July, 1913. Notes on Turquois. 29 



has no independent value, because Ch. 102 of this work treating of the 

 countries of the west, as well demonstrated by Chavannes,^ has been 

 merely reproduced from Ch. 97 of the Pei shi by a committee of schol- 

 ars of the Sung period headed by Fan Tsu-yii (1641-1098). 



It is thus evident that si-se were known to the Chinese prior to the 

 age of the T'ang dynasty as occurring in the territory of Persia and 

 Sogdiana, to wit, within the Iranian culture-area. It is noteworthy 

 also that any particular region or mountain producing the stone is not 

 alluded to in these earlier texts as subsequently in the T'ang shti, and 

 that Pei shi and Sui shu, while locating se-se in Sogdiana, do not allude 

 to it in their notices of Tashkend {Shi kuo). 



As I did not know on what evidence Prof. Hirth had based his 

 identification of se-se with the turquois, I consulted him regarding this 

 point, and he was good enough to furnish the following note which is 

 here reproduced with his kind permission. 



"The word s6-s6 (in Cantonese shat-shat, sit-sit, or sok-sok) has, besides others, 

 the meaning of a precious stone, 'a greenish or bluish bead' (pi chu), as quoted in 

 P'ei wen yiinfu, Ch. 93 B, p. 85. The P^n ts'ao kang mu (Ch. 8, p. 55) says that the 

 people of the T'ang dynasty called green (or blue) precious stones by the name so-so. 

 The Japanese sources as quoted in Geerts, Les Produits de la nature japonaise et 

 chinoise, p. 481, do not apparently refer to so-so, but the T'u shu tsi ch'Sng (section 

 27, National Economy, Ch. 335) contains an extract from the T'ien kung k'ai wu in 

 which so-so is classed with greenish precious stones. The T'ang kuo shih p'u (ibid.) 

 relates the story o: a big so-so which the author thinks was not a genuine one ; the same 

 story is told in Yen fan lu, Ch. 15, p. 11. 



"Bretschneider (Chinese Recorder, Vol. VI, p. 6) was, as far as I know, the first 

 to find out that se-se was not a musical instrument as Pauthier had assumed, but a 

 precious stone.^ In his translation of a passage regarding precious stones found in 

 the Cho keng lu (reproduced in his Mediaeval Researches, Vol. I, pp. 173-6), he refers 

 to 'stones called tien-tze' which occur in Nishapur and Kirman. Bretschneider says 

 of these : ' I have little doubt that the Chinese author understood by it the turquoise, 

 the Persian name of which \sfiruze. Both Nishapur and Kirman produced turquoise. 

 So did the hills of Ferghana referred to in Nachworte, etc., p. 81, for the territory of 

 Ferghana furnished turquoises, according to von Kremer, Kulturgeschichte des 

 Orients, Vol. I, p. 329. These are the reasons which had induced me to render so-so 

 by 'Turkis'."' 



^ Documents, p. 99. 



^ The word si-se in the sense of a jewel, as will be seen below, is the Chinese 

 transcription of a foreign word. The single word se denotes a stringed musical 

 instrument, a kind of lute, described e. g. by J. A. van Aalst (Chinese Music, p. 62, 

 Shanghai, 1884). But there is a passage (in the San kuo chi, Wei chi, commentary to 

 the Biography of Ch'Sn Se-wang, quoted in P'ei wen yiinfu, Ch. 93 B, p. 85) where 

 also the compound se-se seems to have the meaning of a musical instrument. In the 

 Tsin shu (Ch. 97, p. 2) it is said in regard to the Shen Han, a Korean tribe, that they 

 are skilled in playing the se-se which in shape is like a five-stringed lute {chu, 

 No. 2575). 



' It should be added that it is Bretschneider himself (Mediaeval Researches, 

 Vol. I, p. 140) who first proposed the translation of si-si as turquois, but with 

 the restriction of a "probably." 



