Page 12 - Deydier UNDERSTANDING CHINESE ARCHAIC BRONZES

Introduction

The Earliest Bronze Production in China

As early as 18 /17 centuries B.C., during the Xia 夏 dynasty,
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sophisticated bronze vessels were being produced in China. From those
early beginnings more than 3600 years ago and throughout China’s
ancient dynastic periods, bronze vessels were regarded by the Chinese
as tangible symbols of their possessors’ heaven-bestowed right to
wield political power, as well as to worship and supplicate heaven, the
spirits, and the clan’s and nation’s ancestors on behalf of themselves,
their clans, their dynasties and their people, thereby ensuring peace,
prosperity and heavenly protection from natural disasters within the
lands under their control. Thus, in the minds of the Chinese people,
bronze vessels were in the past, and are still today, inextricably linked
to political power, the well-being of the nation and its people and to
filial piety or ancestor worship, the most fundamental, most sacrosanct
and most enduring quasi-religious sentiment shared by all Chinese,
wherever they be found.

King Yu and His Nine Ding

According to legend, around 2200 B.C./2100 B.C. King Yu 禹 of the
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Xia 夏 dynasty (circa 21 – 17 /16 centuries B.C.) succeeded in
reigning in the natural elements and controlling overflowing rivers
to save large stretches of previously submerged arable land, thus
ushering in a new era of prosperity and growth for his people. He then
divided his kingdom, with its newly increased arable land mass, into
nine provinces, for each of which he cast one magnificent large bronze
vessel in the form of a large tripod cauldron, a form known as ding 鼎
in Chinese. These 9 large bronze ding 九鼎 thus became the tangible
symbols of royal power and the heaven-bestowed legitimacy of King Yu
禹 and his royal dynasty.

President Jacques Chirac and the author looking at a bronze vessel gu.

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