266 



J. HORNELL ON INDIAN BOAT DESIGNS. 



eyes adorn Chinese craft, large as well as small, the ocean junk equally with the sampan, 

 must be extremely few ; I do not remember seeing one without. And the Chinese boat- 

 men and fishermen when they emigrate to the Straits Settlements and the Dutch 

 Indies adhere to the custom ; even so far west as Rangoon, Penang and Singapore, the 

 ubiquitous sampan greets the traveller with fixed stare from protuberant eyeballs. 



The Chinese and the Annamite oculus show peculiar differences. In the former, 

 each eye is circular, the dark or black centre, representing probably the pupil and iris 

 combined, large and protuberant, encircled by a band of white (fig. ^;^). No attempt 

 is made to impart an air of realism ; the object is wholly conventionalized, and a most 



Fig. 34. — Elongated oculus characteristic of Annamite boats. (Original). 



curious feature is the roundness. Whether this is due to the original design having 

 been circular in the foreign source from which the Chinese adopted this custom or 

 whether it is the result of convention is impossible to decide. 



In Annam, on the contrary, where boats are equally commonly endowed with eyes, 

 they are neither round nor of boss form ; they are painted on the flat of the bows and 

 reproduce in some degree the almond outline of the Mongolian eye. The degree of 

 elongation varies greatly ; it begins as a slight lengthening of the aft side of the circle 

 and through all degrees passes to an extreme where it becomes an exaggerated oval 

 with its length fully five times the vertical height (fig. 34) . As in Chinese boat-eyes, 

 the pupil and iris are represented in black upon a white ground. 



