Page 371 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

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Marks on Chinese Pottery and Porcelain 213

It will be seen that cyclical dates without any indication of the

particular cycle intended are merely tantalising. On the other

hand when the reign is specified as well, the combination gives the

most precise form of date. But unfortunately there are many cases
in which the reign name is absent, and we can only judge the cycle

by the style of the ware, a calculation which is always open to
dispute. It is not often that the cycle is so clearly indicated by an
indirect method as in the oft-quoted mark yu hsin ch'ou nien chih

'ii^ = made in the hsin ch'ou year recurring {yu). This can

d2-

only be 1721, when the hsin ch'ou year actually recurred in the

(sixty-first year of) reign of K'ang Hsi.^

(b) The more usual form of date mark is that which gives the

reign name of an Emperor. On ascending the throne the Emperor

discarded his family name and assumed a title by which his reign

was thenceforth known. This is the name which appears in the

date marks, and it is known as the nien (period) hao (name). After

his death the Emperor received another title, the miao hao, or name

under which he was canonised ; but though reference might be made
to him in history under his 7niao hao, it is obvious that the posthumous

name cannot occur on contemporary date marks.

In reckoning the date of an Emperor's reign it was not usual to in-

clude officially the year in which his predecessor had died, but to date

the reign from the first day of the year following. Thus, though K'ang

Hsi became Emperor in 1661, his reign is dated officially from 1662.

The Imperial date mark is usually written in six characters

beginning with the name of the dynasty and ending with the words
12nien chih (made in the period) : the nien hao coming in the middle :
3 45 6

e.g. Ta ming ch^eng =hua nien chih made {chih)

5^ PJ 2

6M^ 3

in the Ch'eng Hua period {nien) of the great Ming (dynasty).

^Occasionally the word nien is replaced by yii (Imperial),

^ Though the reign of K'ang Hsi officially dates from 1662, in reality it began with
the death of the previous Emperor in 1661 ; see p. 216.