AUT. 16 



CAVES OF SZECHWAISr PKOVUSTCE, CHINA GRAHAM 



high to nearly full life-size. Tliey represent persons of botli sexes and various 

 ranks and callings. There are besides models of houses, cooking pots, boilers, 

 vice steamers, bowls, basins, vases, trays, jars, lamps, musical instruments, dogs, 

 cats, horses, cows, sheep, fowls, ducks, etc. Standing with your reflector lamp 

 in the midst of a large cave it seems verily an imitation of Noah's avk.° 



FiGCRB 12. — Chiseled on the wall of a cave near Kiatlng is this representation of 



a house (slightly idealized) 



The following are among the burnt-clay figures, mostly unglazed, 

 secured by the writer in the Szechwan caves, and now in the 

 United States National Museum. 

 (The accompanying numbers are 

 U.S.N.M. catalogue numbers.) 



Plate 1, 5, illustrates a frag- 

 ment of an elephant's foot (No. 

 342202). In the public museum 

 at Chengtu is an unglazed arti- 

 fact, taken from a Han dynasty 

 grave on the Chengtu plain, on 

 which are several images of ele- 

 phants, very artistically designed. 

 We have historical evidence that 

 elephants were known in Szech- 

 wan during the early Christian 

 centuries. An aborigine chief 

 is said to have ridden an elephant in a battle against Chu Ko 

 Liang, and the saint, P'u Hsien, now worshiped as a god, is 

 said to have ridden an elephant to Mount Omei. 



FiGUEB 13. — Representation of a bouse roof, 

 carved on a stone pillar in a cave-tomb 

 near Kiating 



5 .Tournal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 41, p. 68. Kelly 

 and Walsh, Shanghai, 1910. 



