Page 36 - J. P Morgan Collection of Chinese Art and Porcelain

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

with the history of the people among whom the art was

practised." This axiom applies with added force to
China and to Chinese art, and particularly to the art of

the Chinese potter, who invented porcelain, and sub-

sequently carried its decoration, almost unaided, to
such a high pitch of perfection.

The native story of the evolution of Chinese culture
makes it nearly as old as the civilizations of Egypt,
Chaldaea, and Susiana. These empires have, long
since, culminated and disappeared below the horizon,
while China has continued to exist, to work out its own

ideas of art and ethics, and to elaborate the peculiar
script which it retains to the present time. The char-
acters of the ancient Chinese script would appear to
have originated and developed in the valley of the
Yellow River, and no connection has hitherto been sat-

isfactorily traced with any other system of picture
writing. Chinese history is carried back by some to a
mythical period of fabulous antiquity; their first man.
Pan Ku, emerging from chaos as the embryo of an

all-productive cosmic egg or atom. He is followed by
a mythical series of celestial, terrestrial, and human
rulers, some of the last of which were called Yu Ch'ao

(the Nesters), because they lived in trees in those days,
and others Sui Jen (the Fire Producers), the discoverers
of the primitive friction hand-drill of wood.

The legendary, as distinct from the purely mythical,

period begins with Fu-hsi, the reputed founder of the

Chinese polity. He is figured in the carved stone bas-
reliefs of the Han dynasty, which date from about the

Christian era, and are an invaluable storehouse of

ancient lore,* as the first of the three ancient sover-

eigns, known as San Huang. He holds a mason's

square, and is accompanied by a female personage wear-
ing a coronet, and holding a pair of compasses, another

*See La Sculpture sur pterre en Chine au temps des deux dynasties
Han, by Prof. E. Chavannes, Paris, 1893.

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