CHAPTER XII 

 THE COMMERCE OF IVORY 



The Arab traveller Soleiman, writing in the ninth cen- 

 tury, notes ivory among the principal articles imported 

 into the port of Canton for distribution in China; the others 

 were frankincense, copper, tortoise-shell, camphor, and 

 rhinoceros horns. Three tenths of the merchandise was 

 kept by the Chinese Government as import duty, the bal- 

 ance being turned over to the merchants to do as they 

 pleased with.* The same writer remarks that the Chinese 

 women adorned their heads with a number of small combs 

 of ivory and other materials, as many as a score of these 

 being sometimes worn together. f 



Those who imported ivory into China by way of Canton 

 in the ninth century of our era were not only forced to yield 

 the high import dues we have noted, but were forced to sell 

 all tusks weighing 30 catties or more (about 40 pounds 

 or upward) in the official market, where there was commonly 

 great undervaluation. Of course the consequent exclusion 

 of competition must have been felt as a great hardship. 

 To escape this restriction but one way was open: to cut up 

 the heavier tusks so that each separate piece would weigh 

 less than the limit set for the official market. Any attempt 

 to evade the strict customs regulations was severely pun- 



*Chau Ju-Kua, " Chu-fan-chi" ("A Description of Barbarous Peoples"), trans, by 

 Friedrich Hirth and W. W. Rockliill, St. Petersburg, 1911, p. 15. 



t" Ancient Accounts of India and China by Two Mohammedan Travellers," Engl, trans, 

 of Renaudot's French version, London, 1733, p. 14. 



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