[Footnote 24: A very large series of Han sepulchral pottery, including most of the known types, is in the Field Museum, Chicago; but most of our large museums possess specimens enough to give a good idea of the ware.] [Footnote 25: Bk. ix., p. 3, quoting the _Chêng tzŭ t´ung_, which in turn quotes the _Han Shu_, or Han Histories. Presumably this is the Nan Shan near Lung Chou, in Shensi.] [Footnote 26: Fragments of this ware which were brought back by the Grünwedel expedition in 1903 are in the Museum für Völkerkunde, in Berlin.] [Footnote 27: See Bushell, op. cit., p. 97.] [Footnote 28: [Chinese]. See also Bushell's translation of the _T´ao shuo_, pp. 97 and 98.] [Footnote 29: Tu Yü, in his "Verses upon Tea." See _T´ao shuo_, Bushell's translation, p. 98. The words used are _Ch´i tsê t´ao chien_ [Chinese] for which Bushell has given the free and rather misleading version, "Select cups of fine porcelain."] [Footnote 30: _tz´ŭ wa_, a phrase which Bushell has translated "porcelain and earthenware," though it is improbable that porcelain was meant at this early period (see Chap. XI.)] [Footnote 31: J. J. M. de Groot, _The Religious System of China_. Leyden, 1894, vol. ii., p. 383.] [Footnote 32: Loc. cit., p. 807.] [Footnote 33: Loc. cit., p. 808.] [Footnote 34: De Groot, loc. cit., p. 401.] [Footnote 35: Loc. cit., p. 696.] [Footnote 36: Loc. cit., p. 808.] [Footnote 37: De Groot, loc. cit., p. 809.] [Footnote 38: De Groot, loc. cit., p. 717.] [Footnote 39: Loc. cit., p. 718.] [Footnote 40: Who visited China about 1280.] CHAPTER III THE T´ANG [Chinese] DYNASTY, 618-906 A.D. THE Chinese Empire, reunited by the Sui emperors, reached the zenith of its power under the world-famed dynasty of the T´ang (618-906 A.D.). A Chinese general penetrated into Central India and took the capital, Magadha, in 648. Chinese junks sailed into the Persian Gulf, and the northern boundaries of the empire extended into Turkestan, where traces of a flourishing civilisation have been discovered in the sand-buried cities in the regions of Turfan and Khotan, recently explored by Sir Aurel Stein and by a German expedition under Professor Grünwedel. In return, we read of Arab settlers in Yunnan and in Canton and the coast towns, and the last of the Sassanids appealed to China for help. A host of foreign influences must have penetrated the Middle Kingdom at this time, including those of the Indian, Persian, and Byzantine arts. Proof of this, if proof were needed, is seen in the wonderful treasures preserved in the Shoso-in at Nara in Japan, a temple museum stocked in the eighth century chiefly with the personal belongings of the Emperor Shomu, most of which had been sent over from China. Indeed, the Nara treasure is, in many respects, the most comprehensive exhibition of T´ang craftsmanship which exists to-day.