Page 140 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

CHINA

oped, under the influence of the Cha no Tu cult, an

antiquarian taste of the most severe description.

The genuine Chajin aspired to simplicity before
everything. The closer he could get to nature, the

more faithfully was he obeying the tenets of his
philosophy. Could he have dispensed altogether

with manufactured utensils without outraging refine-

ment, he would doubtless have made the attempt.
His austerity did not, however, carry him quite so

far. He was content to use the closest procurable

representatives of nascent art, and in these his sym-
pathetic eye detected excellences which were doubt-
less present, to some extent, since the efforts of all
successful pioneers show traces of original genius.

To this propensity is due the preservation of many

specimens which would never have survived for their

own sakes. Among them are examples of blue-and-
white ware dating from the Sung period. The

epoch is fixed, not alone by tradition, but also by
inscriptions which the specimens carry. As a gen-

eral rule year-marks are quite untrustworthy for

determining the date of a keramic specimen. What

they do show, however, in the case of imitators so

faithful as the Chinese, is that ware of a certain de-

Ascription was manufactured at a certain epoch.

Chinese potter would scarcely resort to the manifest

fraud of producing an intrinsically worthless speci-

men of blue-and-white merely for the sake of mark-
ing it with the date of a period when nothing of the

kind had existed. Such deceptions might have been
practised at the factories of Chien-lung, or even of
Kang-hsit to supply the demand of Japanese collec-
tors. But some of the specimens here referred to
are said to have come to Japan as long ago as the

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