652 ANNUAL REPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION^ 1912. 



in the passage quoted from Kia Kung-yen, is the phrase for ' ' making 

 a finger impression" in the T'ang period, and the same words reversed 

 in their position, cM hua, mean "fuiger painting" or ''painted with 

 the finger. " It seems to me that also in finger painting the idea of 

 magic was prevalent at the outset, and that the artist, by the imme- 

 diate bodily touch with the paper or silk, was enabled to instill part of 

 his soul into his work. Eventually we might even go a step farther 

 and make bold to say that finger paintmg, in general, is a most 

 ancient and primitive method of drawing and painting, one practiced 

 long before the invention in the third century B. C. of the writing 

 brush of animal hair, and the older wooden stylus. The hand, with 

 "its versatile organs of fingers, was the earliest implement utilized by 

 man, and the later artistic finger painting might well be explained as 

 the inheritance of a primeval age revived under suggestions and im- 

 pressions received from the fuiger-prmt system. 



