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level like the Egyptian figure.
D. J. FINN
The
It is not possible apparently to determine whether this is earlier or late, or whether it would point to a change of tribe or family. It may be in place here to remark on the actual “Mongolian eye: I have not the training nor the opportunities for a proper investigation but I give my own amateurish observations: there seem locally to be two distinct varieties; in each case the real inner canthus and part of the lacus lacrimalis are hidden by a fold of skin that is drawn out of the outer surface of the upper lid but this fold extends sometimes only as far as the margin of the under lid and there fuses evenly making a kind of false canthus, other times it corresponds better with Prof. Seligman's description and runs over the under lid to join with the skin a millimeter or so lower down. former agrees with some of the characters and the latter agrees with the type we reproduce. Unfortunately we must wait for future excavations to show if there is any real difference here. At present we have some fragments without the projecting overlap and while they come from what Mr. Tung Tsopin (REAY I p. 194) would believe to be a very old collection, e.g. frgs. 326, 328, 373 from pit 36, yet on one which seems to be the very latest in date and to refer to the rising Chow family a similar shape occurs; on the other hand it is impossible to determine our fragments 32, 49, 63 closer than that the circumstances of their find would not place them among the most recent. The difference may be due to the greater accuracy of certain scribes (or rather artists) in antiquity itself: the same variation is found in the X collection. One should know more about the Mongolian "eye itself and have more precise order in these fragments to work out any ethnographical value behind the variation.
ge
This pair of eyes appears on a tripod-vase and leaves no doubt as to the epicanthal fold. Our photographs of eyes, Plate 21, show specimens that are only moderately developed. Extreme development is suggestive of the above character.
A question of great interest to Sinologues is touched here. Are the Chinese symbols autochthonous or are they a borrowing, as some have held, from say the Sumerians? It is, I think, unlikely that the Sumerian eye possessed this trait but it would be worth while for anyone who has the chance to compare this Chinese pictograph of the eye with the Sumerian pictograph-if such a one does exist. Even a negative result would be of importance.
A
Lastly there is one difficulty which in all fairness I must state. very similar scheme is used for the head of certain animals. The pictograms DEER HORSE HARE (as can be traced even in their modern forms) had an eye " like form to stand for their heads. Usually there is a difference of curve or there is sometimes a line for the mouth, but the
The Hong Kong Naturalist.
The Mongolian Eye
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resemblance can be so close that we must ask whether our figure is an eye at all or whether it may not be a head. This doubt is needless, I suggest,
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if one takes into account the correspondence with the modern ideogram see ; in the old ideogram we have the eye" and the man and the eye changes with the man's change. Further there is the economy of labour by the scribe when he turns a difficult form into a well-known and simpler; one might be pardoned using an eye for a head but hardly in using an animal's head for the human eye;* e.g. other instances can be found where the scribe used the usual scheme for a woman's arms to do duty for a stag's head-perhaps these are primitive school-boy howlers whereas our No. 32 scems exceptionally well cut. It has that marked exten- sion which those animals very rarely show (the deer sometimes has it) but that extension is a regular feature in another character which still preserves it to this day (one serving a ruler). This ideogram has been traditionally explained as depicting bowing in serving "; it seems to me to be our Mongolian eye turned through an angle of 90 degrees with the epicanthus fold in the old characters always below. In other words the owner of the
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C
eye makes his bow and his eye is ingeniously taken as the part for the whole." An argument for this interpretation may be drawn from the fact that the character TO BEHOLD was formerly writen with and not with and that this explanation is simpler if less poetic than the orthodox one.
The soil of China, it is to hoped, still holds much material that will solve the interesting questions that wait solution as to be origin of the race and its culture. Yet even now the study of this script can be made to yield a vast amount of information and there are many Chinese scholars of to-day who see that it should be used to interpret the literary records handed down to them, and that if there is a proved contradiction, it is more likely the literary traditions that are at fault. Naturalists with a bent for such Chinese studies will find material waiting them-even the unicorn
has re- cently been run to ground by Mr. Tung Tsopin. What I offer to-day is one little peep into a Mongolian" eye that existed some 3,000 years ago, I shall be happy if others can correct or carry to more accuracy the view offered.
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In all subsequent (i.e. after Palacolithic) art we note that it is almost impossible for a draughtsman not to emphasize and greatly enlarge the eye, on account of its predominant attraction for our regard." Roger Fry (The Arts of Painting and Sculpture).
** Since writing the above, I find that my interpretation of has been already suggested by Mr. E in his XYME (1931) Vol. I, No. 2. I quote his text because of its clear concinnity, 第一竪目之形,人首俯則目坠,所以象屈服之形。
May 1935.
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