Page 41 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book
P. 41
10 Tain vase. Stoneware decorated with
impressed design under yellowish-
ning of a tradition that culminates, two thousand years later, in brown ash glaze. Excavated at
Chcngchow. Honan. Middle Shang
the Yueh wares and celadons of Chekiang and Kiangsu. period.
According to tradition, when the great emperor Yu of the Hsia di- THE RITUAL BRONZES
vided the empire, he ordered nine ting tripods to be cast in metal,
brought as tribute from each of the nine provinces, and decorated
with representations of the remarkable things characteristic of
each region. These tripods were credited with magical powers;
they could ward off noxious influences, for example, and cook
food without fire. From dynasty to dynasty they were handed
down as the palladia of empire, but at the end of the Chou they
were lost. The unsuccessful efforts of the first Ch'in emperor,
Shih-huang-ti, to recover one ofthem from a riverbed are mocked
in several delightfully humorous Han reliefs, though one of the
Han emperors tried to accomplish the same thing by means of sac-
rifices with no better success. But so strong was the tradition of
