and gold by the early sailors of the Erythraean Sea was acquired also by jade. The only reasonable suggestion that explains this remarkable circumstance is that these ideas were acquired by the people of Turkestan from Mesopotamian miners, and that the former came to attach to all the materials for which the im- migrants were searching the peculiar attributes which these immigrants themselves assigned only to certain ,of them. Hence jade came to be regarded, like pearls, as the giver of life and resurrection and as a preventive of putrefaction of the corpse. The problem that must be solved in the explanation of the symbolism of jade in China is the source of its inspiration. Why should jade be regarded as the giver of life and resurrection, the preserver of the dead and the bringer of good fortune ? We know how and why the pearl came to acquire these magical attributes. We know also that the ancient Persian word for a pearl, margan, " the giver of life," was adopted in all the Turanian languages; so that the word and the idea underlying it spread E. as far as Kamchatka. The exact identity of the ideas concerning (and the methods of using) jade suggest that they must be derived from the pearl-symbolism, and the tenta- tive explanation suggests itself that the people of Mesopotamia exploited the area in the neighbourhood of the Tian Shan moun- tains for gold and jade, and so transmitted to the people of Chinese Turkestan ideas of the magical properties of jade which in course of time spread due E. to the head-waters of the Hwang- ho river.
" The mountains south of Si-ngan-fu in Shensi Province produced jade, gold, silver, copper and iron in the first century B.C., as ex- pressly stated in the Annals of the Former Han Dynasty , . . the distinguished physician T'ao Hung-King (452-536 A.D.), the author of a treatise on Materia Medica (Ming i pieh lu), states that the best jade comes from (Lan-t'ien) : he mentions also the occurrence of jade in Nan-yang, Honan Province, and in the Lu-jung river of Tonking, also that brought from Khotan and Kaskgar " (Laufer's Jade, p. 24).
Laufer denies that jade was imported into China from Turkes- tan before the commencement of the Christian era; and also seems to be opposed to the idea that the magical value attached to jade in China was suggested by the West.
" While from about the Christian era Turkestan became the chief source for the supply of jade to China, to which Yunnan and Burma were later added, neither Turkestan nor Yunnan came into question in very early times. The jades used in the period of the Chou, and most of those of the Han Dynasty, were quarried on the very soil of China proper. It was doubtless the Chinese themselves who, being acquainted with jade in their country, probably for millenniums, gave impetus to the jade fishing and mining industries of Turkestan. Also this case may throw a side-light on the nephrite question of Europe: home-sources do not exclude imports, and scarcity or ex- haustion of sources may favor them " (Laufer, Jade, pp. 23 and 24).
But Laufer's hypothesis of the origin in China of the special appreciation of jade will not bear examination. The search for gold in Turkestan was certainly begun by people from the South. There can be no doubt that the same people who washed the sands of these rivers of Turkestan for alluvial gold and fresh- water pearls also inaugurated the practice of "fishing for jade." The proof of this inference is provided by the fact that jade acquired precisely the same reputation and had attributed to it the same remarkable repertory of magical properties as these southern miners associated with pearls and gold.
Dr. Laufer himself puts the matter in its true perspective when he is discussing the problem of European jade (p. 5). His argument is so apt and incisive that it is tempting to use it to demolish his own hypothesis:
" Nothing could induce me to the belief that primitive man of central Europe incidentally and spontaneously embarked on the laborious task of quarrying and working jade. The psychological motive for this act must be supplied, and it can be deduced only from the source of historical facts. From the standpoint of the general development of culture in the Old World, there is absolutely no vestige of originality in the prehistoric cultures of Europe, which appear as an appendix to Asia. .Originality is certainly the rarest thing in this world, and in the history of mankind the original thoughts are appallingly sparse. There iS, in thfe light of historical facts and experiences, no reason to credit the prehistoric and early historic populations of Europe with any spontaneous ideas relative to jade; they received these, as everything else, from an outside
source ; they gradually learned to appreciate the value of this tough and compact substance, and then set to hunting for natural supplies."
Substitute " China " for " central Europe " in this admirable statement, and it applies with equal force. For the Chinese had no reasons for attaching a special value to jade until they were inspired to do so by ideas which came to them from else- where. Laufer claims that the question can only be settled on the basis of historical fact. His argument also implies that the idea of working jade spread from one centre. In other words, if we accept his teaching, the use of jade in Europe during the early Bronze Age was inspired by events in the Shensi province of China! What historical evidence is there, first, for assigning such a remote date for the exploitation of jade in China, and, secondly, for the transmission of the knowledge of these events from China to Switzerland nearly 40 centuries ago ?
In Turkestan we find definite reasons for the appreciation of and the commencement of the working of jade. We have also found some evidence to justify the hypothesis that the making of bronze was invented in close proximity to Turkestan. The people who introduced the knowledge of bronze-making into Europe, also introduced the appreciation of jade.
If, however, we accept Laufer's view that Chinese culture inspired the appreciation of jade in central Europe in the second millennium B.C., or even earlier, presumably the channel passed via Turkestan. Part of his argument (see above) was based upon the fact that the Chinese jade traffic with Turkestan was unknown before the beginning of the Christian era. But if there was this early intercourse with Turkestan, the fact that the Babylonians or whoever was exploiting the wealth of that country, attached a special value to gold, pearls and jade can hardly be left out of account in considering the origin of Chinese ideas. Is it likely that the exact coincidence between these wholly arbitrary ideas in China and Babylonia respec- tively were independent the one of the other? Dr. Laufer him- self rightly scouts the idea of such independent development. If so he must admit that the Chinese ideas concerning jade must have been inspired by the West.
Light is thrown upon these problems by the study of the metal implements found in Siberia and elsewhere. In his ad- mirable Guide to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age (British Museum, 1904), Sir Hercules Read summarizes the evidence in an impartial manner 1 :
" At the extremities of the vast area stretching from Lake Baikal through the southern Siberian steppes across the Ural Mountains to the basin of the Volga, and even beyond to the valleys of the Don and Dnieper, there have been found, generally in tombs, but occasionally on the surface of the ground, implements and weapons marked by the same peculiarities of form and by a single type of decoration. These objects exhibit an undoubted affinity with those discovered in China; but some of their distinctive features have been traced in the Bronze industry of Hungary and the Caucasus: for example, pierced axes and sickles have a close resemblance to Hun- garian and Caucasian forms. The Siberian bronzes have thus rela- tionships both in the East and West; but their kinship with Chinese antiquities being the more obvious, it is natural to assume that the culture which they represent is of East Asiatic origin. The presumable antiquity of Chinese civilization (which after all is only a presumption); the continued westward tendency of migra- tion in historical times (which, however, were started by the dis- turbances in the gold region of the Altai, 2 and therefore tell against Sir Hercules Read's argument) ; and the fact that the greatest centre of discovery lies far away to the East in the basin of the Yenisei, in the districts of Minusinsk and Krasnoiarsk, are all points which may be urged in support of this view."
To the objections which we have interpolated in this quota- tion, Sir Hercules Read himself adds others. The Chinese implements are " not of primitive forms ":
" Their prototypes are found neither in the Ural-Altaic region itself, where some objects may indeed be simpler in design than others but cannot be described as quite primitive; nor as yet within the limits of China itself " (p. 107).
1 Pages 106-1 1 1 compare also the fuller and more recent summary of the evidence in the book; by Minns, Scythians and Creeks, in which, however, the statement is marred by an uncritical acceptance of the dogma of independent evolution of culture.
1 See Perry's Rylands Library Lecture, War and Civilisation.
