-ORNIA COLLEGE 
 IN CHINA 
 
 B M lED TflT 
 
 Field Museum of Natural History. 
 
 Publication 162. 
 
 Anthropological Series. Vol. XII, No. i 
 
 CHINESE POTTERY 
 
 IN THE PHILIPPINES 
 
 BY 
 
 Fay-Cooper Cole 
 
 WITH postscript BY 
 
 Berthold Laufer 
 
 The Robert F. Cummings Philippine Expedition 
 
 George A. Dorsey 
 Curator, Department of Anthropology 
 
 Chicago, U. S. A. 
 July, 1912. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 •■ 
 
 
 
CALIFORNIA COLLEGE 
 IN CHINA 
 
 Field Museum of Natural History. 
 Publication 162. 
 Anthropological Series. Vol. XII, No. 
 
 CHINESE POTTERY 
 
 IN THE PHILIPPINES 
 
 BY 
 
 Fay-Cooper Cole 
 
 WITH POSTSCRIPT BY 
 
 Berthold Laufer 
 
 The Robert F. Cummings Philippine Expedition 
 
 George A. Dorsey 
 Curator, Department of Anthropology 
 
 BERKELEY 
 
 GENERAL 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 Chicago, U. S. A. 
 July, 1912. 
 
^^ A ^^ ^. ftnv.vj 
 
u^■l 
 
 In the spring of 1906 Mr. Robert F. Cummings of this city expressed 
 his intention of providing the Field Museum of Natural History with 
 funds to defray the expenses of an extended series of Ethnological 
 investigations in the Philippine Islands. 
 
 Working imder this Hberal endowment the following expeditions 
 have been in the field : 
 
 In 1906 Mr. S. C. Simms visited the Igorot of Benguet, Lepanto 
 and Bontoc, and the Ifugao of Nueva Viscaya. During 1907-8 Mr. 
 F. C. Cole worked among the Tinguian, Apayao and Kalinga tribes of 
 Northern Luzon, and the Batak of Palawan. 
 
 The late Dr. WiUiam Jones reached the PhiHppines in the fall of 
 1907 and proceeded to the Ilongot of the Upper Cagayan river, Luzon. 
 After residing a year in that district he was murdered by members of 
 a hostile village. Following Dr. Jones' death Mr. Simms returned to 
 the Philippines, secured the material gathered by Dr. Jones and com- 
 pleted the Igorot and Ifugao collections, visiting for this purpose the 
 Mayayao and Amburayan Igorot, in addition to certain points touched 
 on the first expedition. 
 
 In the fall of 1909 Mr. Cole returned to the Islands and devoted 
 nearly two years to the study of the pigmy blacks of Bataan province, 
 the Bukidnon of North Central Mindanao, and the several tribes 
 residing about the Gulf of Davao in Southern Mindanao. 
 
 While the primary object of these expeditions was to gather museum 
 collections, much time was given to the study of the mental and material 
 culture, as well as of the language, folklore and anthropometry of 
 the tribes visited. The results of these studies will appear from time to 
 time in the Anthropological Series of this Museum. The present paper 
 forms the first issue of Mr. Cole's researches. 
 
 George A. Dorsey. 
 
 f^/%f^^nfXci 
 
CHINESE POTTERY IN THE PHILIPPINES 
 
 When the Spaniards first set foot in the PhiHppines, they found 
 evidences of trade with an advanced nation. When near Leyte, 
 Magellan stopped for a time at a small island whose chief ''embraced 
 the captain-general to whom he gave three porcelain jars covered with 
 leaves and full of rice wine." ^ Later when Pigafetta and his com- 
 panions went ashore, they were treated to wine taken from a large jar, 
 and when the meal was served, ''two large porcelain dishes were brought 
 in, one full of rice, and the other of pork with its gravy." 2 When 
 they reached Cebu (April 7, 1521), they were informed by the king 
 that they were welcome "but that it was their custom for all ships which 
 entered their ports to pay tribute, and that it was but four days since 
 a junk from Ciama {i. e. Siam) laden with gold and slaves had paid 
 tribute." The tribute was refused but friendly relations were estab- 
 lished, whereupon the king "had refreshments of many dishes, all 
 made of meat and contained in porcelain platters, besides many jars 
 of wine brought in." ^ 
 
 When Pigafetta visited the king of Zubu (Cebu), he found him 
 "seated on a palm mat on the ground, with only a cotton cloth before 
 his privies. . . From another mat on the ground he was eating 
 turtle eggs which were in two porcelain dishes, and he had four jars 
 of palm wine in front of him covered with sweet smelling herbs and 
 arranged with four small reeds in each jar by which means he drank. "^ 
 
 Later they were conducted to the house of the prince "where four 
 young girls were playing, one on a drum like ours, but resting on the 
 ground; the second was striking two suspended gongs alternately with 
 a stick wrapped somewhat thickly at the end with palm cloth; the 
 third, one large gong in the same manner; and the last, two small 
 gongs held in her hand, by striking one against the other, which gave 
 forth a sweet sound. . . These gongs are made of brass and are 
 manufactured in the regions about the Signio Magno which is called 
 China." ^ After the death of Magellan, the fleet sailed to the south 
 
 1 Blair and Robertson, The Philippine Islands, Vol. XXXIII, p. 15. 
 
 2 Ihid., p. 119. 
 
 3 Ihid., p. 139. 
 
 ^ Ibid., p. 149. This is still the method of drinking in Mindanao (compare 
 PL I). 
 
 5 Blair and Robertson, (Pigafetta) Vol. XXXIII, pp. 149-15 1. 
 
4 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 until they reached Mindanao. There they made peace with the king, 
 and Pigafetta went ashore with the ruler, in order to see the island. He 
 describes the country, people, their customs and foods, and did not fail 
 to note that "in the house were hanging a number of porcelain jars 
 and four metal gongs." ^ Here they also learned more of the large 
 island of ''Lozon" (Luzon) lying to the northwest, ''where six or eight 
 junks belonging to the Lequian (Liukiu) people go yearly." ^ Pro- 
 ceeding further to the south, they encountered the island of Borneo 
 where they found many evidences of an advanced civilization and an 
 active trade with neighboring countries. Here they saw beautiful 
 porcelain jars, cups and dishes, silks and carpets. ^ 
 
 The chronicles of succeeding expeditions left many references to 
 Chinese articles and trade.^ In the account of Loaisa's Expedition, 
 we are told of the Island of Bendenao (Mindanao) where two junks 
 from China come each year for purposes of trade. '' North of Bendanao 
 is Cebu, and according to the natives it also contains gold, for which 
 the Chinese come to trade each year." ^ Again in 1543, Alvarado says 
 of Mindanao: ''Upon capturing this island we found a quantity of 
 porcelain and some bells. They are well supplied with perfumes 
 from the Chinese who come to Mindanao and the Philippinas."^ 
 
 The first (recorded) encounter of the Spaniards with the Chinese 
 seems to have been during a trip from Panay (May 8th, 1570) to Luzon 
 and Manila. When off the Island of Mindoro they learned that "two 
 vessels from China, the inhabitants of which the natives call Sangleys 
 {i. e. merchants), were in a river near by." Salcedo was dispatched to 
 reconnoiter the ships, and to request friendship with them, but the 
 Chinese made a warHke display, whereupon they were attacked by the 
 vSpaniards who after a short fight took possession of the junks. "The 
 soldiers searched the cabins in which the Chinese kept their most 
 valuable goods, and there they found silk, both woven and in skeins, 
 gold thread, musk, gilded porcelain bowls, pieces of cotton cloth, gilded 
 water jugs, and other curious articles, although not in a large quantity 
 considering the size of the ships. The decks of the vessels were full of 
 earthen jars and crockery, large porcelain vases, plates and bowls, and 
 some fine porcelain jars which they call sinoratas:' ^ They also found 
 iron, copper, steel and a small quantity of wax which the Chinese had 
 
 ^ Ibid., p. 205. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 207. 
 
 ' Ibid., p. 215. 
 
 * Blair and Robertson, Vol. Ill, p. 42; Vol. II, p. 72; Vol. Ill, p. 57. 
 
 ^ Blair and Robertson, Vol. II, pp. 35, 69. 
 
 « Blair and Robertson, Vol. Ill, p. 74. 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 5 
 
 purchased. From their captives they learned that three more Chinese 
 boats were trading only three leagues away. Later, on crossing to 
 Luzon, at a point near the town of Balayan, they found that two Chinese 
 ships had just been trading there, and that in a quarrel two Chinamen 
 had been made captives and others had been killed. Proceeding to 
 Manila bay, the Spaniards found four Chinese vessels, with earthenware 
 jars and porcelains, trading. In the city they learned that forty Chinese 
 and twenty Japanese were regular residents there. Friendly relations 
 appeared to have been established when the Moro raja treacherously 
 attacked the Spaniards. In return the Spaniards burned a part of the 
 city, in the ruins of which they found many objects of porcelain. 
 
 After the Spaniards had become established in Manila, the trade 
 with China steadily increased, ^ not only in that city but in other ports 
 of the Islands. At first the articles dealt in were of little value to the 
 Spaniards, for "they brought some trifle, although but a small quantity, 
 as the natives with whom they come principally to trade commonly 
 use, and for them are brought only large earthen jars, common crockery, 
 iron, copper, tin and other things of that kind. For the chiefs, they 
 brought a few pieces of silk and fine porcelain." ^ Of such little use 
 were these articles to the newcomers that it was proposed, in 1574, to 
 stop the trade. ^ However, the Chinese were quick to accommodate 
 themselves to the new conditions, and we soon find them supplying 
 many articles, such as "sugar, barley, wheat, and barley flour, nuts, 
 raisins, pears, and oranges; silks, choice porcelains and iron; and other 
 small things which we lacked in this land before their arrival." ^ Each 
 year this trade increased until the number of the traders was in the 
 thousands, and the Spaniards became dependent upon them for their 
 sustenance. Even the natives relied on this trade to such an extent 
 that the old industries languished and the colony became each day less 
 able to support itself. However, in addition to the foodstuffs which the 
 colony needed they brought silks and other articles which entered into 
 direct competition with the products of the mother country, and this 
 resulted in the royal decree of 1586, which prohibited all such trade. ^ 
 This edict failed of its purpose, and in hopes of devising a plan whereby 
 the competition would be eliminated, the outflow of gold to China be 
 stopped, and the return of the natives to their old pursuits be accom- 
 plished, a meeting was called, and leading Filipino were summoned 
 
 1 Ibid., pp. 167, 172, 181, 225. 
 
 2 Blair and Robertson, Vol. II, p. 238; Vol. Ill, pp. 243-5. 
 ^ Ibid., Vol. Ill, p. 226, note. 
 
 * Letters of Lavezaris, Ibid., Vol. Ill, p. 276. 
 
 ^ Blair and Robertson, Vol. VI, pp. 28, 29, 90, 150, 283, 286. 
 
6 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 to give evidence under oath concerning the extent and nature of Chinese 
 trade. It was believed that if trade in Chinese cloth and the like could 
 be stopped, the natives and Chinese would continue to trade without 
 using money; ''for if they should wish to barter in the Islands — which 
 is not forbidden them — they can and will obtain goods as they formerly 
 did, in exchange for such articles as siguey (a small white snail), dye 
 wood, and carabao horns; to this mode of trading the Chinese will 
 adapt themselves and the outflow of money will cease." ^ The nine 
 Filipino chiefs, from villages near Manila, agreed that before the 
 Spaniards came to the Islands the people raised cotton, which they 
 made into cloth for their own garments and did not depend on the 
 Chinese, ''for although one or two ships came from China each year 
 at that time, these brought no cloths or silks, but only iron and earthen- 
 ware and camanguian, ^ while since the arrival of the Spaniards, often 
 twenty or thirty ships come each year." ^ 
 
 The inquiry was without result, and the Chinese increased in 
 numbers and power until 1596, when about twelve thousand were 
 expelled from the Islands.^ Despite hostile laws and massacres, they 
 continued to increase and spread out over the Islands throughout the 
 time of Spanish rule, and to-day they dominate the trade with the 
 natives of the Archipelago. The commerce with the Spaniards, whom 
 the civiHzed natives imitated, was so much more lucrative than that 
 previously carried on with the various villages that the old trade in 
 pottery and the Hke seems practically to have ceased. Despite the 
 constant references of the early writers to the Chinese and their trade 
 the importation of earthenware and common glazed pottery seems not 
 to have been mentioned after about the year 1600. 
 
 While the greater part of the Chinese wares doubtless entered the 
 Islands through direct trade, a considerable amount came in through 
 trade with "Borneo, Maluco, Malacca, Sian, Camboja, Japan and 
 other districts." * "A few years before the Spaniards subdued the 
 Island of Luzon, certain natives of Borneo began to go thither to trade, 
 especially to the settlements of Manila and Tondo; and the inhabitants 
 of one island intermarried with those of the other." ^ "The cargoes of 
 these traders consisted of fine and well made palm mats, a few slaves 
 for the natives, sago, and tibors: large and small jars, glazed black and 
 very fine, which are of great service and use." ^ Legaspi tells of captur- 
 
 ^ Blair and Robertson, Vol. VIII, pp. 82-84. 
 ^ Incense. 
 
 Blair and Robertson, (Morga). Vol. IX, p. 266. 
 Blair and Robertson, Vol. Ill, p. 29 
 :ari, Wandering in the Great Forests o 
 5 Morga, Ihid., Vol. XVI, pp. 134, 185. 
 
 4 Blair and Robertson, Vol. Ill, p. 298; Vol. V, pp. 7^, los; Vol XVI o 176' 
 Beccari, Wandering in the Great Forests of Borneo. voi. ^Vi, p. 17&, 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 7 
 
 ing, near Butuan, a junk whose crew were Borneo Moors. They had 
 with them silk, cotton, porcelain and the like. They also traded in 
 bells, copper and other Chinese goods. ^ 
 
 Inter-island trade among the Filipino seems to have reached con- 
 siderable proportions prior to the arrival of the white man. Some of 
 their trips carried them to the ports of Borneo, and one account credits 
 the Tagalog and Pampango with sailing "for purposes of trade to 
 Maluco, Malaca, Hanzian (Achen?), Parani, Brunei, and other king- 
 doms." 2 Pigafetta tells of their party seizing a junk in the port of 
 Borneo in which "was a son of the king of Luzon, a very large island." ^ 
 In 1565, Legaspi learned that two Moro junks from Luzon were in 
 Butuan trading gold, wax, and slaves. 
 
 These Moro from Luzon also came to Cebu to arrange with Legaspi 
 for the right to trade, and when they met with success, two junks from 
 Mindoro were induced to go there also. "They carried iron, tin, porce- 
 lain, shawls, light woolen cloth and the like from China." ^ 
 
 It will thus be seen that pottery and other articles of Chinese origin 
 might have had a rapid spread along the coasts of the Archipelago, 
 from whence they slowly penetrated into the interior by means of 
 trade.^ It seems, however, that even upon the arrival of the Spaniards, 
 some of this ware had assumed great value in the eyes of the natives, 
 and in 1574 we find the native chiefs sending "jewels, gold, silks, porce- 
 lains, rich and large earthen jars, and other very excellent things" in 
 token of their allegiance to the King of Spain.^ It was also the custom 
 at that time for the family of the deceased to bury with the body "their 
 finest clothes, porcelain ware, and gold jewels," ^ and when this became 
 known to the Spaniards they began to rifle the graves in order to secure 
 these valuable objects. This continued until it became necessary for 
 Legaspi to order that "henceforth no grave or burial place be opened 
 without the permission of his Excellency." ^ 
 
 There is some evidence that burial in jars was early practiced in the 
 Philippines. Aduarte, writing in 1640, describes the finding, by a 
 crew shipwrecked on the Batannes islands, of "some jars of moderate 
 size covered with others of similar size. Inside they found some dead 
 
 1 Blair and Robertson, Vol. II, p. 207; Vol. Ill, p. 57, note; Vol. XXXIV, 
 p. 224; Barrows, History of the Philippines, pp. 99-101. 
 
 2 Blair and Robertson, Vol. XXXIV, p. 377. 
 
 3 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 265. 
 
 ^ Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 117, 142. 
 
 5 Ibid., Vol. V, 121; Barrows, History of the Philippines, p. 182. 
 ' ^ Blair and Robertson, Vol. Ill, p. 249; Vol. IV, p. 290. 
 T Ibid., Vol. II, p. 139. 
 ^ Ibid., Vol. U, p. 173. 
 
8 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 bodies dried, and nothing else.''^ Dr. Merton Miller of the Philip- 
 pine Bureau of Science recently opened a number of mounds found on 
 the Island of Camiguin lying north of Luzon. In them he found jars 
 placed one over the other, in the manner just described, and containing 
 some human bones as well as a few beads.^ Mr. Emerson Christy, also 
 of the PhiHppine Bureau of Science, while exploring ancient burial caves 
 in the Subuanan district of Mindanao, found a number of large Chinese 
 jars, some containing human bones and accompanied by agate beads. 
 Fragments of large jars were also found in the burial cave of Pokanin 
 in Southern Mindoro ^ (compare PL II). Dr. Fletcher Gardner, 
 who first visited the place, described the cave as follows: ^ 
 
 "It is situated about half way between the towns of Bulalacao and 
 Mansalay in Southern Mindoro. It is on the seaward face of a cliif 
 about 500 feet high and 200 yards wide and is about 200 feet 
 above high water mark. In the summer of 1904, while hunting for 
 guano, I accidentally discovered this cave and procured the skulls and 
 other bones which I am sending you. The nearest inhabitants, who 
 live within half a mile of the cave at the little sitio of Hampangan Mang- 
 yans, have known that these remains were there but deny that the bones 
 are those of their ancestors. As two or three members of the sitio 
 assisted me in procuring and carrying away the bones I am satisfied 
 that they believe the statement to be true, but as will be seen from the 
 remains of basketry and fabrics enclosed with the bones these products 
 are practically the same as those of the inhabitants of the sitio above 
 mentioned. I believe that during the great Moro raid of 1754 when 
 seventy-five slaves were taken from Manol and Mansalay the Mangyan 
 at that time inhabiting the neighborhood were driven into the interior 
 and abandoned this cave for burial purposes. . . The bones were 
 covered with about three inches of dust and nitrous earth, which argues 
 a very long time without disturbance . " 
 
 From this evidence it seems not at all unlikely that jar burial may 
 have been practiced by the FiHpino, especially those in direct trade 
 relations with Borneo, in which country such burials are common.^ 
 In this connection it is interesting to note that Dr. Hirth beHeves jar 
 burial to have been introduced into Borneo by the Chinese traders from 
 Fukien, and its introduction was probably later than the Hf etime of Chao 
 
 ^1 Aduarte, Ibid., Vol. XXXI, p. 115. Jagor, Travels in the Philippines, pp. 
 
 2 Philippine Journal of Science, Feb., 191 1, pp. 1-4. 
 
 3 The contents of this cave are now in the Field Museum of Natural History. 
 * Extract from letter to Field Museum. 
 
 » Ling Roth, The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, Vol I 00 iso- 
 154; FURNESS, Home Life of Borneo Head-hunters, p. 139. ' 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 9 
 
 Ju-kua, in the early part of the thirteenth century.^ Ancient remains 
 other than those just cited are of rare occurrence in the Philippines; 
 so I shall quote somewhat at length the very interesting account, given 
 by Jagor, of excavations in Ambos Camarines, Luzon. 
 
 '' In 185 1 , during the construction of a road a little beyond Libmanan, 
 at a place called Poro, a bed of shells was dug up under four feet of 
 mould, one hundred feet distant from the river. It consisted of Cyrenae 
 (C. suborbicularis, Busch.), a species of bivalve belonging to the family 
 of Cyclades which occurs only in warm waters, and is extraordinarily 
 abundant in the brackish waters of the PhiHppines. On the same 
 occasion, at the depth of from one and a half to three and a half feet, 
 were found numerous remains of the early inhabitants, skulls, ribs, bones 
 of men and animals, a child's thigh-bone inserted in a spiral of brass 
 wire, several stags' horns, beautifully formed dishes and vessels, some 
 of them painted, probably of Chinese origin; striped bracelets, of a 
 soft, gypseous, copper-red rock, glancing as if they were varnished; small 
 copper knives, but no iron utensils; and several broad flat stones bored 
 through the middle; besides a wedge of petrified wood, embedded in a 
 cleft branch of a tree. The place, which to this day may be easily 
 recognized in a hollow, might, by excavation systematically carried on, 
 yield many more interesting results. What was not immediately 
 useful was then and there destroyed, and the remainder dispersed. In 
 spite of every endeavor, I could obtain, through the kindness of Sefior 
 Focinos in Naga, only one small vessel. Similar remains of more 
 primitive inhabitants have been found at the mouth of the Bigajo, not 
 far from Libmanan, in a shell-bed of the same kind ; and an urn, with a 
 human skeleton, was found at the mouth of the Perlos, west of Sitio de 
 Poro, in 1840. 
 
 **Mr. W. A. Franks, who had the kindness to examine the vessel, 
 inclines to the opinion that it is Chinese, and pronounces it to be of 
 very great antiquity, without, however, being able to determine its age 
 more exactly; and a learned Chinese of the Burlingame Embassy ex- 
 pressed himself to the same effect. He knew only of one article, now 
 in the British Museum, which was brought from Japan by Kaempfer, 
 the color, glazing and cracks in the glazing of which (craqueles) cor- 
 respond precisely with mine.^ According to Kaempfer, the Japanese 
 
 1 F. HiRTH, Ancient Chinese Porcelain (Journal of the China Branch of the Royal 
 Asiatic Society, Vol. XXII, N. S., pp. 181-3, 1888). 
 
 2 Referring to this paragraph Dr. C. H. Read of the British Museum says: "There 
 must be some mistake in Jagor 's book. No such jar given by Kaempfer is in the 
 Museum, and I cannot understand my predecessor, Sir. A. W.Franks, making such 
 a statement. I may mention that I knew Dr. Jagor intimately and regard him as 
 more than usually accurate." 
 
lo Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 found similar vessels in the sea; ' and they value them very highly for 
 the purpose of preserving their tea in them." 
 
 MoRGA writes: " On this island, Luzon, particularly in the provinces 
 of Manilla, Pampanga, Pangasinan, and Ylocos, very ancient clay 
 vessels of a dark brown colour are found by the natives, of a sorry ap- 
 pearance; some of a middling size^ and others smaller; marked with 
 characters and stamps. They are unable to say either when or where 
 they obtained them; but they are no longer to be acquired, nor are they 
 manufactured in the islands. The Japanese prize them highly, for they 
 have found that the root of a herb which they call Tscha (tea), and 
 which when drunk hot is considered as a great delicacy and of medicinal 
 efficacy by the kings and lords in Japan, cannot be effectively preserved 
 except in these vessels; which are so highly esteemed all over Japan 
 that they form the most costly articles of their showrooms and cabinets. 
 Indeed, so highly do they value them that they overlay them externally 
 with fine gold embossed with great skill, and enclose them in cases of 
 brocade; and some of these vessels are valued at and fetch from 2,000 
 tael to II reals. The natives of these islands purchase them from the 
 Japanese at very high rates, and take much pains in the search for them 
 on account of their value, though but few are now found on account 
 of the eagerness with which they have been sought for. 
 
 "When Carletti, in 1597, went from the Philippines to Japan, all 
 the passengers on board were examined carefully, by order of the 
 governor, and threatened with capital punishment if they endeavoured 
 to conceal ' certain earthen vessels which were wont to be brought from 
 the PhiHppines and other islands of that sea,' as the king wished to 
 
 ^ This is not a fact but a legend. Engelbert Kaempfer (The History of 
 Japan, Glasgow reprint, Vol. Ill, p. 237) relates a story, told him by Chinese, regard- 
 ing an island Maurigasima near Formosa famous in former ages for its fine porcelain 
 clay. "The inhabitants very much inrich'd themselves by this manufacture, but 
 their increasing wealth gave birth to luxury, and contempt of religion, which in- 
 censed the Gods to that degree, that by an irrevocable decree they determin'd to 
 sink the whole island." Then follows the long story of the virtuous king who 
 managed to escape the disaster miraculously, and to flee into the province of Fukien. 
 The island sank, and with it all its ceramic treasures. They were subsequently 
 taken up by divers and sold to Chinese merchants of Fukien who traded them to 
 Japan at immense sums. There is consequently a double error in the above state- 
 ment of Franks: it is not the Japanese who found jars in the sea, nor does Kaempfer 
 say that they were celadons or similar to them; on the contrary, he describes them 
 as "transparent, exceeding thin, of a whitish color, inclining to green," which is 
 almost the opposite to a celadon. That legend, as far as I know, has not yet Been 
 traced to a Chinese source. Brinkley (Japan, Vol. VIII, p. 267) shows little under- 
 standing of folklore, if he calls it a foolish fable; it doubtless ranks among the category 
 of familiar stories of sunken isles and towns in Europe. Brinkley's explanation that 
 the story was probably invented by some Japanese Swift to satirise the irrational 
 value attached to rusty old specimens of pottery is decidedly untenable, if for no 
 other reason, because, according to Kaempfer's statement, the legend is Chinese 
 in origin. The pottery in question is, in my opinion, Chinese ware of Fukien, and 
 the legend emanates from the potters of Fukien. [B. L.] 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. ii 
 
 buy them all. . . 'These vessels were worth as much as 5, 6, and 
 even 10,000 scudi each; but they were not permitted to demand for 
 them more than one Giulio (about a half Paolo).' In 161 5 Carle tti 
 met with a Franciscan who was sent as ambassador from Japan to 
 Rome, who assured him that he had seen 130,000 scudi paid by the 
 king of Japan for such a vessel ; and his companions confirmed the state- 
 ment. Carletti also alleges, as the reason for the high price, 'that the 
 leaf cia or tea, the quality of which improves with age, is preserved 
 better in those vessels than in all others. The Japanese besides know 
 these vessels by certain characters and stamps. They are of great age 
 and very rare, and come only from Cambodia, Siam, Cochin China, 
 the Philippines, and other neighbouring islands. From their external 
 appearance they would be estimated at three or four quatrini (two 
 dreier) . . It is perfectly true that the king and the princes of 
 that kingdom possess a very large number of these vessels, and prize 
 them as their most valuable treasure and above all other rarities . . . 
 and that they boast of their acquisitions, and from motives of vanity 
 strive to outvie one another in the multitude of pretty vessels which 
 they possess.' 
 
 ''Many travellers mention vessels found likewise amongst the 
 Dyaks and the Malays in Borneo, which, from superstitious motives, 
 were estimated at most exaggerated figures, amounting sometimes to 
 many thousand dollars. 
 
 "St. John relates that the Datu of Tamparuli (Borneo) gave rice 
 to the value of almost £700 for a jar, and that he possessed a second jar 
 of almost fabulous value, which was about two feet high, and of a dark 
 olive green. The Datu fills both jars with water, which, after adding 
 plants and flowers to it, he dispenses to all the sick persons in the coun- 
 try. But the most famous jar in Borneo is that of the Sultan of Brunei, 
 which not only possesses all the valuable properties of the other jars 
 but can also speak. St. John did not see it, as it is always kept in the 
 women's apartment ; but the sultan, a credible man, related to him that 
 the jar howled dolefully the night before the death of his first wife, and 
 that it emitted similar tones in the event of impending misfortunes. 
 St. John is inclined to explain the mysterious phenomenon by a prob- 
 ably peculiar form of the mouth of the vessel, in passing over which the 
 air-draught is thrown into resonant verberations, like the Aeolian harp. 
 The vessel is generally enveloped in gold brocade, and is uncovered only 
 when it is to be consulted; and hence, of course, it happens that it speaks 
 only on solemn occasions. St. John states further that the Bisayans 
 used formerly to bring presents to the sultan; in recognition of which 
 they received some water from the sacred jar to sprinkle over their fields 
 
12 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 and thereby ensure plentiful harvests. When the sultan was asked 
 whether he would sell his jar for £20,000, he answered that no offer in 
 the world could tempt him to part with it." ^ 
 
 This desire for old jars was by no means confined to the traders and 
 Japanese, for the tribes of the interior had secured a great number of 
 them at a very early period, and later when the supply from the coast 
 had ceased, they began to mount in value until a man's wealth was, and 
 still is, largely reckoned by the number of old jars in his possession 
 (compare PL III). As they were handed down from one generation 
 to another, they began to gather to themselves stories of wondrous 
 origin and deeds, until to-day certain jars have reputations which extend 
 far beyond the limits of the tribes by which they may be owned. While 
 among the Tinguian of Abra, the writer continually heard tales of a 
 wonderful jar called Magsawi (PI. IV). It was credited with the ability 
 to talk; sometimes went on long journeys by itself; and was married to 
 a female jar owned by the Tinguian of Ilocos Norte. A small jar at 
 San Quintin, Abra, was said to be the child of this union and partook 
 of many qualities of its parents. ^ The history of this jar as related by 
 its owner, Cabildo of Domayco, is as follows: "Magsawi, my jar, when 
 it was not yet broken talked softly, but now its lines are broken, and the 
 low tones are insufficient for us to understand. The jar was not made 
 where the Chinese are, but belongs to the spirits or Kabonlan, because 
 my father and grandfather, from whom I inherited it, said that in the 
 first times they (the Tinguian) hunted Magsawi on the mountains and 
 in the wooded hills. My ancestors thought that their dog had brought 
 a deer to bay (which he was catching), and they hurried to assist it. 
 They saw the jar and tried to catch it but were unable; sometimes it 
 disappeared, sometimes it appeared again, and, because they could not 
 catch it they went again to the wooded hill on their way to their town. 
 Then they heard a voice speaking words which they understood, but 
 they could see no man. The words it spoke were: 'You secure a pig, 
 a sow without young, and take its blood, so that you may catch the jar 
 which your dog pursued.' They obeyed and went to secure the 
 blood. The dog again brought to bay the jar which belonged to Kabon- 
 lan (a spirit). They plainly saw the jar go through a hole in the rock 
 
 1 JAGOR, Travels in the Philippines, p. 162. In Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, Vol. I, 
 1869, pp. 80-82, jAGOR describes an ancient burial cave in Southern Samar. 
 In It were found broken pieces of crudely decorated pottery associated with human 
 remains. 
 
 2 Other jars credited with the ability to talk were seen by the writer, and similar 
 jars are described by travelers in Borneo. See Ling Roth, Natives of Sarawak and 
 British N. Borneo, Vol. II, p. 286; Hein, Die bildenden Kiinste bei den Dayaks 
 auf Borneo, p. 139; also St. John, Life in the Forests of the Far East.— The idea 
 of sex in jars is widespread throughout the Archipelago. 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 13 
 
 which is a cave, and there it was cornered so that they captured the 
 pretty jar which is MagsawT, which I inherited." ^ 
 
 Other jars of equal fame "were found in caves in which the spirits 
 dwelt," or were called into being by supernatural agencies. References 
 to these wonderful jars abound in the folktales, the following quotations 
 from which will serve to show the character of all.^ 
 
 "Not long after he started, and when he arrived in the pasture, all 
 the jars went to him, and all the jars stuck out their tongues; for they 
 were very hungry and had not been fed for a long time. The jars were 
 somadag, ginlasan, malayo, and tadogan, and other kinds also.^ When 
 Aponltolau thought that all the jars had arrived, he fed them all with 
 betel-nut covered with lawed leaves. As soon as he fed them, he gave 
 them some salt. Not long after this they went to the pasture, and they 
 rode on the back of a carabao. As soon as they arrived, all the jars 
 rolled around them and stuck out their tongues, and Aponibolinayen 
 was afraid, for she feared that the jars would eat them. The wide field 
 was full of jars. Aponltolau gave them betel-nut and lawed wine and 
 salt. As soon as they fed them, they went back home." (Extract 
 from the tale about Gimbangonan.) 
 
 "And they took many things to be used at the wedding. So they 
 agreed on the marriage price, and Bangan and his wife said, the price 
 must be the halaua * nine times full of dijfferent kinds of jars. As soon 
 as the halaua was filled nine times, Daluagan raised her eyebrows, and 
 immediately half of the jars vanished, and Aponibolinayen used her 
 (magical) power, and the halaua was filled again, so that it was truly 
 filled. When they had danced, all the guests took some jars, before they 
 went home." (From the Kanag tale.) 
 
 "'Now we are going to pay the marriage price according to the 
 custom,' said AponlboHnayen, 'our custom is to fill the halaua nine 
 times with different kinds of jars.' So AponlboHnayen said 'Ala, you 
 Alan^ who live in the different springs, and Bananayo^ oi Kadanan 
 
 1 Similar stories of jars turning to animals and vice versa are encountered in the 
 Southern Philippines and in Borneo. See Ling Roth, Natives of Sarawak and 
 British North Borneo, Vol. II, p. CLXXVI; Hein, Die bildenden Kunste bei den 
 Dayaks auf Borneo, pp. 132-134. 
 
 2 The following are extracts from Tinguian folktales. During the dry season 
 bonfires are built in various parts of the village and around them the men and 
 women gather, the former to make fishnets, the latter to spin. Meanwhile some good 
 story-teller chants these tales. 
 
 » Each type of jar has its particular name. 
 
 * A small spirit house built during a certain ceremony. 
 
 5 Lesser spirits. 
 
14 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 and you Liblibayan, ^ go and get the jars which Kanag must pay as the 
 price for Dapilisan.' As soon as she commanded them, they went and 
 filled the balaua nine times." (Tale of Dumalawf.) 
 
 "So they danced and the big jars which she had hung about her 
 neck made a noise, and the earth shook when she moved her body. 
 The people did not agree, and they said: 'Five times full, if you do 
 not have that many (jars) he may not marry AponlboHnayen.' He 
 was so anxious to marry her that he told his parents to agree to what 
 they said. As soon as they agreed, Langaan used magic so that all the 
 jars which the people wanted were already in the balaua. The day 
 came when they agreed to take Linggiwan to AponlboHnayen, and he 
 carried one jar. As soon as they arrived there, they made the rice 
 ceremony." ^ (Extracts from tale of Ginambo and Gonigonau.) 
 
 "Soon after they started, they met the doldolt (a jar) in the way. 
 'Where are you going, young men,' it said. 'Where are you going,' 
 you ask; we are going to secure the perfume of Balewan, for though we 
 are still far from it we can smell it now.' The jar replied: 'Ala, young 
 men, you cannot go there, for when anyone goes there, only his name 
 goes back to his town,' {i. e. he dies), but the boy replied: 'We are going 
 anyway. That is the reason we are already far from home, and it is 
 the thing which the pretty maiden desires.' 'If you say that you are 
 going anyway, you will repent when you reach there.' So they left 
 the jar and walked on." (From Balewan tale.) 
 
 "The food was of thirty different kinds, and they were ashamed 
 to be in the house of Ilwi'san which had in it many valuable jars, for the 
 Alan (spirit) had given them to him." (AponlboHnayen tale.) 
 
 Great prices are offered and sometimes paid for the more renowned 
 jars, and successful war parties are accustomed to return home with 
 numbers of such trophies. 
 
 Every wild tribe, encountered by the writer, in the interior of Luzon, 
 
 Palawan and Mindanao, possesses these jars which enter intimately 
 
 into the life of the people (PI. V-VIII). Among many the price paid 
 
 by the bridegroom for his bride is wholly or in part in jars (PI. IX- 
 
 X). When a Tinguian youth is to take his bride, he goes to her house 
 
 at night, carrying with him a Chinese jar which he presents to his 
 
 father-in-law, and thereafter he may never address his parents-in-law 
 
 by name. The Hquor served at ceremonies and festivals is sometimes 
 
 contained in these jars (PL XI-XVI), while small porcelain dishes 
 
 ^ Lesser Spirits. 
 
 ■^ This is still the custom when the groom finally claims the bride. 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 15 
 
 contain the food offered to the spirits. Porcelain plates are used by 
 the mediums when summoning the spirits, and having served in such a 
 capacity are highly prized; so much so that they are never sold during 
 the lifetime of the medium, and after her death only to an aspirant for 
 mediumship honors (PI. XVII). When about to call a spirit into 
 her body, the medium sets herself in front of the spirit mat, and 
 covering her face with her hands, she trembles violently, meanwhile 
 chanting or wailing songs in which she bids the spirits to come and 
 possess her (PI. XVIII). From time to time she pauses, and holding 
 a plate on the finger tips of her left hand, she strikes it with a string of 
 sea shells or a bit of lead, in order that the bell-like sound may attract 
 the attention of the spirits. Suddenly a spirit takes possession of her 
 body and then as a human the superior being talks with mortals (PL 
 XIX). 
 
 In districts where head-hunting is still in vogue, a Chinese jar is 
 readily accepted as payment in full for a head, and many feuds are 
 settled on this basis. In 1907 the writer accompanied a war party from 
 Apayao to a hostile village several days' march distant. The two 
 villages agreed to make peace on the terms of one jar for each head the 
 one town held in excess of the other, and on this basis the Apayao 
 paid eleven jars to their erstwhile enemies. 
 
 Most tribes of the interior have pottery of their own mantifacture. 
 These generally bear distinctive names according to the uses to which 
 they are put. Thus among the Tinguian a jar used for greens or 
 vegetables has a definite name, while another in which meat is cooked 
 has its own designation. 
 
 In Northern Luzon the women of certain towns have acquired such 
 fame as potters that their wares have a wide distribution, and the 
 industry has almost vanished from neighboring villages. 
 
 The general method employed by the potters (PI. XX-XXI) is 
 as follows: The clay after being dampened is carefully kneaded with 
 the hands, in order to remove stones and bits of gravel. A handful of 
 the tnass is taken up and the bottom of the bowl roughly shaped with 
 the fingers. This is placed on a wooden dish, which in turn rests on a 
 bamboo rice winnower — forming a crude potter's wheel. The dish is 
 turned with the right hand while the woman shapes the clay with the 
 fingers of the left or with a piece of dampened bark cloth. From time 
 to time a coil of fresh clay is laid along the top of the vessels and is 
 worked in as the wheel turns. Further shaping is done with a wooden 
 paddle, after which the jar is allowed to dry. In a day or two it is hard 
 enough to be handled, and the operator then rubs it, inside and out, with 
 stone or seed disks, in order to make it perfectly smooth. The jars 
 
i6 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 are placed in dung or other material which will make a slow fire and are 
 burned for a night, after which they are ready for service.^ Some tribes 
 understand the art of glazing with pitch, but this is not generally prac- 
 ticed throughout the Islands. These jars are generally red in color, 
 and in form quite distinct from those of Chinese manufacture. They 
 are in daily use and have a value of only a few centavos. 
 
 ^ The writer found this process both in Luzon and Mindanao. Dr. Jenks 
 found a slightly different method of production at Bontoc (see Jenks, The Bontoc 
 Igorot, pp. 117-121). This process is illustrated by a life sized group in the Field 
 Museum of Natural History. PI. XXII. 
 
POSTSCRIPT 
 By Berthold Laufer 
 
 At the request of Mr. Cole I take the liberty to append a few notes 
 on the subject of Chinese pottery in the PhiHppine Islands. From 
 the very interesting information furnished by Mr. Cole on the subject, 
 it becomes evident that two well-defined periods in the trade of Chinese 
 pottery to the Islands must be distinguished. The one is constituted 
 by the burial pottery discovered in caves, the other is marked by the 
 numerous specimens still found in the possession of families and, 
 according to tradition, transmitted as heirlooms through many genera- 
 tions. Let us state at the outset that from the viewpoint of the Chinese 
 field of research a plausible guess may be hazarded as to what these 
 two periods are, — the mortuary finds roughly corresponding to the 
 period of the Chinese Sung dynasty (960-1278 a. d.), and the surface 
 finds to that of the Ming dynasty (1368-1643).^ By this division in 
 time I do not mean to draw a hard and fast line for the classification of 
 this pottery, but merely to lay down a working hypothesis as the basis 
 from which to attack the problem that will remain for future investiga- 
 tion. There is the possibility also that -early Ming pieces are to be 
 found in the graves or caves and, on the other hand, the existence of 
 Sung and After-Ming specimens, say of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries, in the hands of the natives will no doubt be established with 
 the advance of search and research. But these two cases, if they will 
 prove, will surely remain the exceptions, while the formula as expressed 
 above carries the calculation of the greatest probability. 
 
 It is well known that during the middle ages a lively export trade in 
 pottery took place from China into the regions of the Malayan Archi- 
 pelago, India, Persia, Egypt, the east coast of Africa, and Morocco. 
 Quite a number of ancient specimens of China ware have been discovered 
 in all those countries and wandered into collections of Europe. The 
 curiosity of investigators was early stimiilated in this subject, and to 
 A. B. Meyer, Karabacek, Hirth, A. R. Hein, F. Brinkley and others, 
 we owe contributions to this question from the ceramic and trade- 
 
 ^ Certainly I have here in mind only those specimens prized by the natives as 
 heirlooms and looked upon by them as old. There is assuredly any quantity of 
 modern Chinese crockery and porcelain spread over the Philippines, which, however, 
 is of no account and not the object of legends and worship on the part of the natives. 
 
 17 
 
i8 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 historical standpoint, while active explorers, particularly on Borneo, 
 have brought to light considerable material in the way of specimens. 
 For the Philippines, Httle had been done in this direction, and it is the 
 merit of Mr. Cole to render accessible to students a representative 
 collection of that pottery which may be designated as ''second period," 
 and which is of the highest interest as palpable evidence of the inter- 
 course between China and the PhiHppines during the Ming period. 
 
 The estabhshment of the two periods is reflected also in the tradi- 
 tions of the Malayan tribes. Mr. .Cole (p. 12) relates that the Magsawt 
 jar was not made where the Chinese are, but belongs to the spirits or 
 Kabonian. There are other jars clearly recognized as Chinese by the 
 natives. In regard to the latter, the tradition is still alive; the former 
 are of a more considerable age or were made in a period, the wares of 
 which could no more be supplied by the Chinese, so that the belief 
 could gain ground that they had never been made by the Chinese, but 
 by the spirits. Among the Dayak of Borneo, this state of affairs is 
 still more conspicuous. There, the oldest jars have been connected 
 with solar and lunar mythology. Mahatara, the supreme god, piled 
 up on Java seven mountains from the loam which was left after the 
 creation of sun, moon and earth. Ratu Tjampu, of divine origin, used 
 the clay of these mountains to make a great number of djawet (sacred 
 jars) which he kept and carefully guarded in a cave. One day when 
 his watch was interrupted, the jars transformed themselves into animals 
 (compare Cole, pp. 12, 13) and escaped.' When a fortunate hunter kills 
 such garne it changes again into a jar, which becomes the trophy of the 
 hunter favored by the gods. According to another tradition, the god 
 of the moon, Kadjanka, taught the son of a Javanese ruler. Raja Pahit, 
 to form jars out of the clay with which Mahatara had made sun and 
 moon; all these jars fled to Borneo, where they still are.^ I do not 
 beheve that these traditions point to Java as a place from which pottery 
 found its way to Borneo; Java has merely become a symbol for the 
 mysterious unknown. This mythical pottery attributed to the action 
 of gods, it seems to me, is to be identified with Chinese pottery of the 
 Sung period, while that accompanied by mere narrative traditions 
 seems to correspond to that of the Ming period. This sequence of 
 myth and plain story has its foundation in long intervals of time and 
 in many changes as to the kinds and grades of pottery introduced from 
 
 1 A. R. Hein, Die bildenden Kiinste bei den Dayaks auf Borneo, p. 134 (Wien, 
 1894), and F. S. Grabowsky, Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologic, Vol. XVII, 1885, pp. 121- 
 123. Grabowsky is of the opinion that Perelaer, to whom the second tradition is 
 due, can never have heard it from the lips of a Dayak, but simply ascribed to them 
 this tradition originating from Java. 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 
 
 19 
 
 China. This does not mean that a piece ascribed to the spirits will 
 necessarily be a Sung, and one credited with a tale always a Ming, for 
 interchanges, adjustments and confusions of traditions are constantly 
 at operation. 
 
 As no material regarding the earlier period of burial pottery (except 
 a small fragment) exists in the Field Museum, I must be content with 
 a few suggestive remarks regarding the latter. Chinese-Philippine 
 trade must have existed early in the thirteenth, and very likely in the 
 latter part of the twelfth century, as I tried to establish on a former 
 occasion,^ chiefly guided by the accounts of a Chinese author, Chao 
 Ju-kua, who around 1220 wrote a most valuable record of the foreign 
 nations then trading with China. His work has been translated and 
 profusely commented on by Prof. Hirth.^ Chao Ju-kua mentions three 
 times the export of porcelain, by which also pottery not being porcelain 
 must be understood, in the barter with the Philippine tribes. Unfortu- 
 nately he does not tell us of what kind, or from which locality this 
 pottery was, but one interesting fact may be gleaned now from a com- 
 parison of the Philippine place-names known to him with those re- 
 ported by Mr. Cole as having yielded finds of burial jars. Dr. Miller, 
 Mr. Cole informs us, discovered jars containing human bones and 
 beads in mounds opened by him on the Island of Camiguin, lying north 
 of Luzon. This name is doubtless identical with Ka-ma-yen mentioned 
 by Chao Ju-kua as forming the "Three Islands" with Pa-lao-yu (Pala- 
 wan?) and Pa-ki-nung,^ and he gives a lively description of the barter 
 with the Hai-tan (Aeta) living there, with the express mention of porce- 
 lain. Fragments of large jars, says Mr. Cole, were also found in the 
 burial cave of Pokanin in southern Mindoro ; now Chao Ju-kua describes 
 a country in the north of Borneo which he calls Ma-yi{t) and identified 
 by me with Mindoro, the ancient name of which was Mail. Mindoro, 
 where Spaniards and Chinese met for the first time in 1570, was an old ^ 
 stronghold of the latter, and probably at an earlier date than Luzon. 
 These coincidences cannot be accidental, and must further be taken in 
 connection with the fact to which Mr. Cole justly calls attention, that 
 jar burial may have been practised, especially by those Filipino in 
 direct trade relations with Borneo. It seems to me that we are bound 
 to assume an historical connection between the two and an influencing 
 
 1 The Relations of the Chinese to the Philippine Islands, p. 252 {Smithsonian 
 Miscellaneous Contributions, Vol. L, Part 2, 1907). 
 
 2 A complete translation of the work jointly edited by Hirth and W. W. Rockhill 
 has been printed by the Academy of St. Petersburg and is soon expected to be out. 
 
 3 See Hirth, Chinesische Studien, p. 41. 
 
20 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 of the Filipino by the Borneo custom.^ On both sides, we encounter 
 almost the same kinds of Chinese ceramic wares, the same veneration 
 for them, and a similar basis of folklore and mythology associated with 
 them, so that the belief in an interdependence seems justifiable. The 
 one fact stands out clearly: Chao Ju-kua, a reliable author of the Sung 
 period, himself a member of the imperial house, relates the export of 
 pottery to Borneo and the Philippines (in the case of Borneo also that 
 of celadons) at his time, the beginning of the thirteenth century, a 
 trade which may have set in at a much earlier date. This pottery can 
 but have been the contemporaneous pottery of the Sung period, and we 
 are, for this reason, entitled to look to the Philippines for Sung pottery. 
 As the pottery found in the caves is, in all probability, older than that 
 now possessed by the natives, there is the greatest likelihood of identi- 
 fying this burial pottery with the productions of the Sung period. The 
 investigations of the antiquities of the Philippines are in their begin- 
 nings, and further results and more tangible material must be awaited 
 before definite verdicts can be arrived at. The pottery fragments must 
 be carefully gathered and examined; it is obvious that they will be of 
 immense value in helping to make out the periods of these burial places. 
 The terminus a quo is given by the eleventh century. The small vessel 
 
 ^ The subject of jar-burial remains one to be investigated. It is still practised 
 in China among the Buddhist priesthood and, according to the observations of W. 
 Perceval Yetts (Notes on the Disposal of Buddhist Dead in China, Journal R. 
 Asiatic Society, 191 1, p. 705), occurs throughout the region of the Middle and Lower 
 Yangtse. The same author informs us (p. 707) that the earthenware tubs required 
 for this purpose resemble those commonly used for holding water or for storage of 
 manure. "Occasionally two ordinary domestic tubs (kang) joined mouth to mouth 
 are made to act as a cofifin, though usually tubs specially manufactured for funeral 
 purposes are obtained. These are made in pairs, and are so designed that the rim 
 of the lid of the uppermost tub fits closely over the rim of the other, producing 
 a joint easily rendered airtight by the aid of cement. A pair thus joined together 
 forms a chamber resembling a barrel in shape." Most of these vessels are said to 
 come from the kilns of Wu-si in Kiangsu Province. The ancient earthenware 
 coffins, however, considered by Mr. Yetts in this connection, must be separated from 
 these burial jars, as they are pre-buddhistic in origin; such a pottery coffin with 
 green-glazed lid attributed to the T'ang period, is in the Chinese collection of the 
 Field Museum. E. Boerschmann (Die Baukunst und religiose Kultur der Chinesen, 
 Vol. I, P'u t'o shan, p. 175) states that the cremation and preservation of Buddhist 
 pnests m large urns of glazed pottery is generally practised; that in the pottery kilns 
 of all provmces such jars are made up to 1.50 m in height and shipped far away, 
 and that a district on the Siang River in Hunan, a Httle north of the provincial 
 capital Ch'ang-sha, is a well-known place for their production. The jars are mostly 
 ^glazed brown, concludes Boerschmann, and adorned with reliefs alluding to death, 
 e. g. two dragons surrounding a dragon-gate and a pearl in the entrance, indicating 
 Wiat the priest has passed the gate of perception and reached the state of perfection. 
 This information sheds light on the fact that it was dragon- jars which were utilized 
 on Borneo for purposes of burial. 
 
 An interesting practice of jar-burial is revealed by Paul Pelliot (Le Fou-nan, 
 Bulletin de I' Ecole frangaise d' Extreme-Orient, Vol. Ill, 1903, p. 279) from a passage 
 in the Fu-nan ki, written by Chu Chi in the fifth century A. D. It relates to the 
 kingdom of Tun-siin, a dependance of Fu-nan (Cambodja), which seems to have 
 been largely under the influence of Brahmanic India. Over a thousand Brahmans 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 21 
 
 mentioned by Jagor is most probably a piece of celadon pottery. 
 Prof. Eduard Seler has been good enough to inform us that it is not 
 preserved in the Berlin Museum, but he describes a similar piece extant 
 there, a fragment of a plate or a fiat bowl found by Dr. Schetelig in a 
 cave of Caramuan, Luzon, on the Philippines. "The material," 
 Prof. Seler says, ''is a red-burnt hard clay including small white bits 
 of what is apparently calcareous matter. The well-known salad-green 
 glaze exhibiting numerous fine crackles covers the entire surface except 
 the circular foot. On the lower face, the marks of the potter's wheel 
 are visible. On the glazed surface shallow grooves are radially ar- 
 ranged." This description, beyond any doubt, ^refers to a specimen of 
 celadon pottery of the Sung period, and I am especially interested in 
 the fact that it is hard, red-burnt stoneware, and not porcelain. The 
 former authors always spoke of celadon porcelains exclusively, an 
 error first refuted by Captain F. Brinkley,^ who justly says that all 
 the choice celadons of the Sung, Yuan, and even the Ming dynasties 
 were stoneware, showing considerable variation in respect to fineness 
 of pate and thinness of biscuit, but never becoming true translucid 
 porcelain. The majority of celadon pieces in the Sung period seem to 
 have been stoneware, while the porcelain specimens increase during the 
 
 from India were settled there, married to native women and engaged in reading 
 their sacred books. When they are sick, says the Chinese report, they make a vow 
 to be buried by the birds; under chants and dances, they are conducted outside of 
 the town, and there are birds who devour them. The remaining bones are calcined 
 and enclosed in a jar which is flung into the sea. When they are not eaten by the 
 birds, they are placed in a basket. As regards burial by fire, it consists in leaping 
 into a fire. The ashes are gathered in a vase which is interred, and to which sacrifices 
 are offered without limit of time. The inference could be drawn from this passage 
 that the practice of burial in jars is derived from India. "Among the tribes of the 
 Hindukush," reports W. Crooke (Things Indian, p. 128), "cremation used to be 
 the common form of burial, the ashes being collected in rude wooden boxes or in 
 earthen jars and buried." This was the case also in the funerary rites of ancient 
 India (W. Caland, Die altindischen Todten- und Bestattungsgebrauche, pp. 104, 
 107, 108) when the bones after cremation were gathered in an urn; according to one 
 rite, the bones collected in an earthenware bowl were sprinkled with water, the bowl 
 was wrapped up in a dress made from Kuga grass and inserted in another pottery 
 vessel which was interred in a forest, or near the root of a tree or in a clean place in a 
 durable relic-shrine. Among the Nayars or Nairs of Malabar, the pieces of unburnt 
 bones are placed in an earthen pot which has been sun-dried (not burnt by fire in the 
 usual way); the pot is covered up with a piece of new cloth, and all following the 
 eldest, who carries it, proceed to the nearest river (it must be running water), which 
 receives the remains of the dead (E. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern 
 India, p. 215, Madras, 1906). The latter practice offers a parallel to the burying 
 of the jar in the sea, as related above in regard to Tun-siin. Nowadays, the bones 
 after cremation are gathered on a gold, silver, or copper plate in Cambodja (A. 
 Leclere, Cambodge: La cremation et les rites fun^raires, pp. 76, 82, Hanoi, 1906). 
 On jar-burial on the Liu-kiu Islands compare the interesting article of M. Haber- 
 LANDT, tJber eine Graburne von den Liukiu-Inseln {Mitteilungen der Anthropol. 
 Gesellschaft in Wien, Vol. XXIII, 1893, pp. 39-42); the specimen figured is doubtless 
 a Chinese production as used for the burial of the ashes of a Buddhist monk. 
 
 1 China, Keramic Art, p. 34 (London, 1904). 
 
2 2 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 Ming epoch. To this conclusion, at least, I am prompted by a series 
 of celadons gathered by me in China and including specimens of the 
 Sung, Ming, and K'ien-lung periods. It is somewhat a matter of sur- 
 prise that a larger number of celadons has not been discovered on the 
 Philippines. Judging from the account of a Japanese writer on ceram- 
 ics, translated farther below, there must have been a large quantity 
 of this fine and curious pottery on the Islands in former times, and the 
 search of the Japanese for ceramic treasures there in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries was chiefly prompted by their craving for cela- 
 dons. Maybe the Japanese have taken hold of the best specimens, 
 maybe these are still hidden away in solitary caves or untouched burial 
 mounds. We hope that these remarks will instigate present and future 
 explorers on the Islands to keep a vigilant watch on celadons, and to 
 pick up even small fragments, always with exact statements of locahty, 
 site, nature of the find (underground, surface, cave, mound, etc.) and 
 traditions of the natives, if there are any, because they may be of great 
 significance. Everything relating to celadons is of utmost historical 
 importance; in almost every case, in my opinion at least, it is possible 
 to define the age or period of a piece of celadon, and also the place of 
 its production,— China, Japan, Korea, or Siam. The Sung celadons 
 are inimitable and could never be imitated, and the varying character 
 of this pottery through all ages affords a most fortunate clue to chrono- 
 logical diagnosis. 
 
 In glancing over the collection of pottery brought home by Mr. 
 Cole, we are struck, first of all, by a certain uniform character of all 
 these pieces, if we leave aside the three small dishes reproduced on 
 Plate XVII, which in correspondence with their different ceramic char- 
 acter enter also a different phase of rehgious notions. Only in the 
 latter lot a single piece of porcelain is found (PI. XVII, Fig. 3). All 
 other specimens are characterized as stoneware of an exceedingly hard, 
 consistent and durable clayish substance; most of them are high and 
 spacious jars of large capacity; all of them are glazed, and well glazed, 
 and betray in the manner and color of glazing as well as in their shapes 
 and decorative designs a decidedly Chinese origin; all of them have a 
 concave unglazed bottom, most of them are provided with ears on the 
 shoulders for the passage of a cord to secure convenient handhng and 
 carrying; none of them is impressed with a seal, date-mark, or inscrip- 
 tion of any other kind. All of them are the products of solid workman- 
 ship executed with care and deHberation, apparently with a side-glance 
 at a customer who knew. On the whole, two principal types are dis- 
 cernible,— dragon-jars and plain jars. Both groups are distinguished 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 23 
 
 at the same time by different glazes, and it may be surmised at the out- 
 set that they originate from different kilns. 
 
 The three jars on Plates VI-VIII exactly agree with one another 
 in shape and glaze (evidently an iron glaze) the color of which moves 
 from a light-yellow to a dark-brown. In the form of rim, neck and 
 shoulders, the identity is perfect. The shoulders are decorated with 
 five massive lion-heads ^ formed in separate moulds and stuck on to the 
 body of the vessel, perforations running horizontally through the jaws. 
 The designs, wave-bands and a couple of dragons with the usual cloud- 
 ornaments, are incised in the body of the clay and in the two specimens 
 on Plates VI and VII not covered by the glaze, while in the case of the 
 specimen in Plate VIII the outlines and scales of the dragon have been 
 overlaid with a glaze of darker tinge, resulting in a flat-relief design. 
 The dragon- jar in Plate V differs from those three in form and technique, 
 and is an extraordinary specimen. The clay walls are of much thinner 
 build and covered with a fine dark-greenish slip. Six ears (two of which 
 are broken off) rest on the shoulders; they are shaped into the very 
 frequent conventional form of elephant heads ending in curved trunks. 
 The two dragons are turned out in moiilds and playing with the pearl 
 (not represented in the illustration) designed as a spiral with flame. 
 
 In this connection, attention shoiild be drawn to the dragon- jars 
 of a similar type discovered in large numbers on Borneo. The Tung 
 si yang k^ao, an interesting Chinese work describing the far-eastern 
 sea trade of the sixteenth century and pubHshed in 1618 (Ming period) 
 relates that the people of Bandjermasin on Borneo at first used banana 
 leaves' in the place of dishes, but that, since trade had been carried on 
 with China, they had gradually adopted the use of porcelain; that they 
 liked to bargain for porcelain jars decorated with dragons on the sur- 
 face; and that they woiild keep the bodies of the dead in such jars in- 
 stead of burying them.^ Despite everything that has been written on 
 the subject of these jars, their descriptions, from a ceramic and historical 
 point of view, are still rather unsatisfactory. The illustrations referred 
 to below are made from sketches, not from photographs. A. B. Meyer 
 and Grabowsky describe the glazes as brown or mottled brown, one 
 
 1 A. B. Meyer (Altertumer aus dem Ostindischen Archipel, p. 7, Leipzig, 1884) 
 describing similar jars from Borneo speaks of five Rakshasa or lion-heads. They are, 
 according to Chinese notion, nothing but lion-heads. The Rakshasa heads are quite 
 different in style, are always characterized by long protruding tusks, and never occur 
 as decorations on Chinese pottery. 
 
 2 HiRTH, Ancient Chinese Porcelain, p. 182. — The Dayak designation m«g^a«i; 
 for these jars seems to me to be suggested by the Chinese name lung kang ("dragon- 
 jar").— For illustrations of Borneo dragon-jars see F. S. Grabowsky, Zeitschrift 
 filr Ethnologie, Vol. XVII, 1885, PL VII, or A. R. Hein, Die bildenden Kiinste bei den 
 Dayaks auf Borneo, p. 133 (Wien, 1890). 
 
24 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 glazed white being the only exception. Not having had occasion to 
 see any of them, I think I should not be too positive in my judgment, 
 but can merely give it as my impression that the Borneo dragon- 
 jars are very similar in shape, glaze and design to those from the 
 PhiHppines, and that both seem to have originated from the same 
 Chinese kiln. 
 
 Unfortunately, our knowledge of Chinese pottery is far from being 
 complete, and anything Hke a scientific history of it does not yet exist. 
 Our collectors have been more interested in porcelains, and the subject 
 of common pottery has been almost wholly neglected. Porcelain is 
 nothing but a variety of pottery and can be properly understood only 
 from a consideration of the subject in its widest range. Porcelain and 
 stoneware appear in China as parallel phenomena, that is to say, the 
 same processes of glazing and decorating have been applied to both 
 categories alike, and certain porcelain glazes have their precedents in 
 corresponding glazes on non-porcellanous clays. The study of this 
 ware is therefore of importance for the history of porcelain, and it has 
 besides so many qualities and merits of its own that it is deserving of 
 close investigation for its own sake. If we had at our disposal such 
 complete collections of pottery from China as we have from Japan, it 
 would presumably be easy to point out the Chinese specimens cor- 
 responding to those of the PhiHppines, and to settle satisfactorily the 
 question as to the furnace where they were produced. Such a collec- 
 tion, whose ideal object it would be to embrace representative speci- 
 mens, ancient and modem, of the many hundred^ of Chinese kilns, will 
 probably never exist, as it would require for itself a large museum to be 
 housed. From my personal experience, restricted to the more promi- 
 nent kilns of the provinces of Shantung, ChiH, Honan, Shansi, Shensi and 
 Kansu, I may say that dragon-jars of the PhiHppine type are not 
 turned out there at the present day, nor can ancient specimens 
 of this kind be obtained there. Both facts are conclusive evi- 
 dence, for if once made, some vestiges of them would have sur- 
 vived in modem forms, in view of the stupendous persistency of 
 traditions among the potters. A priori it may be inferred that the 
 PhiHppine pottery came from those locaHties which were in closest 
 commercial touch with the Islands, i. e. the provinces of Fukien and 
 Kuangtung in southem China. The fictile productions of the latter 
 province are included under the general term Kuang yao, Kuang being 
 ^n abbreviation of the name of the province, yao meaning "pottery." 
 f The city of Yang-kiang in the prefecture of Chao-k'ing, not far from 
 ;the coast, may be credited, in ah likelihood, with the manufacture 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 25 
 
 of the dragon-jars. Dr. Bushell ^ thus describes the productions of 
 this locaHty: ''A pecuHarly dense, hard, and refractory stoneware is 
 fabricated here, the body of which ranges from reddish, brown, and 
 dark gray shades to black. All kinds of things are made at this place, 
 including architectural ornaments, cisterns, fish bowls and flower pots 
 for gardens, tubs and jars for storage, domestic utensils, reUgious images, 
 sacred figures and grotesque animals, besides an infinity of smaller 
 ornamental and fantastic curiosities. These potteries are distinguished 
 for the qualities of the glazes with which the dark brown body is in- 
 vested. One of them, a souffle blue, was copied in the imperial porce- 
 lain manufactory by T'ang Ying [in the eighteenth century], from a 
 specimen specially sent from the Palace at Peking for the purpose." 
 Nothing accurate is known about the history of this factory, and 
 additional proof is required to show that dragon- jars were once manu- 
 factured there. It is not very likely that jars strictly identical with 
 those found on Borneo and the Philippines will ever turn up in China, 
 unless by excavations on the ancient sites of the kilns. Chinese col- 
 lectors of exquisite ceramic treasures were not interested in this com- 
 mon household ware which the religious spirit of the Malayan tribes 
 has faithfully preserved. The age of these dragon-jars is illustrated by 
 the fact stated by several observers that the Dayak refused to buy any 
 later imitations made in China which speculative dealers tried to palm 
 off on them, and that any remembrance of their Chinese origin is lost. 
 The same is the case, according to the statement of Mr. Cole, on' the 
 Philippines. This fact is singular, as the natives there have been in 
 constant relations with the Chinese, as a Chinese colony has been 
 settled at Manila for centuries, and it can be accounted for only by the 
 explanation that at one remote period dragon-jars of a superior quality, 
 at least in the eyes of the natives, were fabricated which were not 
 rivaled by the later productions. This assumption will be quite plaus- 
 ible to one familiar with ceramic developments in China exhibiting 
 different aspects and ever-varying processes and qualities through all 
 periods. For this reason, I feel inclined to set these dragon- jars in the 
 epoch of the early intercourse of the Chinese with the Philippines, the 
 end of the Sung or the early Ming period, say roughly the time of the 
 thirteenth to the fifteenth century. ^ 
 
 ^ Chinese Art, Vol. II, p. 13 (London, 1906). 
 
 2 In China, large vessels of the shape of these dragon-jars, usually of much 
 larger size, are still used everywhere for the storage of the water-supply needed in 
 the household. They find their place in a corner of the courtyard and are filled, 
 according to want, with the water drawn from wells, which is brought in by carriers 
 or on wheel-barrows. They are called kang or weng, and no doubt represent an an- 
 
26 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 The other group of pottery in the Cole collection is characterized 
 by well-made thick and oily glazes ranging in color from a peculiar light- 
 blue to shades of grass-green, dark-green, olive-green, and lilac, some- 
 times combined on one surface. There can be no doubt that all these 
 pieces represent Kuang yao, either made at Yang-ch'un, or at Yang- 
 kiang, in Kuangtung Province. None of them is a real celadon, though 
 some of the glazes, in particular the jar on Plate XII, come near to it, to 
 a certain degree. ^ Similar glazes are still turned out at Yi-hsing on the 
 Great Lake {Tai hu) near Shanghai, but they are inferior in quality to 
 these specimens. They owe their attractions entirely to the glaze 
 brilHant with its varying colors blue speckled, flecked with green, or 
 green being the prevailing tint, the blue looking out from beneath it in 
 spots or streaks; in one example (PI. IX, Fig. 2), fine purplish Hnes 
 like bundles of rays are brought out around the shoulders under the 
 glaze. The only exception is represented by the jar in Plate XI, which 
 is covered by a dark olive-green glaze, (also in its interior) interspersed 
 with yellowish and brownish spots. It is possibly a Sung production, 
 while the others may belong to the Ming period. The only decorated 
 jar is that in Plate XIV which is adorned with a fiat-relief band of floral 
 designs. The jar in Plate XII has the four ears worked into animal-heads 
 which differ in style from the lion-heads on the dragon-jars. The 
 larger jars are used in China for holding water, the smaller specimens 
 are wine-vessels. 
 
 In regard to the three small pieces grouped on Plate XVII, I have 
 no positive judgment, for lack of material that could be adequately 
 compared with them. The most interesting of these specimens is that 
 in Fig. I . The ornaments of this stoneware dish are laid out in a cinna- 
 bar-red paint over a buff-colored glaze; this paint is produced either by 
 means of vermiHon or siHcate of copper. A ring on the inner side of the 
 dish is left unglazed; the lower side is completely glazed with exception 
 
 cient type of pottery. During the middle ages, the province of Ch^kiang enjoyed 
 a certain fame for their manufacture (see S. W. Bushell, Description of Chinese 
 Pottery and Porcelain, p. 130). At the present time, the best are made in the kilns 
 of Yi-hsing in the province of Kiangsu. — Porcelain jars decorated with dragons are 
 mentioned as having been made in the imperial factory established under the Ming 
 (St. Julien, Histoire et fabrication de la porcelaine chinoise, p. 100). The extensive 
 rdle which the dragon played during that period is too well known to be discussed 
 here anew. But as early as the Sung period (and possibly still earlier) the dragon 
 appears as a decorative motive on pottery. In our Chinese collection in the Field 
 Museum, e. g., there is a large Sung celadon plate the centre of which is decorated 
 with the relief figure of a dragon. Dragons and many other motives were doubtless 
 applied to common pottery centuries before they made their debut on porcelain. 
 
 1 1 am inclined to think that such pseudo-celadons have caused travellers in the 
 Archipelago unfamiliar with the ceramics of China or having merely a book knowl- 
 edge of the subject to see celadons in many cases where there are none, and am 
 seconded in this opinion by Dr. Bushell (I. c, p. 13). 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 27 
 
 of the raised rim on which the dish stands. Nothing like this dish is 
 known to me from China, and I should rather suspect a Japanese origin 
 for it. However, he who will take the trouble to peruse the Japanese 
 account on Luzon pottery, translated below, will receive the impression 
 that it may belong to that still mysterious class styled "Luzon ware" 
 by the Japanese author. 
 
 The tiny cup in Fig. 2 is covered with a grayish glaze with an impure 
 yellowish tinge and has a floral design in black-blue overglaze painting ; 
 three ornaments along the outward rim resemble fishes. Fig. 3 repre- 
 sents a blue and white porcelain dish, as said before, the only porcelain 
 in this collection; scenery of mountains and water, a rock and a building 
 in the foreground, are painted under the glaze in a darkened blue of 
 poor quality. This piece is of crude and coarse workmanship, and I 
 do not remember having seen anything similar in China. I believe I 
 do not go far amiss in assigning it to the early attempts of the Japanese 
 to imitate the Chinese cobalt-blue, which was first studied by Shonzui 
 on his visit to King-t^-chen in 15 10. Also the mark on the bottom 
 (Fig. 3b) betrays a decidedly Japanese trait, and the dish is probably 
 connected with the great export era of Japanese porcelain in the seven- 
 teenth century. Brinkley (Japan, Vol. VIII: Keramic Art, p. 87) 
 remarks: "With regard to the possibility of Japan's porcelain having 
 found its way to Eastern countries in the early years of its manufacture, 
 it appears from the evidence of a terrestrial globe in 1670 and preserved 
 in the Tokyo Museum, that Japan had commercial relations with the 
 Philippines, Cambodja, Tonkin, Annam, Siam, and various parts of 
 China, in the beginning of the seventeenth century." 
 
 The exaggerated valuation affixed to these pieces of pottery by the 
 Malayan tribes is not by any means justified by their merits, but seems 
 to be largely the consequence of the wondrous stories associated with 
 them. It is accordingly a mere ideal estimation resulting from social 
 and religious customs. Hardly any of these pieces can lay claim to 
 unusual ceramic or artistic qualities, and from a Chinese ceramic view- 
 point they are average common household productions, which would 
 not be very costly affairs when made in China at the present time. 
 While the natives have apparently linked their own ideas and beliefs 
 with this pottery, the question is justified as to whether the impetus for 
 the formation of this ceramic lore was possibly received from Chinese 
 traders. It would be plausible to assume that these were clever enough 
 to trade off on the innocents not only the jar, but also a bit of a marvel- 
 ous story about its supernatural quaHties, which was capable of in- 
 creasing the price by not a few per cent. It was not even necessary for 
 them to strain their imagination to an extraordinary degree, while on 
 
28 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 the lookout for such stories, as they abound in the domain of their own 
 folklore, so that an optimist might feel inclined to think of them as 
 honest rogues who themselves beHeved what they told their customers 
 in a mere good-natured attempt to be entertaining. 
 
 In the Tao shuo ''Discourse on Pottery" written by Chu Yen in 
 1774 and translated by Dr. Bushell, ^ we find the following tradition 
 on record : 
 
 ''Chou Yi-kung (a celebrated mihtary commander during the Sung 
 dynasty) sent a teacup as a present to a poor friend, who after his 
 return home prepared tea and poured it into the cup, whereupon there 
 immediately appeared a pair of cranes, which flew out of the cup and 
 circled round it, and only disappeared when the tea was drunk." 
 
 "Such wonderful stories," continues the Chinese author of the 
 treatise, ''may not be impossible like the transformations which happen 
 spontaneously in the furnace. Porcelain is created out of the element 
 'earth,' and combines in itself also the essential powers of the elements 
 'water' and 'fire.' It is related in the Wu ch'uan lu, that when the 
 military store-house at Mei-chun, in the province of Sze-ch'uan, was 
 being repaired, a large water-jar was found inside full of small stones. 
 After the religious worship on the first day of each moon, another lot 
 of water and stone used to be added, and this was done for an unknown 
 number of years, and yet even then it was not quite full. We read 
 again in the Yu ya chih, that while Ts'ao Chu was a small official at 
 Ch'ien-k'ang, Lu was officiating as Prefect, and there stood in front of 
 his Yamen a large jar of the capacity of five hundred piculs, from the 
 interior of which used to come out both wind and clouds. These are 
 similar stories, and are quoted here on that account." 
 
 In the same work (p. 47) a story referred to the year 1 100 is told to 
 the effect that at a wine banquet of friends the sounds of a pipe and flute 
 were suddenly heard, faintly echoing as if from above the clouds, rising 
 and falHng so that the musical notes could almost be distinguished, and 
 how upon investigation it was discovered that they came out of a pair 
 of vases, and how they stopped when the meal was over. Here we meet 
 an interesting analogy with the PhiHppine talking jars discussed by 
 Mr. Cole. Another magic legend is related regarding a scholar who 
 bought an earthenware basin to wash his hands in. The water remain- 
 ing on the bottom froze on a cold winter day, and he saw there a spray 
 of peach blossom. Next morning there appeared a branch of peony 
 crowned with two flowers. On the following day a winter landscape 
 was formed, filling the basin, with water and villages of bamboo houses, 
 wild geese flying, and herons standing upon one leg, all as complete as 
 
 1 Description of Chinese Pottery and Porcelain, p. 127 (Oxford, 1910). 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 
 
 29 
 
 a finished picture. The scholar had the basin mounted and enclosed 
 in a silk-lined case; and in the winter, he invited guests to enjoy the 
 sight. The logic of this story is intelHgible: designs and scenery as 
 painted on pottery here appear on a plain, coarse basin by a magical 
 process which is suggested to imagination by the flowers formed in an 
 ice-crust. 
 
 While these stories seem to have emanated from the Hterary circle 
 of society and savour of bookish estheticism, there are also others into 
 which more popular elements enter, and which characterize themselves 
 as originating from Taoism. There is a saying in regard to the mysteri- 
 ous ways of the Taoists capable of concentrating Heaven and Earth in 
 a vase. The legend goes that a certain Fei once noticed a stranger 
 jumping into a vase and completely disappearing in it. Fei, in utmost 
 surprise, hurried to the scene and respectfully greeted the old man who 
 invited him to enter also the marvelous vase. He gladly accepted 
 the offer and found a palace with a table covered with exquisite dishes 
 and wines which he heartily enjoyed. The old man possessed the fac- 
 ulty of placing the finest sights of nature in this jar and called himself 
 Vase-Heaven {Hu THen), subsequently changed into Hu kung, "Mr. 
 Vase." ^ Based on this legend, a potter at the end of the Ming period 
 gave himself the sobriquet ''the Taoist hidden in a Vase" {Hu yin tao 
 jen).^ 
 
 Taoist priests are generally called in by the people to expel evil 
 spirits. They are able to capture the demons and sometimes put 
 them in an earthenware vessel closed with a cover containing some 
 magic character, and the devils are thus safely carried away by the 
 priests. These and other spirits are sometimes sold to the people as 
 imbued with the power of conferring prosperity on their owners, at 
 prices ranging from twenty to forty Mexican dollars.^ 
 
 If the Chinese were lovers of fine porcelains and celebrated them 
 in verses, the Japanese may be called maniacs and worshippers of 
 pottery. In view of their relations with the Philippines and the inter- 
 change of pottery between the two, a subject discussed farther below, 
 it may not be amiss to allude briefly to the ceramic folklore of Japan, 
 which, after all, may have stimulated to a certain degree the imagina- 
 tion of the Philippine tribes. It is well known that tea was the chief 
 agency in the refinement of pottery, in Japan as in China, and also 
 in a refinement of life and social manners. The tea-plant was intro- 
 
 ^ Petillon, Allusions litteraires, p. 70. 
 
 2 HiRTH, Ancient Chinese Porcelain, p. 200. 
 
 3 Compare E. Box, Shanghai Folklore (Journal China Branch Royal Asiatic 
 Society, Vol. XXXIV, p. 125). 
 
30 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 duced into Japan from China in the thirteenth century, and at the 
 close of the fifteenth, tea-clubs were formed which practised an elaborate 
 tea-ceremonial growing into a sort of esthetic and religious cult. Need- 
 less to say that these tea-tasting competitions were derived also from 
 China and in full swing there as early as the Sung period.^ 
 
 The Japanese devotees of the tea-cult were intent on supplying 
 their cherished pieces of pottery with a history and with poetical names ; 
 they were animated with a soul, and wrapped up in precious brocades, 
 treated as gems and relics. They were eagerly bought and sold at 
 prices far out of proportion with their real value. It is recorded, 
 says Brinkley (Japan, Vol. VIII, p. 270), that the Abbot Nensei, in 
 exchange for a little tea-jar of Chinese faience, known as "First Flower," 
 obtained in 1584 a vermilion rescript excusing himself and his descend- 
 ants from the payment of all taxes forever; and it is further a fact that 
 amateurs of the present time disburse hundreds of dollars for speci- 
 mens of Soto-yaki that scarcely seem worth the boxes containing them. 
 Kuroda, the feudal chief of Chikuzen, had a triple case made for a 
 Chinese tea-jar presented to him, and appointed fifteen officials who 
 were all held responsible for its safety {Ibid., p. 319). Of wonderful 
 tales of Japan connected with pottery, the story of the dancing tea-jar 
 which assumed the shape of a badger {tanuki) ^ may be called to mind 
 as an analogy to the personification aiid zoomorphy of Malayan jars. 
 
 In 1854 Tanaka Yonisaburo wrote a book under the title Tdkiko 
 ''Investigations of Pottery," which was pubhshed in 1883 at Tokyo 
 in two volumes of moderate size. This author has devoted a noticeable 
 study to the pottery introduced into Japan from foreign countries, and 
 shows that many pieces taken for Japanese are in fact of foreign origin. 
 He dwells at length on the pottery of Luzon, which was highly appre- 
 ciated in Japan, and which seems to have acted as a stimulus to the 
 productions of her kilns. Owing to the importance and novelty of this 
 subject, a complete translation of two chapters of the Tokiko is here 
 added. In the first chapter, foreign pottery, inclusive of that of Luzon, 
 is considered in general; in the second chapter, Luzon pottery is dealt 
 with more specifically. The general designation of this pottery is 
 Namhan. The latter is a Chinese word composed of nan "south" 
 and Man, originally a generic term for all non-Chinese aboriginal 
 tribes inhabiting the mountain-fastnesses of Southern China. It is 
 usually translated ''the southern Barbarians," but it is very doubtful 
 
 1 BusHELL, /. c, p. 124. The Japanese tea-ceremonies have been described in 
 many books. Of monographs, W. Harding Smith, The Cha-No-Yu, or Tea Cere- 
 mony {Transactions of the Japan Society London, Vol. V, pp. 42-72) and Ida Trot- 
 ziG, Cha-No-Yu Japanernas Teceremoni (Stockholm, 1911) may be mentioned. 
 
 2 First told in English garb by A. B. Mitford in his Tales of Old Japan. 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 31 
 
 to me whether any such sting adhered to the name in the beginning. 
 In the ancient Chinese texts, the Man tribes are frequently spoken of 
 with dignity and respect, and Chinese authors do not shun to admit 
 many cultural elements which the Chinese owed to them. The term 
 Man may occasionally be used contemptuously, — and in what com- 
 munity would an extratribal name not be turned to such an occasional 
 use? — but this certainly does not mean that a stigma is implied in each 
 and every case. In the Chinese accounts of the conflicts with the 
 Spaniards on the Philippines, the Spaniards are sometimes entitled Man 
 instead of their usual name, because the chronicler gives vent to his 
 exasperation at their outrages, and there, it is doubtless intended for 
 savages.^ The Japanese adopted from the Chinese the term Nan-Man 
 or Namban and applied it first to all foreign regions south of their home 
 (with the exception of China), its meaning being simply "foreign tribes 
 of the south" or ''southern foreigners" including Formosa, the Philip- 
 pines, the Malayan Archipelago, Malacca, and the two Indias. Sub- 
 sequently, it was transferred also to the Portuguese, Spaniards and 
 Dutch who made their first appearance in the southern waters, and it 
 finally asstmied the general meaning "foreign," especially in connection 
 with foreign products, like namban kiwi "foreign millet," i. e. maize, 
 namban tetsu, "foreign iron." The church built by the Jesuits at Kyoto 
 in 1568 and destroyed in 1588 after Hideyoshi's edict of proscription 
 was called Namban-ji, "Temple of the Foreigners." 
 
 1 Laufer, The Relations of the Chinese to the Philippine Islands, pp. 262, 271, 
 276. (Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. L, Part 2, 1907.) 
 
TWO CHAPTERS FROM THE TOKIKO 
 
 I. Objects of the Namban 
 
 The pottery of the Namban Islands which are Amakawa,^ Luzon,^ 
 Mo-u-ru, ^ Eastern India, ^ Cochin, ^ Annam, Nekoro, ^ and Taiwan 
 (Formosa) is usually named according to the locality where it is manu- 
 factured. In case that its place of origin is not obvious, the people 
 simply speak of Namban objects, as Namban is a general designation 
 for all these places. While the best productions of the Namban are 
 tea-canisters (cha-ire), we have no reason to doubt that they produce 
 also utensils of other character. When I investigated a pitcher {mi- 
 
 zusashi) shaped likejM, experts took it for the ware called Enshu 
 
 Mikirigata Takatori.^ It was made from a black-purple clay covered 
 with a silvery lustre and brilliant with black marks. I had it exposed 
 
 1 The name is transcribed in the text only in Katakana signs, not given in 
 Chinese characters, which would facilitate its identification. Judging from its 
 phonetic composition, it sounds Japanese, and amakawa is indeed a Japanese word 
 (meaning "the inner bark of a tree"). No such geographical name, as far as I know, 
 occurs in Japan, the Luchu Islands, or the Philippines. It is mentioned farther 
 below in this text that it forms with Luzon and Formosa the group of Three Islands 
 (Mishima) and produces pottery of white clay and grayish glaze. 
 
 2 In Japanese pronunciation: Rusun (Chinese: Lii-sung). 
 ^ Presumably the Moluccas; written only in Katakana. 
 
 ^ In Japanese : To Indu. In other passages the word Tenji (Chinese : T' ien- 
 chu) is used for India. 
 
 ^ The Chinese designation Kiao-chih is used. 
 
 ^ Possibly the Nikobars. 
 
 ^ The designation of the famous master of tea-ceremonies (chanoyu) Kobori 
 Masakazu (i 576-1 645) and a group of pottery manufactured according to his 
 instructions in Takatori in the province of Chikuzen (see F. Brinkley, Japan, Vol. 
 VIII, Keramic Art, p. 318; Oueda ToKOUNOSOUKi;, La ceramique japonaise, pp. 
 89, 93). This name is given in distinction from the Ko-Takatori (Old Takatori) 
 started by Korean settlers in that district. It is not very likely that the above 
 mentioned pitcher is of real Takatori make, as a glaze of that description does not 
 occur among Takatori productions known to us, which generally are of white, 
 light-blue or ash-colored glazes, or take the Chinese "transmutation glaze" (yao 
 pien) as model. Our author evidently means to express the same opinion which 
 leads him to class the piece in question among foreign or Namban wares. — In this 
 connection, it is interesting to note that in the ancient pottery kilns at Sawankalok, 
 Siam, small vases and bottles have been discovered by Mr. T. H. Lyle, described 
 by Mr. C. H. Reid as being "of a fine pottery covered with mottled glaze, the 
 shapes often elegant, and sometimes highly finished, recalling the fine tea-jars made 
 at Takatori in the province of Chikuzen in Japan" (Journal Anthropological Insti- 
 tute, Vol. XXXIII, 1903, p. 244). 
 
 32 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 
 
 33 
 
 to a fire, and the glaze assumed a golden hue. The clay was a mixture 
 of yellow and red earths and changed into a brown. It proved to be a 
 Namban production. 
 
 Further among Yashiro Karatsu-hakeme ^ wares, there was a 
 specimen of black-purplish clay emitting, when struck, a metallic 
 sound. I had a piece broken out, and clay and glaze on examination 
 under a lense attested to its being Namban. Among old Hakeme, 
 that kind known as kodai ^ with black-purplish clay and dark-brown ' 
 and silvery lustre is Namban Hakeme. When investigating some pieces 
 without marks among Bizen, ^ Imbe, ^ Karatsu, ^ and Tamba, ^ they 
 proved to be Namban. 
 
 Mishima (''Three Islands") pottery is that made on the three 
 islands of Amakawa, Luzon, and Formosa. Among this so-called class 
 of Mishima, the large pieces with purple-black clay and green glaze 
 (sei-yaku) are Luzon pottery; ^ those of white clay and grayish ^ glaze 
 are Amakawa. As to Formosa, I have as yet no proofs, but pieces 
 popularly called Hagi Mishima^^ with a light lustre and decorated with 
 
 ^ Karatsu or Nagoya on the north-west coast of Hizen has been the harbour of 
 entry and exit for the greater part of the traffic between Japan, China and Korea; 
 the name Karatsu means "port for China." Brinkley (/. c, pp. 307 et seq.) and 
 Edward S. Morse (Catalogue of the Morse Collection of Japanese Pottery, pp. 37 
 et seq.) have devoted full discussions to the pottery productions of Karatsu. Those 
 with a broad brush-mark of white are termed hakeme, i. e. brush-marked. Brinkley 
 maintains that the potters of Karatsu were chiefly imitators, and that, their best 
 efforts being intended for the tea-clubs, they took as models the rusty wares of 
 Korea, Annam, Luzon, etc., or the choicer but still sombre products of the Seto kilns. 
 If this statement be correct, the specimen alluded to above might be also a Karatsu 
 imitation of a Namban pottery. 
 
 2 Lit. high terrace. 
 
 'Jap. shibu, the juice expressed from unripe persimmons (kaki), from which a 
 dark-brown pigment for underglaze decoration was obtained in Korea (Brinkley, 
 p. 49). 
 
 * The province of Bizen is celebrated for its hard reddish-brown stoneware 
 described by Brinkley (pp. 328 et seq.) and Morse (pp. 49 et seq.). 
 
 5 Imbe is a district in the province of Bizen. Under the name Imhe-yaki, "pot- 
 tery of Imbe," or Ko-Bizen, "Old Bizen," the ware made there at the end of the 
 sixteenth century is understood (Brinkley, p. 329). Nearly every piece of Imbe 
 ware bears a mark of some kind, usually impressed (Morse, p. 49) so that the 
 pieces without marks seem to be the exceptions justifying to some extent the sus- 
 picion of a foreign origin. 
 
 ^ It is difficult to understand what is meant by unmarked pieces of Karatsu, as 
 the Karatsu potters were not in the habit of marking their productions, and have 
 left no personal records (Brinkley, p. 311). See also the last paragraph of this 
 chapter where the presence of marks on Karatsu is utilized as evidence of its foreign 
 origin. 
 
 7 On the pottery of the province of Tamba see Brinkley, p. 398, and Morse, 
 pp. 178, 347, 360. 
 
 8 Apparently celadons. 
 
 ^ Jap. shiro-nezumi, "white rat." 
 
 1° Manufactured in the province of Nagato, with a pearl gray glaze (Brinkley, 
 p. 343; Morse, p. 81). 
 
34 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 a row of round knobs, or water pitchers with black marks on the bottom 
 appear to be Formosan. I shall deal with this subject in a subsequent 
 book. Among Gohon ^ Mishima, there are Korean and Mishima. 
 Specimens called Kumo-tsuru Mishima ^ with good lustre and fine 
 writings are Amakawa. Mishima is merely a general designation. It 
 should be specified as Higaki ^ Mishima, Rei-pin ^ Mishima, Hana ^ 
 Mishima, Hakeme ^ Mishima, Muji ^ Mishima.^ 
 
 Among the Irapo ^ I tested the clay of Old Irapo with the brush- 
 mark {hakeme) Kukihori Genyetsu Irapo,^^ and found it to be Namban 
 clay. Its make-up is crooked (yugami), and it is hard like Korean. As 
 regards the name of the potter Genyetsu, he was usually called Kuki- 
 hori. ^^ Writing the latter name with the Chinese characters for kugi 
 (''nail") and hori ("to carve") is of recent origin. Kukihori is the 
 name of a locality. His style is not limited to the Irapo, but some 
 of the Gohon^2 are like it. Considering a rice-bowl,^^ a confusion 
 with Korean ware is possible; in regard to tea-canisters (cha-ire), how- 
 ever, they are obviously Namban. The Genyetsu Irapo very seldom 
 go by the mark "made by Genyetsu" (Genyetsu-saku) . It is the same 
 case as with the Ki-Seto of Hakuan^'' under whose name originals and 
 
 1 Gohon is the name of a pottery made in Korea at the instigation of lyemitsu, 
 the third Shogun of the Tokugawa family (1623-49) which was imitated in the kilns 
 of Asahi in Yamashiro Province (T. Oueda, La ceramique japonaise, p. 89). Brink- 
 ley (p. 356) remarks that in the Asahi ware imitations are occasionally found of the 
 so-called Cochinchinese faience, but that they are rare and defective. This fact 
 may account for the above definition of Mishima. 
 
 2 /. e. Mishima with clouds (kumo) and cranes itsuru) ; also to be read Un- 
 kwaku in Sinico- Japanese pronunciation. According to Brinkley (p. 48), this 
 design was a favorite in the Korean celadons manufactured at Song-do. In all 
 probability, celadons are involved also in this case. 
 
 3 Higaki means a hedge or fence {kaki) formed by the tree hi or hinoki, Thuya 
 obtusa. 
 
 ^ Evidently a transcription of the name Philippines, the first syllable being 
 dropped. Japanese lacks the sound I and substitutes r for it. 
 ^ /. e. flowery or decorated. 
 
 8 Decorated with brush-work. 
 ^ Plain or undecorated. 
 
 ' Here the term Hana Mishima is repeated, though occurring only in the pre- 
 ceding line. The book is somewhat carelessly written. 
 
 9 The irapo were low-priced bowls serving in Korea for making offerings to the 
 dead on the cemeteries (T. Oueda, /. c, p. LVIII). 
 
 1" /. e. an irapo bowl made by the potter Genyetsu from Kukihori. 
 
 " Written with Katakana signs. 
 
 ^2 See above note i. 
 
 " Jap. chawan, lit. a tea-bowl, by which a large bowl to eat rice from is understood 
 at present, while a tea-cup is called cha-nomi-wan, "bowl for tea-drinking." 
 
 14 The name of a potter in the latter part of the fifteenth century about whom 
 very little is known. Brinkley (p. 274) and Morse (p. 200) place him in the latter 
 part of the fifteenth century, Tokounosouke Ou^da (p. 8) in the first half of the 
 seventeenth. His name is connected with the production of a yellow faience, the 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 35 
 
 imitations are included. It is a mistake to designate all Gohon as 
 Korean.^ 
 
 Toyotomi Hideyoshi (i 536-1 598) despatched a ship from Sakai to 
 Luzon and had a genuine jar (tsubo) made there. At that time, not 
 only jars were brought home from there, but it is also probable that he 
 sent to Luzon samples of Furuori Enshu.^ Among Namban ware we 
 find a cup to wash writing-brushes in (fude-arai) called Hana Tachi- 
 bana, ^ copied from Raku ware, ^ and also a plain bowl in the style of 
 Shigaraki Enshu Kirigata.^ The fact that the lord of Enshu allowed 
 the seal of this ware to be placed only on the pottery for his own royal 
 household and on that of Ido ^ is of deep significance. 
 
 The Mishima bowls (domburi) now in general use are made of pur- 
 yellow ware of Seto {Ki-Seto) , some of which are attributed by tradition directly to his 
 hand. The later copies of his work were, as in so many other cases, named for 
 him, and this makes the point of coincidence with the Irapo of Genyetsu. 
 
 ^ This is a repetition of what was stated above in regard to the Gohon. 
 
 2 The Takatori pottery named for the lord of Enshu, Kobori Masakazu (see 
 above, p. 32). The term furuori (or according to Sinico-Japanese reading ko-shoku) 
 means "ancient weavings," and possibly refers to a group of pottery decorated 
 with textile patterns. If the above statement should really prove to be an historical 
 fact, it would shed light on the piece of alleged Enshu pottery discussed by our 
 author in the beginning of this chapter and explained by him as Namban.^ We 
 could then establish the fact of an interchange of pottery between Takatori and 
 Luzon which would have resulted in mutual influences and imitations. 
 
 3 /. e. decorated pottery with an orange glaze. This ware was produced toward 
 the middle of the eighteenth century at Agano, Buzen Province; its glaze was 
 granulated so as to resemble the skin of an orange, hence known as tachibana (Brink- 
 ley, p. 403). The process is of Chinese origin (St. Julien, Histoire et fabrication de 
 la porcelaine chinoise, p. 195; S. W. Bushell, Description of Chinese Pottery and 
 Porcelain, p. 58). 
 
 * Raku is the designation of a hand-made pottery originating from a Korean 
 potter Ameya Yeisei who settled at Kyoto in 1525. His son Chojiro was protected 
 by Hideyoshi and presented by him with a gold seal bearing the character Raku 
 ("Joy") derived from the name of his palace Juraku erected at Kyoto in 1586; 
 hence the mark and name of this pottery. _ 
 
 5 Shigaraki is a place in the Nagano district, Omi province, where pottery 
 furnaces were at work as long ago as the fourteenth century. Large tea- jars for 
 the preservation of tea-leaves were the dominant feature of its manufacture. A 
 tea-jar of this kind, of extraordinary size, glazed a light-reddish tinge with splashes 
 of pale-green overglaze on the shoulders, is in the collections of the Field Museum. 
 The variety of Shigaraki mentioned in the text is usually called Enshu-Shigaraki, 
 named after Kobori Masakazu, the lord of Enshu, to whom reference was made 
 above (p. 32). According to Brinkley (p. 369), the productions with this label 
 offer no distinctive features, but are valued by the tea-clubs for the sake of their 
 orthodox shapes and sober glazes. 
 
 6 Ido is a keramic district in Korea from which Shinkuro and Hachizo hailed, 
 two Korean captives who after Hideyoshi's expedition to Korea settled at Takatori 
 in Chikuzen and started a kiln there. During the early years of their work they 
 used only materials imported from their native country, and these productions were 
 therefore designated as Ido. Kobori Masakazu, the feudal chief of Enshu, interested 
 himself in the Korean potters and became influential in the perfection of their work. 
 The Ido-yaki seems to have served also the Korean potter of Hagi as a model, for 
 the chief characteristic of his productions was grayish craquele glaze with clouds of 
 salmon tint (Brinkley, p. 344). 
 
36 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 plish clay, and the glaze is decorated in the style of nipples (chichimi 
 moyo). They are much neater than Korean ware. As they are fired 
 under an intense heat, their shapes are well curved, and their sound is 
 metalHc. They are all of Kukihori style. 
 
 Old Ido (Furu-Ido or Ko-Ido), Green Ido (Ao-Ido), and Ido-waki 
 which are green and hard are manufactured in Eastern India. The 
 book Wa-Kan-cha-shi ("Records regarding Tea in Japan and China") 
 says that this pottery comes from India, and that even those pieces 
 said to be produced in Korea have come over from India; the assertion 
 of some that it is called Ido as being made in the style of a certain potter 
 Ido is erroneous ; Furu-Ido and Ao-Ido are entirely different from other 
 Ido both in clay and glaze. This explanation of the Book on Tea is 
 correct: the Ido mentioned above are of Indian make, and the other 
 Ido are Korean.^ There are also Shiiisan ^ Ido and Sowa ^ Ido which 
 appear to be kinds of pottery of India Ido. Their glaze is blistered and 
 of low grade. Ao-Ido is the celadon '* of India. Among the objects 
 left in the temple Kin-chi-in by Todo Takatora ^ (i 556-1 630), there are 
 also Ido which seem to be celadons (seiji) . 
 
 Namban Totoya ^ pottery has a blue-black glaze uncrackled. Its 
 clay is black and purplish, and its sound is metallic. Some have three 
 or four apertures ^ in the body, and others more. The old ones are 
 called Kaki-no-heta ("Persimmon-calyx"). Among this class, also 
 incense-boxes (kogo) and pitchers {mizusashi) are found. 
 
 As regards Namban celadon {seiji), it has a black-purple clay and 
 green glaze (sei-yaku) running in white streams (tamari-yaku) here and 
 there. It has a metallic sound and is popularly called Muji Kumo- 
 tsuru or Un-kwaku, ^ or Hagi make. As regards the production of the 
 green, it is called Karat su Kumo-tsuru. What the ancients called 
 Muji Kumo-tsuru is this. 
 
 The pottery designated as Old Kumo-tsuru and Kumo-tsuru is a 
 production of the Namban. Its style of painting is fine, and the mark 
 
 ^ Regarding these Korean Ido see Brinkley, pp. 51-52. 
 
 2 The name is composed of the two characters for "ship" (shiu, Jap. fune) and 
 "mountain" (san, Jap. yama). The name is derived from Chou-shan, a place in the 
 province of Fukien, China, where a hard white porcelain was made, 
 
 3 Transcribed in Katakana. 
 
 -•Jap. seiji, "green porcelain," identical with the Chinese name for celadons. 
 Probably the celadons of Siam are meant here (T. H. Lyle, Notes on the An- 
 cient Pottery Kilns at Sawankalok, Siam. Journal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 
 XXXIII, 1903, pp. 238-245). 
 
 ^ A daimyo who served Nobunaga and then Hideyoshi and retired on his master's 
 death into the monastery Koyasan. 
 
 ^ Transcribed in Katakana. 
 
 ^ Lit. eyes. 
 
 8 /. e. plain, with clouds and cranes, a favorite design in celadons. 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 37 
 
 of a tripod vessel (gotoku) with which it is provided is also a tripod vessel 
 of the Namban. 
 
 On the preceding pages the difference between Korean and Namban 
 pottery has been explained. Further details will follow. Namban 
 are the various countries as described in the previous notes {koguchi- 
 gaki) . 
 
 Namban pottery provided with the seal of the oven from which it 
 originates is usually not recognized as such by our contemporaries, 
 
 though clay and glaze point to its being Namban. The mark \ ^ 
 finely made on Imbe ware, the mark >\ on a jar (tsubo) of Bizen, the 
 
 T 
 
 mark I three times on a tea-canister (cha-ire) of the same ware, and 
 
 the mark Roku-zo on a pitcher (mizusashi) , and marks on several other 
 potteries represent the national writing of Luzon (Luzon-no kokuji)} 
 Also a deep-brown glazed tea-canister {shibu yaku-no cha-ire) on which 
 
 the character t*^^ is written consists of Namban clay. Some of these 
 
 t 
 
 marks may have been produced by Japanese who crossed over; but 
 others may have been made by the natives (Man-jin), for it cannot be 
 ruled that Namban has no marks of the furnace. There is, e. g., on a 
 fire-pan {hi-ire) of Annam the mark Ta-kang"^ impressed by means 
 of a seal, which is the name of the maker. The tea-canisters called 
 Chosen-Garatsu (Korean Karatsu) ^ which have a plant-green (moyegi) 
 glaze and purpHsh clay, or also dark-brown (shibu) glaze with purplish 
 clay are taken by our contemporaries for real Karatsu-make on account 
 of their seals of the furnace, but I consider them as foreign manufac- 
 
 1 This is a Chinese character {ting, Jap. tei). Imbe pottery is characterized by 
 a great variety of peculiar marks the significance of most of which is unknown (see 
 Morse, pp. 49 et seq.). 
 
 2 The following characters, found in Philippine alphabets, resemble somewhat 
 
 \ 
 
 the markings on these vessels: I Pampanga; 5 Tagalog; P Ilocano, 
 equivalents for la; S Visayan; I Pampanga and Tagbanua for na; 
 
 Tagbanua for ka. [F. C. C] 
 
 ^ Denoting the numeral 7. 
 
 * The two characters are transcribed according to the Annamite pronunciation. 
 
 ^ Brinkley, p. 310. 
 
38 Field Museum or Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 tures in view of the presence of the seals. Such canisters were the 
 models of the Oribe ware.^ Karatsu pots are not made with a view to 
 durabihty and therefore not in need of affixing a seal of the furnace. 
 According to clay and glaze, they are objects of the Man. It may be 
 that Japanese who went abroad imported this ware, or some may have 
 imported the clay and glaze and baked the vessels at home. At any 
 rate, it is not the clay and glaze of Karatsu. 
 
 II. Luzon 
 
 Of pottery vessels of Luzon, there is a large variety. As a rule, 
 people call only jars (tsubo) and tea-canisters (cha-ire) Luzons. Owing 
 to the fact that all other articles of Luzon bear out a similarity to those 
 of Hagi, Karatsu, Seto, Bizen, Tamba, Takatori, Higo, Oribe, and 
 Shino, 2 Luzons are erroneously beHeved to be restricted to the above 
 two articles. Comparing the specimens discovered by me with those 
 imported at present by Chinese junks, I may give the following de- 
 scriptions of the various wares. 
 
 I. Tamba looks very much Hke Luzon. Luzon is of hard clay 
 and lustrous glaze. Greenish-yellow glaze is splashed (Jukidasu) over 
 the bottom. Our home-made ware {i. e. Tamba), however, is soft, 
 and greenish-yellow glaze is painted on the bottom. It frequently 
 
 1 Brinkley, p. 275. 
 
 2 These are, with the exception of Shino, names of pottery-producing localities 
 in Japan; the wares themselves are simply named for the places of production. 
 Most of them have been referred to in the preceding chapter. Hagi is the chief 
 town in the province of Nagato where pottery kilns were started in the sixteenth 
 century by a Korean whose descendants have continued the manufacture down to the 
 present time. Higo is the principal province on the island of Kiushu where pottery- 
 making, also under Korean influence, commenced in 1598. The Shino pottery, a 
 rude stoneware of thick, white crackled glaze, decorated with primitive designs in 
 dark-brown (shibu) pigments, was originated in 1480 by Shino lenobu, a celebrated 
 master of the tea-ceremonies (Brinkley, p. 276); Morse (p. 191) gives 1700 as the 
 earliest date to which pieces recognized under the name of Shino go back, but the 
 type of this pottery must have been made long before this date, as the gray, white- 
 inlaid Shino is accorded an age of three hundred and fifty years. 
 
 Our author Tanaka has a different story to tell regarding the origin of Shino. 
 In his second volume (p. 9) he relates that Shino Munenobu utilized a white-glazed 
 water-basin from Luzon and turned it into a rice-bowl, which gave rise to the name 
 "bowl of Shino" {Shino chawan) ; later on, this bowl was handed down to Imai Mune- 
 hisa, but the book Mei-hutsu-ki ("Records of Famous Objects") says that it is 
 Chinese; imitations of this bowl made in Owari are called Shino-yaki; there are 
 many wares from Luzon and Annam which are like Shinoyaki, and which should be 
 carefully distinguished according to clay and glaze. This account plainly shows how 
 hazy and uncertain Japanese traditions regarding their potters and pottery are. 
 The man Shino Munenobu is called by Brinkley Shino lenobu, by Morse Shino 
 Saburo or Shino Oribe (pseudonym Shino So-on), by T. Ou£da Shino Soshin. Has 
 he really lived, and when? li he lived in the latter part of the fifteenth century, as 
 maintained by a weak tradition, he is not very likely to have obtained any pottery 
 from Luzon, as there is no evidence of Japan having had any intercourse with the 
 Philippines at such an early date. 
 
July, 1912. Chinese Pottery. 39 
 
 happens that Luzon is mistaken for a Tamba.^ The distinction must 
 be made by examining the particular features, as they closely resemble 
 each other in their general make-up. 
 
 2.. Matsumoto Hagi 2 is of soft (yawaraka) clay, its glaze is not 
 transparent (sukitoru), and its sound is mellow (yawaraka). Luzon has 
 a white clay and lustrous glaze, its lustre being more vigorous than the 
 green of a snake (Jakatsu) ; ^ it has a clear sound. There are Tamba 
 which are alike Matsumoto; they are of yellow clay.^ 
 
 3. Takatori is of red clay and crackled glaze. Luzon is of white 
 and yellow clay, with uncrackled glaze, and has the design of a whirl 
 (uzu) on the handle. 
 
 4. Among Seto there are Luzons.^ Among these there are pitchers, 
 bowls and tea-canisters with gold glaze and black streaks running over 
 it. They are found scattered among those called "certain wares" 
 {naniyaki) . 
 
 5. Oribe and Luzon resemble each other. Luzon is hard and 
 lustrous; Oribe is soft and of poor lustre. 
 
 6. There are also Shino which are identical with Luzons. Luzons 
 have a transparent glaze, and on the bottoms and handles of the bowls 
 
 ^ The notice of Brinkley (p. 399), presumably derived also from a Japanese 
 source, tha^ the early productions of Tamba, — a peculiar faience having reddish 
 paste and blisters on its surface, — are supposed to resemble an imported ware at- 
 tributed to Siam, is remarkable in this connection. Brinkley, further, alludes to 
 splashed glazes on Tamba which occasionally occur and are not without attractions, 
 and Mr. Morse (p. 179) describes a Tamba jar of rich brown Seto glaze with splashes 
 of lustrous brown, mottled with greenish-yellow; but neither mentions splashes or 
 paints on the bottom. Ou£da Tokounosouk^ (La ceramique japonaise, p. 90) 
 says regarding the ancient Tamba pieces that their surface is uneven or rough like 
 the Korean vases or those of the Namhan, — the only previous instance in our 
 literature where this term has been used with reference to pottery. 
 
 2 Matsumoto is a place in the Abu district, province of Nagato. The Korean 
 Rikei who opened pottery work in Hagi, on his search for suitable clay, first dis- 
 covered it at Matsumoto, and there he settled (Brinkley, p. 344; Morse, p. 82). 
 
 ^ Jakatsu is the name of a peculiar glaze invented in China, imitated in a ware 
 of Satsuma; its dark gray and green glaze is run in large, distinct globules, supposed 
 to resemble the skin of a snake (but not the scales on a dragon's back, as Brinkley, 
 p. 137, says). In China, this glaze (called "snake-skin green," sM p'i lu) first ap- 
 pears in the era of K'ang-hi (1662-1722) and is still imitated at King-t^-ch^n-(ST. 
 JuLiEN, Histoire et fabrication de la porcelaine chinoise, pp. 107, 195). 
 
 < Mr. Morse (p. 178) speaking of the earliest Tamba made in Onohara evidently 
 alludes to this passage when he says: "These are probably the ones mentioned in 
 Tokiko as resembling old Hagi." But Morse maintains that these pieces have 
 reddish clay. 
 
 5 Seto is a small village in the province of Owari. The Seto ware (setomono 
 or setoyaki) which has become the generic term for all ceramic manufactures of 
 Japan wa* originated by Toshiro, the so-called Father of Pottery (regarding his Hfe 
 see Morse, pp. 183-184). In Vol. II, p. 11 of his work, Tanaka remarks that 
 among a kind of yellow Seto {Ki-Seto), to which we referred above (p. 34), with 
 lustrous glaze and metallic sound. Luzon. Annam, and Fukien wares are mixed, that 
 the latter has fine white clay, while Seto clay is coarse. 
 
40 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 there are designs of tomoye and three apertures. Shino has nothing 
 of the kind. 
 
 7. The tea-canisters of Luzon are of the best quaHty. Those 
 which might be confounded with Tamba are first and second grades, j 
 Those looking Hke Seto are coarse and low grades of Luzons. They 1 
 are frequently found together with those ranging as second quaHties 
 among the Namban.i jhe water-dishes (mizu-ire) 2 and oil-dishes 
 (abura-ire) among the Namban with yellow clay and splashes of dark- 
 brown (shibu fukidasu) are Luzons. 
 
 8. I obtained a tea-canister of the shape \ / similar to Tamba. 
 
 On its shoulders, four plum-blossoms and two seals are impressed by 
 means of a stamp. The writing was first illegible, but when I rubbed 
 
 it, it appeared as follows: 
 
 ^ 
 
 The symbol in the latter 
 
 seal may be the character M Lil in the national writing of Luzon. * 
 
 X? 
 
 This vessel was of yellow clay and tea-colored glaze with splashes of 
 dark-brown (shibu). 
 
 9. Pearl-gray celadon (shukd seiji) is the celadon {seiji) of Luzon. 
 
 10. Sun-koroku should be written Rusun- (i. e. Luzon) koroku.^ 
 
 ^ Namban is here expressed in the text by "insular objects." 
 
 2 Dishes containing the water to be poured on the ink-pallets and used in rubbing 
 a cake of ink. 
 
 3 In the Japanese text, the two seals are placed the one below the other; for the 
 sake of convenience, they are here arranged side by side. 
 
 ^ This supposition is probably correct. The case is as follows. The second 
 portion of the seal plainly contains two Chinese characters reading sung ch' i; this 
 character sung is used in writing the second syllable in the name of Luzon, Chinese 
 Lii-sung, Japanese Ru-sun. It is therefore logical to conjecture the character for 
 Lu preceding that for sung. The sign in the first seal, however, is not obviously 
 identical with the latter, but apparently a variation of it in ornamental style, which, 
 as suggested by our author, may have developed on Luzon itself. If we adopt 
 this reading, we obtain the legend: Lii-sung ch'i (Chinese) or Ru-sun tsukuru (Jap- 
 anese), which means: "Luzon make," or "made on Luzon." I see no reason to 
 doubt the credibility of our informant, and take it for granted that a vessel with such 
 a seal really was in existence. This fact, then, is of great historical importance, 
 for it demonstrates that pottery may have actually been manufactured on the 
 Philippines either by Chinese or Japanese, or by both. 
 
 5 Mr. Morse (p. 321) alludes to this passage in the following notice: "The 
 work Tokiko says that the word Sunkoroku ought to be written Rosokoroku. It 
 further adds that Sun stands for the Chinese dynasty, and Koroku the name of a 
 pottery. ' ' But it will be seen from the above text that our author means to express 
 a dififerent sense. He is far from identifying the word Sun with the Sung dynasty, 
 but proposes to interpret it as Lii-sung, Rusun, Luzon (the reading Roso is certainly 
 possible, but the Tokiko, in the first passage where the word occurs, transcribes the 
 characters in Kana as Rusun). The pottery called Sunkoroku is, according to 
 Morse, a hard stoneware with dull yellowish or grayish clay (that having the former 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 41 
 
 On Luzon it is the designation for a dyed article. On a flowerpot of 
 Mitani Rioboku Fukushiu, the legend Karamono Koroku {i. e. Chinese 
 Koroku) is inscribed. Koroku is an article of pottery. It is so called 
 by combining the names of the utensil and the locality. It is soft 
 because it is not thoroughly baked. Among later imports some with 
 black designs and pale-yellow glaze are encountered. Its sound is 
 solid. 
 
 11. Luzon is compact and dense both in clay and glaze. After 
 years, when washed, it appears like new, and its age may be doubted. 
 This is due to the intense heat of the tropical regions. 
 
 12. The genuine jars and tea-canisters have their bottoms concave.^ 
 The "Book on Tea" (Cha-kei) says: "When placed on the bottom and 
 on the sides of the body, tea keeps well in these jars." Luzon, therefore, 
 is serviceable for tea. 
 
 13. The best qualities are of white clay; the middle grades are of 
 yellow clay mixed with white clay and sand ; and the lowest grades are 
 of purplish-black clay. 
 
 14. All Luzon pieces have the wheel-mark (rokuro) ^D^ - On the 
 
 incense-boxes {kdgo) it is always found inside of the body and on the 
 Hd. On the basins {hachi), censers {koro) and bowls (chawan) it is 
 outside on the bottom. On the pitchers (mizusashi) it is on the handle. 
 Among the so-called Koshido of Iga Shigaraki, Luzons are numerous. 
 They should carefully be distingmshed. Those of stronger lustre 
 and free from any defilements are Luzons. One will surely find two 
 vertical spatular marks on the right. 
 
 The following varieties are encountered among Luzons: Tea- 
 canisters with plum-blossoms impressed by means of a stamp, and a 
 
 color being the oldest) with a peculiar archaic decoration of scrolls and diapers, 
 rarely landscapes, carefully drawn in dark brown; whatever the origin of the style 
 of decoration, it forms a most unique type. There are fifteen pieces of this pottery 
 in the Morse collection at Boston, and one of these is dated 1845. It may hence 
 be inferred that the first part of the nineteenth century is the period when the Sun- 
 koroku was in vogue. The Japanese concerned seem to agree in assigning to it a 
 foreign origin. T. Oueda (La ceramique japonaise, p. 69) explains the word as the 
 name of a centre of foreign manufacture the products of which were imitated. 
 Brinkley (p. 171) holds a more elaborate theory. He makes Sunkoroku a variety 
 of Satsuma copied from a faience of archaic character manufactured near Aden,^ and 
 valued by the Japanese for the sake of its curiosity and foreign origin. "The 
 pate is stone-gray, tolerably hard, but designedly less fine than that of choice Satsu- 
 ma wares. The glaze is translucid, and the decoration consists of zigzags, scrolls, 
 diapers, and tessellations in dark brown obtained from the juice of the Kaki. The 
 Indian affinities of this type are unmistakable. It is not without interest, but a 
 somewhat coarse gray faience with purely conventional designs in dark brown cer- 
 tainly cannot boast many attractions. The original ware of Aden is, in some cases, 
 redeemed from utter homehness by a curious purplish tinge which the glaze assumes 
 in places." It is evident that this pottery is different from that of our Japanese 
 author, which is stated to be soft. 
 
 1 This is the case in all specimens of Philippine jars in Mr. Cole's collection 
 
42 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 thin yellow-green glaze. The same with a combination of black and 
 gold glaze. The same with gold glaze. The same with black glaze. 
 The same with tea-colored (brownish) glaze and provided with ears. 
 The same with green-yellow glaze. The same with yellow glaze. The 
 same of the. shape of a rice-kettle. The same with four nipples. ^ The 
 same with projecting bottom. The same called Usu-ito-giriP- The 
 same called Hi-tasuki.^ The same with candy-brown^ glaze. Mon- 
 rin.^ Tegami.^ Oil-pitchers. The same with ears. The same, Utsu- 
 mi and Daikei.^ The same called Nasubi.^ The same called Wari- 
 futa.^ Various shapes of Bizen. Shapes of Iga, and other kinds. 
 
 Of Mishima there are the following: Undecorated common ones 
 {muji-hira). The same, of the black variety of the country Go.^° 
 With painting of a trout {ayu). Various kinds with brush -marks 
 (hakeme). Old Mishima. Deep bowls {domhuri). Various Mishima. 
 Gourd-shaped fire-holders with brush-mark. 
 
 Of white porcelain, there are the following: Pitchers (katakuchi) . 
 Hcind-jngs (te-bac hi). Boat-shaped jugs (fune-bachi)}^ Various bowls. 
 Tachimizu. Gourd-shaped fire-holders. Plain basins. Fire-holders 
 
 ^ I. e. knobs. The Chinese archaeologists avail themselves of the same expression 
 in describing the knobs on certain ancient bronze bells and metal mirrors. Com- 
 pare p. 36. 
 
 2 /. e. cut with a thin thread. The thread was used to cut off the superfluous 
 clay at the bottom of the piece before removing the latter from the wheel, a con- 
 trivance first applied by the famous potter Toshiro of the thirteenth century (Brink- 
 ley, p. 266). The term is here simply used in opposition to the pieces with pro- 
 jecting bottom. 
 
 3 /. e. vermilion cord; tasuki is a cord used for girding up the sleeves while work- 
 ing. These vessels doubtless had a cord brought out in relief around the neck, as 
 may be seen, e. g., also in Chinese terra cotta of Yi-hsing. 
 
 * Ante or takane is a kind of jelly made from wheat or barley flour. 
 
 5 Or Bun-rin. Brinkley (p. 319) mentions a tea-jar named Fun-rin cha-tsubo, 
 without explaining this designation. 
 
 ^ Jars with ears. 
 
 ^ Utsumi (Chinese: nei hai) means inland sea, .and daikei (Chinese: ta hai) 
 great sea; expressions to denote certain varieties of pottery. 
 
 ^ J. e. egg-plant. 
 
 ' /. e. with divided lids. 
 
 " Chinese: Wu. Wu was the name of an ancient kingdom in China inhabited 
 by a non-Chmese stock of peoples and comprising the territory of the present prov- 
 mce of Kiangsu, the south of Anhui, and the north of Ch^kiang and Kiangsi. An 
 ancient tradition has it that the Japanese called themselves descendants of the 
 ancestor of the kings of Wu (Chavannes, Les memoires historiques de Se-ma 
 Ts len, Vol. IV, p. i), and the oldest cultural relations of Japan with China refer to 
 this region. The Japanese understand the name Wu (or Go according to their 
 pronunciation) in the sense of middle China, also as China in general, sometimes 
 more specifically as the region of the Yangtse Delta, or as Nanking. 
 
 ^, "A jardiniere in the shape of a boat, of Shino pottery, is figured in Collection 
 Ch. Gtllot, p. 104. 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 
 
 43 
 
 with ears. Kaya-tsubo.^ Wine-cups ^ with ears, on stands. Koroku 
 water-pitcher. Koroku deep bowls (domburi). The same, hexagonal 
 incense-box. The same, incense-box in straight lines. 
 
 Of Oribe shapes, the following are known: Three incense-boxes. 
 Water-pitcher {mizutsugi) . Flower- vase. Bowl. Basin. 
 
 Of Shino shapes, a bowl, incense-box, water-pitcher, wine-cup, 
 saucer, basin, jug (katakuchi), and others, are known. 
 
 Of black-glazed ware, flower- vases with ears, various water-pitchers, 
 and tachimizu with ears are known. 
 
 Of Iga shapes, water-pitchers with ears, one made by Koson,^ and 
 various pieces similar to Iga and Shigaraki are known. 
 
 Various pieces resembhng Seto, Tamba, Takatori, Yasshiro, Karatsu, 
 etc. 
 
 Of plainly burnt ware:^ bottle with vermilion cord (hi-tasuki 
 tokuri); fire-holder; goiu-d-shaped water-pitcher; large and small 
 kayatsubo. 
 
 Of gourd-shaped pieces there are: jugs (katakuchi); hexagonal ones; 
 tachimizu; flower- vases with horizontal rope and ears; rippled bowls 
 with sea-slug glaze; ^ basin in the shape of a fish; water-pitcher with 
 dark-brown (shibu) glaze and potato-head {imo-gashira) . 
 
 Of Shibu ware there are water-pitchers with indented rim; green- 
 glazed katakuchi J and the same of black glaze and gold glaze. 
 
 This account is exceedingly interesting, but must certainly not be 
 accepted on its face value. The author apparently suffers from a 
 certain degree of Luzonitis by seeing Luzon ware in every possible case, 
 and without rendering himself a clear account of what this Luzon 
 pottery is. Judging from the extensive trade carried on between China 
 and the PhiHppines, the large bulk of foreign pottery brought to the 
 Islands must have been of Chinese origin, and the descriptions given 
 by our Japanese author, however succinct they may be, hardly allow 
 of any other inference than that the pieces referred to are Chinese. 
 If we adopt this point of view, an embarrassing difficulty arises at once. 
 If it is here the question of plainly Chinese pottery, why does the 
 Japanese scholar not make any statement to this effect? Is it believable 
 that a Japanese expert in ceramics who is bound to know Chinese 
 pottery thoroughly, and who writes about it with authority in the same 
 
 ^ Lit. mosquito-net jars. 
 
 2 Choku, lit. pig's mouth. 
 
 2 Apparently provided with this mark. 
 
 * Suyaki-mono, i. e. unglazed pottery. 
 
 ^ Namako-gusuri, so called from the Hkeness which the flambS glaze bears to the 
 greenish-blue mottled tints of the sea-slug (namako), a Chinese glaze imitated in 
 Satsuma ware (Brinkley, p. 137). 
 
44 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 book, should have failed to recognize the Chinese character of pieces 
 brought from Luzon over to Japan? If he does not allude to any 
 Chinese relationship, but classifies this ware as a distinct group of 
 Luzons, — what is, or could then be, the specific character of these pro- 
 ductions to differentiate them from Chinese or any other? One point 
 is obvious at the outset, — that this Luzon ware cannot be due to any 
 native tribes of the PhiHppines. The descriptions refer to highly 
 glazed pieces of an advanced workmanship, such as have never been 
 turned out by the aborigines, whose primitive unglazed or polished 
 earthenware could hardly have tempted the Japanese, not to speak of 
 having eHcited their admiration, as we read on the preceding pages. 
 In order to understand, on the part of the Japanese, the assumption of 
 an individual, artistic Philippine pottery coveted by them and deemed 
 worthy of imitation, we have three possibilities to take into considera- 
 tion: the trade of Siam and Cambodja with the Islands by which 
 pottery of these countries has doubtless reached them, particularly 
 the celadon made in Siam; a special manufacture of pottery in China 
 for the needs of the Philippine market; and possibly, to a certain extent, 
 a home production on the Islands through Chinese or Japanese settlers 
 (or both).^ By availing themselves of local clays and glazing materials, 
 these may have accomplished a ware of fairly peculiar qualities and yet 
 not much removed from what they had learned in the lands of their 
 birth. Such an hypothesis would indeed meet the requirements of the 
 situation advantageously and satisfactorily. The only objection to 
 be made to it, — and it is certainly a strong one, — is that no record of 
 any Sino- Japanese pottery-making on the Islands exists, either in 
 Spanish accounts, or in native traditions, or in Chinese and Japanese 
 literature. On the other hand, no valid reason could be advanced 
 against the possibility of its existence, and in the same manner as the 
 ruins of the celadon kilns of Siam, for a long time disowned, have finally 
 been discovered, we may expectantly look forward to a future similar 
 
 ^ In the Seiyo-ki-hun, an old Japanese manuscript by Arm Hakuseki, trans- 
 lated by S. R. Brown {Journal North China Branch Royal Asiatic Society, N. S., 
 Vols. II and III, Shanghai, 1865 and 66), there is the following passage relative to 
 the Japanese settlement on Luzon (Vol. II, p. 80) : " In the southwest part of Luzon, 
 there is a mountain which produces a large amount of silver. More than three 
 thousand descendants of Japanese emigrants live there together and do not depart 
 from the customs of their fatherland. When their officers make their appearance 
 abroad, they wear two swords and are accompanied by spear-bearers. The rest of 
 these Japanese wear one sword. The Spaniards have laws for the government of 
 this colony of Japanese, and do not let them wander about in the country indis- 
 criminately. Four years ago twelve Japanese who had been driven off from our 
 coast by a storm, arrived at Rusun [Luzon], and the Spaniards assigned them a 
 place with the rest of their countrymen." The political platform of these Japanese 
 colonizers, who seem to have been settled before 1598, was an entente cordiale with the 
 Spaniards and hostile attitude toward the Chinese, in their own interest (see Rela- 
 tions of the Chinese, etc., p. 269). 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 
 
 45 
 
 discovery on the Philippines. One palpable piece of evidence pointing 
 in this direction is furnished by our author in the description of a tea- 
 canister bearing the Chinese seal "Luzon make" (p. 40). The only 
 plausible explanation for this, if the report is correct, — and I see no 
 reason to take umbrage at it, — is that a jar with such a special mark 
 could but have been produced on the very soil of Luzon. 
 
 Conspicuous among the pottery recorded in the Tokiko are the 
 celadons. They are attributed to the Namban in general, to India and 
 to Luzon in particular. The black-purple clay, the green glaze, the 
 metallic sound, the designs of clouds and cranes, all pronounced char- 
 acteristics of celadons, are insisted on by our author. The search of 
 the Japanese for celadons in the PhiHppines is the more remarkable, as 
 they received these vessels from China and Korea and subsequently 
 manufactured them in their own country. Celadon was imitated at 
 Okawachi in the province of Hizen, though the time of its beginnings 
 seems not to be known. According to Brinkley (p. 99) the color of 
 the glaze in some of the best specimens is indescribably beautiful; 
 only a practiced eye can perceive that, in point of dehcacy and lustre, 
 the advantage is with the Chinese ware. In the first part of the seven- 
 teenth century, celadon was produced at Himeji in the province of 
 Harima on the Inland Sea {Ibid., p. 372), in the* eighteenth century by 
 the potter Eisen at Kyoto (p. 210), later on at Meppo.(p. 378), from 1801 
 at Inugahara (p. 380), quite recently by Seifu at Kyoto (p. 417), and 
 at Otokoyama in the province of Kishiu (p. 377). 
 
 Hideyoshi, the Taiko, a liberal patron of the ceramic industry which 
 was revived and promoted under his untiring activity, had a genuine 
 jar made for himself on Luzon, as stated by our author. This is in 
 accord with contemporaneous Jesuit relations. The Jesuit Ludwig 
 Froez (Frois) wrote in 1595: ''In the Phihppines jars called boioni are 
 found which are estimated low there but highly priced in Japan, for the 
 delicious beverage Cie (tea) is well preserved in them; hence what is 
 counted as two crowns by the Filipino, is much higher valued in Japan 
 and looked upon as the greatest wealth like a gem." ^ Hideyoshi 
 monopolized the trade in this pottery and is said to have confiscated 
 similar jars on their arrival from Japanese Christians who had purchased 
 them at Manila, and to have prohibited any further trade in them under 
 penalty of death. ^ But the same Hideyoshi was visited in his castle at 
 Osaka by Chinese merchants who brought him the choicest ceramic 
 productions of their country. Many a noble pair of celadon vases 
 
 1 Quoted by O. Munsterberg, Chinesische Kunstgeschichte, Vol. II, p. 247. 
 
 2 O. Nachod, Die Beziehungen der Niederlandischen Ostindischen Kompagnie 
 zu Japan, p. 57 (Leipzig, 1897). Compare also Cole, above, p. 10. 
 
46 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 
 
 thus came into his possession, and were presented by him to temples 
 throughout the country where several of them are still carefully pre- 
 served.^ For this reason, we are bound to presume, either that the 
 celadons hunted by the Japanese on the PhiHppines were different from 
 those imported from China, or that the Chinese imports did not suffice 
 to fill the demand, and that the commercial opportunities afforded on 
 the PhiHppines must have had a special attraction for them. This may 
 indeed be inferred from the poHtical events of the time. Hideyoshi's 
 miHtary expedition to Korea in 1597 was a blow directed against China. 
 During the rule of the Ming dynasty (i 368-1 643), commercial relations 
 between China and Japan were crippled; Japanese corsairs pillaged 
 the coasts of southern China, and fear of them led to the exclusion of 
 Japanese trading- vessels except admission on special passports, and 
 but few Chinese junks stealthily made for Japan. Only the advance 
 of the Manchu dynasty brought about a change in these conditions, 
 and after the Dutch had lost the possession of Formosa (1662), China's 
 trade with Japan began to flourish. While Hideyoshi, owing to the 
 high ambitions of his politics, observed a hostile attitude toward China, 
 he cast his eyes Philippine ward. In 1592, he despatched a message to 
 the Spanish Governor, demanding the recognition of his supremacy; 
 otherwise he would enforce it by an invasion and devastation of the 
 Islands. The frightened Governor, not prepared for such an attack nor 
 willing to lose the profitable trade relations with Japan, sent an embassy 
 under the leadership of a Dominican to the Taiko to whom he offered a 
 treaty of amity. Hideyoshi promised to desist from military action, 
 on payment of a yearly tribute. In 1593, the conditions of this treaty 
 were stipulated, according to which the Japanese promised to despatch 
 annually to Manila ships freighted with provisions, to stop piracy, and 
 to grant passports to Spanish captains for the safety of their ships.^ 
 
 In many cases where our Japanese author believes to recognize 
 Namban or Luzon types among well-known Japanese wares, I am under 
 the impression that such coincidences, partially, may be due to the 
 common ancestorship of these pieces being in China. The traditions 
 of Japanese potters rest on those of China, and even in comparatively 
 modern productions of Japanese furnaces, many ancient Chinese forms 
 are rather faithfully preserved. Mr. Morse '(p. 320), in speaking of 
 Satsuma, has the following interesting remark: ''One of the types 
 of Ninagawa ^ resembles very closely in form a jar found among ancient 
 Chinese pieces discovered in caves in Borneo, an example of which is 
 
 1 Brinkley, /. c, p. 31. 
 
 2 Nachod, /. c, pp. 58, 60. 
 
 ^ A Japanese writer on pottery. 
 
July, 191 2. Chinese Pottery. 47 
 
 in the Trocadero Museum in Paris." This can only mean to say that 
 the piece in question is derived from a Chinese type, which was also 
 the parent of the Borneo jar. 
 
 But whatever our criticism of this Japanese record may be, it re- 
 veals a good rrfany interesting facts hitherto unknown to us. It unrolls 
 a picture of a former intimate contact between the two cultures, and 
 undeniably shows that at a time the Philippines must have been a rich 
 storehouse of fine pottery of various descriptions coveted and imitated 
 by the Japanese. We are thus confronted with the fact that historical 
 problems worth}^ of investigation are connected with the Philippines, 
 and that the question of foreign pottery in existence on the Islands is 
 much more complicated than it appears on the surface. Inquiries 
 should be made in Japan as to any stirviving examples of this so-called 
 Luzon pottery and its possible influences on indigenous manufactures. 
 Further research conducted in the Philippines may bring to light addi- 
 tional material toward the solution of this problem. 
 
FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
 
 ANTHROPOLOGY, VOL. XII, PLATE 
 
 BURIAL Cave. 
 
FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
 
 ANTHROPOLOGY, VOL. XII, PLATE V. 
 
 Chinese Dragon-Jar. 
 
FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. ANTHROPOLOGY, VOL. XII, PLATE VI. 
 
 Chinese Dragon-Jar. 
 
FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
 
 ANTHROPOLOGY, VOL. XII, PLATE VII. 
 
 Chinese dragon-Jar. 
 
FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
 
 ANTHROPOLOGY, VOL. XII, PLATE VIII. 
 
 Chinese dragon-Jar. 
 
FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. ANTHROPOLOGY, VOL. XII, PLATE X. 
 
 CHINESE JAR WITH BLUE AND GREEN MOTTLED, CRACKLED GLAZE. 
 
FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. ANTHROPOLOGY, VOL. XII, PLATE XI. 
 
 Chinese Dark Olive-Green Glazed Wine-Jar. 
 
V 
 
FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
 
 ANTHROPOLOGY, VOL. Xli, PLATE XII. 
 
 Chinese Light-Blue Glazed Jar. 
 
FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. ANTHROPOLOGY, VOL. XII, PLATE XIV. 
 
 CHINESE BLUE AND GREEN GLAZED LlQUOR-JAR. 
 
FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. ANTHROPOLOGY, VOL. XII, PLATE XV. 
 
 Chinese green-Glazed Jar. 
 
FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
 
 ANTHROPOLOGY, VOL. XII, PLATE XVI. 
 
 CHINESE GREEN-GLAZED WiNE-jAR. 
 
^ UJ 
 
CALIFORNIA COLLEGE 
 IN CHINA 
 
 <X 
 
VKV^