National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

whether it is the object and its use, or only the ornament; or whether it is the
object and the ornament that have been borrowed.
In order to set forth this series of questions, the documents must be classified
in some way. In an attempt to do this, we shall group the different uses
starting from the possibility of their origin. This distribution has always the
advantage of being clear, but has the disadvantage of not taking into account
the diversity of concordant forces. Thus, although the names seem to show that
they owe their inspiration to a definite geographic locality, the subdivisions are
oriented quite differently. In order to account for the definite intermixture of
influences, we should repeat the same process of distribution for the ornamental
motives alone, without reference to the object's use.
What I am attempting to do here, is to combine these two methods of consider-
ing the problem. In the following chapters we shall search not only for the
Eurasiatic precurser of each type of utensil, and of each ornament from the
north of China, but we believe it will be possible to point out along with the
influences, the individual developments peculiar to the region. This neigh-
bouring country took little if any part in the changes in Chinese style. For
the famous " Asiatic retardation ", conditions could be no better except in those
places where the inhabitants of the Steppes could turn towards a higher civil-
ization, when at the same time a strange world was opening up for the Chinese
that, compared to her, was poor in artistic form.


NOTES OF CHAPTER I