Page 284 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

95
Bronze zun-pan vessels

3
zun: height 30.1 (n /4), diam. at mouth 25 (9 7s)
3
l
pan: height 23.5 (^ A) f diam. at mouth 58 (22 / 4)
Warring States Period (c. first half of fifth
century BCE)
From Leigudun, Suixian, Hubei Province

Hubei Provincial Museum, Wuhan

1
This remarkable composite vessel represents the
culmination of the fashion for festooning ritual
vessels with elaborate sculptural ornaments. This
flamboyant style is characteristic of bronzecasting
in the Chu sphere during the sixth and fifth cen-
turies BCE and stands in contrast to the simpler
profiles of vessels preferred in northern regions
such as the Jin state. 2
Beneath the encrustations of ornament lie two
Chu sphere. The marquis' bronze dou, however, does vessel types whose functions, according to the
not closely match the wooden dou from the tomb ritual commentaries, were unrelated: a pan basin
and seems instead to have been based on northern (conventionally used for ritual ablutions) and a
bronze dou. zun goblet (used for libations). The consistent style
Unlike most of the marquis' bronzes, this dou of their decoration and fact that the vessels were
5
has retained much of its turquoise inlay. The deco- found placed one inside the other suggest that they
ration on the bowl of the piece consists of stylized were nonetheless designed as a unit. While their
pairs of addorsed birds with reverted heads, identi- placement in the tomb's central chamber, near the
fiable by the eyes at the top of the frieze and claws wine vessels, suggests that they were wine contain-
at the bottom. These evoke the design schemes ers, the mass of intricate and fragile decoration
on Early to Middle Western Zhou period bronzes, would have hindered any practical function; it
and may have been a deliberate revival of the older would, in fact, have been impossible to pour liquid
style. CM from the zun. The value of these vessels therefore
probably lay less in their use in ritual than in their
1 Zhou li in Lin 1983, 54 - 56. ornament.
2 See, in particular, the Pin li (Education of a mission) in
Ti li, Yang 1982, chap. 21. Imaginary creatures, in astonishing profusion,
3 Excavated in 1978 (C 194); reported: Hubei 1989, i: 211 - clamber over the vessels: the authors of the excava-
212, fig. 111:2, and 2: pi. 59:2-3. Inscribed inside the bowl tion report counted more than one hundred and
and the lid: "Marquis Yi commissioned [this vessel]; may
he possess and use it for eternity." seventy "dragons" among the sculptural elements.
4 A pair of bronze dou were excavated from the tomb of On the large handles of the zun, they take the
Marquis Zhao of Cai (r. 518-491 BCE) in Shouxian, but form of felines with reverted heads and lolling
they are not very close in form to the Marquis Yi example.
See Anhui 1956, pi. 6:4. tongues; the beasts that clench the rim of the pan
5 So 1995, 51, plausibly suggests that the fine intaglio bor- in their mouths seem more amphibian. A writhing
dering lines may originally have held a metallic inlay.
energy animates all of these creatures, echoed in
the fields of tiny curls that cover the walls of the
two vessels.

283 Z E N G H O U YI TOM B AT L E I C U D U N