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



If as early as the Sung period the Chinese had lost all correct notions 

 of the se-se of the Leu-ch'ao and T'ang periods, there is no reason to 

 wonder that the confusion becomes complete among the later authors 

 who are simply content to repeat the older statements. Characteristic 

 of this state of affairs is the explanation given in the T'ung ya, a miscel- 

 lany written by Fang Mi-chi at the close of the Ming period: "The 

 se-se are looked upon by some as precious stones, while the Wei lio 

 considers them as pearls. Ch'eng T'ai-chi says: The se-se circulating 

 at our time are all made from burnt stone. There are, however, three 

 kinds of se-se: — precious stones like pearls are the genuine ones; those 

 passing into blue and changing their color are the burnt ones, which are 

 round and bright ; Chinese beads of colored glass and baked clay are also 

 called se-se by a mere transfer of the name." ^ There is assuredly not 

 one Chinese author to venture the identification of se-se with turquois; 

 neither under the Yiian nor under the Manchu dynasty when turquois 

 was perfectly known in China did anybody assert that it was identical 

 with the se-s^ in vogue during the T'ang dynasty.^ 



less of the material, whereas a pearl is always chen chu, a true or genuine pearl. In 

 his Mediaeval Researches (Vol. I, p. 140), he says, however, that se-se is probably the 

 turquois. In the Annals of the Yuan Dynasty {Yiian shi, Ch. 21, p. 7 b, reign of 

 Emperor Ch'eng-tsung, 1 295-1 307) there is another reference to se-se, two thousand 

 five hundred catties of which are reported to have been palmed off on officials in 

 lieu of money ; but this transaction was soon stopped by the emperor. The turquois 

 cannot be understood iij this case, because, as will be seen below, this stone was 

 known in the Mongol period under the name pi tien and is always so designated in the 

 Yiian shi. Another text allows the inference that what was known as se-se in the 

 Yuan epoch was a stone coming from Manchuria. The Cheng tse t'ung written in the 

 beginning of the seventeenth century is quoted in K'ang-hi's Dictionary as saying 

 that at the time of Emperor Jen-tsung (1312-20) of the Yiian dynasty it was 

 reported that the subprefecture Kin-chou (in Feng-t'ien fu, Sheng-king, Manchuria) 

 ofifered se-se which had been gathered in a cave. The passage occurs in the Yiian 

 shi, Ch. 24, p. 2 b; the Emperor was requested to send an envoy to the place who 

 should gather the stones, but declined, as he regarded them as useless. Consequently 

 the se-se of the Mongol period, as far as they relate to Chinese territory, cannot have 

 been turquoises, as it was the very turquois which was highly appreciated by the 

 Mongol rulers. 



1 Also Fang I-chi who lived in the first part of the seventeenth century, in his 

 work Wu li siao shi (Ch. 8, p. 23 b; edition of Ning tsing t'ang, 1884) states that 

 colored glass beads are designated se-se. This is the most recent author in whom I 

 have been able to trace this word. 



2 Bretschneider (Medieval Researches, Vol. I, p. 175) is entirely erroneous in 

 his assertion that it is stated in the Pen ts'ao kang mu that the stone called tien-tse 

 was known under the name of se-se at the time of the T'ang dynasty. The Pen 

 ts'ao does not contain a word to this eflfect. Its author, Li Shi-chen, states in the 

 beginning of his essay on precious stones that blue ones are called tien-tse 

 (No. 11,199); this is not the word tien-tse (No. 11,180) used in the Cho keng lu and 

 Yiian shi (see below). Then follow ten sentences which have nothing at all to do with 

 this subject, whereupon he proceeds to say, as stated above, that blue-green ones were 

 called se-se by the T'ang people. It is therefore evident that these two statements 

 separated from each other by several lines are not mutually connected, and that, on 

 the contrary, in the mind of Li Shi-chfin tien-tse and se-se are entirely distinct affairs; 

 neither in the case of tien-tse does he refer to se-si, nor in the case of se-se to tien-tse; 

 and he says nowhere that the one is identical with the other. Even did he say so, his 



