Description of and remarks upon an ancient calvaria from China, which has been supposed to be that of Confucius / by George Busk.

  • Busk, George, 1807-1886.
Date:
[1870?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Description of and remarks upon an ancient calvaria from China, which has been supposed to be that of Confucius / by George Busk. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    here and there small thin patches of what appears to be wax, or some similar substance, by which, doubtless, the gold with which it is said to have been lined was cemented to the bone. The outer surface is everywhere highly polished; and to effect this, some thickness of the outer table of the bone has apparently been removed. The skull seems to have been very carefully sawn, in the plane above described. The sawn edge, also, has afterwards been ground, as it would seem, on a flat surface, so as to be quite true. This was doubt- less done to ensure the close fitting of the gold lid. But the most remarkable circumstance, as regards the outer surface, remains to be described, and which, so far as I am aware, appears to have been hitherto overlooked. It consists in the existence, in three places, of figures in faint relief, which, though easily escaping observation on the bone itself, are very distinctly seen in a plaster-cast of it, upon which, indeed, I first noticed them. One of the figui’es is placed at about the middle of the frontal bone, and the others on either side, just behind the parietal eminences. The frontal figure (PI. XI. fig. 5) is obviously a written cha- racter of some kind, whilst the others can only, I should ima- gine, be regarded as ornaments. That on the left side (fig. 6) is very distinct, and of a trefoil shape ; and that on the right side, though nearly obliterated, is seen on close inspection in a plaster-cast to have been of the same form. There also appear to be traces of a figure (fig. 7) of some kind on the back of the skull, just above the termination of the sagittal suture. These are so faint, however, that it can only be doubtfully surmised that the figure w'as originally of a horse-shoe shape, with the points of the crescent expanded into more or less circidar disks. These figures, as before said, are in slight relief; but whilst that on the forehead is apparently altogether raised above the general surface-level, the others seem to have been produced by a mere local excavation of the immediately sm’roundiug surface. As the chief interest of the relic in its present condition ap- pears to lie in these curious markings upon it, I had recourse to my friend Mr. J. Fergusson for an explanation of their mean- ing. He took much interest in the matter, and has kindly bestowed considerable pains in its elucidation. But although he at once recognized the Sanskrit character of the frontal in- scription, and was assured that it was not of a Chinese type, he was unable to define its exact significance. He thereupon con- sulted two distinguished oriental scholars, who are especially skilled in the interpretation of ancient inscriptions—Mr. E. Thomas and General Cunningham,—who both agree in regard- ing the frontal monogram as representing an initial A of the