Page 63 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

The Han Dynasty, 206 b.c. to 220 a.d. 13

Plate 4 illustrates a remarkable structure which seems to represent
a fowling tower. Models of houses and shrines have been found

frequently in Han tombs, showing most of the elements which are

combined in this complex ornament. The structure of wooden beams
and galleries and the roofs with their tubular tile-ridges, the formal

ox-heads supporting the angles of the lower gallery, the ornamentation

of combed lines, are all features which occur in architectural tomb

ornaments of the Han period. Here we have apparently a sporting

tower, with persons engaged in shooting with crossbows at the

pigeons which tamely perch on the roof. The dead birds have
fallen into the saucer-like stand below. This rare and curious
specimen is made of green-glazed pottery, and measures about 30

inches in height.

As already indicated, our knowledge of Han pottery is mainly

derived from the articles disinterred from the tombs of the period,

and this will explain the curious fact that Han pottery was almost

unknown until quite recent times, and that information on the

subject in Chinese ceramic literature is of the most meagre and
least satisfying description. The ancestor-worshipping Chinese have
always been averse to the systematic exploration of graves. What-

ever their practice may have been when the opportunity occurred

of rifling a grave unobserved, this at any rate has been the avowed
principle. The result is that though China must be honeycombed
with graves and tombs, they have not been overtly disturbed in
any numbers until recent years, when extensive railway cuttings
have opened up the ground. To the progress of railway engineer-
ing the sudden appearance of considerable quantities of mortuary

pottery is chiefly due.

On the other hand, one of our most interesting finds was made
away from the railway in Szechuan. Here, in the neighbourhood

of Ch'eng-tu and along the banks of the Min, the soft sandstone hills
which line the river had in ancient times been extensively tunnelled
with elaborate chambers protected by small entrance doors. Whether
these were ever used as dwellings is uncertain, but they certainly
became eventually the tenements of the dead. The deposits of
ages have covered over the entrances to these tombs, but from
time to time torrential rain or some other cause exposed their

approaches to the country folk, who invariably pillaged them for

coins and smashed and scattered their less marketable contents.

The Rev. Thomas Torrance, when stationed at Ch'eng-tu, had the