Chinese pottery and porcelain; vol. 1. Pottery and early wares

by R. L. Hobson

THE HAN

DYNASTY, 206 B. C. TO 220 A. D.

TWO centuries of internecine strife between the great feudal princes culminated in the destruction of the Chou dynasty and the consolidation of the Chinese states under the powerful Ch´in emperor Chêng. If this ambitious tyrant is famous in history for beating back the Hiung–nu Turks, the wild nomads of the north who had threatened to overrun the Chou states, and for building the Great Wall of China as a rampart against these dreaded invaders, he is far more infamous for the disastrous attempt to burn all existing books and records, by which, in his overweening pride, he hoped to wipe out past history and make good to posterity his arrogant title of Shih Huang Ti or First Emperor. His reign, however, was short, and his dynasty ended in 206 B. C. when his grandson gave himself up to Liu Pang, of the house of Han, and was assassinated within a few days of his surrender.

The Han dynasty, which began in 206 B. C. and continued till 220 A. D., united the states of China in a great and prosperous empire with widely extended boundaries. During this period the Chinese, who had already come into commercial contact with the kingdoms of Western Asia, sent expeditions, some peaceful and others warlike, to Turkestan, Fergana, Bactria, Sogdiana, and Parthia. They even contemplated an embassy to Rome, but the envoys who reached the Persian Gulf turned back in fear of the long sea journey round Arabia, the length and danger of which seem to have been vividly impressed upon them by persons interested, it is thought, in preventing their farther progress.[13] A considerable trade, chiefly in silks, had been opened up between China and the Roman provinces, and the Parthians who acted as middlemen had no desire to bring the two principals into direct communication.

Needless to say, China was not uninfluenced by this contact 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 Nisæan breed. But from the artistic standpoint the most important event was the official introduction 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 meanwhile 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 Chêng, and though partially revived by Han enthusiasts, they were essentially modified by the new spirit of the age. Berthold Laufer,[14] in discussing 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 characterise 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 everyone to choose a girdle ornament according to his liking. For the first time we hear of names of artists under the Han—six painters under the Western Han, and nine under the Eastern Han; also of workers in bronze and other craftsmen.[15] The typical, traditional objects of antiquity now received a tinge of personality, or even gave way to new forms; these dissolved into numerous variations, to express correspondingly numerous shades of sentiment and to answer the demands of customers of various minds."

Religion has always exerted a powerful influence on art, especially among primitive peoples, and the religions of China at the beginning of the Han dynasty were headed by two great schools of thought—Confucianism and Taoism. These had absorbed and, to a great extent, already superseded the elements of primitive nature worship, which never entirely disappear. Confucianism, however, being rather a philosophy than a religion, and discouraging belief in the mystic and supernatural, had comparatively little influence on art. Taoism, on the other hand, with its worship of Longevity and its constant questing for the secrets of Immortality, supplied a host of legends and myths, spirits and demons, sages and fairies which provided endless motives for poetry, painting and the decorative arts. The Han emperor Wu Ti was a Taoist adept, and the story of the visit which he received from Hsi Wang Mu, the Queen Mother of the West, and of the expeditions which he sent to find Mount P´êng Lai, one of the sea–girt hills of the Immortals, have furnished numerous themes for artists and craftsmen.

It is not yet easy for people in this country to study the monuments of Han art, but facilities are increasing, and a good impression of one phase at least may be obtained from reproductions of the stone carvings in Shantung, executed about the middle of the Han dynasty, which have been published from rubbings by Professor E. Chavannes.[16] On these monuments historical and mythological subjects are portrayed in a curious mixture of imagination and realism.

But these general considerations are leading us rather far afield, and it remains to see how much or how little of them is reflected in the pottery of the time.