Page 170 - Deydier UNDERSTANDING CHINESE ARCHAIC BRONZES

A.D.) who collected and studied a great number of ancient bronze
vessels near the site of Gao 鎬, the ancient capital of the Western
Zhou 西周, southwest of present-day Xian 西安 in Shaanxi 陝西
province, together with Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修 (1007 – 1072 A.D.) one
of the greatest writers, poets, statesmen and historians of the Song
dynasty.
■ The Jigulu Bawei 集古錄跋尾, edited and published by Ouyang
Xiu 歐陽修 (1007 – 1072 A.D.), is regarded by scholars as the first
specialized study of the inscriptions cast on nineteen inscribed ritual
bronze vessels known at that time. The book contains information
about the place of discovery of each bronze, its shape and size and
a transcription and translation of its inscription, if there was one.
Ouyang Xiu’s book was greatly influenced by the work of Liu Chang
劉敞.
■ The Kaogu Tu 考古圖, written by the Northern Song scholar Lü
Dalin 呂大臨 (1040 – 1092 A.D.) and published in 1092, is probably
the oldest and most important compilation produced during the
Song 宋 period. It includes a description and a drawing of two
hundred and ten bronze vessels and objects, as well as thirteen
jade objects, dating from the Shang 商 dynasty up to the Han 漢
dynasty, all of which were held in either the Imperial Collections or
in ten private famous collections of the period.
Of the two hundred and ten bronzes treated in the book, one
hundred and forty-eight were considered to date from the Shang 商
and Zhou 周 dynasties. Lü arranged these according to their shape,
then meticulously recorded their sizes, weights, inscriptions, etc.
and indicated, wherever possible, the area where they had been
discovered as well as other details of their provenance. He also
searched through ancient classics such as the Lushi Chunqiu Annals
呂氏春秋, the Zhouli 周禮, the Erya 爾雅, etc., etc. to determine
the correct names by which such vessels and their motifs should be
called, as well as their use in antiquity. Lü’s extremely important
work was the pioneer in its field and is the book upon which all
further works and studies of ancient Chinese bronze vessels, their
morphology, etc. are based.
■ The Xuan He Bogu Tu 宣和博古圖 was compiled, revised and then
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expanded between the years 1107 and 1123 or 1125 A.D. by the
Northern Song Prime Minister Wang Fu 王黼 (1079 – 1126 A.D.)
and a group of scholars working under him, on the instructions
of Emperor Huizong 徽宗 (1101 – 1125 A.D.). In this extremely
important 30-volume work, Wang Fu 王黼 and his assistants not
only recorded and arranged according to their shapes, all of the eight
hundred and thirty-nine bronze ritual vessels then held in the Song
宋 Imperial Collections, but also described and included drawings
of each piece as well as drawings or rubbings of the inscriptions
on all the inscribed pieces. Perhaps even more importantly, after
making a thorough search for the names of ancient ritual vessels in
all the classical and historical texts then known, as well as in earlier
works on bronzes, Wang Fu 王黼 standardized the terminology
used to describe ancient bronze vessel shapes and their decorative
motifs.
Unfortunately some of the ritual bronzes published in the Xuan
He Bogu Tu 宣和博古圖 are now considered to be later copies of
ancient ritual bronzes.
It is generally agreed that the work carried out by the Song 宋
antiquarians, all without exception men of great erudition, was very
meticulous and well-researched and thus the books they produced
were well-written, factual studies. Apart from a few errors, sometimes
extremely slight, the Song 宋 antiquarians’ method of classifying
bronzes and the terminology which they either established or
standardized, constitute the basis of our modern classifications and
terminology. Thus, the Song antiquarians found in the ancient texts
and then standardized names for ritual vessels like ding 鼎, li 鬲, jue
爵, jia 斝, pan 盤, etc., and terms like leiwen 雷紋 and taotie 饕餮 mask
to refer respectively to a motif composed of finger-print-like spirals,
and the animal mask motif, all of which names and terms are still used
by scholars today.
3. Ming 明 studies
During the Ming 明 dynasty (1368 – 1644 A.D.), on the other hand,
antiquarians and scholars seem to have been less attracted by the study
of ancient bronze vessels, and when they did set their hand to the study
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