Page 376 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

122 CHINESE ART.
incised with a bronze style, or painted with a reed pen dipped
in black lacquer, until the hair- brush the pi of later times appeared,
the invention of which is attributed to Meng T'ien, who died B.C.
209. The Taoists often used prepared panels of peach-wood, their
sacred tree, instead of bamboo. Paper is supposed to have been
invented by Ts'ai Lun, a chamberlain of the Han emperor Ho Ti
(a.d. 89-105), who used bark, fishing nets of hemp, and other
fibrous material, pounded to pulp in stone mortars ; and since his
time paper has been employed as a material for pictorial art,
secondary only to woven silk. Many other fibres have been used
by the Chinese for paper, including silk-waste, cotton, bamboo,
common reeds and straw, the bast of the paper mulberry (Brousso-
netia papyrifera), and the pith of the Aralia papyrifcra. Cotton
paper was made by Chinese artisans at Samarkand in the 7th
century and was first made in Europe by the Moors in Spain, the
Mohammedans being the medium of the introduction of the art
of paper-making from China to the west. The connoisseur of
Chinese art should be equipped with some knowledge of the te.xture
of paper and its different characteristics, varying according to
date and locality, a point of some stress in attesting the authen-
ticity of a particular picture, but there is no space to pursue the
subject here.

2. Classical Period, a.d. 265-960.
The Chin dynasty began its rule in the year 265 and moved its
capital to Chien-yeh, the modern Nanking, m A.D. 317, where it
reigned till .'v.d. 419 under the title of the Eastern Chin. The
scene of Chinese art and culture is now shifted to the south, while
the north comes under the sway of invading Tartars of alien blood.
The latter are subject to a new wave of Buddhist influence coming
overland and develop a new school of art under changed conditions.
Hence the division of Chinese art into northern and southern
schools, the different characteristics of which are destined to become
still furtlier accentuated in Japan. Two of the artists of the Chin