Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/29

 ably did not begin to assume large dimensions previous to the Tang dynasty. Clumsy copper censers and other sacrificial implements, imitating the then archaic style of the Chan dynasty, monopolised the attention of the rich, together with the so-called precious materials. A large portion of the latter came from Tats'in, and glass is in all the older records mentioned among them." Had Dr. Hirth written "keramic," instead of "porcelain," industry, there would have been nothing to question in this opinion. The Chinese do not seem to have turned their attention seriously to keramics until, as in Japan four centuries later, the growing popularity of tea, under the Tang dynasty (618-907), provided a new function for vessels of faïence. Glass was then comparatively out of fashion. Its composition had become known to the Chinese about 430, and they already excelled in its manufacture. Thenceforth glazed pottery or fine stone-ware became the national taste, until, in the tenth or eleventh century, porcelain was discovered.

Du Sartel, in his "Porcelaine de Chine," says that under the Tang dynasty (618-907), the term yao was substituted for tao in describing the keramic productions of the era, and concludes that the substitution may be taken as indicating the first manufacture of true porcelain. Neither the fact upon which this inference is founded nor the inference itself can be accepted. As far back as the Wei dynasty (220-265), the ideograph yao was used with reference to pottery; and in comparatively modern times, when the distinctive meaning of the two ideographs—did any distinction really exist in the sense indicated by M. du Sartel—would have been fully recognised, the term yao was applied to boccaro ware, which cannot for a