Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/30

 moment be confounded with porcelain. It is unsafe to attach much chronological importance to differences of terms and ideographs about which confusion still exists.

There are two pieces of evidence which, whatever may be their real value, seem opposed to the verdict of Japanese antiquarians as to the earliest manufacture of porcelain in China. The first is furnished by the Cha Ching, a treatise on tea, written by Liu Yu, in the middle of the eighth century of the Christian era. In this book descriptions are given of various kinds of tea-cups, the merits of which are judged rather by the effect of their coloured glazes in contrast with the colour of infused tea, than by their keramic qualities. Of the best, which are said to have been made at a place called Yueh-chou (now Shao-hsing-fu) in the province of Chikiang, it is related that they were as transparent as jade, and that, owing to the sweetness of their timbre, they were used like musical glasses. The second piece of evidence is the story told by an Arab traveller, Solyman, who visited China in the middle of the ninth century. He wrote:—"There is in this country a very fine clay with which they make vases that have the transparence of glass. Water can be seen through them." This account has been held to indicate the existence of translucid ware; that is to say, the existence not only of porcelain proper, but even of the finest and thinnest description of porcelain. There seems little hope now of determining exactly what was meant by the author Liu Yu or the traveller Solyman. But their language does not necessarily refer to porcelain proper. Translucidity alone is not an absolute proof of real porcelain. Witness, for example, the so-called "porcelain" of Persia, a