THE HAN [Chinese] DYNASTY, 206 B.C. TO 220 A.D.
TWO centuries of internecine strife between the great feudal princes
culminated in the destruction of the Chou dynasty and the consolidation
of the Chinese states under the powerful Ch´in emperor Chêng. If this
ambitious tyrant is famous in history for beating back the Hiung-nu Turks,
the wild nomads of the north who had threatened to overrun the Chou
states, and for building the Great Wall of China as a rampart against
these dreaded invaders, he is far more infamous for the disastrous attempt
to burn all existing books and records, by which, in his overweening
pride, he hoped to wipe out past history and make good to posterity his
arrogant title of Shih Huang Ti or First Emperor. His reign, however, was
short, and his dynasty ended in 206 B.C. when his grandson gave himself up
to Liu Pang, of the house of Han, and was assassinated within a few days
of his surrender.
The Han dynasty, which began in 206 B.C. and continued till 220 A.D.,
united the states of China in a great and prosperous empire with widely
extended boundaries. During this period the Chinese, who had already
come into commercial contact with the kingdoms of Western Asia, sent
expeditions, some peaceful and others warlike, to Turkestan, Fergana,
Bactria, Sogdiana, and Parthia. They even contemplated an embassy to Rome,
but the envoys who reached the Persian Gulf turned back in fear of the
long sea journey round Arabia, the length and danger of which seem to have
been vividly impressed upon them by persons interested, it is thought, in
preventing their farther progress.[13] A considerable trade, chiefly in
silks, had been opened up between China and the Roman provinces, and the
Parthians who acted as middlemen had no desire to bring the two principals
into direct communication.
Needless to say, China was not uninfluenced by this contact with the
West. The merchants brought back Syrian glass, the celebrated envoy Chang
Ch´ien in the second century B.C. introduced the culture of the vine from
Fergana and the pomegranate from Parthia, and some years later an armed
expedition to Fergana returned with horses of the famous Nisæan breed. But
from the artistic standpoint the most important event was the official
introduction of Buddhism in 67 A.D. at the desire of the Emperor Ming Ti
and the arrival of two Indian monks with the sacred books and images of
Buddha at Lo-yang. The Buddhist art of India, which had met and mingled
with the Greek on the north-west frontiers since Alexander's conquests,
now obtained a foothold in China and began to exert an influence which
spread like a wave over the empire and rolled on to Japan. But this
influence had hardly time to develop before the end of the Han period, and
in the meanwhile we must return to the conditions which existed in China
at the beginning of the dynasty.
The hieratic culture of the Chou, and the traditions of Chou art with
its rigid symbolism and formalised designs, had been broken in the long
struggles which terminated the dynasty and banned by the iconoclastic
aspirations of the tyrant Chêng, and though partially revived by Han
enthusiasts, they were essentially modified by the new spirit of the
age. Berthold Laufer,[14] in discussing the jade ornaments of the Chou
and Han periods, speaks of the "impersonal and ethnical character of the
art of that age"--viz. the Chou. "It was," he continues, "general and
communistic; it applied to everybody in the community in the same form; it
did not spring up from an individual thought, but presented an ethnical
element, a national type. Sentiments move on manifold lines, and pendulate
between numerous degrees of variations. When sentiment demanded its right
and conquered its place in the art of the Han, the natural consequence was
that at the same time when the individual keynote was sounded in the art
motives, also variations of motives sprang into existence in proportion to
the variations of sentiments. This implies the two new great factors which
characterise the spirit of the Han time--individualism and variability--in
poetry, in art, in culture, and life in general. The personal spirit
in taste gradually awakens; it was now possible for everyone to choose
a girdle ornament according to his liking. For the first time we hear
of names of artists under the Han--six painters under the Western Han,
and nine under the Eastern Han; also of workers in bronze and other
craftsmen.[15] The typical, traditional objects of antiquity now received
a tinge of personality, or even gave way to new forms; these dissolved
into numerous variations, to express correspondingly numerous shades of
sentiment and to answer the demands of customers of various minds."
Religion has always exerted a powerful influence on art, especially among
primitive peoples, and the religions of China at the beginning of the Han
dynasty were headed by two great schools of thought--Confucianism and
Taoism. These had absorbed and, to a great extent, already superseded the
elements of primitive nature worship, which never entirely disappear.
Confucianism, however, being rather a philosophy than a religion, and
discouraging belief in the mystic and supernatural, had comparatively
little influence on art. Taoism, on the other hand, with its worship
of Longevity and its constant questing for the secrets of Immortality,
supplied a host of legends and myths, spirits and demons, sages and
fairies which provided endless motives for poetry, painting and the
decorative arts. The Han emperor Wu Ti was a Taoist adept, and the story
of the visit which he received from Hsi Wang Mu, the Queen Mother of the
West, and of the expeditions which he sent to find Mount P´êng Lai, one of
the sea-girt hills of the Immortals, have furnished numerous themes for
artists and craftsmen.
It is not yet easy for people in this country to study the monuments of
Han art, but facilities are increasing, and a good impression of one phase
at least may be obtained from reproductions of the stone carvings in
Shantung, executed about the middle of the Han dynasty, which have been
published from rubbings by Professor E. Chavannes.[16] On these monuments
historical and mythological subjects are portrayed in a curious mixture of
imagination and realism.
But these general considerations are leading us rather far afield, and it
remains to see how much or how little of them is reflected in the pottery
of the time.
As far as our present knowledge of the subject permits us to see, there
is nothing in the pre-Han pottery to attract the collector. It will only
interest him remotely and for antiquarian reasons, and he will prefer
to look at it in museum cases rather than allow it to cumber his own
cabinets. With the Han pottery it is otherwise. The antiquarian interest,
which is by no means to be underestimated, is now supplemented by æsthetic
attractions caught from the general artistic impetus which stirred the
arts of this period of national greatness. Not that we must expect to
find all the refinements of Han art mirrored in the pottery of the time.
Chinese ceramic art was not yet capable of adequately expressing the
refinements of the painter, jade carver, and bronze worker. But even with
the somewhat coarse material at his disposal the Han potter was able to
show his appreciation of majestic forms and appropriate ornament, and to
translate, when called upon, even the commonplace objects of daily use
into shapes pleasant to the eye. In a word, the ornamental possibilities
of pottery were now realised, and the elements of an exquisite art may be
said to have made their appearance. From a technical point of view, the
most significant advance was made in the use of glaze. Though supported
by negative evidence only, the theory that the Chinese first made use
of glaze in the Han period is exceedingly plausible.[17] In the scanty
references to earlier wares in ancient texts no mention of glaze
appears, and, indeed, the severe simplicity of the older pottery is so
emphatically urged that such an embellishment as glaze would seem to have
been almost undesirable. The idea of glazing earthenware, if not evolved
before, would now be naturally suggested to the Chinese by the pottery of
the Western peoples with whom they first made contact about the beginning
of the Han dynasty. Glazes had been used from high antiquity in Egypt,
they are found in the Persian bricks at Susa and on the Parthian coffins,
and they must have been commonplace on the pottery of Western Asia two
hundred years before our era.
[Illustration:
Fig. 3 Fig. 4
Fig. 1 Fig. 2
Plate 2.--Han Pottery.
Fig. 1.--Vase, green glazed. Height 14 inches. _Boston Museum._
Fig. 2.--Vase with black surface and incised designs. Height 16 inches.
_Eumorfopoulos Collection._
Fig. 3.--Vase with designs in red, white and black pigments. Height 11½
inches. _British Museum._
Fig. 4.--"Granary urn," green glazed. Height 12 inches. _Peters
Collection._]
It is possible, of course, that evidence may yet be forthcoming to carry
back the use of glaze in China beyond the limits at present prescribed,
but all we can state with certainty to-day is that the oldest known
objects on which it appears are those which for full and sufficient
reasons can be assigned to the Han period. To explain all these reasons
would necessitate a long excursion into archæology which would be out of
place here. Many of them can be found in Berthold Laufer's[18] excellent
work on the subject, and others will in due course be set out in the
catalogue of the British Museum collections. But it would be unfair to ask
the reader to take these conclusions entirely on trust, and some idea of
the evidence is certainly his due.
There are a few specimens of Han pottery inscribed with dates, such as
the vase (Plate 2, Fig. 1) from the Dana Collection, which is now in the
Boston Museum; but in almost every case the inscriptions have proved to
be posthumous and must be regarded at best as recording the pious opinion
of a subsequent owner. It will be safer, then, to leave inscriptions out
of consideration and to rely on the close analogies which exist between
the pottery and the bronze vessels of the Han period and between the
decorative designs on the pottery and the Han stone sculptures, and, where
possible, on the circumstances in which the vessels have been found.
Unfortunately, the bulk of the Han pottery which has reached Europe in
recent years has passed through traders' hands, and no records have
been kept of its discovery. But there are exceptional cases in which we
have first-hand evidence of Han tombs explored by Europeans, and in two
instances their contents have been brought direct to the British Museum.
Both these hauls are from the rock-tombs in Szechuan, the one made by
the ill-fated Lieutenant Brooke, who was murdered by the Lolos, the other
by the Rev. Thomas Torrance, to whom I shall refer again. The evidence of
both finds is mutually corroborative; it is supported by Han coins found
in the tombs, by inscriptions carved on their doorways, and by the rare
passages of decoration on the objects themselves, which correspond closely
to designs on stone carvings published by Chavannes. In this way a whole
chain of unassailable evidence has been welded together until, in spite of
the remoteness of the period, we are able to speak with greater confidence
about the Han pottery than about the productions of far more recent times.
The Han pottery is usually of red or slaty grey colour, varying in
hardness from a soft earthenware to something approaching stoneware, and
in texture from that of a brick to the fineness of delft. These variations
are due to the nature of the clay in different localities and to the
degree of heat in which the ware was fired. No chronological significance
can be attached to the variations of colour, and to place the grey ware
earlier than the red is both, unscientific and patently incorrect. Most of
the Szechuan ware is grey and comparatively soft, while of the specimens
sent from Northern China the majority seem to be of the red clay. Some of
the ware from both parts is unglazed, and in certain cases it has been
washed over with a white clay and even painted with unfired pigment,
chiefly red and black. The bulk of it, however, is glazed, the typical
Han glaze being a translucent greenish yellow, which, over the red body,
produces a colour varying from leaf green to olive brown, according to
the thickness of the glaze and the extent to which the colour of the
underlying body appears through it. Age and burial have wonderfully
affected this green glaze, and in many cases the surface is encrusted in
the process of decay with iridescent layers of beautiful gold and silver
lustre. In other cases the decay has gone too far, and the glaze has
scaled and flaked off. Another feature which it shares with many of the
later glazes is a minute and almost imperceptible crackle. This feature
is almost universal on the softer Chinese pottery glazes, and has nothing
to do[19] with the deliberate and pronounced crackle of later Chinese
porcelain, being purely accidental in its formation.
The colour of the glaze shows considerable variations, being sometimes
brownish yellow, sometimes deep brown, and occasionally mottled like that
of our mediæval pottery. A passage in the _T´ao shuo_[20] seems to imply
the existence of a black glaze as well, but it is a solitary literary
reference, and it is not perfectly clear whether a black earthenware or a
black glaze is meant. It was thought at one time that the fine white ware
with pale straw-coloured or greenish glaze, of which much of the T´ang
mortuary pottery is made, was in use as early as the Han period, but I am
now convinced that this is a later development, and cannot be included in
the ware of the Han dynasty.
Among the technical peculiarities of Han pottery, the marks--usually
three in number--of small, oblong rectangular kiln supports will often
be noticed under the base or on the mouth of the wares. These so-called
"spur-marks" were made by the supports or rests on which the ware was
placed when in the kiln. In many cases, too, large drops of glaze have
formed on the mouth of the piece, proving that the vessel was fired in an
inverted position, which directed the down flow of the glaze as it melted
towards the mouth. This is by no means universal. Indeed, the glaze drops
on other pieces are found on the base even when the "spur-marks" appear on
the mouth. The explanation of these apparently contradictory phenomena is
that to economise space one piece was sometimes placed on top of another
in the kiln.
The ornamentation of Han pottery was accomplished in several ways: by
pressing the ware in moulds with incuse designs, which produced a low
relief on the surface of the pottery; by the use of stamps or dies[21];
and more especially by applying strips of ornament which had been
separately formed in moulds. All these ornaments were covered by the glaze
when glaze was used. Laufer has made an exhaustive study of Han decoration
in his book, and it will be sufficient here to give a few typical examples.
On Plate 2, Fig. 1 is a green-glazed vase of typical Han form with two
handles representing rings attached to tiger masks which are borrowed,
like the general form of the piece, from a contemporary bronze. This
vase, formerly in the Dana Collection and now in the Fine Arts Museum at
Boston, has a posthumous date[22] incised on the neck corresponding to the
year 133 B.C.
Fig. 2 is a rare specimen with reddish body and polished black surface
in which are incised designs of birds, dragons and fish, and bands of
vandykes, lozenges and pointed quatrefoil ornaments. It has the usual mask
handles, and stands 16 inches high.
On Plate 3, Fig. 1, is a "hill jar" with brown glaze, standing on three
feet which are moulded with bear forms. On the side is a frieze in strong
relief with hunting scenes of animals, such as the tiger, boar, monkey,
deer, hydra and demon figures, spaced out by conventional waves. This kind
of frieze is frequently found ornamenting the shoulders of vases such as
Fig. 1 of Plate 2, and the animals are usually represented in vigorous
movement, often with fore and hind legs outstretched in a "flying gallop."
The cover is moulded to suggest mountains rising from sea waves (the
sea-girt isles of the Taoist Immortals), peopled with animals.
Fig. 2 is a green-glazed box or covered bowl of elegant form, the cover
moulded in low relief with a quatrefoil design surrounded by a frieze of
animals.
Fig. 3 is an incense burner of rare form derived from a bronze. It is a
variation of the more usual "hill censer" (_po shan lu_) which has the
same body with a cover in the form of hills as on Fig. 1. In this case the
cover suggests a lotus flower in bud, and is surmounted by a duck. The
whole is coated with an iridescent green glaze.
A few choice specimens of green-glazed Han pottery in the S.T. Peters
Collection includes a well-modelled duck, a handsome vase with mask
handles and hexagonal base, and a good example of the "granary urn." The
last is a grain jar which derives its form from a granary tower. In some
instances the tiled roof of the tower is represented by tile-mouldings on
the shoulder; but in this instance the form is entirely conventionalised
into a cylindrical vase supported by three bear-shaped feet. The bear,
an emblem of strength, is commonly employed in this capacity in Han art.
Another ornamental form borrowed from a homely object is the model of a
well-head, of cylindrical shape, with arched superstructure, in the centre
of which a pulley-wheel is represented. The well bucket is usually added,
resting on the edge of the well.
[Illustration:
Fig. 2
Fig. 1
Fig. 3
Plate 3.--Han Pottery.
Fig. 1.--"Hill Jar" with brown glaze. Height 9½ inches. _Eumorfopoulos
Collection._
Fig. 2.--Box, green glazed. Height 5½ inches. _Eumorfopoulos
Collection._
Fig. 3.--"Lotus Censer" green glazed. Height 10½ inches. _Rothenstein
Collection._]
[Illustration: Plate 4.--Model of a "Fowling Tower."
Han pottery with iridescent green glaze. Height 30 inches.
_Freer Collection._]
Plate 4 illustrates a remarkable structure which seems to represent a
fowling tower. Models of houses and shrines have been found frequently
in Han tombs, showing most of the elements which are combined in this
complex ornament. The structure of wooden beams and galleries and the
roofs with their tubular tile-ridges, the formal ox-heads supporting the
angles of the lower gallery, the ornamentation of combed lines, are all
features which occur in architectural tomb ornaments of the Han period.
Here we have apparently a sporting tower, with persons engaged in shooting
with crossbows at the pigeons which tamely perch on the roof. The dead
birds have fallen into the saucer-like stand below. This rare and curious
specimen is made of green-glazed pottery, and measures about 30 inches in
height.
As already indicated, our knowledge of Han pottery is mainly derived from
the articles disinterred from the tombs of the period, and this will
explain the curious fact that Han pottery was almost unknown until quite
recent times, and that information on the subject in Chinese ceramic
literature is of the most meagre and least satisfying description. The
ancestor-worshipping Chinese have always been averse to the systematic
exploration of graves. Whatever their practice may have been when the
opportunity occurred of rifling a grave unobserved, this at any rate
has been the avowed principle. The result is that though China must be
honeycombed with graves and tombs, they have not been overtly disturbed
in any numbers until recent years, when extensive railway cuttings have
opened up the ground. To the progress of railway engineering the sudden
appearance of considerable quantities of mortuary pottery is chiefly due.
On the other hand, one of our most interesting finds was made away from
the railway in Szechuan. Here, in the neighbourhood of Ch´êng-tu and
along the banks of the Min, the soft sandstone hills which line the
river had in ancient times been extensively tunnelled with elaborate
chambers protected by small entrance doors. Whether these were ever
used as dwellings is uncertain, but they certainly became eventually
the tenements of the dead. The deposits of ages have covered over the
entrances to these tombs, but from time to time torrential rain or some
other cause exposed their approaches to the country folk, who invariably
pillaged them for coins and smashed and scattered their less marketable
contents. The Rev. Thomas Torrance, when stationed at Ch´êng-tu, had the
opportunity of exploring some of these caverns, and even succeeded in
discovering some unrifled tombs, part of the contents of which he brought
over and presented to the British Museum. The funeral furniture of these
tombs varied according to the wealth and status of the owner. In the poor
man's tomb were unprotected skeletons, small images in a niche, an iron
cooking pot, and a few coins. In the rich man's were terra cotta coffins,
encased in ornamented slabs, images apparently of the members of his
household, a quantity of crockery, and a perfect menagerie of domestic
animals and birds. To quote Mr. Torrance's own words:[23] "Standing with
your reflector in the midst of a large cave, it seems verily an imitation
Noah's Ark."
The practice of burying with the dead the objects which surrounded him in
life has never entirely ceased in any country. Among primitive peoples it
has taken the revolting form of immolating, or even burying alive, the
household of a dead chieftain. Instances of this practice in China occur
as late as the third century b.c., and voluntary acts of sacrifice at the
tomb are recorded much later in China as in India. When humaner counsels
prevailed figures of wood, straw and clay were substituted, straw images
being suggested for the purpose by Confucius himself. In the Han dynasty
the tomb of the well-to-do was furnished with models of his house, his
shrine, his farmyard, threshing floor, rice-pounder, his cattle, sheep,
dogs, and poultry, besides his retainers and certain half-human creatures
which may have been his guardian spirits; it was provided with vases
for wine and grain, models of the stove and kitchen range with cooking
pots and implements--the last merely indicated in low relief on the
kitchen range--besides the more stately sacrificial vessels for wine and
incense.[24] All these were modelled in pottery, and must have fostered a
flourishing potter's trade, and given a tremendous impetus to the growth
of modelling and design. The underlying idea of all this was, no doubt, to
provide the spirit of the dead with the means of pursuing the habits of
his lifetime, and the modern practice of supplying his needs by means of
paper models which are transmitted to the spirit world through the medium
of fire serves the same purpose in a more economical fashion. But a fuller
note on the grave furniture of the Han and T´ang periods will be given in
the next chapter.
Little or nothing is at present known of the potteries in which the Han
wares were made, but we may fairly assume that the manufacture was very
general and that local potteries supplied local demands. An incidental
reference in the _T´ao lu_ gives us one solitary name, Nan Shan, where the
potteries of the Emperor Wu Ti (140-85 B.C.) were situated;[25] and there
is a mention of potteries in Kiangsi in the place which was afterwards the
site of the celebrated porcelain centre, Ching-tê Chên.
The interval between the Han and T´ang periods, from 221 to 618 A.D., is
marked by a rapid succession of short-lived dynasties, an age of conflict
and division, in which China was again split up into warring states. The
conditions were not favourable to the steady development of the ceramic
industry, and little is known of the pottery of this period. From the few
references in Chinese literature, however, we infer that new kinds of
pottery appeared from time to time, and it is certain that the evolution
which culminated in porcelain made sensible advances. This latter fact is
proved by the scientific analysis of some vases obtained by Dr. Laufer
near Hsi-an Fu in Shensi. There is a similar vase in the British Museum
with ovoid body strongly marked with wheel-ridges, short neck and wide
cup-shaped mouth, and loop handles on the shoulders. The ware is in
appearance a reddish stoneware, and the glaze which covers the upper part
is translucent greenish brown with signs of crackle. Dr. Laufer's vases
are in the Field Museum at Chicago, where the body and glaze have been
analysed by Mr. Nicholls, the results showing that the body is composed
of a kaolin-like material (probably a kind of decomposed pegmatite) and
is, in fact, an incipient porcelain, lacking a sufficient grinding of
the material. The glaze is composed of the same material softened with
powdered limestone and coloured with iron oxide. An iron cooking stove
found with these vases has an inscription indicating by its style a date
in the Han dynasty or shortly after it; and the nature of the pottery, in
spite of its coarse grain and dark colour, which is probably due in part
to the presence of iron in the clay, seems to show that the manufacture of
porcelain was not far distant.
Meanwhile, there is little doubt that the Han traditions were kept alive,
and the discovery of green glazed ware of Han type in the ruins of
Bazaklik, in Turfan,[26] a site which from other indications appears to
belong to the T´ang civilisation, shows that this type, at any rate, was
long-lived. Two vases from a grave on the Black Rock Hill in Fu Chou, and
now in the British Museum, which are proved to belong to a period anterior
to the seventh century, seem to combine Han and T´ang characteristics.
They are of dark grey stoneware with a mottled greenish brown glaze,
ending considerably above the base in a wavy line, which is a common
feature of T´ang wares.
It is highly probable that some of the tomb pottery discussed in the
next chapter belongs to the later part of this intermediate period.
Indeed among the pottery figures of this class there are specimens with
slender, graceful bodies and elaborate details of costume (see Plate 7)
which closely resemble the stone statues of the Northern Wei and the Sui
dynasties; but with our present imperfect information on the tomb finds,
it will be more convenient to treat these nearly related figures as one
group.
Turning to Chinese literature, in default of other and more tangible
evidence, we read in the _T´ao shuo_[27] of pottery dishes and wine
vessels in the Wei dynasty (220-264 A.D.), and in the _T´ao lu_ of pottery
made at Kuan Chung, in the district of Hsi-an Fu, and at Lo-yang for
Imperial use. The poet P´an Yo, of the Chin dynasty (265-419 A.D.), speaks
of "cups of green ware." The actual words used are _p´iao tz´ŭ_,[28]
of which the former is elsewhere used to describe "the bright tint of
distant, well-wooded mountains," and as a synonym for _lü_ (green),
though, like the common colour word _ch´ing_, it is capable of meaning
both blue and green. The ceramic glaze which most closely corresponds to
the description _p´iao_ is the bluish green celadon best known from Corean
wares, but we have not yet sufficient grounds for assuming the existence
of this particular type at such an early date.
Another poet[29] of the same period bids his countrymen, when selecting
cups for tea-drinking, to choose the ware of Eastern Ou, a place in the
Yüeh territory, and apparently in the neighbourhood of, if not identical
with, the Yüeh Chou, which was celebrated for its wares in the T´ang
dynasty. The period of the "Northern and Southern Dynasties" provides
but two references, to a kind of wine vessel known as "crane cups" but
otherwise unexplained, and to _chün-ch´ih_ of fine and coarse ware,[30]
which appear to have been Buddhist water vases for ceremonial washing, or
_Kundikâ_, which the Chinese have transcribed in the form _Chün-ch´ih-ka_.
Buddhism was making great strides in China at this time. It was proclaimed
the state religion of the Toba Tartars or Northern Wei, who ruled the
north from 386 to 549 A.D., and Buddhist thought and the canons of
Buddhist art were now firmly imposed upon the Chinese. The rock sculptures
of this period visited and photographed by Chavannes show unmistakable
traces of the Græco-Buddhist art of Gandhara; and in one remarkable
instance among the figures which were sculptured round the entrance of a
Buddhist grotto were deities with a thyrsus like that of Dionysus and a
trident like Poseidon's.
In the annals of the brief Sui dynasty (581-617 A.D.), we find that a man
named Ho Ch´ou succeeded in exactly imitating a glassy material called
_liu li_ by means of green ware. The exact meaning of this interesting
passage is discussed elsewhere (p. 144), but it is difficult to imagine
any but a porcellanous ware which could satisfy the conditions implied.
Under the circumstance it is not surprising if theorists see in this green
ware (_lü tz´ŭ_) something in the nature of the later celadon porcelain.
NOTE ON THE EARLY CHINESE TOMB WARES
With reference to the figures of men and animals and the other objects
which were placed in the ancient tombs of China, much information will
be found in Dr. J.J.M. de Groot's _Religious System of China_. The
fundamental idea underlying these burial practices seems to have been
that the soul of the dead was the actual tenant of the grave; but it is
not clear in every case whether the sepulchral furniture was provided
in expectation of a bodily resurrection, or in the belief that it would
minister to the wants of the dead in his spiritual existence. Both
ideas appear to have obtained in early times, though it is certain that
the second alone explains the more modern custom of burning either the
objects themselves or paper counterfeits of them at the tomb, and thus
transmitting them through the medium of fire direct to the spirit world.
The older custom of burying with the dead all that was necessary for the
continuation of the pursuits of his lifetime, dates back to the farthest
limits of history, so that we read without surprise that in the Chou
dynasty (1122-255 B.C.) there were placed in the tomb "three earthen pots
with pickled meat, preserved meat, and sliced food; two earthen jars with
must and spirits,"[31] besides "clothes, mirrors, weapons, jade and food
pots." It became customary to hold a preliminary exhibition of the funeral
articles at the dead man's house before removing them to the tomb, and
this, as we may well imagine in a country of ancestor-worshippers, led to
ostentation and extravagance which legislators of various periods vainly
endeavoured to curtail.
The magnificent burials of the Chin and early Han emperors, the vast
mausolea built by forced labour and stocked with costly furniture and
treasure, chariots and live animals, and even human victims, must have
been an intolerable burden to the community. There is no lack of instances
of the immolation, voluntary or otherwise, of relatives and retainers at
the tombs of great personages in ancient China, though the practice never
seems to have been general, and was strongly reprobated by Confucius
(551-479 B.C.). The sage even went so far as to condemn the substitution
of wooden puppets, "for was there not a danger of their leading to the use
of living victims?"[32] Images of straw were all that he would permit.
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.
It is clear that at an early date wood was regarded as preferable to
pottery as a material for sepulchral furniture, for the _Yin-yang tsa
tsu_,[36] written in the eighth century, states that "houses and sheds,
cars and horses, male and female slaves, horned cattle, and so forth, are
made of wood." Indeed, the decree of 741 notwithstanding, wood seems to
have become the standard material for grave implements from this time
onward. Thus, Chu Hsi of the Sung dynasty taught in his Ritual of Family
Life "the custom of burying the dead with a good many _wooden_ servants,
followers, and female attendants, all holding in their hands articles
for use and food"; and the contents of the Ming graves included "a
furnace-kettle and a furnace, both of _wood_, saucer with stand, pot, or
vase, an earthen wine-pot, a spittoon, a water basin, an incense burner,
two candlesticks, an incense box, a tea-cup, a tea-saucer, two chopsticks,
two spoons, etc., two _wooden_ bowls, twelve _wooden_ platters, various
articles of furniture, including bed, screen, chest, and couch, all of
wood; sixteen musicians, twenty-four armed lifeguards, six bearers, ten
female attendants; the spirits known as the Azure Dragon, the White Tiger,
the Red Bird, and the Black Warrior; the two Spirits of the Doorway and
ten warriors--all _made of wood_ and one foot high." These were among the
implements permitted in the tombs of grandees; the regulations of 1372
allowed only one kind of implement in the tombs of the common folk.
From the foregoing passages it may be inferred that wood superseded
pottery to a very great extent in the funeral furniture of the Sung and
Ming periods, and consequently that the tombs in which a full pottery
equipment has been found are most probably not later than the first half
of the T´ang dynasty. Needless to say, the wooden paraphernalia rapidly
perished under the ground, and while the pottery implements have preserved
their original form and appearance, the wooden objects have mostly
disintegrated.
An amusing fragment of folklore, translated by de Groot[37] from the
_Kuang i chi_, "a work probably written in the tenth century," will form a
fitting conclusion to this note, revealing as it does the thought of the
Chinese of this period with regard to the burial customs which we have
discussed:--
"During one of the last generations there lived a man, who used to travel
the country as an itinerant trader in the environs of the place where
his family was settled. Having been accompanied on one of his excursions
for several days by a certain man, the latter unexpectedly said, 'I am
a ghost. Every day and every night I am obliged to fight and quarrel
with the objects buried in my tomb for the use of my manes, because they
oppose my will. I hope you will not refuse to speak a few words for me,
to help me out of this calamitous state of disorder. What will you do in
this case?' 'If a good result be attainable,' replied the trader, 'I dare
undertake anything.' About twilight they came to a large tomb, located
on the left side of the road. Pointing to it, the ghost said: 'This is
my grave. Stand in front of it and exclaim, "By Imperial Order, behead
thy gold and silver subjects, and all will be over." Hereupon the ghost
entered the grave. The pedlar shouted out the order, and during some
moments he heard a noise like that produced by an executioner's sword.
After a while the ghost came forth from the tomb, his hands filled with
several decapitated men and horses of gold and silver. 'Accept these
things,' he said; 'they will sufficiently ensure your felicity for the
whole of your life; take them as a reward for what you have done for
me.' When our pedlar reached the Western metropolis he was denounced
to the prefect of the district by a detective from Ch´ang-ngan city,
who held that such antique objects could only have been obtained from
a grave broken open. The man gave the prefect a veracious account of
what had happened, and this magistrate reported the matter to the higher
authorities, who sent it on to the Throne. Some persons were dispatched
to the grave with the pedlar. They opened the grave, and found therein
hundreds of gold and silver images of men and horses with their heads
severed from their bodies."
In the present day[38] at important sacrifices to ancestors (and
presumably at the funeral itself), it is customary to burn counterfeits
of all kinds of furniture and objects which might be useful in the
spirit-world. In general these counterfeits take the form of small square
sheets of cheap paper adorned with pictures, stamped with a rudely carved
wooden die, and representing houses, chairs, implements for cooking,
writing and the toilette, carts and horses, sedan chairs, attendants and
servants, slaves (male and female), cattle, etc. It is not clear when
this custom first came into being, but it evidently replaced an earlier
practice of burning real furniture, clothing, etc., at the tomb; and de
Groot implies, at any rate, that the two practices existed side by side
in the eleventh century. "Bonfires of genuine articles," he says,[39]
"and valuables continued for a long time to hold a place side by side
with bonfires of counterfeits. We read e.g. that at the demise of the
Emperor Shêng Tsung of the Liao dynasty (1030 A.D.) the departure of the
cortège of death from the palace was marked by a sacrifice, at which they
took clothes, bows and arrows, saddles, bridles, pictures of horses, of
camels, lifeguards, and similar things, which were all committed to the
flames." Marco Polo,[40] in describing the city of Kinsai, relates that
the inhabitants burnt their dead, and "threw into the flames many pieces
of cotton paper upon which were painted representations of male and female
servants, horses, camels, silk wrought with gold, as well as gold and
silver money."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 13: See Hirth, _China and the Roman Orient_.]
[Footnote 14: Berthold Laufer, _Jade_, Field Museum of Natural History,
Publication 154, Anthropological Series, vol. x., Chicago, 1912, pp. 232
and 233.]
[Footnote 15: Occasionally of potters.]
[Footnote 16: _La Sculpture sur pierre en Chine au temps des deux
dynasties Han_, Paris, 1893. A few of these are figured by Bushell in
_Chinese Art_, vol. i. See also Chavannes, _Mission archéologique dans la
Chine septentrionale_, Paris, 1909.]
[Footnote 17: If geological arguments could be accepted at their face
value, a vase found at Chi-ning Chou, in Shantung, would go far to prove
the existence of a highly sophisticated glazed pottery at a date not
less than 500 years B.C. The find is described and illustrated in the
_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, Jahrg. 43, 1911, p. 153, by Herr Ernst
Börschmann. The vase, which is 10 cm. high, is of globular form, with a
short straight neck and two loop handles. It is of hard buff ware, with a
chocolate brown glaze with purplish reflexions of a metallic appearance,
and the glaze covers only the upper part of the exterior and ends in
an uneven line with drops. One would say Sung or possibly T'ang, and
of the type associated with the name Chien yao. This pot was found not
in a tomb, but in the undisturbed earth at a depth of seven metres, by
a German architect, while sinking a well; and a reasoned case from the
stratification of the soil is made out to prove that it must have at least
an antiquity of twenty-four hundred years. It is, however, proverbial
that geological arguments applied to relatively modern archæology lead to
results more startling than correct; and I refuse to accept this solitary
specimen as evidence to upset the whole theory of the evolution of Chinese
pottery. For it must do nothing less. This piece is of a style which is at
present unknown before the T'ang dynasty. It has nothing in common with
Han pottery as we know it, still less with Chou, and to accept its Chou
date would be to believe that an advanced style of manufacture was in use
500 years B.C., that it was forgotten again for some twelve centuries, and
then reappeared in precisely the same form. Fukien white porcelain seals
have been found in an Irish bog in positions from which geologists might
infer a colossal antiquity, but the history of porcelain has not been
disturbed on that account; and I cannot help thinking that this strange
phenomenon at Chi-ning Chou must be regarded in much the same light.]
[Footnote 18: Berthold Laufer, _Pottery of the Han Dynasty_, Leyden, 1908.]
[Footnote 19: Laufer seems to have mistaken it for the beginning of the
regular Chinese crackle (see op. cit., p. 8). The Han green glaze contains
a large proportion of lead oxide and is coloured with oxide of copper.]
[Footnote 20: See Bushell, _Chinese Pottery and Porcelain_, p. 96. "In the
tomb of the Empress Tao, consort of Wu Ti (140-85 B.C.) there was found
one lac-black earthenware dish."]
[Footnote 21: One of these, in the form of a small roller, by which a
continuous pattern could be impressed, is figured by Laufer, op. cit.
Plate xxxvi.]
[Footnote 22: See _Burlington Magazine_, December, 1913, where it is
published with a note on the inscription by F.S. Kershaw.]
[Footnote 23: _Burial Customs in Szechuan_, Journal of the North-China
Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xli., 1910, p. 58, etc.]
[Footnote 24: A very large series of Han sepulchral pottery, including
most of the known types, is in the Field Museum, Chicago; but most of our
large museums possess specimens enough to give a good idea of the ware.]
[Footnote 25: Bk. ix., p. 3, quoting the _Chêng tzŭ t´ung_, which in turn
quotes the _Han Shu_, or Han Histories. Presumably this is the Nan Shan
near Lung Chou, in Shensi.]
[Footnote 26: Fragments of this ware which were brought back by the
Grünwedel expedition in 1903 are in the Museum für Völkerkunde, in Berlin.]
[Footnote 27: See Bushell, op. cit., p. 97.]
[Footnote 28: [Chinese]. See also Bushell's translation of the _T´ao
shuo_, pp. 97 and 98.]
[Footnote 29: Tu Yü, in his "Verses upon Tea." See _T´ao shuo_, Bushell's
translation, p. 98. The words used are _Ch´i tsê t´ao chien_ [Chinese] for
which Bushell has given the free and rather misleading version, "Select
cups of fine porcelain."]
[Footnote 30: _tz´ŭ wa_, a phrase which Bushell has translated "porcelain
and earthenware," though it is improbable that porcelain was meant at this
early period (see Chap. XI.)]
[Footnote 31: J. J. M. de Groot, _The Religious System of China_. Leyden,
1894, vol. ii., p. 383.]
[Footnote 32: Loc. cit., p. 807.]
[Footnote 33: Loc. cit., p. 808.]
[Footnote 34: De Groot, loc. cit., p. 401.]
[Footnote 35: Loc. cit., p. 696.]
[Footnote 36: Loc. cit., p. 808.]
[Footnote 37: De Groot, loc. cit., p. 809.]
[Footnote 38: De Groot, loc. cit., p. 717.]
[Footnote 39: Loc. cit., p. 718.]
[Footnote 40: Who visited China about 1280.]