July, 1913. Notes on Turquois. 57 



the Tangutans) whose veins are coarse; thirdly, stones of King-chou, 

 called tien-tse of Siang-yang whose color is changeable. It is easy to 

 see, and Bretschneider ^ has already pointed it out, that the turquois 

 of Nishapur and Kerman is understood here,^ and it hence follows that 

 Siang-yang tien-tse must have the meaning "turquois of Siang-yang." 

 Siang-yang is a city and prefecture of Hu-pei Province, and King-chou 

 is the name of an ancient province comprising parts of the present 

 provinces of Hu-nan and Hu-pei. The changing of color, indeed, fits 

 the turquois, since its blue shades often fade to a pale green on long 

 exposure to the light.' If this conclusion is correct, this would be the 

 oldest Chinese reference to a turquois-producing locality in China 

 proper in the latter part of the fourteenth century, and the first authentic 

 use of a word for turquois in the Chinese language.* It is interesting 

 that Tu Wan in his lapidarium of 1133 (Ch. a, p. 11 ; see p. 23) devotes 

 a notice to stones of Siang-yang employed for building purposes, but. has 

 no allusion to turquois of this or any other locality. It is therefore 

 obvious that, while quarries existed in that place during the Sung 

 period, the turquois had then not yet made its appearance, and the 

 fact is confirmed that the turquois mines were not operated before 



1 Mediaeval Researches, Vol. I, p. 175. 



2 See above pp. 40-42. 



' This peculiar property of the turquois is well known. Ibn al-BaitSr says after 

 al-Kindi who (according to Wiedemann, Zur Alchemic bei den Arabern, Journal 

 fiir praktische Chemie, 1907, p. 73) died shortly after 870 A. D.,'that "the turquois 

 changes its color on contact with an oily substance; also perspiration affects it [this is 

 mentioned likewise by Boetius de Boot, /. c, p. 269.and Max Bauer, Edelstein- 

 kunde, p. 488] and entirely deprives it of its color; contact with musk has a similar 

 effect and destroys its value; Aristotle holds the opinion that a stone thus changing 

 color has no value for its wearer" (L. Leclerc, /. c, Vol. Ill, p. 51). In Pseudo- 

 Aristotle (J. RusKA, /. c, p. 152) the purity of color in the stone is ascribed to the 

 purity of the atmosphere which, when the latter becomes impure, causes the stone 

 to become dim; when it comes in contact with molten gold, its beauty disappears. 

 The latter clause is dubious. The sentence imputed to Aristotle is not traceable to 

 him; neither Aristotle nor Theophrast make mention of the turquois. The alteration 

 of color gave rise to the belief in the west that the stone foretold misfortune, or that 

 the stone, when its owner sickens, will grow pale, and at his death lose color entirely. 

 Ben Jonson (i 574-1 637), the dramatist, in his Sejanus, has the verse: "And true 

 as Turkise in the deare lord's ring, Looke well or ill with him." Fenton (Secret 

 Wonders of Nature, 1569) says: "The Turkeys doth move when there is any perill 

 prepared to him that weareth it." 



* The quarrying of turquois in Hui-ch"uan, Yun-nan Province, mentioned for the 

 year 1290 in the Yiian shi (see p. 26, Note 3) is, of course, older in fact. The Cho 

 keng lu, however, is our starting-point in unraveling the mystery, as it affords the 

 means of determining in an unobjectionable manner the significance of the word 

 tien-tse. With this authentic evidence in our hands we can hope to attack success- 

 fully the passages in the Yiian shi where this word is employed, while it is not there 

 explained. Besides, we have the important testimony of Marco Polo, as pointed 

 out before, which enables us to establish with certainty the fact that turquois was 

 known and mined in China during the Mongol period. Marco Polo was familiar 

 with the turquois, as shown by his remarks on the turquois-quarries in the province 

 of Kerman in Persia, so that his turquois in the province of Caindu cannot be called 

 into doubt. 



