«5^^^- .v^'W.jfJfr'^ ^ m^ { t^/^ THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES ^m^ ^'y ^^^,.^ \J C K^ ^K.wrrr ^/^ m% (L^-^. ■ / ^ ^. ~ ^im ^/fcr %> ^^:^;:<^ Vv' i^'v&^v; ..t n BOARD OF EDUCATION, SOUTH KENSINGTON, VICTOHIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM. CHINESE ART STEPHEN W. BUSHELL, C.M.G., B.Sc, M.D. Member of Council of Royal Asiatic and Royal Numismatic Societies. Late Physician to II. M. Legation, Pekimj. VOLUME I. WITH 104 ILLUSTRATIONS. LONDON : WIINTED FOR HIS MA.IESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE, By WYMAN and SONS, Limited, Fetter Lane, E.C. 1905. Large paper Editton. Prhe, lO.t. 6d. To be purchased, either directly or through any Bookseller, from WYMAN & SONS, Ltd., Fetter Lane, London, E.C. ; or OLIVER AND BOYD, Edinbursh ; or E. PONSONBY, lie, Grafton Street, Dublin; or on personal application at the Catalogue Stall. Victoria and .\Ibert iluseuni, S.W. 'I'lic ordinary Kdition, Demy Svo, Price One Shilling and Sixpence in Paper Wrapper, or Two Shillings and Threepence in C'lotli. iSTS P^ a) 154GC43 rff-^.^m ^iTA Fii:. I. — Bas Relief. Han Dynasty. Frontispiece {see pajc 39). 2A ft. X 2 ft. PREFACE. Th' following chapters on Chinese Art haveheemarittenin obedience to a request which I had the honour of receiving from the Board of Education to write a handbook on the art and industries of China. In venturing to undertake the task I am anxious, at the outset, to disclaim any pretension to authority on the subject, and to state my position to be merely that of an inquirer. During a residence of some thirty years at Peking I have been a diligent collector of Chinese books relating to antiquities and art industries and tried to gain a desultory knowledge of their scope. There is such a vast amount of Chinese literature on every conceivable subject, of all shades of authenticity, that one of the chief difficulties of the strident is that of selection. The best method for the inquirer seems to be an exact illustration and description of a typical object selected from the museum galleries, with a passing reference to any source of information calculated to throw light upon its origin and association. These have been the lines followed here as far as the brief space assigned to each branch of art has allowed. Much of the ground is almost ncio, as the ceramic field is the only one that appears, hitherto, to have attracted investigators in England. On the Continent one general book of light and authority has been published covering more or less the same ground, the graceful sketch entitled L'Art Chinois, by M. Paleologue, sometime Secretary of Embassy at the French Legation at Peking, which was issued in 1887, (ts one of the excellent series of art books of the Biblioth^que de I'Enseignement des Beaux-Arts, Paris. 8634. 250— Wt. 3762. 8/05. Wy. ^: S. 3990r. A 2 4 CHINESE ART. A few words on the wriiing and pronuncuxfion of Chinese words, addressed to novices in Sinology, may not be out of place here. The Chinese language, it need hardly he said, is monosyllabic, and each word is represented by a separate " character " in the u'ritten scrip/. These characters were originally pictures of natural objects or ideas, used singly or in combination, and it was not until later that they were distinguished into two categories, as phonetics, and determinatives or radicals. The radicals in modern use are 214, a number arbitrarily fixed for dictionary purposes, as a means of classifying the 20,000 or more u'ritten characters of the language, and of providing a ready means of coining new combinations. The large majority of characters of the modern script are composed of a radical, which gives a clue to the meaning by indicating the particular class of things or ideas to ■witich the combination of which it forms a part belongs, and a phonetic, which conveys some idea of the sound. With regard to pronunciation Sir Thomas Wade's scheme of ortho- graphy has been folloieed. It is the system of transliteration which has been adopted by Professor Giles in his large Chinese Dictionary, and by Mr. Goodrich in his invaluable Pocket Dictionary and Poking Syllabary, and it is now very generally accepted by Chinese scholars. The consonants are generally to be pronounced as in English, ivith the exception of j, which is nearly the French j in ]:ixme,ihe English s in fusion or z in brazier. The initials ch, k, p, t, ts, tz, are either unaspirated or aspirated. When aspirated, the aspirvie which intervenes between them and the vowel following is indicated by an apostrophe in preference to an h, lest the English reader should pro- nounce ph as in triumph, (li as in month, and so on. To pronounce ch'a, drop the italicised letters in muc\\-\\arm, for t'a, drop the italics in hti-h.a.rd. The initial hs, where a slight aspirant precedes and modifies the sibilant, is a peculiar sound of the Peking mandarin dialed which can only be acquired by practice. PREFACB. 5 The vowels and difhthongs arc to be prvnotinced as in llaliun, tn accordance with the following table, er's System. Ent 3G 3 — Stone Carving. First century B.c ,,36 10. — Stone Carving. First century n.c. - - . - - ,, 30 11. — Caevino of Dragon. First century b.c. ,,38 12. — Carving or PHGiNixES, etc. First century B.C. - - • ■ „ 38 13. — Moon and Constellations. First century b.c. - - - - ,, 38 14 ScTN and Constellations. First century B.C. - ■ - - „ 38 15. — Discovery of Bronze Tripod. Han bas relief - - - - ,, 40 10. — Reception op King Mu BY Hsi Wang Mil. Han bas relief ■ - ,, 40 17. — Aerial Abode of Taoist Divinities. Han bas relief - - - ,, 42 18. — Engraved Stone Stele. T'ang dynasty. Seventh century - „ 42 19. — Colossal Stone Figure. Ming Tombs. Fifteenth century - ,, 44 20. — Stele with Amitabha Buddha. Northern Wei dynasty, a.d. OS.'j ,, 44 21. — Pedestal FOE Maitreya Buddha. Northern Wei dynasty. A.D. 5!27 ,, 4U 22. — Carved Pedestal with Inscrii'tion. Northern Wei dynasty. A.D. 524 - - - - - - ■ ■ „ 40 23. — Chd Yung Kuan Archway with Hesaglot Inscriptions. Yuan dynasty, a.d. 1345 - ,,48 24. — Cho Yung Kuan Sculpture of Dhritabashtra - - - - ,, 48 25. — .\VAL0KITA with Hexaglot INSCRIPTION. Yuan dynasty, a.d. 1348 ,,48 26. — Marble Stupa OF Pai T'a Ssil AT Peking „ 48 27. — Incarnation of a Bodhisattva. Sculptured in marble at Pa' T'a Ssu ,48 a CHINESE ART. Fig. Page 28. — Sacrificial Hall OF Yung Lo. Ming Tombs, near Peking - -facing 50 29. — Imperial Hall of the Classics. National University, Peking - ,, 52 30. — Pailou of Marble and Glazed Terracotta. Wo Fo S.sfi, near Peking .,54 31. — Altar OF Heaven, Peking .,54 32. — Temple of Heaven, Peking ,,56 33. — Shrine and Altar OF Confucius ,,58 34. — Imperial Garden Pavilion at Wan Shou Shan - - - - ,, 58 35. — K'uNJUNG Hu. Lake at Summer Palace ,,00 36. — Hunchback Bridge near Summer Palace ,,60 37. — Bronze Buddhist Shrine .\T Wan Shoc Shan ■ - - - ,, 02 38. — " Porcelain " Pagoda at Yuan Ming Yuan - - - - ., 02 39. — Ling KuANG Ssu Pagoda. Seventh Century - • - - ,, 64 40. — Buddhist Triad. Interior of Lama Temple - ■ - - „ 04 41. — Lama Te.mple at Jehol. Modelled after the Potaia temple at Lhasa - - - - - - - - - - - ,, 60 42. — Five-Towered Temple near Peiono. Cojiy of Mahabodhi at Buddha-Gaya „ 00 43. — Bronze Incense Burner with Mohammedan Scrolls ■ - ,, 70 44. — Ruined G,vtbway of a Mosque, Peking ,.70 45. — Sacrificial Colander, yen. Shang Dynasty • - ■ ,, 76 46. — Ancient Bronze Bell. Seventh century B.C. - • ■ - ,, 80 47. — The Wu-Chuan Ting of the Chou Dyn.asty - - - - ,. 82 48. — Inscription on the Above Wu-Chuan Ting - - - - ,, 82 49 — Sacrificial Bowl. p'an. Chou Dynasty. Bronze inlaid with gold and .silver - - - • - - - - - ,, 84 50. — Inscription on the above Sacrificial Boux. Attributed to the year B.C. 632 ,,86 51. — Sacrificial Wine Vase. tsun. T'ao-t'ieh and other conven- tional designs - - - - - - - - - - ,, 88 52. — Archaic Wine Jar with Cover, yu ,, 90 53. — Archaic Libation Cup. chI'o ,,00 54. — Slender Trumpet-shaped Vase, ku ,,90 55 — Sacrificial Wine Vessel. hsi tsun. Moulded in tlie form of a rhinoceros - - - - - - - - - ,, 92 56 — Dove-shaped Wine Vessel on Wheels, chiu ch'£ tsun - ,, 92 67 — Sacrificial Utensil for Meat Offerings, san hsi ting - .. 94 58 — Four-Legged Incense- HiiRNMR WITH Cover - - - ,94 59. GO. 01.- G2.- 63.. Gi. G5.- 07.- 68.- 69.- 70.- 71.- 72.. 73. 74.- 75. 7G.- 77. 78.- 79.- 80.- 81.- 82.- 83.- 84.- 85. 86.- 87.- 89.- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. ^ Pack -Incense BnRNER moulded with Dragons in Relief - - -facing 94 -Han Dynasty Mikkok with Gr/UCo-Bactrian Deskins - - ,. 9G -Yuan Dynasty Mirror with Sanskrit Inscription • - ■ „ 90 -Votive St&pa or Gilded Bronze, a.d. 955 - - . , 98 -Buddhist Temple Gonq. a.d. 1832 ,, 100 -Equatorial Akmillary. Thirteenth Century - - - ,. 102 -Peking Astronomical Instruments. Seventeenth Century - ,, 102 -War Drum. Chu-ku Kv. Inscribed a.d. 199 - - - ,, 104 -Wine Ve.ssel Modelled in the Form of a Duck. Bronze iii- cru.stcd with gokl and silver • - - - - - , 104 -Archaic Wine Pot. Bronze inlaid with gold and silver - - ., 104 -Vase from a Lama Temple. Bronze, parcel-gilt, chased, and inlaid with coral and malachite - - - - - - ,, 106 -Goblet-shaped Vase with Gilded Orn.4ment - - - - ,, 100 -Iron Statuette Coated with Realgar Mosaic - - ■ ■ ,. 100 -Rustic Silver Wine Cup. Dated a.d. 1361. 106 -Stand of Wood cakved with Lotus, etc. - - - - ,, 108 -Screen of Lacquered Wood painted in Coloured and Gilded Lacs. The Taoist genii worshipping the god of longevity - - ,, 112 -Two Panels of the above Screen ,.112 -Two Leaves of another Lacquered Twelve-fold Screen painted IN Colours - - ,, 114 -Two other Leaves OF THE above Screen - - - - - ,, 114 -Ivory Hand Rest carved with the Eighteen Buddhist .\rh.ats ,, 110 -Ivory Ball cabved in Concentric Sphekes of Open-Work Design - ,, 116 -Model of A Buddhist TE.MPLE ,,118 -Model OF Pavilions IN Ornamental Grounds - - ■ - ,, 118 -Carved Tortoiseshell "Work Box on 120 -Carved Rhinoceros Horn Cup mounted on Pedestal - facing 120 -Box of carved Red and Black Lacquer ,, 126 -Box Lid of Canton Lacquer. Painted in two sliades of gold on a black ground - - - - - - - - - ,, 128 -Fan and Case of Canton Lacquer ,, 128 -Metal Ewer Lacquered and Incrusted with Mother-of- Peael and Ivory ,, 130 -Screen of Black Lacquer incrusted WITH Motuer-of-Pearl - ,, 130 -Tray of FoL'Hou Lacquer shaped AS a Lotus Lf.af - - - ,, 130 10 CHINESE ART. FiQ Page 90. — Vase of carved Red Peking Lacquer. From the Summer Palace. Decorated with nine imperial dragons - - - facing 132 91 PiETBA Dura Picture or the Taoist Para wse. Diapered ground of cinnabar lao incrusted with jade, malachito, and lapis lazuli - ,, 132 92. — Peach-shaped Box decorated with Fruit and Flowers. Chiselled red lao, inlaid with green and yellow jade, lapis lazuli, turquoise, and amethyst „ 132 03. — Bowl OF Jadeite. Granular whitish ground witli green markings ., 142 94. — Vase OF White Jade shaped as A Finger-Citron - - - ,, 142 95.^Ju-i Sceptre carved with Dragon and Phcenix - - - ,, 140 96 Rosary with Plaques and Pendants of Jadeite - - - ,, 148 97 Cylindrical Brush Pot. pi t'ung. Carved in White Jade ,, 150 98 Vase of White Jade carved with Dragon and Flowers. Stand of Green Jade - ,, 150 99. — Twin Cylinder Vase of White Jade. In the Salting Collection - ,, 150 100. — Vase and Cover carved in Dark Green Jade - - - - „ 150 101. — Screen carved in Steatite of Three Layers with a Taoist Scene ,, 150 102. — Double Vase of Rock Crystal. Carved with elephant-head handles, phoenix, bat, and foliage ,, 150 103. — Statuette of Siiou Lao carved in Green-Tinged Rock Crystal ,, 150 104. — Fish Dragon Vase carved in Red and Variegated White Agate .-- - ,, 150 CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. The study of any liraiich of art supposes, as Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole justly observes in his handbook on the Arl of ike Saracens in Egypt, some acquaintance witli the history of the people among whom the art was practised. This applies with ad- ditional force to China and to Chinese art, a still more dist- ant and less familiar field of study. The native story of the development of Chinese culture makes it nearly as old as the civilisa- tions of Egypt, Chald;ea, and Susiana. These empires have, long since, culminated and disappeared below the horizon, while China has continued to exist, to work out its own ideas of art and ethics, and to elaborate the peculiar script which it retains to the present time. The characters of the ancient Chinese script would appear to have originated and developed in the valley of the Yellow River, and no connection has hitherto been satisfactorily traced with any other system of pictui^e writing. Our knowledge of the ancient empires of Western Asia has been widely increased by recent discoveries due to systematic exploration of the ruins of cities and temples. There are, doubtless, many such relics of ancient China awaiting the spade of the future explorer along the course of the Yellow River, and of its principal affluent, the Wei River, which runs from west to east through the province of Shensi, where the early settlements of the Chinese were situated. But they lie deeply buried beneath pUes of river silt, blown to and fro by the wind to form the thick deposits of yellow loess which are so characteristic of these regions. It happens only occasionally that a site is laid bare by the river changing its course, or during the digging of canals for irrigation or other purposes, a fruitful source of the 12 CHINESE ART. discovery of bronze sacrificial vessels and other antiquities. The Chinese attach the highest value to such relics of the ancient dynasties, although they are generally averse, for geomantic reasons, to any intentional disturbance of the soil for their discovery. The sepulchral bas-reliefs of the Han dynasty, for example, which were dug up in the seventeenth century in the province of Shantung, are now housed in a building which was specially constructed for their pre- servation, and endowed with some land purchased by voluntary subscribers interested in the preservation of the antiquities. These will be more fully noticed later and are just mentioned here because some of the carvings have been selected to illustrate this chapter. Chinese history is carried back by some to a mythical period of fabulous antiquity ; their first man. Pan Ku, emerging from chaos as the embryo of an all-productive cosmic egg or atom. He is followed by a mythical series of celestial, terrestrial, and human rulers, some of the last of which were called Yu Cli'ao (the Nest-having) because they lived in trees in those days, and others Sui Jen (the Fire Producers), as the discoverers of the primitive friction hand- drill of wood. The legendary, as distinct from the purely mythical, period begins with Fu Hsi, the reputed founder of the Chinese polity. He is represented in the lowest panel of the bas-relief in the frontispiece, and also in Fig. 2 in the right hand corner of the bas-relief, as the first of the three ancient sovereigns known as San Huang, holding a mason's square, in company with a female personage wearing a coronet and holding a pair of compasses. This last is Nii Wa, who is variously represented as either the consort, or sister, of Fu Hsi ; their bodies terminating in the forms of dragons, or serpents, are intertwined below, and so are those of the attendant sprites of anomalous outline supported by rolled clouds ending in birds' heads. The inscription on the left, reads : — " Fu Hsi, styled Ts'ang Ching, was tho lir.st to rule as king; ho traced the trigrama and knotted cords as a means of "oveiniiig all within the seas." Fig. 2.— The San Huanu Han Dynasty Bas Relief. 18 in. X 12 in. i'ju. 3.— This Wu Ti Han Dynasty Bas Relief. 24 in, X 12 in iiisroRKwi. IN rROhUcnoN. 13 'I"he /)(« kiia, or " eight trigrams," rofcrrcd to here, arc the well- known symbols of ancient divination and mystic philosophy, which arc said to have been revealed to Fu Hsi by a supernatural being called the dragon horse, rising from the waters of the Yellow River, with a scroll upon its back inscribed with the mystic diagrams. The figure of the dragon horse is often represented in jade, porcelain, or bronze. (See Fig. 77.) The " knotted cords " referred to have been compared with the qitippus, the cord records of the ancient Peruvians. Chu Yung occupies the next panel in Fig. 2, as the second of the three ancient sovereigns, represented in a combatant attitude. He is chiefly celebrated as the conqueror of Kung Kung, the first rebel, and the leader of a titanic insurrection in times of old, when he well- nigh overwhelmed the earth with a watery deluge. The inscription reads : — " Chu Yung had nothing to do, there were no desires nor evil passions, and neither punishments nor fines were instituted." The third of the San Huang is Shen Nung, the Divine Husbandman , who first fashioned timber into ploughs, and taught his people the art of husbandry. He discovered the curative virtues of herbs, and founded the first markets for the exchange of commodities. The inscription reads : — " Shen Nung, seeing tlie value of agriculture, taught how to till the ground and sow grain, and stirred up the myriads of the people." The Wu Ti, or Five Rulers, who succeeded the above, are depicted in Fig. 3, which is taken from the same bas-relief as the last. The cartouches, proceeding from right to left, read : — 1. " Huang Ti made inauy changes ; he fabricated weapon.s, dug wells in the fields, lengthened the official robes, built palaces and dwelling-houses." 2. " The emperor Chuan Hsii is the same as Kao Yang, the grandson of Huang Ti and the son of Ch'ang I." 3. " The emperor K'u is no other than Kao Hsin, he was great grandson of Huang Ti." 4. " The emperor Yao was named Fang Hsiin, his benevolence was celestial, his knowledge that of a god, near at hand he was like the sun, afar off like a eloiul." 5. " The emperor Shun was named Ch'ung Hua ; he tilled the ground on the Li Mountain, for three years he laboiireil far from his home." 14 CHINESE ART. The five figures are all dressed in the same style with long robes and wear the square-topped hat hung with pendants of jade called mien which was adopted by Huang Ti. This last is a most prominent personage at the dawn of Chinese history. His capital was near the modern Hsi-an Fa, in the province of Shensi. Many of the industrial arts are traced back to his time, and his principal consort Hsi-ling Shih, who first taught the people to rear silkworms, is still worshipped as a deity on that account. The Taoists have transfoi med Huang Ti, t he " Yellow Emperor, ' ' into a miraculous being who inventedalchemy and succeeded in gaining immortality. He has been identified by Terrien de Lacouperie with Nakhunte, and made the leader of the so-called Bak tribes, which are supposed by him to have traversed Asia from Elam to China and started a new civilisation in the valley of the Yellow River ; while Shen Nung is identified with Sargon who according to him, ruled in Chaldcea about 3,800 B.C. But such speculations are difficult to follow, although there would really appear to have been some connection between the nascent civilisations of Chaldaea and China at an early period. With the emperors Yao and Shun we stand on firmer ground, as they are placed by Confucius at the head of the Shu King, the classical annals compiled by him, and idealized as perfect models of disinterested rule for all time. Their capital was at P'ing-yang Fu in Shansi. Their memorial temple still stands outside the walls of this city with gigantic images of the two heroes, thirty feet high, erected in the central pavilion of the principal courtyard, before which the reigning emperor Kuang-hsii burned incense on his return journey from Hsi-an Fu to Peking in 1900. Yao set aside his own son, and called on the nobles to name a successor, when Shun was chosen ; and Shun, in his turn, passing by an unworthy son, transmitted the throne to an able minister, the great Yu. Yu departed from these illustrious precedents and incurred the censure of " converting the empire into a family estate," and since his time the hereditary princijile has prevailed. Yu gained HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 15 his great reputation by the success of vast hydrographic works con- tinued for nine years tUI the country was rescued from floods and finally divided into nine provinces. His labours are described in the " Tribute of Yu," which is found with some modifications in the Shu Ching compiled by Confucius, and in the first two of the dynastic histories — the Historical Memoirs of Ssu-ma Ch'ien (7). B.C. 85), and the Annals of the Former Han dynasty by Pan Ku {D. a.d. 92). He is said to have cast nine bronze tripod vessels (ting) from metal sent up from the nine provinces to the capital, situated near Kai- feng Fu, in the province of Honan, which were religiously preserved for nearly 2,000 years as palladia of the empire. The great Yu is represented as the founder of the Hsia dynasty in Fig. 4, in company with Chieh Kuei, a degenerate descendant, the last of the line, a monster of cruelty, whose iniquities cried out to heaven, till he was overthrown by T'ang, " the Completer," the founder of the new dynasty of Shang. The label attached reads : — " Yu of Hsia was celebrated for his geometric knowledge of watercourses and springs ; he knew the hidden principles and the proper seasons for embanking the lands ; after his return he instituted mutilations as punishments." The great Yu has a pronged spade in his hand. Chieh Kuei, armed with a halbert (ko), is carried by two women, a cruel custom attri- buted by tradition to him. The Hsia dynasty was succeeded by the Shang, and the Shang by the Chou, as indicated in the following table of the period, which is always known to the Chinese as that of the " Three Dynasties " — San Tai. THE THREE EARLY DYNASTIES. Name op Dynasty. Number of Rulers. DURATION OP Dynasty. ^ Hsia [^ Sbang j^Chou Eighteen Twenty-eight Thirty-five B.C. 2-205-1767 1766-1122 1122-25.5 i6 CHINESE ART. The dates given above are in accordance with those of the official chronology, which is not contemporary, but has been calculated backwards from the lengths of the reigns, the cyclical days of eclipses of the sun and moon, and other data recorded in the annals. It has been shown that the cycle of sixty was used only for days at this time, not for years. The early dates must be consequently taken as only approximative, since it is not till the accession of Hsiian Wang (B.C. 822) that there is a general agreement in the native sources. From this year downwards the Chinese dates may be accepted with every confidence. The Chou dynasty was really founded by W^n Wang, although not actually proclaimed till the 13th year of his eldest son and successor, Wu Wang, after the gi-eat battle^in the plains of Mu, in which the last tyrant of the house of Shang was defeated. The latter forthwith fled to burn himself with all his treasures in the Stag Tower (Lu T'ai) which he had built in his capital, now Kuei-te Fu in the province' of Honan, and Wu Wang reigned in his stead. ThefoUowing table gives the succession of the rulers of the new line: THE CHOU DYNASTY. DvSASTic Title, Acces- sion. Kemarks. ^ 3l Wen Wang H.C. 1169 Accession to the Princii)ality of Chou. ^ ]£ Wn Wang 1134 Proclaimeil Einpeior n.c. 112-2. Mi i Cheng Wang 1115 First seven years under regency of Wi i K'aDgWang 1078 his uncle, the Duke of Chou. flK zL ChaoWang 1052 f^ -^ Mu AV ang 1001 .Jimruev to the West. Celebrateil in / -» ^ Kung Wang 940 Taoist legends IA I YiWang , 934 Fig. 4.— The Great Yu and Chieh Kuei. Han Dynasty Bas Relief. 11 in. A 'J in. Fi(!. 0. — Kino Gh'eng of the (j'liou Dvnas'iv. Hans Dynasty Bas Itelicf. il In. X !l HI. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 17 Dynastic Title. 3f- ^^ Hsiao Wang % 3EYiWang iS. ^^ Li WanK g ^I^ Hsliaii Wang [0 jYuWang ^ J Ping Wang tM 31 Huan Wan,' ►H^ ^F Cliuang Wang -fi insiWang ^. lEHuiAVang ^^ J^ Hsiang Wang iS Ip Ch'ing Wang Re ^P K'uang Wang aE ^ Ting Wang ^ ^ ( hien Wang M i "^'"^ ^^'"'" ^ zE ^^'""g Wang ^ ^rChingWang ~T\n -^ Yuan Wang ^ aE, iE *-'''^" Ting Wang .-fe ^E K *o Wang ^ rrr An Wang ^ij IC Lieh Wang 1^ ^ Hsien Wang '!^ rS 3i ^''^" "^ '""^ ^^''"^ ^I^^NanAVang ^ J^ ^ Tung Chou Chiin 8634. Acces- sion. B.C. 909 894 878 S-27 7H1 770 719 696 681 676 651 618 612 606 58r> 571 544 519 475 468 440 425 401 375 368 320 315 255 Last 14 years an exile in tlie Chin Statu. Killed by Tartar invaders. Removal of capital from Hao (Il-i an Fu) to Lo Yang (Ho-nan Fu). Hence known as Eastern Cliou dynasty (B.C. 770-481). Period comprised in the Ch'un Cli'iu Annals, compiled liy Confucius, B.C. 721-478. Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, was a keeper of the records at Lo Yang at the close of the 6th centuiy. Confucius lived 551- Period of the contending States, B.C. 475-221. during which the seven feuilal states of Ch'in, Cli'i, Yen, Ts'u, Cliao, Wei, and Han were fighting for supremacy. Mencius lived 372-289. Surrendered to the ruler of Ch'in in 256. Nominally reigned till B.C. 249. B i8 CHINESE ART. The Choii dynasty, which was started so gloriously by the state- craft of King Wen and the military prowess of King Wu, was con- solidated in the reign of King Ch'eng. The last was only thirteen years old when he succeeded, and the regency fell to his uncle Tan, the Duke of Chou, one of the most celebrated personages in history, where he is ranked in virtue, wisdom, and honours, as yielding place only to the great rulers of antiquity, Yao and Shun. He drew up the ordinances of the empire, directed its policy, and acted generally as guardian and presiding genius of the newly created line, during the reign of his brother King Wu, who conferred on him the princi- pality of Lu, and during the first part of that of his nephew King Ch'eng. This last youthful Sovereign is seen in Fig. 5, which is taken from another of the bas-reliefs of the Han dynasty, seated in the centre on a raised platform, with an umbrella held over his head by an attendant. The kneeling figure on the left is his celebrated uncle, the Duke of Chou, accom- panied by two attendants holding tablets of office ; the standing figure on the right is, judging from labels in similar scenes of the period, the Duke of Shao, another uncle and a colleague in the regency, the first feudal prince of Yen, the capital of which was on the site of the modern Peking, and who is also attended by two officials. The division of the country into hereditary fiefs, conferred upon scions of the Royal house and representatives of the former dynasties, led to ultimate disaster. As the power of the surrounding feudatories increased, that of the central kingdom waned, till it was unable to withstand the assaults of the barbarous tribes on the south and west. Mu Wang invaded their mountain fastnesses, and he is recorded to have been driven by his charioteer, Tsao Fu, with his eight famous horses, wherever wheel-ruts ran and the hoofs of horses had trodden. He gained nothing by his campaigns, but the incidents HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. rg of the journey and his reception by Hsi Wang Mu, the " Royal Mother of the West," in her fairy palace on the Kun Lun Mountain, have been favourite subjects of Chinese art ever since, and one often sees his famous eight horses, each labelled with its name, cleverly cut in jade (see Fig. 97) or chosen for the motive of decoration of a porcelain vase. King Hsiian, a vigorous ruler, resisted the invaders with success, but little more than ten years after his death, the capital was taken by the barbarian tribes, and in the year B.C. 771, his son and successor. King Yu, was slain. The reign of King Yu is memorable for the record in the canonical Book of Odes of an eclipse of the sim on the 29th of August B.C. 776, the first of a long line of eclipses, which give ]ioints of chronological certainty to subsequent Chinese history. His son and successor reigned at the new capital, Lo Yang, and the dynasty, known henceforward as the Eastern Chou, remained there, although its authority gradually dwindled to a shadow, in spite of all the efforts of Confucius and Mencius to reassert its right- ful claims. The barbarian invaders were meanwhile driven out by a combination of the two feudal States of Chin (Tsin) and Ch'in and the old capital was ceded to the latter, who were destined in course of time to supplant the Chou. During the 7th Century B.C. the power of the empire was swayed by confederacies of feudal princes, and the period (b.c. 685-591) is known in history as that of the Wu Pa, or " Five Leaders," who figured in succession as maintainers of the Government of the Son of Heaven. They were : 1. Duke Huan of Ch'i. 2. Duke Wen of Chin. 3. Duke Hsiang of Sung. 4. Prince Chuang of Ch'u. 5. Duke Mu of Ch'in. This system of presiding chiefs, or rather of leading States, checked for a time the prevailing disorder ; but it was succeeded by the 8634, B 2 20 CHINESE ART. period of the contending States, when the country was again devastated by civil wars, prolonged for more than two centuries, till King Nan, in 256, surrendered finally to the Prince of Ch'in and brought the Chou dynasty to an end. King Cheng succeeded to the throne of Ch'in in B.C. 246, and in 221, after he had conquered and annexed all the other States, founded a new and homogeneous empire on the ruins of the feudal system. He extended the empire widely towards the south, drove back the Hiung-nu Turks on the north, and built the Great Wall as a rampart of defence against these horse-riding nomads. He tried to burn all historical books, declared himself the First Divus Augustus (Shih Huang Ti), and decreed that his successor should be known as the Second, the Third, and so forth, even down to the ten-thousandth generation. But his ambitious projects came to nought, as his son, who succeeded as Erh Shih Huang Ti, or Emperor in the second generation, in B.C. 2og, was murdered by the eunuch Chao Kao two years after, and in 206 his grandson, a mere chOd, gave himself up to the founder of the house of Han, Liu Pang, bringing with him the jade seals of State, and was assas- sinated a few days later. A table of the regular succession of dynasties follows here, for reference, with the dates of their com- mencement. The figures in brackets indicate the number in the series of twenty-four dynastic histories devoted to their annals, (see Wylie's Notes on Chinese Literature, p. 13.) Name of DvNASiir. ■ Chi'n ;/f Ha (1,2) j|i y^ EaBtein Han (.1) ^3 >"£ After Han BEGAN. n.c. 221 206 A.n. 25 221 Capital at Ch'ang-an. Capital at Lo-yang. j ( Epocli of tlie Three Kingdoms, \ viz., Han, Wei, and \Vu (4). HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 21 Namk of Dynasty. Chin (5) ^^ ~^ Eastern Cliin ' ^J A^ Sung, Liu House (6) ^ Ch'i(7) '^ Liang (8) 1^ Ch'en (<») vn sui (13) T'ang (16, 17) e m Posterior Liang W. iM „ T'ang W. ^ „ Cliin W M „ Han fe' JSl •, Cl.ou 'iL ylV Noithern Sung i iW ^frC Southern Sung ) 7C Vuan (23) ^ Ming (24) M Ch'iDg :'20) liKOAN. 265 323 421) 47!l 502 557 581 618 9(17 il23 936 947 951 !l(i(l 1127 1280 1368 1644 Kkmauks. Epoch of Division between Noith and South, Nan Pei Ch'ao (14, 15), the (10) Wei (Toba), 380-549, ruling the north ; fol- lowed by (11) tlie nortliem Ch'i 550-577; and (12) the Northern Chou, 557-581. Tliese short-lived line.s are known collectively as the Five Dynasties, or Wu Tai (18, 19). North China ruled by the Kitan Tartar.s, a.s Liao rr Jen Tsung ^ J^ Chia Ch'ing 1796 Hsiian Tsung ^ yl[; lao Kuang 18-21 ■^^ Wen Tsung j^ @ Hsien Ffng 1851 #^ Mu Tsung 1^ '/j^ T'ung Chih 1862 Reigning Sovereign ^ 1^ Kuang Hsfi 1875 CHAPTER II. Sculpture. There are no relics of carved stone in China to be compared in importance or antiquity with the ancient monuments of Egypt, Chaldsea, and Susa. The chief materials of Chinese buildings have always been wood and bricks, so that stone is generally used only for architectural accessories and for the decoration of interiors. The origin of sculpture in stone, like that of many other Chinese arts, is very obscure, in spite of all that has been WTitten on the sub- ject, in native as well as in foreign books. In Chinese books its indigenous origin and development are always taken for granted, and it seems natural to accept such views until the contrary be proved. Non-Chinese theories are of the most varied character and depend mainly on the ideas of the individual writer as to the source and subsequent history of the Chinese race. Dr. Legge, like many other missionaries, starts in his speculations from the Book of Genesis and — " supposes that the family, or collection of families — the tribe — of the sons of Noah, which has since grown into the most numerous of the nations, began to move eastwards, from the regions between the Black and Caspian Seas, not long ?fter the confusion of tongues," and finally reached the valley of the Yellow River, where they met with other early immigrant tribes of ruder manners, whose route is not sketched so minutely, and ultimately prevailed over their opposition. M. Terrien de Lacouperie brings his fanciful " Bak tribes " from nearly the same region — the southern slopes of the Caspian — under the leadership of a certain Nakhunte, who is pre- sumed to be the ancient Chinese ruler Huang Ti, provided with an Akkadian cuneiform script, and with many items of ancient lore, for SCULPJURE. 31 a complete list of which wo must refer to his book entitled Wcafcrn Origin of the Early Chinese Civilisation, 1894. A totally opposite view is upheld by Parrot and Chipiez in their well-known Histories of the Ancient Arts of Egypt, Chaldcea and Assyria, etc., where they say : — " During the period with which we are concerned, China might as well have been in the planet Saturn for all she liad to do with the ancient world, and we need refer to her no more, except now and then perhaps for purposes of illus- tration." The truth must lie somewhere between these extremes, but there is hardly space to discuss the subject here, or to make any attempt to reconcile such conflicting authorities. The peculiar Chinese script would seem to be, at any rate, of purely indigenous origin and growth. Native scholars trace out carefully and correctly its main stages of development ; how the original pictures {wen) of objects and conditions were first used singly or in multiple combination ; how they were subsequently employed phonetically for other monosyllables of similar sound ; till the device was finally hit upon of prefixing or affixing a radical, or determinative, to distinguish words of the same sound but of different meaning. This last is the principle on which the multitudinous characters (few) of the Chinese lexicon have been formed, composed as they are of a radical, which determines the sense, and a phonetic, which suggests the sound, and in the same lines all newly invented characters must be pencilled. Chinese scholars reverence the written script and hire men tocollect every scrap of manuscript or printed paper to be burned afterwards with due ceremony. Calligraphy is a branch of the fine arts in China, and the penman who can write elegantly in sweeping lines with a flowing brush is ranked above the artist. The highest reverence is paid to any ancient relics of stone and bronze with inscriptions, a long series of books under the heading of Corpus Inscriptionum having been printed during the last thousand years, the bibliography of which would fill many pages Two indispensable dictionaries of the ancient script for the 32 CHINESE ART. antiquary are the Shiio Wen, compiled by Hsii Shen in a.d. ioo, as an aid in the decipherment of the old books carved on tablets of bamboo, which had been buried to avoid the fires of Ch'in Shih Huang, and unearthed again under the Han dynasty when literature was no longer proscribed : and the Shuo Wen Ku Chou Pu by Wu Ta-cheng, a high official and celebrated scholar of the present reign, published in 1884 ; with a preface by Pan Tsu-yin, President of the Board of Punishments, another famous collector of antiquities ; being a collection of some 3,500 characters of the script of the Chou dynasty (B.c.1122-249), reproduced in exact fac-simile from actual specimens of stone, bronze, seals and pottery of the period. The most cherished relics of the Chou dynasty are ten stone drums, now installed in the two side halls of the principal gateway of the Confucian Temple at Peking, where they were placed in the year 1307 by Kuo Shou-ching, the famous minister and astronomer of the reigns of Kublai Khan and his successor. They are really mountain boulders roughly chiselled into the shape of drums, about three feet high, the form of which may be seen in Fig. 6, repro- duced from a photograph taken in Peking by Mr. J. Thomson, the learned photographer now attached to the Royal Geographical Society.* The picture shows how the drum on the right has been truncated and scooped out to make a mortar for pounding grain, involving the loss of nearly half of its inscription, an allusion to which occurs in the well-known verses by the celebrated poet Han Yii, written in 812, which have been engraved on a marble stele erected in the Confucian Temple by the Emperor Ch'ien- lung, accompanied by a laudatory ode of his own composition. The stone drums were discovered in the early part of the 7th century, lying half buried in the ground in the vicinity of Feng- *Itis fitting to express here our deepest acknowledgment to Mr. Thomson for his generous contribution of Figs. 6, 24, 27, ."!.*!, 37, 44, 64 and 65 to our list of illuatrutioiia. SCULPTURE. 33 hsiang Fii in the province of Shcnsi, on the r.oulh of the hills called Ch'i Shan, from which the district city Ch'i-shan Hsien takes its name. T'ai Wang, an ancestor of the Chou, moved to this locality in the year B.C. 1325, and it continued to be the capital of the Chou State till the time of Wen Wang, who is said to have made tlic hunting park on the south of Mount Ch'i, surrounded by a wall seventy K square, which is supposed to have been the " Great Park " of our inscription (Fig. 7). The drums were set up in the Confucian Temple of Feng-hsiang Fu about a.d. 820. When the Sung emperor fled from the Kitan Tartars to the province of Honan and founded a new capital there, a hall was specially built in the new grand palace, finished in 1119, for the exhibition of the drums, an edict having been issued that the inscriptions should be filled in with gold, to betoken their value, and, at the same time, to prevent their further injury by the hammer in takinc; rubbings.* But they rested here a few years only, for the Juchen Tartars sacked the city in 1126, dug out the gold inlay, and carried off the drums to their own central capital, the modern Peking. The inscriptions on the stone drums comprise a series of ten odes, a complete one being cut on each drum, composed in rhyming stanzas of irregular verse, in the style of the odes of the early Chcai period which are preserved in the Shih Ching, the canonical Bo-'k of Odes compiled by Confucius. They celebrate an imperial hunting and fishing expedition in the country where the drums were found, and relate how the roads had been levelled and the * The Chinese obtain fac-simile rubbings of inscriptions with sheets of tliin, tough, cohesive paper, moistened and applied evenly to the surface of the stone or bronze. The paper is first hammered in by a wooden mallet, a piece of felt being interposed to prevent injury to the object, and afterwards forced into every crevice and depression by a brush with long soft bristles. If torn during the process a little plug of wetted paper \vill join the rent or fill up the gap perfectly. As soon as the paper has become sufficiently dry, a stuffed pad of silk or cotton dipped ir .sized ink ground down to a semi-soliil consistency is passed lightly and evenly over the paper. It is finally peeled off, imprinted with a perfect and durable impression of the inscription, which comes out, of course, in white reverse on a black or rod ground according to the colour of the cake of ink ussd. 8fi.'?4. C 34 CHINESE ART. river courses cleared for a grand battue carried out by troops of warriors marshalled under the command of the feudal princes. The cyclical number of the day is given in one line, but there is nothing to indicate the year, and Chinese authorities unfortunately differas to the probable date. It must, at any rate, be before B.C. 770, when we have seen that the capital of the Chou was moved east- wards to Loyang, and their ancestral territory ceded to the rising State of Ch'in, which was destined eventually to supplant them. The older authorities generally referred the inscriptions, on literary grounds chiefly, to the reign of Hsiian Wang (B.C. 827-782), but several competent scholars of more recent date attribute them to Ch'eng Wang (b.c. 1115-1079), on grounds which seem to me to be well founded. Both the Bamboo Books and the Annals of Lu mention a grand hunting expedition to the south of Mount Ch'i in the spring of the sixth year of Ch'6ng Wang, on his return from a military expedition to the Huai river in the east, and the drums are reasonably supposed to have been inscribed on this occasion. The archaic character of the script and its analogies with inscriptions of the time on bronze vessels newly unearthed, tend to strengthen the argument, although it is not universally accepted. Waiving the question of their exact date, the stone drums may be accepted as certainly early relics of the Chou dynasty. A fac-simile of the first of the ten inscriptions taken from one of the old rubbings of the Sung dynasty, subsequently cut in stone in the College of Hang-chou, by the great viceroy and scholar Yuan Yuan ( 1764-1849), is given in Fig. 7. It runs somewhat as follows : — " (^ur chariots were solid and strong, Our teams of well-matclied steeds ; Our chariotswere shining and bright, Our horses all lustv and sleek, '' The nobles gathered round for the hunt. And hunted us they closed in the ring. The hinds und stags bounded on. With the nobles in close pursuit. Flu. (i — iStone Drums of the Chuu Uykastv. Confucian Temple, Peking. 5<* J " " Vie. 7. — Insceiption on Stone Deum. Confucian Temple, Peking. 6 in. X 4 in SCULPrURli. 35 " Drawing our polished bows of horn. And fitting arrows to the strings. We drove them over the hills ; The hoofs of the chase resounded. And they herded in close- packed mass, As the drivers checked their horses. " The hinds and stags pressed smftly on, Till they reached the great hunting park. Wc drove on through the forest, And as we found them one by one. We shot with our arrows the wild boar and elk." Passing on next to the mural decoration of buildings and tombs by sculptured figures, we find many references to such in early litera- ture. The life of Confucius describes a visit of the sage in b.c, 517 to the court of the Chou at Loyang, and how he saw on the walls of the Hall of Light, where the feudal princes were received in audience, portraits of Yao and Shun, figures of the last tyrants of the lines of Hsia and Shang, with words of praise or blame affixed to each, and a picture of Chou Kung in attendance as minister upon his infant nephew Ch'eng Wang (see Fig. 5.) : " Now," exclaimed Confucius, " I know the wisdom of the duke of Chou anil understand how his house attained to imperial sway ; we see antiquity as in a glass and can apply its lessons to the present day." Other writers from the 2nd century b.c. onwards speak of ancestral temples and tombs of princes and high officials, in the provinces of Ssuchuan, Hupei, and Shantung, containing intaglio carvings and sculptured bas-reliefs, representing all kinds of scenes, terrestrial and celestial, historical and mythological. The best known examples that have come down to us are derived from two localities in the province of Shantung, and are attributed to the ist century b.c. and to the 2nd century A.D. respectively. Rubbings are prepared from the stones in the way that has been described and circulated throughout China, for the'juse of scholars, in a collection numbering about eighty sheets, and they have been published, as a whole or in part, in several S634. c i 36 CHINESE ART. uitive archaeological works. I may be permitted to mention I hat I was probably the first to bring one of these collections to Europe, to present them to the Oriental Congress at Berlin, in 1881, after which two were photographed at the South Kensington Museum, at the instance of Sir Philip Owen, who unsuccessfully urged the publication of the whole series. Lieut. D. Mills, on a journey through the district in 1886, saw the stones housed in the building which had been dedicated about a century before by the native authorities for their pre- servation, and brought home another set of the rubbings, which he gave to the British Museum. Professor E. Chavannes also visited the site in 1891, and has published the whole with a learned commentary in a fine quarto volume, entitled La Sculpture sur pierre en Chine au temps des deux dynasties Han, which was issued in 1893 at Paris, under the auspices of the Ministhe de I' Instruction PuUique et des Beaux-Arts. The earlier series comprises eight slabs of stone found on the hill called Hsiao T'ang Shan, about sixty li north-west of the city Fei- ch'eng Hsien, in the province of Shantung. The figures are lightly incised when compared with the bolder bas-reliefs of the later series, but the birds and other details are often sketched with a singularly naturalistic touch. There is no contemporary record of the date, but the incised grafitti of early pilgrims to the tombs con- firm their general attribution by Chinese archaeologists to the close of the Former Han dynasty, i.e., the ist century B.C. The first of these grafitti, cut on the sixth stone, runs thus : — " On the 24th day of the 4tli month of the 4th year (a.d. 129) of the epoch Yung- chicn, Chao Shan Chun of T'o Yin, in the province of P'ing Yuan, carae to visit tliis hall ; he. prostrated himself in token of gratitude for its sacred illuminating influences." The slabs are too large for our jiage, and a cutting or two must S'lfhce to show the style of the varied scenes dci)ictcd, ranging as they do from Taoist deities and mythological animals to battles Fiu. 8. — Stone Cabving. Hsiao T'ang Shan. 1st Century B.C. 30 in. X 13 in. %:%>^ Fio. 9. — Stone Carving. Hsiao T'ang Shan. 1st Century B.C. 38 in. X 13 in. «f^-A> Fig. 10. — Stone Cakvino Hsiao T ano Shan. 1st Century B.C. 38 in. X 13 in. SCULPTURF. 37 with Tartar bowmeia, clad in fuis and wearing pointed Scythian caps of felt, hunting and cooking scenes, tribute-bearing processions, historical and legendary episodes, etc. Cuttings from one of the processions are reproduced in Figs. 8, g, lo. We see the '' Great King " — Ta Wang — in the middle of Fig. g, seated in a chariot drawn by a team of four horses harnessed abreast, the curved yoke mounted with a phcenix, under which the reins pass. A large two- horse chariot in front, with a canopy supported upon a central pole mounted with dragons' heads, carries two drummers, beating a leather drum, with hanging bells of metal attached, and a band of four musicians with pandean pipes, besides the charioteer ; remind- ing one of the chariot which always accompanied the general to battle in olden times, when, we are told, the drum was sounded for advance, the metal bells as a signal for retreat. Two more pair- horse chariots follow (Fig. lo), the front one with the pronged bronze heads of halbert-like spears {ko), a characteristic weapon of the time, sticking out behind ; similar weapons being carried by the foot -men, who herald the cortege (Fig. 8), in addition to short swords in their belts. The horsemen have saddles, pads of leather, and stirrups, and the horses' tails are tied up in knots, in the fashion that still prevails in China; occasional gaps are filled in here and elsewhere, with birds flying in the direction of the movement. The next two fections have been selected for illustration as the earliest known reprefenlations of the Chinese dragon, lung, and phoenix, fmg-huang. The horned dragon, in Fig. ii.with serpentine scaly body, four legs and rudimentary wings, is pursuing a rat, indistinct in the picture ; between ornamental bands of primitive design, one strewn with "cash," the other pencilled in lozenges. The phoenixes in Fig. 12, something between the peacock and the argus pheasant, are being fed by a monkey on the roof of a two- storeyed pavihon, the upper storey only being seen in the picture, occupied by Hsi Wang Mu with her courtier-'- ; the jihoenix alway? 38 CHINESE ART. figures as king of the feathered tribe, and among the other birds a wild goose can be identified on the left, a hawk pouncing upon a hare on the right. The cuts in Figs, 13, 14 represent the sun and moon, with their mythological attributes, posed within bands of constellations with the stars connected by lines in Chinese fashion ; these happen to be omitted in Professor Chavannes' illustrations, the Editor explaining in a note that they had not reached him in time. The moon is in- habited by the toad and the hare, which appear in Fig. 13 in realistic relief, stippled with punctured dots. According to old legends Ch'ang-0, the wife of the " Archer Lord " of the time of the ancient emperor Yao, stole from her husband the drug of immortality and fled with it to the moon, when she was transformed into a toad ; the mythological toad in later Chinese art has thi ee legs only, here it has four. The hare, according to a later Buddhist story, offered its body as a willing sacrifice, lying upon a pile of dry grass, and was re- warded for its devotion by transmigration to the moon ; in other parts of these bas-reliefs the hare is seen busy with pestle and mortar jiounding herbs ; Taoist herbalists must always gather in the mountains materials to compound their elixir vitcB by the light of the full moon. The red crow with three feet is the tenant of the solar disk, and is the origin of the triqiietra symbol of ancient bronzes. Huai Nan Tzii, who died B.C. 122, grandson of the founder of the Han dynasty and an ardent Taoist votary, says that the red crow has three feet because three is the emblem of the masculine principle of which the sun is the essence : the bird often flies down to Earth to feed on the plant of immortality, as indicated in the bas-relief. Among the constellations depicted here the SiJinning Damsel is recognised by the figure of a girl working at a loom, witli three stars over her head, which are a, rj, and 7, Lyra;. The constellation of seven stars on the left of the moon is the Great Bear, which occupies a prominent position in the Taoist heavens as the seat of their sti])reme deity, Shang Ti, round wliom all tlic other star-gods Fig. U. — Carving of Dragon. 1st Century B.C. 2| ft. X 1 ft. Fi(i. 12. — Carving of Phcknixes. etc. 1st Century B.C. 3 ft. X 10 in. xT^'- c a Eh . O " SCULPTURE. 39 circulate in •homage ; on another bas-relief it figures as the aerial throne of Shang Ti, who is answering the prayers of a band of pilgrims, appealing for aid against the apparition of a comet, which is borne before him by an attendant sprite. The second group of bas-reliefs comes from the ancient cemetery of the Wu family, situated about ten miles to the south of the city Chia-hsiang Hsien, which is also in the province of Shantung. This family claimed to be descended from Wu Ti, one of the most famous kings of the Shang dynasty, according to the inscription on the memorial stele of Wu Pan, who died in the year a.d. 145, which was discovered on the same site. Three separate tombs have been unearthed, and the sculjitured stones from the three sites are preserved in a building which was endowed for the purpose in the year 1787. In front of the building stand two square pillars of stone, which have not been disturbed, and one of these pillars has a panel with the inscription : — " In the 1st year (a.d. 147) of Chien Ho, the cyclical year tinghai, in the tliinl mouth which began with the day khig-hs'i, on the 4th day knci-ch'ou, tlic filial sons, Wu Shih-kimg and his younger brothers, Sui-tsung, Ching-hsing and K'ai- niing, erected these pillars, made by the sculptor Li Ti-mao, styled Mcng-fu, at a cost of 150,000 pieces of money. Sun-tsung made the lions which cost 40,000 ' cash,' etc." The lions are lost, but some other steles of about the same date have been discovered on the site, so that the bas-reliefs may be con- fidently attributed to the middle of the second century of our era. One of the smaller stones unearthed here is illustrated in the frontis- piece of this volume (Fig. i). It is carved in three panels with three different scenes. The upper panel displays the " strong man " of Chinese story, the charioteer who wrenched off the canopy of his chariot, which he holds up by the pole to shelter his lord, lying wounded on the ground ; while the enemy, bow in hand, accom- panied by two retainers holding tablets, hu, comes up to commend him for his loyalty. The middle panel contains one of the historical assassination attempts so vigorously related in the annals of the Han 40 CHINESE ART. dynasty by the " father of history," Ssu-ma Ch'ien. Ching K'o was sent by Tan, hereditary prince of the state of Yen, in B.C. 227, to assassinate the celebrated Ch'in Shih-huang, bringing with him as credentials the head of a rebel general in a box and a map of the territory pretended to be ceded with a poisoned dagger rolled up inside. He is given audience in the jjalace of Hsien Yang together with a colleague, and immediately attacks the future emperor, who is attended only by his physician. The first stroke severs his sleeve, he rushes behind a pillar, which shields him from the second stroke, and is saved by the physician who seizes the assassin and shouts for I he guard. In the picture the dagger is seen thrust through the pillar, on one side of which is the future emperor holding up a per- forated medallion symbol of jade, on the other the arrested assassin with dishevelled hair ; his fellow envoy is " prostrate from fright," and a guardsman is coming up armed with sword and shield. The lowest panel presents another representation (compare Fig. 2) of Fu Hsi ana Nii Wa, the mythical founders of the Chinese polity, holding mason's square and compasses ; the attendant sprites are v/inged and the scrolled clouds end in birds' heads ; the peculiar coroneted female headdress and the horned heads distinctive of supernatural beings may also be noticed. The larger bas-relief in Fig. 15, which measure? in the original three feet by two, pictures the discovery, in the 28th year (r>.c. 194) of the reign of Ch'in Sliih-huang, of one of the celebrated bronze tripods, the ancient palladia of the kingdom. " The nine sacred tripods," according to the Shui Ching, an old geographical work, " were lost in the Sstl Eirer during the reign of Hsien Wang in B.C. 233. It was reported that they had been seen there and the emperor sent an expedition to recover them who t^earched a long time in %'ain, and when at last they fished out one of the number, a dragon suddenly appeared and bit the rope in two, so tliat it fell back into the river and was never seen again." We see here the commissioners with their altendants assembled on the bank above, looking at the tripod as it is being pulled up out of the river with the help of men with poles in two boats, while a o ^ Sir- §^ KK I >- m Spq t. if- I SCULPTURE. 4^ dragon's head emerging from tlie tripod has bitten the ro]ic in two, making the haulers fall backwards in two lines along the parapet. There is a comjianion dragon in the background on the right, a prancing bear and lairds flying fill in the intervals, and fishermen aie seen catching fish with basket traps in the water below— natural accessories of the scene unconnected with the story. ' Another large stone from the s ime site is represented in Fig. i6, measuring about two feet by four, on which two scenes are depicted, having no connection with each other. The upper and larger part gives the reception of the ancient emperor Mu Wang by the Taoist divinity, Hsi Wang Mn, the " Royal Mother of the West." The lower part is devoted to an official procession, presenting a phase in the career of the deceased mandarin to whose sacrificial temjile it belonged. The reception is held in a two-storied pavilion, with two straight untilted tiled roofs, flanked by twin columns, which are also double-roofed ; the lower roof in each case is supported by plain round pillars, the upper roof by caryatides. A pair of gigantic phoenixes are disporting on the top of the roof, fed by a winged sprite ; the head of a dragon projects on the right, astonishing one of the visitors ; a bear and monkey of naturalistic outline appear on the left, and birds fill in every available gap ; while a winged sprite, with serpentine body coiled round one of the right hand pillars of the pavilion, supplies another mythological touch to the composition. Mu Wang, large in scale, as befits his dignity, is seated below under a canopy, attended by a servitor with fan and towel, while another comes up with a tray of food ; four courtiers stand behind holding their tablets of office. Hsi Wang Mu, wearing a coroneted hat, is installed with her court in the upper storey, attended by ladies carry- ing cup, mirror, and fan ; besides another on the left with her special attribute, the triple jewelled fruit of long life with which she endows her faithful votaries. In the courtyard stands a stately ho huan tree with forked trunk and interlacing branches, the sacred cosmic tree of Taoist lore, with a charioteer at its foot unharnessing Mu Wang's 4^ CHINESE ART. chariot, a couple of hunting dogs, like greyhounds, and an archer shooting towards the sacred tree, despite the dissuasions of its guardian. In the procession below the chariot on the right is labelled Chun Chil, " Chariot of the Sage," a laudatory term usually applied to the deceased in the epitaphs. It is preceded by two men on foot, with staves and fans, two horsemen with pronged lances, and two chariots labelled " Secretary of the Prefecture," and " Chief of Police of the Prefecture," respectively. The picture of the bas-relief in Fig. 17 is taken from a stone measuring four feet by three, unearthed on the same site from the tomb of one of the other scions of the Wu family. The sculptures of this tomb present a still more marked mythological air. The upper panel exhibits a mortal standing in a respectful attitude on the left, watching a nightmare procession of winged dragons and sprites revealed in the intervals of rolling clouds, heralding a winged deity seated in a chariot drawn by a team of three dragons. The lower and larger panel displays the aerial abode of the Taoist divinity Tung Wang Kung, the "Royal King of the East." The deity is seated on the clouds in a central position, a winged figure precisely like the one labelled with his name so often moulded on the backs of bronze mirrors of the period. His consort, Hsi Wang Mu, is enthroned on the right, recognised by her attribute, the three- beaded sceptre, which is held by a winged attendant. Their horses, even their chariots, are winged, and the scrolled cloud ends in birds' heads. Tung Fang So, a devotee of Taoism, writes in the 2nd cen- tury B.C. : — " Oil the summit of the Kuiduu mountains there is a gigantic bird named Hsi- yu which faces the south, it stretches out its left wing to support the venerable king of the east and its right wing to support the maternal queen of the west ; on its back is a spot without feathers 19,000 li across. Hsi Wang Mu, once a year, rides along the wing to make a \-isit to Tung Wang Kung." The clouds here unroll from the summit of a mountain, defended apparently against a mortal in official robes, who has just alighted from a three-horse chariot, attended by two lancers, whose saddled O iJ fa '^ Fig. 18. — Engraved Stone Stele. T'ang Dynasty. 7th Century. 5 ft. X 3 ft. SCUI.l'lVRE. 43 horses have been left behind. Who this may be it is impossible to decide, as the labels attached are defaced and illegible, if they were ever inscribed. The rubbing reproduced on Fig. i8 is taken from an engraved stele of the 7th century, 5 feet by 3 in size, to show the Chinese artist's treatment of horses at this period. The stele was erected by the celebrated T'ai Tsung, the real founder of the T'ang dynasty, to commemorate the services of six chargers, which he had ridden to battle on various occasions during the period 618-626, before he came to the throne. The inscription attached to each horse gives its name, its colour, the victory to which it contributed, and the number of arrows with which it was wounded, whether from the front or back, concluding with a laudatory verse of four lines. A man-at- arms is seen drawing an arrow from the breast of one of the horses, which is described as a chestnut bay, named " Autumn Dew," of the colour of the red wild goose, which the crown prince rode in the year 621 to the conquest of Tung Tu, the eastern capital in Honan. The animals, thick-set like the Mongolian strain of the present day, have braided manes and knotted tails, and they are bridled and saddled in a fashion which still holds good in China. Some of the painted pictures of the period display horses sketched in precisely similar lines. The treatment of the human figure in sculpture of a later period is indicated in Fig. 19, the photograph of one of the colossal men in armour which guard the entrance of the mausoleum of the emperor Yung Lo (1403-24), about twenty-five miles north of Peking. Another figure appears in tbe background, and two of the three gates leading to the tomb are seen in the distance. The avenue of approach is lined with monoliths of men and animals carved in blue limestone. The military mandarins, six in number, of whom this is one, have mailed coats reaching down below the knees, close-fitting caps hanging over the shoulders, a sword in Ihe left hand and a marshal's baton in the right. The civil 44 CHINESE ART. officials have robes with long hanging sleeves, tasselled sashes, bound with jade-mounted belts, embroidered breastplates, and square caps. The animals which follow, facing the avenue, com- prise two pairs of lions, two of unicorn monsters, two of camels, two of elephants, two of ki-lin, and two of horses ; one pair being represented standing, the other seated or kneeling. The remaining selections for this chapter are of Buddhist origin. The name of Buddha was first heard in China after the return of the Chinese envoy, Chang Ch'ien, from his adventurous journey to Central Asia in B.C. 126, and the religion was officially recognised in A.D. 67 in the way alluded to in the introduction (p. 23). The Tartar dynasties have always been its chief patrons in China, especi- ally the Northern Wei (a.d. 386-549), and the ^longolian Yuan (a.d. 1280-1367), to which our illustrations belong. The first (Fig. 20) is an early representation of Amitabha, the ideal Buddha of boundless age and light, whose paradise is in the Western Heavens. He stands on a lotus pedestal, with a three- fold nimbus round the head, under a jewelled canopy surmounted by a diadem and hung with strings of silken tassels. The following inscription is engraved underneath : — " Spiritual truth is deep and wide, of infinite excellence but difficult comprehen- sion. Without words it would be impossible to expound its doctrine, without images its form could not be revealed. Words explain the law of two and six, images delineate the relations of four and eight. Is it not profound and co-extensive with inhnite space, beyond all comparison lofty ? " Chang Fa-shou, the liberal founder of this temple Wu Sheug Ssu, was able under the manifold net of a five-fold covering, to cut the bonds of family affection and worldly cares. In the ijnd year (.4.D. ,517) of the Hsi P'ing epoch, he gave up his house and built the temple there, and in fulfilment of old vows had the images carved, so that his happiness will be endless. He joyfully accepted the salvation of the law and after searching out its intricate doctrine entered its sacred borders. It must verily have been the fruit of seed sown during previous existences and cherished for many generations, how else coidd he have accomplished such a grand votive deed? " His descendants Jung-ch'ien anti Hsnn-ho, benevolent in deed and filial piety, have carried on in their generation the good work, and |jroved their far-reaching love in completing the fulfilment of the great vow. They have carved in stone Fig. 19.— Colossal Stone Figure. Ming Tombs. 15th Century. .■35) of the T'ion P'ing (epoch), being the cyclical year iji-mao, on tho Uth day of tho 4th month, by tho Pi.ch'iii (Bhikshu) Hung Pao." An example of bas-relief carving of the same period from the front, measuring six by one and a half feet, of a stone pedestal of Maitreya Buddha (Mi-lo Fo), is shown in Fig. 21. Two Buddhist monks with shaven heads are worshipping, one reciting with folded hands up- lifted, the other putting incense, taken from the covered round casket which he holds in his left hand, into the tray of the elabor- ately mounted censer which stands on the ground between them. The rest of tlie spmce is occupied by two grotesque lion-like monsters with protruded tongues and flowing manes. The inscriptions attached give the names of the resident monks, the date of the dedication of the image, and of the completion of the temple of Chich Kung Ssu in which it was installed, both being dated the 3rd year (a.d. 527) of the Hsiao Ch'ang epoch of the Wei dynasty. Tlie rubbings illustrated in Fig. 22, two feet broad, are taken from the four sides of a square stone pedestal, which once supported an image of Maitreya, the Buddhist Messiah, recently discovered in the province of Chihli. The inscription records its dedication by the governor of Wei Hsien, the modern T'ai-ming Fu, in the si.xth year of the Cheng Kuang epoch of the Great Wei dynasty (a.d. 524). This personage is seen in the procession, on the second panel, accompanied by two boys, perhaps his sons, and followed by attendants holding up an umbrella, banner screens, and other symbols of office ; one is leading a horse laden with rolls of silk, another an ox harnessed to a cart. Two mythical lions guard an 46 CHINESE ART. incense urn, and the intervals are filled in with conventional birds and flowers, the lotus predominating, emphasizing the horror vitcni of the primitive artist. The general effect is that of a woven silk brocade rather than a stone bas-relief. The Mongolian Khans of the Yuan dynasty patronised Lamaism, the Tibetan form of Buddhism. Bashpa, a Tibetan lama, was made State Preceptor in a.d. 1260, and was recognised by the Khan as supreme head of the Buddhist Church. In 1269 he com- posed an alphabet, modelled on that of the Tibetan script, for the transliteration of all languages under the sway of Kublai Khan. An example of the Bashpa script is preserved in the well-known arch at Chii Yung Kuan (Fig. 23), a gateway through a branch of the Great Wall as it spans the Nankou Pass, forty miles north of Peking. The arch dated 1345, is buUt of massive blocks of marble, deeply carved with Buddhist figures and symbols, besides the inscriptions in six languages which have been recently published at Paris by Prince Roland Bonaparte in a magnificent album. The keystone of the arch displays the garuda bird in bold relief, between a pair of Naga kings, with seven-cobra hoods, whose serpentine bodies are lost in the rich coils of foliage which succeed. The four corners, inside, are guarded by the four mah&.ra,jas, sculptured in marble blocks after the fashion exhibited in Fig. 24, which repre- sents Dhritarashtra, the great guardian king of the east, identified by the mandolin on which he is playing. The six scripts of the Chii Yung Kuan archway are the same as those which were engraved in 1348, three years later, on a stone stele at Sha Chou, in the province of Kansu, on the verge of the Great Desert, a facsimile of which is given in Fig. 25. This is headed Mo Kao Wo, i.e.. The Grotto of Peerless Height. The central niche presents a figure of the four-handed Avalokita, seated upon a lotus pedestal, with two hands folded in the " attitude of meditation," the others grasping a rosary, and a lotus blossom. It is posed as a Bodhisattva, with a nimbus encircling the head, on t ' A. «J ' "^ ■// ^. 4m ,'?^ "j^fcA^J: xr"'- IQ fa . O Q ^^ w ft! a £> i4 C o g s s ^:i^iJ^-*^^ Fig. 22. — Carved Pedestal of Buddhist Image. Nortliern Wei Dynasty, a.d. 524. "Si ft. X 2 ft. SCULPTURE. 47 which rests a small fipure of Amitabha, the corresponding Dhy&in Huddha. The hexaglot inscrij)tion round the figure is the oft- repeated S])ell Om niatti padme hum, whic^Bfcs consecrated to Avalo- kita and consequently to his living incarnation the Grand Lama of Tibet. The two horizontal lines above are in Devanagari and Tibetan script. The vertical lines on the left are in Uigur Turk, derived from the Syriac and parent of the modern Mongol and Manchu ; and in the Rashpa Mongol scri])t rcfen'cd to above, which is derived from the Tibetan. The vertical lines on the right are in the rare Tangut script of the locality, Shachou (the Sachiu of Marco Polo) having been one of the cities of the Tangut kingdom which was destroyed by Genghis Khan in 1227 ; and Chinese. The rest of the Chinese inscription gives the names of the restorers of the shrine headed by those of Sulaiman, king of Sining, and his consort Kiuchou ; and the date, the 8th year of the epoch Chih Cheng (a.d. 1348) of the great Yuan (dynasty). As an example of modern sculpture in stone no better example could be selected than the marble stupa of Pai T'a Ssu, which was built in the northern suburbs of Peking by the Emperor Ch'ien Limg in memory of the Panchan Bogdo, the Grand Lama of Tashil- hunpo, who died there of smallpox on November 12th, 1780. His robes were buried under this stupa, although his cremated remains were carried back in a gold casket to Tibet. An interesting account of his visit to Peking is given in Bogle's Mission to Tibet. The stupa, as seen in Fig. 26, is modelled in Tibetan lines, adhering generally to the ancient Indian type, but differing in that the dome is inverted. The spire, or (oran, composed of thirteen step-like segments, symbolical of the thirteen Bodhisat heavens, is surmounted by a large cupola of gilded bronze. It is mounted on a series of angular plinths, posed upon a solid base of octagonal form. On the eight sides are sculptured in high relief scenes in the life of the deceased Lama, including the jireternatural circumstances attendant on his birth, his entrance into the priesthood, combats with heretics, 48 CHINESE ART. instruction of disciples, and death. The birth scene is presented in Fig. 27, which shows the Bodhisattva with haloes round the body and head, seated upon a lotus pedestal, borne by a white elephant supported by clouds, while more scrolls of clouds fill in the back- ground ; picturing the appearance of the celestial divinity for his final incarnation as a living Buddha, the mountain pavilion on the left being the family residence of the future saint. The sur- roundings indicate the extraordinary richness and delicate finish of the carved details in the ornamental bands, composed of phoenixes flyins; through sprays of flowers, grotesque sea monsters in the midst of rolling waves, bats appearing in the intervals of serried scrolls of clouds, and many other designs of diverse character. X E- Eh ^ c/-.,; o c I = o £ ■ ^- .it;— ^m Fig. 25. — Avalokita with Hexaolot Inscription. Yuan I)yn 50 CHINESE ART. to double, or even to triple it. Tliis preponderance of a part usually sacrificed in Western architecture is justified by the smaller vertical elevation of the plan, and the architect devotes every attention to the decoration of the roof by the addition of ante- fixal ornaments, and by covering it with glazed tiles of brilliant colour, so as to concentrate the eye upon it. The dragons and phcenixes posed on the crest of the roof, the grotesque animals perched in lines upon the eaves, and the yellow, green and blue tiles which cover it are never chosen at random, but after strict sumptuary laws, so that they may denote the rank of the owner of a house or indicate the imperial foundation of a temple. The gi'eat weight of the roof necessitates the multiple employ- ment of the column, which is assigned a function of the first impor- tance. The columns are made of wood ; the shaft is generally cylindrical, occasionally polyhedral, never channelled ; the capital is only a kind of consol, squared at the ends, or shaped into dragons' heads ; the pedestal is a square block of stone chiselled at the top into a circular base on which the shaft is posed. The pedestal, according to rule, ought not to be higher than the width of the column, and the shaft not more than ten times longer than its diameter. Large trunks of the Persea nanmu from the province of Ssuchuan are floated down the Yangtsze river to be brought to Peking to be used as columns for the palaces and large temples. The nanmu is the tallest and straightest of Chinese trees, the grain improves by age, and the wood gradually acquires a dead- leaf brown tint while it preserves its aromatic qualities, so that the superb columns of the sacrificial tomjilo of the Emperor Yung Lo, Fig. 28, which date from the early part of the fifteenth century, stm exhale a vague perfume. The pillars are brightened with vermilion and gold, but it is the roof which still attracts most attention, in tlie interior as well as outside, the beams being often gorgeously inlaid witli colours and the intervening ceiling < 60 a: .5 11 c c MRrjJTTnrTVRE. 51 geometrically divided into sunken jianels worketl in relief and lacquered with draf,'ons or some other appropriate desif^ns. The stability of the structure depends u])on the wooden fiame- work ; the walls, which are filled in afterwards with blocks of stone or brickwork, are not intended to figure as supports ; the space in fact, is often occupied entirely by doors and windows carved with elegant tracery of the most flimsy character. A Chinese fabric so far, is curiously analogous to a modern American building of the newest type, with its skeleton framework of steel filled in with dummy walls. The Chinese seem to have a feeling of the innate poverty of their architectural designs and strive to break the ]ilain lines with a yvci- fusion of decorative details. The ridge poles and corners of the sagging roofs are covered with iinial dragons and long rows of fantastic animals, arranged after a symbolism known only to the initiated, the eaves are underlaid with elaborately carved wood- work brilliantly lacquered, the walls are outlined with bands of terra cotta reliefs moulded with figures and floral sprays ; but in spite of everything, the monotony of the original type is always apparent. Chinese buildings are usually one-storied and are developed horizontally as they are increased in size or number. The principle which determines the plan of projection is that of symmetry. The main buildings and the wings, the side buildings, the avenues, the courtyards, the pavilions, the motives of decoration, all the details in fact, are planned symmetrically. The architect only dejiarts from this formal rule in the case of summer residences and gardens, which are, on the contrary, designed and carried out in the most capricious fashion. Here we have pagodas and kiosques elevated at random, detached edifices of the most studied irregularity, rustic cottages and one-winged pavilions ; dotted down in the midst of surroundings of the most complicated and artificial nature, comjioscd of rockeries, lakes, waterfalls, and running streams spanned by fantastic bridges, with an unexpected surprise at every turn. 8634 i> 2 52 CHINESE ART. Ruins in China are rare, and we must turn to books to get some idea of ancient architecture. The first large buildings described in the oldest canonical books are the lofty towers called t'ai, which were usually square and built of stone, rising to the height sometimes of 300 feet, so that tiiey are stigmatised as ruinous follies of the ancient kings. There were three kinds of t'ai, one intended as a storehouse of treasures, a second built within a walled hunting park for watch- ing military exercises and the pleasures of the chase, and a third, the knan hsiang t'ai, fitted up as an astronomical observatory. The Hsia dynasty, of the second millenium B.C., was renowned for its buildings and irrigation works ; their predecessor Shun as a patron of the potter's art ; while among their successors, the Shang dynasty was celebrated for its sacrificial vessels and wine cups, the Chou dynasty for the finish of its hunting and war chariots. Among the later representatives of the t'ai arc the towers of the Great Wall, which are built of stone with arched doors and windows — the Chinese would seem always to have employed the arch in stone architecture ; the storied buildings dominating the gateways and angles of the city walls, often used to store arms ; and the observatory of Peking, which is also a square tower mounted upon the city wall. When the tower is planned of oblong section, broader than it is deep, it is technically called a lou. Chinese buildings might be classified as civil, religious, and funereal, but it is more convenient to group all together in the few illustrations allowed in our limited space. The Hall of the Classics, called Pi Yung Kung, Fig. 29, was built after an ancient model by the emperor Ch'ien Lung in Peking, adjoining the national university called Kuo Tzn Chien, where the Temple of Confucius and the stone drums, as described above, are installed. The emperor goes there in state on certain occasions to expound the classics, seated upon the large throne within the hall, which is backed by a screen fashioned in the form of the five sacred mountains. It is a lofty square building with a four sided roof covered with tiles enamelled imperial yellow. '^1 «> w e Ui « K c ',-< c- 1 ?^ ARCHITECrURh:. 53 and surmounted by a large gilded ball, encircled by a pillared verandah under a second projecting roof ot yellow tiles. The four sides consist, each one, of seven pairs of folding doors with tracery panels. It is surrounded by a circular moat with marble balustrades crossed by four bridges leading to the central doors. ,On the sides of the courtyard u\ which it stands are two long cloistered buildings sheltering about 200 upright stone steles covered with inscriptions over the front or back. The inscriptions comprise the complete text of the " nine classics," and were engraved by the emperor Ch'ien Lung, in emulation of the Han and T'ang dynasties, both of which had the canonical books cut in stone at Si An Fu, the capital of Ciiina in their times. The text is divided on the face of the stone into pages of convenient size, so that rubbings may be taken on paper and bound up in the form of books. It was the custom as early as the Han dynasty to take such impressions, a practice which may possibly have first suggested the idea of block printing. A sun-dial of antique form is seen mounted on a stone pedestal in the foreground of the picture. On the other side of the hall, the south, stands a magnificient " porcelain " pailou, resembling the one illustrated in Fig. 30, which spans the avenue leading to Wo Fo Ssu, the " temple of the sleeping Buddha " in the Western Hills near Peking. The pedestals and three arches are built of sculptured marble, separated by walls of vermilion stucco from the panelled facing of faience covering the rest of the structure, which is enamelled in three colours, yellow, green, and blue, and forms an elaborate framework for the inscribed tablet of white marble enshrined in th centre. This tablet, the motive of the erection, displays a short dedicatory formula, composed and presented by the emperor, which is chiselled and tilled in with red in the actual lines of his original brushwork. These archways, which are a characteristic feature of Chinese architecture, are only erected by special authority. They are generally made of wood with tiled roof and are usually intended as memorials of distinguished men and women. Some, however, are 54 CHINESE ART. built entirely of stone like the immense gateway with five portals at the avenue of the Ming tombs. The stone ioran of Indian siupas is doubtless the original form from which the Chinese pailoit, as well as tlie Japanese loyi is derived. One of the grandest and most interesting sights of Peking is the Temple of Heaven, which is within the southern or Chinese city, surrounded by stately cypress trees in the midst of a walled park over three miles round. The oxen used in sacrifice are kept in the park, and there are separate inclosures provided for the other sacrificial animals, which include shee^), deer, pigs, and hares. The consecrated meats are prepared in accordance with an ancient ritual in kitchens built for the purpose, to which are attached special slaughter houses, well houses, and stores for vegetables, fruit, corn, and wine. The Chinese have no idea of vicarious sacrifice, the offerings to their supreme deity are like the precious objects, raiment, and foods, which are set forth in ancestral worship. Heaven is not worshipped alone ; the ancestral tablets of four of the imperial forefathers are always associated with the tablet of Sliang Ti, the " supreme deity," followed by those of the sun, moon, planets and starry constellations, while the spirits of the atmosphere, winds, clouds, rain and thunder are ranged in subordinate rank below. Heaven is distinguished by the offering of blue jade pi, a foot in diameter, round and with a square hole in the middle, like the ancient mace-head symbols of sovereignty, and by the bullock being sacrificed as a whole burnt offering. The j ade and sil k are also burnt ; twelve rolls of plain white silk and hempen cloth being sacrificed for heaven, one for each of the other spirits ; while the banquet pDed on the altar in dishes of blue porcelain is proportionately lavish. The great altar of heaven, T'ien T'an, the most sacred of all Chinese religious structures, is seen in Fig. 31. It consists of three circular terraces with marble balustrades and triple staircases at the four cardinal points to ascend to the upper terrace, which is ninety feet wide, the base being 210 feet across. The platform is laid with fa o o <^ « :£ c .^ < K £< S to H O w g X S Pi 1 ARCHITECTURE. 55 marble stones in nine concentric circles and everything is arranged in multiples of the number nine. The emperor, prostrate before heaven on the altar, surrounded first by the circles of the terraces and their railings, and then by the horizon, seems to be in the centre of the universe, as he acknowledges himself inferior to heaven, and to heaven alone. Round him on the pavement are figured the nine circles of as many heavens, widening in successive multiples till the square of nine, the favourite number of numerical philosophy, is reached in the outer circle of eighty-one stones. The great annual sacrifice on the altar is at dawn on the winter solstice, the emperor having proceeded in state in a carriage drawn by an elephant the day before, and spent the night in the hall of fasting called Chai Kung, after first inspecting the offerings. The sacred tablets are kept in the building with a round roof of blue enamelled tiles behind the altar which is seen on the right of the picture. The furnace for the whole burnt offering stands on the south-cast of the altar, at the distance of an arrow flight ; it is faced with green tiles, and is nine feet high, ascended by three flights of green steps, the bullock being placed inside upon an iron grating, under which the fire is kindled. The rolls of silk are burned in eight open-work iron urns, stretching from the furnace round to the eastward ; an urn is added when an emperor dies. The prayers written upon silk are also burned in these urns after they have been formally presented in worshiji before the tablets. To the north of the great altar, which is open to the sky, there is a second three-tiered marble altar conceived in similar lines, but somewhat smaller, called the Ch'i Ku T'an, or altar of prayer for grain. This is dominated by the imposing triple roofed temple presented in Fig. 32, which is covered with tiles of deep cobalt blue shining in the sunlight so as to make it the most conspicuous object in the city. The name of this edifice, as set forth on the framed plaque fixed under the eaves of the upper roof, in Manchu and Chinese script, is Ch'i Nien Tien, "temple of prayer forthe year." 56 CHINESE ART. The Emperor goes there early each year in spring to make offerings for a propitious year. It is gg feet high, the upper roof supported by four stately pillars, the lower loofs by two circles of twelve pillars, all straight trunks of nan-mu trees recently brought up from the south-west, when the temple had to be rebuOt after its destruction by fire. Originally founded by the Emperor Ch'ien Lung, it was rebuilt during the present reign in every detail after the old plan. During the ceremonies inside everything is blue : the sacrificial utensils are of blue porcelain, the worshippers are robed in blue brocades, even the atmosphere is blue, Venetians made of thin rods of blue glass, strung together by cords, being hung down over the tracery of the doors and windows. Colour symbolism is an important feature of Chinese rites ; at the temple of earth all is yellow ; at the temple of the sun, red ; at the temple of themoon, white, or rather the pale grayish blue which is known as yueh pai, or moonlight white, pure white being reserved for mourn- ing. The altar of the earth, Ti T'an, is on the north of the city, outside the city wall, and is square in form ; the offerings are buried in the ground instead of being burned. The temples of the sun and moon are on the east and west and are also outside the city wall of Peking ; the princes of the blood are usually deputed by the emporer to officiate at these. A good illustration of the fing, which is so characteristic of Chinese architecture, has been given in Fig. 28, from a photograph of the large sacrificial hall of the Emperor Yung Lo. The tombs of the Ming dynasty, called colloquially Shih-san Ling, " Tombs of the Thirteen (Emperors)," are, as the name indicates, the last resting places of thirteen of the Ming emperors. The first was buried at Nanking, his capital ; the last near a Buddhist temple on a hill west of Peking, by command of the Manchu rulers when they obtained the empire. The Emperor Yung Lo (1403-1424), who made Peking his capital, chose this beautiful valley for the mausoleum of his house. It is six miles long, thirty miles distant from Peking to I FiQ. 32.— Ch'i Nien Tien. Temple of Heaven. Southern City, Poking. ARCHITECTURE. 57 the nortli, and tlie im])crial tombs arc in separate walled inclosures, dottmg the slopes of the wooded hills which skirt the valley. The avenue with its rows of colossal stone figures has been noticed in the last chapter. At the end of the avenue one comes to a triple gateway leading to a court with a smaller hall, and passes through to reach thcmaincourtyard with the large sacrificing Iiall, where, by order of the Manchu emperors, offerings are still presented to the long-deceased ruler of a fallen dynasty by one of his lineal descend- ants selected for the purpose. The hall is mounted upon a terrace, with three balustrades of carved marble extending all round, ascended by three flights of eighteen steps in front and behind, leading to three portals with folding doors of tracery. It is seventy yards long by thirty deep, with a massive tiled roof supported by eight rows of four pillars each. The columns, of Persea nummi wood, are twelve feet round at the base and over sixty feet high to the true roof, under which there is a lower ceiling, about thirty- five feet from the floor, made of wood in sunken square panels painted in bright colours. The ancestral tablet is kept in a yellow roofed shrine mounted upon a dais, with a large carved screen in the background, and in front stands a sacrificial table with an incense urn, a pair of pricket candlesticks and a pair of flower vases ranged in line upon it. Leaving this magnificent hall and piassing through another court, planted like those preceding with pines, arbor vitte trees and oaks, one comes to the actual tomb. A subterranean passage forty yards long leads to the tumulus, the door of which is closed by masonry, but flights of steps, east and west, lead to the top of the grave terrace. Here, in front of the mound, and immediately above the coffin passage, is the tombstone, an immense upright slab, mounted upon a tortoise, inscribed with the posthumous title, " Tomb of the Emperor Ch'eng Tsu Wen." The tumulus is more than half a mile in circuit, and, though artificial, looks like a natural hill, being planted with trees to the toj^i, among 58 CHINESE ART which the large-leafed oak (Quercus Bungenn;i), on which wild silkworms are fed, is conspicuous. The usual paraphernalia of the shrine of an ancestral temple are seen in Fig. y^, which is a view of the interior of the Confucian Temple in the Kuo Tzii Chien, the old national university of Peking. The ancestral tablet is seen dimly in the centre of the picture enshrined in an alcove between two pillars. The tablet, two feet five inches high and six inches broad, mounted upon a pedestal two feet high, is inscribed in gold letters upon a lacquered vermilion ground, in Manchu and Chinese, " The tablet of the spirit of the most holy ancestral teacher Confucius." The pillars are hung with laudatory couplets, and the beams with dedicatory inscrip- tions, one of which is pencilled by each succeeding Emperor in token of his veneration for the sage. The line of four large char- acters above, for example. Wan shih shih piao, " The Model Teacher of a Myriad Ages," was composed and written by the Emperor K'ang Hsi in the twenty-fourth year of his reign (a.d. 1685), and is authenticated by his seal attached to the inscription. The wu kimg, " sacrificial set of five," comprising incense urn, pricket candlesticks and flower vases, made of bronze, is here posed on separate stands of white marble. In front of all is the table ready foi the sacrificial offerings, which are regularly presented at spring and autumn. The rest of the large hall is lined with tablets of Tseng Tzu, Mencius, and the other distinguished sages and disciples of Confucius, whose spirits are olficially worshipped in turn on the same ceremonial occasions. The ornamental lines of an open garden pavilion, which also comes under the general heading of i'ing, are fairly exhibited in I'^'g- 34. in spite of the half-ruinous condition of the picturesque structure, as it appeared when it was photographed after the destruction of the Summer Palace during the Anglo-French expedition of i860. It stands on the border of the lake at Wan Shou Shan having recently been repaired for the Empress Dowager, who has tea served .'a '^ 1 w^^H^i^l£ ^fl^^j ^ = =• i . ? t-^ i A'^^;^^fi. f 1 *^ Flo. 33. — Shrink and Altar of Con foci ds. ConfiiciaQ Temple, Peking. Fig. 34. — Garden Pavilion at Wan Shou Shan Imperial Summer Palace, near Peking. ARCHITECTURE. 59