ROMAN ORIENT AND FAR EAST — SELIGMAN 567 



that I have cited, coupled with what we know of the accredited proper- 

 ties of jade, seem to prove the existence of a strongly held belief in the 

 Elixir Vitae in the Far East at a time when there is no evidence for 

 the existence of this belief in Europe. Moreover it seems probable 

 that more evidence in favor of this view might be derived from a new 

 examination of Chinese sources, for Laufer's great work on jade was 

 published in 1912. 



The last matters to which I shall refer are those two great gifts of 

 China to the West, paper and printing, the latter for practical purposes 

 impossible without the former. Up to the end of the Chou dynasty- 

 writing was done with a bamboo pen upon slips of bamboo or wood. 

 Then came the writing brush of hair. This is the traditional Chinese 

 belief, but the modern view as set forth by Yetts is that brush cal- 

 ligraphy existed in the Shang-Yin period, than which we have no 

 earlier relics. Referring to two Shang-Yin inscriptions, which he 

 reproduces, he denies that the "spontaneity and modulation of their 

 line" makes possible any other agency. Certain pictograms in the 

 archaic script are adduced, which clearly represent a hand holding a 

 brush. These come from a Honan bone and a Shang-Yin bronze. 48 

 Moreover, recent excavations near An-yang have brought to light 

 three fragments of bone, used by Shang-Yin diviners, on which there 

 are remains of writing done with ink and brush. 49 Paper, or near- 

 paper, was invented about the end of the first century A. D., tradi- 

 tionally in the year 105. Rag paper dating from the middle of the 

 second century was discovered by Stein at Tun Huang in the form of 

 eight letters on paper (together with letters on silk and wood). Dis- 

 coveries at Turfan date to the end of the fourth century. These, 

 together with later documents from Turkestan, show that the paper 

 was manufactured from both raw fiber and worked-up material, e. g., 

 the remains of old textiles and fishing nets, a discovery indicating that 

 it was not the Muslims of Samarkand who, as commonly held, origi- 

 nated rag paper: 



Rag paper, supposed till 1885 to have been invented in Europe in the fifteenth 

 century, supposed till 1911 to have been invented by the Arabs of Samarkand in 

 the eighth century, was carried back to the Chinese of the second century, and the 

 Chinese record, stating that rag paper was invented in China at the beginning of 

 the second century, was confirmed. 80 



Gradually the Chinese improved the composition and face of their 

 papers, so that it was a perfected invention that passed from the 

 Chinese to the Arabic world. Thence it reached Baghdad in the 



« The George Eumorfopoulos Collection, Catalogue of the Chinese and Corean Bronzes, etc., vol. 1, see 

 especially pp. 15-17, London, 1929. 



«• Tung Tso-pin in Studies presented to Ts'ai Yuan P'ei on his Sixty -fifth Birthday, pp. 417, 418, fig. 7, 

 Pei-p'ing, 1933. 



»• Carter, Thomas Francis, The invention of printing in China and its spread westward, p. 5, New York, 

 1931. To this work I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness for this short account of early paper and 

 printing. 



