Introductory 83 



Emperor Wen. Mr. Gammon told me that he had bought the jar 

 on the spot where it was found. The jar itself, like the others belong- 

 ing to us, was welded or coiled up by hand before a summary smooth- 

 ing-off on the wheel. It had four loop handles, finger-modelled, at 

 the shoulder (two only of these remain), and was glazed in a thin 

 running blackish-green, of which the little that still adheres is for the 

 most part oxidized to dull brownish-ochre. The clay is softer than 

 your shards, and softer, too, than that of 12865 or I2 875; but it seems 

 to be quite the same in all other respects. It has the same admixture 

 of black and occasional white particles in the mass of gray, the same 

 unevenly ferruginous surface, and the same occasional thickening of 

 that surface. The jar is much less well potted than your pieces and 

 ours. Perhaps it is more primitive; that is, it may be an early example 

 of the method used so expertly in making your jars and ours. Perhaps, 

 on the other hand, it is simply cruder; that is, the potter may have 

 used a well-known and well-developed method carelessly in making 

 an unimportant vessel. Who knows? I incline toward the latter 

 possibility. 



"I dated the jar 'Han' because of the evidence of the coins found 

 in it. Now, emboldened by your ascription of the date to the porce- 

 lanous jars, I shall classify No. 12865 m the Han period or shortly 

 after. As regards 12875, because of its different glaze and an obscure 

 device impressed on its shoulder, I am not yet sure." 



At my request Mr. Kershaw was good enough to send me for ex- 

 amination the pan-liang copper coins, twenty-one all together, found in 

 Mr. Gammon's jar. They all proved to be authentic, as particularly 

 determined by close comparison with numerous corresponding issues 

 in the Chalfant coin collection, and to have been issued under the Han. 1 

 The presence of this batch of coins in that vessel is, of course, no abso- 

 lute proof warranting us in assigning the vessel to the early Han period, 

 as these coins may still have been in circulation long after Han times. 

 In 1901 I found in actual circulation at Si-ngan fu Han copper coins 

 with the legend wu chu. A collection of twenty-one Han pan-liang 

 coins in a single jar would rather hint at a high appreciation of this 

 money, and such is rather more probable in post-Han than in Han 

 times. At any rate, the exclusive presence of a single Han issue, 

 together with the absence of any later coin, would seem to favor a 

 period approaching very closely the age of the Han. 



1 Money with this legend, weighing exactly half an ounce (pan-liang), was 

 first issued under the Ts'in (see Chavannes, M6moires historiques de Se-raa Ts'ien, 

 Vol. Ill, pp. 539, 542). 



