648 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



or to prove properly. If the finger print has not been evolved from 

 the hand print, nor the latter from the former, there is a certain degree 

 of inward relationship between the two; both are coexisting phe- 

 nomena resting on a common psychological basis. In order to pene- 

 trate into the beginnings and original significance of finger prints, 

 it is necessary to consider another subject, that of seals. 



The antiquarian history of Chinese seals begins with the famous 

 seal of the first Emperor Ts'in Shi (B. C. 246-210). This was carved 

 from white jade obtained at Lan-t'ien in Shensi Province and is said 

 to have contained the inscription ''Having received the mandate of 

 Heaven, I am in possession of longevity and eternal prosperity." 

 It was, accordingly, the emblem of sovereignty conferred by Heaven 

 on the Emperor.^ The word si,^ which had up to that date served 

 for the designation of any seal, was henceforth reserved as the exclu- 

 sive name of the imperial seal; in other words, a taboo was placed 

 on it. Furthermore the character used in writing this word under- 

 went a change: the symbol for "jade" (yii) entering into its composi- 

 tion, together with a phonetic element, was substituted for the pre- 

 vious symbol ''earth" (fu). The latter word denotes also clay, so 

 that we are allowed to infer that prior to the time of the jade seal of 

 Ts'in Shi seals were ordinarily made of clay. 



The common name for these clay seals is feng ni,^ and they were 

 utilized especially in sealing documents which were -written at that 

 time on slips of bamboo or wood. After the age of Emperor Wu 

 (B. C. 156-87) of the Former Han dynasty they fell into disuse, 

 but during his reign they were still employed, as attested by the 

 biographies of the Gens. Chang K'ien and Su Wu. A. Stein ^ has 

 discovered a large number of such tablets with clay seals attached 

 to them in the ruins of Turkistan. A number of ancient clay seals 

 having been discovered also on Chinese soil, particularly in the 

 provinces of Shensi and Honan, they could not escape the attention 

 of the native archeologists. One of these, Liu T'ie-yun, published 

 at Shanghai in 1904 a small work in four volumes under the title 

 Tie-yiln ts'ang fao, "Clay Pieces from the Collection of T'ie-yiin." 

 These volumes contain facsimiles of a number of clay seals as an- 

 ciently employed for sealing official letters and packages.^ The sub- 

 ject, however, is not investigated, and no identifications of the char- 

 acters of old script with their modern forms are given. Their deci- 

 pherment is difficult and remains a task for the future. A few such 



1 E. Chavannes (Les m6moires historiques de S&-ma Ts'ien, vol. 2, pp. 108-110) has recorded the various 

 destinies of this now lost seal, according to the Chinese tradition, down to the T'ang dynasty. 



2 Giles, Chinese-English Dictionary, Nos. 4143, 4144. 



3 Literary references to them are scarce; some notes regarding them are gathered in the cyclopedia Yen 

 Iden lei han, ch. 205, p. 36. 



* Ancient Khotan, Oxford, 1907, Vol. 1, p. 31S. 



6 Laufer, Chinese Pottery, p. 287, and Chavannes in Journal asiatique, \o\. 17, No. 1, 1911, p. 128. 



