A smokey blue chalcedony Chinese snuff bottle, Qing dynasty, of flattened circular form carved with a white reserve in raised relief depicting Liu Hai, later coral stopper. 2 1/4" h., 5.6 cm. [excluding stopper]

Provenance: A Montreal Collection Lot Notes: "Liu Haichan is traditionally represented as a child with a string or sash of coins and a three-legged toad (symbols of good fortune), two attributes "probably borrowed" from the immortals Lan Caihe and Helan Qizhen ????, both of whom were irregulars in the Eight Immortals (Goossaert 2008: 688). First, Lan Caihe was known for dragging a string of coins casually on the ground when begging in streets, symbolically showing an utter contempt for money (Yetts 1916: 806-807). Once the string of coins changed hands, it created a new iconography for Liu's enlightenment by Zhongli Quan stacking up eggs and coins to represent the precariousness of human existence (Jing 1996: 216, Pas and Leung 1998: 211). Second, the Northern Song dynasty Daoist master Helan Qizhen ???? (d. 1010) supposedly achieved immortality by devouring a three-legged golden toad. The Yuan dynasty author Luo Tianxiang ??? wrote (tr. Jing 1996: 216), "In White Deer Abbey on Mount Li, there is a Toad Well, in which there was a three-legged toad of golden color. 'This is a meat fungus,' [i.e., rouzhi ?? above] exclaimed Master He-lan when he saw it. He cooked and ate it, whereupon he flew up to the sky in broad daylight." Anning Jing (1996: 217) suggests this story about Helan Qizhen eating a toad might have been a literal interpretation of a Daoist neidan in which "golden toad" represents the zhenjing ?? "true essence"; which is mentioned in a poem by the Southern Song scholar-official Li Shih ?? (1108-1181): "I have heard that the delicacy of old toad is a drug / That can turn even grass into golden bud; / But would it be better to close [my] mouth and nourish internally / To replace your [toad's] ugly substance and nurture [my internal] bud. / Riding you, I shall fly to the palace in the moon / And descend to see the mulberry sea that reaches the clouds beyond the sky." There are two versions of the Chinese folktale called Liúhai xì [jin]chán ???[?]? "Liu Hai plays with the [golden] toad" [Liu Hai] employed [his toad] as a charger to carry him instantaneously from place to place. The creature was not entirely reconciled to this mode of life, and occasionally escaped by diving down the nearest well. Its passion for the gleam of gold, however, invariably led to its recapture, when its master dangled a string of cash before its eyes. He is popularly represented with one foot on the toad's head, holding in his hand a ribbon, or fillet, on which are strung five golden coins. The design is known as "Liu Hai sporting with the toad" (????), and is regarded as highly auspicious and conducive to good fortune. Another version of the story, inconsistent with the last or the moon theory, is that the reptile lived in a deep pool and exuded a vapour poisonous to the neighborhood, and that it was thus hooked and destroyed by Liu Hai, exemplifying the fatal attraction of money to lure men to their ruin. (Buckhardt 2013: 47) - Wikipedia

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