Laufer writes in this connection: “If we consider how many years, and what strenuous efforts it required for European scientists to discover the actual sites of jade in Central Europe, which is geographically so well explored, we may realize that it could not have been quite such an [[252]]easy task for primitive man to hunt up these hidden places”. Laufer thinks that in undertaking to overcome the difficulties experienced in discovering jade in Europe, early man “must have been prompted by a motive pre-existing and acting in his mind; the impetus of searching for jade he must have received somehow from somewhere.… Nothing”, he says, “could induce me to believe 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.… 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.”[106]
Apparently the “psychological motive” for searching for jade in China and Europe came from the Khotan area in Chinese Turkestan, whence jade was carried to Babylonia during the Sumerian period. It is probable that bronze was first manufactured in the jade-bearing area of Asia, and that the people who carried “the knowledge of bronze-making into Europe”, as Professor Elliot Smith suggests, “also introduced the appreciation of jade”. Laufer comments in this connection: “Originality is certainly the rarest thing in the world, and in the history of mankind the original thoughts are appallingly sparse. There is, in the light of historical facts and experience, no reason to credit the prehistoric and early populations of Europe with any spontaneous ideas relative to jade.” After receiving jade and adopting the beliefs attached to it, they set out to search for it, and found it in Europe.
The polished axe pendants of jade found in Malta were evidently charms. Among the Greeks jade was [[253]]“the kidney stone”; it cured diseases of the kidneys. The Spaniards brought jade or jadeite from Mexico, and called it “the loin stone” (piedra de hijada). Sir Walter Raleigh introduced it into England, and used the Spanish name from which “jade” is derived.
Red, green, blue, white, grey, and black jade were used, by reason of their colours, for various deities in China, and to indicate the rank of officials. “White jade, considered the most precious, was the privileged ornament of the emperor; jade green like the mountains was reserved for the princes of the first and second ranks; water-blue jade was for the great prefects; the heir apparent had a special kind of jade.”[107] Mottled jades—some resembling granite—were likewise favoured for a variety of purposes.
Jade played an important part in Chinese rain-getting ceremonies. Dragon jade symbols, decorated with fish-scales, were placed on the altar as offerings and for the purpose of invoking the rain-controlling “composite wonder beast” and god. Sometimes bronze and silver dragon symbols were used. According to Laufer, “the jade image of the dragon remained restricted to the Han period, and was substituted at later ages by prayers inscribed on jade or metal tablets. A survival of the ancient custom”, he adds, “may be seen in the large paper or papier mâché figures of dragons carried around in the streets by festival processions in times of drought to ensure the benefit of rain.”[108] In front of these dragons are carried the red ball, which symbolizes the moon, the source of fertilizing moisture—of dew, of rain, and therefore of the streams and rivers that flow to the sea.
Jade links with pearls in the ocean surrounding the world, in which lies a gigantic oyster that gapes after rain [[254]]falls, and sends forth the gleaming rainbow. The Greek historian, Isidorus of Charace (c. 300 B.C.), referring to the pearl-fishing in the Persian Gulf, relates a story about the breeding of pearls being influenced by thunder-storms.[109] The jade ceremonial object, which roused the dragon, had thus indirectly a share in pearl production. Pearls were, as we have seen, likewise produced by dragons, who spat them out during storms. As certain pearls were supposed to be formed by dew that dropped from the moon, it may be that the Chinese gigantic oyster was, when it gaped to send forth the rainbow, receiving the substance of a gigantic pearl from the celestial regions. The life-prolonging and youth-renewing “Red Cloud herb” came into existence during a thunder- and rain-storm.
As we have seen, jade contains, according to Far Eastern belief, the essence of heat as well as of moisture. It contains, too, the essence of cold—not the cold of winter but the coolness desired in hot weather.[110] In the Tu yang tsa pien, a Chinese work of the ninth century, it is recorded that the Emperor of China received from Japan “an engraved gobang board of warm jade, on which the game could be played in winter without getting cold, and that it was most highly prized”. It is told in this connection that “thirty thousand li (leagues) east of Japan is the island of Tsi-mo, and upon this island the Ninghia Terrace, on which terrace is the Gobang Player’s Lake. This lake produces the chess-men which need no carving, and are naturally divided into black and white. They are warm in winter, cool in summer, and known as cool and warm jade. It also produces the catalpa-jade, in structure like the wood of the catalpa tree, which [[255]]is carved into chess-boards, shining and brilliant as mirrors.”[111]
Jade is, in short, a “luck stone”: the giver of children, health, immortality, wisdom, power, victory, growth, food, clothing, &c. It is “the jewel that grants all desires” in this world and the next, and is therefore connected with all religious beliefs, while it also plays its part as a symbol in the social organization, being the medium through which the mysterious forces of nature exercise their influence in every sphere of human thought and activity. [[256]]
[1] Jade and other stone mirrors are referred to in ancient texts. No doubt these were religious symbols. None survives. Jade shoes are mentioned too, but there are [[212]]no surviving specimens. In Ireland bronze shoes were worn in ancient times—perhaps in connection with religious ceremonies. Obsidian mirrors were used in Mexico for purposes of divination, and there were stone mirrors in Peru. [↑]