Jade: the stone of virtues from China to Mesoamerica
Nephrite and jadeite among Chinese bi discs, Han jade burial suits, Maya masks and the Spanish name piedra de ijada: a history of jade.
The name jade actually covers two different minerals, nephrite and jadeite, which were distinguished only in 1863 by the French mineralogist Augustin Alexis Damour. Both are hard, compact and difficult to work, and this very resistance made them, in cultures very far apart, a symbol of endurance, nobility and protection. China, Mesoamerica and New Zealand developed independent traditions, sharing the idea that jade holds something precious and lasting.
Chinese yu and the five virtues
In China jade, called yu, was already worked in the Neolithic: the Hongshan and Liangzhu cultures produced bi discs and cong tubes of extraordinary precision, whose ritual meaning is still partly debated. In historical times the stone became an emblem of the ruler and the gentleman. The Shuowen jiezi dictionary by Xu Shen, compiled around AD 100, defines it as the most beautiful of stones and attributes five virtues to it, among them benevolence, righteousness and courage.
In the ritual texts of the Confucian tradition the qualities of jade are compared to those of the virtuous man: its hardness to firmness, its lustre to sincerity, its clear sound to the right word. The jade pendant worn at the belt was at once an ornament, a sign of rank and a constant reminder of proper conduct, since the sound of its parts accompanied the measured step of the wearer.
The jade suits of the Han
The most spectacular belief concerned the preservation of the body. Under the Han dynasty some princes were buried in suits made of thousands of small jade plaques sewn with gold thread. The most famous, belonging to Prince Liu Sheng and his consort Dou Wan, were discovered in 1968 at Mancheng, in Hebei province. Jade was believed to protect the dead from decay; the excavations showed that the bodies had not, in fact, survived.
Chalchihuitl and piedra de ijada
In Mesoamerica jadeite was more precious than gold. The Olmecs, the Maya and later the Aztecs associated it with water, maize and the breath of life; the Maya sometimes placed a jade bead in the mouth of the dead, and the funerary mask of King Pakal of Palenque is a mosaic of green tesserae. The Aztecs called the finest green stones chalchihuitl, and Spanish chroniclers report how highly rulers prized them.
It was the Spaniards who gave the stone its European name: piedra de ijada, the stone of the flank, because local peoples held it to be useful against pain in the lower back. From this belief come the Latin lapis nephriticus and the term nephrite. In New Zealand, meanwhile, the Maori work nephrite, called pounamu, into pendants such as the hei-tiki, handed down from generation to generation as family heirlooms.
Jade teaches that the idea of protection can arise from very concrete material qualities: hardness, weight, coolness to the touch, a lustre that does not fade. The cultures that revered it had no contact with one another, yet they all recognised in it a material fit to express what must endure: virtue, power, the memory of the dead. The healing virtues attributed to it belong to the history of beliefs and names, not to medicine.