National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

exact parallels to such an arrangement certain Central Asiatic tribes of our day use
women's head-dresses of very voluminous shape which may afford at least some
points of general resemblance. But this conjecture is very uncertain.
Below the cape the buried lady wore a shirt with bodice of undyed silk taffeta
with very long sleeves completely covering the hands, Fig. 23. The lower part of
the sleeves is adorned with a thin red silk damask in plain weave and twill, with a
pattern of rows of zig-zag lines attached to ribs between which are both diamonds
and human figures of a highly geometrized shape, Pl. 16: 9, (this photograph was
taken with translucent light). The pattern has a general likeness to Han dynasty
tiles with simple geometric ornaments and with Han silks in general. Below this part
the sleeves have an edging of plain green silk.
The ornamentation of the front part of the bodice consists of a red silk strip runn-
ing round the neck and along the opening in front. This strip is followed by a silk
ribbon in warp-rib weave, 4 cm. wide, with three similar parallel borders in differ-
ent shades of buff, each having a lion in a field with reversed colours. The outer
border of this ribbon shows distinctly, because the colours are here red and white,
Pl. 16: 1. The shape of the lions is not very naturalistic and not so well executed
as those on the lion border on a shoe among Stein's finds (Stein 1928, Pl. XLII,
L. H. 04). The right part of the front apparently overlapped the left part, as the
latter has a shorter "lion-ribbon" than the former.
In a loose ribbon at the right hip were tied a pair of iron scissors, or more cor-
rectly shears as it is made in one piece, Pl. 16: 2. The description of a pair of
scissors found in the Astana cemetery nearly corresponds to ours (Stein 1928, p.
685, Ast. i. 8.05). A pair of T'ang silver shears in the Asiatic Collections in Berlin
also shows the same construction with the limbs crossed over from side to side form-
ing a loop (Kümmel, Pl. 95); another T'ang specimen is depicted in Katori Pl.
94: 5. This figure-of-eight shape is unknown on European shears; their handles or
springs are always open. Our Lop-nor specimen does not correspond absolutely
with the T'ang shears referred to and is not necessarily of the same age as these.

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