‘A New Chinese Tomb Discovery: The Earliest Representation of a Famous Literary Theme Alexander Coburn Soper Artibus Asiae, Vol. 24, No. 2. (1961), pp. 79-86. Stable URL: http://links,jstor.org/sici?sici=0004-3648% 28 19614%2924%3A2%3C79%3AANCTDT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M Artibus Asiae is currently published by Artibus Asiae Publishers, ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hhup:/www.jstororg/about/terms.huml. JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hup:/www jstor.org/journalsartibus. html Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @jstor.org. hupulwww.jstor.org/ Sat Jun 17 15:37:22 2006ALEXANDER COBURN SOPER A NEW CHINESE TOMB DISCOVERY: THE EARLIEST REPRESENTATION OF A FAMOUS LITERARY THEME Ox of the most remarkable finds made in recent years on the Chinese mainland is an early Six Dynasties brick tomb uncovered near Nanking, with wall decorations that show the celebrated theme of “the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove” (fg. 1)'. ‘The discovery, made by accident in the spring of 1960 in the vicinity of the Hsi-shan Bridge, was followed by a little over two weeks of systematic excavation. The tomb lay under a fill 2.6 meters deep of earth mixed with pebbles and green-glazed Han potsherds, facing 7o degrees or roughly northeast by east. In ground plan it was found to be an extended oblong, consisting of a main chamber and a narrower approach corridor (this last severely damaged by grave rob- bers). The chamber’s maximum dimensions are 6.85 meters by 3.1 meters; the rear wall being curved like a shallow apse, and the side walls slightly bowed outward. The roof is a tunnel ‘vault 3.45 meters high. Architectural interest is concentrated at the entrance, to frame the (now smashed) stone doors. There are stone door posts that hold a stone lunette; the latter is carved to simulate lintel beams and a central bearing block supported by two slanting arms (the proto- type of the intercolumnar bracketing motif found later at HOry(ji and in the YUn-kang caves)’, Roughly at the middle of each long wall is a panel with an engraved figure group, filling a space near the floor 2.4 meters long by 0.8 high. Elsewhere the walls are decorated by regularly spaced, simulated windows with a lattice of vertical bars. Over the center of each false window is a small triangular niche with a rounded bottom, perhaps intended to hold a taper. ‘The rear two thirds of the room, exclusive of the apse, is filled with a brick platform 0.18 meters high. Upon this rest four stone slabs, the bases for the two vanished coffins. Of these last — unequal in length, and so doubtless intended for husband and wife — there remain only a scattering of rusty iron nails. On the free floor between platform and door tise four symmetri- cally placed stone posts 0.42 meters high, pethaps once used as standards for lamps. “The floor is of brick laid in a herring-bone pattern, At the front end of the room and in the apse are two square sump pits, connected to a drainage line under the floor, and intended to carry water seepage out of the tomb, ‘The authors of the excavation report draw attention to the close similarity between the con- struction of this tomb and that of another in the same Hsi-shan Bridge region, dated A. D. 369. * Wen Wa 1960, 8-9, pp. 37-42: a feport by members of the Nanking Museum and of the city's Office for the Preset- vation of Cultural Monuments. # Lautence Sickman and Alexander Soper, The Art and Architecture of China, Pelican History of Art series, Baltimore and Harmondsworth, 1936, p. 234,686. 159, 160. Soper, The Evolution of Buddbist Architecture in Japan, Princeton and London, 1942, BP. 99-101, figs. 19, 5657, 59, 39. : 19‘The drain feature reappears in a second parallel they cite, a tomb outside the Chung-shan Gate dated A.D. 3842. Robbery had left the mortuary objects in disorder, damaged, and presumably incomplete. Fifty-three items were recovered intact or selatively well preserved. The eight copper coins found, some very badly clipped, represent two types current since the Han, Wang Mang’s Juo-cB'dan and the commoner wu-hu. A single broken and nondestipt mirror shows the familiar Han inscription “Long may you have sons and grandsons”. The one piece of jade is a p’e ring with an all-over comma motif as omament. Of the three clay puppets in good condition, all wear a version of the traditional Chinese robe, with moderately long, full sleeves and skirts. “The one preserved female has her hair done in the wide-flaring style familiar among Six Dyna- stics figurines from the Nanking vicinity’. There are a number of simply modelled clay or soapstone animals. Various utensils, vessels, and the like are made of a low-fired red clay, with a black slips there are in addition two wide-mouthed ping vases and a small wan bowl of lustrous blue proto-porcelain. Like the tomb form, these objects suggest parallels known from other Eastern Chin graves in the capital region’. “The two large figure panels that give the tomb its chief interest are each 2.4 meters long by 0.8 high. Each is roughly centered in the lower half of a side wall, at the level of the vanished coffins. ‘The design is organized around five evenly spaced trees of varying species, the full height of the panel. Between these sit four male figures, identified by inscriptions. Those on the south wall are four of the “Seven Sages”*, Hsi K’ang (223—262), Yilan Chi (210-263), Shan ‘Tao (205-283) and Wang Jung (234~305). On the north wall, the remaining three — Hsiang Hsiu, Liu Ling, and Yuan Hsien (234—305) — are supplemented by the figure of a legendary contemporary of Confucius, Jung Ch’i-ch’i, at the front. “The authors assume that all of this was first painted, and then was subdivided and carved with raised lines on a series of wooden blocks, each of which was then stamped into the wet clay of a brick-to-be. The latter was numbered on its side, to facilitate laying in the proper order on the wall. Presumably this technique represents a sophisticated conclusion drawa from the stamped, hollow tile tombs of the end of Chou or early Han, common in the Lo-yang region (and best represented outside of China by the large collection in the Royal Ontario Musum in Toronto)". The same periodical in which the Nanking find is described contains also a report on a hollow tile tomb assigned to a later period, the end of Wester Han, at Cheng-chou in Honan’, There the two tile valves of the door are decorated with stamped scenes of much greater complexity than anything so far known from Lo-yang: there are buildings of various sorts, rows of trees, gateways and files of horsemen, put together to suggest — though with an archaic flatness and the mechanical repetitions of the eatlier style — a real event in an actual 2 Wen Wn, pp. 38, 395 K'asku Tang Hats 2958, 4, pp. 49, 41- + Nanchng Lin CB'ae T'arung, Peking, 1958, ps. 14, 19,29, for examples found elsewhere. 5 The typical ceramic items are illustrated in the report, pp. 39-41, in poor reproductions. Parallels elsewhere ate cited fon pp. 40,41 © For the seven see R. H. van Goliky Hi Kong and Hit Poetical Evy on the Late, Toky®, 1941, pp- 1-93 D. Holzman, Le tee la pence de Hi Kang, Leyden, 1957, pp- 26-38; H. Maspero, Milangeepothumes sar le religions et Visor dela Chine, Paris, 1950, Il, pp. 6t—65. 7 W.C. White, Tomb Tile Petres of Ancient China, Toronto, 1939. © Wen Wa, pp. 19-24, 80.Fig. 1 Wall panels with scenes stamped on bricks: Nanking tombsetting, In their way the Cheng-chou door valves are as much a surprise as the Nanking panels with the “Seven Sages”; perhaps further excavation will reveal intermediate monuments that will make the technical and stylistic progression seem less startlingly abrupt. Both of the Nanking tomb panels are framed at either end by gingko trees, shown with clearly recognizable, though oversized, leaves. On the north wall, the easternmost figure, at the tight end, is that of Wang Jung, shown barcheaded and barefoot, lolling against an arm rest while he toys with a ja wand in his right hand. In front of him, on what could be called the ground if any were indicated, is a bowl, presumably of wine, with a cup alongside; in the vessel a miniature duck is shown afloat. A citation by the authors explains the presence of the cere- ‘monial jai in this highly informal context: a poem “To Wine” by the sixth century YU Hsin! speaks of “Wang Jung's ju-i dance”, Beyond a willow sits Shan T’ao, wearing a kerchief cap; he holds a cup in his left hand and lasps his raised knee with his right". ‘The next tree, though it branches very much like the willow, has the foliage of a locust. Under it, in profile sits the most bohemian personage of the group, Yilan Chi, with one knee up, the other leg extended, and his body braced by his left arm. He holds his right hand to his mouth in a gesture which must indicate that he is whistling through his fingers; in tradition ‘Yitan is bracketed as a whistler with his friend Hsi Kang as a lutist™». In front of him is another bowl with a miniature floating duck. ‘The next framing tree is a pine, and the last another gingko, Between the two, in a neatly frontal position, is the barcheaded and bare-legged Hsi K’ang, with his beloved clin lying in front of him, At the right end of the south wall, another frontal figure, Hsiang Hsin, sits leaning against © HLA.Giles, A Chinese Biographicel Dictionary, London and Shanghai, 1898, no. 2188; W. F. Mayers, A Chinese Reade’s ‘Manual, Shanghai eprint, 1924, 20. 799; official biography in Chin Su, xl. The lst is chiefly concerned with Wang's as civil servant, but records brie his youthful intimacy with Yan Chi asa drinking companion. '© Giles no. 25205 biogs. in Chou Séu, 41, and Pei Shi, 83. A scion of a well-known southern family, who entered the ser vice ofthe Northeen Chou after che downfall of his frst patrons, the Liang, 1 Giles no. 1675; Mayers no. 581; his biog. in Chin Su, 43, tells that he was @ lover of Taoism, who fist became intimate swith ewo fellow recluses, Hsi K’ang and the lattes friend .u An, and later met Yan Chi and "joined the pleasures of the Bamboo Grove. .. He could consume up to eight ‘su of wine before getting drunk. Once the emperor, wishing to try him out, offered him an eightfow drink, while secretly adding to the amount. T’ao did away with the original amount and no more + Giles no. 35443 Mayers no. 968; biogs. in San Kuo Wei Chib, 21, and Chin Sb, 49. According to the fuller account of the last, “Chi's appearance was as strikingly gallant as his will-power was far-reaching and fee. He took pride in wine ning office theough his own attainments alone. By nature he brooked no restraint, yet joy or anger never were revealed in his countenance. He might lock his doors to pore over his books for months on end without emerging; ot else might climb through the wilds for days ata time, forgetting to return... He loved best [the teachings of] Chuang-tzu and Lao-tzu, He had a weakness for wine, knew how to whistle, and was an expert on the «in; when he reached his best level he would at once forget all corporeal existence. His contemporaries were wont to speak of him asa simpleton; but ‘ cousin... paid his oustanding qualities such continual respect chat in the end they all agreed that he wat an exceptional person”. At one time he held court ranks and was enfeofed 25 a marquis. He even cherished an ambition to succeed as a reformer, but became so disillusioned “that he gave up all wordly affairs and settled down to habitual drinking. (The king-maker] Ssu-ma Chao once wished to take wife for (his son, the later Chin] Wu Ti from Chi's [family]; but nding the later drunk and speechless for three months on end, gave up the ides.” Other anecdotes repeat the theme of his iresponsibilty and fondness for shocking the stat laced, ies no. 293 (as Chi Kang); Mavers no, 246; bigs. in San Kuo Wei Chib, 21, and Chin Shu 49. See references in note 6. 83the comer gingko with his eyes closed. He wears a cap with pendant ribbons, and his robe leaves his right arm bare, Beyond a willow is the bareheaded Liu Ling, looking intently at a cup in his hand. His given name is written in the inscription with a homophone character unlike that preserved in the texts, ‘The central tree is a gingko and the next a bamboo. Between is the cross-legged figure of Yan Hsien, playing the banjolike stringed instrument that he is said to have invented and which was given his name (the genkan of the Shdsdin collection catalogues)", ‘The last figure, enclosed by a final gingko, is that of the older hermit Jung Ch’i-ch’i, obvi- ously added to round out the total to an even number", All that is remembered of him is a meeting with Confucius — doubtless apocryphal — on Mount ‘’ai. He is said to have been discovered wearing a garment of deer hide and a rope girdle, playing the lim and singing happily: the perfect figure of a natural man, invented to emphasize Confucius’ bondage to so- ciety. In the picture he has long hair and a wrinkled face, and holds a ¢d’in across his legs. les no. 6933 Mayers no. 163; biog. in Chin Shu, 49, tells of his devotion to Taoism and of the brilliance of his ten chapters of commentary on Chuang-tzu, “He used to discuss with Hsi Kang how to nourish one’s vital principle and avoid dangets, visiting him frequently because he hoped to arouse Kang to his highest pitch of achievement. K’ang ‘was an expert forger of metals; Hsiu would serve him at assistant, working opposite him happily with complete sll- effacement, Also he used to help Lil An water his garden at Shan-yang. ..” 15 Giles no. 1328; Mayers no. 411; biog. in Chin Séu, 49. The poem therein contained on “The Virtue of Wine” has been ‘translated by Maspero, Mélongs, Tl, pp. 65-66. “A tranquil and reticent man, who spoke litle and never sought his amusements heedlestly. He and Yuan Chi and Hsi K’ang used to delight in each other's company, entering into theie ‘grove under the guidance of a spiritual understanding, He had no interest in whether or not he had servants to work for his family, but always went out riding in a deer carriage, holding a jog of wine and having a man with a spade follow, with ‘orders to bury him wherever he might die: such was his neglect of his body. He was once so exceptionally thirsty that the asked his wife for wine. She threw out the wine and broke the vessel, crying and upbraiding him in these words: “My lord’s drinking isa grea fault. This is not the way to support one’s hold on life. You must give it up completely.” Ling answered: ‘Good. I cannot of myself stop, but if I pray to the spirits and give my oath, then I may be able to sive up wine and mest” His wife agreed, and so Ling keelt to pray. What he actually said was: “Heaven has made Liu Ling win fame through wine. At a single sitting he can drink a bu measure, and he sobers up on five fou more. Take care not to listen to his wife's words ” ‘Then he had wine and meat brought in, and lofty got drunk. Another time when he was drunk he got into an argument with a commoner, who rolled up his sleeves and gave him a drubbing. As he was leaving Ling said gravely: "These chicken ribs of mine are not enough to pacify your honorable fist.” The man laughed, and the quarrel ended, 1 Giles no. 2548; Mayers no. 9633 biog. in Chin Shu, 49. A nephew of Yuan Chi. “Held important offices but refused to bbe bound by them, preferring to join his uncle in the pleasures of the Bamboo Grove; by which he won the censure of conventional folk, He lived with Chi south ofthe avenue while che rest ofthe Yan clan lived on the north side, poor 1s they were rich. On the seventh day of the seventh month the northern Yoans would put out for a sunning all their ‘garments of brocade or gauze, in splendid show for the eyes. Hisien took a pole and hung up in the courtyard a big pair of ‘calfs-nose’ drawers, explaining to a surprised visitor, “Lcannot escape custom, even if only this way’. ... Shan T’ao selected him for promotion, saying: “Yuan Hsien isan honest, unpretentious man with few desires. He has a profound understanding of the dference between pputity and corruption; everything in the world could not make him change his stand. If he wins court employment be will be peerless in his time, ‘The Chin emperor, however, decided that Hsien wat too much addicted to wine and frivolity, and so turned him down, Hist had a remarkable understanding of musical theory, and was an expert performer on the pip'a. However since be didn go out in society, only his intimates knew how he could play and sing a their banquets. .. Once when the other ‘Yuans were all having a drinking pasty, Hsien went around to his own relatives to invite them to a meeting. There they didn’t use cups and flagons, but decided to have a big basin full of wine and to sit around ie ina crcl, drinking bum pers. It happened that a herd of pigs came in to share the wine; Hsien immediately went off at their head asa crowd of fellow drinkers..." 7 Giles no. 930; story inthe Kao Shib Chuan, “Biographies of Eminent Recluses”, by the jrd century Huangefu Mi. %Donald Holzman’s excellent study of the life of Hsi K’ang suggests how rapidly the story of the seven friends’ meetings spread in the China of the southern dynasties'*. We know that the theme was already a familiar one in art a century or so after Hsi’s tragic execution in 262. Ku K’ai-chih (543~405) in his notes on painting, Lia Hua, includes a paragraph on a picture of “the Seven Worthies” running as follows": “Lam inclined to fee! that only Master Hsi’s figure is really first-rate. The rest are not remark- able, and do not come up to earlier paintings of the Bamboo Grove.” Ku’s own works which were stil in existence under the T’ang included a “portrait” of one of the seven, Yian Hsien, and another of Jung Ch’i-ch’i*, The occurrence of the subject on the walls of a tomb of Ku’s time, perhaps, or a generation later — must indicate that the person buried there felt an exceptionally strong sympathy with the Seven Sages’ way of life. A similar, intensely personal choice is recorded two centuries earlier of the late Eastern Han grandee Chao Ch’. On the walls .. the tomb which he constructed for himself he painted four noted worthies of the past as his guests, with his own figure in the position of host, It is noteworthy that the seven are not shown revelling in each others’ company, like the carousing gentlemen of later Chinese painting tradition, but are set in dignified isolation. ‘Though the notorious drinkers of the group are given wine vessels as attributes, none is notice- able tipsy. Hsiang Hsiu, who leans against a tree with his eyes closed, has no accompanying cup. Very likely his pose is merely one of deep meditation; he was a fervent student of Taoism, and the author of a penetrating commentary on Chuang-tau. Notable also is the fact that the trees that separate the group are of several types, principally the gingko, and include among their ten only a single bamboo. John Ferguson pointed out a generation ago that “Bamboo Grove” or Chu-lin was at the outset only a geographical name for a beauty spot north of Lo-yang*. Though this has been questioned by Holzman, his quotations from early writers include one in which the friends are called simply “the Sages of the Wood”. Presumably their association with bamboo was at first not universally recognized ; or at least was so little emphasized that an artist interested in vatiety could feel fee to substitute a collection of trees of his own choice. It is at any rate indubitable that the two lines of trees provide a very handy prototype for the tree setting of the Kansas City filial piety sarcophagus (fig. 2), carved at Lo-yang in the last years of the Northern Wei dynasty**. The differences between the two treatments — the development of a spatially plausible middle ground for figure action, the sug- gestion of far distant hill ranges, the more precise and accurate drawing of the trees and their more plausible scale, the introduction of wind-blown motion in the foliage — all these represent Op. tity pp- 33-34. ‘Quoted in Lital Ming Hua Chi, v, section on Ku K'si-chib bid, K's Lam Hua, again, comments on a picture of “2 whistling man that looks as if he were {ceally] whistling”. Curiously enough, the subject here seems not to have been Yiian Chi, but Hi K’ang. The ttle of th is “Hal's Light Carriage Poem”; the criticism runs on: “However the melancholy expression is not li (Hsi held the honorary court rank of Chung-san Ts-fu). #1 Litai MHC, section on Chao Chi: Giles no. 146 3 Oral communication to van Gull, cited in his Hai Kang, p.l 1 2 Viesp. 38,0. 5. ¥ See'my “‘Life-motion and the Sense of Space in Early Chinese Representational Ar”, rt Bulletin, XXX, 1948, pp. 180ff, Fig. 2 reproduced by permission of the Nelson Gallery. 85innovations which could easily have become the common property of artists in the century and a half that separate the Nanking tomb and the Lo-yang coffin. Between the two in the geographical sense, and probably also in a chronological one, lies a third example of a tree setting which should be cited at this point, a part of the rich decorative vocabulary of an undated southern dynasty tomb at Teng-hsien in south Honan*. There the walls are lined with bricks on each of which some small, individual motif or scene has been stamped in relief. One such theme, a pair of flying Buddhist angels, is treated with the distortion and clongation familiar in the North in the cave sculptures of Lung-men and Kung-hsien, dating in the first of the sixth century; probably the Teng-hsien version falls in the same period — or if a theory that I have argued elsewhere is valid — a generation earlier. Among the pictorial bricks, two use a setting of trees the full height of the panel (or more; in one case the tops project into the upper border). These merely frame the figure action at one or both ends, however, and are markedly more archaic in their details than those of the Nanking tomb; presumably because of their much smaller scale, and pethaps also because they represent 2 more conventional and slow- moving side of funerary att. The authors of the report on the Nanking tomb stress the general relationships between its figure style and that associated with Ku K’ai-chih**. Actually, in comparison with the “Ad- monitions” scroll, the drawing is rather harsh and obvious; doubtless in part because of the much clumsier technique used. Close inspection reveals details that do recall the British Museum painting. In particular the drapery of Hsi K’ang shows two of the scroll’s favorite devices: the curling ribbon end, turning back on itself, and the long, rounded finger of skirt trailing across the seat top. It is obvious that the painter who furnished the original design was interested in giving his figures as much variety and individual expressiveness as the subject permitted. A com- parison with the monotonously alternating puppets of the “Painted Basket” from Lolang shows much of the advance that one should expect to find in the evolution of Chinese painting between Eastern Han and Eastern Chin. CHINESE GLOSSARY Chao Chi te Nanhing Lin Cao Tao Young HSCS 8G Chung-shan Gate ri Shan Tao Lift Hsi Kang #0 Teng-bion T? ae Hua Hing Chuan Mou 3 65 3 Hsi-shan Bridge 753 HRI Hsiang Hiv (35 ‘Wang Jung E buo-cb'dan $e wuchu FE Jung Ch’i-ch'i Rh ‘Ya Hsin (i (% Lia Ling (in texts) B14 Yoan Chi 5 6 Liu Ling (in inscription) 83at Yuan Hsien Bish 1 Seo Tengen T? iss Hua Heiang Chuan Mon, Peking, 19, pls. 15, 28. Some recently discovered Tang tombe have paintings of eight robed male figuees standing between evenly spaced tall trees: see Wen Wu, 1959, 8, and Kang, x960, 1. ‘These are much les varied and interesting than the Nanking version, however, and must reveal ether grossly inferior ‘workmanship or the decadence of the theme. % Report p. 42. 86