Page 237 - Bonhams May 12 16 London

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN 士紳藏品

225 *

A MASSIVE PAINTED WOOD CEREMONIAL
TABLET, GUI
19th century
Painted with a fearsome dragon head atop a
cartouche containing two confronting dragons
amidst swirling clouds and four medallions, each
encircling a character, the reverse with a wood
handle.
114cm (45in) long

£2,000 - 3,000
HK$22,000 - 33,000
CNY18,000 - 28,000

十九世紀 木胎彩繪龍紋「雨公及私」鎮圭

Provenance: Lieutenant-Colonel T.S.Cox,
and thence by descent

來源： T.S.Cox中校收藏，並由後人保存迄今

The four medallions on the tablet contain the
Chinese characters:

‘rain’ (yu 雨)’ ‘public’ (gong 公) ‘up to’ (ji 及) ‘myself’
(si 私)

These can be traced to a line from a poem in
the ‘Classic of Poetry’ or Shijing, China’s oldest
anthology of poetry:

‘雨我公田, 遂及我私’

This may be translated as:

‘Rain on my people’s fields, so fulfilling me’

The present lot would have been an important
object in agricultural ceremonies calling for
rain which involved the emperor and may have
originated from the Temple of Agriculture in Beijing.
As the son of heaven, the emperor was seen as the
mediator between heaven and earth. A lack of rain
or drought in an agricultural society, such as imperial
China, would not only be disastrous for the common
people, but a sign that the emperor had incurred
heaven’s displeasure or even lost heaven’s mandate
to rule. See E.Rawski and J.Rawson, China: The
Three Emperors, London, 2005, pp.118-121.