Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎514v] (153/238)

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Siam's Intercourse with China.
in penning these lines is not to refute one-sided views of “ arm-chair ”
professors who discourse on topics connected with Far Eastern countries,
taking for their chief basis what is said—and too often left unsaid in
superficial and out-of-date books on these lands, to so large an extent still
mysterious to us. My aim is, on the other hand, to simply call attention
to the fact of the well-authenticated existence in Siam, despite all
theoretical demonstrations to the contrary, of ceramic works where glazed
wares were manufactured originally by Chinese artisans in imitation of the
Chinese porcelains, which fact, so far almost unknown, and in any case as
yet totally unproved before my investigations, may contribute to solve the
as yet unsettled question as to the real origin of the mysterious Martabani
vessels.
Two points still remain to be touched upon before dismissing the
subject. The first regards the fluted pattern, so often met with in
Martabani celadons, which Professor Karabacek regards as characteristic
of Siamese origin, and holds to be a specific ornament of Siamese
civilization. In this, I am sorry to say, he is completely mistaken ; for
not only does not the fluted or radialstreifen pattern, as he terms it, occur
in Swankhalok and other wares of local manufacture, but is not even, or
hardly ever, met with in other works of Siamese art except very modern
ones where it was undoubtedly imitated from Chinese models. I am
therefore disposed to regard it, with Dr. Hirth,* as peculiar to Chinese
porcelains. What must have induced Professor Karabacek to err was
having found it in modern so-called “ Siamese ” crockery “ made in China.”
The next point concerns certain marks that Professor Karabacek has
seen engraved on the bottom of some of the celadon dishes in dispute,
and which he declared to be of Siamese origin, while Dr. Meyer—
backed in this by Dr. Hirth—attempts to explain them, not a little un
successfully, by means of Chinese hieroglyphs. Here are the three
marks forming the subject of the debate: j “Of these,” says
Dr. Hirth,f “the first is admitted to strongly resemble the sign used in
the Chinese running-hand style for liu, six. The third one has a decided
similarity to Chinese, the running-hand sign for wu, five. The middle
one is explained by Professor Karabacek as representing the letter L
in the Peguan alphabet; however, this says not much, since the mark
is especially described as tief eingegraben, mit ausgezackten Riindern,
which seems to be a strong hint as to its having nothing to do with
the manufacture of the dish, since an owner’s mark drilled or chiselled
into the hard paste after the completion of a vessel, may have been
made at any time and in any country.” This may be very well for
sinologists, but for outsiders it does not require, I think, much
reflection to see the puerility of the suggestion made as regards the
identity of the first mark. The Chinese running-hand form of the
number six is ±, and this scarcely bears comparison with the mark in
question, which looks almost exactly like an inverted pall or Y, each of
whose three branches is formed of four circlets or dots, making twelve
Loc. cit., p. 154.
t Loc. cit., p. 156.