Asbestos
Or: stone wool, amianthus, linum vivum, everlasting lamps.
'Stone wool' which is mentioned in old chronicles, was once an article of curiosity and
magic; it is cloth that can be cleansed by fire. To be precise, it is woven asbestos from
India. Of course, asbestos was unknown by the Persians, who imported their stone wool
across the Hindu Kush; they said of this astonishing material that it was made from the
hair of an animal small as a rat, which lived in fire and died by water; from this hair, a
silken cloth was woven. This very special cloth could be thrown into the fire if soiled, and
would simmer like ashes and emerged dazzling white, as white as snow. Very rich
Persians amazed their guests at feasts, by exhibiting stone-wool napkins; it was a party
trick. When soiled, the napkins were cleansed by being put into the fire. Pliny mentions
asbestos (Natural History, 139): "Asbestos looks like alum and is completely fire-proof; it
also resists all magic potions, especially those concocted by the Magi." Pre-Christian
Chinese annals (they were collections of wonders and anecdotes) also mention the fireproof
Indian cloth.
This same stone wool is the asbestos cloth later called amianthus: the tapers of everlasting
lamps. Medieval writers mentioned it; they said that when the Persians in ancient times
burned the bodies of their dead, they first wrapped them in a linen called linum vivum,
woven from the stone asbestos; put into the fire, this cloth would not be consumed, and so
the ashes were preserved from mixture with other things, and kept safe to be put into the
sepulcher.
One Thomas Herbert--a British trader, who visited Persia during the Renaissance--also
mentions asbestos. From it, he writes, were made the "famous everlasting lamps and
tapers. The stone is called asbestos, ie unextinguishable; but the linen or stuff amianthus:
some of which lamps have (as historians say) burnt 1,500 years, closed in glasses and placed
in caves and old sepulchres: the aliment being this asbestos mixed with naphtha, or other
like bituminous matter or substance."
And here is a quote from an anonymous Arabic compilation with (like most Muslim books) a
lovely title: Cloaks of Fine Fabric in Subtle Ruses, Raqa'iq al-hilal fi Daqaiq al-hiyal. It
was written around 1500 AD, and one passage is headed Fireproofed garments:
"The false prophets included Abu-Ja'wana in al-Ta'if. He claimed to be a prophet and
began to play with fire and walk on it or threw his tunic on it and it would put out the
flames. The trick he used was the following: he took osier branches, white tragacanth
gum, white mallow and asbestos. He ground all the ingredients, mixed them with white of
egg and spread the mixture over the skin of his hands and feet. When he played with fire,
it did not hurt him.
"He had a tunic coated with the concoction. He dropped it on the fire, which had no effect
on it and would often go out. He also had a sash woven from the feathers of a phoenix. He
threw it into the fire, but it would not burn . . ."
Next, from Marco Polo:
HERE HE TELLS OF THE PROVINCE OF GHINGHIN TALAS. When one sets out from this
aforesaid province of Camul, Ghinghin talas is a province which again is likewise next to the
aforesaid little desert between tramontain and the plough-beam. And it is sixteen days marches in
size, and it belongs to the domain of the great Kaan, and there in that province are cities and
villages enough. And there are three kinds of people; these are idolaters some, and they are the
more, and some those who worship by the law of Mahomet, and some Turks who follow the law
of Nestorian Christians & jacobites. And on the border of this province towards tramontaine is a
mountain in which is a very good vein of steel and of andanique. And know too that in this same
mountain is found a good vein from which the cloth which we call of salamander, which cannot be
burnt if it is thrown into the fire, is made, it is of the best that is found in the world. And you may
know in truth that salamander which I speak is not a beast nor serpent, for it is not true that those
cloths are of the hair of an animal which lives in fire, as one says in our country, but is such a
thing as I shall say below; it is a vein of earth, and you shall hear how.
It is truth that you know well that by nature no beast nor any animal can live in fire, because each
animal is made of the four elements, namely air, water, fire, & earth, so that an annual any kind
has in it heat, moisture, cold, & dryness, & so it would be impossible that an animal made up of
the four elements should be able to live in fire. And because people did not know the certainty
about the salamander they said it in the way that they say still that salamander is a beast; but it is
not truth.
But I shall tell it you now, how salamander is made and what it is. For I tell you that I had a
companion, who had Culficar for name, a Turk merchant, who was very knowing in my
judgement & trustworthy, who told how he had stayed three years in that province for the great
Kaan in charge of the work of the mines to have that salamander brought out for the lord and that
andanique and that steel and everything, and he used to have these salamanders made. And
always the great Kaan sends a lord there for three years to rule the province and to do the
business of the salamander. And this baron my companion told me the facts, and he was a person
who had often seen it made, and I saw them myself - I saw many made.
The way moreover of making salamanders is this. For I tell you that when one has dug from the
mountains some of that vein of which you have heard, and one has torn it and broken it up, it is
twisted together and makes threads like silk. And therefore when one has this vein he has it dried
in the sun;and then when it is dry he has it pounded in a great copper mortar; and then when it is
pounded he has it washed with water, and only that thread like wool of which I have told you
stays on the top of the water,. and all the earth clinging there, which is worthless, falls off, goes to
the bottom of the water, is thrown away. Then this thread which is like wool, he has it well spun
like wool and then he has it woven & cloth or towels & mantles made of it, which we say are of
salamander. And when the towels are made I tell you that they are not at all quite white, and they
are brown when they are taken from the loom. But when they wish to make them white they put
them in the fire and leave them to stay there a space of an hour, and when it is taken out the towel
becomes very white like snow. And whenever these salamander towels have any soil or stain one
puts them in fire and leaves them there a space and they are not burnt up nor hurt but become
white like snow; & in that way they keep them pure & clean.
And this is the truth of the making of the salamander which I have told you, no other. - I have
seen it with my eyes put into the fire & come back very white. - And those of the country tell it in
this way themselves, -but of the salamander serpent which is said to live in the fire I beard nothing
in the parts of the east; and all the other things which are said of it, that it is an animal, are lies and
fables.
And again I tell you that there is a towel of it at Rome which the great Kaan sent to the Apostle
for a very great present when he sent him the two brothers ambassadors, and for this reason the
holy napkin of our Lord Master Jesus Christ (may he be blest!) was put inside it, and on this towel
were written in letters of gold - these words, Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram edificabo
ecclesiam meam. In this province there is nothing else to say, so now let us leave speaking to you
of this province and we will tell you of the other provinces which are between the Greek wind and
sunrising, that is of the province which is called Succiu.
From John Bell:
In the neighbourhood of Solikamsky is found the fossil called asbestos; of which is made a kind of
cloth like linen, that may be put into the fire and taken out again unconsumed. This cloth was
known among the ancients, and used by them on several occasions. At present, it goes by the
name of the incombustible linen.
The asbestos, like many both curious and useful discoveries, was found out by mere accident in
these parts. I shall briefly relate in what manner: A certain huntsman being about to load his
fowling-piece, and wanting wadding, observed a great stone in the woods, which seemed to have
some flakes upon it like loose threeds; he soon found that by rubbing it turned into a soft downy
substance fit for his use: he therefore filled his pocket with it; but having fired his piece, was
surprised to see that the gun-powder had no effect upon the wadding: this raised his curiosity so
far, that he kindled a fire on purpose, into which he put the asbestos; but still took it out intire,
and of the same use as formerly: this experiment so frightened the poor sportsman, that he
imagined the devil had taken possession of the fossil. On returning home, he narrated what had
happened to the priest of the parish; who, amazed at the relation, repeated it so frequently, that, at
last, he told it to a person who was acquainted with that quality peculiar to the asbestos; and, on
examination, found the flakes to be that fossil.
And the following comes (slightly paraphrased in order to fit in the footnotes)
from the inimitable Berthold Laufer, who knew everything about everything:
"Toward the close of the reign of Kao Tsun, better known as Wen C'en
(A.D. 452-465) of the Hou Wei dynasty (386-532), the king of Su-le (Kashgar)
sent an emissary to present a garment (kasaya) of Cakyamuni Buddha, over
twenty feet in length. On examination, Kao Tsun satisfied himself that it was
a Buddha robe. It proved a miracle, for, in order to get at the real facts, the
Emperor had the cloth put to a test and exposed to a violent fire for a full day,
but it was not consumed by the flames. All spectators were startled and spell-bound. < Wei su, Ch. 102, p. 4 b.>
"This test has repeatedly been made everywhere with asbestine cloth, of
which many examples are given in my article "Asbestos and Salamander."
<T'oung Pao magazine, 1915, pp. 299-373. >
"The Chinese themselves have recognized without difficulty that this
Buddha relic of Kashgar was made of an asbestine material. In the Lu c'an
kun si k'i, <Ed. of Ts'in cao t'an ts'un su, P. 40 (see above, P. 346) on P. 41 b
there is a notice of fire-proof cloth, consisting of quotations from earlier
works, which are all contained in my article.> a modern work, which contains
a great number of valuable annotations on subject matters mentioned in the
Annals, the kasaya of Kashgar is identified with the fire-proof cloth of the
Western Regions and Fu-nan (Camboja); that is, asbestos.
"During the K'ai-yuan and T'ien-pao periods (A.D. 713-755), Persia sent ten
embassies to China, offering among other things "embroideries of fire-hair"
(hwo mao siu). <T'an Su, Ch. 221 B, P. 7. In the T'an hui yao (Ch. 100, P. 4)
this event is fixed in the year 750.>
"CHAVANNES <Documents sur les Tou-kiue, p. 173.> translates this term
"des broderies en laine couleur de feu." In my opinion, asbestos is here in
question.
"Thus the term was already conceived by ABEL-REMUSAT. <Nouveaux
melanges asiatiques, Vol. I, P. 253. The term hwo pu (fire-cloth") or asbestos
appears in the Sun Su (Ch. 97, P. 10). The Chinese notions of textiles made
from an "ice silkworm," possibly connected with Persia (cf. H. MASPERO,
Bull. de I'Ecole francaise, Vol. XV, No. 4, 1915, P. 46), in my opinion, must
be dissociated from asbestos; the Chinese sources (chiefly Wei lio, Ch. 10, P. 2
b) say nothing to the effect that this textile was of the nature of asbestos.
Maspero's argumentation (ibid., PP. 43-45) in regard to the alleged asbestos
from tree-bark, which according to him should be a real asbestine stuff,
appears to me erroneous. He thinks that I have been misled by an inexact
translation of S. W. WILLIAMS. First, this translation is not by Williams,
but, as expressly stated by me (l. c., P. 372), the question is of a French article
of d'Hervey-St.-Denys, translated into English by Williams. If an error there
is (the case is trivial enough), it is not due to Williams or myself, but solely to
the French translator, who merits Maspero's criticism. Second, Maspero is
entirely mistaken in arguing that this translation should have influenced my
interpretation of the text on P. 338. This is out of the question, as all this was
written without knowledge of the article of St.-Denys and Williams, which
became accessible to me only after the completion and printing of the
manuscript, and was therefore relegated to the Addenda inserted in the
proofs. Maspero's interpretation leads to no tangible result, in fact, to
nothing, as is plainly manifest from his conclusion that one sort of asbestos
should have been a textile, the other a kind of felt. There is indeed no
asbestos felt. How Maspero can deny that Malayan bark-doth underlies the
Chinese traditions under notice, which refer to Malayan regions, is not
intelligible to me. Nothing can be plainer than the text of the Liang Annals:
"On Volcano Island there are trees which grow in the fire. The people in the
vicinity of the island peel off the bark, and spin and weave it into cloth hardly
a few feet in length. This they work into kerchiefs, which do not differ in
appearance from textiles made of palm and hemp fibres," etc. (PP- 346, 347).
What else is this but bark-cloth? And how could we assume a Malayan
asbestine cloth if asbestos has never been found and wrought anywhere in the
Archipelago? I trust that M. Maspero, for whose scholarship I have
profound respect, will pardon me for not accepting his opinion in this case,
and for adhering to my own interpretation. I may add here a curious notice
from J. A. DE MANDELSLO'S Voyages into the East Indies (p. 133, London,
1669): "In the Moluccaes there is a certain wood, which, laid in the fire,
burns, sparkles, and flames, yet consumes not, and yet a man may rub it to
powder betwixt his fingers.">
"I have shown that asbestos was well known to the Persians and Arabs, and
that the mineral came from Badaxsan. <T'oung Pao, 1915, PP. 327-328.>
"An additional text to this effect may be noted here. Ibn al-Faqih, who
wrote in A.D. 902, has this account: " In Kirman there is wood that is not
burnt by fire, but comes out undamaged. <Qazwini adds to this passage,
"even if left in fire for several days."> A Christian <Qazwini speaks in
general of charlatans> wanted to commit frauds with such wood by asserting
that it was derived from the cross of the Messiah. Christian folks were thus
almost led into temptation. A theologian, noting this man, brought them a
piece of wood from Kirman, which was still more impervious to fire than his
cross-wood." According to P. SCHWARZ, <Iran im Mittelalter, P. 214> to
whom we owe the translation of this passage, the question here is of fossilized
forests. Most assuredly, however, asbestos is understood. The above text of
the Wei su is thus by far the earliest allusion to asbestos from an Iranian
region.
"The following notes may serve as additional information to my former
contribution. Cou Mi (1230-1320), in his Ci ya t'an tsa c'ao, mentions
asbestine stuffs twice. <Ch. A, P. 20 b; and Ch. B, P. 25 b (ed. of Yue ya t'an
ts'un su).> In one passage he relates that in his house there was a piece of
fire-proof cloth (hwo kwan pu) over a foot long, which his matemal
grandfather had once obtained in Ts'uan cou (Fu-kien Province). <This
locality renders it almost certain that this specimen belonged to those
imported by the Arabs into China during the middle ages (P. 331 of my
article). The asbestos of Mosul is already mentioned in the Lin wai tai la (Ch.
3, P. 4).> Visitors to his house were entertained by the experiment of placing
it on the fire of a brazier. Subsequently Cao Mon-i borrowed it from him, but
never returned it.
"In the other text he quotes a certain Ho Ts'in-fu to the effect that fire-
proof cloth is said to represent the fibres of the mineral coal of northern
China, burnt and woven, but not the hair of the fire-rodent (salamander).
This is accompanied by the comment that coal cannot be wrought into fibres,
but that now pu-hwei-mu (a kind of asbestos) is found in Pao-tin (Ci-li). <The
term pu-hwei-mu ("wood burning without ashes, incombustible wood")
appears as early as the Sung period in the Cen lei pen ts'ao (Ch. 5, P. 35): it
comes from Safi-tafi (south-east portion of San-si and part of Ho-nan), and is
now found in the Tse-lu mountains. It is a kind of stone, of green and white
color, looking like rotten wood, and cannot be consumed by fire. Some call it
the root of soapstone.>
"A brief notice of asbestos is inserted in the Ko ku yao lun, <Ch. 8, P. 4 (ed.
of Si yin huan ts'un lu); in Ch. 7, P. 17, there is a notice on pu-hwei-mu stone,
stated to be a product of Tse-cou and Lu-nan in San-si, and employed for
lamps> where merely the old fables are reiterated.
"Information on the asbestos of Ci-li Province will be found in the Ki fu t'un
ci, <Ch. 74, PP. 10 b, 13.>on asbestos of Se-c'wan in the Se c'wan t'un ci.
<Ch. 74, P. 25.>
"In the eighteenth century the Chinese noticed asbestos among the
Portuguese of Macao, but the article was rarely to be found in the
market.<Ao-men ci lio, Ch. B, P. 41.>
"Hanzo Murakami discusses asbestos ("stone cotton") as occurring in the
proximity of Kin-cou in Sen-kin, Manchuria. <Journal Geol. Soc. Tokyo,
Vol. XXIII, NO. 276, 1916, pp. 333-336. The same journal, Vol. XXV, No.
294, March, 1918, contains an article on asbestos in Japan and Korea by K.
OKADA.>
"In regard to the salamander, FRANCISQUE-MICHEL <Recherches sur
le commerce, la fabrication et l'usage des etoffes de soie, d'or et d'argent, Vol.
II, PP- 90, 462 (Paris, 1854).> refers to" Traditions teratologiques de Berger
de Xivrey" (Paris, Imprimerie royale, 1836, PP. 457, 458, 460, 463) and to an
article of Duchalais entitled "L'Apollon sauroctone" (Revue archeologique,
Vol. VI, 1850, pp. 87-90); further to Mahudel in Memoires de litterature tires
des registres de l'Academie royale des inscriptions et belles-lettres, Vol. IV, pp.
634-647. Quoting several examples of salamander stuff from medieval
romances, Francisque-Michel remarks, "Ces etoffes en poil de salamandre,
qui vraisemblablement etaient passees des fables des marchands dans celles
des poetes, venaient de loin, comme ceux qui avaient par la beau jeu pour
mentir. On en faisait aussi des manteaux; du moins celui de dame Jafite, du
Roman de Gui le Gallois, en etait."
"No one interested in this subject should fail to read chapter LII of book III
of Rabelais' Le Gargantua et Le Pantagruel, entitled 'Comment doibt estre
prepare et mis en oeuvre le celebre Pantagruelion.'"
. . . end quote! And that's enough about asbestos.
Sources:
John Bell, A Journey from St Petersburg to Pekin, 1719-22 (from the edition of 1763)
Thomas Herbert, Travels in Persia.
The Subtle Ruse (The Book of Arabic Wisdom and Guile),
translated by Rene Khawam.
Berthold Laufer, Sino-Iranica
Marco Polo, The Description of the World, translation of 1938 by
A. C. Moule and Paul Pelliot
Sou-shen Chi, In Search of the Supernatural.
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