154 Beginnings" of Porcelain 



man appropriated to himself the work hitherto cultivated by woman. 

 The development was one from outside, not from within. All efforts, 

 accordingly, which view the subject solely from the technological 

 angle, and try to derive the wheel from previous devices of the female 

 potter, are futile and misleading. 1 It is as erroneous as tracing the 

 plough back to the hoe or digging-stick, whereas in fact the two 

 are in no historical interrelation, and belong to fundamentally differ- 

 ent culture strata and periods, — the hoe to the gardening activity of 

 woman, the plough to the agricultural activity of man. Both in India 

 and China, the division of ceramic labor sets apart the thrower or 

 wheel-potter, and distinctly separates him from the moulder. The 

 potters of India, who work on the wheel, do not intermarry with those 

 who use a mould or make images. 2 They form a caste by them- 

 selves. 3 In ancient China, a net discrimination was made between 

 wheel-potters (t'ao jen PS| A) and moulders {fang jen jff A). 4 This 

 clear distinction is accentuated also by Chu Yen ifc ^ in his Treatise 



1 E. J. Banks (Terra-Cotta Vases from Bismya, Am. Journ. Sem. Langs., 

 Vol. XXII, 1905-06, p. 140) has this observation on the making of Babylonian 

 pottery: " From the study of Bismya pottery it is evident that a wheel was employed 

 at every period, yet all of the vases were not turned. No. 43, a form reconstructed 

 from several fragments from the lowest strata of the temple hill, and which therefore 

 dates several millenniums before 4500 B.C., has the appearance of having been formed 

 by placing the clay upon a flat surface, and while the potter shaped it with one hand, 

 he turned the board or flat stone, whatever it was upon which it rested, with the 

 other. This was probably the origin of the potter's wheel; it was but a matter 

 of time when an arrangement was attached to the board that it might be turned 

 with the feet." All this is purely speculative and fantastic, and has no value for 

 the real history of the wheel. 



* A. Baines, Ethnography (Castes and Tribes) of India, p. 65. 



3 The social position of the Indian potter is differently described by various 

 authors. H. Compton (Indian Life in Town and Country, p. 65) observes that 

 the potter in India is an artist; that he is an hereditary village officer, and receives 

 certain very comfortable fees; that his position is respected; that he enjoys the 

 privilege of beating the drum at merry-makings, that he shares with the barber 

 a useful and lucrative place in the community; and that there is probably no member 

 of it who is happier in his lot, and less liable to the vicissitudes of fortune. H. 

 Risley (People of India, p. 130) gives us a bit of Indian popular thought regarding 

 the potter: "He fives penuriously, and his own domestic crockery consists of broken 

 pots. He is a stupid fellow — in a deserted village even a potter is a scribe — 

 and his wife is a meddlesome fool, who is depicted as burning herself, like a Hindu 

 wife, on the carcase of the Dhobi's donkey." According to G. C. M. Birdwood 

 (Industrial Arts of India, Vol. II, p. 146), the potter is one of the most useful and 

 respected members of the community, and in the happy religious organization of 

 Hindu village life there is no man happier than the hereditary potter. The truth 

 probably lies in the midway between these two extreme appreciations. As to an- 

 cient times, compare the Buddhist story of the sage potter, translated by E. Lang 

 (Journal asiatique, 1912, mai-juin, p. 530). 



4 E. Biot, Tcheou-fi, Vol. II, pp. 537~539- 



