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The Roman Orient and the Far East*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

C. G. Seligman
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Extract

Compared with the civilizations of Egypt and the Near East, Chinese civilization as we know it is not of great age. Authentic history does not begin until about the ninth century B.C. (a commonly accepted date is 841 B.C.), nor have we archaeological finds that we can reasonably date prior to the thirteenth or fourteenth century B.c., though the beauty and mature style of the earliest known bronzes indicates a history of at least hundreds of years before this.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 11 , Issue 41 , March 1937 , pp. 5 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1937 

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Footnotes

*

The Lloyd-Roberts lecture for the year 1935, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians.

References

* The Lloyd-Roberts lecture for the year 1935, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians.

1 Déchelette, , Manuel à"Archäologie (Paris, 1910), 11, 106.Google Scholar In eastern Russia the date given by von Merhart, G., Bronzezeit am Yenissei (Vienna, 1926), p. 16, is from 1000 to 400 B.c.Google Scholar

2 I have discussed the passage of the socketed celt from Europe to China in The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 50, 1920, and have suggested that the European bird–chariot of the Late Bronze Age passed with the socketed celt to China, where it gave rise to the ‘dove-chariot’.Google Scholar

3 Gregory, J.W., The Story of the Road (1931), pp. 33–4;Google Scholar also Lucas, A., Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries (1934), pp. 347, 348.Google Scholar

4 The Indian trade, and the sea–borne trade from the Far East which travelled up the Red Sea, is discussed at length in an excellent work by Warmington, E.H. entitled The Commerce between the Roman Empire and India (Cambridge, 1928).Google Scholar

5 Description des Médailles Chinoises du Cabines Imperial de France, précédée d’un essai de Numismatique Chinoise, avec des éclaircissemens sur le commerce des Grecs avec la Chine…, Paris, an 8=1805.Google Scholar

6 Joyce, T.A., ‘On the Physical Anthropology of the Oases of Khotan and Keriya’, fourn. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., 1903, 33;Google Scholar and ‘Notes on the Physical Anthropology of Chinese Turkestan and the Pamirs’, op. cit., 1912, 62.Google Scholar

7 Laufer, B., Sino-Iranica (Chicago, 1919), p. 210.Google Scholar

8 Laufer, , op. cit., pp. 321 et seq.Google Scholar

9 In 255 B.c. or thereabouts, Bactria revolted under Diodotus and gradually became independent, Diodotus 11 becoming king some time before 227 (Cambridge Ancient History, VII, 719, 720).

10 The Parthians dated their era from the year 247 B.c. (loc. cit.). In order to emphasize the high degree in which Hellenistic influence was present in the Satrapy it is worth remembering that both Herat and Kandahar when founded bore the name of Alexandria. I may also refer to a passage by Rostovtzeff bearing on this point (Cambridge Ancient History, VII, 157–8).

11 Fitzgerald, C.P., China : a cultural History (1935), pp. 178–9.Google Scholar

12 Fitzgerald, , op. cit., p. 191.Google Scholar

13 Hudson, G.F., Europe and China (1931), p. 91.Google Scholar

14 Stein, Aurel, ‘Central Asian Relics of China’s Ancient Silk Trade’, Asia Major Hirth Anniversary Volume (1923), p. 368.Google Scholar See also Serindia (1921), pp. 373, 374.Google Scholar

15 Stein, , Serindia, loc. cit., and p1. XXXVII.Google Scholar

16 This is perhaps scarcely true at the present day, though it was so a couple of years ago. A very few pieces of silk judged to be of Chinese weave have been discovered in the West ; work recently carried out at Palmyra—the great caravan town northeast of Damascus on the northern edge of the Syrian and Arabian desert—appears to have produced some examples ( Pfister, R., Textiles de Palmyra, Paris, 1934),Google Scholar and it has recently been suggested that a piece of fifth century silk derived from a Rhine cathedral and now in Berlin may have been woven in China ( Sylvan, V., ‘Eine Chinesische Seide mit spätgriechischen Muster aus dem 5. bis 6. Jahrhundert’, Ostasiatische Zeitschrift, 1935, N.s. 11, 22–27).Google Scholar

17 O.M., Dalton, Byzantine Art and Archaeology (1911), p. 584.Google Scholar

18 The ‘hunter’ type is one of those popular Persian designs in which a mounted hero is shooting wild beasts, ‘the whole framed in a medallion and repeated over the surface, the medallions being interlaced or connected by small tangent circles, while the interspaces are filled with formal foliage. The huntsman is usually duplicated so that the composition is symmetrical, the two figures being usually back to back, but turning inwards to release the arrow’. ( O.M., Dalton, op. cit., pp. 590–91).Google Scholar

19 We know nothing of the glass–making sites in classic lands in classic times. I therefore use ‘Mediterranean’ as a convenient term for glass made by the old civilizations which existed on its shores or in vital contact with it, including Mesopotamia.

20 I would especially acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr Horace Beck, whose unrivalled knowledge of beads and early glass has been invaluable, as well as to Mr R. L. Hobson, Mr Bernard Rackham and Mr G. Eumorfopoulos for much kindly advice. On the chemical side I have had the advantage of unlimited help from the Scientific Laboratories of the Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London), so that it gives me the greatest pleasure to thank Professor W. G. Constable, the Director of the Institute, and Dr P. D. Ritchie, lately Head of the Scientific Department, for their interest and assistance. I am also greatly indebted to the Rt. Rev. Bishop White, formerly Bishop of Honan, for specimens and advice. I should also like to acknowledge help given by Dr Otto Samson, formerly of the Ethnographic Museum, Hamburg, while for permission to reproduce FIGURES II and 12 I must thank the authorities of the British Museum and of the India Office respectively.

21 I have not included in my examples of early western glass a vase in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, apparently ground out of a lump of glass and decorated with Amazon heads, as this has not yet been adequately studied ; perhaps the decoration is not of the same age as the body of the vessel. Some account will be found in The Burlington Magazine, 1922, pp. 225–7.Google Scholar

22 Five of these specimens, figured in vol. vn (plates 1–5) of the Shösö–in Catalogue, may be considered to have been made in Mesopotamia, Persia, or possibly Alexandria and be dated to about A.D. 700. I take this opportunity of thanking Messrs W. A. H. King and R. Hinks of the British Museum for information concerning the provenance of these early pieces of western glass.

Besides these there are numerous smaller pieces of glass in the Shösö–in. I have not seen them myself, but owe my knowledge of them to Professor Jiro Harada, whom I take this opportunity of thanking for his assistance. So numerous are these specimens that it seems unlikely that any considerable number are of western origin. They include 200 glass tips (blue, brown, yellow, and green) for the rods (jiku) on which are rolled sutra scripts, and about 62,500 glass beads, while many glass beads of different colours help to compose the headdresses worn by the Emperor Shömu and his consort. There are also pieces of bead work and lumps of unworked glass.

23 It must not be thought that Stein’s discoveries of Egyptian beads were limited to a particular type of Coptic bead. His finds include many other specimens of Roman-Egyptian type.

24 Hirth, , Chinesische Studien (München u. Leipzig, 1890), p. 65.Google Scholar

25 Serindia, p. 393.

26 Europe and China, p. 96.

27 Analyses of two early beads containing barium will be found in a note contributed by MrBeck, and myself to Nature, 1934, 33, p. 982.Google Scholar One bead contained sufficient barium to give barium oxide 19.2 per cent.

28 Professor C. G. Cullis, whom I consulted with regard to the presence of barium ores in China, writes that he knows of no record of ‘straight’ barium deposits in China, but that there are lead–zinc deposits and mines in plenty and that it is from such that he would expect the barium in the glass to be derived. Actually barium and lead are associated in a number of beads, etc., examined by Dr Ritchie.

29 In Custom is King : essays presented to Dr R. R. Marett on his seventieth Birthday (Hutchinson, 1936).Google Scholar

30 Hudson, , op. cit., p. 84.Google Scholar

31 T’ang grave figures, if known to Chinese dealers before this date, were not regarded as of any worth ; they were not collected by the Chinese and did not reach western collections. It was only when, in the course of building railways in northern China, grave mounds were disturbed without disaster to the violators that grave–goods began to be collected and shipped westward in quantity. There are still Chinese collectors who will have nothing to do with these figures, fearing the results.

32 Chotcho (Berlin, 1913).Google Scholar

33 Sarre, F., ‘Die Keramik von Samarra’, being vol. 2 of Die Ausgrabungen von Samarra (Berlin, 1925), pp. 54–62, 101, and plates xxiii–xxix. Samarra was founded in A.D. 838 and destroyed in 883.Google Scholar

34 Fitzgerald, , op. cit. pp. 323–4.Google Scholar To a question as to how closely this account could be dated, Mr Fitzgerald expressed the opinion that while accurate dating was impossible it could probably be attributed to the seventh or eighth century.

35 Stein, , On Central Asian Tracks, 1933, pp. 64–5.Google Scholar

36 Laufer, Berthold, ‘The Diamond, a study in Chinese and Hellenistic Folk–Lore’, Field Museum of Natural History, Publication 184 (Chicago, 1915), vol. xv, no. 1, p. 7.Google Scholar

37 Laufer, , op. cit., pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

38 Laufer, , op. cit., p. 10–.Google Scholar

39 The large collection of magical texts, coming down to Coptic times, published by Francois Lexa under the title La Magie dans l‘Égypte antique (Paris, 1925)Google Scholar, contains no text referring either to the Elixir or to the transmutation of metals. With regard to Mesopotamia, my statement is made on the authority of Dr Campbell Thompson.

40 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th ed., 1929, s.v. ALCHEMY.

41 Stillman, John M., The Story of Early Chemistry (New York, 1924), p. 150.Google Scholar

42 Space is lacking to describe the virtues of jade : though the product of the earth, it is at the same time the essence of Heaven, perfected under high spiritual influence (Laufer, fade, 1912, p. 148). Appropriate emblems of jade were placed upon or within the orifices of the body, e.g. the cicada in the mouth, and ceremonial objects of jade were placed within the coffin in contact with the body. Naturally it was only the rich whose grave-furnishings were of jade ; I have already alluded to the glass pi (p. 18) of the less well-to-do.

43 Waley, A., ‘Notes on Chinese Alchemy’, Bull. School of Oriental Studies, 1930–2, vol. 6, p. 2.Google Scholar Chinese words have been omitted and only their transliteration given.

44 Waley, , op. cit., p. 2.Google Scholar It might have been expected that jade rather than gold would have been cited in the texts quoted. Mr Waley has suggested to me that the admiration for gold was adopted from the northern nomads at the time when their costume and military tactics were taken over by the Chinese.

45 Waley, , op. cit., p. 3.Google Scholar

46 In arguing that the Elixir Vitae as known to the western world since the early centuries of our era originated in China, I do not ignore the view put forward by the late Sir Grafton Elliot Smith and Dr W. J. Perry that all ‘life givers’ had their origin in the beliefs of Ancient Egypt, which spread across Eurasia at a comparatively early date. I would, however, point out that even if this view be held the diffusion westwards of a conception which was flourishing in the Far East in the latter half of the first millennium B.c. can still be accepted.

47 Carter, Thomas Francis, The Invention of Printing in China and its spread westward (New York, 1931), p. 5.Google Scholar To this work I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness for this short account of early paper and printing.

48 Carter, , op. cit., p. 36.Google Scholar