ART. 16 CAVES OP SZECHWAN PEOVINCE, CHINA GRAHAM 13 



into the pasaage, the King had them shut in and allowed them to 

 perish there so they would accompany his daughter into hades and 

 there be her servants. 



These, and other instances that could be mentioned, show that in 

 China, as in other parts of the world at a much later date, it was 

 customary between two and three thousand years ago to kill and 

 bury human beings with kings, nobles, and others of the upper class. 

 With them were also buried fowls, dogs, weapons, jewelry, money, 

 and other objects. At a later date images of wood and straw were 

 substituted for the living. During the Han dynasty unglazed burnt- 

 clay images were used. By the time of the Tang dynasty (A. D. 

 620-907) the images were generally glazed. People had also begun 

 to burn paper money (it was believed that burning transformed it 

 into real money that could be used by the departed souls in hades) 

 instead of placing actual coins- in the tombs. This custom of sub- 

 stitution spread until it included all the diverse offerings, animate 

 and inanimate, formerly interred with the deceased. Burials in the 

 Szechwan caves were accompanied by clay images which differ in 

 no appreciable degree from those found elsewhere in Chinese tombs 

 of the Han dynasty and of the Three Kingdoms. For these reasons 

 it seems quite evident that the Szechwan caves are of Chinese origin 

 and that they can not be earlier than the Han dynasty. 



In China to-daj^ paper money and paper images of people, domes- 

 tic animals, houses, and many other things are burned during the 

 funeral ceremonies. It is believed that, through burning, these 

 paper figures are transformed into real people, houses, money, etc.,. 

 for use of the departed souls. Chinese widows rarely remarry, for 

 the simple reason that they hope after death to rejoin their late 

 husbands in the other world. 



U. S. GOVERNMENT PRiNTINS OFFICE: 1932 



