July, 1913. Notes on Turquois. 9 



him with an immense quantity of ttirquoises and other precious stones, 

 heaping them on the roof of his house, hence the origin of his name. 

 The mansion of this family still stands in Lhasa near a bridge called 

 " Turquois-Roof Bridge." A Chinese author, writing in 1792, men- 

 tions this bridge and records the following tradition: "In the trans- 

 parent waters of the river are turquois, colored rocks whose bluish 

 tinge seems on the point of dissolving into water; the tops of the stones 

 are bowl-shaped; if once dug away from the mud around them, they 

 would look as big as elephants. One cannot take pebbles out of this 

 river as an amusement as easily as in other streams." ^ It is not known 

 whether this tradition is founded on fact, or whether the tradition 

 connected with Doctor gYu-t'og and his name gave rise to the notion 

 of turquoises existing in the river whose blue tinge may have lent a 

 support to such a view; for in another Chinese source, according to 

 RocKHiLL, it is said: "At the foot of Marpori (the mountain on which 

 the palace of the Dalai Lamas rises) meanders the Kyi-ch'u, whose 

 azure bends encircle the hill with a network green as the dark green 

 bamboo; it is so lovely that it drives all cares away from the beholder." 

 In 641 A. D., the powerful Tibetan king Srong-btsan sgam-po mar- 

 ried a Chinese princess, the daughter of the Emperor T'ai-tsung of the 

 T'ang dynasty. The story of his wooing of the princess has been made 

 by the Tibetans into a poetical romance in which we find such well- 

 known and world-wide motives of popular tradition as the difficult 

 tasks to be solved bj'- the prospective son-in-law.^ The candidates for 

 the hand of the princess were many, so the emperor decided that he 

 should obtain her who could best stand a number of tests. One of 

 these was that he laid before the assembled delegates a buckler con- 

 structed of a coil of turquois arranged in concentric circles so that one 

 end of it just formed the center; he required that a silk thread should be 

 passed through the apertures of the turquoises from one end of the coil 

 to the other. Nobody could solve the puzzle except the astute Tibetan 

 minister Gar who caught a queen-ant and fed it well with milk until it 

 grew bigger. Then he tied a silk thread to its waist, fastening the end 

 of the thread to a silk band which he held in his hand, and placed the 

 ant in the perforation of the first turquois, gently blowing into the hole, 

 till to the amazement of the lookers-on the ant came out at the other 

 end of the coil dragging the thread along. ^ 



^ According to the translation of W. W. Rockhill, Tibet from Chinese Sources 

 {Journal Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. XXIII, 1891, p. 76). 



^ Compare R. H. Lowie, The Test-theme in North American Mythology {Journal 

 of American Folk-lore, Vol. XXI, 1908, pp. 97-148). 



' Narrated in the Tibetan Annals of the Kings of Tibet {rgyal robs, manuscript 

 in the writer's possession), Chapter 13, fol. 45a. 



