Some Physical Traits of the Chinese of the Second Millennium B.C. 223
overlying cartilage up to the attachment to the nasal bone. The lower compartment which sometimes is added might be equated to the greater alar cartilages as distinct from the lateral and septum ones, but that refinement is not necessarily true for such a remote age, though they probably got plenty of practise by the vivisection of the nose as a punishment. Higher up are upward curving lines, normally three in number and divergent: these must represent the bony structure so familiar on the skeleton.
Now the general impression is that of a nose with depressed root with dilated nostrils and uptilted apex.
FIG. 1.
FG.2.
له
له
FG.3.
FIG.4.
لهما
巨
لما
X
A
凶
四
ID
D
FIG. 5.
H
巨耳
自
2/2
FIG. 6.
FIG. 7.
H
止止
Figures 17 of pictograms mentioned in the text.
M. Henri Maspero in his excellent "La Chine antique," p. 16 quotes some descriptions of the typical Chinese as set down by their own writers of the centuries immediately after Christ, i.e. at least 1,000 years after the era of our characters; (a-first century A.D.) "teeth one inch long, a dragon face, a tiger mouth": (b-IV century A.D.) "
cyes like clouds. nose like a dragon's, a mouth' like the orifice of a square vase,' cars as if at variance": (c-a description of Lao Tsze in the Shen sien chwan), a wide forehead, long cars, big eyes, wide-set teeth, square-cut_mouth." The dragon nose of art pictures conforms to the analysis of the old character as attempted above and thus helps to confirm it.
46
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Even other points of these descriptions may be illustrated from the old bone characters of Honan. There is a modern character for "teeth'
19
December 1932.