Page 63 - Ming_China_Courts_and_Contacts_1400_1450 Craig lunas

Plate 5.8 Interior of the Sacrificial
Hall at Changling mausoleum of
the Yongle emperor, c. 1424
(Boerschmann 1925, pl. 86)
another in the grounds of the imperial stables. Like the side of the main axis (Pl. 5.9). Elephants took on a more
bathing of horses in the lake, the bathing of the elephants in public visibility on ritual occasions. The Beijing population
the city moat was a public spectacle. got to see elephants on the emperor’s birthday, on New
Under the Mongols, elephants had been working Year’s Day and on the winter solstice, all of which were
animals; it was elephants that moved huge transplanted marked by the stationing of elephants at the gates of the
trees into the Yuan palace gardens. Under the Ming, Forbidden City. And then, once a year, when the emperor
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however, elephants were ceremonial animals, whose main made offerings at the Imperial Ancestral Temple, ten pairs
role was to modify both court space and urban space on a of elephants flanked the road from Fengtian Gate to the
temporary basis. Like old trees, they were living temple itself. Finally, for the imperial sacrifices at the Altar
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monuments, but unlike trees they could easily be moved of Heaven and Earth, 26 caparisoned elephants were led out
about. At court, on any day when the emperor was holding of the elephant stables in pairs to stand either side of the
an audience, three pairs of elephants were stationed in front major gateways and crossroads that the imperial procession
of the Meridian Gate, standing facing each other on either passed through, and at a bridge the procession passed over,

Plate 5.9 Anonymous, Palace and
Gardens of the Ming Dynasty
(detail of Pl. 6.13), Ming dynasty.
Hanging scroll, ink and colours
on silk, image: height 183.8cm,
width 156cm; with mount: height
317cm, width 163cm. Nanjing
Museum

Green Beijing: Ecologies of Movement in the New Capital c. 1450 | 53