After that you go back to the Shangs and with a shrewder eye note in the decoration—crisp still beneath ellens thick green patina—nightmare, threatening mon-heads, those twisted unreal beasts treading quietly enough their paths of rain and thunder, but capable of dashing forth with terrible jaws and claws at any moment.
Yes, the thrill of a pantheon of deities whose attributes are those of mature, sometimes benign but potentially destructive and fearsome, begins to edge the simpler lay delight in just a passage of design, But are we prepared—we who may not have been able before to say offhand, with absolute assurance, which was a chih and which a ting and which, again, was yu—are we prepared to recognize the slow changes that occur as Chinese design passes out of Shang (1766-1122 B.C) and into Chou (which lasted until about 250 years before the dawn of the Christian era) and to appreciate the tremendous change that comes with Middle Chou?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.