by Li Feng
Ban Gu was apparently a little less ambitious if not missionary than Sima Qian and had the limited goal of producing a general history of the greater half of the Han Dynasty (206 BC to AD 8) which was ended by the misrule of Wang Mang – in that regard, it is a nearly contemporary history of the Han Dynasty. Ban Gu adopted the basic structure of The Grand Scribe’s Records as his model and composed the book in twelve basic annals, eight tables, ten treatises, and eighty biographies of the officials and military generals. In fact, for the period of the Han Dynasty already covered by Sima Qian, he simply used existing information and very often the copy was verbatim. However, there are no genealogical accounts of hereditary lineages because most such families had already vanished before the founding of the Han Empire. Some of Ban Gu’s treatises are quite innovative and have been regarded highly by later generations. Among these the most important ones are the “Treatise of Art and Literature” which preserves the bibliography of the Han imperial library, and the “Treatise of Geography” which offers the very first real geographical survey of China.
Since ancient times, the royal court had kept scribes who would keep records of current political and military events. Such were the sources for historical texts like the Spring and Autumn Annals or the Bamboo Annals. The Han Empire was no exception. Not only did the Han imperial court employ a large number of scribes headed at one point by the Sima father and son, there developed strict rules and procedures for the training and promotion of scribes in the Han government, as we know from the statutes from Zhangjiashan. However, the task of synthesizing complex information and representing the grand historical processes in which individuals could then find their positions when turned into historical figures is the mission of great intellectuals. As such the works they produced may or may not truthfully represent the imperial view of history. However, the situation changed when Emperor Ming of Eastern Han commissioned officials to compile the history of his father’s reign, which was subsequently carried down to the next ten reigns across a time span of some 180 years during which new records were gradually added. Since the work was conducted and kept in the eastern lounge, the imperial library of the Eastern Han Empire, the work was called the “Records of the Eastern Lounge.” Although the book has been largely lost, its records are preserved in the History of the Eastern Han Dynasty by Fan Ye (AD 420–479), which then took over the position as the official history of the Eastern Han Empire.
Han Mortuary Art and Han Material Culture
Except for a few famous stone sculptures standing near the tombs of the Han emperors and generals, most of what we know about the visual culture of the Han Empire has come from burial sites. What people chose to bury in a tomb depends on what they considered important for the provision of the dead in the afterlife, and what could eventually be buried was also conditioned by the political and economic standing of the dead person and his or her family. But first, a few notes on the changes in the burial environment of Han tombs and their social contexts is necessary for understanding what has been unearthed.
During the Western Han, the practice of extravagant burial of the Warring States period continued to find favor with the Han nobility and social elites, particularly the numerous members of the imperial family and the high officials of the empire. Those tombs belonging to the regional kings were often dug deep into mountains or at least partly constructed by cutting cliff rocks. These mountain tombs usually have a long pathway leading to the spacious main chamber, which is surrounded by a circular hallway. On the two sides of the pathway multiple smaller chambers were opened to store burial goods. The construction of such mountain tombs cost a huge amount of manpower that only the kingdoms could afford to supply in early Han contexts. Typical examples are the tomb of the king of Zhongshan in Mancheng, Hebei Province, who was buried in 113 BC. From this tomb, as many as 10,000 articles were excavated including a large number of elaborate bronze vessels and implements in addition to the ultra-famous jade garment worn by the king himself. The garment was made of more than 1,000 pieces of jade stitched together with golden or silver wires (Fig. 14.2), and according to historical records, such garments were specially made in the imperial workshop in Chang’an and distributed to the regional kings as imperial gifts.9
Fig. 14.2 The jade funeral garment of the King of Zhongshan in Mancheng.
On the next grade are the various large tombs with traditional wooden chambers, dug deep into the earth, such as the famous tombs at Mawangdui, though these are not the largest in the same category.10 This type of large tomb had a long history in China, and in Han contexts, most of them were burials of nobles of secondary ranks such as dukes or marquises, or of high officials in the regional kingdoms. The so-called Mawangdui tombs include three burial pits, located side by side on the eastern outskirts of Changsha. Tomb no. 2 belongs to Li Cang, the chancellor of the kingdom of Changsha who held the rank of “Marquis,” buried in 193 BC. Tomb no. 1 is slightly larger, from which the well-preserved body of Li Cang’s wife was excavated. Tomb no. 3 belongs to their son, and it yielded a large number of bamboo strips as well as silk manuscripts that formed a small underground library, buried in 168 BC. The three tombs have yielded as many as 3,000 items featuring particularly 500 high-quality lacquer vessels including plates, drinking cups, jars, and musical instruments. Some of the types were clearly modeled on bronze vessels of the period, but they are more elaborate and show higher aesthetic standards. Particularly popular among their decorative patterns are the various finely executed thin-line clouds accompanied in their gaps by the ghostly presence of different types of zoomorphic imagery (Fig. 14.3). They depart sharply from the somewhat rigorous making of geometric patterns on Warring States period bronzes, and are probably associated with the belief in the paradise of immortal spirits.11 But more fundamentally, they had roots in the unique Han appreciation of natural order that figured very highly in early Han intellectual thought. Such patterns also appear on silk fabric and clothes from the same tombs. One of the special items from Mawangdui tomb no. 1 is the earliest known painting on fabric from ancient China, which depicts the old lady’s journey from the world of men to Heaven where she is greeted by two officials.
Fig. 14.3 Lacquer wares and painting from the tombs at Mawangdui, Changsha. Upper left, painted lacquer hu-vessel; lower left, painted lacquer pan-basin; right, painting on silk placed on the inner coffin of tomb no 1 (h. 205 cm, w. 92 cm) depicting the lady’s journey to Heaven.
However, the luxurious ornaments and the aristocratic taste represented by articles from the tomb of the kings and high officials gradually became the target of social criticism by Confucian scholars in the first century BC as being too wasteful.12 Ironically, in staging such criticisms against the practice of luxurious burials they were actually taking a position advocated by the Mohists against the Confucian practice of lavish ritual. In reality, the gradual disappearance of luxury items in burial contexts was the material reflection of the weakening power of the regional kings, already discussed in Chapter 12. At the beginning of the Eastern Han, the imperial court issued repeated orders to ban luxurious burials. The transition could not be straightforward, nor could it be synchronized everywhere in the empire. But in the material records, we do see during the Eastern Han a gradual shift from burials with wooden structures to underground brick chambers that contain mainly ceramic replicas which loosely imitate the previous living environment of the dead. This important change in tomb structure led to the shift of mortuary focus from what was buried there to what was to contain them, the interior surface of the tomb itself. This opened ways to the creation of murals that were the means of expression of Confucian values and social norms. Some of these tombs are of considerable size and accompanied by shrines constructed above ground as in the case of the Wu family burial complex in Shandong.
Martin Powers’s study shows that the construction of such brick or stone chambers was based strictly on local economy, and the great majority of them that survived were sponsored by
families of lower officials at the county level. Since modular methods were used to produce such stone slabs which reduced the overall costs, local families with good savings could afford their construction.13 Even high-ranking officials and kings of the Eastern Han Empire gradually adopted similar funeral structures and fashions, only making them much larger and more complex. But their burials can in no way be compared with the lavish tombs of the Western Han kings and nobles. Powers also shows that the styles of carving by the craftsmen were associated with certain “schools” whose geographical areas of representation were relatively small, and this indeed makes the culture of funeral art strictly local, reflecting the social values of the local elites as well as their level of education.14 In fact, the funeral sites constituted an important arena of education for the young generations of the local families that sponsored such tombs and shrines.
The best-known site is the Wu family cemetery in Jiaxiang in Shandong Province, buried by AD 168. The funeral structures on the site included both underground chambers and four aboveground stone shrines. Nearly seventy stone slabs with pictorial carvings and inscriptions have been gathered from the site, and those which belonged to the shrine of Wu Liang, the second generation of the family, have been systematically examined by Wu Hung. The entire surface of the shrine including the four walls, two topped with gables, and the ceilings were decorated with pictorial carving of auspicious images representing paradise and longevity. The history panels, located on the three walls most visible from the opening of the shrine, are carved with a large number of historical figures divided into four registers moving from the west to the east.15 They form a well-organized visual narrative of the historical past. There can be no doubt that the Wu Liang pictorial carving program emerged for the same reason that was behind Sima Qian’s writing of history; that is to use historical events, here illustrated on the slabs of Wu Liang, to manifest the great principles. In the twenty or so years after the first generation of the family was buried in the cemetery, the site must have been frequently visited by members or relatives of the Wu family. To the youths of the family, each occasion afforded them a visual tour through the site approaching the shrines, and a rich experience of education about the human past and the glory of the Han Empire.
Starting with the images of Fuxi and Nüwa, ancestors to the human race, they would have been delighted to know the origin of the world in which they lived. They would encounter legendary rulers like the Yellow Emperor and Emperor Yao whose presentation could afford them a rudimentary sense about the time before history and civilization. They would then come across the stories of the Duke of Zhou, the reputed creator of institutions and ritual rules which they were told to obey by their parents. They would be intrigued to learn stories behind the breathtaking scene of the “Assassination of the First Emperor” (Fig. 14.4), and would be fascinated by the illustrations of “Two Peaches Killing Three Warriors,” a story about wisdom and courage. Arriving at the present Han Dynasty, the youths would be exposed to the depiction of the Xiongnu prince Jin Midi who as a war prisoner had become a model of personal discipline and moral conduct in the Han Empire. From his story, the youths could further grasp some background about the Han Empire’s war with the Xiongnu and about the world beyond Han.
Fig. 14.4 The Wu Liang shrine: “Assassination of the First Emperor.”
Such a tour through history would necessarily help the young generations to experience the family’s cultural heritage, immerse themselves in Confucian values, and better understand the family’s relation to the empire and the empire’s position in the world. It is a tour that neither the family nor the empire should fail to give.
Selected Reading
Harper, Donald, “Warring States Natural Philosophy and Occult Thought,” in Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy (eds.), The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 813–884.
Peerenboom, R. P., Law and Morality in Ancient China: The Silk Manuscripts of Huang-Lao (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993).
Durrant, Stephen, The Cloudy Mirror: Tension and Conflict in the Writings of Sima Qian (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).
Sima, Qian, The Grand Scribe’s Records, vol. 1, The Basic Annals of Pre-Han China, edited by William H. Nienhauser Jr. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).
Ban, Gu (trans. Homer H. Dubs), History of the Former Han Dynasty, vol. 1 (Baltimore: Waverly Press, 1938),
Powers, Martin J., Art and Political Expression in Early China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).
Wu, Hung, The Wu Liang Shrine: The Ideology of Early Chinese Pictorial Art (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989).
Wang, Zhongshu, Han Civilization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982).
1 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 2, The History of Scientific Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), pp. 232–244.
2 For a discussion of this intellection tradition, see Donald Harper, “Warring States Natural Philosophy and Occult Thought,” in Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy (eds.), The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 813–884.
3 R. P. Peerenboom, Law and Morality in Ancient China: The Silk Manuscripts of Huang-Lao (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993).
4 In Peerenboom’s interpretation, Huang-Lao thought indeed advocated a natural law based on the law of nature, but this point is being debated.
5 For a critical review of Peerenboom’s study, see Carine Defoort, “Review: The ‘Transcendence’ of Tian,” Philosophy East and West 44.2 (1994), 347–368.
6 Sima Qian, The Grand Scribe’s Records, vol. 1, The Basic Annals of Pre-Han China, edited by William H. Nienhauser Jr. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), Introduction, pp. x–xxi.
7 Stephen Durrant, Tension and Conflict in the Writing of Sima Qian (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), pp. 1–27.
8 See Ban Gu, History of the Former Han Dynasty, vol. 1, translated by Homer H. Dubs(Baltimore: Waverly Press, 1938).
9 Wang Zhongshu, Han Civilization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 181–182.
10 The largest in this category is the tomb of the King of Guangyang, buried in 45 BC, in Dabaotai to the south of Beijing.
11 For a discussion of this type of ornaments and their religious and cultural meaning, see Martin J. Powers, Art and Political Expression, in Early China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991) pp. 76–84.
12 Ibid., pp. 2–5, 73–103.
13 Ibid., pp. 129–141.
14 Ibid., pp. 124–125.
15 Wu Hung, The Wu Liang Shrine: The Ideology of Early Chinese Pictorial Art (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), pp. 142–144.
Index
activist government, opposed by Zhuangzi 219–220
administration
Han 漢 Empire 284–285, 287–288
mid Western Zhou 周 147, 167–168
Qin 秦 Empire 246–249
afterlife, First Emperor of China 250–256
“Age of Philosophers” 207
agriculture
production in state of Wei 魏 188
small farmer households 191–192
Warring States period 190–192
alcohol, Shang 商 Dynasty 83
Allan, Sarah
Selected Reading 111
Shang royal lineage 105
Analects 212–213
ancestor worship
pre-dynastic Zhou 117
Zhou 147
“Ancient texts,” Han Empire 312, 314–315
Andersson, Johan Gunnar 15, 17
animal bones, divination 92–93
“Annual Report,” Warring States period 196
anthropology, meaning of “state” 42
Anyang 安陽
twenty-first century discove
ries 75
area 69
bone factory 75–78
bronze casting site 75
bronzes styles 77–78, 124
construction process 71
“cradle of Chinese archaeology” 66
Creel, Herrlee G. 12
cultural network 83–85
economic life 75
excavations 68–69
oracle bones 67–68
inscriptions 79, 113
and shells 7, 9
palace complex 69–71
periodization 78–81
sacrificial activities 71
Sanxingdui see Sanxingdui 三星堆
Shang Dynasty excavations 9
spoken language 92
start of Chinese archaeology 9
Anyang Work Team of the Institute of Archaeology, CASS, Selected Reading 74, 89
“appointment inscriptions”
bronze inscriptions 149–150
Song ding 頌鼎 150
archaeology
“complex society” concept 21–22
discovery of Feng 豐, Hao 鎬, and Qiyi 岐邑 124
dating standards 78–79, 116
migration of peoples 181
North China cultural mixing 181
Ordos region finds 265–267
start of Chinese 9
Zhou regional states 132–134