Page 241 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

years at the beginning of the dynasty (c. 1042 -
2
1036 BCE) ; most scholars, on that evidence, dated
the vessel to the very beginning of the dynasty —
certainly no later than the reign of King Cheng
(r. c. 1035-1006 BCE). However, the inscription also
mentions a temple — the Kang Gong — that one
scholar argued must have been dedicated posthu-
mously to Cheng's son, King Kang (r. c. 1005 - 978
BCE); its mention suggested that the Ling fangyi
could date no earlier than the reign of King Zhao,
the son of King Kang. 3
The debate about the date of the Lingfangyi
extended to the dating of scores of Early Western
Zhou period bronze vessels — indeed, in some ways
to the entire development of bronze styles through
the first hundred or so years of the dynasty. The
discovery in 1976 of the Zhe fangyi, a virtual double
of the Ling fangyi, has resolved the debate con-
clusively: since the inscription of the Shi Qiang
pan leaves no doubt that the Zhe fangyi dates to
the reign of King Zhao, it is now almost universally
agreed that the Ling fangyi and many other vessels
that had heretofore been dated to the reign of
King Cheng must date to the reign of his grandson,
King Zhao — or at least to the second half of the
Early Western Zhou period. 4 ES

1 Excavated in 1976 (17); reported: Shaanxi 1978.
2 This dating was first advanced by Guo Muruo and Chen
Mengjia, two of the greatest authorities on Western Zhou
bronze vessels and their inscriptions: see Guo Muruo
1930; Chen 1936. It was accepted by almost all Western
scholars writing on Western Zhou bronzes. For a summary
of the debate see Shaughnessy 1991,193-216, and for
citations to Western-language scholarship, 200 n. 20.
3 The argument was made by Tang Lan in Tang 1962.
4 See, for example, Rawson 1990, part 1:63.

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