When humaner influences prevailed, the ladies of the harem, and the military guards, instead of following their Imperial master to the spirit world, were condemned to reside within the precincts of the mausoleum; and doubtless the clay figures of women and warriors placed in the graves of more enlightened times were intended to relieve their human prototypes of this irksome duty. The earliest recorded allusion[33] to clay substitutes appears to be the words of Kuang Wu (in the first century A.D.), that "anciently, at every burial of an emperor or king, human images of stoneware (_t´ao jên_), implements of earthenware (_wa ch´i_), wooden cars, and straw horses were used." De Groot[34] quotes a long list of objects supplied for an Imperial burial of the Later Han (25-220 A.D.), including "eight hampers of various grains and pease; three earthen pots of three pints, holding respectively pickled meat, preserved meat, and sliced food; two earthen liquor jars of three pints, filled with must and spirits; ... one candlestick of earthenware; ... eight goblets, tureens, pots, square baskets, wine jars; one wash-basin with a ewer; bells, ... musical instruments, ... arms; nine carriages, and thirty-six straw images of men and horses; two cooking stoves, two kettles, one rice strainer, and twelve caldrons of five pints, all of earthenware; ... ten rice dishes of earthenware, two wine pots of earthenware holding five pints." The use of earthenware substitutes for the actual belongings of the dead was due in part to the spirit of economy preached by certain rulers at this time, and in part to the feeling that graves containing valueless objects would be safe from the desecration of the robber. In addition to the general precepts of economy, we learn that definite regulations were issued prescribing the number and even the nature of the articles to be used by the various ranks of the nobility and by the proletariat. Thus in 682 A.D. Kao Tsung rebuked the competitive extravagance of the people in burial equipments, which even the ravages of famine had failed to diminish; and in the K´ai Yüan period an Imperial decree[35] of the year 741 A.D. reduced the number of implements allowed to the various ranks in burial, officers of the first, second, and third classes of nobility being allowed seventy, forty, and twenty implements in place of ninety, seventy, and forty respectively; while for the common people fifteen only were permitted. Moreover, all such implements were to be of plain earthenware (_ssŭ wa_), wood, gold, silver, copper, and tin being forbidden.