Seeking the Three Dynasties among the Ritual Vessels of Old:
The Sung Dynasty Move from
“Investigating Antiquity” to “Appreciating Antiquity”
Chen Fang-mei
Graduate Institute of Art History
National Taiwan University
Abstract
The great bronze casting tradition of the Shang to the Warring States faded into
the shadows during the era of the Han empire and the succeeding centuries. During
the Sung dynasty, ancient bronzes were not just inadvertently rediscovered, but also
sought out, collected, studied, and recorded in books. They were used as models for
bronze imitations of their shape, décor, and inscriptions; and also served as the basis
for imitations in ceramic, gold, silver, jade, and other media. These projects provided
a visual impression of the bronzes of the “Three Dynasties” (Hsia, Shang, and Chou),
which had grown muddled and obscure over the passage of time. Sung men took
bronzes that were used in ancestral rites held in the clan and state temples of the Three
Dynasties’ nobility, and gave them a new life in the contexts of Confucian, Buddhist,
Taoist, and popular religious practice. As the medium changed, the distance from the
original vessels gradually increased. At the same time, as these vessels found their
way into the daily life of common people, moving from temples into the decorative
space of the home, they became an emblem of the possession of the past and a
concrete embodiment of different social groups’ recognition of the new values of
“investigating antiquity” and “appreciating antiquity.”
The present essay uses recent archaeological discoveries – in particular
discoveries or aspects of discoveries that have largely been neglected (such as the
burial context and the inter-relationship of items within this context, inscriptions, and
the status of the tomb occupant) – in conjunction with historical records to construct a
tentative explanation of the relationships between these objects and the people who
used them. Such links include the relationships between the functional contexts of the
objects and the social and political status of the individual. The ultimate goal is to
explore the rebirth of Three Dynasties bronze imagery as a cultural element and
examine the forces that drove this revival. In particular, the essay explores the
cognitive shift from thinking of ancient bronzes as emblems of loss to understanding
them first as objects of inquiry and then as foci of aesthetic appreciation. The author
also investigates the expansion and transformation of the social, economic, political,
and religious foundations of the class of patrons from whom these cognitive changes
emerged. These changes gradually pushed revivalist bronze imagery into the world of
Confucian, Buddhist, Taoist, and even popular religious observances, as well as into
the lives of the common people. It lay the foundation for key developments of the
subsequent millennium, and thus represents a key influence in the history of the
material arts.
Key words: Three Dynasties, investigating antiquity, appreciating antiquity, incense
burner