THE CERAMIC ART IN CHINA. 451 



only Ib tbje© thousand years, but each fruit conferred three centuries 

 of life upon the eater. At that moment she perceived Tung Fang — 

 peeping at her through the window, and so, pointing to him, said: 

 'That child whom you see yonder has stolen three of my peaches 

 and is now nine thousand years old.' " * The gum of the peach-tree 

 mixed with mulberry ash is used as an elixir vite by the Taoists.t 

 The decoration on the outside is an adaptation of the allegorical repre- 

 sentation of the prayer for " happiness, distinction, and longevity" 

 {fu-lao-dhou"), met with in Chinese paintings under many forms, but 

 always with the same general characteristics. One of the immortals, 

 the great sage Lao Tz'u, accompanied by attendants, the crane 

 {Grus viridirostris Veillot), the stag, the hairy tortoise, all emblems of 

 long life; another, Li 'Tich-Kuai, with attendants, evolving from a 

 gourd contracted at the center, five bats, emblematic of the five bless- 

 ings — longevity, riches, peacefulness and serenity, the love of virtue, 

 and an end crowning the life — the Chinese characters for bat and 

 happiness having the same pronunciation. 

 28-31. Plates (4) of white porcelain. Hsi Wang Mu, depicted as a beautiful female 

 in the ancient Chinese dress, is represented accompanied by one of her at- 

 tendant maidens holding a tray containing peaches and other articles, and 

 by the spotted stag, symbolical of longevity, very delicately painted in enamel 

 colors. The rim is ornamented with a narrow band in vermilion red of de- 

 tached flowers of the Chinese peony {Poeonia Moutan) and of butterflies. 

 Mark Ta-Ming-ch^eng-hna-nien-chih, "Made during the Ch'eughua period (1465 

 to 1487) of the great Ming or Bright (dynasty);" the colors and style of 

 painting, however, point rather to the K'anghsi period as that of their manu- 

 facture. Diameter, 6| inches. 



Hsi Wang Mu, literally Royal Mother of the West, is the legendary 

 queen of the Genii, who is supposed to have dwelt in a palace in 

 Central Asia among the K'unlun Mountains, where she held court 

 with her fairy legions. Upon some slight allusions to this personage 

 in earlier works the philosopher Lieh Tz'u, in the fifth century, B. 

 C, based a fanciful and perhaps allegorical tale of the entertain- 

 ment with which King Mu of the Chou dyuasty was honored and en- 

 thralled by the fairy queen during his famous journeyings B. C. 985. 

 In later ages the superstitious vagaries of the Emperor Wu Ti of the 

 Han dynasty gave rise to innumerable fables respecting the alleged 

 visits paid to that monarch by Hsi Wang Mn and her fairy troop ; 

 and the imagination of the Taoist writers of the ensuing centuries 

 was exercised in glowing descriptions of the magnificence of her 

 mountain palace. Here, by the borders of the Lake of Gems, grows 

 the peach-tree of the Genii, whose fruit confers the gift of immor- 

 tality, bestowed by the goddess upon the favored beings admitted 

 to her presence, and hence she dispatches the azure-winged birds, 

 ChHng-niao, which serve, like Venus' doves, as her attendants and 

 messengers. In process of time a consort was found for her in the 

 person of Tung Wang Kung, or King Lord of the East, whose name 

 is designed in obvious imitation of her own, and who appears to owe 

 many of his attributes to the Hindoo legends respecting India. By 

 the time of the Sung dynasty (the tenth century, A. D.) a highly 

 mystical doctrine respecting the pair, represented as the first created 

 and creative results of the powers of nature in their primary process 

 of development, was elaborated in the Kiiang-Chi. The more sober re- 

 search of modern writers leads to the suggestion that Wang Mu was 

 the name either of a region or of a sovereign in the ancient West." 

 ' Mayers ; Op. cit., No. 673. t Ibid, No. 707. 



