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Where the Rainbow ends (AN INTRODUCTION TO THE DRAGON TERRESTRIAL AND THE DRAGON CELESTIAL)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

1. Among the less common Chinese decorative or symbolic themes is one whose norm may reasonably be regarded as a semi-circle terminating at each end in an animal's head. But arcs of the circle both less and more than the half are perhaps more frequent, and the curvature is likewise bent, as the applicational needs demand, into other modes of arch or loop. Instances of penannular bracelets and torques in other lands are perhaps also derivatives when their terminals are thus enriched.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1931

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References

page 603 note 1 See Laufer, , Jade, p. 200Google Scholar, in “Girdle Pendants”; pp. 186–7, in “Jade Images”, lung. Rostovtzeff, Animal Style in S. Russia and China, plate xviii, fig. 1, in “Gold Torque from Siberia”: Minns, , Scythians and Greeks, p. 411Google Scholar, fig. 298, in “Gold and Chalcedony gem and Camelian”; p. 64, in “Golden Bracelet, from the Golubinskaja Stanitza”. Pelliot, Jades archaiques de Chine, plate xviii, figs. 1–3, “Segment de cercle se terminant à chaque extrémité par une tête de dragon.” Dalton, Treasure of the Oxus; numerous examples of armlets with animals' heads, but all are penannular.

page 604 note1 One, from which my figure is copied, is on p. 4 of Lo's Yin Hsü Shu Ch'i Tsing Hua; one from his Yin Hsü Shu Ch'i, ch. vii, p. 7; and one from ibid., p. 43.

See ch. xi, p. 21.

page 605 note 1 Uranographie Chinoise, vol. i, p. 453.

page 607 note 1 The original is in Lo's Yin Hsü Shu Ch'i K'ao Shih, ch. vii, p. 43.

page 607 note 2 See the latter work, ch. xxx, p. 27, and the former, ch. xviii, p. 41.

page 607 note 3 Which, however, does not appear in P. K. T.'s illustration, though it seems to be necessary. The vessel is there ascribed to the Han era.

page 609 note 1 See the whole passage, cited in Schlegel's, Uranographie Chinoise, vol. i, pp. 455–6Google Scholar.

1 Analytic Dictionary of Chinese, p. 259, No. 877.