Page 163 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

Hemmed about by hostile powers, the Sung looked inward
upon herself. Han China had lived in a fabulous world whose
boundaries were mythical K'un-lun and P'eng-lai far beyond the
horizon; T'ang China flung out her arms to embrace central Asia
and welcome all that the West had to offer. Sung China, at peace
with itself and buying peace with its neighbours, proceeded to ex-
amine the world with a new curiosity, a deeper reverence. She re-
discovered the world of feeling and imagination which had been
revealed to her in the Six Dynasties but had been lost again under
the strong light of T'ang positivism. It was this depth of philo-
sophical insight, combined with a perfect balance of creative en-
ergy and technical refinement, that made the tenth and eleventh
centuries one of the great epochs in the history of Chinese art.
During this time, China was ruled by a succession of emperors
more truly cultivated than any before or since. Under them, the
intellectuals who ran the government were an honoured elite, per-
mitted to remain seated in the imperial presence and to debate rival
policies with complete freedom. Their prestige was perhaps
partly due to the rapid spread of printing, for which Chengtu, the
capital of Shu, was already the chief centre in the ninth century.
There, the first paper money had been printed, between 932 and
953 the first edition of the Classics was issued in 130 volumes, and
before the end of the tenth century the Buddhist Tripilaka in over
5,000 volumes, and the Taoist canon. With the aid of this new craft
it became possible to synthesise knowledge as never before, and
there began the unending compilation of dictionaries, encyclo-
paedias, and anthologies which was to become ever more charac-
teristic of Chinese intellectual activity until the revolution. It was
this desire for intellectual synthesis which led to the founding by
Chou Tun-i and Chu Hsi of the doctrine of Nco-Confucianism,
in which the Confucian moral principle (/i) became identified
with the Taoist first cause (t'ai-chi) seen as both a metaphysical and
a moral force, and at the same time was enriched by a theory of
knowledge and a way of self-cultivation derived partly from
Buddhism. To the Neo-Confucianist, li became the governing
principle which gives to each form its inherent nature. By "inves-
tigating things"—that is, by a process of study, part scientific, part
intuitive, and leading outward from the near and familiar—the
cultivated man could deepen his knowledge of the world and of
the workings of li. The intense realism of Northern Sung paint-
ing, whether revealed in the painter's knowledge of the texture of
rocks, the true form of flowers and birds, or the construction of a
river boat, bears witness to the profound and subtle examination
of the visible world which found philosophical expression in
Neo-Confucianism.
An important by-product of the Confucian revival, or parallel
manifestation of the same backward-looking impulses perhaps,
was the new interest taken in ancient arts and crafts, creating a de-
mand for reproductions of archaic ritual vessels and implements,
in bronze and jade, which was to grow with the centuries. While 177 Winged lion in the style of the
Warring States period. Bronze inlaid
there is little secure evidence for dating these reproductions, the
with gold and silver. Attributed to (he
general opinion is that those of the Sung Dynasty arc on the whole Sung Dynasty.
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