JADABILLAY. TAM. A woman's head ornament in the Tamil country. See Jewellery. JADDI. MAliii. Land left to grow fodder. JADE.
Yuh, CHIN. I Yashm,Sang-i•yashm,Pces . . MoNcoL. Sootash, . . TURK.
This mineral, called also nephrite and axe-stone, is celebrated in China as the Yuh or gem of gems. It is found in Fung-tien-fu (Shing-kiug), Lien chau-fu (Canton), in Shantung, near Khoten, Karakash,Yarkand, and other places in Turkestan; in the rivers among the Siansk mountains, to the S.W. of Lake Baikal, in Eastern Siberia, at Mogoung north of Burma, and other places in Eastern Asia ; also in N. Zealand, Egypt, Poly nesia, and a few localities in the United States. It is of white, blue, yellow, and green colours ; but the milk-white and the light-green varieties are most prized. Chemically, it consists of the silicates of magnesia and alumina coloured to the tint of the stone by varying proportions of chrom ium. Its hardness, weight, sonoriety, and peculiar sombre tint are the foundation of the Chinese taste for this stone. Their wearing of this stone is supposed to impart to the wearer, humane, just, intelligent, brave, and pure qualities, and philosophers and physicians have ascribed all sorts of properties to this substance, which for any medicinal purpose can be no better than soapstone or steatite. Jade mines in the Konen Lun mountains have been described by Dr. Cayley in Macmillan's Magazine, October 1871. At a very early date nephrite was sent as a tribute to the imperial court. Tho emperor Chinnoung (B.C. 2737) delighted in ornaments of nephrite, and the emperor Chau-sin (B.C. 1154) had a pillow made of the same material. A chief source for nephrite is in Khotan. M. Blondin says—' La ville d'Yarkande envoie chaquc mink a Khotan pour etre expecli6s h la tour de Peking 6000 kg. de jade. Nous ne comprenons pas dans ce chiffre les pieces taillees et sculptoes, on ne pent plus habilement, par les lapidaires d'Aksou, la capitale actuelle de la Tartaric Chinoise, par ceux de Kachghar, et enfin par ceux d'Yarkande, l'ancienne capitale oa le travail de jade occupe le plus de bras.' Mr. John Anderson (Report on the Expedition to Western Yunnan, via Bhamo, Calcutta 1871) visited the bazar of Momien. He says the copper discs used in cutting jade are very thin, bend easily, and measure about one foot and a half in diameter. The centre is beaten out with a cup-shaped depression, which receives the end of the cylinder on which the disc revolves. In one establishment two men were at work, one using the cutting disc and the other a re volving cylinder tipped at the free end with a composition of quartz and little particles resem bling ruby dust. Both were driven by the feet.
The stone is held below the disc, under which there is a basin of water and fine silicious mud, in which the stone is dipped at intervals, the operator filling his hands with as much of the mud as possible. The stones are cut into discs one eighth of an inch in thickness, when they are intended for ear-rings, and are then made over to the man at the silicious-tipped cylinder, who bores a round hole in the centre of each. The same course is followed in the case of the larger and thicker rings. Bangles made of jade come from Mogoung, in the north of Burma; the bright green tint seen in these specimens is the characteristic peculiarity of the Burmese jade. It occurs there in the form of rounded boulders, and is exported to China.
The Chinese have probably 5orne.squrces of green jade unknown to us. Their jadeite, a differ ent mineral from jade, is supplied, though probably not exclusively, by mines in the mountains to the north-west of Bhamo in the Lao State of Burma. Jahanghir and Shah Jahan seem to have taken pleasure in jade cups and ornaments ; and the art of inlaid work that found such exquisite expression in the Taj Mahal was copied under their munificent auspices in the most precious materials, rubies and diamonds and other precious stones being inlaid in jade of various colours, which was cut in delicate open-work and adorned with enamels, in the production of which India is still unrivalled. The collection of these beautiful productions of Indian art contained in the India .Museum is the finest ever brought together.
Jade possesses the virtue of an extraordinary toughness. 'asy to work when freshly extracted, it hardens jut sufficiently to do the work of cutting, yet r ain an edge. Ou that account New Zealanders tsed jade as well for tomahawks as for amulets, al the jade relics disinterred in Switzerland are oft n in the shape of hatchets.
The Mexicans worked a. kind of jadeite. The Maoris work jade, which is a native mineral in their hernblendie rocks ; and the inhabitants of New Caledonia, and indeed of Polynesia gener ally, have fashioned jade or some varieties of jadeite into implements useful, ornamental, and perhaps too, in one sense, sacred.
A cargo of this mineral was imported into Canton from New Holland, but the Chinese would not purchase it, owing to a fancy taken against its origin and colour. The Chinese use it for man darins' buttons, pipemouth pieces, and articles of personal ornament and luxury. They estimate it according to the purity of the white and brightness of the green tints.