CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

95
Bronze zun-pan vessels
zun: height 30.1 (n 3 /4), diam. at mouth 25 (9 7s)
pan: height 23.5 (^lA)
f diam. at mouth 58 (22 3 / 4 )
Warring States Period (c. first half of fifth
century BCE)
From Leigudun, Suixian, Hubei Province
Hubei Provincial Museum, Wuhan
Chu sphere. The marquis' bronze dou, however, does
not closely match the wooden dou from the tomb
and seems instead to have been based on northern
bronze dou.
Unlike most of the marquis' bronzes, this dou
has retained much of its turquoise inlay. 5 The decoration
on the bowl of the piece consists of stylized
pairs of addorsed birds with reverted heads, identifiable
by the eyes at the top of the frieze and claws
at the bottom. These evoke the design schemes
on Early to Middle Western Zhou period bronzes,
and may have been a deliberate revival of the older
style. CM
1 Zhou li in Lin 1983, 54 - 56.
2 See, in particular, the Pin li (Education of a mission) in
Ti li, Yang 1982, chap. 21.
3 Excavated in 1978 (C 194); reported: Hubei 1989, i: 211 -
212, fig. 111:2, and 2: pi. 59:2-3. Inscribed inside the bowl
and the lid: "Marquis Yi commissioned [this vessel]; may
he possess and use it for eternity."
4 A pair of bronze dou were excavated from the tomb of
Marquis Zhao of Cai (r. 518-491 BCE) in Shouxian, but
they are not very close in form to the Marquis Yi example.
See Anhui 1956, pi. 6:4.
5 So 1995, 51, plausibly suggests that the fine intaglio bordering
lines may originally have held a metallic inlay.
This remarkable composite vessel 1 represents the
culmination of the fashion for festooning ritual
vessels with elaborate sculptural ornaments. This
flamboyant style is characteristic of bronzecasting
in the Chu sphere during the sixth and fifth centuries
BCE and stands in contrast to the simpler
profiles of vessels preferred in northern regions
such as the Jin state. 2
Beneath the encrustations of ornament lie two
vessel types whose functions, according to the
ritual commentaries, were unrelated: a pan basin
(conventionally used for ritual ablutions) and a
zun goblet (used for libations). The consistent style
of their decoration and fact that the vessels were
found placed one inside the other suggest that they
were nonetheless designed as a unit. While their
placement in the tomb's central chamber, near the
wine vessels, suggests that they were wine containers,
the mass of intricate and fragile decoration
would have hindered any practical function; it
would, in fact, have been impossible to pour liquid
from the zun. The value of these vessels therefore
probably lay less in their use in ritual than in their
ornament.
Imaginary creatures, in astonishing profusion,
clamber over the vessels: the authors of the excavation
report counted more than one hundred and
seventy "dragons" among the sculptural elements.
On the large handles of the zun, they take the
form of felines with reverted heads and lolling
tongues; the beasts that clench the rim of the pan
in their mouths seem more amphibian. A writhing
energy animates all of these creatures, echoed in
the fields of tiny curls that cover the walls of the
two vessels.
283 ZENGHOU YI TOMB AT LEICUDUN