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Wu Hung, Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995. xviii + 376 pp.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2015

Lothar von Falkenhausen
Lothar von Falkenhausen*
Affiliation:
Department of History of Art, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024
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Early China , Volume 21 , 1996 , pp. 183 - 199
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Copyright © Society for the Study of Early China 1996

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References

1. Hung, Wu, The Wu Liang Shrine: The Ideology of Early Chinese Pictorial Art (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

2. Another occurrence of such a fallacy in this book is in connection with ming 命 “mandate” on p. 90.

3. Joseph-Marie Callery, writing in 1853, as rendered by Legge, James in The Lî kî (The Sacred Books of the East, vols. 27-28; The Sacred Books of China: The Texts of Confucianism, parts III–IV; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1885), first vol., 12Google Scholar.

4. Granet, Marcel, La civilisation chinoise (Paris: La renaissance du livre, 1929Google Scholar; several rééditions) and La pensée chinoise (Paris: La renaissance du livre, 1934Google Scholar; several rééditions). Among earlier sinological works heavily dependent on the Li ji, one might also mention de Groot's, J. J. M. unfinished masterpiece. The Religious System of China (6 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1892–1910)Google Scholar, and the posthumous book of Soothill, William E., The Hall of Light: A Study of Early Chinese Kingship (London: Lutterworth Press, 1951)Google Scholar.

5. A minor instance of possible pitfalls resulting from a lack of concern with ritual change may be seen in Monumentality, p. 21, where the author, with reference to a Li ji locus, characterizes the principal activity in ancestral sacrifices as follows: “Year after year, members of a lineage gathered in the ancestral temple and placed food and wine before the symbols of the dead.” But such acts of mere presentation constitute late Eastern Zhou practice. Earlier sources—including several Shi jing poems—show that during the earlier part of the Bronze Age, ancestral ceremonies were structured as communal meals, where the ancestors, represented by personators (shi 尸), and their descendants jointly partook of the sacrificial foodstuffs. See Falkenhausen, Lothar von, Suspended Music, Chime-Bells in the Culture of Bronze Age China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 25–32Google Scholaret passim; and Falkenhausen, , “Issues in Western Zhou studies,” Early China 18 (1993), 139–226 (especially 146–52)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. To my knowledge, this point of view was first suggested, very boldly at the time, by Rawson, Jessica in Ancient China: Art and Archaeology (London: British Museum Press, 1980), 39Google Scholar; following the important discoveries of the Eighties, it has been adopted in a host of Chinese treatments of the issue.

7. Unfortunately, like other recent Western authors, Wu perpetuates the use of the problematic antiquarian term taotie which is rarely used in modern Chinese treatments and has been commendably abandoned by Japanese scholars.

8. Compare Bagley, Robert W., Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 48Google Scholar, n. 40, and Bagley, , “Il neolitico,” in La Cina, ed. Pirazzoli-t'Serstevens, Michèle (Storia Universale dell'Arte; Torino: UTEX 1996), vol. 1,9–25Google Scholar. See also Bagley, , “L'antica età del bronzo: Il periodo Shang,” La Cina, vol. 1, 27–59 (especially 41)Google Scholar. Bagley (“Il neolitico,” 25) does suggest the possibility of indirect diffusion of Liangzhu-derived imagery to north China by way of the early bronze-producing cultures of the Middle Yangzi river basin, but this still needs to be demonstrated archaeologically. The entire issue remains wide open.

9. For a more extended discussion of this complex question, see Boltz, William G., The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System (American Oriental Series, vol. 78; New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1994), 31–52et passimGoogle Scholar.

10. Xiaoneng, Yang, in his Ph. D. dissertation (“Rethinking Early China: Pictographic Inscriptions, Décor, and Religion,” Washington University, St. Louis, 1992)Google Scholar, has been groping towards a discussion of this phenomenon.

11. Huber, Louise G. Fitzgerald, “Some Anyang Bronzes: Remarks on Shang Bronze Decor,” in The Great Bronze Age of China: A Symposium, ed. Kuwayama, George (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Museum of Art, 1983), 16–43Google Scholar; Thorp, Robert, “The Growth of Early Shang Civilization: New Evidence from Ritual Vessels,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 45.1 (1985), 5–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. See Bagley, , Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, 19–24et passimGoogle Scholar; Bagley, , “Shang Ritual Bronzes: Casting Technique and Vessel Design,” Archives of Asian Art 43 (1990), 6–20Google Scholar; and Bagley, “L'antica età del bronzo.”

13. This felicitous term was coined by Tatsurō, Asahara 淺原達 “Zokuhei tangen” 蜀兵探源׳ Koshi shunjū 古史春秋 2 (1985), 23–52Google Scholar.

14. Rawson, Jessica, “A Bronze-Casting Revolution in the Western Zhou and Its Impact on Provincial Industries,” in The Beginning of the Use of Metals and Alloys, ed. Maddin, Robert (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), 228–38Google Scholar; Rawson, , Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), vol. 1, 93–125Google Scholar; and Rawson, Jessica, “I Zhou occidentali,” in La Cina, vol. 1, 61–93 (especially 85–89)Google Scholar.

15. Pratt, Keith “The Evidence for Music in the Shang Dynasty: A Reappraisal,” Bulletin of the British Association for Chinese Studies, 09 1986, 22–50Google Scholar; Falkenhausen, , “Issues in Western Zhou Studies,” 205–12Google Scholar; Tai, Luo 羅泰 (Lothar von Falkenhausen), “Youguan Xi Zhou wanqi lizhi gaige ji Zhuangbai qingtongqi niandai de xinjiashuo: Congshixi mingwen shuoqi” 有關西周晚期禮制改革曁莊白靑銅器年代的新假說：從世繫銘文說起， in Zhongguo kaogu yu lishi zhenghe 中國考古與歷ί Ê׳R (Taibei: Academia Sinica, forthcomingGoogle Scholar; an English version of the same article is the unpublished manuscript referred to by Wu in Monumentality, 300, n. 86).

16. Falkenhausen, , “Issues in Western Zhou Studies,” 161–67 et passimGoogle Scholar.

17. Zuo zhuan (Shisanjing zhushu 十三經注疏 ed. [Beijing: Zhonghua, 1981]), vol. 2, Xi 5, 1795Google Scholar; Xi 26, 1821; and Xiang 11, 1951.

18. Vandermeersch, Léon, Wangdao ou La voie royale: Recherches sur l'esprit des institutions de la Chine archaïque, 2 vols. (Publications de l'École Française d'Extrême-Ori¬ent, vol. 113; Paris: Maisonneuve, 1977 and 1980)Google Scholar.

19. This point has been made with some authority by Wagner, Donald B., Iron and Steel in Ancient China (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 28–41et passimGoogle Scholar.

20. Hung, Wu, “From Temple to Tomb: Ancient Chinese Art and Religion in Transition,” Early China 13 (1988), 78–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. von Falkenhausen, Lothar, “Grabkult und Ahnenkult im Staat Qin: Der religiōse Hintergrund der Terrakotta-Armee,” in Jenseits der Grossen Mauer: Der Erste Kaiser von China und seine Terrakotta-Armee, ed. Ledderose, Lothar and Schlombs, Adele (Mūnchen: Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, 1990), 35–48Google Scholar; and Falkenhausen, , “Sources of Taoism: Reflections on Archaeological Indicators of Religious Change in Eastern Zhou China,” Taoist Resources 5.2 (1994), 1–12Google Scholar. Similar ideas are voiced, albeit from a very different angle, in the most sophisticated treatment of Eastern Zhou material culture so far published in the West: Thote, Alain, “I Zhou orientali,” in La Cina, vol. 1, 95–165Google Scholar.

22. Yirang, Sun 孫詒讓， Zhou lizhengyi 周禮正義（Beijing: Zhonghua, 1987), vol. 6, 1694Google Scholar (“Chunguan 春官: Zhongren” 冢人) and 1705 (“Chunguan: Mudafu” 墓大夫).

23. Thote, , “I Zhou orientali,” 95 (translation mine)Google Scholar.

24. The exceedingly skimpy preliminary report (Wenhuaguan, Linru Xian 臨汝縣文化館， “Linru Yancun xinshiqishidai yizhi diaocha” ״臨汝閻村新石器時代遺址調查, Zhongyuan wenwu 中原文物 1981.1, 3–6Google Scholar) neither mentions nor depicts this object, nor does it identify any of the ceramic vessels found at Yancun as coffins; it is entirely unclear whether the object was in fact found in a burial context (this seems just slightly doubtful because Yancun was a settlement site). Wu takes his illustration from a Japa¬nese exhibition catalogue (Dai Kōga bunmeiten 大黃河文明展 [Tokyo: Tokyo National Museum et al. 1986], fig. 29)Google Scholar, where the object is designated as “a small child's coffin,” but the reasons for doing so are not given.

25. For a comprehensive discussion of this sort of object, and for further references, see Tianlin, Gao 高天麟, “Huanghe liuyu xinshiqishidai de taogu bianxi” 黃河流域新石器時代的陶鼓辨析， Kaogu xuebao 考古學報 1991.2, 125–140Google Scholar.

26. On the representation of she and for further references, see Ichiro, Kominami 小南一郎， “Sha-no saiji-no shokeitai-to sono kigen ,” Koshi shunjū 4 (1987), 17–37Google Scholar.

27. Hung, Wu, “The Wu Liang Ci and Eastern Han Offering Shrines” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1987)Google Scholar.

28. Powers, Martin J., Art and Political Expression in Early China (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Powers, , “Hybrid Omens and Public Issues in Early Imperial China,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 55 (1983) 1–55Google Scholar; Powers, , “Pictorial Art and its Public Issues in Early Imperial China,” Art History 7.2 (1984), 135–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Powers, , “Artistic Taste, the Economy, and the Social Order in Former Han China”, Art History 9.3 (1986), 285–305CrossRefGoogle Scholar.