It will be strange if in Honan and Quang-si we do not eventually find the links which will confirm the connexion of the two races of Cambodia and China, and explain what at present can only be regarded as one of the unsolved problems of architectural history.
A little well-directed industry on the spot would very soon clear all this doubt away. Meanwhile there are other minor causes which may have contributed to the absence of monumental buildings in China, and which it may be as well to allude to before proceeding further. In the first place, the Chinese never had either a dominant priesthood or a hereditary nobility. The absence of the former class is a very important consideration, because, in all countries where architecture has been carried to anything like perfection, it is to sacred art that it has owed its highest inspiration, and sacred art is never so strongly developed as under the influence of a powerful and splendid hierarchy. Again, religious and sectarian zeal is often a strong stimulus to sacred architecture, and this is entirely wanting in this remarkable people. Though the Chinese are bigoted to a greater extent than we can well conceive in all political matters, they are more tolerant than any other nation we know of in all that concerns religion. At the present moment three great religious sects divide the empire nearly equally between them. For though Buddhism is the religion of the reigning family, and perhaps numbers more followers than either of the other two, still the followers of the doctrines of Confucius—the contemporary and rival of Sakya Sinha—are a more purely Chinese sect than the other, and hold an equal place in public estimation; while, at the present time, the sect of Laou Tse, or the Doctors of Reason, is more fashionable, and certainly more progressive, than the others.[655] Christianity, too, might at one time have encroached largely on either of these, and become a very prevalent religion in this tolerant empire, had the Jesuits and Dominicans understood that the condition of religious tolerance here is a total abstinence from interference in political matters. This, however, the Roman Catholic priesthood never could be brought to understand; hence their expulsion from the realm, and the proscription of their faith, which otherwise would not only have been tolerated like all others, but bid fair to find more extensive favour than any. Such toleration is highly laudable in one point of view; but the want of fervour and energy from which it arises is fatal to any great exertions for the honour of religion.
In the same manner the want of an hereditary nobility, and indeed of any strong family pride, is equally unfavourable to domestic architecture of a durable description. At a man’s death his property is generally divided equally among his children. Consequently the wealthiest men do not build residences calculated to last longer than their own lives. The royal palaces are merely somewhat larger and more splendid than those of the mandarins, but the same in character, and erected with the same ends.
There is no country where property has hitherto been considered so secure as China. Private feuds and private wars were till lately unknown; foreign invasion was practically impossible, and little dreaded. Hence they have none of those fortalices, or fortified mansions, which by their mass and solidity give such a marked character to a certain class of domestic edifices in the western world. Equality, peace, and toleration, are blessings whose value it would be difficult to overestimate; but on the dead though pleasing level where they exist, it is in vain to look for the rugged sublimity of the mountain, or the terrific grandeur of the storm. The Chinese have chosen the humbler path of life, and with singular success. There is not perhaps a more industrious or, till the late wars, happier people on the face of the globe; but they are at the same time singularly deficient in every element of greatness, either political or artistic.
Notwithstanding all this, it certainly is curious to find the oldest civilized people now existing on the face of the globe almost wholly without monuments to record the past, or any desire to convey to posterity a worthy idea of their present greatness. It is no less remarkable to find the most populous of nations, a nation in which millions are always seeking employment, never thinking of any of those higher modes of expression which would serve as a means of multiplying occupation, and which elevate while feeding the masses; and still more startling to find wealth, such as the Chinese possess, never invested in self-glorification, by individuals erecting for themselves monuments which shall astonish their contemporaries, and hand down their names to posterity.
From these causes it may be that Chinese architecture is not worthy of much attention. In one respect, however, it is instructive, since the Chinese are the only people who now employ polychromy as an essential part of their architecture: indeed, with them, colour is far more essential than form; and certainly the result is so far pleasing and satisfactory, that for the lower grades of art it is hardly doubtful that it should always be so. For the higher grades, however, it is hardly less certain that colour, though most valuable as an accessary, is incapable of that lofty power of expression which form conveys to the human mind.
CHAPTER II.
PAGODAS.
CONTENTS.
Temple of the Great Dragon—Buddhist Temples—Taas—Tombs—Pailoos—Domestic Architecture.
If we had the requisite knowledge, or if the known examples of Chinese temples were sufficiently numerous, we ought, before describing them, to classify the buildings, apportioning each to that one of the three religions to which it belongs. For the present this must be left to some one on the spot. Meanwhile there is no difficulty in recognising those which belong to the religion of Fo or Buddha. These are generally the nine-storeyed towers or taas, which, as will be explained hereafter, are merely exaggerated tees of the Indian dagobas. The temples, properly so-called, of this religion, are not very magnificent, nor are they generally built in a permanent style of architecture. This is still more the case, apparently, with the temples of Confucius. The only one that has been carefully described and photographed is that at Pekin, which is also probably the most magnificent. Judging from our present information, it more resembles a university than a temple. There are neither images nor altars, but great halls, on which are hung up the names of the emperors and of the most distinguished literates of the kingdom. There are no priests; and though ceremonies are there performed annually by the emperor in honour of the great philosopher, these scarcely can be called worship, or the hall a temple.