Page 300 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

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Bronze drum stand centimeters wide and approximately 90 centimeters
in diameter, made of maple (pterocarya stenoptera).
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Height 54 (2i A), diam. 80 (31 A) (The pole had broken, and the drum had fallen to
Warring States Period (c. 433 BCE)
the floor of the tomb.) The drum originally stood
From Leigudun, Suixian, Hubei Province
approximately i meter above the stand, and the pole
Hubei Provincial Museum, Wuhan protruded a further 1.5 meters above the drum. To-
gether with the drum itself and the stand, the total
Washington only height of the assemblage would have been almost
4 meters. Positioned at the end of the shorter arm
Constructed of a central tube linked to a ring base of the bell rack, the drum clearly formed part of
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by an openwork web, this drum stand shows eight the ritual orchestra. It has been plausibly identified
pairs of writhing and twisting serpentine dragons with thejiangu, or "supported drum," mentioned
(cast in the round and originally inlaid with tur- both in the Zhou li (Rites of Zhou) and the Yi li
quoise), over whose torsos, tails, and heads smaller (Book of ceremonial), the latter in connection with
dragons clamber in great profusion. The excavators the Great Archery Contest (Da she). 2
have identified twenty-two separately cast sections, This type of drum is probably descended from
linked together by casting-on and by soldering barrel-shaped drums, supported on small feet or
with copper and a tin-lead alloy. low stands, in use as early as the Shang period.
A pole inserted into the tube of the stand The ghost of a barrel-shaped drum, preserved in
originally supported a barrel-shaped drum 106 the earth in Houjiazhuang tomb HPKM 1217, clearly

299 Z E N C H O U Y I TOM B A T L E I C U D U N