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object

Jade

Colors & materials · Objects

Tough green stone worked in China and, as jadeite, in Mesoamerica. Two mineral and ritual histories that should not be rhymed into one “sacred green stone.”

Also known as yu · jadeite · nephrite

Chinese tradition

  • Jade is used in Chinese tradition.

    Chinese yu is a worked stone of ritual, burial, and court. Laufer’s study is archaeological and dated; it is still about China, not Maya jadeite.

    from Berthold Laufer · Jade, 1912

    used in · sourced · documented

  • Jade is used in Death.

    Chinese burial practice, as Laufer treats it, places jade on and in the corpse (mouth pieces, plugs, tomb jades). A Chinese mortuary craft, not Classic Maya funerary jadeite and not “jade energy.”

    from Berthold Laufer · Jade, 1912

    used in · sourced · culturally specific

  • Chinese tradition is used in Jade.

    Jade working is a Chinese craft-history. Laufer’s book is one named survey.

    from Berthold Laufer · Jade, 1912

    used in · sourced · documented

  • Chinese dragon is associated with Jade.

    Imperial and burial jades may carry dragon imagery. A Chinese pairing of creature and stone, not a Mesoamerican jadeite cosmology.

    from Berthold Laufer · Jade, 1912

    associated with · partially sourced · documented

  • Serpentine is historically related to Jade.

    Laufer’s Jade states that ancient Chinese yu could include specially beautiful kinds of serpentine beside nephrite and jadeite, while later speech keeps true jade apart. A named historical yu-scope relation, not identity and not Pliny pharmacy.

    from Berthold Laufer · Jade, 1912

    historically related to · sourced · culturally specific

  • Marble is historically related to Jade.

    Laufer’s Jade notes that antiquity’s yu-name could sometimes take in marble beside nephrite and jadeite, while later Chinese speech keeps true jade as its own species. A named historical naming-scope relation, not identity and not Williams’s over-broad marble-under-yu dump that Laufer corrects.

    from Berthold Laufer · Jade, 1912

    historically related to · sourced · culturally specific

Maya tradition

Nahua tradition

Two stored meetings of this pair

These are separate published relations. They are not one meaning.

Chinese tradition

  • Jade is used in Death.

    Chinese burial practice, as Laufer treats it, places jade on and in the corpse (mouth pieces, plugs, tomb jades). A Chinese mortuary craft, not Classic Maya funerary jadeite and not “jade energy.”

    from Berthold Laufer · Jade, 1912

    used in · sourced · culturally specific

Maya tradition

  • Jade is used in Death.

    Taube describes Classic Maya jadeite in funerary rites and in conjuring gods and ancestors, as a material of the breath-spirit. A Maya tomb and earspool grammar, not Chinese orifice-plugs and not a pan-Mesoamerican “jade of immortality.”

    from Karl A. Taube · The Symbolism of Jade in Classic Maya Religion, 2005

    used in · sourced · culturally specific

sources