Page 46 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

considered a monster; later it came to be called "the glutton" and
was interpreted as a warning against overeating. Modern scholars
have claimed that it represents a tiger or a bull; sometimes it has the
characteristics of the one, sometimes of the other. Mizuno has
drawn attention to a passage in the Ch'un-ch'iu Tso-chuan describ-
ing the t'ao-t'ieh as one of the four devils driven away by the em-
peror Shun, and subsequently made defenders of the land from
1
evil spirits. Like the grotesque characters in the Tibetan "devil
dance," the more terrifying the t'ao-t'ieh, the greater his protective
power.
29 Ritual vessel, hung . Bronze Phase Two examples will show how effectively the various elements
IV, Laic Shang period.
can be combined and integrated with the shape of the vessel itself.
The lid of the kuang shown on this page terminates in a tiger's head
at one end and an owl's at the other; the tiger's legs can clearly be
seen on the front of the vessel, the owl's wing at the back. Between
them a serpent coils up onto the lid, ending in a dragon's head at
the crown of the dorsal flange. The main decoration of the mag-
nificent chia in Kansas City (Fig. 30) consists of t'ao-t'ieh masks di-
vided down the centre by a low flange and standing out against a
background of spirals, called lei-wen by Chinese antiquarians
from their supposed resemblance to the archaic form of the char-
acter lei ("thunder"). However, like the endless spirals painted on
the Yang-shao pottery, their meaning, if any, is lost. The t'ao-t'ieh
has large "eyebrows" or horns; a frieze of long-tailed birds fills the
upper zone, while under the lip is a continuous band of "rising
blades" containing the formalised bodies of the cicada, a common
JO Ritual vessel, ihia. Bronze Phase V, symbol of regeneration in Chinese art. The vessel is crowned with
.
Late Shang period.
a squatting heraldic beast and two large knobs for lifting it off the
fire with tongs, while the tapering legs are decorated with a com-
plex system of antithetical k'uei dragons.
Several distinct bronze styles appear to have existed simultane-
2
ously. Some vessels arc plain, some richly ornamented, while
some confine the decoration to a band below the lip; the kuei may
have t'ao-t'ieh on its body, or vertical fluting like a Georgian tea-
pot, while its handles, like those on many Shang bronzes, are vig-
orously modelled in the form of elephants, bulls, tigers, or more
fabulous composite creatures. That this mastery of the craft was
not confined to Anyang is shown by the magnificent tsun illus-
trated here, which was excavated in 1957 at Funan in Anhui. At
first it was thought that it could not have been made locally but
must have been imported from Anyang, but now we realise that
Shang culture reached far beyond the Central Plain and that this
richly conceived vessel, whose decoration is more flowing and
"plastic" that that of the typical late Anyang bronzes, must repre-
sent a vigorous local tradition far to the southeast. Occasionally,
the effect is too bizarre and extravagant to be altogether pleasing,
but in the finest vessels the main decorative elements play over the
surface like a dominant theme in music against a subtle ground
bass of lei-wen; indeed, to pursue the analogy further, these motifs
seem to interpenetrate one another like the parts in a fugue and at
3 1 Ritual vessel, ku. Bronze. Phase V,
Late Shang period. the same time to pulsate with a powerful rhythm. Already in the