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The “Battle at the Bridge” at Wu Liang Tz'u: A Problem inMethod

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2015

Patricia Berger
Patricia Berger*
Affiliation:
Department of Art History, University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

The iconography of Han Dynasty pictorial cycles has become a subject of someinterest to historians of early Chinese art. Such pictorial cycles orprograms consist of series of related or unrelated scenes from history,legend, and daily life. The problem posed by such iconographic cycles is oneof interpretive method. Should these scenes be taken as relatingspecifically to the lives of the persons they honor or should they be viewedmore simply in terms of the general context of Han life? Is there anyalternative to these two views? My feeling is that there is an alternative,one which suggested itself after a close examination of the intimately tiedgroup of offering shrines referred to by the catch-all Wu Liang T'zu . I willargue below that the iconographic cycle designed for the earliest of thethree reconstructed shrines at this site was adhered to in the later oneswhose architectural structure is similar though more elaborate, but that theiconographic specificity of the earliest shrine was substantiallygeneralized in the others.

Type
Articles
Information
Early China , Volume 2 , Fall 1976 , pp. 3 - 8
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Study of Early China 1976 

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References

FOOTNOTES

1. For a complete summary of the history of the Wu family shrines in early Chinese archaeology see Chavannes, Edouard, Mission archéologique dans la Chine septentrionale (Paris, Ernest Ledoux, 1913)Google Scholar and Fairbank, Wilma, “The Offering Shrines of ‘Wu Liang Tz'u’.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 6, no, 1 (03 1941): 1–16 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in a collection of her essays, Adventures in Retrieval (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1972), pp. 43–86 Google Scholar. All references are made to pagination in this collection.

2. The scene is found twice in the shrine given by Fairbank to Wu Pan (dated A.De 145) on Rear Stones 7 and 10 (see Chavannes Mission archéoloqique, figures 126 and 140, respectively), and once in the shrine assigned by Fairbank to Wu Jung (dated 168) on Front Stone 6 (Chavannes, figure 109). See Fairbank, , “Offering Shrines,” p. 83 Google Scholar.

3. Archives of Asian Art XX (1966–1967): 25–53 Google Scholar.

4. For Bulling's statement of this hypothesis, see her “Historical Plays in the Art of the Han Period,” Archives of Asian Art XXI (1967–1967): 20–38 Google Scholar, and for her argument with Alexander Soper over this cognitive issue, see his “All the World's a Stage: A Note,” Artibus Asiae XXX (1968): 249–259 Google Scholar, and her reply in Artibus Asiae XXXI (1969): 204–209 Google Scholar.

5. Soper, Alexander, “The Purpose and Date of the Hsiao-t'ang Shan Offering Shrines: A Modest Proposal,” Artibus Asiae XXXVI (1974): 249–266 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Yoshiko, Doi, in Shirin 48, no. 3 (1965): 411–430 Google Scholar.

7. For Hs1ao-t'ang shan, see Chavannes, Mission archéologique, Plate volume, figures 44-55, or, for relevant plates, Soper, “A Modest Proposal,” figures 1-3. For I-nan, see the comprehensive report, Chao-yeh, Tseng et.al., I-nan ku hua-hsiang shih mu fa-chüeh pao-kao (Excavation report of the ancient stone engraved tomb at I-nan) (Peking, 1956)Google Scholar. For the sites of Chiu-nü-tun, Sunning and Hung-lou, , see Kiangsu Hsü-chou Han hua-hsiang shih (Han stone engravings from Hsü-chou, Kiangsu ) (Peking, 1959)Google Scholar. And finally, for Ts'ang shan, see the Shantung Provincial Museum and Ts'ang Shan Hsien Cultural Bureau, “Shan-tung Ts'ang shan yüan-chia yüan nien hua-hsiang shih mu” (A stone engraved tomb from Ts'ang shan, Shantung, dated to the first year of yüan-chia), K'ao-ku 1975.2: 124–134 Google Scholar.

8. See also his “King Wu Ting's Victory over the ‘Realm of Demons,’” Artibus Asiae XVII (1954): 55–60 Google Scholar.

9. Originally published in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 7, no. 1 (04 1942): 52–88 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and then reprinted in Adventures in Retrieval, pp. 89-140.

10. Soper, “King Wu Ting's Victory.”

11. Soper, , “A Modest Proposal,” pp. 264–265 Google Scholar.

12. See note 4.

13. Chavannes, Mission archéologique, figure 76.

14. Lü-shih ch'un-ch'iu (1820 edition with commentary by Yu, Kao), 11: 6a-bGoogle Scholar.

15. Chavannes repeatedly demonstrates his lack of faith in the attribution of this shrine to Wu Liang by referring to it as the shrine of the pseudo-Wu Liang.

16. See Kiangsu Hsü-chou Han hua-hsiang shih for a number of these.