July, 1913. » Notes on Turquois. 47 



(lan-ch'i) as occurring in the same locality, and since Badakshan is the 

 locality producing lapis and balas ruby, the greater probability is that 

 Ch'ang Te's ya-se is identical with pi-ya-se, the balas ruby of Badakshan. 

 The fact that Ch'ang T^, in writing the name, employs other characters 

 than those in use at later tinies is certainly not in the way of this identi- 

 fication. On the other hand, as stated above (p. 33, note 5), Ch'ang 

 T6 notices in the palace of the CaUph se-se together with lapis lazuli, and 

 hence it may be concluded that his se-se is identidal with ya-se, i.e. that 

 se-se is the balas ruby of Badakshan. And if it is permissible to inter- 

 pret the word liu-li, occurring in the accoimt on Persia in the Sui shu 

 (Ch. 83, p. lib) and having its place between coral, agate and crystal, 

 in the sense of lapis lazuli, we are there confronted with an analogous 

 case. The great antiquity, of lapis lazuli in Egypt and Western Asia, 

 corresponding to its relatively early appearance in China, leads one to 

 the inevitable conclusion that also balas ruby, originating from the 

 same mines, must be of proportionately equal age. 



From the few accounts we have in regard to the se-se — there is no 

 contemporaneous description of them — we cannot surely be too positive 

 on the subject of identification. But the spinel or balas ruby tentatively 

 proposed suits the situation far better than the turquois, for it is a 

 precious stone, it was found (and still is found) in the heart of those 

 regiorts participating in the property of se-si, and is well authenticated 

 historically and archasologieally. The word se-se is evidently not 

 Chinese, buj derived from a foreign language ; it may be either a Chinese 

 attempt at transcribing a Turkish or Persian designation of the stone, 

 or the name of some locality, mountain or river.^ 



1 Marco Polo's designation of the mountain where the balas ruby is mined, 

 Syghinan = Shignan, is very suggestive as a possible foundation of the word st-sk 

 (Cantonese: sok-sok). It is also significant that the ancient Chinese name for Shigh- 

 nan is recorded in the Annals of the T'ang Dynasty in the form St-ni or Se-k'i-ni, 

 and that this syllable se is written with the same character as used in the jewel si-si 

 (see Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-kiue occidentaux, pp. 162, 322). It is 

 therefore possible, after all, that si-se derives its name from this locality and means 

 "stone of Shighnan," — a case from a philological point of view analogous to the 

 above mentioned pijdzakl and badakshl. During the Mongol period the balas ruby 

 is designated la in the Cho keng lu (Ch. 7, p. 5 b, edition of 1469), — a word which is 

 traced by Bretschneider (Mediaeval Researches, Vol. I, p. 173) to Persian Idl. The 

 Chinese author T'ao Tsung-i — a fact not mentioned by Bretschneider — states 

 that this word is only dialectic. The adoption of this foreign word indicates a change 

 in the commercial conditions; in the T'ang period the balas rubies were traded to 

 China from the countfy of the Western Turks (Khotan), in the Mongol period from 

 Persia. An error of Bretschneider here deserves correction. The Cho keng lu enu- 

 merates four red stones and expressly says that they come from the same mine; 

 since the balas ruby is mined in Badakshan, the three others, viz., pi-che-ta, si-la-ni, 

 and ku-mu-lan, must be derived from the same locality, and it is impossible to con- 

 jecture with Bretschneider that si-la-ni probably means "fi*om Ceylon" — a view 

 untenable also for philological reasons. The pi-che-ta corresponds to Arabic bigddl, 

 "garnet" (Wiedemann, Der Islam, Vol. II, p. 352, and Zur Mineralogie im 

 Islam, pp. 217, 2>36, Erlangen, 1912). If Bretschneider adds that nowadays the 



