56 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XIII. 



tsie-mu-lu seems to go back directly to the Persian word zumurrtid,^ 

 and it seems quite plausible that the Chinese obtained emeralds in their 

 considerable trade with Persia. Possibly the Chinese have made their 

 first acquaintance with emeralds at the end of %he Mongol period.^ 



Let us now revert to the history of the turquois in China. T'ao 

 Tsung-i, the author of the interesting work Cho keng lu (first published 

 in 1366) replete with valuable information concerning the Mongol 

 period, has embodied in it a brief enumeration of the precious stones of 

 the Mohammedans, which were traded to China in his time (Ch. 7, 

 pp. 5 b-7 b, edition of 1469). The last group of these stones is desig- 

 nated tien-tse (Giles's Dictionary, No. 11,180, but not noted with this 

 meaning).^ Three kinds of these are distinguished: first, Ni-she-pu-ti, 

 that is, stones from Nishapur in Persia, called the Mohammedan tien-tse 

 whose veins are fine ; secondly, Ki-U-ma-ni, that is, stones from Kerman 

 in Persia, called Host tien-tse (that is, tien-tse used in the country of 



1 Horn, Neupersische Schriftsprache, p. 6 {Grundriss der iranischen Philologie 

 I, 2) and F. Jusxi, Kurdische Grammatik, p. XVI (St. Petersburg, 1880). In the 

 Taoist novel Feng shen yen i emeralds are mentioned as composing the umbrella of 

 Virupaksha. In W. Grube's posthumous work (Metamorphosen'der Gotter, p. 512, 

 Leiden, 1912) the name tsu'-mu-lu has not been recognized as a foreign word and' 

 is literally translated from the meaning pf the Chinese characters "Grandmother 

 green," while the editor H. Mueller in the index compiled by him (p. 651) explains 

 it as "pearls"; also the variant tsii-mu-pi there employed means "emeralds." The 

 same manner of writing the word (tsu-mu-lu) is employed also by Yang Shen (Ko chi 

 king yiian, Ch. 33, p. i) and by Ku Ying-t'ai in his Po wu yao Ian (ibid.) written be- 

 tween 1621 and 1627. A curious error occurs in R. Pumpelly, Geological Re-i 

 searches, p. 1 18 (Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Vol. XV, Washington, 1867) 

 who in a discussion of the mineral production of Yiin-nan remarks: "Emeralds are 

 very rare, and although the Chinese name is lieupaoshi [i. e. Itl pao shi] (green precious 

 stone), they are known among lapidaries as Sz'mulu, the name of Sumatra, whence 

 they are probably obtained." The Chinese word in question is not a designation of 

 Sumatra which was known to the Chinese under the names Shi-li-fo-shi and San-fo- 

 ts'i (see Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-kua, p. 63), nor is emerald known to be found 

 on Sumatra. 



2 Bretschneider, Mediaeval Researches, Vol. I, p. 174. But at an earlier date 

 they heard of emeralds in the translations of Buddhist Sanskrit works. In one of 

 the series of the so-called Seven Jewels (saptaratna) the emerald appears in the second 

 place following the diamond, and is transcribed in the form mo-lo-kia-t'o rendered into 

 Chinese "green-colored bead" (lii se chu) identical with harinmani, one of the 

 Sanskrit synonyms of the emerald. Compare Kiao ch'engfa shu (Ch. 7, p. 3, Hang- 

 chou, 1878), a Buddhist dictionary of numerical categories written by Yiian Tsing 

 in 1431 (Wylie, Notes, p. 211). 



^ In fact, none of our dictionaries contains the word tien-tse with the meaning of 

 turquois, nor even does K'ang-hi's Dictionary. The origin and significance of the 

 word is somewhat embarrassing, as it cannot be explained from any meaning assigned 

 to the character tien (No. 11,180). In my opinion, a confusion of characters has 

 been in operation in writing the word. It was intended for the character tien 

 (No. 11,179) whose meaning is "to inlay objects with stones, inlaid or incrustated 

 work." From this verbal noun, the new word tien-tse was derived with the sense 

 "stones for inlaying," one of the main purposes for which turquoises are employed, 

 and hence quite an appropriate designation. In the Ming period (Ko ku yao luti 

 and Pen ts'ao kang mu, see below) we find a new mode of writing the word tien-tse, 

 with the character tien (No. 11,199) meaning "indigo," which might have been 

 prompted by an association of the color of the stone with that of indigo. 



