CHAPTER III 

 ORIENTAL IVORY CARVINGS 



In the time of MasMl, (b. in Bagdad— d. 956 A. D.), 

 the author of the encyclopedic work in Arabic entitled 

 "Meadows of Gold," and who has been called the Herodotus 

 of the Arabs, the principal source of African ivory was "the 

 land of the Zenjes," in the Upper Nile. This African ivory 

 first went to Oman (probably to Muscat) and was thence 

 despatched to China and India. That so much African 

 ivory was sent to those lands was a subject of regret for 

 Mastidl, who states that otherwise the Mohammedan 

 countries would have been very plentifully supplied with it. 

 A special use of ivory in China, according to this author, was 

 for the palanquins of the great military and civil officials 

 of the empire, as they regarded it as a token of proper re- 

 spect for the emperor to be brought into his presence on an 

 ivory palanquin. For this reason the Chinese especially 

 valued very straight tusks, in preference to those which 

 were curved. In their religious ceremonies the Chinese 

 burned ivory as incense before the sacred images and on the 

 altars.* 



In India the ivory was wrought into hilts for daggers and 

 sabres, but the most frequent use was in the carving of 

 chessmen and a kind of checkers. The Arab writer, after 

 noting that several of the chessmen were given the forms of 



*MaQoudi, "Les Prairies d'Or," text and Fr. transl. by Barbier de Meynard and Pa vet 

 de Courteille, Vol. Ill, Paris. 1864, pp. 7, 8. 



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