Page 236 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

single head — or, alternatively, a spliced depiction
of both sides of a single dragon.
The original name for animal-shaped vessels
4
is unknown; it may be that there was no uniform
name, and that, during rituals, each vessel was used
for the same function as the standard vessel on
which it was based. If so, this vessel may have been
used as a you. Like many Western Zhou you, in fact,
the vessel was paired with a slightly smaller vessel
of identical shape. LVF

1 Excavated in 1984 (M 163:33); published: Zhongguo Fengxi
1986, pi. i; Rawson 1990, part 2:709-710, fig. 119.3; Zhong-
guo 1993,182.
2 Hayashi 1986,128-129.
3 Hayashi 1984, 2:280-285.
4 Since the eleventh century CE, convention has subsumed
all animal-shaped vessels under the term zun, now some-
times amended to xizun to differentiate them from trum-
pet-mouthed zun vessels.

of these elements have parallels elsewhere in the
2
Western Zhou bestiary, but the specific combina-
tion is unique.
The staid demeanor of this composite creature
is enlivened by a crest of four handles shaped as
rambunctious animals: a long-tailed bird and three
different kinds of dragons. Dynamic tension is
introduced as well by the surface ornament, which
accentuates the object's animal features. The ani-
mal's breast, belly, and hindquarters are adorned
with symmetrical pairs of S-shaped dragons that,
when viewed frontally, can be read as animal masks.
This motif frequently appears on ritual bronzes;
its deployment on the belly, with a prominent bird-
shaped flange as its central axis, accentuates the
derivation of that portion of the object from a
standard vessel type.
As is typical for Middle Western Zhou bronzes,
the main elements of the decoration are executed
as wide, flat, empty bands with jagged outlines that
barely emerge from their background of thin spi-
rals. A Middle Western Zhou date is also suggested
by the specific resemblance of the vessel's cover to
3
Middle Western Zhou you covers. The cover's sur-
face features two sinuous dragons merging into a

235 | B R O N Z E S FROM FENG HAO AND E N V I R O N S