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



It seems to me that the color designation insisted on by Hirth is 

 hardly conclusive; the color name pi, 'bluish-green' (originally a kind 

 of jade) is quite indistinct, and aside from the fact that there are many 

 other green or blue stones Hke emerald, lapis lazuH, malachite, sapphire, 

 etc.,^ this attribute with reference to s^-se does not appear in contempo- 

 raneous records of the Sui or T'ang periods, but only in later authors 

 who were not personally familiar w4th the stone. It was known in 

 China under that name only to a limited extent, during, that time, and 

 to the later generations the newly coined word simply became a poetical 

 name with no other meaning than that of a rare, precious stone. The 

 one fact stands out clearly, that se-se was looked upon as a precious 

 stone, a fact for which more testimony will be given, and this is evidence 

 that it can hardly be the turquois. It is always essential to ascertain 

 to what category an object in the views of the Chinese belongs; these 

 categories are always fixed and stable, and suggest an inference as to 

 the nature of the object in question. No Chinese has ever considered 

 turquois a precious stone, but just a common stone good enough for 

 barbarous ornaments.^ It is worth 5 Taels (about $3.50) a catty (i^ 

 pounds) in Si-ngan fu where it is sold by weight, and if the famous se-se 

 were nothing more than that, the Chinese authors would not have 

 expressed any enthusiasm about them.' Hirth's quotation from Bret- 



1 That the definition pi chu means little is illustrated by the fact that other jewels 

 are also defined by this term, as, for example, the pearl called mu-nan (Hirth, Chma 

 and the Roman Orient, p. 59) which is even described as yellow m other texts {Ko 

 chi king yilan, Ch. 32, p. 7 b). Compare also P'ei wen yiinfu, Ch. 7 A, p. loi h (pt 

 chu). The color argument should therefore be disregarded.— The comparative tables 

 of the colors given by W. Tassin (Descriptive Catalogue of the Collections of. Gems 

 in the U. S. National Museum, Report of National Museum, 1900, pp. 541, 542) 

 enumerate the green stones as follows: zircon, sapphire, garnet (demantoid and 

 ouvarovite), chrysoberyl ' (alexandrite) , spinel, topaz, diamond, olivine (peridot), 

 tourmaline, beryl (emerald and aquamarine), quartz (chrysoprase, plasma, prase, 

 and iasper), turquois. The blue stones are: sapphire, spinel, topaz, diamond, 

 tourmaline (indicoHte), bervl (aquamarine), iolite (water sapphire, dichrolite). 

 It should not be overiooked either that, as shown by the modern word lu sung sht, 

 the color of turquois is described by the Chinese with the word l-ii, not pi. 



2 A. J. C. Geerts (Les produits de la nature japonaise et chinoise, p. 202, Yoko- 

 hama, 1878) was cautious enough to pay due attention to the distinction made 

 between pierres ordinaires and pierres precieuses in the Pen ts'ao kang mu. 



' In the Lapidarium of Pseudo-Aristotle (Julius Ruska, Das Steinbuch des 

 Aristoteles, p. 152, Heidelberg, 19 12) it is said in regard to the turquois: "Its color 

 delights those afflicted with sorrow, but it is not employed for the costume of the 

 kings, because it detracts from their majesty." A similar remark is made by Ibn 

 al-Baitar: "It is soft and a bit fragile, and is not used for the ornaments of the 

 sovereigns" (L. Leclerc, Traits des simples, /. c, p. 50). In an Arabic work of 1175 

 it is said: "Many kings hardly have the desire to wear a turquois, because the vulgar 

 frequently utilizes it as sigillum and wears finger rings which are imitations of its best 

 kind" (Wiedemann, Beitrage zur Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, XXX. Zur 

 Mineralogie im Islam, p. 234, Eriangen, 1912). Also in Europe turquoises were low 

 in price. "Admodum magno pretio non venditur, quia magna lUarum ex Oriente 

 adiertur copia," says A. Boetius de Boot (Gemmarum et lapidum histona, p. 271, 

 ed. of A. Toll, Lugduni Batavorum, 1636). The general rule may be set down 

 that there is a large consensus of opinion as to the value of precious metals and 



