Page 462 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

286 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

dorjes or thunderbolts of Vajrapani/ the Buddhist jewel in a leaf-
shaped halo of flames ; and Sanskrit characters of sacred import

are used as decoration for bowls and dishes, made no doubt for the
use of the faithful. The principal animals associated with Buddhist
designs are the elephant, who carries the jewel vase on his back,
the white horse (pai ma), who brought the Buddhist scriptures across
the desert from India, the hare, who offered himself as food to
Buddha, and the Chinese lion who, under the name of the " dog of
Fo " (Buddha), acts as guardian of Buddhist temples and images.

But the religion which has taken the greatest hold on Chinese
imagination and which consequently has supplied the largest number
of motives for their decorative art is undoubtedly Taoism. As
originally taught by Lao-tzu, a contemporary of Confucius, in the
sixth century B.C., the doctrine of Tao (the Way) pointed to abstrac-
tion from worldly cares and freedom from mental perturbation as
the highest good. But just as the later but closely analogous
doctrine of Epicurus degenerated into the cult of pleasure, so the
true teaching of Lao-tzii was afterwards lost among the adventitious
beliefs and superstitions which were grafted on to it by his followers.
The secret of transmuting metals into gold and of compounding
the elixir of life became the chief preoccupations of the Taoist sages,
the latter quest appealing particularly to the Chinese with their
proverbial worship of longevity ; and a host of legends grew up
concerning mortals who won immortality by discovering the elixir,
about fairies and the denizens of the Shou Shan or Hills of Longevity,

about the Isles of the Blessed and the palace of Hsi Wang Mu in

the K'un-lun mountains. It is this later and more popular phase
of Taoism which figures so largely in porcelain decoration.

Lao-tzu is represented as a venerable old man with bald, pro-
tuberant forehead, who rides upon an ox, the same in features as
the god of Longevity, Shou Lao, who is in fact regarded as his dis-
embodied spirit. Shou Lao, however, is more commonly shown

enthroned upon a rocky platform in the Hills of Longevity, holding
in one hand a curious knotted staff, to which are attached rolls of
writing, and in the other a peach, and surrounded by his special
attributes, the spotted deer, the stork, and the ling chih fungus.

^ Vajrapani is one of the gods of the Four Quarters of the Heaven, who are guardians
of Buddha. They are represented as ferocious looking warriors, sometimes stamping
on prostrate d*»mon-figures. As such they occur among the T'ang tomb statuettes,
but they are not often represented on the later porcelains.