Page 472 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

is left entirely unadorned, save for its dais, also
carved from jade.
The earliest surviving Chinese reliquary
deposits, dating from the Northern Wei dynasty
(386-534 CE), were usually contained within a
small stone chest, roughly cubical in shape. By the
early Tang dynasty, however, relic containers had
assumed the shape of the Chinese coffin, with a
rounded lid, higher at one end than the other. The
innermost coffin might be of gold, inside another
of silver or silver-gilt, inside one of bronze or stone.
Two such silver and silver-gilt coffins were found in
the Famen Monastery deposit, one of bone within
the gilt-bronze stiipa (cat. 161), the other made of
jade in another iron casket inside the marble
lingzhang of the middle chamber. They contained
the remaining two fingerbone relics. From their
style, it seems likely that these coffins were made in
the eighth or the ninth century — before 874, when
the deposit was opened and closed again for the
last time. This cannot be the case with these made
of crystal and jade, which are of truly exceptional
quality and which would have been regarded in
China as more precious than gold.
While we cannot reconstruct in detail what
just 11.8 by 8.4 centimeters — corresponds in num- happened on each of the occasions that the relics
ber and in kind with the three jiasha and two were brought out of the crypt and transported to
women's garments mentioned in the inscription the palace (to be returned, normally, three days
and that their slightly amateurish gold thread em- later) one must imagine that new offerings, and
broidery of clouds, lotus flowers, and man charac- very possibly new containers as well, were added
ters is the work of Empress Wu herself. 2 each time. The tiny jade coffin may have held the
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The crystal sarcophagus exhibited here was principal relic, and both it and the crystal sarcoph-
found inside a silver-gilt casket dedicated by Em- agus were perhaps once enshrined within the gilt-
peror Yizong in 871 CE to receive the Buddha relic; bronze pagoda, inside the Ashoka marble stupa, in
the silver-gilt casket was itself protected inside the innermost chamber of the crypt. By 874, only
another of iron, and placed in a secret compart- some thirty years after the disastrous persecution of
ment beneath the rear wall of the innermost cham- Buddhism under the Huichang reign (842-845),
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ber. The crystal sarcophagus, in turn, held another, the time had come for the principal relic to be
smaller coffin, made of greenish jade, which held given its own miniature pagoda of solid gold, inside
the fingerbone relic, a hollow phalanx of soft yellow a splendid new set of caskets, and accompanied
bone, slightly smaller than the white jade one by a vast array of gold and silver, glass, lacquer, and
found in the eight-fold set of caskets (see cat. 164). ceramic objects. The casket that held the crystal
Two precious stones adorn the top of the crystal sarcophagus is adorned on its lid and four sides
sarcophagus, and an openwork gilt bronze plaque is with forty-five images of the Vajradhatu, or Diamond
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affixed to the higher end, but the smaller jade coffin World Mandala, representing the latest Buddhist

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