Page 43 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts

earthly phenomena, especially government. These
theories provided the basis for medicine, divination,
and the interpretation of dreams and portents.
Moreover, because they required searching for both
anomalies and regularities in the skies, the weather, periods as well, Confucian scholars tended to
flora, and fauna, they fostered advances in
astronomical and calendrical calculation and in
natural history.
The collapse of the Qin within a few years of the
death of the First Emperor led to the discrediting
of Legalism but not of other ideas on which Qin
had drawn, such as the Five Phases cosmology or
the myth of the Yellow Emperor, all of which in
Han times were drawn together into an ideological
justification of imperial rule. Dong Zhongshu
(ca. 179—ca. 104 bce) wrote at length on the
interconnections among Heaven, earth, and
humanity. Among human beings, the ruler was
unique in his capacity to link the three. Moreover,
using terms that echo Daoist and Legalist
conceptions, Dong described him as ruling through
— —nonaction abstaining from administration to
maintain his exalted status. The Record oj Ritual,
dating from the early Han, draws on earlier texts
like the Liishi clumqiu to depict the ideal ruler as
one who coordinates the activities of his state with
the forces of nature, analyzed in terms ofYin and
Yang and the Five Phases. His movements had to
be in tune with ritually demarked times and places.
In the first month of the year, for instance, the Son
of Heaven lives in the apartments on the left side of MOUNTAINS
the Green Bright Hall, rides in a chariot with
green pennants drawn by dark green dragon horses,
wears green robes and pendants of green jade. Also
in that month no trees may be cut down and no
people may be summoned for any service, nor may
arms be taken up.
Although Confucian scholars claimed to be experts
in the traditional texts on ritual, they were not the
only ones designing the rituals that would keep the
ruler in harmony with the Five Phases. Rituals
designed on the basis of ancient texts by Confucian
scholars who held secular views of ritual were
always in danger of becoming mere social
ceremonies, useful for creating and confirming
social distinctions, but unable to touch people in
powerful ways. As a consequence, Confucian
scholars were not able to monopolize the design of
court rituals, and many rulers were receptive to
men who claimed alternative ways to tap into
cosmic powers. In 110 bce, when Emperor Wu of
the Han dynasty journeyed to Mount Tai to
perform thefeng and shan sacrifices, he dismissed
the Confucian scholars because they "insisted on
confining themselves to what was written in the
Odes and Documents and other old books" and
objected to sacrificial vessels the emperor had made
because they were not the same as the ones used in
THE INTELLECTUAL AND RELIGIOUS CONTEXT OF CHINESE ART
ancient times. 9 In their place he relied on men who
were experts in the lore of the Yellow Emperor, the
god Great Unity, and routes to immortality. In later
advocate austere textually-based "ancient" rituals
while experts in the occult or later Daoist priests
choreographed elaborate ritual pageants more
satisfying to many emperors.
To sum up, throughout the imperial period, the
production of luxury goods to be used in imperial
palaces, temples, and tombs took place in a cultural
context in which rulers were given all sorts of
advice. They were told to demonstrate their rank in
everything they did but not to burden the people
through excessive extraction; they were told to
model themselves on sage-kings whose attributes
ranged from the mild and temperate Yao to the all-
conquering Yellow Emperor; they were likened to
gods but also told to perform highly scripted roles
that left them little in the way of personal
discretion. Art produced for the court would have
resonated with these ideas in various ways.
Moreover, art produced for other sites often was
shaped by these discourses indirectly. In later
centuries Buddhist and Daoist temples were often
modeled on palaces, and their deities on kings and
queens. Thus, ways ot decorating temples and
depicting deities participated in the discourse on
rulership. Art that was distinctly nonimpenal also, of
course, drew from this discourse. Scholars who
identified with the Confucian critique of imperial
extravagance had to choose a more austere style for
their own homes and gardens.
Depictions of mountains were very common in
Chinese art from the late Warring States period on,
and there are many examples in the exhibition
(cats. 50, 51 [reverse], 153, 186, 189, 192-95, 200,
204—9, I0 Mountains share some of the aura of
212).
kings. Kings sacrifice to mountains. The sage-king
Shun, the Book of Documents reports, regularly
sacrificed to the mountains from afar, and once
every five years made a journey to each region of
the empire, making burnt offerings to Heaven at
the sacred mountains Tai in the east, Heng in the
south, Hua in the west, Heng in the north, and
Songgao in the center. Mountains were also like
Ymgrulers, rich in power, lowering above the
ordinary, linking the lowly to the heavens. The
death of .1 ruler was euphemistically called the
collapse of a mountain. "Great and lofty 1-- the
mountain/ With its might reaching 10 I leaven,"
read the first two lines in a poem in the Classii el
Poetry (poem 259).
Many ideas about mountains undoubtedly derived
from folk traditions about particular local
mountains and the deities or ere. nines thai