CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

141
Jade pei ornament with dragon
and bird openwork
Diam. 16.1 (6Y 8 ), depth 0.5 ('A)
Western Han Dynasty, second century BCE
From the tomb of the King of Nanyue at Xianggang,
Guangzhou, Guangdong Province
The Museum of the Western Han Tomb of the
Nanyue King, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province
In a vivid picture of aggression, two creatures —
a dragon and a bird — confront each other within
a double ring. 1 This highly unusual carving derives
from the traditional jade disk with a large central
hole. In place of the normal, smooth flat surface of
the ring and the central hole, however, two narrow
rings form a double frame. At the center, a feline
dragon with a large roaring mouth, a staring eye,
and a plume behind its head pounces forward in
a double-S curve, bracing its large haunch against
the outer ring. Its striated tail twists in a double
curl between the inner and outer ring, and the foreleg
reaches from within the central circle to the
outer ring. The bird turns to confront the dragon;
its beak open, it stands with one claw on the
dragon's outstretched foreleg, and a long plume
descends from its tail to form scrolls within the
two rings at the bottom; a large crest bends sharply
back from its head against the outer ring.
Found near the head of the jade shroud (cat.
139), this extraordinary ornament belongs to a rare
category of design in which jade disks of the traditional
form were embellished with creatures
displayed in profile. The earliest examples of such
disks come from the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng 2
with summary rendering of animals in profile
against the outer edge of the ring. Much more
elaborate examples are known from several museum
collections, including a particularly fine piece
in the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, composed
of a broad outer ring resembling a bi disk
and a narrow inner ring, between which a bird fills
the space with flamboyant scrolling plumes, while
two feline dragons prance along the outer edge. 3
(This and other pieces have been attributed to finds
from Jincun and Luoyang in Henan province.
The exact provenance of these latter pieces is not
known.) These jade extravagances seem to have
been developed in the third century BCE; similar
pieces were excavated from a tomb at Yanggong,
Changfeng, in Anhui province. 4 The feline dragons
seen both on this ornament and in the Kansas
City example, were innovations of the third century
BCE. They closely resembled twisted feline creatures
(lions or tigers) embossed in gold on ornaments
excavated in Xinjiang in Chinese Central Asia, 5 and
it seems likely that such designs derive from Iranian
lion motifs. In China, this creature was transformed
into a feline dragon, where, as here, it sometimes
takes on a quite ferocious aspect.
Scenes of animals in combat, which originated
in Mesopotamia in the third millennium BCE, are
418 | EARLY IMPERIAL CHINA