Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/28

 was then that Japan began to receive from China specimens of coarse porcelain, some of which are still preserved and venerated by collectors.

That the manufacture of translucid porcelain in China should have preceded its manufacture in Europe by only seven centuries, instead of seventeen as has hitherto been maintained, will not be readily admitted. Yet there is much to support the Japanese view. It is known that before and after the time to which the invention of porcelain is commonly attributed, the Chinese were in commercial communication with the eastern countries of the Roman Empire, and that they received from thence various kinds of glass which they ranked with the seven Buddhist gems. For this glass—of which there were two principal classes, lu-li or opaque glass, and po-li or transparent—they paid immense prices. They had no suspicion that it was artificial, regarding it rather as ice a thousand years old, a precious stone second only to jade. By the Japanese, also, it was held in scarcely less esteem. Beads, probably made on the coast near Sidon, were treasured by Japanese Emperors, buried in their tombs, or preserved among their relics. The Chinese supplied the Japanese with glass, and were themselves supplied by the Syrians, but all the while no Chinese porcelain found its way either to Rome or Japan. Its invention was still in the lap of a distant future. Dr. Hirth, in his recently published work, "China and the Roman Orient," says:—"During the Tats'in period (i.e. the period of China's commercial intercourse with the Roman Orient), "that peculiar fancy for objets de vertu which in Chinese life have at all times taken the place of other luxuries, was not yet absorbed by the porcelain industry, which prob-