Page 48 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

exclusively Chinese are the bronze daggers and knives, simple
forms of which have been found at Chengchow. At Anyang they
become more elaborate, the handle often terminating in a ring or
in the head of a horse, ram, deer, or elk. These have their counter-
part in the "animal style" of the Ordos Desert, Inner Mongolia,
and southern Siberia.
The problem as to whether China or central Asia was the source
of this style has long been debated. Much turns upon the date of
the southern Siberian sites such as Karasuk where it also appears,
and until this is established the question of priority cannot be fi-
nally settled. It seems that an animal style existed simultaneously
in western Asia (Luristan), Siberia (Karasuk), and China roughly
between 1500 and 1000 B.C., and that China drew upon this style
from her western neighbours and at the same time contributed
from her own increasingly rich repertoire of animal forms. Ele-
ments of the animal style appear also in the bronze fittings made
for furniture, weapons, and chariots. Excavations at Anyang have
made it possible to reconstruct the Shang chariot and to assign to
their correct place such objects as hubcaps, jingles, pole ends,
awning-fittings, and the V-shaped sheaths for horses' yokes.
The origin of the decoration on the bronzes represents a diffi-
cult problem. The most striking element in it is the profusion of
is Knife with ibex head. animal motifs, not one of which appears in Chinese Neolithic art.
The Shang people had cultural affinities with the steppe and forest
Anyang. Late Shang period.
folk of Siberia and, more remotely, with the peoples of Alaska,
British Columbia, and Central America. The similarities between
certain Shang designs and those, for example, in the art of the
West Coast Indians of North America are too close to be acciden-
tal. Li Chi has suggested that the richly decorated, square-
sectioned bronze vessels with straight sides are a translation into
metal of a northern woodcarving art, and there is much evidence
for the stylistic similarity between the decor of these bronzes and
the art of the northern nomadic peoples. On the other hand, the
art ofcarving formalised animal masks on wood or gourd is native
to Southeast Asia and the Archipelago and is still practised today.
Also surviving in Southeast Asia till modern times is the technique
of stamping designs in the wet clay, which may have contributed
the repeated circles, spirals, and volutes to bronze ornament. But
even ifsome elements arc not native to China, taken together they
add up to a decorative language that is powerfully and character-
istically Chinese.
Whatever the origins of this language, we must not think of it
as confined solely to the sacrificial bronzes. Could wc but trans-
port ourselves to the home of some rich Anyang nobleman we
would sec t'ao-t'ieh and beaked dragons, cicadas and tigers,
painted on the beams of his house and applied to hangings of
leather and matting about his rooms, and, very probably, woven
into his silk robes. That this is likely we know from the contents of
the tombs, and it tends to reinforce the view that these motifs are
not tied to the form or function ofany individual bronze vessel but
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