Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/95

RV 73 to produce cymbal-like notes. These little bells were often plated with gold, and occasionally they were cast with a decorative design in relief. Their use as pendants for ornamental purposes corresponds with a similar employment of the well-known maga-tama (bent jewels), or crescent-shaped pieces of steatite, jasper, quartz, or other stones, which were attached to garments, trappings, musical instruments, and sword-hilts by the ancient Japanese, and of which numerous specimens may be seen in any collection of Far Eastern antiquities.

Among the early iron castings of Japan there are objects whose use remains to this day uncertain. At first sight they suggest the idea of bells, their shape being that of a truncated pyramid, with two ribbon-like flanges running up the sides and arched over the top so as to afford a means of suspension. The surface is usually divided by vertical and horizontal bands in relief, and groups of circular discs protrude from the flanges at regular intervals. There is great variety of dimensions, some being as small as an inch in height, others as large as five and one-half feet; in every case the thinness of the metal is remarkable,—one-sixteenth of an inch, for example, where the height of the object is fifty-four inches and the diameter at the base twenty inches,—and the workmanship indicates considerable skill. These curious objects are found buried in the earth in the provinces of Yamato, Kawachi, and Totomi, localities which help to connect them with the early Japanese immigrants. There are no indications that they served as bells, and the great thinness of the metal is in itself sufficient to preclude that theory. Since, further, they belong to a period prior to the intro-