CHINESE ARCHITECTURE.
As the consideration of the existing art of India—the main trunk of the art of Eastern Asia—belongs to the province of Ethnography, so does also that of the chief branch of this stem ; that is, the art of China.
Influence of Buddhistic history of China goes back into hoar antiquity, but she received from India the religion of Buddha, here called Fo, and with it received Buddhistic art. Buddhism began to extend itself in China about 5o A. D., and continued to be the ruling relig ion until the thirteenth century, at which time other religions became. re-established in their purity. That of Confucius particularly obtained great prominence, and at the present day the majority of its adherents are found among the educated. The people, brought under the sway of various outward influences, strove to assimilate all, and despite differing nationalities and religions built up a homogeneous civilization. In con trast to the Hindus, the Chinese may be called a philosophical people with whom imagination plays but an insignificant part.
Chinese utilitarian works have come down to us from an earlier date—as the great Chinese Wall, built early in the second century B. C. to protect the land against the invasions of the Tartars—yet we do not meet with the peculiar Chinese art until the period of Buddhism, of which it may be called the daughter. It is, how ever, a somewhat degenerate daughter, since the magic of poesy, which breathes in the imaginative works of India, is, like the varicolored scales of the wings of the butterfly that has been seized by the rough hands of a child, entirely taken away from her, and the varied tints of the lacquer which has taken its place do not give that glamour which poesy has spread.
over the art of Hindustan.
Temples or Pacodas. —The Chinese buildings have neither the imagina tive aspect, the poetry, nor the awe-inspiring artistic ensemble of Hindu art; only its grotesqueness has remained. Yet the architecture of China is everywhere enriched by a variety of materials. Here, as in India, the principal structures are temples, called by Europeans "pagodas." The Hindu tope has become a many-storeyed tower, each stage of which, orna mented with projecting colored roofs, is of smaller diameter than the one below it, until an incurved spire crowns the whole. All the angles of the several roofs are hung with bells. The walls are covered with porce lain tiles; all true architectural detail is wanting alike in the whole and in the parts, and its place is taken by rich ornamentation that covers everything. The best-known and most famous of these buildings was the porcelain tower at Nanking, erected in the fifteenth century and destroyed during the Taiping rebellion that broke out in Southern China in 185o. Temple-structures are here, as in India, surrounded by an enclosure, access to which is gained through gateways. One of these is shown on Plate 18 (fig. 3).
Secular Buildings.—Figure 5 gives an idea of Chinese secular build ings, in which wood is the leading material. Here, after thousands of years, we meet again with the tent building. The monumental structure forming an zesthetic whole does not exist in the brain of the Chinaman; the only field in which he manifests originality and skill is that of the minor industrial arts.