CERAMIC AET IN CHINA. 311 



the productions of that age could oidy have been of earthenware 

 (poss^ibly ghized), and that no greater antiquity can be claimed for 

 the manufaciture of real porcelain than the reign of the Han 

 d3'nasty, which held the throne of China from B, C. 202 to 

 A. D. 220, and that after this date progress in the S3^stem of man- 

 ufacture was for a long period but slow. At one time, earl}^ in 

 the present century, European archsologists were inclined to believe 

 than an antiquity might be conceded to Chinese porcelain almost equal 

 to the wildest claims of Chinese historians.^ Some small porcelain bot- 

 tles, decorated with flowers and inscriptions in Chinese, having been 

 ))rought to Europe by ]\I. Rosellini, who stated that they had been found 

 in undisturbed Egyptian tombs dating from at least ISOO B. C, it was 

 concluded that the manufacture of porcelain must have existed in China 

 anterior to that date. M. Julien discovered, however, that the inscrip- 

 tions upon these bottles were written in the cursive character, a style 

 of writing not introduced till B. C. 48; and later Mr. (afterwards 

 Sir Walter) Medhurst, then an interpreter in the Hongkong govern- 

 ment service, was able with Chinese aid to identify the inscriptions with 

 quotations from poems written during the T'ang dynasty, and later than 

 the seventh century of the Christian era. Any title to such great 

 antiquity in the manufacture of Chinese porcelain, based on these 

 bottles, which had evidently been surreptitiously introduced into the 

 tombs l)v Arabs, thus fell to the ground. Indeed, M. du Sartel, who 

 has published an exhaustive work on LaPorcelaine de la Chine, argues^ 

 that the manufacture of true porcelain in China did not begin till 

 some centuries later than the period assigned to it by M. Julien, 

 who dates it from the reign of the Han dynasty and somewhere 

 between the yeavs B. C. 185 and A. D. 87. This point will be consid- 

 ered when we come to the reign of the T'ang dynasty, the period in 

 which M. du Sartel claims true porcelain was iirst made. 



HAN DYNASTY, B. C. 202 TO A. D. 220. 



It is during the Han dynasty that mention is first made of Jr*//, the 

 Chinese designation of porcelain. It was then made at Hsinping, a 

 district in the State of Ch'en, and corresponding with the modern Huai- 

 ning district, in Honan province. 



WEI DYNASTY, 221 TO 265. 



Under the Wei dynasty, which from A. D. 221 to 265 enjoyed, with 

 the dynasties of Wu and of Han of Szechuen, divided supremacy as 

 rulers of China, maiuifactories are mentioned at several places in the 

 department of Hsi-an, in Shensi province (the products of which were 

 known as KuanchAng-A'ao). and at Loyang, in Honan province (products 

 termed Loching-fao), as supplying porcelain for the inq^erial palace. 



* Ro-sellini, I Monumenti dell' Egitto, 1834. Sir John Davis, The Chinese, 1836. 

 J. Gardener Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, 1837. 



