The Birth of Landscape Painting in China [Reprint 2020 ed.] 9780520310681

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The Birth of Landscape in China

Tainting

T h e Birth of Landscape Painting in China By Michael Sullivan

UNIVERSITY

OF C A L I F O R N I A

Berkeley and Los Angeles

1962

PRESS

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California ( c ) 1 9 6 2 BY MICHAEL SULLIVAN

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-16863 Printed in the United States of America Designed by Rita Carroll

T o KHOAN

PREFACE

virtuous man take delight in landscapes?" asked the Sung painter Kuo Hsi. He gave several reasons, the chief of which was that the conscientious scholar, tied to his desk, immersed in the world and its troubles, finds in the contemplation of a landscape painting a refreshment of mind and heart as compelling as though he were to wander among the mountains themselves. The Chinese landscape painter who in his pictures satisfies this longing depicts not merely the outward and visible forms of nature, but the inner life and harmony that pervade them. The picture is, therefore, in a sense symbolic— not in the way in which a European classical landscape is symbolic, for poetic and mythological allusion play little part in it, but symbolic in a wider and vaguer sense. For Chinese landscape painting embodies a total view of life, expressed in the language of rocks and trees, mountains and water. This book is an attempt to discover the sources of this symbolic language, and to trace its early development. I hope that in due course it will be followed by further studies of Chinese landscape painting in its maturity. A glance at the table of contents will suggest that the subject has been handled in a somewhat piecemeal fashion. But I have resisted the temptation to force it into a smooth, well-rounded shape, feeling that, with the evidence so scattered and fragmentary, it is better to allow the form of each chapter to be dictated by the material at hand. Partially to remedy this situation, however, I have included at the end a brief summary, which the general reader might be advised to glance through before plunging into the book itself. This study has been made possible by the help given me by a number of institutions and individual scholars. I have received generous support in the form of a scholarship and research fellowships from Harvard University and from the Rockefeller and Bollingen foundations. To Professor Serge Elisseeff and the staff of the Harvard-Yenching Institute I am deeply indebted for their assistance, and for the privilege of having had the fullest access to the unique resources of that institution. I wish particularly to thank the Librarian, Dr. Ch'iu K'ai-ming, for his constant help. Above all I am happy to acknowledge my gratitude to the scholars to whose advice and suggestions this book owes so much, especially to Professor Yang Lien-sheng, Professor Benjamin Rowland, Jr., and Dr. William Acker, all of whom read the manuscript in whole or in part; to Laurence Sickman, for his " W H Y DOES THE

viii

Preface

kindness in sharing with me material in which he himself has a deep interest; and to Dr. Valdo Viglielmo, whose generous assistance with Japanese sources often took us far into the night. My debt to the writings of Osvald Siren, Alexander Soper, and other pioneers in this subject will be acknowledged as occasion arises. I am very grateful to those who have supplied me with photographs, particularly to Irene Vincent, to Professor Lao Kan and Professor Shih Ch'ang-ju of the Academia Sinica, and to the collectors and museum directors who have allowed me to reproduce photographs of objects in their collections. The editors of the following journals have very kindly given permission for me to use again, though in rather different form, material which first appeared in their pages: Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America, Art Bulletin, Artibus Asiae, Asian Review, Burlington Magazine, and Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. My thanks are due Miss Genevieve Rogers of the University of California Press for her careful editorial work on the manuscript. I should also like to thank Ja'afar bin Haji Omar and Syed bin Ali for secretarial assistance. This book has been published with the aid of grants from the HarvardYenching Institute and the Bollingen Foundation. Finally, the book will bear witness to the patience and encouragement of my wife, who has helped me at every stage in the writing of it, and to whom I owe far more than the dedication can express.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN

School of Oriental and African Studies London, 1960

CONTENTS

I

PICTORIAL A R T AND THE ATTITUDE TOWARD N A T U R E IN ANTIQUITY

II

III

IV

I

The traditional Chinese attitude toward nature

i

The evidence for painting in early texts

10

The character of pre-Han landscape

16

T H E H A N DYNASTY

25

The historical and cultural background

25

Painting in the Han Dynasty

30

Landscape painting

37

Landscape represented in other media

42

T H E SIX DYNASTIES

74

The historical and intellectual setting

74

The evidence of the texts

86

Aesthetic terminology in the Six Dynasties

110

Notes on recorded titles of landscape paintings

114

Notes toward a grammar of early landscape forms

127

The evolution of style

143

SUMMARY

163

APPENDIX: The Identification and Meaning of Certain Trees and Plants Represented in the Art of the Han Dynasty

169

NOTES

183

INDEX

209

ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATES

1 2 3 4

following page 213. Mountain landscape, Hua-shan. (Photo by Hedda Morrison) Mountain landscape, Hua-shan. (Photo by Hedda Morrison) Mountain landscape, Hua-shan. (Photo by Hedda Morrison) Omei-shan, Szechwan.

WARRING

STATES

5 Silk square excavated at Changsha, Hunan. (Redrawn.) 6 Detail of painted decoration on bronze mirror. Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, Mass. 6a Painted decoration around a cylindrical lacquer box excavated at Changsha. 7 Detail of decoration on side of lacquer lien excavated at Changsha. 8-11 Details of decoration on inlaid bronze hu. Palace Museum, Peking. 12 Inlaid decoration on side of bronze lien. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 13 a-c Engraved decoration around inside of bronze ewer excavated at Changsha. (13c redrawn.) 14 Spout of engraved bronze ewer excavated at Ch'ang-chih, Shansi. (Redrawn.) 15 Engraved decoration around inside of bronze lien excavated at Huihsien. (Redrawn.)

HAN

DYNASTY

16 Detail of wall painting in the Pei-yüan tomb, Liaoyang, southern Manchuria. 17 Funerary clay house. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City. 18 Detail of painted decoration on clay house. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City.

xii

Illustrations

19 Detail of painted decoration on clay house. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City. 20 Clay tile with painted decoration. Cleveland Museum of Art. 20 a, b Pottery mortuary jar, with painted decoration over a white slip. (Dr. Paul Singer, Summit, New Jersey.) 21 Fairy mountain. Detail of painted lacquer bowl excavated at Lolang, Korea. 22 Pottery banner-stand (?) in the form of a fairy mountain, from a cave tomb in Szechwan. Szechwan University Museum. 23 Bronze steamer (po) with painted decoration. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 24 Bronze flask (pien-hu) with painted decoration. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 25 Bronze vessel (chung) with painted decoration. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 26, 27 Bronze vessel (hu) with painted decoration. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 28 Sasanian silver platter. Detail. Hermitage Museum, Leningrad. 29 Embroidered shoe-sole found at Noin-Ula, Mongolia. Hermitage Museum, Leningrad. 30 a-c Cloud-scrolls depicted on painted lacquer objects. 31 Figured silk fabric from grave-pit at Loulan. Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, Mass. 32 Silk damask excavated at Noin-Ula. Hermitage Museum, Leningrad. 33 a-d Designs on inlaid bronze tube. Tokyo School of Art. 34 Decoration on inlaid bronze tube. Collection of the King of Sweden, Stockholm. 35 Woven silk panel excavated at Noin-Ula. Hermitage Museum, Leningrad. 36,37 Stamped clay bricks. 38 Pottery jar with molded design. City Art Museum, St. Louis. 39 Glazed pottery hu with molded design on shoulder. Collection of the King of Sweden, Stockholm. (After Palmgren.) 40 Pottery hill jar with molded design. Cleveland Museum of Art. 41 Pottery hill jar with molded decoration on side. Detail. Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection, Seattle Art Museum. 42 Glazed pottery hu with molded decoration. Cleveland Museum of Art. 43 Bronze hill jar. Detail. Japanese collection. 44 Bronze tube with inlaid decoration. Hellstrôm Collection, Stockholm. 45 Bronze lien with repoussé decoration. Freer Gallery of Art, Washington.

Illustrations 46 47 a-e 48 49 50

51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

xiii

Lid of pottery hill censer. Formerly C. T. Loo Collection. Lid of bronze hill censer. Details. Freer Gallery of Art, Washington. Lid of bronze hill censer. Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, Mass. Bronze mirror, T L V type. Raising the bronze tripod of the Emperor Yii. Rubbing of an incised slab from Hsiao-t'ang-shan, Shantung. Detail of central shrine. Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, Mass. Raising the tripod. Rubbing of a stone relief from W u Liang Tz'u, Shantung. Detail. Raising the tripod. Rubbing of a stone relief from an unknown site in Shantung. Detail. Rubbing of an incised stone slab from Hsiao-t'ang-shan, Shantung. Detail. The battle for the bridge. Rubbing of engraving on left end of main beam of tomb at I-nan, Shantung. Rubbing of relief from Tu-chia-ch'uang, Shantung. Detail. Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, Mass. Relief from unidentified site in Shantung. Detail. Ts'ang Chieh and a companion beneath flowering trees. Detail of an engraved slab from tomb at I-nan, Shantung. Gatehouse with trees beyond. Engraved slab from tomb at I-nan. Calendar plant. Relief from Shantung. (Redrawn.) Calendar plant. Relief from Shantung. (Redrawn.) Mu-lien-li. Relief from unknown site in Shantung. (Redrawn by Feng Yün-p'eng.) Relief from unidentified site in Shantung. (Redrawn by Feng Yiinp'eng.) Relief from Liu-chia-ts'un, Shantung. Detail. Relief on funerary pillar from T'eng-feng-hsien, Honan. Detail. Relief from T'eng-hsien, Honan. Detail. Double interlaced tree. Relief from Tsining-chou, Shantung. Detail. Interlaced tree. Relief from Tsining-chou. Detail. Fu-sang tree (?). Relief from Tsining-chou. Detail. Relief from T'eng-hsien region, Honan. Detail. Relief from T'eng-hsien. Detail. Stone slab from Liang-ch'eng-shan, Honan. Collection of the late Baron Von der Heydt, Ascona. Stone relief from T'eng-hsien region, Honan. Detail. Stone relief from T'eng-hsien, Honan. Detail. Relief carved in honor of Li Hsi, A.D. 171, Ch'eng-hsien, southern Kansu.

Illustrations 75 The chase among mountains. Relief on lintel of tomb at Nanyang, Honan. 76 Fabulous combat. Relief on lintel of tomb at Nanyang. 77 Animal combat. Relief on lintel of tomb at Nanyang. 78 Molded brick with scenes in relief. 79 Relief on vertical panel of tomb at Nanyang. 80 Molded brick with scenes in relief, Honan region. 81 Relief on vertical panel of tomb at Nanyang. 82 Ram and ling-chih (?) on woven panel preserved in Shosoin Repository, Nara. Eighth century. 83 Molded brick with scenes in relief, from Honan. 84 Stone relief from tomb of Wang Te-yiian, Sui-te, Shansi. A.D. 100. 85 Po Ya and Ch'eng Lien. Rubbing of relief on side of stone coffer from Hsinchin, Szechwan. 86 A fabulous game of liu-po. Rubbing of relief on side of stone coffer from Hsinchin. 87 A fabulous scene. Rubbing of relief on side of stone coffer from Hsinchin. 88 The fu-sang tree. Rubbing of relief on side of stone coffer from Hsinchin. 89 Mythological scene. Rubbing of relief on side of stone coffer from Hsinchin. 90 Shooting and harvesting. Relief on a molded pottery tile from Yang-tzu-shan, Szechwan. 91 The salt industry of Tseliutsing. Rubbing of molded pottery tile from Yang-tzu-shan, Szechwan. 92 The salt industry of Tseliutsing. Rubbing of molded pottery tile from Yang-tzu-shan. 93 Boatman on a lake. Rubbing of molded pottery tile from Te-yang, Szechwan. 94 Driving along a road between trees. Rubbing of molded pottery tile from Yang-tzu-shan, Szechwan. 95 Ritual dance (?) in the fields. Molded pottery tile from Te-yang, Szechwan. 96 Woman in a grove of mulberries (?). Rubbing of molded pottery tile from Chengtu, Szechwan, dated A.D. 226. 97 Gatehouse. Rubbing of molded tile from Te-yang, Szechwan.

Illustrations Six

xv

DYNASTIES

98 Detail of wall painting in Tomb of the Wrestlers, T'ung-kou, Manchuria. Sixth century. 99 Detail of wall painting in Tomb of the Wrestlers, T'ung-kou. Sixth century. 100 Detail of wall painting in Tomb of the Wrestlers, T'ung-kou. Sixth century. 101 Detail of wall painting in Tomb of the Wrestlers, T'ung-kou. Sixth century. 102 The Ruru Jataka. Detail of wall painting in Cave 257, Tunhuang. Ca. A.D. 500. 103 The Ruru Jataka. Detail of wall painting in Cave 257, Tunhuang. Ca. A.D. 500. 104 The Admonitions of the Court Instructress, after Ku K'ai-chih (ca. 345-ca. 406). Detail of hand-scroll, ink and slight color on silk. Late T'ang or tenth century. 105 The Tiger Jataka. Detail of wall painting in Cave 254, Tunhuang. 106 Mountainous landscape on lower part of ceiling of Cave 249, Tunhuang. 107 Detail of lower part of ceiling of Cave 285, Tunhuang. 108 Detail of wall painting in "Ming-oi," Karashahr. 109 Landscape detail in Cave 285, Tunhuang. 110 Landscape detail in Cave 285, Tunhuang. HI A walled city. Detail of wall painting in the Three-chambered Tomb, T'ung-kou, Manchuria. Ca. A.D. 500. 112 Jataka scenes. Detail of wall painting in Cave 428, Tunhuang. 113 Jataka scenes. Detail of wall painting in the Cave of the Hippocamps, Kizil. 114 Illustration to the Lo-shen fu, after Ku K'ai-chih. Detail of handscroll, ink on silk. Freer Gallery of Art, Washington. 1 1 5 Detail of side of engraved stone sarcophagus. Minneapolis Institute of Arts. 116 Detail of wall painting in Cave 302, Tunhuang. 117 Detail of wall painting in Cave 296, Tunhuang. 118 Detail of wall painting in Cave 296, Tunhuang. 119 Detail of wall painting in Cave 296, Tunhuang. 120 Painting on ceiling of Cave 419, Tunhuang. 121 Detail of wall painting in Cave 209, Tunhuang. 122 Detail of wall painting in Cave 217, Tunhuang.

xvi

Illustrations 123 The story of the filial Wang Lin. Detail of engraved stone sarcophagus. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City. 124 The story of the filial Ts'ai Shun. Detail of engraved stone sarcophagus. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City. 125 The story of the filial Tung Yung. Detail of engraved stone sarcophagus. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City. 126 The story of the filial Shun. Detail of engraved stone sarcophagus. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City. 127 The story of the filial Kuo Chü. Detail of engraved stone sarcophagus. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City. 128 The story of the filial Yüan Ku. Detail of engraved stone sarcophagus. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City. 129 Detail of painting on north wall of a tomb near Pyongyang, Korea. 130 Illustrated version of the Ingakyö Sutra of Cause and Effect. Detail of Tempyö copy of a Suikö or Chinese Six Dynasties original. Jöbonjendaiji, Kyoto. 131 Illustrated version of the Ingakyö Sutra of Cause and Effect. Detail of Tempyö copy of a Suikö or Chinese Six Dynasties original. Jobonjendaiji, Kyoto. 132 Detail of painting on baldachin over central Buddha figure in Kondö, Höryüji, Nara. 133 Decorated panels on base of Tamamushi Shrine, Höryüji, Nara. (Redrawn.) 134 The Tiger Jataka. Detail of painting on base of Tamamushi Shrine, Höryüji, Nara. 135 Detail of wall painting in tomb in Korea. (Unidentified.) 136 Detail of engraved stone slab from funerary "bed." William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City. 137 Sasanian silver plaque. Hermitage Museum, Leningrad. 138 Silver ornament excavated at Noin-Ula, Mongolia. Hermitage Museum, Leningrad. 139 Rubbing of design on a stamped clay brick. Han Dynasty. Art Institute of Chicago. 140 Rubbing of design on a stamped clay brick. Han Dynasty. Art Institute of Chicago. 141 Rubbing of design on a stamped clay brick. Han Dynasty. Art Institute of Chicago. 142 Rubbing of a stamped clay brick. Han Dynasty. Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto. 143 Fu-sang tree. Rubbing of relief in Wu Liang tomb shrine. Detail. Han Dynasty.

Illustrations xvit 144 Rubbing of a stamped clay brick. Han Dynasty. Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto. 145 Rubbing of a stamped clay brick. Han Dynasty. Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto. 146 Stamped and painted clay tile. Han Dynasty. Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto. 147 Rubbing of a stamped and painted clay tile. Han Dynasty. Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Mass. 148 Clay half-tile from north China. Han Dynasty. Japanese collection. 149 Assyrian cylinder seal. British Museum, London.

TEXT FIGURES

1. 2. 3. 4.

Motifs on Huai and Loyang mirrors. Drawings showing development of landscape motifs from volute. Detail of woven silk panel from Noin-Ula. The compartmented style on bronze vessels from the ancient Near East and China. Mountain conventions at Ajanta. 5. Detail of Admonitions scroll and tenth-century (?) landscape compared with typical Six Dynasties and T'ang foliage conventions. 6. Detail (restored) of Han brick found at Bac-ninh, Tonkin. (After Janse.)

20 48 53 132 134 148 170

Pictorial Art and the Attitude in

Toward

Nature

Antiquity

T H E TRADITIONAL CHINESE ATTITUDE TOWARD NATURE

To the Chinese all mountains are sacred, hallowed by a tradition that goes back centuries before the Buddhists and Taoists built their first temples on the hillsides. They are sacred because, since remote times, the Chinese have held that the cosmic forces, the energy, harmony, and ceaseless renewal of the universe, are in some way made manifest in them* In popular belief the mountain is the body of the cosmic being, the rocks its bones, the water the blood that gushes through its veins, the trees and grasses its hair, the clouds and mists the vapor of its breath—the cosmic breath (ch'i),f or cloud-breath {y¡inch'i), which is the visible manifestation of the very essence of life.1 Perhaps the peasant making his occasional pilgrimage to the temple on its summit is only dimly aware of the power of the mountain. For him it is enough to sense the magic in the air and to feel, almost without knowing it, that for a short time he has come closer to the mysterious heart of nature. To the Chinese poet, painter, or philosopher, however, to wander in the mountains is an act of meditation, even of adoration. In the procession of the seasons, the rhythm of rain and sun, the endless movement of clouds, mist, and water, he sees a manifestation of the rhythm of the universe itself. By climbing the hills and looking out over range upon range of peaks he discovers man's true place in * The scenery of two of China's most renowned sacred mountains, Hua-shan and Omei-shan, is illustrated in the first four plates in this book. These glimpses may suggest to the reader why it is that the Chinese landscape painter has always looked upon the mountains as the visible embodiment of natural forces. They also show how faithfully the spectacular mountain scenery of certain parts of China is reflected in the conventions of the familiar Chinese landscape painting. f F o r the romanization of Chinese I have used the modified Wade-Giles system employed in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, except for common place names, which follow the well-known Chinese Post Office spelling.

2

Pictorial Art in Antiquity

the scheme of things. When the sun first strikes the high, bare eastern slopes at dawn, while the cloud-filled hollows lie dark and hidden, he observes the workings of the cosmic dualism of yang and yin, which, forever interacting yet forever held in balance, set in motion the due process of nature. India, with her extremes of drought and rain, death and rebirth, tends to seek release from the harshness of the physical world in philosophical abstraction, and, if release from the burden of existence cannot be found, to invest the physical act with a metaphysical meaning. Indian thought thus inclines toward the transcendental. The Chinese, living in a kinder environment, tend to seek Reality not in philosophical speculation but in the natural world. T o know nature more intimately, therefore, is to come closer to an understanding of the Reality which is immanent in nature. The Chinese painter may spend years in wandering among the hills and streams so that this natural order, which is but a visible manifestation of the cosmic order, may reveal itself to him. But how can he express the intensity of the awareness that comes to him in these moments of spiritual revelation before the ultimate mysteries of the universe? The language of metaphysics is too remote, too abstract, to convey an experience that, while partly psychic, is also intensely visual. For the wanderer in the mountains attains awareness through no mere feat of the imagination, but through a journey, in space and time, in a real landscape. Bare rock and green foliage, heat and cold, light and shadow, sound and silence—these belong not to the world of the philosophers and metaphysicians but to a world in which visual and psychic experiences are inextricably interwoven. Such experiences can find expression only in a language that is both visual and abstract—visual enough so that the forms that gave rise to it may be apprehended, conveyed, and recognized for what they are, yet abstract enough to confer upon the forms thus created the validity of a general, eternal truth. In the art of landscape painting the Chinese have evolved a language of visual symbols which, in fulfilling these conditions, is one of the great achievements not only of the Chinese genius but of the human imagination. It is with the birth and early evolution of this symbolic language that this book is concerned. Fundamental to any understanding of Chinese culture is the fact that the Chinese are an agricultural people, and have been so since remote antiquity. T o belong to a family with a tradition of studying and farming was something to be proud of. Rooted in the soil, aware above all of the recurring pattern of the year, of rain and drought, winter and summer, the Chinese developed an instinctive sense of an endless rhythm, an endless series of variations on the simple theme of the seasons. From earliest times they accepted this rhythm and submitted to it, for they knew that survival and prosperity depended upon their acceptance. Submission to the rhythm of the world as he

Pictorial Art in Antiquity

3

finds it is the mark of the farmer and gardener, the source of his serenity. The illiterate rustic could scarcely have formulated a philosophy of nature; that was left to the scholars, poets, and painters, who in art and literature found expression for a truth which all instinctively recognized. Their aim was not, like ours in the West, to re-create, to construct, or design the world, but rather to discover, by intuition, what the design actually is. The vast and elaborate ritual established under the Chou Dynasty had as its basic purpose the necessity of making manifest the fact that man had apprehended this grand design—the Will of Heaven—and was acting in accordance with it. The evolution of the Chinese world view has been influenced also by her geographical position. Protected on two sides by sea, on a third by impenetrable mountain ranges, and on the fourth by deserts, China has remained inviolate for long stretches of time, falling prey to invasions across her northern frontiers only when the government was weak. This isolation has given her security, a sense of permanence and attachment to the land. The Chinese have always been receptive to foreign ideas, often uncritically so; but because these borrowed ideas and artistic forms had traveled immense distances from their source, across mountains and deserts, the Chinese were often able to put them to their own use without becoming subject to the cultures that had produced them. We shall find again and again that landscape painting from the Han Dynasty onward made use of subjects and motifs imported from India or the Near East, but these are everywhere controlled and transformed by a uniquely Chinese attitude toward nature.2 We know little of the religion of China before the Chou Dynasty, except that the Shang people believed in a being whom they called Shang-ti (Supreme Emperor). This deity presided over a hierarchy of spirits; these included the ancestors of the nature spirits and genii loci which have been prominent in Chinese popular belief to this day, and are found in the religious systems of all agricultural people. During the Chou Dynasty the Chinese world view crystallized in the concept Tien (Heaven), related in a dualism with Ti (Earth), which assumed a quasi-female aspect as its consort; t'ien-ti, the divine Father-Mother, produced man, forming the metaphysical triad known as the san-ts'ai, or Three Powers. This Heaven-Earth dualism, with man poised between them, later became the basis for the whole system of Chinese metaphysical belief. It was man's unique place at the meeting point of these two forces that endowed him with the responsibility and power to order the pattern of life by means of the divine guidance of the ruler, who, while Son of Heaven, was also of the substance of Earth. This concept, moreover, although not formulated in philosophical terms until late in the first millennium before Christ, was the basis for the belief in the intimate relation between man and nature that is one of the unique characteristics of Chinese thought.

4

Pictorial Art in Antiquity

In ancient China both philosophical ideas and cosmic events were symbolized by means of hsiang—images or emblems. These might be defined as visible forms that stand for the elements that make up the total cosmic pattern. In one system of thought they are, specifically, the eight trigrams (pa-kua) and the sixty-four hexagrams produced by combining them. The Boo\ of Changes (l-ching) tells us that the basis of all existence is the Great Ultimate (t'ai-chi), which produces the two forms (erh-i), which in turn produce the four emblems {hsiang) from which the eight trigrams were derived and were magically made manifest to man on earth.3 Here the hsiang form a purely abstract intermediary stage between the cosmic dualism and the visible pa-\ua. Elsewhere in the l-ching, however, the hsiang are considered as having been created by the divine sage-kings in order to give visible form to all phenomena: "As to the emblems {hsiang), the Sages used them in surveying all the complex phenomena under the sky. Then they considered how these forms could be figured, and made representations of their appropriate forms, which are hence designated emblems. . . . the appearance of anything is called a hsiang; when it has physical form it is called an object (a/«)." 4 Here we might translate hsiang as "primordial image" or "archetype"—in the Platonic, not the Jungian, sense. The use of divination to determine the cosmic pattern as it affected man's immediate destiny carried with it the idea of the hsiang as the visible manifestation of this divine law. According to the Tso-chuan (fifteenth year of Duke Hsi), "The tortoise-shell gives its figures, and the milfoil its numbers. When things are produced, they have their figures, their figures go on to multiply; that multiplication goes on to numbers . . . " 5 We may accept Legge's translation of the term hsiang as "figures" only if we bear in mind the cosmic force that the word bears in this context. Here the hsiang are considered as existing as a result of the preexistence of "things"; these "things" are not to be regarded as concrete objects to be depicted by visual images, but as events in nature in the most general sense. Thus the hsiang may be taken as forms or patterns which are the visible symbols or emblems of these phenomena, and certainly not as representing or depicting them. The divine origin of the hsiang is related in a popular myth. The l-ching describes how Fu Hsi, "looking up, contemplated the hsiang [i.e., sun, moon, stars, etc.] exhibited in Heaven, and, looking down, surveyed the patterns shown on Earth. He contemplated the markings of birds and beasts and the suitabilities of the ground . . . thereupon he first devised the eight trigrams to show fully the attributes of spirit-like intelligence [in its operations], and to classify the qualities of myriads of things. . . . " 6 Having done so, he was able to hand on to Shen Nung the means for the creation of the first plowshare, as a concrete particularization of what might be called the "plowshare aspect" of the Great Ultimate. Closely related to this is the story of Ts'ang

Pictorial Art in Antiquity

5

Chieh, minister to the Yellow Emperor, in the early Han work Huai-nan-tzu: "Chieh had four eyes. He looked up and beheld the hsiang in the heavens and looked down and saw the markings of birds and beasts and then determined the forms of the characters. The Creator could not hide his secrets, therefore Heaven rained millet; the spirits and devils could not conceal their forms, and therefore the ghosts cried in the night." 7 This concept of the hsiang, whether considered philosophically or in relation to the practical requirements of divination, is of great importance in understanding the traditional Chinese attitude toward visual art. It has given rise to the idea that pictorial representation is not for the purpose of describing a particular object, since individual objects have no significance in themselves, but in order to express the ideal or norm which exists eternally beyond the limits of temporal existence and is manifest in natural forms. The more abstract and unparticularized the pictorial forms, the nearer they approach the true form. Because the long and short lines of the pa-\ua are but one step removed from the complete undifferentiation of the Great Ultimate, they approach as near as is possible to constituting its outward and visible symbol. Therefore, as the l-ching says, "what the Superior Man rests in is the order shown in the I, and the study that gives him the greatest pleasure is that of the explanation of the lines."8 We shall see later how other schools of thought emphasized that a work of art must be the product of the harmonious interaction of the forces of Heaven, Earth, Man, and so on, but in the meantime it is important to note the profound philosophical idealism of this view, and its crucial role in the emergence of a philosophy of art in ancient China. The system of the hsiang set out in the I-ching and its appendices may seem to be constructed in an arbitrary and illogical manner. How, one might ask, could such a system satisfy the Chinese intellectual through the centuries? What conceivable order does it offer for the contemplation of the Superior Man ? So much of the culture that surrounded and gave birth to the l-ching is lost that we cannot hope to discover its original meaning, but we may still realize the great significance of the pa-\ua in the history of Chinese thought: it represents an attitude of mind that is uniquely Chinese, an attitude which, once understood, may bring us closer to understanding the attitude toward nature that it revealed in landscape painting. For, when every aspect of nature, both transcendental and phenomenal, could be represented by a combination of the conventional symbols of the pa-\ua, it became unnecessary to examine these things as external events capable of analysis and of yielding, by induction, general laws regarding the behavior and nature of the universe. Indeed, the existence of such a system, by which an intuitive apprehension of the universal order was brought within man's grasp, made difficult, if not impossible, the development of a scientific attitude. In such a system no event or object could be isolated or particularized; all were but aspects of a totality that lay

6

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Antiquity

beyond logical comprehension. This totality could be expressed only in a language of symbols, which, because they were not representations of individual events, could embrace all events. To one who accepts such a view, the typically Western approach of isolation and classification seems an unnecessary and uncongenial limitation upon the power of the mind to grasp the whole. To the ancient Chinese the forms and colors, the material elements and musical notes, the directions in space and the ethical principles—all were but aspects of the total cosmic pattern, and nothing existed or had meaning apart from that pattern. The chaotic condition of China during the later centuries of the Chou Dynasty may have contributed much to the development of this nature philosophy. As the feudal system collapsed, the position of the emperor sank to that of a figurehead. The fortunes of the Confucian doctrine likewise declined until it became merely one of the "hundred schools" that were contending for the support of the feudal princes. As orthodoxy weakened, old folk cults were revived, and, at the same time, metaphysical speculation increased. But even before this period, the popular ballads collected in the Boo\ of Songs reveal that men were turning to nature not only as a manifestation of the eternal powers but also as a mirror for human feeling. Courage in war, the pangs of unrequited love, partings, loneliness, the beauty of a fair maiden, all find their echo in the ever-changing beauty and sadness of nature: Zip, zip, the valley wind! Nothing but wind and rain. In days of peril, in days of dread It was always "I and you." Now in the time of peace, of happiness, You have cast me aside.®

With the gradual awakening of the creative imagination, the poet, and later the artist, found in nature not merely a reflection, but rather an immense enlarging, of their powers of thought and feeling. The philosophical basis for this growing awareness was Taoism. The Tao-te ching, a short work dating probably from the fourth century B.C., is ascribed to the semilegendary Laotzu, believed to have been an official who, weary of court life, retired to reflect in quietude on his country estate. For the purposes of this study, the most significant aspect of his teaching is the likening of Tao, the indefinable, to water; for, like water, Tao takes the low ground, the valleys. This assertion may be superficially regarded as a bait to the rival Confucianists, who maintained that low ground is "the collecting-place of all impurities under heaven,"10 but there is more to this idea in the Tao-te ching than a dig at Confucianism. To the Taoist, water is the source of life. The Kuan-tzu says, "It is by absorbing the water spirit (shui-shen), that vegetation lives, that the

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root gets its girth, the flower its symmetries, the fruit its measure." 1 1 Of great importance in this valley concept is the notion that the valley is female as opposed to the mountain, which is male: T h e Valley Spirit never dies. It is named the Mysterious Female. A n d the Doorway of the Mysterious Female Is the base from which Heaven and Earth sprang. It is there within us all the while; D r a w upon it as you will, it never runs dry. 1 2 H e who knows the male, yet cleaves to the female, Becomes like a ravine, receiving all things under Heaven. 1 3 T h e highest good is like that of water. T h e goodness of water is that it benefits the ten thousand creatures; yet itself does not scramble, but is content with the places that all men disdain. It is this that makes water so near to the W a y . 1 4

As Waley put it, "The valleys . . . are 'nearer to Tao' than the hills; and in the whole of creation it is the negative, passive, 'female' element alone that has access to Tao."15 Indeed, we find here, rather thinly disguised, an echo of the ancient fertility concept of the receptive womb of the cowry shell, transformed and enlarged in proportion as imaginative experience was developing. How far this basically sexual concept of the living landscape was present in the minds of later artists and writers it is impossible to say; yet it seems not unlikely that the emphasis—in Six Dynasties landscape painting, for example —upon the sheer pinnacles of the mountains, set against the rich, curving lusciousness of the valleys, may have been subconsciously stimulated by the mystical sexual element so strongly expressed in the Tao-te ching. The yin-yang dualism is another important, and parallel, manifestation of Late Chou Taoist metaphysics. It appears first in the works of Tsou Yen (ca. 300 B.C.), a philosopher of the state of Ch'i; and in the works of Chuangtzu and Lieh-tzu, both of the third century B.C. The doctrine does not actually appear in the Tao-te ching, but it is certainly compatible with it, for, according to the Erh-ya, the word yin originally meant "the shady side of a hill" (hence valley or low place); while yang meant "the sunny side of the mountain" (hence the eminence itself).16 By extension of meaning the two terms came to stand for an infinite duality of existent and nonexistent, light and dark, and so on—each pole seen not in opposition to the other (as, for instance, are good and evil in Western thought), but as manifestations of an undifferentiate^ whole, interacting in perfect equilibrium, and owing their origin to the power of ch'i, the breath of the universe. The Quietists, as Chuang-tzu, Lieh-tzu, and

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their followers were called, held that this cosmic ch'i dwelt in the individual as "life breath," received by him at birth from the primal source, the "fountain that never dries." This ch'i, or ling (spirit)-ch'i, is within the mind, but may be lost through the perturbations of grief and joy, delight and anger, that daily ripple its surface. Thus it was the aim of the Taoist practitioner to return to the state of primal bliss and innocence, not only by divesting himself of desire, but also by attaining a complete passivity (wu-wei, non-action), in which state the almost imperceptible breathing of nature would be registered upon his consciousness as upon an instrument of supreme refinement and sensitivity. Chuang-tzu, poet and metaphysician, rises to great heights in describing this attitude, which, as Waley well put it, "is not one merely of resignation nor even of acquiescence, but a lyrical, almost ecstatic acceptance which has inspired some of the most moving passages in Taoist literature."17 Chuangtzu's attitude has an important bearing upon Chinese landscape painting, for it proclaims the ideal of harmony with the laws of nature, and ridicules man's efforts to alter his destiny. But an unthinking acceptance of the rules and conventions of society is just as bad as defiance of natural law. The famous story of "the artist who took off his clothes and sat cross-legged" is apposite, although the story does not appear in Chuang-tzu's own writings but in one of the apocryphal chapters (wai-p'ien) dating from the Later Han Dynasty.18 Fung Yu-lan has observed that, although Chuang-tzu was a native of the state of Sung, the form of his thought is close to that of the neighboring kingdom of Ch'u, which flourished in the Yangtze Valley until it was destroyed by the rising Ch'in Empire.19 It is interesting to speculate on the course that Chinese culture would have taken during the next four centuries if the victory in 223 B.C. had gone to the more highly civilized and sophisticated state of Ch'u rather than to the unlettered Ch'in barbarians from the western frontiers. For in the arts—certainly in the literary arts—Ch'u had reached a level of awareness and achievement that survived her destruction as a military power and was profoundly to influence the culture of the Han Dynasty. The state of Ch'u produced during the latter half of the fourth century B.C. two of the first great Chinese poets whose names are known to us—Ch'II Yüan and Sung Yü. Writing mainly in the rhapsodic form known as the sao, and its derivative, the fu, they must have been influenced by the rich and luxuriant environment of the Yangtze Valley, which, even in the Han Dynasty, may have harbored tigers and elephants, and was, more significantly, the source of much of Taoist nature philosophy. The Elegies of Ch'u, compiled in the Later Han Dynasty by Wang I, reveal a sensitive, even passionate, response to nature that is new in Chinese literature.20 In the Book, of Songs nature was used as a mirror to reflect human feeling, but in the poetry of

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Ch'ii Yuan the descriptions of nature are deeply, even passionately, felt, as in the last lines of "The Spirit of the Mountain": 21 am the spirit of the mountain, crowned with alpinias, Drinking from the rocky fountain, in the shade of fir and pines. I half wonder whether you still think of me. Thunder rumbles. Sheets of rain darken the earth."

LADY: " I

LORD:

"The gibbons howl and monkeys mourn all night. The whisding wind whispers among falling leaves. Thinking of the princess in vain can I lay my sorrow."

The same richness of imagery appears in his rhapsody In Praise of the Orange Tree, and above all in the Great Summons™ In the long poem Kao-t'ang fu, Ch'u Yiian's contemporary, Sung Yii, describes to King Hsiang of Ch'u the Kao-t'ang Shrine perched on a hill: T o what shall I liken this high and desolate hill? In all the world it has no kin. The Witches' Mountain Knows no such terraces, such causeways of coiling stone. Climb the treeless rocks, look down into the deep, Where under their tall banks the gathered waters lie. After long rain the sky has cleared afresh. A hundred valleys hold concourse I In silent wrath Mad waters tussle, the high floods Brim abreast and tumble to their home. The shadows spread and spread, the resdess pools Mount their steep shore. . . . Ever the wind blows; great waves are piled Like barrows on a lonely field; Now on a widening bed They josde savagely or beat upon their shores; Now cramped, they draw together and are at peace. Now in precipitous creeks, with violence renewed, High they bound as breakers that an ocean-ship Sees on the Stony Foreland flung.23

As we read on, the spirit of the mountain appears as a goddess, in the guise of a lovely maiden whose seductions are described with exquisite sensuousness. One of the most fascinating and baffling of pre-Han texts is the Tien-wen (Questions to Heaven), traditionally attributed to Ch'u Yiian.24 This extraordinary composition consists of a series of questions in this strain: "Who planned and measured out the round shape and nine-fold gates of Heaven? Whose work was this, and who first made it?

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"How are the Ladle's Handle and the Cord tied together? How was Heaven's Pole raised? How do the Eight Pillars of Heaven keep it up? Why is there a gap in the South-east?" 2 5

Wang I, the Han editor of the Elegies of Ch'u, was repeating what in his day had evidently become a traditional explanation, when he wrote in his preface to the Tien-wen that Ch'ii Yuan was inspired to compose these questions by wall paintings that he had come upon in an ancestral shrine of the Ch'u nobility. This has been taken as a proof not only of the existence of wall painting but even of landscape painting in the third century B.C.26 But, as David Hawkes has suggested in his study of the Ch'u-tz'u, it is much more likely that these are not questions so much as riddles, written purely for entertainment. Wang I's conjectures are of value here only in that they show that, in his day, such themes could have formed the subject matter of wall paintings. It is not at all impossible that the palaces and ancestral shrines of Ch'u were similarly decorated, but there is no evidence to show that they were. Yet it would be unwise to ignore such legendary and traditional origins, for, while they cannot provide concrete evidence for the character of pre-Han painting, they are often consistent with the general Chinese attitude toward the birth of her culture. This is particularly true of the legendary origin of painting and writing, each of which embodies characteristics of the other, and both of which came to occupy an almost sacred position in Chinese history. The written character is highly abstract and rich in symbolic content, and yet it stems in some degree from an early pictographic stage all traces of which have now vanished. By the time the written character appears, scratched on the oracle bones or sunk in the bronze vessels of the Shang Dynasty, it is no longer a pure pictograph, but has arrived at the stage of what a Chinese scholar has called "early semantograms": the character represents not an object, but a meaning or an idea.27 Thereafter the symbolic and associative content takes increasing precedence over its pictographic function, but it cannot be doubted that its remote origins lie in primitive pictures of objects and events. Although the early forms of painting are even more obscurely buried than those of writing, it too expresses a highly symbolic content through the agency of a generalized and relatively abstract language of forms. As we study the history of Chinese representational art, it becomes increasingly clear that it is not far removed, either in formal style or in the concepts it embodies, from the almost pure abstractions of the written character. T H E EVIDENCE FOR PAINTING I N EARLY TEXTS

In attempting any reconstruction of the pictorial art of the Chou period on the basis of literary sources, we must first satisfy ourselves that the means to

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produce such an art were in existence. In fact, the materials both for painting and for writing already existed in prehistoric times. References to the "five colors" occur frequently in pre-Han texts.28 Neolithic pottery recovered from the sites of Pan-shan and Lo-han-t'ang in Kansu and in other painted-pottery sites in Honan displays a type of decoration executed in black pigment, probably made from soot, applied with a brush sufficiently pliable and soft to permit of a good deal of technical freedom. One shard from Ma-chia-yao is decorated with plants painted with extraordinary spontaneity and assurance, showing, in the way in which the leaf terminates in a fine flick of the brush, a technical sophistication hardly different in essence from that revealed in the bamboo paintings of the Sung Dynasty.29 Thus, in the second millennium B.C., the basic materials for a pictorial technique—brush, ink, and colors—were in general use. One of the earliest references to pictorial representation has to do with the legend that in ancient times actual objects had been depicted on bronze vessels. The following story is preserved in the Tso-chuan, a Late Chou commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals, under the third year of Duke Hsiian (605 B.C.) : [The strength of the kingdom] depends on the [sovereign's] virtue. Anciently, when Hsia was distinguished for its virtue, the distant regions sent pictures of the [remarkable] objects in them. The Nine Pastors sent in the metal of their provinces, and the tripods were cast, with representations on them of those objects. All the objects were represented, and [instructions were given] of the preparations to be made in reference to them, so that the people might know the spirits and evil things. Thus the people, when they went among the rivers, marshes, hills, and forests, did not meet with the injurious things, and the hill-sprites, monstrous things, and water-sprites did not meet with them [to do them injury]. 30

This is no more than a fairy story about the entirely mythical Hsia Dynasty, yet it is of value because it indicates that when the Tso-chuan was compiled (Late Chou) there existed a tradition that actual objects had formerly been depicted upon ritual vessels. By the time of the Shang Dynasty the bronze décor is highly stylized; but is it not possible that, just as the written character must have originated in a pure pictograph, the decoration on the bronzes may also have passed through an earlier stage, when objects were depicted upon them with a greater, if cruder, realism ? 31 Until bronzes of an earlier and more primitive type than those found at Chengchow are unearthed, this question cannot be answered; but the isolated facts, taken together—the nature of the written language and of bronze décor in Shang times, the discovery at Anyang of traces of painted wooden vessels, and the old tradition preserved in the Tso-chuan—supply enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that, in the period preceding that of the developed decoration of the familiar Shang bronzes, there may well have existed a cruder and more naturalistic style for

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depicting on vessels the "ten thousand things." Virtually the only examples of Shang Dynasty drawing that have been discovered are two little doodles scratched on a tortoise shell by some scribe in an idle moment.32 Lively and amusing as they are, these are scarcely enough to permit any conclusions regarding Shang pictorial style. Reconstruction of the pictorial art of Shang and Chou must be based upon the information offered by historical and literary sources. One of the few passages in pre-Han texts that offers any concrete evidence of pictorial representation in this period is to be found in one of the authentic chapters of the Shucking, or Shang-shu (Classic of History), which was compiled toward the end of the Chou Dynasty, and contains the most reliable historical material for the Early Chou period that is available. One section may be held to contain a reference to the representation of landscape: I wish to see the emblematic figures of the ancients,—the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountain, the dragon, and the flowery fowl, which are depicted [on the upper garment]; the temple cup, the aquatic grass, the flames, the grains of rice, the hatchet, and the symbol of distinction, which are embroidered [on the lower garment];—I wish to see all these displayed with the five colours, so as to form the [official] robes; it is yours to adjust them clearly.33

Legge's translation is based on the commentary of Cheng Hsiian (A.D. 127200), which distinctly enumerated twelve emblems, known as the shih-erh chang, six of which are painted on the upper garment, six on the lower. This somewhat arbitrary interpretation has been traditionally accepted throughout Chinese history, and in fact became canonical. As late as the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties,34 the decoration of dragon robes was based on Cheng Hsiian's series of the twelve emblems. The twelve symbols of these dragon robes echo this reading of the passage: sun, moon, constellations, mountain, dragon, bird, sacrificial cup, waterweed, flames, grains, axe, and "symbol of distinction." The evolution and manner of representation of these symbols on the dragon robes has recendy been studied in detail by Schuyler Cammann.85 We are concerned rather with the question whether they existed as a series in pre-Han times, and whether they were all represented on embroidered and painted robes at that date; if so, then this passage may be taken as evidence for some form of landscape representation in the Early or Middle Chou period. Karlgren, in his study of the text of the Boo\ of Documents, notes that there are references in the Boo\ of Songs to banners bearing single emblems; and the Kuan-tzu (section Ping-fa) mentions banners bearing nine chang (emblems), including sun, moon, dragon, tiger, bird, snake, and so on. This shows that there existed at this time a series of emblems different in number and in character from the series postulated by Cheng Hsiian. As regards the passage from the Shu-ching, the question of what the emblems were represented upon can

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be answered without much difficulty if, as Karlgren suggests, we abandon the untenable idea that the whole passage is governed by the tso fu (to make up the robes) at the end; the four characters tso hui tsung i may then be translated simply as "made and painted [Karlgren: combined] on the ancestraltemple vases." This is naturally balanced by the succeeding six emblems, which were embroidered on garments. Karlgren's literal translation is as follows: I desire to see the symbols [emblems] of the ancient men: Sun, moon, stars, mountain, dragon, flowery animal [pheasant or phoenix?], those are made and combined on the ancestral-temple vases; water-plant, fire, peeled grain, rice, white-and-black figure [axe], black-and-blue figure, five-colour embroidery on fine dolichos cloth, with five pigments applied into five colours, those are made on the garments; do you [make them clear] distinguish t h e m ! 3 6

However, there still remains a difficulty. Were the first six symbols actually represented on bronzes? It is easy to recognize the dragon and the flowery animal, and it may be possible to see in the motifs which Karlgren calls the "whorl-circle" and "square-with-crescent" the wheeling motion of heavenly bodies, although we cannot identify the pictorial conventions with certainty. But that the mountain emblem can be seen, as Karlgren suggests, in the "rising blade" containing a formalized cicada is hardly acceptable; the shape of the blade seems to arise more from a simplification of the cicada outline than from an attempt to represent or to formalize the silhouette of an actual hill. Moreover, this form is identified by Karlgren himself as a "blade with cicada" in a recent article on bronze decor.37 (An alternative solution of this problem will be suggested later.) There is some doubt in regard to the grouping of the characters that make up the twelve symbols—if indeed there were originally twelve. We cannot profitably discuss them with reference to the pre-Han period, since we do not know how they were read. However, it may be helpful to consider the reference to the mountain and the water plant. If these two emblems have been depicted with any degree of naturalism, this passage is the earliest reference to the representation of landscape elements in Chinese art. In an important article, Alexander Soper discusses the possibility of landscape representation in the pre-Han period.38 He quotes in evidence this passage from the Sha-ching, and in addition refers to the passage in the Analects in which Confucius criticized Tsang Wen, a high officer of the state of Lu, for his presumption in decorating his house with "mountain capitals" and "pondweed kingposts." In both passages the mountain and the pondweed, or "aquatic grass," appear among emblems of royalty. We have no clue as to what the "aquatic grass" actually was, or how it was represented; but, in the light of a passage from the Chou-li cheng-i we would not be justified in assuming that it was depicted as a recognizable plant; it may even be present among the hitherto unidentified forms

Pictorial Art in Antiquity in the repertory of bronze decoration, which, so far as we know, includes no stylized plant motifs whatever. The section of the Chou-li which deals with the duties of the "embroiderers in colour" (Biot) or "painters" (Karlgren) may be translated as follows: The work of the hua-hui (painters or embroiderers) consists in combining the five colours. The east is represented in blue (or green), the south in red, the west in white, the north in black; the sky is dark (hsiian), the earth yellow; blue (or green) and red combined is called wen (regular?), red and white combined is called chang (variegated?), white and black fu, black and blue fu, all five colours used together is called hsiu. Earth is represented by yellow, and its symbol (hsiang) is the square; Heaven changes [Karlgren: in its representation] with the seasons, fire is represented by the symbol of a circle (or a semicircle); the mountain is represented by a chang (roebuck); water is represented by a dragon; while birds, beasts, snakes . . . [Biot: are represented as they really are]. 39

In this, one of the few passages in which specific reference is made to the depicting of mountains and water, we are told unequivocally that they are represented by animal symbols. The choice of these symbols must be deliberate, and is, moreover, consistent with Han practice also; for, as we shall see in the next chapter, it was often the gods and spirits of the mountains and seas, rather than the landscape itself, which were depicted in the great cycles of wall paintings that decorated Han palaces. We are forced to the conclusion, therefore, that pre-Han texts, and later texts such as the Chou-li which are concerned with pre-Han culture, are of almost no help in determining whether any kind of landscape painting was practiced before the end of the Chou Dynasty. Official records naturally are concerned with official art, which, being Confucian in inspiration, was an art of figure painting almost exclusively. However, the K'ao-kung chi section of the Chou-li throws light on an important and more general aspect of the artistic process: here we find the first attempt in Chinese history to formulate an aesthetic criterion, or rather—for the concept of visual beauty as we understand it was then unknown—to establish a technical standard for the production of works of art.40 The chief ideal is declared to be ch'iao, technical excellence. How is this excellence achieved ? At this point, what might have been a mere craftsman's treatise takes wing, and in true Chinese fashion soars into the realm of philosophical abstraction. The work of art, or rather of supreme technical excellence, is the product, the Chou-li maintains, of the perfect balance and interaction of four forces. The first is t'ien-shih (literally, "the times, or seasons, of Heaven"), of which the text gives examples in the growth and decay of vegetation, of water freezing and, according to its due season, melting and flowing once more. The second is ti-ch'i (earth spirit, earth breath), which is interpreted by the commentators as meaning that each region produces the substances, and hence the media and the skilled crafts-

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men, that are appropriate to it. If the crafts (Xung-i) are in accord with the times of Heaven and the ti-ch'i, then the good craftsman (the third factor in the scheme) will be able to use the material to create ts'ai (the fourth element), an excellent work of art. If the times are out of joint or the four elements in any way unbalanced, either the work will be of no merit or the craftsman himself will not be appreciated. The Chou-li held that Heaven, Earth, and materials were the natural factors and man the human factor. This view, however, was by no means universal. The Taoist strenuously opposed the elevation of technique to so high a place, holding that the craftsman could succeed only by a complete submission to nature. The Mohists saw no distinction between skilled and unskilled work, all being rigorously under the control of fa (law): Mo-tzu maintained that if a work embodies all four elements and in addition that of ch'iao, it must of necessity have fa.41 The Mohists, however, preached a doctrine of forbidding utilitarianism that had little to do either with art or with craftsmanship. The significance of the simple aesthetic philosophy of the Chou-li should not be too much stressed in relation to art. It has much in common with other early systems such as that of the Five Elements (wu-hsing) School, which maintained that all forms were composed of the combination and interplay of five basic elements; these might be substances (e.g., earth, fire, air, water, wood), colors, musical notes, cardinal directions, or any other conceivable category.42 Indeed, the system gave rise to an infinite series of groups of five: five sacred mountains, (mythical) emperors, heavenly bodies, and so on indefinitely. To consider this system arbitrary and naive would be to miss its significance, which lies not so much in the system itself as in the proof it offers that the Chinese were already seeking a systematic expression of the concept of eternal order which they had grasped intuitively. Like the pa-\ua, the categories of five symbolize the ordered totality behind appearances. All things in human experience, including art and craftsmanship, are related in an all-embracing pattern. The attitude toward painting in the pre-Han period can be judged from a handful of anecdotes which have been preserved. The first might be taken as an illustration of the philosophy of technical perfection. Han Fei-tzu (died 233 B.C.) tells us in his book of the same title that a retainer spent three years in painting a whip (presumably the stock) for the Duke of Chou.43 When the Duke looked at it, he could see only an ordinary painted whip, and was angry. The painter suggested that the Duke have a ten-plank wall built, with a hole in it eight feet from the ground, and then hold up the whip and look at it again as the rays of the rising sun streamed through the hole. The Duke did so, and to his astonishment and delight saw that the whip was covered with pictures of dragons, snakes, birds, beasts, horses, chariots, and all the ten thousand things. This story does not mention hills and streams, nor were they enumerated among the "ten thousand things" which the Tso-chuan described

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as having being represented on the nine bronze tripods of the (legendary) Emperor Yii. Another anecdote of Han Fei-tzu, although it too has nothing to do with landscape representation, is illuminating because it contains the first mention of a problem that was to engage the attention of Chinese painters for centuries to come, namely, the difficulty of representing objects realistically. Someone made a portrait of the King of Ch'i. The King asked him, "What is the hardest kind of thing to draw?" He answered that dogs and horses were the hardest. "What is the easiest?" The painter replied, "Spirits and ghosts are easiest. Dogs and horses are things that all men know about; they appear constandy before our eyes till we can hardly tell them apart; so they are difficult [to draw]. But since spirits and ghosts have no definite form, and since they don't actually appear before our eyes, they are easy." 44

It has been suggested earlier in this chapter that the Chinese painter was actually hindered in the representation of visual reality by the basically ideographic nature of his pictorial style. Being brought up to think conceptually, he was not equipped with the attitude of mind or the technical means to deal with the world of visual forms. The material for the study of painting offered by the literary remains of the Chou period is scanty indeed, and contains not a single line that points positively to the existence of landscape representation in any form. In fact, we are even told, not only in this period but also repeatedly in the Han Dynasty, that the forms and forces of nature were represented in art by spirits and fantastic beings perhaps partly because they were easy to draw, whereas streams and hills presented spatial and proportional problems. It is more likely that the artists of ancient China were incapable of conceiving of hills and streams apart from the forces that were immanent in them and the spirits that inhabited them. Painting in the Chou Dynasty was either religious or didactic in purpose, and was thus inevitably centered in the representation of figures—human, mythical, or divine. The representation of landscape in Chinese art began as an undercurrent, often unrecognizable as landscape unless its later forms are traced to their source. It does not achieve full freedom until the end of the Han Dynasty or even later, but the attitude of mind that inspired it and the basic architecture of its forms first took shape during the archaic period of Late Chou and Han, when, to a casual glance, it might seem that there was no landscape at all. T H E CHARACTER OF P R E - H A N LANDSCAPE

On the basis of the foregoing literary and historical evidence, we might be justified in thinking that the surviving art of the Chou period includes no

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examples of landscape representation. Yet a few objects bearing hills or trees have come to light; although their number is small, they are sufficient to prove that the germs of a landscape art did exist in China before the Han Dynasty. An important aspect of this early development is the evolution of a hill form out of the abstract and decorative volute or whorl which decorates many Chou and Han inlaid bronzes and painted lacquer objects, and which in turn derives from the breaking down of earlier dragon forms. This evolutionary process need not be considered here, however, for it belongs properly to the Han period; moreover, the pre-Han antecedents of these waves or cloud forms are not yet identifiable as mountains, and were not at that time meant to depict them. The examples to be discussed in this chapter, therefore, are confined to objects on which recognizable hills or trees are represented. The region of Changsha in south-central China has in recent years yielded a quantity of interesting objects associated with the Ch'u culture,45 which flourished in central China before the unification of the empire under Ch'in Shih Huang-ti, and produced in Ch'ii Yuan and Sung Yii two of China's greatest nature poets. Ch'u culture was not entirely destroyed by her disastrous defeats, however, and even after the establishment of the Han it continued to flourish, though increasingly influenced, and finally almost entirely absorbed, by the expanding culture of the metropolitan north. One of the most remarkable pre-Han relics to come to light is a square of silk, bearing a long inscription in archaic characters, surrounded by a border of colored drawings of strange beasts associated with shorter inscriptions; at each corner of the square is drawn a tree or a plant. The original is so darkened as to be almost indecipherable; plate 5 is based on a restoration by a Chinese archaeologist.46 The inscription seems to be connected with divination. The strange three-headed, horned, long-tongued creatures represented on the border closely resemble certain wooden votive or sacrificial figures of deities or spirits which have been found at Changsha. The plants are painted with an astonishing freedom and delicacy, far removed from the rigid formalism which, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must consider as typical of the art of north China under the Chou. The meaning of these plants at the four corners of the square is uncertain; most likely, however, they have a directional significance. There is a large group of bronze mirrors from the Ch'u area on which stylized tree or plant forms are depicted as growing radially out from the central zone in the four directions (see below), and directional trees appear on several inlaid bronzes of the Warring States and Han periods. Excavations at Changsha have also yielded a number of bronze mirrors with painted decoration of a kind which seems to be unknown in north China at this period.47 Most of these mirrors are decorated with a procession of figures, horses and trees. Those in the Moriya and Fogg Museum collections are of

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similar size and type, and both belong to Karlgren's Category G, which includes mirrors from the Shouchou region datable to the third century B.C. 4 8 Both are much damaged and overpainted, but investigation has shown that in both the trees have escaped restoration. The inner zone was a star-shaped motif in relief, with a much-obliterated whorl decoration between the points of the star. On the outer band, divided by roundels at the quarters into four equal segments, a procession winds its way among trees. The style of the painting on the Moriya mirror is the more accomplished: thefiguresare suavely drawn, the trees executed in a fine ink line, terminating in delicate bare branches—a technique anticipating the trees painted on a Later Han clay title in the Cleveland Museum of Art (pi. 20). A very similar treatment of the trees can be seen on a delightful painted mirror in the collection of Dr. Paul Singer (formerly Minkenhof Collection). Here groups of men stand in conversation under flowering trees; five horses, one lying down, complete the bucolic scene, which is painted with a delightfully spontaneous touch in white, blue, and green on a red ground. Close examination of the original reveals that there are two distinct kinds of tree, the one with foliage indicated by scattered dots of pigment, the other with heavy pendent "fruit" suggesting the mulberry. What may be birds are just visible in the sky. Unfortunately, this delightful miniature landscape is too indistinct to bear reproduction in halftone. The one visible tree on the Fogg mirror is in rather different style (pi. 6). The squat trunk and thin, spidery branches drawn in dark ink terminate in blots of pale greenish pigment indicating foliage, foreshadowing a technique for painting trees which was later to be common in north China and can be seen in developed form in the paintings on the walls of a tomb at T'ung-kou in Manchuria (pi. 99). The painted lacquer objects excavated at Changsha provide some of the most precious and beautiful examples of early attempts to indicate a landscape setting. Plate 7 shows a detail of the side of a lacquer lien decorated with the hunts or animal combats so common in Late Chou and Han lacquer. Here for the first time a graceful tree with swaying branches separates two incidents and gives a new life to the scene. Probably the most sophisticated of these early attempts at suggesting a landscape is to be found on the side of a small lacquer box, which was unearthed at Changsha (pi. 6a) ,49 Here is depicted an event which is to become familiar in Han art, and is indeed the forerunner of a vast number of similar scenes. A man of importance sits beneath a gateway on which an auspicious bird has alighted (no doubt the phoenix), while a couple of visitors depart at high speed in a carriage. The carriage-horse bounds over the hill (we can imagine how, a moment later, his passengers will be sailing through the air!) in a pose that immediately suggests the hunting scenes on the inlaid bronzes of the Han Dynasty three centuries later

Pictorial Art in Antiquity

79

(pis. 33 and 34). The large tree to the right, with its heavy masses of foliage joined to the trunk by three, four, or five twigs, foreshadows the technique of the early Six Dynasties. One feature which all these little "landscapes" have in common is that they are painted on a horizontal band which, because of the shape of the object on which it appears, is continuous, indeed endless. This continuous, shifting perspective (or rather point of view, because there is no attempt at true perspective) is to be a characteristic of all later landscape painting, and will indeed constitute the aesthetic basis on which the long hand-scroll is designed. These paintings point to two alternative possibilities: the first is that in the period of the Warring States painters had already evolved the long pictorial scroll on silk, and that its conventions were adapted to round objects such as mirrors and lacquer boxes; the second possibility is that in decorating such round objects the painter hit upon a type of continuous treatment which was later transferred to more ambitious paintings on rolls of silk. In either case these paintings provide ample evidence to suggest that the conventions and techniques which appear in Han landscape art were already present in the Warring States, and that they originated very largely in the state of Ch'u. The only objects of this period from north China in any way comparable are a remarkable pair of small painted shells in the Cleveland Museum of Art.50 These bear-hunting scenes are painted with great delicacy and skill, and even include a head-on view of a four-horse chariot—a much more advanced treatment than the artists of Ch'u were capable of. Yet, by contrast, the "landscape" consists of one feeble little two-branched tree, resembling a child's catapult, with no foliage at all. In the light of these shell paintings I would modify my view, previously expressed elsewhere, that the art of north China was, by contrast with that of Ch'u, stiff and abstract.81 Nevertheless, it seems not without significance that while this northern example shows such sophistication in the handling of space and in the drawing of the figures, it is almost totally lacking in any suggestion of a landscape setting. The tendency toward pictorial expression in terms of the trees and hills of the world of nature, even if they appear at first only as "stage props," seems unquestionably to be a product of Ch'u culture. From actual paintings we must turn, if our survey is to be complete, to other forms of decorative art in which the elements of landscape appear. The group of mirrors first to be discussed would hardly seem relevant, so rudimentary are the trees that adorn them. But if we follow this highly conventionalized leaf or petal from its source in Late Eastern Chou to its end in the Han Dynasty, it seems as though it were intended to represent a tree of some sort. It stands out from the central zone in the four cardinal directions. It takes a variety of shapes, some of which are illustrated here (fig. 1), where they are numbered in accordance with the categories established by Karlgren.

20 Pictorial Art in Antiquity Nearly all these mirrors were found at Shouchou or Changsha, which lay within the ancient state of Ch'u. We cannot tell from early examples what the significance of the "petal" is; as we trace its development through categories C and E (fourth and third centuries B.C.) into the Former Han (Category F), it emerges as a recognizable tree; there is even one instance (E 3, collection of the King of Sweden) of an unusually naturalistic motif crowned by a perching bird; here it is obviously a tree. In one of the early Han mirrors (F 15, Imperial Household Museum, Tokyo), what we may now legitimately identify as a tree is standing on hilly ground, which may be compared with the mountainous landscape that rises from the outer rim of another mirror in this category (F 9, Museum for Asiatic Art, Amsterdam).

LOYANG

SHOUCHOU IV CENT. C.25

C.25

C.24

CENT. 040

Fig. 1. Motifs on Huai and Loyang mirrors.

Pictorial Art in Antiquity

21

The mirrors produced at Loyang, however, tell a very different story (Category D). In these, only one very simple petal form appears, and undergoes no development (e.g., D 34, Worch Collection). However, in D 35 (Staatlische Museum, Berlin) a bird perches on a petal at the angle of the central square of another mirror in this class, a distant cousin of the cruder and more naturalistic E 3 from Shouchou. A large group of pre-Han mirrors from Loyang are decorated with what Karlgren calls the "zig-zag lozenge" (see diagram), a typical Loyang style. The lozenge forms either background or main motif. Sometimes it is broken, a half-lozenge standing up from the outer rim, its top surmounted by a petal (D 34) or a bird (D 40, D 38). As there seems to be little doubt that the petal represents a highly stylized tree form, we may assume that the half-lozenge, in the context in which it is surmounted by a bird or a tree, is to be "read" as a hill. By a similar and highly significant psychological process, the "Han curl border," as Karlgren calls it, later took on the character and meaning of a hill through the addition of beasts, birds, hunters, and tufts of grass. It seems, however, that this half-lozenge was too rigid and intractable to allow of the plastic variation which gave birth to a hill out of the Han curl border: as a convention it was stillborn. But I think we are justified in assuming that, for a short period and within a particular context, this otherwise meaningless form did serve as the symbol of a hill. As Karlgren pointed out, during the third and second centuries B.C. a good deal of cross-fertilization of ideas and motifs occurred between Loyang and Shouchou. The clear stylistic distinctions of former times broke down, and after the fall of Ch'u and its absorption into the Han Empire, the local tradition was influenced, and almost overwhelmed, by the northern manner. The decoration on mirror F 8 (collection of the King of Sweden) shows this process taking place: here, though the tree is a direct descendant of those in categories C, E, and F, the mountains are evolved from Karlgren's "Han curl border," an embellishment on the traditional dragon volute which had wide popularity in Han art; this convention was by no means exclusive to Shouchou, although it appears in mirrors in Category F, which were in Shouchou style. Another mirror in the same group (F 17) might seem, from the style of the mountains, bulbous trees, figures, and animals, to have been made in Shantung.82 The fact that it, too, is a Shouchou product reveals clearly that by the first century B.C., when this mirror was probably made, the Shouchou tradition had been swallowed up in the all-embracing Han culture. A group of bronze vessels of the hu type, dating from the Warring States, are decorated with scenes in which trees and perhaps simple ground lines provide a setting for the activities of men and animals. The so-called "Jannings hu',' now in the Peking Palace Museum, may be taken as a prototype of these decorated vessels, all of which bear somewhat similar scenes and emanate from

22

Pictorial Art in Antiquity

the general area of the ancient Ch'u state.83 This vessel is decorated with five scenes, each repeated once, stamped in the wax of the mold in which the vessel was cast, and then inlaid. Four panels are reproduced here, two from the upper band and two from the lower. The first scene is composite: on the right is an archery contest; on the left, the picking of mulberry leaves (pi. 8). This little scene is remarkable for the clarity of the actions and the freedom and liveliness of the figures. In the left-hand tree a girl with her hair in braids sits picking leaves (to feed the silkworms), while below a youth steadies the limb. A girl and a young man sit in the right-hand tree from the branches of which a basket hangs; below, a man shouts directions and a woman with a staff appears to be superintending operations. The cult of the mulberry tree was of great importance, for upon that tree depended the life of the silkworms and hence the prosperity of the community. The empress herself took a ritual part in the first picking of the leaves—a counterpart to the emperor's turning the first furrow at the spring plowing. It is not impossible that the female figure in this scene wearing a large headdress may be the ruler's consort or her representative. Mulberry-picking scenes, and other legends connected with this auspicious tree, were popular subjects in the art of the Han Dynasty. The manner in which these trees are depicted anticipates the rather heavy, globular plant that decorates Han mirrors and stone reliefs; 54 its more graceful descendants can be seen, however, in the sinuous trees portrayed on Han reliefs found at Nanyang, which also lay within the orbit of Ch'u culture.55 The second scene represents a hunt (pi. 9); bowmen discharge arrows with long trailing cords in which birds become entangled and fall. The landscape setting is confined to the crude suggestion of a riverbank on which birds are standing in the lower left-hand corner; below, fishes swim about in the water. Similar pictorial problems were faced in the battle scene (pi. 10), in which warriors are attacking a rampart only to be hurled down headlong, while from the shelter of a wall or tower (ch'ueh) bowmen shoot at them. The whole scene is depicted with a liveliness and a realism that almost conceal the failure to suggest space convincingly. The fourth scene (pi. xi) represents a naval battle. Here there is even less suggestion of a natural setting, although branches seem to be attached to spears and to form a streaming standard for one of the boats. It is interesting to note that the fight is carried into the water also, for three "frogmen" can be seen swimming among the fishes, though whether they are engaging each other or trying to cripple the enemy's boats it is hard to say. The same open-silhouette treatment combined with a simple vitality of drawing can be seen in several inlaid bronze bowls of various sizes and types in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore,88 and on a much larger lien in the Freer Gallery, Washington.57 The outer

Pictorial Art in Antiquity

23

surface of all these vessels is inlaid with lively designs similar to those on the Consten hu, and stemming from the same pictorial tradition. The Boston vessel (pi. 12) has a lower band of figures and trees like those in the mulberrypicking panel of the hu; there are no girls sitting in the branches, but an elaborated ritual with music and dancing is taking place beneath the trees, in each of which perches a large bird, perhaps the auspicious phoenix. Finally, our little corpus of pre-Han landscape must include the decoration on the inside surface of a group of bronze vessels unearthed in central China. These objects, most of which are in a poor state of preservation, are decorated round the inside surface, including the spout, with lively scenes engraved with a sharp instrument. Two of those so far published were excavated at Changsha (pi. i^a-c), one at Ch'ang-chih in Shansi (pi. 14), one at Huihsien (pi. 15), and one at Shan-hsien on the Yellow River to the west of Loyang.53 The Huihsien specimen is a basin of the type lien; the other four spouted ewers. Prominent at the center of the design on all of them is a ceremony in which antlered figures perform a ritual dance of some sort before an altar on which stand jars of wine.59 The rest of the decorated area is taken up with scenes of shooting and fishing. In every scene the outer border has rows of trees or perhaps water reeds, sometimes interspersed with egrets or wild duck. The center of the design on one of the Changsha ladles has what may be a crude attempt to represent the receding banks of a river (pi. 13c), while on all of them streams and channels are indicated by parallel lines joined at intervals by groups of wavy lines. The trees are of several types, the commonest being a bushy shrub and a thin straight stalk with several branches; the latter probably is meant to suggest reeds at the water's edge. There is one rather more ambitious attempt at a tree on the spout of the fragment found at Ch'angchih (pi. 14). Although three of these vessels were found on or north of the Yellow River, in style and subject matter they seem much closer to the art of Ch'u than to that of Shansi and northern Honan; the preoccupation with water, waterfowl, and fishes, the boats, the slender figures with antler headdresses and long swords, all are characteristic of the South. Although the rite illustrated has not been positively identified, it seems probable that these engraved vessels were part of a cult of sacrifice to the river which originated in Ch'u and spread northward, and that to perform it properly an authentic engraved ladle "made in Ch'u" was a prerequisite. This would account for the appearance in northern Honan and Shansi of a type of vessel that has all the hallmarks of a product of Changsha.60 The engraving technique inevitably placed severe limits on the artist's powers of expression, yet there is much life and movement in the figures and animals. The innocent, explicit manner in which each person, object, and

24

Pictorial Art in Antiquity

creature is set out recalls Egyptian art; indeed, in their way of life the Ch'u people, living, fighting, and fishing among the rivers and lakes, the lagoons and marshes of Hunan, had much in common with the Egyptians. There is no attempt at perspective, except possibly in the larger fragment from Changsha; as in Egyptian art, successive planes are simply placed one above the other with no overlapping, and no attempt at the foreshortening which appears on the painted shell in Cleveland. When we compare these tentative efforts to suggest a natural setting for some human or magical activity, which constitute the evidence for the existence of landscape representation in Late Chou art, with the passionate flood of descriptive imagery poured out by the poets of Ch'u, we realize how far, at this stage, painting lagged behind poetry in its range and power of expression. This is the more remarkable because it was later to be the Chinese who of all people were to rise to the greatest heights of philosophical and imaginative expression in terms of landscape painting. If Roman wall painting is a safe guide, it seems that Greek and Hellenistic landscape treatment must have been far in advance of what was achieved in China at this period. Nevertheless, these fragments hint at the probable existence in Late Chou times of a more developed style than they reveal themselves, a style in which some of the conventions later to be found in the long hand-scroll have already made their appearance. Moreover, in view of the widely current notion that landscape came into existence in the Han Dynasty and largely under foreign inspiration, it is worth noting that nearly all the examples that have been cited in this chapter originate in the area dominated by the state of Ch'u, which was farthest removed from western influences. The comparison between the free pictorial landscape style of the south, drawing upon natural forms, and the more abstract art of north China, in which a natural setting is almost never found, is closely paralleled by what we know of contemporary literature and poetry. The Odes of the Ch'u poets, with their deep penetration into the moods and mysteries of nature, had no counterpart in north China during the Late Eastern Chou. Thus literature and art reinforce each other to suggest that even in this early period there existed in China that dichotomy which many centuries later was to characterize Chinese landscape painting in its maturity. The traditional division between the "Northern" and "Southern" schools of landscape painting may in fact embody a deeper truth than is generally realized. Although the explanation of this division in terms of the two rival schools of Ch'an Buddhism put forward by the Ming critic Tung Ch'i-ch'ang was misleading, it represented a real and deeply rooted division in Chinese thinking about nature and in the pictorial forms in which these ideas were expressed.

The Han Dynasty

T H E HISTORICAL AND C U L T U R A L BACKGROUND

The despotic reign of Ch'in Shih Huang-ti, the "First Emperor" of the Ch'in Dynasty, brought China for the first time under a unified rule. Taking as his philosophy of action the Machiavellian doctrines of the Legalists (fa chid), and aided by his able and ruthless minister Li Ssu, Shih Huang-ti forged a powerful and united nation out of the loose association of feudal states which he had defeated.1 Local cultural and ethnic traditions were crushed under a rigid standardization; the classical schools of thought which found their sanction in the hallowed institutions of the Early Chou rulers were suppressed: the notorious "burning of the books" and the massacre of more than four hundred and sixty scholars in 212 B.C. were two of the emperor's chief instruments of suppression.2 Yet this grimly authoritarian policy made China a great power, pushing her frontiers far to the south, into Central Asia and into Korea, where Chinese colonies were established for the first time. The First Emperor himself lived in constant fear of assassination, a prey to superstitions which drove him to travel about the empire in search of the elixir of immortality, and, in the same quest, to send a band of boys and girls to their death in the Eastern Sea, where, it was believed, lay the Isles of the Blest and the source of the elixir. Shih Huang-ti's capital at Hsienyang in Shensi, from the account of the Han historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien, must have represented unparalleled splendor and extravagance; his palaces and lesser residences, to the number of two hundred and seventy, were lavishly decorated, no doubt with great cycles of wall paintings—and his concubines innumerable. Shih Huang-ti died in 210 B.C. His feeble and self-indulgent son was able to hold the empire together for scarcely three years before the Ch'in Dynasty crumbled in chaos and civil war, which lasted until the founding of the Han in the year 206 B.C. Ssu-ma Ch'ien tells us that when Hsienyang fell, the palaces built by the First Emperor burned continuously for three months 3 —the first of many occasions

26

The Han Dynasty

in Chinese history when the accumulated treasures of a royal house were utterly destroyed. The forcible union of China under the Ch'in Dynasty had been premature. The first emperors of the Han therefore found it expedient to revert to a semifeudal order, in which royal princes were enfeoffed in the remnants of the states that had been conquered by Ch'in Shih Huang-ti.4 Reaction against Ch'in totalitarianism gave rise to a policy of laissez faire, and it was only gradually that the Confucian order was revived; though, once restored, it imposed its pattern on Chinese government, social order, and education for nearly two thousand years. Under the great Wu-ti (140-87 B.C.) the Han Dynasty attained the summit of its power and prestige. South China was finally absorbed, and relations were established with the kingdoms of southeast Asia. The Chinese moved once more into Manchuria and Korea. The colony of Lolang in north Korea —the source of some of the most precious surviving examples of Han pictorial art—supporting no less than 63,000 households of Chinese in addition to the native population. Pressure from the northern non-Chinese tribes, especially the Hsiung-nu, was a constant threat to the security of the empire. A series of great punitive expeditions, with diplomatic missions following in their wake, penetrated far into the heart of Central Asia, to open up the great trade route which, for the next thousand years, was to bear a rich though intermittent flow not only of trade but of religious ideas and art between China and the kingdoms of Central Asia, India, and the Near East. The course of the Han Empire was violently interrupted in A.D. 9 by the usurpation of the radical Wang Mang. Under the cloak of Confucianism, he instituted a series of economic and social reforms, which were, however, as suddenly swept away in the downfall of his short-lived house in A.D. 25. The Han Dynasty (the Eastern or Later Han) was restored, and the territories lost under Wang Mang were gradually regained; by A.D. 90 even the distant kingdom of the Kushans was sending tribute to the Chinese court. But, by the end of the first century of the Christian era, palace intrigues and the growing influence of the eunuchs, followed in the next century by famines, a peasant revolt, and the defection of the colonies, brought the dynasty to the verge of disaster. The final downfall in A.D. 220 was the prelude to three hundred and fifty years of political fragmentation. From the cultural point of view, the Han was a period of consolidation. In keeping with the dynasty's imperial character, institutions which had first appeared under the Chou were stamped with the seal of lasting authority, in much the same manner as the Roman Empire ordered, made practical, and then carried into effect the heritage of classical Greece which had come to being in a similar period of political and social stress. The ethical and institutional basis of Han culture was strongly Confucian. In 125 B.C. the

The Han Dynasty 27 Imperial University (Confucian college of doctors, po-shih) was founded, with fifty students selected, in theory at least, by examination; by the second century of the Christian era the number of students had risen to thirty thousand. The written language had been standardized under Ch'in Shih Huang-ti, and now a unified script (or rather six standard variants on the basic script) was practiced throughout the empire. Before the Han Dynasty, books, documents, and maps had been compiled on slips or blocks of wood, though silk was occasionally used. But during the Han the use of wood slips gradually declined; its disappearance was hastened by the invention of rag paper, probably toward the end of the first century of our era.5 The writing brush, traditionally believed to have been the invention of General Meng T'ien of the Ch'in, had existed in some form in the Shang Dynasty; and the decoration of certain vessels of the neolithic period, found at sites in Kansu, is evidence of the existence, even at this remote period, of a brush of considerable flexibility. It is possible, however, that a radical improvement in the manufacture of brushes took place in the time of Meng T'ien and was introduced under his patronage.6 Material peace and prosperity, a common script, the growth of a new educated class, all contributed to the production of a great quantity of scholarly writing in the Han period. True to the character of the times, writers were engaged less upon metaphysical or philosophical speculation than upon the systematizing of existing knowledge. In Ssu-ma Ch'ien, China found her first great historian, whose Shih-chi (partly translated by Edouard Chavannes under the tide Les Métnoires historiques de Se-ma Ts'ien) became the model not only for the (Former) Han History (Han-shu) of Pan K u (A.D. 32-92), but also for all subsequent dynastic histories. The first dictionaries and the first bibliography were compiled in this period; in a number of works, such as the Huai-nan-tzu and the Lun-heng of Wang Ch'ung, all kinds of lore, whether based on fact, history, folklore, or pure fantasy, were systematically collected and given the authority of scholarship. Stories and traditions preserved in these works provided the subject matter for much of Han pictorial art. Yet these sources must be approached with care. Many of the allegedly ancient traditions preserved in them are in fact concoctions of the Han writers themselves, who with their passion for systematization would unashamedly weave together two or three separate legends or traditions, if by doing so they could improve upon the originals. These synthetic legends have been drawn upon by Western scholars such as Granet, Maspero, and Hentze (who have not hesitated to use T'ang and Sung works as well) for their interpretations of the art motifs and customs of Shang and Chou; 7 an attempt has even been made to explain the meaning of the designs on certain types of neolithic pottery on the basis of these syncretic texts.8 In a brilliant essay, Bernhard Karlgren has revealed how misleading this approach can be.9 This

28

The Han Dynasty

does not mean that these works are valueless, however. Although they are not reliable guides to the interpretation of pre-Han art and iconography, they contain an enormous amount of valuable material for the study of the art of the Han period itself. However solid and respectable was the legacy of Confucian order and belief handed on by the Han, neither the rulers nor their subjects were unreservedly orthodox in their views. Taoist superstition (as opposed to Taoist metaphysics), popular nature cults, belief in the existence of a great number of spirits and strange creatures, the search for the elixir, and imported religions such as Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, all were more characteristic manifestations of the Han religious temper than was Confucian orthodoxy, and they gave to the Han capitals at Changan and Loyang something of the atmosphere of intellectual curiosity and credulity of Athens in the time of Saint Paul. Hu Shih has enumerated some of the local cults which found their way into Changan with the establishment of the dynasty.10 There were Liang priestesses (u/u shamans) from western Szechwan, Ch'in priestesses from Shensi, Ch'in and Chin shamans from west Shensi and the Yangtze Valley. The worship of an oracular goddess (shen-chun) was introduced into the household of Wu-ti. Ch'in also contributed the worship of the livershaped stone which had made them victorious over the feudal states; and Ch'i contributed their pantheon of the Eight Great Gods, to worship whom Wu-ti traveled many times to Shantung. The people of Ch'i and Yen brought to the capital the worship of the three sacred mountains or fairy islands in the Eastern Sea inhabited by immortals. Alchemists (fang-shih), astrologers, and geomancers were patronized indiscriminately by the whole population. In spite of his private predilections, Wu-ti made a determined attempt to restore Confucian practices and to give precedence at court to Confucian scholars; yet inevitably the character of that Confucianism was highly eclectic. Tung Chung-shu,11 a leading "Confucian" reformer, is known to have instituted an elaborate series of regulations to bring rain in time of drought; and the allegedly orthodox Liu Hsiang was an alchemist. The Confucianists even invented or forged other "classics" under strange and fanciful titles, while into the true Classics were read magical meanings that were far from the intentions of their authors. Indeed, Han writers in general were only too ready to meet the demand for fantasy, romance, and magic; Han pictorial art is an equally eloquent witness to the peculiar tastes of the period. Nowhere is the typically Han mixture of constructive energy and love of fantasy more vividly revealed than in the great hunting parks which the Han emperors created for their own amusement, and which are probably depicted in some of the landscapes discussed in this chapter. These parks were in fact great artificial landscapes created out of the hills, streams, and pools in the countryside near the capital. Ditches were enlarged into rivers, hills

The Han Dynasty 29 were heaped up and clothed with trees, and from the center of the artificial lakes were raised pyramidal islands in imitation of the three legendary Isles of the Blest in the Eastern Sea. The imperial hunting park near Changan is described in a fu rhapsody written by the poet and historian Pan K u : In the vicinity of the capital to the west lie the imperial parks, the forbidden gardens, thickets, forests at the foot of mountains, lakes and pools, basins and marshes. They stretch as far as Shu [Szechwan] and Han [-Chung], and are surrounded by a circular wall more than four hundred li in length. The separate palaces and buildings number thirty-six; magic streams and marvelous pools appear on every side. Within the park there are unicorns from Katigara [Tonkin], horses from Ferghana, rhinoceros from Huang-chih [not identified], birds from T'iao-chih [country of the Tadjiks?]. Passing over the K'un-lun Mountain, and crossing the sea, the varied species [of animals and plants] were brought there from countries as far distant as thirty thousand li.12

The view from the top of the observation tower is stupendous: Before stretches the Lake T'ang-chung, behind, Lake T'ai-yeh. Their waves can be seen as high as those of the limitless sea, breaking against the rocks of the fairy shore, half-submerged in water. With a crash they hurl themselves against the fairy rocks, covering isles Ying-chou and Fang-hu, while P'eng-lai rises between them. Then the magic grasses flourish in winter, supernatural trees thrust up in clumps. The rocks are precipitous, the cliffs towering, metals and rocks form high jutting peaks. There the Emperor [Han Wu-ti] raised two statues of immortals holding bowls to collect the dew [an element in the elixir]; these statues he placed on two columns of bronze which rose far above the impurities of the dusty world. 13

There, too, the emperor held long discussions with Taoist practitioners, seeking the key to immortality. "Indeed," says Pan Ku, "that was truly a dwelling place for immortals; it was no place for ordinary men such as we." 1 4 The hunting parks were stocked with tigers, panthers, elephants, deer, wild boars, hares, and game birds of every sort. In his Hsi-ching fu (Rhapsody on the Western Capital), 15 Chang Heng (78-139) tells us that in preparation for the hunt the long grass was burned off, the ground was leveled (for the imperial chariots), and tree trunks and brambles were cleared away. Nets were spread across every path, and a great circle of beaters, striking drums, began to close in upon the game, gradually driving the vast horde of birds and animals toward the point where the emperor and his entourage waited. The slaughter, as we might expect from such a procedure, was terrific. After the hunt and the subsequent division of the spoils came the jousting, clowns, dancing, juggling, sword-swallowing, and fire-belching to entertain the emperor while he feasted. Wonderful streams and trees appeared as if by magic; artificial clouds and even snow darkened the sky, while from overhead galleries the attendants produced the sound of thunder, "like the wrath of the

30

The Han Dynasty

gods," by striking boulders together. Suddenly, by some Leonardesque device, a huge fairy mountain was made to appear. "Upon its sides," writes Chang Heng, "bears and tigers climbed and fought one another; apes leaped about and scrambled among tall trees, strange quadrupeds appeared . . . magicians swallowed swords and vomited fire, or caused dark clouds or fog to engulf the scene." The same author's Nan-ching fu,16 which describes the luxuriant scenery of the city and environs of Nanyang, southern capital of Kuang-wu-Ti (A.D. 25-58), catalogues in great detail the music and dancing girls, the feasting and delicious wines, marvelous birds and fishes, and the trees and plants which grew in profusion: ". . . these trees press their roots into the earth, and lift their trunks high into the air. Tigers, panthers, and brown bears roam about in the thick forest, while various kinds of monkeys play in the treetops . . ." After the hunt and the entertainment, the emperor would sometimes ascend one of the great towers which commanded this fabulous landscape, there to shake off the dust and noise of the day and withdraw into solitary communion with nature, thus, as it were, purging himself of his recent orgy of slaughter and debauchery. Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju ( 1 7 9 - 1 7 7 B.C.), whose Tzuhsu fu and Shang-lin fu became models for all later poems of this kind, described how the king of Ch'u crowned his day by ascending the Terrace of the Summer Cloud and there sinking into a mystic trance.17 W e may see the whole event as a kind of ritual act whereby the warlike passions of king and courtiers were assuaged in the holocaust of the hunt; this accomplished, they turned to the celebration, which ended, dramatically and appropriately, by the final act in which the emperor withdrew into contemplation of the fairy world that he had created. PAINTING IN THE H A N

DYNASTY

When we turn to the histories and literature of the Han Dynasty for evidence of contemporary painting, we find precisely what the foregoing paragraphs would lead us to expect: on the one hand, orthodox Confucianism demanding the representation of ancient heroes and worthies, whose portraits on the palace walls would be constant reminders for the king to rule justly as they had done, and to avoid the evil fate of wicked rulers; on the other hand, "Taoist" mythology and popular folklore inspiring a whole repertoire of fantastic beings whose forms we know both from the reliefs and from vivid descriptions by the Han poets. The biographical sections of the (Ch'ien) Han-shu (History of the Former Han Dynasty) contain a number of stories relating to portrait painting: " O n the palace gate [of Prince Hui of Kuang-ch'uan, ca. 100 B.C.] there was a painting of Ch'eng Ch'ing [an ancient hero] with short coat, large trousers, and

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long sword." 18 "The mother of (Chin) Jih-ti in teaching her sons had very high standards; the Emperor [Wu-ti] heard of it and was pleased. When she fell ill and died, he ordered her portrait to be painted on [the walls of] the palace at Kan-ch'iian [in Shensi] . . . Every time Jih-ti saw the portrait he did obeisance to it and wept before he passed on." 19 An example from the K'ung-tzu chia-yu dates from the very end of Han: Confucius contemplated the Ming T ' a n g . H e saw that on the four gates were the likenesses of Y a o and Shun, and the portraits of Chieh and Chou

[wicked

rulers], showing the good and bad characters of each, and giving warning by their success or failure. There was also the picture of the Duke of Chou acting as minister to the youthful K i n g Ch'eng, holding him in his arms with his back to the hatchetscreen, and with his face toward the south to receive the feudal lords. Confucius walked to and fro looking at them and said to his followers: " T h i s is w h y the House of Chou has prospered. A bright mirror is that by means of which one examines the face; the past is that by means of which one understands the present."

20

While this text is a concoction from the third century of the Christian era, and has nothing to do with the historical Confucius, it is an excellent example of the attitude toward painting that was current in Han times. Who were these painters whose names and works are referred to in the Han histories? Were they professionals or the scholar-amateurs such as we encounter at every turn in later Chinese history? We know now definitely of the existence (under the Han) of an elaborate organization of court painters which was based upon the system that had been practiced under the Chou Dynasty. It was described, perhaps in somewhat idealized form, in the K'ao-kung chi section of the Chou-lt.21 This system consisted of an elaborate hierarchy of painters extending from the lowest technicians (hua-\ung), who were responsible for such activities as applying the colored decoration to saddles and furniture, up through a number of grades to the painters who were tai-chao (officials in attendance upon the emperor). This organization was not confined to providing the needs of the Han court, but extended throughout the empire: each commandery (chun) had its own agency (\ung\uan) for the production and decoration of lacquer ware, official robes, weapons, and gold and silver vessels. Different areas seem to have specialized in particular products. The commanderies of Shu and Kuang-han in modern Szechwan, for example, were famous for their lacquer, and dated specimens (23 B.C., 16 B.C., A.D. 69) found in Chinese tombs at Lolang in Korea were inscribed as having been produced in these centers in western China.22 Some of these decorations, as on the famous painted basket from Lolang, were extremely elaborate and beautiful, but the painters who executed them belonged to the lowest ranks of this complex organization.

j2

The Han Dynasty

The higher levels of painters, the tai-chao, belonged to a group that included singers, jugglers, wrestlers, astrologers, and Confucian scholars, who might be summoned at any time to display their various skills in the imperial presence. Some distinction was made between the wrestlers and singers on the one hand and the painters and scholars on the other, but all were organized under the huang-men (yellow gate), a bureau whose business it was to see that such people were properly trained and available when required. W e may assume, therefore, that portraits and wall paintings in Han palaces, ancestral halls, and royal tombs were executed by tai-chao painters under the aegis of the huang-men™ Under the Later Han this system lost some of the rigid character of an academy; for the emergence of the scholar-official under the personal patronage of the emperor, the decline in the strength of the Confucian hold on the court, and the rise of Taoist practices combined to reduce correspondingly the activity and importance of the professionals. Chang Yen-yuan in his section on the Eastern Han in the Li-tai ming-hua chi does not even mention their names. A n event in the cultural history of the Later Han period that is of great significance for the study of early painting was the emancipation of the art of writing, which came as a direct result of the emergence of this new class of scholar-officials. The technical liberation of the script can be seen in the evolution, in the second century of our era, of the ts'ao-shu (the grass hand), which may be interpreted historically as one aspect of the revolt of this cultivated class against Confucian orthodoxy. During the centuries of confusion after the fall of the Han, the development of calligraphy as a fine art became ever more closely associated with the Taoists, the enemies of orthodoxy in all its forms. It is perhaps no accident that the earliest surviving account of the newly evolved grass script should be an attack upon it written by Chao I, a Confucian of the old school who lived toward the end of the second century. H e sets out to show that, unlike the more orthodox scripts which have their roots deep in the hallowed soil of antiquity, the newfangled grass script started as a strictly utilitarian shorthand: It was merely that, at the end of the Ch'in Dynasty, when punishments were severe and the nets were close-meshed, the official script was troublesome and laborious. Battles and incursions arose on all sides, military messages were exchanged at a gallop, feathered dispatches flew thick and fast, therefore they made the clerk's grass [hand], aiming at rapidity and nothing more. This script shows merely an intent to abridge and render easy, and it is not the creation of the Sages. Its inventors cared only for eliminating the difficult and abridging the troublesome, breaking down the complex and making it simple . . . 24

He observes somewhat caustically that the devotees of this new cult, far from using the grass hand to save time, devote themselves so slavishly to

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33

the cultivation of its every nuance that they take far longer to write a letter by the new method than by the old. (A counterpart to this fashion is the present cult of the Italian chancery hand, whose modern Western devotees seem to spend their time penning pretty letters to each other deploring the decline in the art of handwriting.) Chao I's description of the aficionados hits them off nicely: At night they are diligent without resting; by day they do not stop to eat. They will work for ten days at [perfecting] one stroke, and in one month use several cakes of ink. Their collars and sleeves are as though dyed dark; their lips and teeth are perpetually black. Even when they sit in a gathering of people they do not relax to chat and amuse themselves, but stretch out a finger and draw [imaginary] lines on the floor. Or they will scratch grass characters on a wall till their arm goes through it. Their skin will be scuffed and their fingernails torn and broken . . . 25

Chao I would not have been so indignant if the ts'ao-shu had not become so popular with the new class of literati. William Acker believes that the high esteem which painting enjoyed among scholars and thinkers of the Later Han period was directly due to the evolution of this new art form. "It was this cursive hand more than any other," he writes, "which taught those with a sensitive eye and good artistic judgement the beauty of impetuous and vigorous brushwork as nothing else could have done, since no other script, not even the finest Arabic writing, has anything like the freedom and fluency of line that is revealed in the ts'ao-shu." 26 And this writer notes how in succeeding centuries painting came more and more to be judged on the basis of the qualities it shared with calligraphy—rhythm and vigor of line, a nervous vitality of forms—which were valued far above mere verisimilitude and technical proficiency. We might argue that the intellectual and spiritual liberation which followed the breakdown of Han orthodoxy, and which is reflected in the rise of the scholar class, was the primary historical factor in the rapid development both of painting and of calligraphy in the second and third centuries, that this artistic development could not have taken place until the rigid Confucian mold had been broken. But once that was accomplished, we may agree with Acker that the criteria of the calligrapher must have had their effect upon the judging of painting also, to the extent that painting in this period was a linear art at all. The celebrated painted tiles in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts are decorated with figures executed in energetic, sweeping brush lines which accord well with a simultaneous evolution of the ts'ao-shu and free brush painting.27 Yet in early texts, even those dealing with periods as late as the Six Dynasties, painting is generally referred to euphemistically as tan-ch'ing (the art of red and blue), which suggests a pictorial style based upon the application of

The Han Dynasty colors, with or without a drawn outline. In the fourth century, even that great Taoist, calligrapher, and emancipator of painting, K u K'ai-chih, is spoken of by his biographer as excelling in the art of tan-ch'ing,28 although it seems probable that this term gradually ceased to have any descriptive meaning, and came eventually to be used as a metaphor for painting in general. However, in the absence of representative examples, we cannot be dogmatic about Han painting. T w o stylistic trends appear to be present in Han pictorial art: first, an art of representation based upon drawn outlines filled with color; and second, a calligraphic style based upon the use of the ink line alone. As to which style was the more widely used, not enough pictorial evidence has survived to provide a clear answer, but one fact is at least suggestive: Chang Yen-yuan, in listing in his Li-tai ming-hua chi the titles of a number of paintings of this early period, takes care to mention, in a very few cases, that the work in question was in pai-h.ua (plain ink or ink-line painting). From this we may infer that the great majority of the paintings in his list must have been in the colored style. The bureaucratic organization of the hierarchy of court painters inevitably produced a rigid conservatism, at least so far as official Confucian painting was concerned. Painters were required to show the greatest possible realism in depicting human figures, which no doubt explains why they frequently lamented that these were "harder to draw" than the fairies and immortals, whose imperial masters or dissatisfied relatives were not there to look over the painter's shoulder and complain about the lack of a likeness. This conformity to tradition, however, does not seem to have affected fanciful subjects. In depicting the fairy world and its fantastic inhabitants, craftsmen were left to their own devices, with the result that such paintings and reliefs reveal not only significant local variations in style but also the vitality of form which comes from having their roots in a folk tradition. Regarding the influence of this popular art on educated people during the Han, W a n g Ch'ung, who was continually surprised at the gullibility of his contemporaries, remarked, "Popular legends, though not true, form the subjects of paintings, and, by these pictures, even wise and intelligent men allow themselves to be mystified." 29 The Han poets give us a vivid picture of this nonofficial art, which must have played an important part in the decoration of palaces and ancestral halls. One of the most famous poems is the Lu Ling-kuang-tien fu (Rhapsody on the Ling-kuang Palace in L u ) , written by W a n g Wen-k'ao ( W a n g Yenshou) in the first half of the second century. It is believed that the poem describes a palace with its pictures and carvings, built by a Han prince in 1 5 0 B.C.

Upon the great walls Flickering in dim semblance glint and hover

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T h e Spirits of the Dead. A n d here all Heaven and Earth is painted, all living things After their tribes, and all marryings Of sort with sort; strange spirits of the sea, Gods of the hills. T o all their thousand guises Had the painter formed His reds and blues, and all the wonders of life Had he shaped truthfully and coloured after their kinds. First showed he the Opening of Chaos and the beginnings of the ancient world . . . 30

Whether this is a description of the actual paintings 31 or whether the poet has described the kind of subject matter he imagined would have been painted on the walls, the effect is the same—a typically Han semi-Confucian, semimythological conglomeration of subjects such as we encounter so frequently in Han pictorial art. Although the passage quoted above makes it clear that not landscapes but nature spirits were represented, this does not mean that the Han artist was not equipped with the means or the technique to represent the elements in a landscape when he wished to do so. There is plenty of evidence that trees, hills, and so on were depicted in the Han period—not entirely for their own sake but as a setting for human and mythological events. Soper has rightly remarked that the Han Dynasty declined, in the capacity to love and understand nature, from the heights reached in the elegies of Ch'ii Yuan and Sung Yii; and, if the emphasis was not so exclusively upon human affairs as he maintains, it is still true that landscape as such plays a small though steadily increasing part in Han pictorial art. Specific references in Han texts to the painting of landscape are meager. In that olla podrida, the Huai-nan-tzu, is the story of a painter named Lieh I who came from a western Asiatic country to the court of Ch'in Shih Huang-ti, bringing with him a highly novel pictorial technique: "He put red paint into his mouth and spat it out on the wall in the shapes of dragons and other beasts . . . In the space of a square inch he could depict the Five Mountains and the Four Oceans, marking every country." 32 Somewhat more credible as evidence of attempts to depict a stretch of territory are the numerous references in the histories to maps, made for military or administrative purposes such as flood control. In A.D. 69 the emperor, in charging a certain W a n g Ching with the repair of a breach in the Yellow River at Kaifeng, gave him copies of the Shan-hai ching, of Ssu-ma Ch'ien's treatise on waterworks Ho-ch'u shu (both almost certainly illustrated), and a map of the tribute of Yii. Before the invention of paper in the first century of our era, maps were drawn upon rolls of silk or blocks of wood. Ssu-ma Ch'ien records that a map showing the extent of the Ch'in Empire was represented (presumably

36

The Han Dynasty

engraved or painted) on the stone floor of the tomb of Ch'in Shih Huang-ti.33 A celebrated story, often portrayed in Han reliefs and no doubt in wall paintings also, tells of the attempt of Ch'in K'o, sent by the crown prince of Yen, to assassinate the Ch'in emperor.34 In order to gain audience, Ch'in K'o carried a box containing a map of the territory of Tu-k'ang in which was concealed a poisoned dagger. These maps must have been extremely clumsy, with hardly more than a rough suggestion of the relative position of rivers, mountains, and cities. After the fall of Ch'in, Ssu-ma Ch'ien records (chap. 53) that maps from the palace archives fell into the hands of the governor of P'ei, who, when he became first emperor of the Han, found them of great advantage, enabling him to ascertain "the passes and barriers, strong and vulnerable points, population by houses and persons, and the difficulties of the people" —presumably meaning inhospitable terrain and poor communications. Another tradition tells us that when Chang Ch'ien returned in 128 B.C. from his first expedition into central Asia bearing quantities of precious jade, Han Wu-ti consulted ancient maps (t'u) and documents, and gave the name of K'un-lun to the mountains where the jade was obtained, and whence, it was believed, rose the waters of the Yellow River.35 Quite another kind of "map" is mentioned in the Han Wu-ti \u-shih, believed to be by the third-century writer Ko Hung, who describes the setting for the gladiatorial combats arranged by the Emperor Wu in the courtyard of the Wei-yang Palace to entertain foreign ambassadors. To accompany the contests, he relates, clouds and showers, thunder and lightning, were produced, "just like the real thing"; rivers were drawn out on the ground, and rocks were heaped up to make mountains. The animal combat in the relief illustrated in plate 77, with its very artificial heaped-up mountain, may represent just such a scene.36 The first great development in map making took place soon after the end of the Han Dynasty, in a time of social unrest and intellectual ferment. P'ei Hsiu (224-271), one of a brilliant group of literati at Loyang, who was made minister of works under the Chin in 267, undertook a historical study of the geography of the empire, which is unfortunately lost. He also laid down six principles of cartography, which represented, at least in theory, a considerable advance on the practice of map making before his time. These principles were: a kind of grid system by which the dimensions of a given area could be set out; exact orientation and interrelationship of the parts; fixed and accurate distance; indications of heights and depressions; right and oblique angles; crooked and straight. The last two cryptic phrases probably referred to the strategic and tactical value of roads.37 The Li-tai ming-hua chi contains an account of the cartographic accomplishments of Chao Fu-jen, consort of Sun Ch'iian (181-252), ruler of the state of Wu.

The Han Dynasty

37

She was an expert painter, her skill unrivalled. With silks of different colours she could between her fingers make a woven tapestry of dragons and phoenix which in court circles was considered miraculous. On one occasion, when Sun Ch'iian was lamenting that Wei and Shu were not yet pacified, and was thinking how he could obtain good painters to make maps of their hills, rivers and terrain, his consort presented her work in which she had depicted the rivers, lakes and mountain ranges of the Nine Provinces. She also embroidered the forms of the Five [Sacred] Mountains and the different states upon a square panel, and all her contemporaries considered it the last word in fine needlework. On another occasion she used gum to fix silk threads [or "strands of hair"—the text is ambiguous] to make a light screen, which was thought a work of surpassing excellence.38

A somewhat different account of her powers is given in Chao Fu-jen's biography in the Shih-i chi. In this version, Chao Fu-jen, on being asked by Sun Ch'iian to make a pictorial map of Wei and Shu, replied, " 'The colours used in painting are very changeable, and fade in a comparatively short time. However, I can embroider a square panel and depict on it the five mountains, rivers, seas, cities, districts, roads and armies.' When it was finished, she presented it to the Ruler of Wu. People at that time said it was a miracle of needlework." 39 None of these early maps have survived. The oldest surviving Far Eastern maps are those representing the estates belonging to the Todaiji, preserved in the Shosoin at Nara, and dating from the first half of the eighth century.40 Even at that late date, mountains are depicted in profile on either side of a river, and we may assume that P'ei Hsiu's maps must have been more primitive still. Probably the most interesting of these early efforts was the sectional map constructed by Hsieh Chuang (421-466), who "made a map in wood, ten feet square; the mountains, streams, configuration of the ground, all were well ordered. When one separated [the parts of this map], then the districts were distinct and the provinces isolated; when one put them together, then the whole [empire] was assembled into one [big map]." 4 1 LANDSCAPE PAINTING

The few paintings, or rather painted objects, that have survived from the Han Dynasty are not sufficient to provide anything approaching a complete picture of Han pictorial art. The great frescoes * depicting Confucian and mythological subjects which formed the chief contribution of Han painters have long since crumbled to dust. The surviving fragments merely suggest a few of the pictorial conventions which the fresco painters must have had at their command. Fortunately for the art historian, however, the predilection of Han artists and craftsmen for depicting a natural setting was so strong that * I am using the term in the general sense; there is no evidence that Chinese painters ever used true fresco, that is, painting on wet plaster.

The Han Dynasty it is possible to enlarge our knowledge of landscape in the Han period by studying the way in which hills and trees were depicted in such other media as stone reliefs, inlaid bronzes, textiles, and molded pottery. The wide range of these objects, although they can tell us little about Han painting as such, offers valuable evidence not only on the Han attitude toward nature but also on the pictorial language in which that attitude was expressed. A rare example of a wall painting in situ bearing landscape elements was found in a tomb known as the Pei-yüan (Northern Garden), discovered in recent years in Liaoyang, Manchuria, and since reported in a number of publications.42 The decoration of the tomb includes a variety of typical scenes depicting feasting, juggling, dancing, mounted warriors, servants, and attendants. The painting which decorates the right side of the recess in the rear (west) wall consists of an open pavilion surmounted by two phoenixes and containing three principal figures, one of whom is evidently the deceased, and two smaller figures, presumably attendants, making five in all; they are engaged in performing a sacrificial rite. To the right of the building stands a tree of the interlaced type with crooked trunk (pi. 16); this auspicious symbol is discussed further in the Appendix. In his report, Lee Wen-hsin describes the technique in which the tree is executed. The edges of each branch are painted in a deep rich green, the center a pale green; the arrangement of the foliage is in a scale pattern, with a darker color in the "near parts" (presumably the leaf becomes lighter toward the edges), suggesting "the western manner" of painting. The branches have no outline, "being painted in what is nowadays called the boneless method." Available reproductions do not show these characteristics very clearly, and we must take Lee Wen-hsin at his word. The description implies that the artist used arbitrary shading to suggest three-dimensional relief in the branches, a device generally regarded as having been introduced into China with Indian Buddhist painting in the Six Dynasties. Either this device had already reached Liaoyang, and presumably metropolitan China as well, by the second century (the presumed date of the tomb), or else Chinese artists had themselves independently discovered it. However, the tendency of Chinese painting toward abstraction and conceptual visualization may well have prevented the further development of shading until the time of the great influx of foreign ideas and forms under the late Six Dynasties and the T'ang. A large and splendid model of the type of funerary clay house that was placed in the tomb in Han times is preserved in the Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City (pi. 17). The lower exterior walls of the forecourt are divided into vertical panels by posts and beams painted on the walls in red pigment. In four of these panels (one on either side of the entrance doorway, and one on each of the side walls) are paintings of trees. The trunks are executed with a brush laden with red pigment, in a free "boneless" manner, but without shading of any kind, against a grayish background. Another even larger

The Han Dynasty

39

tree is painted on the back wall of the house. From the gnarled trunks rise branches drawn with long easy sweeps of the brush and ending in several "fingers" around which, like cotton, the white foliage is massed in clumps (pi. 18). The two trees on the front elevation (pi. 19) differ from those on the sides not only in being taller in proportion to their width, but also in the fact that each harbors two ravens, who perch on their upper branches. The raven, with either two or three legs, is commonly used in Han art as symbol for the sun, and hence as a directional symbol standing for the south. Unless we know the position occupied by this house in the original tomb, we cannot determine whether the crows on the fu-sang trees depicted here are intended to represent the south face of the building on which the sun shines, or whether they are placed there as a "sun substitute" to readjust the orientation of a building which from its position in the grave had to face north, away from the sun. But published diagrams showing the orientation of several tombs of the Han and Six Dynasties period in which trees are represented, either painted or in relief, suggest that the position of the tree or trees may not be altogether accidental: in tombs and tomb shrines which have a strict north-south axis the tree is depicted on the north wall if the structure faces south and vice versa; in the Buyo-zuka (Tomb of the Wrestlers) at T'ung-kou in Manchuria, which is on a northeast-southwest axis, the large tree is placed in a position where it still occupies the northernmost portion of the tomb wall. Even greater technical freedom in the use of the brush is seen in the painted decoration on a clay tile in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art (pi. 20). The frieze of figures and bare trees is executed in a fluent calligraphic brush line in monochrome ink. The tile presumably comes from the wall of a tomb, but both in subject and in treatment there is a close similarity between this processional scene and that depicted on the bronze mirrors discussed in chapter i. Here we may perhaps see the original pictorial style, the source from which this subject—figures, trees, and horses disposed as though on a long hand-scroll—was often translated into the more permanent and intractable medium of stamped clay or carved stone. The remarkable features of this Cleveland tile are the free flowing line, the bold yet sensitive sweep of the brush, and the reliance upon the expressive possibilities of monochrome ink alone. Linear vitality, present also in the decoration of the celebrated painted tiles in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts,43 is the pictorial counterpart of the evolution of the ts'ao-shu, which, as we have seen, characterizes the calligraphy of the Later Han period. Bird and flower painting, which by the Sung Dynasty had become important enough to qualify for a heading of its own in the catalogue of Hui-tsung's collection, Hsiian-ho Hua-p'u, is generally thought to have developed no earlier than the T'ang period. There is, however, in the collection of Dr. Paul Singer a pottery mortuary jar whose decoration would suggest a much more

40

The Han Dynasty

ancient origin. The surface of the jar is divided by grooves into three zones, covered with a white slip, and painted (pis. 20a and 20b). Most of the paint has rubbed ofi, but enough remains to show, in the lowest zone, a reticulated design of lines in green suggesting rocks or hills; in the center, pairs of men alternating with trees or shrubs; on the topmost band more plants alternate with large and splendid birds. The branches are drawn in single angular strokes of the brush, touched here and there with pink blossoms. There are also traces of gilding. The division into horizontal bands recalls even earlier lacquer decoration, and suggests a close affinity with the silk scroll. The style of the figures is typically Han, while the brushwork, especially in the drawing of the birds' plumage, is astonishingly deft and assured. Badly damaged though it be, here is the remote ancestor of Hui-tsung's own exquisite studies of birds on flowering branches. A lacquer bowl, manufactured, according to its inscription, in Szechwan in A.D. 69 and discovered in a tomb at Lolang in Korea, bears a tiny painting of a fairy mountain that rises up in swirling curves like a fantastic cloud against a plain background, its summit spreading out in a profusion of trailing grasses to form a platform on which sit two figures, presumably Hsi Wang Mu and her attendant (pi. 21). Behind the divinity rises a tree, its branches spreading like a baldachin over the figure, and its trunk rising from behind her right shoulder. The brushwork, while not as sophisticated as that on the Cleveland tile, is free and assured. A close stylistic parallel to this scene appears in some of the reliefs from Szechwan (pi. 86) in which divinities with swirling draperies and excited gestures engage in celestial games of chance, seated on little fairy mountains, with little trees rising behind their shoulders. The iconography of the fairy mountain is discussed in detail below; it need only be said at this point that the hill with broad overhanging top is a form pregnant with Taoist associations. We shall be able to follow the progress of this ch'iieh, as it was called, into the art of the Six Dynasties, where it develops into an easily recognized pictorial convention and is finally absorbed in the ever-expanding repertory of landscape forms. Plate 22 shows a clay model of a fairy mountain from a Han tomb in Szechwan, complete with ch'iieh platforms on the topmost of which appear two mythical figures, perhaps Po I and Shu Ch'i engaged in their chess lesson, or Po Ya learning the lute from his teacher Ch'eng Lien. Our little corpus of original Han landscape painting includes a group of four small bronze vessels in the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts which are believed to have been found at Yii-lin-fu in Shensi; they are decorated with landscape scenes painted in thickly applied masses of solid mineral colors—red, blue, green, and white.44 The po-type steamer (pi. 23) bears a rudimentary "landscape" in the form of a wavelike frieze around the shoulder of the lower vessel; this very simple mountain form is a develop-

The Han Dynasty

41

ment of the Late Chou "cloud-scroll." The designs on the other vessels, which have larger unbroken areas for painting, are more elaborate. The two large surfaces of the flask (pien-hu), one of which is illustrated (pi. 24), are decorated with scenes of horsemen in a landscape. The contours of the hills are denoted by wavy lines that weave to and fro, dividing the picture space into zones. A few simple trees (e.g., upper left) crown the hilltops. The horsemen, of which four are visible, are represented as if appearing from behind a hill, the lower and hinder parts of the horses being cut off by the outline of the hill. This device is common not only in Han but also in Six Dynasties and even T'ang painting; it is one of several important pictorial conventions which are as easily recognized in Chinese painting as is the foreground tree in a European classical landscape. The "compartmented" composition, in which the hill contours divide the area into a number of smaller and more manageable "space cells," is another Han convention which appears again in the decoration of certain bronze objects and on the sides and covers of hill censers. The end view of this flask reveals a scene in which, with the simplest possible means, a landscape of mountains and trees is suggested. The technique is crude and the forms are elementary, but it requires little effort of imagination to see here the original germ of the style that was to find its fulfillment a thousand years later in the towering landscapes of Fan K'uan and Li Ch'eng. The third vessel, a chung with a globular body (pi. 25), is painted with a design of trees and birds. Two types of trees are visible in the photograph: in the lower center a simple kind of pine winds up out of a rocky form resembling the one on the first vessel; to the right stands a curious plant with long spiny arms which may represent a type of yucca, but may be a product of the artist's imagination, put there to support the strange bird that perches on the topmost branch. Over the surface of the vessel other plants and birds are disposed in what seems to be merely a decorative and pleasing arrangement. The mountain convention employed here seems to represent a stage in that evolution of landscape forms out of the purely abstract or decorative cloud-whorl of the Late Chou and Han inlaid bronzes which is one of the most remarkable features of Han pictorial art. The fourth vessel (pis. 26, 27) bears the clearest designs. The narrow side shows a simple mountain landscape in which a deer at the upper left is being shot at by a crouching man in the lower right-hand corner; the other side (pi. 27) depicts a hunter who has thrown his net over a very sad-looking rabbit and is running to catch it. Both scenes are set in landscapes consisting of tall narrow hills rising from the base of the vessel to the neck, suggesting that in Han pictorial art the peculiarly Chinese device of aerial perspective had already been discovered. Simple trees rise in graceful curving lines from the hills to suggest a woodland setting. This is no hesitant, fumbling attempt

42

The Han

Dynasty

to depict a real landscape; even if we allow for the high degree of stylization in the landscape forms, they suggest a freedom and ease of execution born of long experience and familiarity with an abstract pictorial language. This set of miniature paintings, none of which is more than a few inches high, offers us precious evidence for the character of landscape representation in the Han Dynasty. That this should be so is due in the first place to the complete destruction of the wall paintings and silk scrolls, which, had they been preserved, would no doubt have given us a somewhat different picture of Han landscape art. But the very fact that we should find in these unlikely places such rich material for the study of early landscape is significant, for it shows that in this period Chinese artists and craftsmen were already strongly inclined toward representing landscape wherever there was the least excuse to do so. Indeed, while the craftsman of classical Europe or ancient India instinctively filled a space to be decorated with human figures, animals, or plant forms, his Chinese counterpart thought first of a landscape, and even when, as here, his main preoccupation was a hunting scene, it was the setting rather than the hunt itself which determined the form of the design. LANDSCAPE REPRESENTED IN OTHER MEDIA

If the study of landscape in the Han Dynasty had to be limited to surviving paintings it would be brief indeed. But fortunately it is possible to enlarge its scope by a survey of the way in which the Han Chinese represented trees and hills, the basic elements in a landscape, in a variety of other media. These include reliefs on stone and tile, hill jars and hill censers, inlaid bronzes, mirrors, woven stuffs, and embroideries. This mass of material might be classified by media, dividing the inlaid bronzes and reliefs into separate categories. Or it might be analyzed on a regional basis, which would permit stylistic comparison between the reliefs of Szechwan and those of Shantung. Classification by subject matter (hunting scenes in one group, mythological scenes in another) is a third possibility. I have chosen the first approach, classification by media, chiefly because it is the materials he uses more than any other single factor that determines the craftsman's style. The influence of several distinct cultural forces may be discerned in the art of the Han Dynasty as a whole. Basic in Han art, as in the art of all young and vigorous societies, is the element of folk tradition, which displays itself in legend, popular beliefs, and superstition. This vital force reflects the ideas and feelings of a unified society; for there was in the Han Dynasty little of that rigid distinction between the masses and the literati which later became an enduring feature of Chinese life, and profoundly influenced the character of Chinese art. Taoism, alchemy, and a number of lesser local cults

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were as readily accepted at court as in the homes of the peasants, and consequently are present in the visual arts on all levels of Han society. A second powerful factor in Han culture was the flood of foreign ideas, beliefs, and institutions which entered China with the opening of contacts with western Asia. These influences are revealed in art principally in the representation of hunting and fighting on horseback, and in a variety of exotic animals and barbarians who make their appearance on stone reliefs and inlaid bronzes. These, among the most easily recognized characteristics of Han art, have been extensively studied and described by art historians.45 The third element in the evolution of artistic style in the Han Dynasty, in many respects the most important element, has surprisingly received no attention at all. This is the inheritance from earlier Chinese art (particularly from the bronze tradition) of a highly abstract, rhythmic, and linear mode of visual expression which in the Han period came to be employed in the representation of landscape. Of all the elements that go to make up Chinese pictorial style as it evolved in later centuries, it is this abstract, linear quality above all which gives it a unique character. The various media have been assembled under two headings: Group A consists of woven stuffs, lacquer, and inlaid bronze; Group B comprises sculpture in relief, molded and stamped pottery, and clay tiles. The objects in Group B are made of materials which permit a considerable freedom of plastic and pictorial expression; the media grouped under A require a relatively high degree of stylization. It is only for the clay and stone reliefs that stylistic comparison on a regional basis is possible; these are consequently further subdivided under the main areas of Shantung, Honan, and Szechwan, with a few examples from less important regions such as Kansu and Shensi. Two inconsistencies must be noted before the ground is clear for an analysis of the material. First, the objects stamped on bricks include a variety of highly formalized trees, which are distinct from the continuous free designs characteristic of this class as a whole. Their style arises simply from the use of carved wood dies which were impressed in the wet clay to fill the space in a decorative way. (See the Appendix on the meaning of certain plants in Han art.) Second, there is a marked difference in style between two groups of Han jars with painted decoration. One type is adorned with bands of conventional arabesques and whorls borrowed directly from the inlaid bronze and mirror decoration of the third to first centuries B.C., and will therefore be considered under Group A; a second group of jars is decorated in a free pictorial style with hunting and mythological scenes, and so will be included with the molded bricks and reliefs of Group B. A conspicuous feature of the decoration of objects in Group A—woven stuffs, inlaid bronzes, and lacquer ware—is the subject matter, which often consists mainly if not entirely of hunting scenes in which a variety of animals

44

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pursue each other or are themselves pursued by hunters through a mountainous landscape. An association of this theme with the bronze plaques of the Ordos region, and hence with the hunting art of Central Asia, has given rise to the widely held view that not only the hunt but also its landscape setting were imported from western Asia. The most recent expression of this view is found in Soper's survey of early Chinese landscape painting: It is in the lesser service of decoration that landscape enters the art of the Han period, and under the strongest suspicion of foreign influence. On tomb tiles, pottery vessels, and inlaid bronzes, the typical Han landscape is often present as a setting for human and animal figures in violent action. Hunters pursue their quarry at full gallop across long, swelling ground lines; wild beasts flee from their enemies over a succession of peaks, or halt momentarily at the top to look about. The horsemen seem to be nomads, and turn in their saddles to shoot backwards in the same mid-Asiatic fashion which exasperated the Romans in Parthia; much of the animal repertory is exotic. It can hardly be doubted that the whole idea of the chase among mountains was borrowed by the expanding Han empire from the Near East. The immediate prototypes which should exist in Iranian art are unfortunately lacking; not because they never existed, but through the chances of preservation. The lost Achaemenian chase may plausibly be reconstructed from other evidence. The Iranian renascence in Sasanian times recalls the idea in debased form, when the Shah upon a silver platter pursues his game above a vestigial mountain. Behind the hypothetical Iranian version must have lain the Assyrian. Here known monuments approach the theme closely from various sides without quite fulfilling all the conditions. By a curious accident, the closest parallel known to me for the Chinese formula may be more than two thousand years earlier. A Mesopotamian cylinder seal, which Frankfort dates in the period of Sargon of Akkad, around 2500 B.C., shows bowmen (on foot, since the date is so early), and a pursuit of lions after antelope over precipitous peaks.46

Bachhofer 47 states a somewhat similar case for the western Asiatic origins of the Chinese hunting scene, which both writers consider to be the basis of Han landscape style. Soper then proceeds to an analysis of the manner in which the imported repertoire of landscape and hunting forms was employed by the Chinese in the decoration of hill censers and inlaid bronzes. After remarking on the manner in which the Chinese craftsman takes these foreign conventions and adapts the theme "to his own instinctive preferences," the writer continues: By a further stride toward full creative license, the whole setting may break down into clouds or meaningless swirling lines, as effective as the mountains from the point of view of linear motion, and far less hampering to the imagination of the artist. In highly elaborate form in the inlaid bronzes, and more simply in textiles, the silhouette of repeating peaks may be transformed into an extraordinary abstraction,—part mountain still, with a condor perched at the top, or a deer plunging down to escape the tiger behind; part cloud scroll; and part a derivation from

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the bird-head ornamental finials of the "Scythian" animal style. This readiness to substitute more congenial—because more abstract—versions of the mountain theme shows the general indifference of Han art to landscape as anything but an element of decoration, with only the slightest connection with the natural world. 48

The generally accepted view may be summarized as follows: landscape does not appear in Chinese art before the Han, whereas it is present in the art of western Asia at this period; consequently its appearance in China must be due to foreign influences entering China during the Han Dynasty. That the rudiments of a landscape style existed, particularly in central China, in the Warring States period has been shown in chapter i. The evidence for the existence of a landscape style in western Asia is much stronger, possibly chiefly because so much is preserved in the form of reliefs on stone, an art not practiced in pre-Han China. Mountains, trees, and rivers appear in reliefs from Khorsabad, Nimrud, and especially Kuyunjik (Nineveh). 49 These display a wealth of formalized trees and plants, whose leaves and flowers are splayed out to make a decorative pattern and at the same time to give some indication of a natural setting. Hills, or indeed any ground lines, are indicated by rows of overlapping humps, as on the Sasanian silver platter illustrated in plate 28. It seems hardly likely that Soper's "lost Achaemenian chase" would have included landscape settings any more advanced than this. Perhaps it is possible to see in the trees stamped at intervals on some of the Han tomb bricks a distant echo of the formal style of western Asia, while the overlapping humped hills of Assyrian and Mesopotamian art do recur in the decoration of Han hill jars and inlaid bronzes, in what we may for convenience call the "compartmented" style. Thoroughly un-Chinese in its flat, decorative patternization, this convention disappears entirely during the Six Dynasties. The western Asian origins of the chase-on-horseback theme, also, are unquestionable. This mode of hunting had for centuries been the chief recreation of the upper classes in western Asia; the nomads of the steppes lived by it, and it was through contact with them that it was introduced into China, to become a fashionable sport of the emperors in their great hunting parks. Yet this theme, like the pictorial conventions in which it was often depicted, was essentially foreign to the Chinese temperament and gradually disappeared. It came into fashion again during the T'ang Dynasty, when, for a time, contacts with Central Asia were restored. The overlapping cells on the Sasanian platters are essentially enclosing forms, creating little panels for the isolation of each bird or flower that contribute to the whole pattern; the contour or silhouette—the qualities essential to depicting mountains—are scarcely considered. This manner of drawing a mountain is totally different from that of the Chinese artist, who with a sweep of the brush sets down, in however primitive or abstract a form, the

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very essence of "mountainness." It is significant that Han art includes many examples of the theme conveniently labeled "chase among mountains" in which, although the chase itself is foreign, it is not the clumsy Near Eastern compartmented style of hill humps that forms the setting, but a rhythmic running line that rises at intervals, like a wave, into towering peaks, and is in origin purely Chinese. In other words, the Near Eastern compartmented style, which appears on some inlaid bronzes and hill censers, co-existed with a native style, based upon semi-abstract linear rhythms. The very phrase "chase among mountains" is deceptive, for it carries with it not only an acceptable association with the Near Eastern hunting theme, but also the quite illegitimate suggestion of a similar origin for the mountains themselves, on the supposition that, because the Persian princes hunted in the mountains, and hunts in mountains are depicted in Han art, the mountains themselves must be derived from Persian pictorial conventions. The radically different character of the Chinese and the Near Eastern conventions for representing mountains cannot be explained solely on the basis of a conscious adaptation of a foreign style. On the evidence offered, both by Near Eastern art and by Chinese art in the Han Dynasty, only two conventions in Han landscape can with certainty be attributed directly to foreign influence: the chase theme, with hunters on horseback, and the compartmented style of mountain representation. This is scarcely enough to account for the wide variety of themes and styles in which landscape elements are depicted in Han art. Although it would be wrong to underestimate the extent of stylistic development in the Han Dynasty, when a whole repertoire of archaic conventions was liquidated or reworked in terms of a realism that owed much to contact with western Asia, by no means all the surviving landscape art of the Han period reveals these characteristics; much of it is highly stylized, and is expressed in terms of abstract linear rhythms which are already present in the art of Shang and Chou. Moreover, the very realism of certain examples can be attributed to the influence of indigenous folk art. The key point in the theory of the foreign origins of landscape representation in the Han Dynasty is that the Chinese craftsman took an essentially realistic foreign motif and "transformed" it "into an extraordinary abstraction" (Soper). This process is a familiar one in the history of art. In Chinese neolithic art, for instance, as in the art of primitive peoples throughout the world, we can often trace the evolution (or "degeneration") of a recognizable bird or animal, by endless repetition, into a meaningless abstraction. But, as we have seen, the imported conventions consisted merely of crudely overlapping humps, which no amount of linear genius could have transformed into the soaring wave-like forms of the Chinese mountain range. What, then, were the origins of the Han landscape style?

The Han Dynasty 4J All art, except abstract art, conforms in some degree to the visible world, and the Han artist certainly felt the impulse to depict the world of nature as he saw it. But direct observation, while it may provide subject matter, does not by itself create a style. We all see the same things. What needs to be explained is the dynamic, linear, abstract character of Han landscape treatment, qualities which the Chinese pictorial tradition has retained to this day. The first hint of a solution to this problem was given by Bachhofer, when he wrote: T h e further development of painting shows a curious and charming blend of decoration and representation. Forms that stand for one thing unexpectedly change their function; time and again scrolls turn into fantastic animals or tails of animals into scrolls. There is also ample evidence that such scrolls, which had become more luscious and rich as time went on, were interspersed with tiny figures of men and animals, and that these scrolls were transformed into a kind of rocaille. T h e y serve in a new capacity, as a background of rocks and trees to Taoist saints who stand around conversing, listening to music, and patting the heads of tigers or riding on their backs. 50

Bachhofer is on the threshold of the truth; yet he seems to have missed the full implication of this important moment in the development of a repertory of landscape forms. Rostovtseff, also, in his analysis of the origin and development of what he calls the "cloud-scroll," remarks upon this evolution, but attributes it almost wholly to the influence of three or four factors of western Asiatic origin: the Hellenistic vegetal scroll, the Scythian and "Sarmatian" landscape (see his statement that the "landscape is the peculiar abstract landscape typical of Iranian art in general"), and Persian animal forms.51 A brief examination of objects in which this evolving scroll occurs will show the process by which the landscape style seems to grow naturally out of a purely decorative abstraction. One of the many basic forms of the volute or whorl pattern appears in the decoration on a small hu inlaid with gold and silver in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago (fig. 2a). As this scroll begins to evolve, or break down, it may take on, merely by a change in context, the significance of a cloud, flames, hills, or waves. In a lacquer box from Changsha, although a different stylistic tradition is represented, an apparently decorative volute becomes, by a slight change in form, a hill tufted with grass (confronting the ch'i-lin) or a cloud (behind him) (fig. ib). A trifling variation on a basic form occurs in the volute on an inlaid platter in the collection of Marquis Hosokawa. Here the top of the volute, otherwise purely abstract, rises to a stiff T-form which is undoubtedly intended to give the effect of a precipitous crag, and indeed anticipates the characteristic mountain convention of the Six Dynasties period as it is seen on the famous engraved sar-

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The Han Dynasty

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cophagus in the Nelson Gallery, Kansas City (fig. 2c). On a band of decoration inlaid in a bronze pole-end, in the collection of the King of Sweden, a recognizable mountain form appears to be emerging out of the sweep and curve of an even more complex volute design (fig. 2d, where, in our drawing, the hill form has been deliberately accentuated). The same basic architecture of forms can be seen on an embroidered shoe sole found at Noin-Ula in Mongolia, which Prudence Myer has correctly identified as a mountain in process of evolution out of the abstract volute (pi. 29) .B2 Three details from painted lacquer objects (pi. 30) provide further examples óf the use of this volute motif to suggest a hill or a cloud. If there is any doubt regarding the correct interpretation of this motif, we have only to turn to the famous bronze tube in the collection of the Marquis Hosokawa (fig. 2