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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

a designation explains the error Ibn Baṭṭūṭah makes when he says (IV, 256) that porcelain is made
in China only at Zāitūn (= Ch'üan-chou) and at Sinkālān (= Canton); he mistook the ports of
export for the places where the wares were manufactured.

Fortunately, another Chinese work, the Tao-i chih-lio of 1349-1350, gives a more precise
indication: in five cases, it speaks of « porcelain of Ch'u-chou », or of « porcelain of Ch'u[-chou] »,
or of « green porcelain of Ch'u[-chou] » (cf. ROCKHILL, in TP, 1915, 112, 132, 136, 147, 271). The
place-name is well known; it is 處 州 府 Ch'u-chou-fu in Chê-chiang, the prefecture to which the
hsien of Lung-ch'üan belonged. It has been commonly believed, on the authority of the Ching-
tê-chên t'ao lu (6, 6 a, which in fact repeats the words of the T'ao-shuo, 1914 ed., 2, 9 a), that the
Lung-ch'üan factories were moved to Ch'u-chou-fu at the beginning of the Ming dynasty (cf. JULIEN,
Hist. et fabrication, 30; HIRTH, Ancient Porcelain, 36), and ROCKHILL, because of the texts of the
Tao-i chih-lio, remarked that the factories must have been moved at an earlier date (TP, 1915,
112). This is certainly a grievous error. JULIEN's and HIRTH's opinion merely follows a tradition
which may be valueless, and the work may have gone on at Lung-ch'üan well into the middle of
the Ming dynasty. There is in Sir Percival DAVID's collection a celadon libation cup bearing on
one side the inscription 龍 泉 縣 學 儒 祭 器, « Libation vessel of the Confucian College of the
district of Lung-ch'üan », and on the other, 弘 治 四 年 三 月 立 « Established (li) in the third
month of the fourth year of Hung-chih (1491) ». It may have been made at Ch'u-chou-fu, though
it may just as well have been made at Lung-ch'üan. As a matter of fact, the Lung-ch'üan hsien
chih, 3, 18 b, speaks of porcelain manufactured at Lung-ch'üan in 1436-1449, and even as late as
1465-1505. Moreover, even when the celadon wares were still manufactured at Lung-ch'üan, they
could very well have been, and were in fact, commonly known under the name of the prefectural
city. This was positively stated in the revised Ko-ku yao-lun of 1459 (end of ch. 7): « The old
Lung-ch'üan ware... is now called Ch'u-ch'i [Ware of Ch'u-chou-fu] or Ch'ing-ch'i [Green ware] »
(HIRTH, Ancient Porcelain, 34). In any case, what is of interest for us is to find the name « Ch'u-
chou porcelain » used as an adequate designation of celadon half a century after Polo. We have
seen that Polo's porcelain must be celadon. Now, the most frequent clerical errors in mediaeval
manuscripts are the confusion of t and c and that of n and u. Ch'u-chou ought to be *Ciugiu in
Polo's system of transcribing Chinese names. I have no doubt that « Tingiu » has been altered
from *Ciugiu = Ch'u-chou[-fu]; but the corruption, at least that of c- to t-, must have occurred
in the archetype of all our manuscripts.

The word « porcellaine » is employed by Polo in its two meanings of « shell » (cowry) and of
« china » (a third meaning, « purslane », < Fr. « pourcelaine » < It. « porcellana », occurs in Pegolotti
[EVANS, 427], and may partly account for some of the corruptions of the Mss. in Polo's chapter on
« Lochac »; cf. Vol. I, 369). It is borrowed from the Italian porcellana (and porcelletta), a derivative
form of the word porcella, « sow ». The sense of « shell » is of course the more ancient. Polo's
text is up to the present the earliest where the word occurs with an unambiguous meaning of « china »
(cf. YULE, Hobson-Jobson², 725; HEYD, Hist. du commerce, II, 678-680). With Polo's French
text in front of us, we cannot but feel some amazement when we read in BLOCH, Dict. étymol.
de la langue française, II, 171, that the meaning of « white pottery imported from the East » was
evolved only in the 16th cent.