558 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 8 



have just referred. Presumably these were made for the poorer folk 

 who could not afford anything so expensive as glass, which was 

 certainly of high value in China. They have a composite core, and 

 are covered with a bluish glaze, the "eyes" being produced by local 

 heaping up of brown and white glazes to give the desired effect. 



It has been generally accepted on literary evidence that glass was 

 not made in China until the fifth century A. D. Hirth quotes an 

 historical work, the Pei-shih, to the effect that in the reign of the Wei 

 Emperor T'ai Wu (A. D. 424-52) traders from the land of the Ta 

 Yueh-chih (Bactria) came to his capital [in what is now Shansi], stating 

 that by melting together certain minerals they could produce glass 

 of any color. They were told to find the required material in the 

 neighboring hills, and did this so successfully that the glass they 

 produced was considered superior to that brought from the West. 

 An older work, the Wei Annals, states that the foreigners came not 

 from Ta Yueh-chih but from Tien Chu-kuo, i. e., India. 26 Stein 

 refers with approval to the above account in connection with his 

 discoveries at Loulan, 28 nor does Hudson dissent, 27 but the facts given 

 below indicate that glass was made in China at least as early as the 

 third century B. C, if not earlier. This is but another example of 

 what has often happened before, namely, a belief accepted on literary 

 evidence has to give way to the findings of archeology. Nor do I base 

 my conclusions solely on the specimens that I have handled or that 

 have been analyzed, for much corroborative evidence will be found 

 in the specimens described and figured by Bishop White in his volume, 

 Tombs of Old Lo-yang. 



The import of vessels of such fragile material as glass seems proof 

 positive of the high value attached to this substance in China, and this 

 view is supported by a number of glass objects of minor importance 

 which have come to light in the last few years. Many of these are of 

 Chinese manufacture, as is indicated by the presence in the glass of the 

 element barium in substantial amount, a remarkable fact, since, so 

 far as I can discover, barium, except in traces, is not known to occur in 

 Western or Near Eastern glass, ancient or modern, until about 1884, 

 when, as Mr. Beck informs me, it was purposely introduced as a 

 constituent of some of the new glasses with high refractive index and 

 low dispersion put on the market by Messrs. Schott of Jena. 28 



The beads I shall discuss immediately ; other glass objects of interest 

 are the ear ornaments (sometimes called capstan beads) and the 

 ceremonial disks (imitating jade) called pi, placed under the pelvis 



» Hirth, Chinesiscne Studien, p. 65, Miinchen u. Leipzig, 1890. 



» Serindia, p. 393. 



»' Europe and China, p. 98. 



" Analyses of two early beads containing barium will be found in a note contributed by Mr. Beck and 

 myself to Nature, vol. 33, p. 982, 1934. One bead contained sufficient barium to give barium oxide 19.3 

 percent. 



