CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

129
Jade shroud sewn with gold wire, and
set of plugs
Length 188 (74), width at shoulder 44.1 (17'A)
Western Han Dynasty, late second century BCE
(c. 113)
From the tomb of Liu Sheng at Lingshan,
Mancheng, Hebei Province
Hebei Provincial Museum, Shijiazhuang
The jade shroud of Liu Sheng 1 is the most famous
example of this extraordinary category of object.
Since its discovery in 1968, approximately forty
complete or fragmentary shrouds have been found;
few are in such good condition as this example and
that of Liu Sheng's consort, Dou Wan, both of
whom were buried in tombs carefully hollowed out
of a mountainside at Lingshan, Mancheng, Hebei
province. 2
Prior to their discovery, such jade shrouds were
known from a number of texts. One of the fullest
descriptions is found in the Han jiuyi buyi (Ancient
rites of the Han dynasty) by Wei Hong, first century
CE: "When the Emperor died, a pearl was placed
in his mouth; his body was wrapped around with
twelve layers of reddish yellow silk. Jade was used
to make the garment. It had the shape of armor
and the jade pieces were stitched together with
gold threads." 3
These jade shrouds have been treated as a Han
development arising out of jade face coverings and
pectorals in use as early as the Western Zhou period
(see cats. 84, 85). Found primarily in eastern China,
the shrouds in fact have little direct connection
with the earlier tradition. The pectorals are most
often found in the western provinces, and the most
elaborate are at least three or four hundred years
older than the shrouds. Shrouds differ markedly
from one another in the details of their construction,
but they are more or less uniformly composed
of twelve sections: the face, the head, the front and
back parts of the tunic, the arms, the gloves, the
leggings and the feet (fig. i), each consisting of
closely fitting plaques drilled at the corners and
sewn together with wire. In the later centuries
of the Han period, different metals — gold, silver,
or copper — were used to indicate the rank of the
shroud's owner, but most of the examples dating
from the early period were sewn with gold. The
shroud made for the King of Nanyue (cat. 139) exemplifies
a lesser level of refinement: only certain
sections contain drilled plaques; in these instances,
silk rather than metal was used to attach the pieces
to one another. Despite such variations, it seems
that the design of such shrouds followed a widely
disseminated model.
Liu Sheng's shroud incorporates a Neolithic
jade cong tube (see cats. 29, 30) to hold his genitals.
From this and other such examples, we may infer
that the Han had discovered Neolithic tombs,
which they mined for jade; the large quantities of
390 EARLY IMPERIAL CHINA