Historical Observations and Conclusions 105 



credit it with the meaning of "porcelain," but attributes to it only the 

 proper significance, "loadstone." This, however, means nothing. 

 Chinese standard works, like the great cyclopaedia T'u shu tsi ch'eng 

 and others, also the Japanese, employ this character throughout in the 

 sense of "porcelain," so that there is no longer the question of confusion. 

 On the contrary, it is a perfectly legitimate usage, even sanctioned by 

 the English and Chinese Standard Dictionary issued by the Shanghai 

 Commercial Press; and for this reason our own dictionaries, like those 

 of Palladius, Giles, and Couvreur, are justified in assigning the meaning 

 "porcelain" also to the character ts'e k&. This was the outcome of a 

 natural development of the language, which no alleged purism can sweep. 

 The original term "porcelain of Ts'e" was simply amplified into the 

 wider notion of porcelain in general, because the word ts'e employed 

 in the name of the city bearing that name, and the word ts'e for 

 "porcelain," though physically different words, phonetically are ho- 

 mophonous. 1 This history of the subject clearly shows that Hirth's 

 theory is untenable and should be discarded. The new word ts'e &8, 

 in the sense of "porcelain," has no organic and historical connection 

 whatever with the older word for " porcelain " ts'e %, but is an independ- 

 ent side-issue of purely incidental character. The alleged evolution 

 from earthenware to stony material cannot be read from the formation 

 of these characters, as they have nothing in common, and move along 

 separate lines. This conclusion settles also the general speculation* 

 to the effect that the word ts'e in its origin should have meant nothing 

 but common earthenware, and that gradual improvement of the ware 

 resulted in changes of meaning and writing. We now recognize that 

 the genuine character for ts'e ~tt has not been subject to any alterations, 

 and that it was in the beginning exactly the same as it is at present. It 

 is therefore infinitely more probable that this speculation regarding 

 substitutes of material resulting in altered significations of the word is 

 imaginary in its entire range; that is to say, the newly coined word ts'e, 

 from the days of its childhood, denoted not simply "earthenware," 



the question is here of porcelain is confirmed by the King te chen Vao lu (Julien, 

 Histoire, p. 28). In other passages of the T'ang Annals we meet the regular mode 

 of writing ^^; for instance, in Ch. 41, p. 4 b, where the porcelain of Hui-ki in 

 Yue-chou (the present province of Che-kiang) is mentioned. In the T'ai p'ing 

 huan yu ki only the form §§► is employed. "Porcelain" is expressed by $& in the 

 Liao shi (Ch. 104, p. 2) and Yuan shi (Ch. 88, p. 10 b). 



1 The mental process underlying this transformation may be compared with 

 the extension of our word "china" to porcelains made in any countries outside 

 of China. 



* Hirth, Ancient Chinese Porcelain, p. 130 (repeated in his Chinesische Studien, 

 P- 48). 



