Page 14 - Deydier UNDERSTANDING CHINESE ARCHAIC BRONZES

The Importance of Spirit and Ancestor Worship
The Xia 夏 dynasty (circa 21 – 17 /16 centuries B.C.) was succeeded
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by the Shang 商 dynasty (circa 17 /16 – 12 /11 centuries B.C.), the
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period in which the art of bronze production reached its zenith in China.
The rulers and people of the Shang not only believed in spirits and in an
afterlife, but also believed, like many Chinese today, that both the spirits
and the deceased had need, like the living, of proper nourishment and
material comfort, and that the worship and propitiation of the spirits
and the proper care or lack of it of the ancestors in the afterlife exerted
a direct influence on the lives and fortunes of the living.
These beliefs gave rise to an active cult of ancestor worship which has
survived among the Chinese people up to the present day.
During the Shang 商 dynasty (circa 17 /16 – 12 /11 centuries
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B.C.) the cult of spirit and ancestral worship dominated the lives and
activities of society at all levels. Thus, the oracle bone and tortoise
shell inscriptions 甲骨文 jiaguwen, the earliest surviving examples of
Chinese writing and China’s oldest extant historical records, mention
in detail not only ancestral, spirit and nature worship ceremonies, but
also elaborate rituals of food offerings and libations, for all of which
bronze vessels were needed.
These bronze ritual vessels were set apart from the vessels used in daily
life and were employed only on solemn ritual occasions. Each had its
own suitable form and size and each was used to cook, reheat and hold
either edibles or beverages that were used as offerings to the spirits and
ancestors, the edibles consisting of fish and various meats including
beef, goat, chicken, dog, etc. and the heated beverages consisting of
fermented musts or worts of grains such as rice, barley and sorghum.
The Esteem Accorded Ritual Bronze Vessels
In China, throughout the ages, the ancient bronze vessels employed in
ancient rituals have been held in great esteem by the Chinese, so much
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so that even at the present moment, modern receptacles in the forms
of these ancient vessels in both bronze, jade, porcelain and other media
are still placed in temples and on modern-day family altars, where they
are used to hold sticks of incense offered to the gods, to ancient deified
heroes and to the spirits of the ancestors.
Today the great historic, cultural and artistic value of ancient Chinese
bronze vessels is recognised by all. Indispensable in the ritual practices
of the kings, emperors and nobility of ancient China, as well as symbols
of political and religious legitimacy and primacy, these objects serve
contemporary social scientists, historians and the modern general
public as tangible, material witnesses to the political, social and
religious life of the rulers and people of the Xia 夏, Shang 商 and Zhou
周 and later dynasties, as well as to the creative genius, technical skill
and sophistication of the ancient Chinese artisans who produced them.
Both inside and outside of China, ancient bronze vessels, and especially
those of the Shang 商 and Zhou 周 are regarded with a special
reverence by scholars and collectors alike and extensively researched
by an elite group. Inside China itself success in the study of ancient
bronzes and their inscriptions is regarded as a sign of great erudition.
It is perhaps for this reason that on the mainland even today, many
books on archaic ritual bronzes are still written in the traditional form
of Chinese characters, rather than the simplified characters officially
employed throughout mainland China since the late 1950s.
The Bronze Age in China
In China, the Bronze Age began around the 19 / 18 centuries B.C.
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and continued throughout the Iron Age, which in China began near the
end of the Spring and Autumn 春秋 period (770 – 476 B.C.), and lasted
beyond the Iron Age for a few hundred more years, until traditional
ancient bronze casting piece-mold techniques were completely
superseded by those employing the lost wax process, sometime during
the Han 漢 dynasty (206 B.C. – 220 A.D.) or according to Chinese
scholars like Ma Cheng-Yuan 馬承源, as late as the Sui 隋 and Tang 唐
(581 – 907 A.D.) dynasties.
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