Page 108 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts
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Fig. 6. Clay tomb figurines. Ca. 141 BCE. Yangling,
necropolis of Emperor Jing of the Western Han dynasty,
Xianyang, Shaanxi Province.
Fig. 5. Scale drawings of a Warring States figurine from Most early figurines represented guardians, servants,
Zhangqiu, Shandong Province (right), and a warrior and entertainers; and they clearly stood for human
figure from the Lishan necropolis of Qin Shihtiangdi. companions, not sacrificial offerings. 5 Moreover, it
seems that during this transitional period, the burial
of tomb figurines was concurrent with the decline of a prestigious nobleman could still have
and final extinction of human sacrifices. demanded real human victims, "whereas for the
burial of a lower-ranking person figurines were
Archaeology also enables us to develop this sometimes used instead. In a fifth-century bce
"substitution" theory further. It is possible that tomb at Langjiazhuang, in Shandong Province, for
figurines substituted for some but not all kinds of example, the deceased was accompanied by
seventeen female "companions in death" 6 All these
human sacrifices. Scholars have distinguished two
main types of human victims in early China: women had individual graves and personal
"companions in death" (renxun) and "human belongings. Two were accompanied by their own
offerings" (rensheng).* "Companions in death" human victims, and six of the women by pottery
Afigurines. similar arrangement was found in
included relatives, consorts, subordinates, guards,
another Qi-state tomb, excavated recently at
and servants, who followed the deceased to the Zhangqiu and dating from the mid-Warring States
afterlife. "Human offerings," on the other hand, period. 7 Here the main burial was surrounded by
were considered a particular kind of "sacrificial five smaller grave pits of young women; of these, pit
animal" (sheng) and always suffered a violent death. Number 1 contained a group of thirty-eight
pottery figurines (fig. 2).
Warring States (475—221 bce) figurines are of two
principal types, one generally found in the north
and the other in the south. All figurines from the
Chu region in the south are made of wood,
whereas most examples from the northern states are
of clay. The differences between the northern and
REALITIES OF LIFE AFTER DEATH 106
