The Six Dynasties had been a period when new forms, new ideas and values
were first, and often tentatively, tried out--ideas which could not find their
fullest expression in those restless centuries, but needed an era of stability and
prosperity to bring them to fruition. The founder of the Sui Dynasty was an
able general and administrator, who not only united China after four hundred years of
fragmentation, but also carried the prestige of her arms out into Central Asia. But his
son Yang Ti squandered the resources of the empire on palaces and gardens built on the
scale of Versailles, and on vast public works. These included a long section of the Grand
Canal, constructed to link his northern and southern capitals, for the building of which
over five million men, women and children were recruited into forced labour. These vast
projects, as a Ming historian put it, 'shortened the life of his dynasty by a number of
years, but benefited posterity unto ten thousand generations.' Combined with four
disastrous wars against Korea, they were too much for his long-suffering subjects, who
rose in revolt. Soon a ducal family of the name of Li joined the insurrection, and the Sui
Dynasty collapsed. In 617 Li Yüan captured Changan, and in the following year was
placed on the throne as first emperor of the T'ang Dynasty by his able and energetic son
Li Shih-min. In 626 Li Yüan abdicated in favour of Shih-min, who then at the age of
twenty-five ascended the throne as T'ang T'ai-tsung, thereby inaugurating an era of
peace and prosperity which lasted for well over a century.

T'ang culture was to that of the Six Dynasties as was Han to the Warring States or, to
stretch the parallel a little, Rome to ancient Greece. It was a time of consolidation, of
practical achievement, of immense assurance. We will not find in T'ang art the wild and
fanciful taste of the fifth century, which saw fairies and immortals on every peak. Nor
does it carry us, as does Sung art, into those silent realms where man and nature are one.
There is metaphysical speculation certainly, but it is that of the difficult schools of
Mahāyāna idealism which interested a small minority, and is expressed moreover in
forms and symbols which touch neither the imagination nor the heart. For the rest,

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