July, 1913. Notes on Turquois. 31 



Schneider is hardly in favor of his view that se-se was the turquois; 

 Bretschneider's statement merely shows that at the end of the 

 Mongol dynasty — - the Cho keng lu was published in 1366 — the Persian 

 tiu"quois became known to the Chinese. 



From three practical examples it may be demonstrated that se-se, 

 as known during the Sung period, cannot be construed to mean turquois. 



In the K'ao kti t'u (Ch. 10, p. 22 b), a book on ancient bronzes by 

 Lii Ta-lin, completed in 1092, a girdle-clasp is figured and described 

 as being made of se-se; it is a highly ornamented piece, engraved in fine 

 lines and ending in a curve shaped into a dragon's head. This whole 

 technique would be impossible if the material were turquois, which 

 results only in straight, stiff, angular lines (compare Plates VI-VIII). 



The Ku yil Vu p'u, "Illustrated Description of Ancient Jades," 

 compiled in 11 76 and printed in 1779, describes several jade specimens 

 adorned with the stone se-se, — a sword possessed by* the Sung Emperor 

 T'ai-tsu (968-976), having a hilt ornamented with amber, se-se, and 

 genuine pearls (Ch. 28, p. 10). The Chinese would hardly display such 

 bad taste as to unite a cheap stone like turquois with genuine pearls. 

 In Ch. 97, p. 10, of the same work a jade lantern of the Sung palace is 

 figured and described, the eight sides of which are adorned with coral, 

 amber, se-se and such like jewels (pao). In this case turquois is again 

 out of the question, as it is not considered by the Chinese a precious 

 stone or a jewel, but just an ordinary stone. ^ 



The two works here quoted come down from the Sung period, 



and it can be shown from another source of the same epoch that the 



word se-se designated at that time a stone capable of carving found on 



the very soil of China, and that, consequently, the se-se in the age of the 



Sung dynasty are affairs different from those mentioned in the Pet shi, 



Sui shu and T'ang shu for Persia, Sogdiana, Ferghana, and Tibet^ 



Kao Se-sun, a poet and essayist who lived in the latter part of the 



twelfth century,^ is the author of an interesting work on miscellaneous 



minerals among peoples of all times, and that the changes which have affected the 

 appreciation of precious stones from the days of antiquity until now are but very 

 slight, chiefly due to the operations of fashion and variations in the sources of supply. 

 Thus it is not very likely that a stone looked upon as non-precious at present by gen- 

 eral agreement of opinion was ever prized as a jewel in earlier periods of history. 



' Such carvings of se-sS are referred to.also by other authors of the Sung period. 

 Chou Mi in his interesting work Yun yen kuo yen lu (Ch. b, p. 31 b), a review of 

 ancient bronzes, paintings and jades which had come to the notice of the author 

 during his lifetime, mentions the carving of "a crane moaning in the autumn" en- 

 tirely made from this material. This very subject savors of the impressionism of the 

 Sung artists, and in this case turquois is inconceivable, not only for technical but 

 also, and even more so, for artistic reasons. The work quoted is embodied in the 

 collection 'Shi wan kiian lou edited by Lu Sin-yiian and thoroughly analyzed by Paul 

 Pelliot {Bulletin de l' Ecole franQaise d' Extreme-Orient, Vol. IX, 1909, p. 246). 



'^ Giles, Biographical Dictionary, p. 368; Wylie, Notes on Chinese Literature, 

 p. 161. 



