Page 39 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

16 Carnage burial, showing bronze
fittings in place, Anyang. Late Shang
Dynasty.

woodbark, and bamboo; in the approaching ramps and main
chamber lay the complete skeletons of no fewer than twenty-two
men (one beneath the tomb chamber) and twenty-four women,
while the skulls of 3 further fifty men were buried in adjacent pits.
In some cases the bodies show no signs of violence—the result,
perhaps, of voluntary self-immolation by relations or retainers of
the dead man—while in others, decapitation suggests that the vic-
tims may have been slaves, criminals, or prisoners-of-war. Else-
17 Ritual vessel, tsun, in the shape ol an
where at Anyang, light carriages with their horses and driver were elephant. Bronze. Isolated find near
Changsha. Hunan. Late Shang period.
buried in specially prepared pits, with channels dug out for the
wheels. The wood has of course perished, but impressions in the
earth have made it possible to reconstruct the carriage itself, and
thus to determine the position and function of many of its beauti-
ful bronze fittings. Mass immolation was not practised officially
by the Chou, though it appears to have been revived from time to
time, on a more modest scale, by later rulers.
One of the biggest surprises at Anyang was the discovery of
Shang marble sculpture in the round, a notable example of which
is the head of an ox illustrated here. Previously, nothing of the sort
earlier than the Han Dynasty was known, and even today only a
handful of Chou stone carvings have been unearthed and those so
18 Ox-head Marble Excavated at
small as hardly to deserve the name of sculpture. Other figures in-
Hou-chia-chuang. Anyang. Late Shang
clude tigers, buffalo, birds, tortoises, and a kneeling captive (or Dynasty.
19