ABSTRACT
The policy of the Sung emperors towards the tribal intruders in the North and West, who maintained their own dynastic rule over the territories they had conquered, was one of appeasement. The memorial, unacknowledged, must have had some impact, for at the age of forty-eight Wang An-shih became vice grand counselor under the new emperor Shen-tsung and was given full leeway to carry out much more formidable changes than he had originally proposed. The philosophers of Sung time added to it a metaphysical system that they conceived in contention with and under the influence of Buddhism and Taoism, a Taosim that had itself assumed new religious traits from its Buddhist competitor. The most famous Sung art was landscape painting, but also testifying to the advanced techniques and taste of the time was the perfection of form and exquisite simplicity of the white and greyish-green colored Sung porcelain.
