CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

87
Jinhou Pi bronze gui vessel
Height 384 (15 Vs)
Late Western Zhou Period, ninth century BCE
From Tianma-Qucun (Beizhao, Quwo),
Shanxi Province
Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology,
Taiyuan
Following the changes in ritual during the ninth
century, lords of the Late Western Zhou period
acquired sets of ritual food basins (gui) that comprised
an even number of vessels, often fitted with
lids (as in this example). This gui 1 with its substantial
square base, S-shaped profile, and two handles,
is a typical example. (Less common during the
Early Western Zhou period, the squared base of
the gui became a standard feature in the ninth to
eighth centuries.) The handles bear large animal
heads with rounded horns or ears, and a flange
contains a trunklike extension. Abstract angular
S-shaped motifs fill two borders on the body and
two on the lid, the handle of which is composed of
an everted ring. Other semi-abstract designs form
borders around undecorated panels within each of
the four sides of the base. The bronze has a graygreen
sheen, with traces of bright green and reddish
corrosion.
One of a pair surviving from a group of four,
this basin is inscribed inside the body and lid dedicating
the bronze by an individual titled Jinhou, or
Marquis of Jin, for ritual offerings to his ancestor.
Jinhou is not the occupant of the tomb, however.
The character for the name of the lord has been
transcribed in several different ways by various
scholars, however, and these identifications remain
controversial. 2
While many Shang period bronzes were inscribed,
often with the characters of the owner's
names, the form of the inscription on this vessel
is typical of the Zhou period. It is likely that these
inscriptions were intended to be read by both the
living and the dead, for it was expected that the
ancestors would be drawn to the feast by the aroma
of the food and wine prepared for them in these
vessels. The inscriptions may have been placed
inside the vessels so that the ancestors would read
them as they consumed the contents. In addition
to the dedications seen here, some bronzes contain
longer inscriptions that memorialize the honors
accorded the owners of the vessels. Such achievements
may have been recorded in these inscriptions
precisely because the living lords wished to
inform their ancestors of these honors, which presumably
raised the status of the living and might
raise the ranking of the ancestors as well. 3
Inscriptions such as those on this vessel and,
much later, on seals (cat. 138) are among the many
elements of daily life that were carried into the
realms of the ancestors and spirits. By the Han
period, the afterlife had come to be viewed as
including a large bureaucracy that required the
paraphernalia of officialdom, including seals and
records, to authenticate the positions of the dead
and to receive similarly important information
across the boundary of death. That view of the
afterlife was altogether different from that of classical
Greece and Rome, which prized individualism in
the afterlife as it did on earth, and it was also far
removed from that of the early Christians, whose
Kingdom of God had much in common with the
court of a small European state of the day. JR
1 Excavated in 1992 (M 8:30); reported: Beijing 1994.
2 See Xu 1996^ especially table 2.
3 For a full discussion of Western Zhou period bronze
inscriptions, see Shaughnessy 1991. For a critique of this
view, see Falkenhausen 19933.
257 | ROYAL TOMBS OF THE JIN STATE, BEIZHAO