Page 68 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

i8 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

dead in his spiritual existence. Both ideas appear to have obtained
in early times, though it is certain that the second alone explains
the more modern custom of burning either the objects them-
selves or paper counterfeits of them at the tomb, and thus

transmitting them through the medium of fire direct to the spirit

world.

The older custom of burying with the dead all that was neces-
sary for the continuation of the pursuits of his lifetime, dates back
to the farthest limits of history, so ihsit we read without surprise

that in the Chou dynasty (1122-255 B.C.) there were placed in
the tomb " three earthen pots with pickled meat, preserved meat,
and sliced food ; two earthen jars with must and spirits," ^ besides
" clothes, mirrors, weapons, jade and food pots." It became cus-

tomary to hold a preliminary exhibition of the funeral articles at the
dead man's house before removing them to the tomb, and this,

as we may well imagine in a country of ancestor-worshippers, led

to ostentation and extravagance which legislators of various periods

vainly endeavoured to curtail.

The magnificent burials of the Chin and early Han emperors,

the vast mausolea built by forced labour and stocked with costly

furniture and treasure, chariots and live animals, and even human

victims, must have been an intolerable burden to the community.

There is no lack of instances of the immolation, voluntary or other-
wise, of relatives and retainers at the tombs of great personages

in ancient China, though the practice never seems to have been

general, and was strongly reprobated by Confucius (551-479 B.C.).
The sage even went so far as to condemn the substitution of wooden
puppets, " for was there not a danger of their leading to the use
of living victims ? " - Images of straw were all that he would

permit.

When humaner influences prevailed, the ladies of the harem

and the military guards, instead of following their Imperial master

to the spirit world, were condemned to reside within the precincts

of the mausoleum ; and doubtless the clay figures of women and

warriors placed in the graves of more enlightened times were in-

tended to relieve their human prototypes of this irksome duty.

The earliest recorded allusion ^ to clay substitutes appears to be

Wuthe words of Kuang (in the first century a.d.), that " anciently,

1 J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious System of China. Leyden, 1894, vol. ii., p. 383.

« Loc. cit., p. 807. ^ Loc. cit,, p. 808.