Two types of the crescent-shaped ornaments, a simple crescent and a crescent boding a small globe on its upper centre, first appeared in the earlier caves at Tung-huang and Yün-kan as decorating the front emblems of crowns worn by either painted or carved Bodhisattvas. Such ornaments of a foreign character reached China between A. D. 420 and 460, because they are never depicted in the cave No. 169 of Ping-ling-ssû _??__??__??_ dated by the legend written on the wall in the first year of Chien-hung, A. D. 420, while the cave temple of Yün-kan was opened in and after A. D. 460 where both ornaments were carved side by side.
In the line of the Sassanian crowns, as seen on the coins, Yazdegard I first adopted at the front of his diadem a crescent, which, then, Yazdegard II employed at the lower front of the globe. From this time on a set of the globe-on-the-crescent could have been transferred to crowns other than the Sassanians such as those of the Kidara Kushans and of the Chinese Bodhisattvas.
In China the Northern Wei emperor had officially accepted the first tribute of the Sassanian Yazdegard II in A. D. 455 and of the Hephthalites in A. D. 456. The actual documents which testifise these events were unearthed as dedicated objects such as the silver drachms of their issues put in the square limestone case bearing a legend which tells that the emperor Hsiao-wên _??__??__??_ desired to build a five-storeys pagoda in A. D. 481.
On the Sassanian crowns the crescent was adopted much earlier than the globe-on-the-crescent, but in China both were accepted possibly at the same time after the Northern Wei's conquest of North Liang in A. D. 439. Since there can be no evidence of such ornaments identified to the 5th century in the land between China and Sassanian lran, the above historical events permits us to suppose that the ornaments directly came to China from the Sassanian land just before the Yün-kan caves were hewn out.
