Page 50 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

—

6 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

with the West. The merchants brought back Syrian glass, the
celebrated envoy Chang Ch'ien in the second century B.C. introduced
the culture of the vine from Fergana and the pomegranate from
Parthia, and some years later an armed expedition to Fergana
returned with horses of the famous Nisacan breed. But from the
artistic standpoint the most important event was the official intro-
duction of Buddhism in 67 a.d. at the desire of the Emperor Ming
Ti and the arrival of two Indian monks with the sacred books and
images of Buddha at Lo-yang. The Buddhist art of India, which
had met and mingled with the Greek on the north-west frontiers
since Alexander's conquests, now obtained a foothold in China
and began to exert an influence which spread like a wave over
the empire and rolled on to Japan. But this influence had hardly

time to develop before the end of the Han period, and in the mean-

while we must return to the conditions which existed in China at

the beginning of the dynasty.

The hieratic culture of the Chou, and the traditions of Chou
art with its rigid symbolism and formalised designs, had been
broken in the long struggles which terminated the dynasty and
banned by the iconoclastic aspirations of the tyrant Cheng, and

though partially revived by Han enthusiasts, they were essentially

modified by the new spirit of the age. Berthold Laufer,i in dis-

cussing the jade ornaments of the Chou and Han periods, speaks

of the " impersonal and ethnical character of the art of that age "

—viz. the Chou. " It was," he continues, " general and communistic
;

it applied to everybody in the community in the same form ; it
did not spring up from an individual thought, but presented an
ethnical element, a national type. Sentiments move on manifold

lines, and pendulate between numerous degrees of variations. When

sentiment demanded its right and conquered its place in the art of
the Han, the natural consequence was that at the same time when
the individual keynote was sounded in the art motives, also variations

of motives sprang into existence in proportion to the variations of

sentiments. This implies the two new great factors which charac-

—terise the spirit of the Han time individualism and variability

in poetry, in art, in culture, and life in general. The personal
spirit in taste gradually awakens ; it was now possible for every-
one to choose a girdle ornament according to his liking. For the

^ Berthold Laufer, Jade, Field Museum of Natural History, Puhlication 154, Anthro-

pological Series, vol. X., Chicago, 1912, pp. 232 and 233.