222 The Stone Age in China. 



since it allows the authentic sign of the sovereignty of the 

 kingdom to fall into your hands/ 



" The text adds that the king caused search to be made 

 amongst his antiquities, and that an arrow was found precisely 

 similar to that in the bird of prey. 



' ' Does it not appear from this passage that at the succession 

 of Ou-ouang to fche empire, the date assigned to which is 1122 

 B.C., iron-pointed arrows were used, but that tradition preserved 

 the reminiscence of sharp, stone-pointed arrows, and that 

 Ou-ouang availed himself of this tradition, and gave a sacred 

 sanction to the kingdom of Tchen by an imperial gift of a 

 weapon used by the ancient Chinese V 



To this paper of M. Chevreul is appended a note by M. 

 Stanislas Julien on the " Age of Stone in China." He quotes 

 the dictionary P'ing-tsen-loui-jpien, printed in 1726, to the effect 

 that stone arrows were found in digging the earth in the dis- 

 trict Sin-thou-hien, where in old time there was a tower and a 

 camp. In the Annals of Song (biography of Tchang-sun), 

 soldiers are spoken of as fighting with stone arrows. These 

 annals were composed under the Youen dynasty, which lasted 

 from 1260 to 1341. The Annals of Northern China, composed 

 under the Thang dynasty, founded in 1618, states that ' in the 

 country east of Fo-ni all the arrows have iron points/ In 

 another passage in P'ing-tsen-loui-pien, arrows are spoken, of 

 ' pointed with bluish-black stone/ 



"The Chinese have a particular character, nou, signifying a 

 stone, from which arrow-points are made (Die. du P. B. de 

 Glemona). 



11 We read in Koue-yu (a Discouse on Kingdoms), a work 

 anterior to our era, this passage, relating to the kingdom of 

 Lou, the land of Confucius, 'When Confucius was in 

 the kingdom of Tchin, a hawk rested on the palace of Prince 

 Tchin, and was killed (or died ?) there. It was pierced with a 

 stone arrow-point fixed to the wood of Khou. This arrow was 

 twenty inches long. Hoei-kong, Prince of Tchin, ordered a man 

 to carry the hawk to Confucius, and inquire of him concerning 

 it. The philosopher said, this hawk comes from afar. The 

 arrow which has killed him is an arrow of the country of 

 So-tchin.' 



" In P'ing-tsen-loui-pien, vol. xlii., fol/38, we read, ' In days 

 of yore Wou-wang (who mounted the throne in 1122) having 

 conquered the dynasty of Chang, opened a way in the midst of 

 the country of nine barbarous tribes, and ordered them to 

 bring tribute of the produce of their land. Then the inhabi- 

 tants of the country of So-tchin offered arrows made of the 

 wood of Khou, and pointed with stone. These arrows were 

 twenty inches long." 



