Viewing page 305 of 469

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[underline]] Chapter XIII. [[/underline]] 275.

were fastened in rows along the poles and upper rims of chariots; or they are found provided with sockets, and were then probably borne on the ends of wands or staves, for some ceremonial or ritual purpose.  It is interesting to note that they still survive in China (in brass, however---not, so far as I have seen, in bronze), being put to various uses; for example a string of them may be hung across the breast of a saddle-horse, that their jingling may warn pedestrians of its approach.

[[underline]] Bronze Knives. [[/underline]]
The knives, though they were like the daggers in being of bronze and cast in one piece, both blade and hilt, were unlike them in being neither stra^[[i]]ght nor double-edged.  In some, the junction of blade and hilt formed an obtuse angle recalling the one seen in the ancient Chinese "knife-money" ([[underline]] cf. [[/underline]] Fig. 12).  Others displayed a curve---often, it is true, a very slight one; this was sometimes single, sometimes double like a very elongated and flattened letter S.  The cutting-edge was usually, though not always, on the concave side.
The pommels assumed various forms, generally quite different from those on the daggers.  In certain instances they were merely rings in the plane of the blade; or again, there might be a naturalistic representation of the Asiatic ibex ([[underline]] Capra sibirica [[/underline]] ) whose long backward-curving horns, their tips jointed to the animal's loins, themselves formed the outer side of the ring; or perhaps most commonly of all, the pommel took the form of a somewhat stylized horse's head (pl. 39, fig. 1), the latter in turn sometimes surmounted by a ring.
Here too this ring had evidently served some definite purpose; for it was present in all cases save those in which its place was taken by a perforation through the end of the hilt.  Sometimes, too, there was a second ring, much smaller than the first, just beneath the pommel, on the same side as the cutting-edge of the blade