July, 1913. Notes on Turquois. 25 



I once received a water-receptacle to wash writing-brushes in, made from turquois, 

 of the size of a dish, in the shape of lotus-leaves, and onion-green and kingfisher-blue 

 in color." 



In the Annals of the T'ang Dynasty (T'ang shu), there is a curious 

 word se-se (No. 9599) occurring in several passages and assumed by 

 HiRTH and Chavannes to have the meaning of turquois. The one is 

 met with in Ch. 221 b, p. 2 b, in an account of Sogdiana, but relating to 

 the region of Ferghana, where it is said : 



"North-east from the capital (modern Tashkend), there are the Western Turks, 

 north-west P'o-la; 200 li south one comes to Khojend, 500 It south-west to K'ang 

 (that is, Sogdiana, the region of Samarkand). In the south-west is the river Yao-sha 

 (the Yaxartes), and in the south-east are big mountains producing si-s& (or so-so). "^ 



Another passage containing this word will be found in Ch. 256 of 

 the T'ang shu, in the account of Tibet. 



and Tibet (the Tibetan name is ko-shel; in Mongol: tabarkhai shel; in Manchu: 

 meisile, an artificial hybrid from Chinese mi and Tibetan shel 'crystal'). In Ch'^ng- 

 tu fu, the capital of Sze-ch'uan Province, a number of small girdle-pendants carved 

 from this substance were obtained by me (Yun-nan being given as the place of pro- 

 duction) which have not yet been examined as to their composition. 



1 See F. HiRTH, Nachworte zur Inschrift des Tonjukuk, p. 81 (in W. Radloff, 

 Die alttiirkischen Inschriften der Mongoleij^ Vol. II, St. Petersburg, 1899). E. 

 Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux, p. 140 (St. Peters- 

 burg, 1903) translating the same passage accepts the rendering of Hirth. Also Giles, 

 in the second edition of his Chinese-English Dictionary, sides with this translation. 

 Palladius, who transcribes the word she-she, was not of this opinion, for in his 

 excellent Chinese- Russiarl Dictionary (Vol. II, p. 569) he gives the definition "azure- 

 colored, transparent precious stone." He has likewise another word she-she (written 

 with the character No. 9600 in the Dictionary of Giles) with the meaning of "emer- 

 ald." CouvREUR (Dictionnaire classique de la langue chinoise, p. 584) explains se-se: 

 "nom d'une belle pierre et d'une esp^ce de verre." In his Dictionnaire chinois- 

 frangais (p. 13), the same author gives the interpretation: "pierre bleue et trans- 

 parente," and for the plain se: "limpidity d'une pierre pr^cieuse; pur, net." It 

 would be very interesting to have the Chinese source pointed out to which the state- 

 ments of Palladius and Couvreur in regard to the transparency of the stone go back; 

 in the Chinese records at my disposal I regret I can find nothing to this effect. In 

 view of the mineralogical properties of turquois it is evident that this is a point of 

 importance, for non-transparency is one of the prominent characteristics of turquois. 

 As we can but presume that both Palladius and Couvreur must have founded their 

 definition on some Chinese document, this would present another of the objections 

 which must be raised to the weak hypothesis of identifying sii-si with the turquois. 

 E. H. Parker {China Review, Vol. XVIII, 1890, p. 221) defines se-se as a sort of jade 

 much used for arrowheads and other purposes by the Tibetans, Tungusians, and even 

 Ta Yue-chi (Indoscythians) who after their conversion to Buddhism had a sacred 

 patra or alms-bowl made of the same material (ts'ing shi); in his opinion, si-s^ is 

 identical with the latter term, which means green or blue (but possibly also dark- 

 colored) stone. This point of view is hardly correct. The arrowheads of the 

 Tungusian tribes, as corroborated by archaeological finds made in the Amur region, 

 were of nothing but common flint. The ts'ing shi of which the alms-bowl of the 

 Indoscythians was made in all probability was lapis lazuli and would accordingly 

 mean in this case 'blue stone'; on Buddhist pictures alms-bowls are usually painted 

 an ultramarine or lapis-lazuli blue color (see above p. 14). There are several other 

 instances where the word ts'ing shi has the same meaning (Hirth, China and the 

 Roman Orient, p. 72, and Chinesische Studien, p. 250). There is no Chinese text 

 saying that se-se was a kind of jade, that it was a ts'ing shi, or ever used for 

 arrowheads. 



