Page 103 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

THE CELADON

might be broached. Ultimately the Court regulated
the conditions under which commerce should be

conducted and determined the prices to be paid.

Despite all this luxury, the household use of keramic

utensils had not yet become habitual. Joints and

leaves of the Palmyra palm served for dishes and cups

which were thrown away after the meal was finished.

Soon, however, the products of the Chinese kilns

began to be appreciated. Chao Jukua, in his list of

articles sent to Bruni as gold and silver coins, bro-

cades of Chien-yang and other silks, deer's horns,

glass beads and glass bottles, bangles, rouge, lacquered
mentions " vessels
bowls and plates elsewhere says that "ofwhgirteeenwakrerea"-
mic ware," and

was exchanged for incense, laka wood, yellow wax,

and tortoise-shell produced in islands in the vicinity

of Bruni. Constant importations of these keramic

specimens gradually changed the habits of the people

until, as described in Chinese annals of the sixteenth

century, they freely employed porcelain utensils, and

for wooden coffins in burying their dead substituted
"
Chinese jars having dragons represented on their

outer surface." Marryat, in his History of Pottery

and Porcelain, quotes the following from Low's

Sarawak :

Among the Dyaks are found jars held by them in high

veneration, the manufacturers of which are forgotten ; the

smaller ones among the land and sea Dyaks are common.

They are called Nagas, from the Naga, or dragon, which is

rudely traced upon them. They are glazed on the outside,

and the current value of them is 40 dollars but those
;

which are found among the Kyan tribes, and those of South

Borneo, and among the Kadyans and other tribes of the

north, are valued so highly as to be altogether beyond the

means of ordinary persons, and are the property of the Ma-