6o Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XIII. 



there are also those of black and green hues which are low in price. In 

 another work of the Ming period, the Po wu yao Ian (published between 

 1 62 1 and 1627), the precious stones of Tibet are enumerated, the series 

 being closed by a "blue precious stone, light-blue in color like the hue 

 of the sky." As the word pao shi, 'precious stone' is used here, I am 

 not certain whether the turquois is meant. 



In Chinese pottery occurs a deep-blue glaze well known to collectors 

 under the name of turquois glaze. It has sometimes .been supposed 

 that this glaze was intended to imitate the color of turquois, as is, e. g., 

 stated in the "Catalogue of the Morgan Collection of Chinese Porce- 

 lains." ^ This view, however, is erroneous; "turquois glaze" is merely 

 a designation of foreign origin, whereas, in the minds of the Chinese, 

 the glaze has no relation to the turquois. This glaze is produced by 

 means of a silicate of copper known to the Chinese as fei ts'ui from its 

 resemblance to the color of the plumes of the kingfisher, or as k'ung-tsio 

 lii, "peacock green."^ This glaze appears for the first time in the pottery 

 of the Sung period (960-1279)^ and was in full swing during the time 

 of the Ming dynasty, being applied to porcelain as successfully as to 

 faience. During these two periods, the turquois was hardly known to 

 the Chinese, or played no r61e in their life.'* 



The modem word lii sung shi, as far as I can see, does not occur 

 earlier than the eighteenth century,^ and it may be presumed also that 



school reminiscences reiterated by several authors. As early as in the Lapidarium 

 of Tu Wan {Yiin lin shi p'u, published in 1133) we find it stated (Ch. 2, p. 7) that on 

 the waste land of the Temple of the White Horse {Pai ma sze) east of Ho-nan fu, 

 after a heavy rain, fine stones of a deep purple and green color are found in the 

 ground which belong "to the class of beads having the price of a Tibetan horse; 

 others of these beads are light-green with many veins and speckles, and some are 

 made into carvings of objects and images; deep-green ones are high in price." "These 

 stones," concludes the author, "are produced in foreign countries, and are found also 

 in the soil near the ancient capitals of Si-ngan fu and Lb-yang. (Ho-nan)." If it 

 were permissible to regard these stones as imported turquoises, additional negative 

 evidence would be furnished that turquois was not yet mined in China during the 

 Sung period. Also Li Shi-ch6n (in his Pen ts'ao kang mu, Ch. 8, p. 17 b) uses the 

 term ' bead of the value of a horse ' (ma kia chu) as a designation for kingfisher-blue 

 stones. 



1 Vol. II, p. 78 (New York, 191 1). 



^ Compare S. W. Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art, pp. 265, 315, 376 (New York, 

 1899). 



^ Laufer, Chinese Pottery, p. 316. 



* There is a popular tradition in Tibet in regard to blue-glazed Chinese faience 

 tiles with which some temples are roofed that the first king Srong-btsan sgam-po of 

 the seventh century had produced the glaze by melting an immense quantity of 

 turquois for the purpose (S. Chandra Das, Narrative of a Journey round Lake 

 Yamdo, p. 49, Calcutta, 1887). 



^ It is certainly possible, as in the case of the word pi-ya-se, that also the word lii 

 sung shi belonging to the colloquial language may be of earlier date than we at pres- 

 ent suspect; but as the older sources regarding the every day language are very scarce, 

 we can not yet offer any positive evidence. 



