THE POTTER'S WHEEL 



When the clay is on the wheel the potter 

 may shape it as he will, though the clay 

 rejoins, 'Now you trample on me, one day 

 I shall trample on you.' 



Sir Herbert Risley, The People of India. 



Most of the phenomena of Chinese culture have hitherto been 

 studied in splendid isolation. Sinologues have usually been content to 

 gather their information from Chinese sources and to arrange it in 

 chronological order, giving a more or less critical digest of the subject 

 from the Chinese viewpoint; but the question as to what the phe- 

 nomena actually mean is, as a rule, shunned, their interpretation hardly 

 attempted. It is certainly impossible to grasp any phenomenon with- 

 in a given culture-zone without understanding the parallel phenomena 

 in other areas, and without setting them in correlation with their 

 concomitant factors. The historical position and development of any 

 cultural idea can be determined only by an attempt to unravel its 

 causal connection with the natural group of related or associated ideas; 

 for no phenomenon is isolated or absolute, but conditional upon others, 

 relative, and cohesive. Whether this method be styled that of com- 

 parative ethnology or archasology, or that of culture-science, or some- 

 thing else, does not matter. It is there, and must be applied if we 

 are eager to reach results. How it can be applied I wish to demonstrate 

 by discussing on the following pages the nature of a simple instrument, 

 — the potter's wheel. Its concatenation with other technical elements 

 and with social and religious factors will be pointed out, and may help 

 to show the history of pottery in a new light, and in particular to 

 determine the relation of ancient Chinese ceramic art to that of the 

 West. In a case like this one, the foundation of which reaches back 

 into a prehistoric past, a purely historical method is of no avail, and 

 will lead us nowhere. Thus Hobson 1 observes, "Unfortunately, none 

 of the [Chinese] writers can throw any light on the first use of the 

 potter's wheel in China. It is true, that, like several other nations, 

 the Chinese claim for themselves the invention of that essential im- 

 plement, but there is no real evidence to illuminate the question, and 

 even if the wheel was independently discovered in China, the priority 



1 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain, Vol. I, p. 2. 

 148 



