Page 26 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

CHINA

was then that Japan began to receive from China
specimens of coarse porcelain, some of which are still
preserved and venerated by collectors.

That the manufacture of translucid porcelain in
China should have preceded its manufacture in Europe
by only seven centuries, instead of seventeen as has
hitherto been maintained, will not be readily admitted.

Yet there is much to support the Japanese view. It
is known that before and after the time to which the

invention of porcelain is commonly attributed, the

Chinese were in commercial communication with

the eastern countries of the Roman Empire, and that

they received from thence various kinds of glass which
they ranked with the seven Buddhist gems. For this
glass of which there were two principal classes,
lu-li or opaque glass, and po-li or transparent they
paid immense prices. They had no suspicion that it
was artificial, regarding it rather as ice a thousand
years old, a precious stone second only to jade. By
the Japanese, also, it was held in scarcely less esteem.
Beads, probably made on the coast near Sidon, were

treasured by Japanese Emperors, buried in their tombs,

or preserved among their relics. The Chinese sup-

plied the Japanese with glass, and were themselves
supplied by the Syrians, but all the while no Chinese

porcelain found its way either to Rome or Japan.

Its invention was still in the lap of a distant future.
Dr. Hirth, in his recently published work, " China

and the Roman Orient," says: "During the Ta-

ts'in period (i.e. the period of China's commercial in-

tercourse with the Roman Orient), " that peculiar

fancy for objets de vertu which in Chinese life have at

all times taken the place of other luxuries, was not
yet absorbed by the porcelain industry, which prob-

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