Anonymous, Kublai Khan’s armies lay siege to the Chinese fortress O-Chou, Illustration 14th c.Book c. 1590. Paper, Folio.
Golestan Palace, Teheran.
Han Dynasty
The next dynasty, the Han, was the first to open up regular communication with western countries by sending Chang Ch’ien on a mission to the Yueh-ti, or Indo-Scythes, whose capital was then on the northern bank of the Oxus River. The envoy started in 139 B. C., was kept prisoner for ten years by the Hiung-nu Turks, who ruled Eastern Turkestan, but at last reached his destination through Ta Yuan (Fergana). Travelling through Bactria, he tried to return by the Khotan Lobnor route, but was again stopped by the Hiung-nu, until he finally escaped and got back to China in 126 B. C., after an absence of thirteen years. Chang Ch’ien found bamboo staves, cloth, and other goods offered for sale in Bactria, which he recognised as products of Szechuan, and was told that they were brought there from Shên-tu (India). He reported to the emperor the existence of this southwestern trade between China and India, and also the name of Buddha and of Buddhism as an Indian religion. The grape vine (pu-t’ao), the lucerne (Medicago sativa), the pomegranate from Parthia (Anhsi), and several other plants were introduced into China by him, and were cultivated in the Shang Lin Park at the capital.
The Emperor Wu Ti subsequently sent friendly embassies to Sogdiana, and to Parthia in the beginning of the reign of Mithradates II., and sent an army to Fergana in 102–100 B. C., which conquered the Kingdom of Ta Yuan, and brought back in triumph thirty horses (of classical fame). In the far south, Kattigara (Indochina China) was annexed in 110 B. C., given the Chinese name of Jih Nan, “South of the Sun,” and a ship was dispatched from that port to get a supply of the coloured glass of Kabulistan, which was becoming so highly valued at the Chinese court.
The official introduction of Buddhism followed in the year 67 A. D. The emperor Ming Ti, having seen in a dream a golden figure floating in a halo of light across the pavillion, was told by his council that it must have been an apparition of Buddha, and at once sent a special mission of inquiry to India. The envoys returned to the capital, Lo Yang, with two Indian monks, bringing with them Sanskrit books, some of which were forthwith translated, and pictures of Buddhist figures and scenes, which were copied to adorn the walls of the palace halls and of the new temple which was built on the occasion. This was called Pai Ma Ssu, the White Horse Temple, in memory of the horse which had carried the sacred relics across Asia, and the two Indian sramana lived there until they died. The subsequent influence of Buddhist ideals on Chinese art has been all-pervading, but there is no space to pursue the subject here.
In 97 A. D., the celebrated Chinese general Pan Ch’ao led an army as far as Antiochia Margiana, and sent his lieutenant Kan Ying to the Persian Gulf to take a ship there on an embassy to Rome, but the envoy shirked the sea journey and came back without accomplishing his mission. Roman merchants came by sea to Kattigara (Indochina China) in 166 A. D., appearing in the annals as envoys from the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, and later arrivals of Roman traders were reported at Canton in 226, 284. Meanwhile, the overland route to the north, which had been interrupted by the Parthian wars, was re-opened, and many Buddhist missionaries came to Lo Yang from Parthia and Samarkand, as well as from Gandhara in Northern India.
Southern And Northern Dynasty
During the period of the “Northern and Southern Dynasties,” when China, from the beginning of the fifth to nearly the end of the sixth dynasty, was divided, Buddhism flourished exceedingly. The Toba Tartars, who ruled the north, made it a state religion, and their history devotes a special book (Wei Shu, Ch. CXIV) to the subject, which gives an interesting account of the monasteries, pagodas, and rock sculptures of the time; with a supplement on Taoism under the heading of Huang Lao, i.e., the religion of Huang Ti and Lao Tzu. In the south the emperor Wu Ti of the Liang dynasty, who reigned (502–549) at Chien K’ang (Nanking), often put on the mendicant’s robes and expounded the sacred books of the law in Buddhist cloisters. It was in his reign that Bôdhidharma, the son of a king in Southern India, the 28th Indian and 1st Chinese patriarch, came to China in 520 A. D., and after a short stay at Canton settled at Lo Yang. He is frequently represented in glyptic art carrying the famous pâtra, the “Holy Grail” of the Buddhist faith, or pictured crossing the Yangtze on a reed which he had plucked from the bank of the river.
Tang Dynasty
In the Sui Dynasty the empire was re-united, and under the Great Tang Dynasty (618–906), which followed, it attained its widest limits. The Tang ranks with the Han as one of the great “world-powers“ of Chinese history, and many of the countries of Central Asia appealed to the Son of Heaven for protection against the rising prowess of the Arabs.
A Chinese general with an army of Tibetan and Nepalese auxiliaries took the Capital of Central India (Magadha) in 648, and fleets of Chinese junks sailed to the Persian Gulf, while the last of the Sassanides fled to China for refuge. The Arabs soon afterwards came by ship to Canton, settled in some of the coastal cities, as well as in the province of Yunnan, and enlisted in the imperial armies of the north-west for service against rebels. Nestorian missionaries, Manicheans, and Jews came overland during the same period, but the Crescent prevailed in these parts and has lasted ever since, the number of Chinese Muslims today being estimated to exceed 20,000,000.
Buddhist propagandism was most active early in the Tang after the headquarters of the faith had been shifted from India to China. Hindu monks, expelled from their native country, brought their sacred images and pictures with them, and introduced their traditional canons of art, which have been handed down to the present day with little change. Chinese ascetics, on the other hand, wandered in successive parties to India to investigate the holy land of the Buddha and burn incense before the principal shrines, studying Sanskrit and collecting relics and manuscripts for translation, and it is to the records of their travels that we owe much of our knowledge of the ancient geography of India.
Stimulated by such varied influences, Chinese art flourished apace, the Tang Dynasty being generally considered to be its golden period, as it certainly was that of literature, belles-lettres, and poetry. However, the Tang power during its decline was shorn, one by one, of its vast dominions, and finally collapsed in 906. The Kitans, who gave their name to Marco Polo’s Cathay, as well as to Kitai, the modern Russian word for China, were encroaching on the north, a Tangut power was rising in the north-west, a Shan kingdom was established in Yunnan, and Annam declared its independence.
Of the five dynasties which rapidly succeeded one another after the Tang, three were of Turkish extraction, and they may be dismissed as being of little account from an artistic point of view.
Sung Dynasty
In 960, the Sung Dynasty reunited, the greater part of China proper, shorn of its outer dominions. The rule of the Sung has been justly characterised as a protracted Augustan era, its inclinations being peaceful, literary, and strategical rather than warlike, bold, and ambitious. Philosophy was widely cultivated, large encyclopedias were written, and a host of voluminous commentaries on the classics issued from the press, so that the period has been summed up in a word as that of Neo-Confucianism. The emperor and high officials made many collections of books, pictures, rubbings of inscriptions, bronze and jade antiquities, and other art objects of which important illustrated catalogues still remain, although the collections have long since been dispersed. During this time, the Chinese intellect seems to have become crystallised, and Chinese art gradually developed into the lines which it still, for the most part, retains.
Anonymous court artist, Portraits of the Kangxi Emperor in court dress (1662–1722), early 18th c. Hanging scroll, ink and colour on silk, 278 × 143 cm. Palace Museum, Peking.
Yuan