TALISMANIC USE OP PRECIOUS STONES 85
bind
the little one to life and protect it from all danger in infantile
diseases. A jade object of a different kind is sometimes used at
nuptial feasts in China. This is a cup having the form of a cock, and
both bride and groom drink from it. The form of this vessel is
accounted for by a legend to the effect that when a beautiful white
cock saw its young mistress, who had often petted it, throw herself
into a well in a transport of despair at the loss of her lover, the
faithful fowl sought and found death in the same way, so as not to be
separated from its mistress.
Among the splendid Chinese jade carvings of the Woodward Collection is a curious symbolic ornament carved out of the rare fei-ts'ui yü, or
"kingfisher-green jade," a rich emerald green Jadeite with translucent
green shading. This ornament, executed in the beginning of the
eighteenth century and believed to be a product of the Imperial Jade
"Works in Peking, figures the natural form of a so-called
"hand-of-Buddha" citron, the finger-like protuberances of the fruit
suggesting this strangely fanciful name. The Chinese regard this as a
most felicitous emblem, denoting at once a long life and abundance of
riches for its enjoyment. In the present carving the figure of a bat
clinging to the foliage enveloping the fruit constitutes an added omen
of good fortune, the Chinese character fu signifying at once
"bat" and "happiness," another proof of what we are prone to call
Chinese queerness, for with the superstitious of our race the bat is
always looked upon as especially ill-omened.70
It is a well-known fact that many analogies have been found between the customs, usages, and products of the more civilized aborigines of the New World and those of
,0
" Catalogue of the Woodward Collection of Jades and other Hard Stones,"
by John Getz, Privately printed (New York), 1913, p. 11, No. 24.
