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The Independent Bronze Industries in the South of China Contemporary with the Shang and Western Chou Dynasties Author(s): Virginia C. Kane Source: Archives of Asian Art, Vol. 28 (1974/1975), pp. 77-107 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20111064 Accessed: 22-10-2018 16:33 UTC

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The Independent Bronze Industries in the South of China

Contemporary with the Shang and Western Chou Dynasties

Virginia C. Kane

University of Michigan

IN china during the period between 1950 and 1966, planned archaeological investiga tions as well as chance finds of antiquities were for the first time documented and pub lished with a concern for scientific accuracy and reliability, thereby supplying the

scholar of China's past with a wealth of new information even as yet imperfectly absorbed and interpreted. The re-appearance in 1972 of the archaeological journals Wen-wu, Kaogu and Kaogu Xuebao (publication of all of which had been suspended since mid-1966) has now assured the continued flow of new archaeological data and sustains the hope that fur ther progress can be made toward the solution of certain problematical issues associated with China's Bronze Age.

One such issue concerns the date and the circumstances of the initial dispersion of bronze metallurgy from the Shang and Chou metropolitan centers close to the Yellow River valley in north China to areas in south China variously located in the central Yangtze River valley, in the valleys of its western tributaries, and in the southeast coast delta region (the areas presently occupied by northern Hunan, central Szechuan, and central Kiangsu). In the past this problem has received only relatively cursory or imprecise consideration from schol ars, despite its obviously significant implications for the technological and artistic develop

ment of ancient China. Scholarly opinion has tended to agree that bronze metallurgy first spread from north China to the southeast coastal regions only in the course of the Western Chou period and that local bronze industries established elsewhere in the south of China be came productive only during the Eastern Chou period.1 According to this view, bronze metallurgy and Bronze Age culture in general were diffused into south China from the metropolitan areas of the Yellow River valley gradually but steadily (as opposed to inter mittently or repeatedly) during the Western and Eastern Chou periods, thereby providing a convenient but perhaps overly simplified or idealized theoretical structure for the develop ment of Bronze Age civilization throughout China. Almost of necessity, then, it has been claimed that the bronze vessels of Shang style unearthed at various times during the past twenty years from sites in Anhui, northern Hunan, and elsewhere in south China should be viewed only as exported objects created in the Shang capital at An-yang and therefore not be taken as evidence for the existence of local bronze industries functioning in the vi cinity of these southern sites at a date as early as the Shang dynasty.2 In contrast to this view, Hayashi Minao has recently recognized that certain of the bronze objects unearthed in central south China differ from analogous Shang bronzes in style or type sufficiently to

warrant their attribution to a local bronze industry established in the south at a time con temporary with the Shang dynasty.3 The purpose here is to enlarge upon Hayashi's observa tions and to explore their full implications for the study of Chinese archaeology and the art of Chinese bronze vessels.

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Fig. 1. Trumpet-mouthed tsun from M331, Hsiao-t'un, An-yang. H. 47.5 cm. Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taipei.

Fig. 2. Trumpet-mouthed tsun. H. 29.1 cm. Hakutsuru Bijutsukan, Kobe.

In the absence of finds of habitation or foun dry sites in the south of China, claims that local bronze industries existed there must rest upon the recognition of stylistic and typological idio syncrasies observed among bronzes unearthed in that region?idiosyncrasies which betray their local provenance and serve to distinguish them not only from their northern counterparts but also from those other bronzes similarly unearthed in the south which are indeed imports from the north. At present (mid-1974), finds of south ern bronzes of local provenance justify the con clusion that a rather vigorous, independently functioning bronze industry arose somewhere in the region of northern Hunan at a time con temporary with the Middle An-yang period and persisted there until the end of the Middle West ern Chou period ; that a second, much smaller and perhaps quite short-lived industry established itself in central Szechuan at a time contem porary with the Early Western Chou period under direct influence from the Chou metro politan centers in the Wei River valley in Shensi; and that a third bronze industry, unrelated to the other two, existed in the region of the Yangtze delta in central Kiangsu and southernmost Anhui contemporary with the Middle Western Chou period and strongly influenced by its art. Con nections between these early bronze industries and those which flourished in the same regions during the subsequent Eastern Chou period re main tenuous, uncertain, and perhaps even non existent, indicating that bronze metallurgy hav ing been introduced from the north during the

Shang and Western Chou periods nevertheless subsequently disappeared in the south and needed to be re-introduced from the north again during the first half of the Eastern Chou period. The process by which northern metallurgical skills were dispersed to the south of China thus emerges as considerably more varied and complex than hitherto realized?though perhaps more in accord with the observed untidiness of human developments in general.

It is impossible to speak of a strongly estab lished northern metropolitan bronze style dis tinguishable with certainty from regional varia tions until after the beginning of the Middle An yang period at the Shang capital. Prior to that, at the pre-An-yang capital at Cheng-chou and during the subsequent Early An-yang period at the new capital, the experimentalism and linger ing primitivity observable both in vessel shapes and in surface decor render it very difficult to judge whether bronze vessels found outside of the area of the capitals represent local products or imports from the metropolitan centers.4 How ever, by the beginning of the Middle An-yang period (distinguished in this method of periodi zation by the introduction of relief decor), An yang creativity had sufficiently defined itself and set its matchless standards of design and ex ecution to allow one to discern the An-yang touch where it exists and to realize its absence where it does not. Therefore, beginning with the Middle An-yang period it becomes possible to discriminate An-yang creations from what

must in contrast be judged as regional variations,

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Fig. 3. Trump et-mouthed tsun from Fu-nan-hsien, Anhui. H. 47 cm. {After Hsin Chung-kuo ch'u-t'u wen-wu, Peking, 1972, pl. 49.)

Fig. 4. Trumpet-mouthed tsun from Fu-nan hsien, An hu i. H. 50.5 cm. {After Akiyama T. et al., Arts of China: Neolithic Cultures to the T'ang Dynasty, Recent Discoveries, Tokyo, 1968, pi. 43.)

whose very presence provides the evidence for the existence of local foundries contemporary

with and, of course, strongly influenced by the dominating art and craftsmanship of the Shang capital.

Two trumpet-mouthed tsun (Figs. 3 and 4) unearthed in 1957 from Fu-nan-hsien on the northern bank of the Huai River in northern Anhui5 suggest themselves as local versions of a Middle An-yang prototype and as such demon strate the kinds of typological and stylistic idio syncracies and anachronisms which in general seem to distinguish regional bronzes. The mature trumpet-mouthed tsun is a large wine vessel characterized by a broad, flaring "trumpet shaped" mouth rising from a narrow, slanting shoulder which in turn joins the body of the ves sel at a clearly defined angle. This vessel-type underwent an early and rapid development at Cheng-chou and An-yang, where the Early An yang burial M331 at Hsiao-t'un has yielded two examples (Fig. I).6 Both are fashioned with a trumpet-mouth which is undecorated except for three relief "bow strings" encircling the neck, and with three animal heads in prominent re lief which rest on the shoulder and overlap the division between shoulder and body. The surface designs on shoulder, body, and foot are executed in a pre-relief style (Style III?IV?to employ

M. Loehr's familiar and extremely useful ter minology7), and are segmented by three high thick flanges on the shoulder and body (but not on the foot) .8 Immediately subsequent innova

Fig. 5. Trumpet-mouthed tsun from Hua jung-hsien, Hunan. H. 12A cm. {After

Wen-hua Ta-k'e-ming-ch'i chien ch'u-t'u wen-wu, Peking, 1972, pi. 30.)

tions in this vessel-type rapidly perfected its in herent aesthetic qualities and imparted to it its definitive form: the plain trumpet-mouth with bow strings was replaced by one decorated with a horizontal frieze encircling the neck and a series of rising blades, designed to enhance the mouth's graceful flare; the three high relief animal heads were confined to the shoulder-zone in order to reinforce the sharp articulation between

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shoulder and body instead of blurring it as had their earlier overlapping position; and the surface decor was executed in increasingly high relief segmented on shoulder, body, and foot by six decisively jutting flanges, which, in the very latest versions, rise even to the lip of the trumpet mouth (Fig. 2). It is important for the purpose of the present discussion to recognize that during the course of this rapid progress toward perfec tion, no aberrant or old-fashioned types in truded themselves into the typological sequence: flanges once introduced were progressively mul tiplied and never subsequently omitted; the horizontal neck frieze and rising blades, which first appear prior to the use of relief decor, there after totally replace the plain trumpet-mouth; relief heads once confined to the shoulder never again overlap the angle between shoulder and body. It is this sense of intense purposefulness and deliberateness, infusing all of the An-yang typological sequences, which allows one unerr ingly to identify An-yang creations and to speak

with confidence of the An-yang touch. It is, moreover, important to observe that the final stage of unimprovable typological perfection (exemplified here by the Hakutsuru tsun) was achieved for this vessel-type during the latter half of the Middle An-yang period and that thereafter it ceased to be made at An-yang: the type is not found among vessels correctly dated to the Late An-yang and Western Chou periods, during which time it was replaced by the newly developed but much less impressive A^-shaped tsun. This fact is significant for the proper dating of the Anhui and other regional trumpet mouthed tsun to a period contemporary with or not substantially later than the Middle An-yang period.

It is clear from the foregoing description of the development of the An-yang trumpet

mouthed tsun that neither of the two tsun un earthed in Anhui could have been made at An yang. In both, the high relief decor found only on the latest An-yang tsun is combined ana chronistically with a trumpet-mouth still plain except for the three bow strings. Relief heads still overhang the angle between shoulder and body and on one, the foot-zone remains under rated, while on the other is seen a fao-fieh frieze executed incongruously in Cheng-chou style. One tsun is flangeless except for curious curvi linear excrescences attached at intervals to the shoulder, and the other exhibits broken curvi

linear flanges of a type not used at An-yang but apparently inherited from the very latest phase of activity at Cheng-chou.9 In both, the handling of the relief decor diverges conspicuously from that characteristic of An-yang, particularly in its lack of a clear distinction between the volute embellishment of the relief surfaces and what should be the squared spirals of the lei-wen ground. In short, as combinations of both early and late features, neither of the Anhui tsun can be accommodated into the typological sequence established at An-yang and both betray the hand of a regional artist familiar perhaps with early and later examples of this vessel-type but not aware of the correct combination of all of its elements and therefore oblivious to the inconsis tencies in his designs. Furthermore, the rather distinctive iconography of the larger of the Anhui tsun (Fig. 4)?a "displayed" human figure possibly with a long protruding tongue apparently being devoured by a "split-bodied" feline-like monster?is not found at An-yang10 and it presumably represents a complex of reli gious ideas or attitudes prevalent only in the south of China and probably even there intrusive from areas outside of China.11 Finally, recent technological studies on the larger of the two

Anhui tsun have revealed certain idosyncratic casting techniques which provide additional evi dence arguing against a possible An-yang prove nance.12 The two tsun thus testify to the exist ence of a regional bronze industry operating pre sumably somewhere in southern Honan or north ern Anhui at a time contemporary with the Mid dle An-yang period, although the lack of other regional Shang or Western Chou bronzes from this area may indicate either that such an indus try was extremely short-lived or that these bronzes were actually made elsewhere in the south of China.

It is likely that the far more long-lived and productive local bronze industry which existed in northern Hunan, at a point directly south of An yang and readily accessible to it through the river valleys of southern Honan and central Hupei, was sustained by friendly and mutually bene ficial trade relations with the Shang capital, which the southern community may have sup plied with such exotic items as the large tortoise plastrons needed in the Shang practice of divina tion. Since no habitation sites of the Shang period have been discovered in the Hunan region it is impossible to judge whether the bronzes

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Fig. 6. P'ou from Ning-hsiang-hsien, Hunan. H. 41.0 cm. {After Hsin Chung-kuo ch'u-t'u wen-tvu, Peking, 1972, pi. 42.)

made there represent merely the efforts of the local indigenous population to imitate the cul tural appurtenances of their powerful and presti gious ally to the north or whether they consti tute the locally cast possessions of a Shang colony transplanted to the south for the purpose of overseeing trade.13 It is clear, however, that the Hunan industry persisted for approximately one hundred and fifty years after the fall of the Shang dynasty and that it displayed an inde pendent and original creativity which suggests the active participation of local talent, even though itinerant craftsmen from An-yang may have provided the original impetus.

Arising at a time contemporary with the Mid dle An-yang period, the Hunan industry first created an array of bronze vessels which consci entiously attempted to emulate contemporary An-yang prototypes and yet would not now be confused with those prototypes. The trumpet mouthed tsun found recently in Hua-jung-hsien in northern Hunan (Fig. 5)14 displays the same anachronistic combination of plain trumpet

mouth and relief decor as the Anhui examples; and its awkward proportions, graduated curvi linear flanges, misunderstood positioning of the high relief animal heads and the upright bird flanges on the shoulder all betray a provincial artist, as do, of course, the weak and attenuated design of the t'ao t'ieh masks in the surface decor and their timid execution.15

Fig. 7. P'ou, said to be from Ctiang-sha, Hunan. H. 40 cm. Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm.

Fig. 8. P'ou, said to be from Hsiang River region, Hunan. H. 38.8 cm. {After Shanghai po-wu-kuan ts'ang ch'ing t'ung-ch'i, Shanghai, 1964, vol. I, pi. 12.)

Although no trumpet-mouthed tsun of An yang provenance has yet been discovered in the Hunan region, one need only contrast the self assurance and technical precision of the superbly designed covered ffou found in 1961 in Ning hsiang-hsien in northern Hunan (Fig. 6),16 to recognize the difference between an An-yang import and a local casting. The p'ou is one of a

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Fig. 9. P'ou cover, said to be from Ch'ang sha, Hunan. H. 28 cm. Mus?e Guimet, Paris.

Fig. 10. Chia. H. 41.9 cm. Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.

Fig. 11. Chia. H. 49.S cm. Senoku Hakk?kan, Kyoto. {After Mizuno S., ed., T?y?bijutsu, Tokyo, 1968, vol. V, pi. 21. Reproduced courtesy of the Asahi Shimbun Publishing Co., Tokyo.)

number of excellent Middle and Late An-yang bronze vessels discovered in the Hunan region.17 Valued objects, presumably received in trade with the Shang capital, they served as models upon which local artists could base their own designs and hope to match in execution. The large and impressive coverless ffou in the Stock holm Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (Fig. 7), which is said to have come from the Ch'ang sha region, Hunan,18 represents the local effort. It is quite creditable, except for the three-di

mensional heads, rendered too large and bulging and overhanging the border between shoulder and body (in a manner not found on mature An-yang p'ou for the same reason that it is not found on the mature An-yang trumpet-mouthed tsun), and for the rather inadequate curvilinear and bird flanges, which are very similar to those on the Hunan trumpet-mouthed tsun. Also similar to the tsun is the handling of the relief decor, particularly the virtually identical t'ao t'ieh mask in the foot-zone of each vessel (rather ineptly truncated in the foot of the p'ou) de signed with unembellished upright horns, punc tuated with relief dots and somehow lacking the experienced An-yang touch.

Another large coverless p'ou (Fig. 8), said to have come from the Hsiang River region of Hunan and now in the Shanghai Museum,10 ex hibits many of the same local idiosyncracies as the Stockholm p'ou, together with some addi

tional non-An-yang features: the shoulder of the vessel is concave and meets the body at an angle in a manner appropriate to a tsun but never encountered on an An-yang p'ou, the con tours of which are always smoothly convex; and the diamond-and-boss decor found on small-sized p'ou, kuei, ting, etc., made at An-yang espe cially during the Early An-yang period is not normally used on the large-scale p'ou of the Mid dle An-yang period. This willingness on the part of the southern bronze artist to diverge from An yang prototypes testifies to a spirit of independ ent creativity which becomes more and more ap parent in the later stages of the Hunan bronze industry.

Something of this rising independence can be sensed in the splendid large vessel-cover in the

Mus?e Guimet (Fig 9), said to be from the Ch'ang-sha region and probably belonging to a p'ou now unfortunately lost. The graduated curvilinear flanges, virtually identical to those on the Stockholm and Shanghai p'ou, can now be recognized as a persistent southern tradition; but the designer of the cover has deviated from An-yang standards by using four instead of three t'ao-t'ieb and by positioning the flanges so that they segregate but do not bisect the

masks. Thus there are four rather than the nor mal six flanges, just as there are only four flanges on the Stockholm and Shanghai p'ou, but six on the An-yang import. The striking large-eyed

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bird with jutting beak and elaborate crest con stitutes a witty and successful variation on Mid dle An-yang bird prototypes, which can be found surmounting much smaller yu and fang chia covers but not, so far as is known, p'ou or other covers of similar size.

It would seem that the bird with elaborate crest is a motif of sufficient uniqueness and dis tinction to allow one to attribute to the same

Hunan bronze industry certain other bronzes on which it also occurs, notably the two tall chia in the Freer Gallery of Art and the Sumitomo col lection, Kyoto, (Figs. 10 and 11) and the hang ing bell in the Sackler Collections, to be consid ered below. Like the trumpet-mouthed tsun and the p'ou, the tall chia attained its climactic de velopment as a vessel-type during the Middle An-yang period and thereafter became extinct at An-yang or replaced by the smaller and gen erally plain-surfaced tri-lobed chia. The Freer chia is thus probably contemporary with the

Middle An-yang period but betrays its southern origin not only in its distinctive bird caps but also in its curvilinear flanges and ungainly large animal head decorating its handle (a mask which recalls those on the Stockholm and Shanghai p'ou), and in its curiously unsure and ineffective surface decor.20 Moreover, analysis of the casting technique employed in this vessel has revealed certain inexplicable idiosyncrasies which?as in the case of the Anhui tsun?tend to confirm its non-An-yang origins.21 The Sumitomo lobed chia (actually a strange sort of hybrid between a tall chia and a lobed chia) reflects typological innovations introduced at An-yang during the Late An-yang period and is thus slightly later than the Freer chia, as its considerably more ac complished, but still somewhat constrained, han dling of the surface decor also suggests.

The willingness of the Hunan bronze artists to assert their independence of An-yang proto types is most persuasively demonstrated by the large fang-ting (Fig. 12) possibly recovered from the region of Ning-hsiang-hsien,22 on which four human faces realistically modelled in high relief have supplanted the requisite t'ao-t'ieh

masks (whose vestigial claws and ears neverthe less incongruously remain)?an altogether aston ishingly willful and unthinkable perversion of established traditions of Shang bronze design which, one feels, would have caused an An-yang artist to moan in outrage and vague despair.23

Fig. 12. Fang-ting from Ning-hsiang-hsien, Hunan. H. 38.5 cm. {After Akiyama T., et al, Arts of China: Neolithic Cultures to the T'ang Dynasty, Recent Discoveries, Tokyo, 1968, pi. 45.)

An almost equally astonishing bronze vessel also unearthed from Ning-hsiang-hsien24?a fang-tsun (Fig. 14) designed with four pro truding rams' heads and forelegs in high relief and all surfaces ingeniously decorated with a spirited array of t'ao-t'ieh, dragon, and bird

motifs?finds no counterpart among the An yang repertory and must be credited to the dar ing originality and flawless artistry of an out standing Hunan artist, whose only provincialism can be observed in his use of curvilinear flanges. It is interesting that a typical mature fang-tsun of An-yang provenance (Fig. 13) has also been recovered from Hunan,25 suggesting that a local artist could have been well enough acquainted with the standard northern prototype, which he then proceeded to emulate and surpass with staggering ease. In this case, one feels that an An-yang artist would only have gasped in en vious admiration.

In an article reporting on these Hunan bronze finds, reference was also made to an otherwise undescribed "double-ram tsun" from Ch'ang-sha now in the Hunan Provincial Museum26, a desig nation which quite inevitably calls to mind the two "double-ram tsun" in the Nezu Museum, Tokyo, (Fig. 15) and in the British Museum (Fig. 16)?two objects obviously closely related to each other but never quite convincingly at

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Fig. 13. Fang-tsun from Chang-ning-hsien, Hu nan. H. 54 cm. {After Hsin Chung-kuo ch'u t'u wen-wu, Peking, 1972, pi. 43)

Fig. 14. Quadruple ram fang-tsun from Ning-hsiang hsien, Hunan. H. 58.3 cm. {After Wen-xvu, 1959, no. 10, p. A.)

tributed to either the Shang or the Western Chou periods. In view of the quadruple-ram fang-tsun from Ning-hsiang-hsien (and pending the pub lication of the mysterious vessel from Ch'ang sha), one might reasonably be persuaded that the

Nezu and London vessels represent further Hu nan variations on the theme so splendidly set forth in the fang-tsun. One senses, however, not only a reduction in the ambitiousness of the de sign but also a gradual decline both in the precise

and varied details of the surface decor and in the carefulness and technical finesse of the casting. It is obvious in this regard that the British Mu seum tsun must be the later of the two vessels and it is perhaps significant that the apparent crudeness of its casting technique, together with the reduction of the t'ao-t'ieh mask to a pattern of nicely incised hooked scrolls and volutes, ac cords with the analogous process of technical deterioration and pattern dissolution observed in

F/?. 15. Double ram tsun. H. 45.8 cw. AVz/v Bijutsu kan, Tokyo.

Fig. 16. Double ram tsun. H. 45.5 cm. The British Museum, London.

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connection with the series of bells of southern provenance to be discussed below. In short, to re gard the Nezu and British Museum double-ram tsun as products of the Hunan bronze industry may well be the best solution to the problem currently posed by their anomalous forms?at least until more decisive archaeological evidence can be adduced.

While bronze vessels based on imported An yang prototypes, but also at times of fearlessly in ventive design, were thus produced in the north ern Hunan region, it is by no means certain that such vessels were used for sacrifices on behalf of deceased ancestors in accord with Shang practice. No bronze of southern provenance carries an in scribed ancestor dedication or longer inscription (so far as one can know from the published ma terial) and it is possible, therefore, that the bronze vessels served merely as precious possessions or that they functioned in some other type of purely local sacrificial rite. It is perhaps worth noting that most of the vessels discussed above are extraordinarily large by An-yang standards, seemingly cast to function more as single "monu

ments" than as components of a varied array of sacrificial vessels on a household or temple altar.

Moreover, none of these bronzes was actually un earthed from a human burial (since no graves of this early period have as yet been discovered in Hunan) ; and a few seem to have served as re positories for pieces of jade or other smaller bronze objects.27 In short, one cannot assume that the social or religious milieu which sup ported the Hunan bronze industry was neces sarily the same or even similar to that of the Shang capital from which its metallurgical skills had been initially derived. The dissimilarities become more apparent when one considers what were the most numerous and the most original creations of the Hunan bronze industry? the bronze bells of various types which pre sumably served some essential religious or cere monial demand different in kind, scope, or relative importance from anything analogous in the north. At An-yang, hanging bells (ling*)

were made only on the very small scale suitable for suspension around the necks of dogs or chariot horses,28 while the sets of three modestly sized clapperless bells held or placed mouth-upward and struck were relatively rare during the Shang dynasty and apparently unknown in Western Chou (see below). Although these two types of An-yang bells exerted a decisive typological in

fluence on the creation of bells in Hunan, the fact that in the south such bells were cast on a scale and in numbers far surpassing that of their northern prototypes indicates some as yet unspe cifiable shift in the role of bells in the southern community. It might even be claimed that it was the need for bronze bells, rather than for bronze vessels, which sustained the Hunan bronze industry and motivated its development particu larly after the fall of the Shang dynasty, the cessation of continuous contacts with the north, and the apparent subsiding of interest in the casting of bronze vessels.

At a height of 31.1 cm., the aforementioned hanging bell in the Sackler Collections (Fig. 17) is far larger than the little harness bells from which it must have been derived; and no such large-scale hanging bells are known from the north during the Shang or succeeding Early and Middle Western Chou periods. The Sackler bell unfortunately lacks documented provenance, but the two crested birds which flank the suspension loop serve to suggest a Hunan origin?a non

metropolitan provenance which is not contra dicted by the outlandish hooked flanges29 and the boldly simplified handling of the t'ao-t'ieh mask, which is partially bisected by a frontal flange on which perches yet another small bird. The Sackler bell probably dates from a time contemporary with the Late An-yang period, when a spirit of independent creativity was beginning to assert itself in the Hunan bronze industry, a tendency

which is confirmed by the quadruple-ram fang tsun and the fang-ting with human faces.

The fall of the Shang dynasty to the Chou conquerors and the destruction of An-yang appears to have severed the trade connections which had presumably fostered cultural relations between Hunan and the Yellow River valley: virtually no Western Chou influence can be de tected among the subsequent creations of the

Hunan bronze industry and it is quite likely that the southern community regarded the con querors of their erstwhile trading partners as hostile to themselves. At any rate, the failure to receive fresh stylistic and technological inspira tion from the north seems to have contributed to the slow decline and eventual extinction of the Hunan bronze industry, a decline evidenced by the two bells here adduced as later versions of the Sackler flanged bell with birds (Figs. 18 and 19). It must be assumed that a certain num

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ber of generations intervene between the Sackler and Singer bells, the latter of which should ac cordingly be dated to a time contemporary with

Middle Western Chou. However, the develop ment is purely internal to the south, unaffected by Western Chou stylistic changes. The bell has become taller and narrower and the t'ao-t'ieh has disappeared, though the hooked flanges on the four quarters topped with birds remain to testify to the bell's provenance. Even allowing for the heavily corroded surface, one senses a certain technological deterioration?the omission of details in the decor, including the diagnostic elaborate bird crests, and a certain loss of inten sity in the execution of a design which had by this time presumably become rather conventional through repetition. The slightly later bell in the Fujii Y?rinkan, Kyoto, strays further from the original design, omitting the birds entirely, sub stituting a meaningless abstract pattern for the t'ao-t'ieh, but adding curiously realistic but artis tically irrelevant salamander-type motifs in the upper and lower margins. These motifs are also encountered on the bell from the Buckingham collection discussed below, where they serve to establish the chronological relationship between these two typologically disparate objects. The rather flimsy-looking thread relief lines and spirals are also encountered repeatedly on other bronzes from the later stage of the Hunan in dustry, as further discussed below. The Fujii Y?rinkan bell, datable it would seem to a time contemporary with the Middle Western Chou king Mu-wang,b may constitute the latest bell in this particular series, since the Hunan industry appears to have become extinct at the end of the Middle Western Chou period.

A second and closely related series of loop suspended hanging bells also, it would seem, of southern workmanship poses somewhat different and more difficult problems. The interesting bell of unknown provenance now in the Museum of the Peking Former Imperial Palace (Fig. 20)30 shares many of the characteristics of the Sackler bell, including the crested birds flanking the suspension loop, the deeply hooked flanges, and the general configuration of the t'ao-t'ieh mask. The substitution of small owl faces for the more orthodox whorl circles, and the elegant scroll and volute embellishment of the remaining spaces and flanges constitute decorative elabora tions not inconsistent with the increasingly in dependent Hunan bronze industry of the Late

An-yang period. Like the characteristics which ally this object with the Sackler bell, they are not to be found on bronzes of known northern provenance. Equally unusual are the central flanges which bisect the t'ao-t'ieh on the two main faces of the bell and which have been given the form of a single descending feline with gaping mouth and curved tail. The recur rence of these feline flanges on another series of bells, all of unknown provenance and uncertain date, would seem to justify their attribution to the southern bronze industry?at least until one such object is actually excavated from elsewhere in China. The second bell in the Sackler Col lections (Fig. 21) is typical of this series31 in that the felines have been doubled and placed on the longitudinal axis, while the hooked flanges surmounted by crested birds have been trans ferred to the center of the front and rear faces. It seems clear from the far more perfunctory handling of the feline flanges and the t'ao-t'ieh mask with its lax contours and inane volute em bellishments that this bell must be later than both the Peking bell and the first Sackler bell, but not so late as the taller and narrower bell in the Singer collection. Therefore, it may be dated

more or less contemporary with the Early West ern Chou period, although it reflects no northern stylistic influences of that time.

However, unlike the bells with large hooked flanges which ended their life-span in the ex treme degeneration seen in the Fujii Y?rinkan bell, the bells with feline flanges seem to have experienced only two minor changes in the course of their evolution. The round bosses be came diamond-shaped, and the abstracted t'ao t'ieh decor was at some point transformed into confronted dragons, familiar in the design vo cabulary of Middle and Late Western Chou and therefore presumably reflecting influence from the north at that time. A bell in the Shanghai

Museum (H. 42.0) exhibits these changes, but is otherwise similar to the Sackler bell.32 Another bell (Fig. 22), belonging to a private collection in Tientsin and recently published for the first time,33 shows not only the changes seen in the Shanghai bell but also a dramatic increase in size (H. 63.5) and an expansion of the double feline flanges into four astonishingly elaborate reticu lated flanges and suspension loop composed of

multiple interlaced dragon motifs executed in Late Western Chou metropolitan Shensi style. This bell bears on its plain lower right-hand mar

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Fig. 17 Fig. 18 Fig. 19

Fig. 20

Fig. 21

Fig. 22

Fig. 17. Hanging bell. H. 31.1 cm. The Sackler Collections, New York.

Fig. 18. Hanging bell. H. 43.5 cm. Collection Dr. Paul Singer.

Fig. 19. Hanging bell. H. 41.5 cm. Fujii Y?rinkan, Kyoto. {After Umehara S., Nihon sh?cho S hi?a kod? seika, Osaka, 1959?1964, vol. IV, pi. 287.)

Fig. 20. Hanging bell, front and side views. H. 28 cm. {After Shih Chih-lien, Wen-wu, I960, no. 10, p. 59.)

Fig. 21. Hanging bell. H. 38.5 cm. The Sackler Collections, New York.

Fig. 22. K'e chung, from Ch'i-shan-hsien, Shensi. H. 63.5 cm. {After Ch'en Pang huai, Wen-wu, 1972, no. 6, pi. 1.)

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gin a seventy-nine-character inscription which is heavily corroded but sufficiently legible to identify the owner as a man named rrK'e",c com

memorating his receipt of a royal command in a palace in the capital on a day in the ninth month of the sixteenth year of an unnamed king. The personage K'e is known to have com missioned a number of other bronze vessels, many of which were included in a hoard of some one hundred-and-twenty bronzes unearthed from Ch'i-shan-hsien, Shensi, in 1890 and subsequently dispersed to various collections in China and abroad. Among these objects were the enormous Ta K'e ting, bearing a long undated inscription, now in the Shanghai Museum, and a hsii and seven smaller ting, with inscriptions dated re spectively to the eighteenth and twenty-third years, as well as a graduated set of at least six large obliquely hanging bells cast with the same inscription as the Tientsin bell (sixteenth year).34 It seems safe to accept both the Shensi prove nance of this bell and the authenticity of its in scription, the calligraphy of which accords with that of the other K'e inscriptions and with other inscriptions datable to the end of the Western

Chou period. Since the provenance of the Tien tsin bell, together with its inscription and the style of its dragon motifs, thus indicate that it must have been cast in Shensi and not in the south, one is led to conclude that it represents an absorption into northern metropolitan bronze art of a type of bell actually introduced and de veloped in the south. This conclusion is rein forced by the fact that large perpendicularly hanging bells of the Tientsin bell type are other wise completely unknown in the north during the Western Chou period and in fact do not re occur anywhere among excavated bronzes until the end of the seventh century or the beginning of the sixth century B.C.?after which, cast in graduated sets, they become a prominent feature of Eastern Chou bronze art.35 (It is, moreover, in teresting and perhaps musicologically significant that the perpendicularly hanging Tientsin bell was clearly cast in conjunction with a graduated set of at least six obliquely hanging bells whose inscription it shares?thereby providing a rare and "classical" instance wherein a distinction in terminology might be hoped for, with the single vertically hanging bell termed rrpo"e and the obliquely hanging bells termed rrchung"f: yet in fact all of the K'e bells are called chung in their inscriptions.36)

The K'e bell in Tientsin is thus unique among Western Chou metropolitan bronzes and?until further evidence demands some other conclusion

?it can be explained only by supposing it to have been inspired by a southern bell which somehow had found its way northward to the

Western Chcu metropolitan center in Shensi.

That this hypothesis is by no means improb able is indicated by the course of development of yet another series of bells of a type evolved in the south and subsequently adopted in the north.37 This series had its origin in the so-called "nao"1 or rrcheng"k bells of the Shang dynasty? the small clapperless bells (Fig. 23) made in graduated sets of three, held or placed mouth upward and struck38?examples of which must have been known in Hunan although none has yet been unearthed there. At a time possibly prior to the fall of An-yang, bells of this type began to be cast in Hunan on a scale far larger than that characteristic of the Shang prototype and with the t'ao-t'ieh decor transformed into an increasingly abstract pattern, in a manner analogous to that observed in connection with the series of flanged bells with birds. The beau tiful and impressive bell (Fig. 25) of unknown provenance (formerly in the von Lochow col lection and now in the Museum of the Former Imperial Palace, Peking) may be taken to repre sent a group of five very similar bells, all an astonishing 70 cm. in height, unearthed in 1959 from Ning-hsiang-hsien, Hunan,39 and another smaller example (H. 29 cm.) found in Y? hang-hsien in northern Chekiang.40 On all of these bells, the t'ao-t'ieh mask?which, one be gins to feel, was never deeply meaningful to the southern community?has been deprived of its representational qualities and rendered as

Fig. 23. Nao bell. H. 15.2 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. John Marriott, Mrs. John Barry Ryan, Gilbert W. Kahn, Roger Wolfe Kahn, 1949.

Fig. 24. Nao bell. H. 50.2 cm. The Portland Art Museum.

Fig. 25. Nao bell. H. 64.5 cm. {After H. J. von Lochow. Sammlung Lochow. Chinesische Bronzen, Peking, 1943, vol. I, pi- I.)

Fig. 26. Nao bell. H. 29.5 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1943.

Fig. 27. Nao bell. H. 77.8 cm. {After J. Kleijkamp, Mas terpieces of Ancient China, collected in China by fan Kleijkamp during 1940?41, N. Y., c. 1941, pi. 1.)

Fig. 28. Nao bell from Ch'ang-hsing-hsien, Chekiang. H. 52 cm. {After Akiyama T., op. cit., pi. 59.)

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Fig. 23 Fig. 24

Fig. 25 Fig. 26

Fig. 27 Fig. 28

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a virtually non-representational linear design, executed in bold relief organized around two vestigial oval "eyes" or bosses and resting on a ground of elegantly drawn hooked scrolls, an ex panded version of which also decorates the rim of the mouth. The self-assured design and superb craftsmanship of these bells testify to the high creative level of the Hunan industry at a time when it was still strongly influenced by the technical standards set by the north yet inde pendent enough to assert its own artistic prefer ences. The large bell of unknown provenance in the Portland Art Museum (Fig. 24) exhibits a somewhat less abstracted and therefore perhaps slightly earlier stage in the dissolution of the t'ao-t'ieh mask, but the delight in covering both the relief decor and every area of the ground with incised scrollwork constitutes a southern characteristic which becomes increasingly domi nant as the t'ao-t'ieh disappears. This is demon strated by a bell in the Metropolitan Museum (Fig. 26) on which there survive only the two oval "eyes" in relief on a ground otherwise cov ered with abstract incised scrolls arranged in a configuration only faintly recalling the earlier animal mask. The bell is further distinguished by an interior surface (clearly visible in the bell's correct mouth-upward position) which is also covered with large and beautifully drawn ab stract scrolls. Although the Metropolitan bell is of unknown provenance, another bell of the same stage of development but decorated with fluid thread relief designs around the two oval bosses is said to have been unearthed in Ch'ien shan-hsien in southwestern Anhui on the north ern side of the Yangtze River and is now in the Anhui Provincial Museum.41

The ensuing standardization of the back ground scrolls and their organization into neat bilaterally symmetrical horizontal rows above and below the relief bosses is exemplified by an enormous bell (H. 77.8) formerly in the col lection of Jan Kleijkamp (Fig. 27). The addi tion of the bracelet encircling the shank of many of these bells constitutes, one supposes, a func tional feature, intended to steady the object

when the shank has been inserted into an aper ture presumably in a wooden frame of some sort. It is, however, also possible that these bells were impaled on a stake passed through the length of the shank?which in all cases has been found to be hollow cast and to open into the in terior of the bell. Although no bell of the stage

represented by the Kleijkamp nao has as yet been excavated, the immediately subsequent stage? in which eighteen round bosses replaced the two oval "eyes"?has been defined by the superbly cast bell (Fig. 28) excavated in 1959 from Ch'ang-hsing-hsien, Chekiang,42 and by an iden tical but smaller and less well preserved bell found in the same location in 1969.43 The possi bility exists that these two nao actually formed parts of a graduated set of two or three com ponents. The round bosses with their whorl de signs were probably adopted from the hanging bells with flanges which were presumably being made at the same time and must therefore be viewed as a purely decorative innovation serving no functional or musical purpose. The 1959 Ch'ang-hsing-hsien discovery was unique among the finds of these southern bells in that it also included a bronze vessel (Fig. 29)?a round kuei

with four small handles, decorated in an all-over surface pattern of incised hooked scrolls inter spersed with thick relief volutes. The style of the kuei thus accords well with that of the bells but can be related to no northern style, except insofar as four-handled kuei were made in the north primarily during the Early and Middle

Western Chou periods. Like the bells, the kuei cannot be said to reflect northern inspiration or influence but rather testifies to the continued in dependence and isolation of the southern bronze industry at a time contemporary with the first half of Western Chou. However, as in the case of the slightly earlier Y?-hang-hsien bell, it should probably be supposed that the Ch'ang-hsing hsien objects were actually cast not in Chekiang but in northern Hunan.44

The stage of development represented by the Ch'ang-hsing-hsien bells and a similar bell in the Ogawa collection45 marks the end of the period of high artistic quality among southern bronzes: thereafter, a steady decline both in design and in casting technique becomes increasingly dis cernible. One or more intervening stages docu menting this deterioration must be posited be tween the Chekiang bells and that in the Buck ingham collection of the Art Institute of Chicago (Fig. 30), which shows a reduction in the rows of spirals, their confinement to the horizontal panels between the bosses, which are now separated into two groups by a broadened central vertical panel, and their execution in a rather perfunctory thread relief. The handling of the thread relief spirals, together with the

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Fig. 29

Fig. 30

Fig. 31

Fig. 32

Fig. 33

Fig. 29. Kuei from Ch'ang-hsing-hsien, Chekiang. H. 10 cm. {After Akiyama T., op. cit., pi. 11.)

Fig. 30. Nao bell. H. AU cm. The Art Institute of Chi cago. {After C. F. Kelley and Ch'en Meng-chia, Chinese Bronzes from the Buckingham Collection, Chicago, 1946, pi. 41.)

Fig. 31. Three chung from M3, P'u-tu-ts'un, Ch'ang-an hsien, Shensi. H. 48.5, 44 and 38 cm. {After Ch'en Meng-chia, Kaogu Xuebao, 1956, no. 4, pi. 10.)

Fig. 32. Ching Jen An chung. H. 69.5 cm. {After Shang hai po-wu-kuan ts'ang ch'ing-t'ung-ch'i, Shanghai, 1964, vol. 1, pi. 61.)

Fig. 33. Ch'u-kung Wei (?) chung. H. 51.8 cm. Senoku Hakk?kan, Kyoto. {After Mizuno S., In-Sh? seid?ki to gyoku, Tokyo, 1959, pi 114.)

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curious* reptilian motifs placed along the outer margins, recalls the similar features on the hang ing bell in the Fujii Y?rinkan (Fig. 19) and suggests, as noted above, that these two bells

must be approximately contemporary with each other. The further diminution of the thread re lief into barely visible lines, the outlining of all of the panels with rows of small circles, and the reduction of the previously lavish amounts of in cised scrollwork in the margin around the mouth to two sets of centrally placed paired volutes constitute the changes which mark the final stage of the prolonged development of the Shang nao in the south. A bell of this stage was exca vated in 1962 from Hsin-y?-hsien in central Kiangsi.46

An immediately subsequent innovation intro duced a suspension hook onto the shank of the bell enabling it to be hung from a wooden frame mouth-downward but at a slight angle, thereby transforming the object typologically from a nao or cheng to a chung. This change is docu mented by two bells excavated from Hsin-y? hsien, Kiangsi,47 two bells from Hsiang-t'an-hsien, Hunan,48 and one bell from Ning-hsiang-hsien, Hunan.49 All of these bells are characterized by bosses which are now tall and pointed, by paired abstract scrolls in the lower margin, and by rows of small hobnail-like bosses, evolved from the thread relief circles of the preceding stage, out lining all of the subsidiary panels. The pairs of bells from Hsin-y? and Hsiang-t'an may have been parts of graduated sets.

It is the discovery of a graduated set of three bells of this stage from the burial M3 at P'u-tu ts'un, Ch'ang-an-hsien, Shensi (Fig. 31), which effectively provides the late Middle Western Chou (and specifically Mu-wang) terminus ante quern for the entire foregoing develop mental sequence of the nao and chung bells.50 The P'u-tu-ts'un bells constitute the earliest large bells of any type excavated in the north subse quent to the An-yang nao; nor do there exist any other bells of unknown provenance which could be attributed to the first five reigns of the West ern Chou period on the basis of their style or in scriptions. Thus, within the context of Western Chou metropolitan bronzes, the P'u-tu-ts'un bells represent a notable innovation. Yet, their close similarity to the bells of the same type excavated in Hunan and Kiangsi, together with the fact that their decor of abstract scrolls executed in

faint thread relief is encountered on none of the other P'u-tu-ts'un bronzes or on any other con temporary or earlier Western Chou object of

metropolitan origin suggests that these bells were cast?not in the metropolitan center in Shensi? but in northern Hunan, and that their appear ance in a Shensi burial is to be explained as the result of trade or captured booty. It thus becomes clear that large bells of the obliquely hanging type, like the previously discussed perpendicu larly hanging type, were actually an invention of the southern bronze industry, developed and transformed from the small Shang nao, and im ported into the north only after the middle of the Western Chou period.

The P'u-tu-ts'un bells are, moreover, not iso lated instances of bells made in the south and found in the north. A hoard of twenty-three bronze vessels recently discovered at Ma-wang ts'un, Ch'ang-an-hsien, Shensi, included ten bells ranging in height from 54.0 to 29.3 cm. (at least four of which belonged to a graduated set) similar in style to the P'u-tu-ts'un bells or other bells found in the south. Judging from the style of the accompanying bronze vessels and their in scriptions, the hoard must have been interred during the reign of Kung-wangm, the son of Mu wang.51

Subsequently, however, obliquely hanging bells gradually began to be cast in the north and oc casionally inscribed in the typical Late Western Chou manner, although until the reign of Hs?an wang such northern bells retained the rather crude and degenerate decor of large paired ab stract volutes which had evolved in the south and which?like the bells themselves?was alien to the artistic vocabulary of northern work shops.52 It was not until the very end of the

Western Chou period, during the reigns of Hs?an-wang and Yu-wang,? that hanging bells were thoroughly absorbed into the northern rep ertory of ceremonial bronzes. At that time nu merous excellently cast sets of large chung, decorated with the characteristic Late Western Chou zoomorphic motifs and inscribed with the long investiture inscriptions typical of the period,

were made in the metropolitan centers in Shensi. From this area many admirable examples, in cluding the aforementioned K'e chung, have been discovered in recent years (Fig. 32).53 Yet, this brief period of florescence was abruptly ter

minated in 771 B.C. by the collapse of the West ern Chou regime, the transfer of the Chou

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capital eastward to the vicinity of Lo-yang, and the subsequent dispersal of bronze craftsmen to new centers of patronage among the states of Eastern Chou, where for some reason?presum ably their exorbitant cost?sets of large bells were not cast again until the beginning of the sixth century B.C.

Meanwhile, during the period corresponding to the Late Western Chou and early Eastern Chou periods in the north, the bronze industry in the Hunan region apparently ceased to de velop beyond the stage represented by the P'u tu-ts'un bells. The lack of any further finds from this region suggests that by that time the independent southern bronze industry had de clined and become extinct. The next subsequent finds of bronzes from northern Hunan come from the Ch'u burials at Ch'ang-sha and other sites, dating from the fifth to third centuries B.C. and representing the adoption of northern bronze art by the state of Ch'u: they do not constitute a continuation of the earlier bronze industry in the same area.

Yet the question of the relationship between the peoples who supported the bronze industry in northern Hunan contemporary with the Shang and Western Chou periods and those who at some as yet undetermined time formed the state of Ch'u in the Hupei-Hunan region cannot be avoided. Current scholarly opinion, relying upon the information provided in the Ch'u shih-chia of the Shih-chi, holds that the state of Ch'u was founded at the beginning of the Western Chou period under an enfeoffment by Ch'eng-wang,Q the son of the conqueror Wu-wang,r and that it established its first capital at a place called Tan yang,s traditionally thought to have been located on the northern side of the Yangtze River in south central Hupei.54 The subsequent history of the state during the centuries intervening be tween the time of Ch'eng-wang and its first mention in the Ch'un-ch'iu (under the tenth year of Chuang-kung?682 B.C.) is rather briefly documented in the Shih-chi; and it can be only surmised that the state persisted during that period and that its leadership was passed down through the succession of rulers whose names the Shih-chi records.

The Early Western Chou existence of the state of Ch'u is, however, not substantiated either by the archaeological record for the area presumably involved (south central Hupei) or by contem

porary Western Chou bronze inscriptions. In Western Chou bronze inscriptions datable to the reigns of K'ang-wangv and Chao-wang,w there occur the names of "Ch'u-po,"x "Ching,"y and "Ch'u Ching,"z in all cases referring to peoples or places hostile to the Western Chou regime and against whom K'ang-wang and Chao-wang were obliged to campaign. However, in the case of the inscription on the Tso-ts'e Nieh Ling kuei, wherein the king (who should be identified as K'ang-wang) is reported to be campaigning against a certain "Ch'u-po" at a place called "T'an,"*h scholars have tended to locate the places involved in the east?in the region of southern Shantung?not in the Hupei area.00 The name "Ch'u"?which also occurs on a few Shang oracle bones (referring, however, to some unlo cated place56)?is first used unequivocally to refer to a place in the south, probably in the region of the Han River in southern Honan or central Hupei, only in the reign of Chao-wang, from which there survives one bronze inscrip tion documenting the king's campaign in the south against "Ch'u Ching,"'01 as well as two other contemporary inscriptions which refer to the same campaign against "Ching."58 It seems clear, however, that "Ching" was the term more frequently applied to the hostile south (and in terestingly it is still this term which occurs first in the Ch'un-ch'iu and persists there until it is finally superseded by the name "Ch'u" only in the entry for the first year of Hsi-kung?658 B.C.). It is also clear that neither of the terms "Ching" or "Ch'u Ching" seen in the bronze in scriptions can be interpreted as referring to a feudal state, even a hostile feudal state, which had been duly enfeoffed by Chao-wang's grand father Ch'eng-wang. On the contrary, these in scriptions indicate that the names "Ching" and "Ch'u Ching" were employed by the north to designate the region of Hupei before that region was occupied by any state recognized as such by the north and that such a state could have arisen only after the time of Chao-wang.

The reign of Chao-wang's successor Mu-wang was noted for its extensive and repeated cam paigns directed particularly toward the east and southeast against peoples referred to in the bronze inscriptions as the "Eastern I,"ae the "Southern J,"af and the "Huai I,ag but apparently not against "Ching" or "Ch'u Ching," the erst while enemies of his father. From the reign of Kung-wang until the end of the Western Chou

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period, Chou military contacts with the south seem to have been drastically reduced, either as the people in the south ceased to present a realis tic military threat or as the Chou effort to main tain its royal prerogatives on its southern peri pheries waned as its attention shifted to the areas to the north and west of the Shensi capital. There appear to be no further references to "Ch'u" or "Ching" in Late Western Chou bronze inscrip tions.

If the bronze inscriptions of the Western Chou period thus fail to affirm the contemporaneous existence of a state of Ch'u in the Hupei region, the current archaeological record for Hupei simi larly fails to support the alleged existence there of any feudal state allied politically with royal Chou. Thus far there has appeared only one find of bronzes from Hupei datable to the Western Chou period, a cache of seventeen Middle West ern Chou bronze vessels discovered in 1961 at Chiang-ling-hsien and quite obviously of north ern (specifically Lo-yang, i.e., Ch'eng-chouah) provenance.59 To whom these bronzes belonged and how they came to be buried in southern

Hupei are questions which remain problemati cal,60 but it is clear from their inscriptions that they bear no relationship to the state of Ch'u

which traditional history alleges was occupying the very region in which they were found. The next subsequent finds of bronze objects from Hupei date from the eighth century B.C. and are associated with the state of Tsenga]: executed in impeccable Late Western Chou Shensi style, they undoubtedly represent the work of Shensi trained craftsmen displaced to a new center of patronage immediately after 770 B.C.61 Judging from the evidence supplied by these finds of in scribed bronzes, it thus appears that the first states to occupy central Hupei were the early Eastern Chou states of Tseng, Huang, etc., and not the state of Ch'u.

The possibility thus arises that the state of Ch'u did not occupy the region of Hupei north of the Yangtze River until the end of the eighth or the beginning of the seventh centuries B.C., at a time roughly coinciding with Ch'u Wen wang's alleged founding of a new Ch'u capital at "Ying"aa (located at Chi-nan-ch'eng, to the north of present-day Chiang-ling) in 689 B.C., and followed, not surprisingly, by the ensuing conquest by Ch'u of the earlier Hupei states of

Huang, Chiang, Teng, Shen,ar Hsi,as and prob ably Tseng, in the years between 688 and 623

B.C. In short, if one rejects the historicity of the Shih-chi account of the founding of the state of Ch'u under Ch'eng-wang and the resulting supposition that the state must have occupied the region of Hupei throughout all of the un documented centuries of its early history, one is then free to speculate that the state did not in fact exist prior to the Late Western Chou period at the earliest, and that its place of origin was not Hupei but further south?in northern Hunan. It would thus not be unreasonable to assume a certain continuity between the popula tion which had earlier been trading partners with the Shang and had instituted a flourishing and creative bronze industry under Shang influence, and that which?during a time of isolation from the north corresponding to the Late Western Chou and early Eastern Chou periods in the ninth and eighth centuries B.C.?had slowly and with out help or acknowledgment from royal Chou formed itself into a "state," gradually spreading its dominion to the land north of the Yangtze, conquering the small Eastern Chou states already located there and assimilating itself to northern culture?but always remaining essentially inde pendent of royal Chou and in many matters of governmental organization dissimilar to the other states of Eastern Chou.62

No bronzes datable to the eighth, seventh, or early sixth centuries and attributable to the de veloping state of Ch'u have been discovered in northern Hunan or in Hupei, perhaps suggesting that the practice of casting such vessels?to gether with the techniques of advanced bronze metallurgy?had to be re-learned from the north in the process of rapid acculturation which the state of Ch'u underwent during the eighth and seventh centuries. It is interesting, however, that although a few bronze inscriptions of acceptable authenticity dedicated by rulers of Ch'u survive from the second half of the sixth century B.C., testifying to the existence of vessel-casting capa bility at least by that time, the bronze art asso ciated with the state of Ch'u during the fifth to third centuries B.C. was neither particularly vigorous nor original in comparison with that of the other Eastern Chou states; and the unique creativity of the southern peoples tended to ex press itself more conspicuously in other media such as wood-carving, lacquer-painting and textiles.

The conclusions tentatively advanced here concerning the early history of the state of

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Ch'u and its relationship to the northern Hunan bronze industry would, however, be incomplete if they neglected to recognize the existence of three bronze inscriptions of highly uncertain date and perhaps questionable authenticity, each of which names a "Duke of Ch'u" {Ch'u kung&t) and all of which?if genuine?wculd date from the eighth century B.C. or earlier, thus affecting one's conception of the early existence or bronze-casting activities of that state.

The use of the feudal title Kung (Duke) in all three of these inscriptions is surprising and puzzling: during the first half of the Eastern Chou period, as evidenced by the Ch'un-ch'iu, the northern states applied only the title Tzuau (Viscount) to the rulers of the state of Ch'u.63

While this title also occurs in at least one sur viving bronze inscription of a date not earlier than the sixth century B.C.,64 it is well known that the rulers of Ch'u "usurped" the royal title of Wang (King) at an early period, though not necessarily so early as 706 B.C., the year for which the title Ch'u-wang first appears in the Tso-chuan.65 The use of the title Kung in the three bronze inscriptions is thus unprecedented in historical texts and in other Ch'u bronze in scriptions and may provide unique evidence for the earliest self-designation used by the rulers of the developing state of Ch'u.

The earliest and in many ways the most in teresting and convincing of these three early Ch'u inscriptions (the other two of which are discussed in the Addendum) was found inscribed on the tang of a bronze ko dagger-ax (Fig. 34) rescued in 1959 from a Hunan scrap-metal heap (and now in the Hunan Provincial Museum).66

The authenticity of the ko and/or its five character inscription was heatedly debated by Chinese scholars in a series of articles in the early 1960's,67 in an argument terminated only by Shang Ch'eng-tso's careful examination of the object itself and his conclusion that the blade was genuinely old and that the inscription? though incised?had been incised in antiquity.68 This conclusion must at present be respected, since it was reached with some degree of scien tific care and objectivity.

The ko is of an extremely unusual and rare type characterized by a broad triangular blade and symmetrically placed rectangular tang per forated by a lens-shaped hole. Although ko of this type puzzled early historians?who specu

Fig. 34. Ch'u-kung Wei (?) ko, from Hunan. L. 21.3 cm. {After Kao Chih-hsi wen-wu, 1959, no. 12, p. 60.)

lated that their rarity might indicate their chron ological priority among all other types of Shang ko weapons69?subsequent documented excava tions have shown this not to be the case: ko with triangular blades merely constitute a minor sub type at various Shang sites70 (one example of which has been excavated in a pre-Conquest or early post-Conquest Chou context in Chang chia-p'o, Ch'ang-an-hsien, Shensi,71 and another from Ch'eng-ku-hsien, located in southwestern

most Shensi close to the Szechuan border72). It is, however, only in connection with a small local bronze industry centered in the region of Ch'eng-tu or P'eng-hsien in Szechuan?an in dustry which had been initiated under the stimu lus of the pre-Conquest or early post-Conquest Chou bronze industry in the Wei River valley in Shensi?that ko of this type were cast to the virtual exclusion of all other types.73 The blade of the inscribed ko is curiously decorated on each side with fourteen regularly spaced patches of inlaid silver (now oxidized) in a manner iden tical to that found on another triangular ko un earthed from Ch'eng-tu;74 and it seems certain that the inscribed ko was actually cast in Sze chuan. Although the lack of sufficient evidence still obscures the history and duration of the Szechuan bronze industry, it is clear that it was functioning at a time close to the Chou Conquest and probably for a while thereafter and again at the end of the Eastern Chou period; but it is not at present certain whether the industry persisted uninterruptedly throughout the Chou period. Although triangular bladed ko have been found in both the Early Western Chou and the Late Eastern Chou contexts, the later versions differ markedly from the earlier (suggesting themselves almost as "archaistic" revivals) ;75 and it is to the Early Western Chou Szechuan bronze industry that the inscribed ko found in Hunan should be properly ascribed.

The five-character inscription found on the tang of the Hunan ko is executed on a very small scale and with delicacy, precision, and credibility,

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in a style of calligraphy which accords with that used in Shensi during the reign of Mu-wang or Kung-wang in the Middle Western Chou period. It thus seems that the blade, having been cast as a luxury item in Szechuan, must have been ac quired by a personage of prominence in northern Hunan, who had the object laboriously inscribed by a literate northerner at a time just when con tacts between the south and the north were stronger than they had been since the fall of the Shang dynasty, as witnessed by the P'u-tu-ts'un and Ma-wang-ts'un bells (as well as the incipient Kiangsu bronze industry, to be discussed below). If this theory accounting for the inscribed ko is true, then one would seemingly be obliged to ac cept the existence of a state of Ch'u, ruled by a duke and located not in central Hupei but in northern Hunan, at a time at least contemporary with the end of the Middle Western Chou period. The inscribed ko would thus constitute the earliest contemporary inscriptional evidence for the existence of the state of Ch'u.

The inscribed ko is, nevertheless, at present an isolated piece of evidence (with the exception of the two bell inscriptions discussed in the Adden dum) and must remain puzzling for a number of reasons besides its uniqueness. Since the weapon was cast not in Hunan but in Szechuan, it unfortunately cannot serve to establish a re lationship between "Ch'u" or a "Duke of Ch'u" and the southern bronze industry which had existed in the northern Hunan region since the

Middle An-yang period and whose objects bear no comparably long inscriptions?cast or incised. Moreover, since the inscription on the ko must have been executed by a skilled, Shensi-trained scribe, it cannot be used as evidence for the literacy of the southern community or its leader. In fact, the possibility even exists that the title "Ch'u-kung" may not necessarily have been in current use among the southern peoples but was simply improvised by the scribe, drawing upon his knowledge that the name "Ch'u" was ap plied by the Western Chou court to the territory south of Honan and that "kung" was a suitable

?if at times somewhat vague?feudal title or title of respect. In short, because of its peculiarity and uniqueness, the inscribed ko in itself still fails to provide totally convincing proof for the existence of a politically organized and literate feudal state of Ch'u in the region of northern

Hunan as early as the end of the Middle Western Chou period?although it may indeed suggest

one of the ways in which the notions of state hood and of rulers identified by feudal title may have been diffused from the north into the south without benefit of a specific act of enfeoffment by the Chou royal house.

The Szechuan bronze industry which existed during a period contemporary with the early reigns of the Western Chou dynasty and which created the inscribed ko and other distinctive weapon types?though apparently nothing on a larger scale such as bronze vessels or bells?serves to recall the fact that the spread of bronze metal lurgy from the northern metropolitan centers into the south of China actually progressed in termittently, from a number of different sources, and in a number of different directions during various different periods of time in the course of the Shang and Chou dynasties. While the Hunan industry adopted bronze metallurgy under An-yang influence, and the Szechuan in dustry reflects influence from the Wei River valley centers during the earliest Western Chou period, the third of the independent bronze in dustries in the south, located on the southeast coast in the Yangtze delta region of central Kiangsu and southern Anhui, received its main impetus from the north during the militarily ac tive and expansionist reigns of K'ang-wang, Chao-wang, and especially Mu-wang, whose campaigns against peoples living to the east and southeast of the Chou kingdom are well docu

mented in contemporary bronze inscriptions.

Although some slight evidence may indicate that bronze casting on a very small scale was not entirely unknown among the villagers of the southeast coast at a time contemporary with the An-yang period,76 the casting of bronze vessels was attempted only under Western Chou influ ence, when bronzes imitating northern proto types of the Middle Western Chou period were cast and interred in graves in a manner analo gous to Western Chou practice. Such graves have been excavated in Tan-t'u-hsien, Kiangsu,77 and in T'un-hsi-hsien, Anhui,78 while a group of some forty objects (of which about twelve survive) was found under undocumented circumstances in 1930 in I-cheng-hsien, Kiangsu.79 Such as semblages characteristically consist of bronzes ranging stylistically and typologically from close imitations of the northern prototypes to local designs of varying degrees of artistic merit. The small number of bronze vessels actually imported from the north and interred with the far more

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Fig. 35. Yu from T'un-hsi-hsien, Anhui. H. 23.5 cm. {After H s in Chung-kuo ch'u-t'u wen-wu, Peking, 1972, pi. 54.)

numerous locally made imitations range in date from K'ang-wang to Mu-wang?with the earlier period represented by the now well-known l-hou Nieh kuei (from Tan-t'u), with its long and interesting inscription,80 and the later period by the extremely fine, briefly inscribed yu from T'un-hsi (Fig. 35),81 decorated with long-tailed birds?locally made imitations of which were found among other vessels from the same site (Fig. 36).82 However, no northern influences from the Late Western Chou period can be de tected and, as in the case of the Hunan industry, contact with the north appears not to have per sisted after the reign of Mu-wang. This fact, to gether with the absence of inscriptions from the locally made vessels (implying that the southeast coast communities may have remained illiterate during this period) argues against the theory that the finds of bronzes in Kiangsu and Anhui rep resent the locally cast possessions of groups of northern "colonizers" spreading northern culture and technology into the still Neolithic south, rather than of local residents temporarily adopt ing a northern technique which they subse quently allowed to lapse into almost total disuse.83

Although the southeast coast bronze industry was apparently of shorter duration than the Hu nan industry and exhibited a much lower level of original creativity, and although there appears to have been no contact between the two areas of bronze production?for no bells have been discovered in the east coast burials84 and it seems that the casting of bells, together with whatever social or religious demands motivated their crea

Fig. 36. Rubbing of the decor on a yu from T'un-hsi, Anhui. H. 34.5 cm. {After Yin Ti fei, Kaogu Xuebao, 1959, no. 4, p. 72, fig. 9.)

tion, was not a feature of the east coast industry ?yet it is noteworthy that the manner in which the east coast industry asserted its independent creativity in the transformation of Western Chou bronze motifs is analogous to the manner in which the Hunan industry had treated the Shang t'ao-t'ieh in connection with the series of bells discussed above?transforming the mask into an increasingly abstract pattern of scrolls and volutes devoid of representational imagery. Similarly, in the hands of the east coast artisans, the Western Chou "crested dragon" motif copied from north ern bronzes was progressively transformed into a purely abstract linear design, increasingly minia turized to create a densely textured surface executed with remarkable technical precision and delicacy but totally deprived of its former imag ery. Something of this process can be observed in the decor on the yu from T'un-hsi (Fig. 36),

where the crested dragon frieze appears in its rep resentational guise in the upper zone on the body of the vessel, but transformed into an elegantly abstract linear design on the cover. On other vessels from T'un-hsi, such as the small tsun from M2 (Fig. 38), the same linear design is both miniaturized and multiplied to produce a visually complex but completely abstract mat-like sur face, whose origins in the crested dragon motif can no longer be readily discerned. This insistence on the abstract and non-representational at the expense of northern zoomorphic motifs also emerges eloquently in the original, unprecedented surface decor of a kuei (Fig. 37) found in 1966 at T'un-hsi in an unpublished archaeological

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context. On this vessel a repeated pattern of rectilinear panels, filled with thin parallel stria tions alternately vertical and horizontal separated by narrow borders filled with delicately paired volutes, surround, dominate, and virtually sub merge a small, flat, vestigial t'ao-t'ieh mask, while the gracefully incised scrolls and volutes decorat ing the narrow neck and foot zones recall only remotely or hardly at all the crested dragon motif from which they were initially derived.

It thus seems that the innate aesthetic prefer ences of the southern artist?whether in north ern Hunan or the southeast coast?demanded the suppression of the representational or zoomorphic content of northern metropolitan bronze motifs and their transformation into non-representa tional designs. These same aesthetic preferences were given earlier and more prolonged expres sion in the stamped and impressed surfaces of the so-called "Geometric" ceramics, pieces of which have been found in conjunction with the above mentioned finds of bronze vessels. It was per haps the preference for these high-fired, high quality ceramics which inhibited the growth of the bronze industries in the coastal regions and allowed these industries to atrophy after their brief florescence in the Middle Western Chou period.

It is, however, premature to pronounce with certainty upon the fate of the southeast coast bronze industry during the period corresponding to Late Western Chou and early Eastern Chou in the north. It may be that some small, purely local bronze-casting activity did in fact persist there into the eighth or seventh centuries and that the miniaturized crested dragon design?as the unique and distinctive creation of the south east coast?endured there for a period beyond the terminus dates for the T'un-hsi finds. This possibility is perhaps supported by the discovery in 1957 of an excellently cast tsun (Fig. 39) from the vicinity of the Eastern Chou walled city site of Yen-ch'eng-ts'un, in Wu-chin-hsien, Kiangsu

?one of three such tsun found in conjunction with a few other bronze vessels of eccentrically

local type, difficult to date but not earlier than the late seventh or early sixth century B.C.85 The tsun resemble in shape and in their minutely textured surface decor the tsun discovered at T'un-hsi (Fig. 38), and within their Eastern Chou archaeological context appear strangely incongruous, if not archaistic; but if the Wu chin tsun are not, in fact, to be viewed as acci dental survivals from the Middle Western Chou period, they would indicate the local persistence into the Eastern Chou period of both this West ern Chou vessel-shape and its peculiar decora tion.

Another such tsun (Fig. 40), fashioned in the same shape, decorated in the same style, and ex ecuted with the same unflagging conviction, was unearthed in 1965 from an isolated or unknown context in Sung-chiang, Shanghai municipality. It represents a number of such objects?includ ing an exquisitely cast pole fineal supported by a kneeling human figure86?recently discovered in southern Kiangsu or northern Chekiang, all of

which are decorated in some manner with the diagnostic miniaturized crested dragon design, and many of which may post-date the T'un-hsi finds and thus document the lingering produc tivity of the southeast coast bronze industry, its relentless concentration on a single mode of sur face decoration, and its continuing?and in fact rising?standards of technical proficiency.

Yet it would be a mistake to conclude from this that the bronze art of the Eastern Chou states of Wu and Y?eh (which subsequently occupied the same coastal area) merely repre sents a persistence or acceleration of the bronze industry already established in the delta region during the Middle Western Chou period: ulti mately the vestiges of the earlier industry dis appeared or were engulfed by the new wave of cultural influences from the northern states which reached the southeast coastal area towards the mid-sixth century B.C., introducing an array of new vessel-types and modes of surface decora tion and re-introducing large-scale bronze metal lurgy?in effect for the second time.

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Fig. 37. Kuei from T'un-hsi, Anhui. H. 19.7 cm. {After H sin Chung-kuo ch'u-t'u wen-wu, Peking, 1972, pl. 55.)

Fig. 38. Tsun from T'un-hsi, Anhui. H. 19 cm. {After Yin Ti fei, Kaogu Xuebao, 1959, no. 4, pl. 10: 1-2.)

Fig. 39. Tsun from Yen-ch'eng-ts'un, Wu-chin hsien, Kiangsu. H. 21.S cm. {After H s in Chung-kuo ch'u-t'u wen-wu, Peking, 1972, pl. 60.)

Fig. 40. Tsun from Sung-chiang, Shanghai.

ADDENDUM:

Two Other Bronze Inscriptions Naming Dukes of Ch'u {Ch'u-kung)

In addition to the ko blade discussed above which is in scribed with the name of a certain Duke of Ch'u, there are two other bronze inscriptions similarly dedicated by Dukes of Ch'u, one of which has been considered to name the same personage named in the inscription on the ko. This second inscription exists in five virtually identical versions associated with a number of bells, three of which are now in the Sumitomo collection, Kyoto (Fig. 33).87 These bell inscriptions, which have been known since the nineteenth century but which are of undocumented provenance, have been thought to record the dedication of a certain "Ch'u kung Wei," whom Kuo Mo-jo has identified with Hsiung Iaw?who allegedly ruled Ch'u from 790?764 B.C., ac

cording to information provided in Shih-chi.83 The char acter for "Wei" in these inscriptions bears a certain similar ity to the character for the personal name of the Duke in the ko inscription, and scholars have tended to equate the two personages.89

The three bells in the Sumitomo collection are decorated

with the sets of paired volutes found on bells of southern origin; but the generous proportions of the bells, their sharply defined contours, and self-assured casting invite comparisons with the best of Late Western Chou chung (such as the Ching Jen An chung?Fig. 32) and suggest that the Sumitomo bells must have been cast in Shensi.

However, it is the alarming crudeness of the calligraphy

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used in the inscriptions and the altogether excessive inept ness of the spacing and positioning of the characters which decisively segregate them both from attested Late Western Chou bronze inscriptions and from the ko inscription with which they are theoretically contemporary. Inasmuch as the late Middle Western Chou style of the ko inscription does not accord with the eighth century B.C. reign-date for Hsiung I, nor, on the other hand, does the advanced style of the bells accord with a late Middle Western Chou date, the relationship between the ko inscription and the bell in scriptions remains at present an unsolved problem.

Although the authenticity of the Sumitomo bell inscrip tions has never been questioned nor have they been sub jected to scientific investigation, early publishers of the in scriptions such as Wu Ta-ch'eng noted the strangeness of the script-style but viewed it as a reflection of the virile and

martial Ch'u character.90 The possibility that the calligraphy does represent a local Ch'u script-style cannot be denied, but it remains unsupported by any additional archaeologi cally attested evidence. The three Sumitomo bells first be came known when they were included in the famous col lection of Ch'en Chieh-ch'i towards the middle of the nine teenth century, at which time they were published by Wu Shih-fen, and then subsequently by Fang Ch?n-i, Liu Hsin yiian, Wu Ta-ch'eng, and Teng Shih,91 before entering the collection of Baron Sumitomo. It is, however, interesting that the same inscription found on two of the Ch'en Chieh ch'i bells had been published earlier by Juan Yuan92 and that the bell which bore that inscription subsequently passed into the collection of Tuan-fang and appeared in his cata logue of 190893 (though its present whereabouts is un known). However, because of certain discrepancies in the manner in which the duke's personal name is written, the Juan Yuan-Tuan-fang inscription is now regarded by scholars to be a forgery94?even though it was published considerably earlier than the "genuine" Ch'en Chieh-ch'i bell inscriptions. The image in the Tuan-fang catalogue shows a bell with simple paired volutes analogous to the Ch'en Chieh-ch'i bells, though its other physical qualities cannot be judged from the unelaborated line-drawing.

If one were inclined to doubt all of the Ch'u-kung Wei inscriptions, one might speculate that the Tuan-fang bell

was indeed an uninscribed bell of southern origin un earthed in Hunan or Kiangsi during the eighteenth century and subsequently equipped with a forged inscription nam ing a "Duke of Ch'u," such as would accord with its south ern provenance and apparently early date. At some time during the early nineteenth century, this forged inscription or slight variations thereon was duplicated on the three Ch'en Chieh-ch'i bells?as well as on a certain number of other bells,95 in each case retaining or even exaggerating the crude calligraphic style of the eighteenth century forgery.

Without technological analysis of the Sumitomo bells (or of the Tuan-fang bell, should it ever re-appear), it is im possible to present this theory as fact or to discern whether the Sumitomo bells themselves are genuinely ancient cast ings or not. Although no other such bells on which the southern volute motif is executed with such elaborate care and finesse have been excavated from Shensi or elsewhere,

Kuo Mo-jo has published torn fragments of rubbings taken from another bell whose size and design is virtually iden tical to the largest of the Sumitomo bells and which carried a long Late Western Chou inscription written in a script style which?while not entirely above suspicion?is far

closer to typical Late Western Chou style than are the Ch'u kung Wei inscriptions.96 Unless this other bell in some way served as a model for the Ch'en Chieh-ch'i bells, it may in dicate that the latter were cast (but not inscribed) in Shensi at the end of the Western Chou period, at a time contemporary with the bells of more typical Late Western Chou style (Fig. 32). The only other alternative?namely, that the bells were cast in the skilled Shensi workshops of Late Western Chou but then imported into the provincial state of Ch'u where their inscriptions were incised in an tiquity by an inexperienced Ch'u scribe would seem to be negated by the fact that the inscriptions explicitly state that the Duke of Ch'u had the bells "made" or "cast" "for him self" {tz? tso, tzu chu)?phraseology which would seem inappropriate if he had acquired the completed bells first.

In no way at the present time does it seem possible to reconcile the crudeness and ineptness of the inscriptions with the excellent design and casting of the bells them selves, except to conclude that the inscriptions must be in cised Ch'ing forgeries.

The second inscription naming a "Duke of Ch'u" pre sents problems which at present seem far less hopeful of solution than those associated with the Sumitomo bells, since this inscription allegedly belonged to a bell unearthed from Chia-yii-hsien (Hupei) in the year 1113 A.D. and, of course, long since disappeared.97 The inscription recorded the dedication of a certain Duke of Ch'u whose personal name remained untranslatable until Sun I-jang suggested that the character be read as eeNi" and the personage equated with Hsiung Ngo,be who allegedly ruled the state of Ch'u from 799?791 B.C. (according to the Shih-chi)

?and was the father of Hsiung I.98 No image or descrip tion of the bell has ever existed, and the drawings of the inscription handed down in the various editions of the Sung catalogues in which it was first published appear too crude and inaccurate to allow one to assess the date or authenticity of the inscription on the basis of calligraphy or character formation.99 However, since the inscription also employs the expression tzu tso?to "make for oneself" or "for one's own use"?and since this construction does not occur in bronze inscriptions prior to the eighth century B.C. (al though it is extremely common thereafter),100 a date sub sequent to c. 800 B.C. would seem to be required, making Sun I-jang's identification just barely possible.

The inscription appears to have been quite unusually large and must have occupied the central panel of a very sizable bell?which prior to the sixth century B.C. was

most likely to have been of the obliquely hanging type, such as are common in Late Western Chou Shensi. How ever, the term used to designate the bell in the inscription is not that found for "chung" in all Western and Eastern Chou inscriptions but rather another character not elsewhere encountered in bronze inscriptions.101 Many other characters in the four-column, forty-character inscription remain ob scure or untranslatable; but the inadequacy of the present evidence seems to render it impossible to judge whether these difficulties should be ascribed to the inexperience of an unskilled scribe in the remote eighth century state of Ch'u or whether they are the result of the flawed inventive ness of a Sung forger.

Since the genuineness of the inscription may remain for ever in doubt, the evidence which it provides for the early existence of the state of Ch'u also must be viewed as unreliable.

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NOTES 1. Kwang-chih Chang, The Archaeology of Ancient China, revised

and enlarged edition, New Haven, [c. 1968], pp. 384-394. 2. W. Watson, Cultural Frontiers of Ancient East Asia, Edinburgh,

[c. 1971], pp. 144?145; idem, "Traditions of Material Cul ture in the Territory of Ch'u," in N. Barnard, ed., Early Chi nese Art and its Possible Influence in the Pacific Basin, 3 vols., New York, [c. 1972], vol. I, p. 72.

3. Hayashi M., "Ch?sa shutsudo So hakusho no j?ni kami no yurai" ("The Twelve God Figures in the Ch'u Manuscript found at

Ch'ang-sha and their Origin"), T?h?gakuh?, Kyoto, vol. 42 (March, 1971), pp. 40?52; idem, "The Twelve Gods of the

Chan-kuo Period Silk Manuscript excavated at Ch'ang-sha," translated and condensed by N. Barnard, in N. Barnard, ed., op. cit., vol. I, pp. 176?179.

A. E.g., the assemblage of four bronze vessels (a ch?eh, chia, ku, and p'ou) unearthed from an irrigation canal in Chia-shan hsien, on the south bank of the Huai River in northern Anhui (Ko Ch'ih-kung, Wen-wu, 1965, no. 7, pp. 23?26), as well as the chia and the ch?eh found recently in Fei-hsi, central Anhui (W. Watson, The Genius of China: An Exhibition of Archaeological Finds of the People's Republic of China, Lon don, 1973, p. 74, no. 84; Hsin Chung-kuo ch'u-t'u wen-wu, Peking, 1972, pi. 40). These vessels, all of which are well cast and highly styled, date from a period contemporary with the first three generations ruling at An-yang, but may have been cast elsewhere than in the Shang capital?in northern Anhui or southern Honan. There is, however, no possibility that the issue Dosed by these Anhui bronzes can be solved by calling them Western Chou, as has been suggested (Kwang chih Chang, op. cit., p. 379).

5. Ko Chieh-p'ing, Wen-wu, 1959, no. 1, p. 1. The find also included two chia, two ch?eh, and two ku, whose local or

metropolitan provenance can be less certainly ascertained from the small photographs.

6. Both of these M331 trumpet-mouthed tsun are illustrated and discussed in Li Chi and Wan Chia-pao, Yin-hs? ch'u-t'u wu shih-san-chien ch'ing-t'ung jung-ch'i chih yen-chiu {Studies of Fifty-three Ritual Bronzes excavated from Hsiao-t'un and Hou chia-chang, their Casting Process and Decorative Patterns), Nankang, 1972, pp. 32?34, pis. 33?34.

7.M. Loehr, "The Bronze Styles of the An-yang Period (1300? 1028 B.C.)," Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America, vol.7 (1953), pp. 42?53.

8. The earlier development of the trumpet-mouthed tsun has been outlined by M. Loehr, Ritual Vessels of Bronze Age China, New York [c. 1968], pp. 22, 74?77, in connection with the early tsun in the Sackler Collections (no. 3), the Metropolitan

Museum of Art (no. 29), and the Museum f?r Ostasiatische Kunst der Stadt K?ln (no. 30). A vessel formerly in the col lection of C. T. Loo and now in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (Staff of the Far Eastern Department, Chinese Art in the Royal Ontario Museum, [Toronto], c. 1972, pp. 82?83, no. 52), which is decorated (on shoulder and body only) in a simple and early Cheng-chou style, constitutes the earliest known tsun equipped with a full trumpet-mouth, indicating that this typological innovation should be credited to Cheng chou artisans. The Toronto vessel lacks the three high relief animal heads which characteristically rest on the shoulder-zone of later tsun and which are included on the earliest as yet ex cavated trumpet-mouthed tsun, found in 1958 in Yen-ling hsien, Honan, slightly to the southeast of Cheng-chou. This vessel is decorated (still on shoulder and body only) in a more advanced Cheng-chou style (Hsin Lai and Chou Tao, Kaogu, 1966, no. 4, pp. 219?220, pi. 10: 3). Four trumpet-mouthed tsun decorated in the Early An-yang style Style III and now in the Shanghai Museum (Mizuno S., ?n-Sh? seid?ki to gyoku (Bronzes and Jades of Anchient China), Tokyo, 1959, pi. 19C) represent the earliest An-yang versions of this vessel type: all are flangeless and have plain trumpet-mouths, un decorated foot-zones, and high relief animal heads overhanging the angle between shoulder and body. The next generation saw the addition of flanges and decorated foot-zone, accom panied by a more advanced style of surface decor (Style III? IV), as illustrated by the M331 tsun.

9. A trumpet-mouthed tsun which represents either the very latest phase of activity at Cheng-chou or else a brief period contem porary with the first two generations ruling at An-yang, during which bronzes still continued to be produced at the pre-An yang capital, was excavated from Cheng-chou in 1954 (W.

Watson, The Genius of China . . ., pp. 68?69, no. 74). Dec orated on the foot as well as the body and shoulder, it is also equipped with three very prominent curvilinear flanges on body and shoulder, the immediate precursors of the curvilinear flanges repeatedly observed on bronzes of southern origin. A very similar tsun of unknown provenance but presumably also made during this latest phase at Cheng-chou is shown in Ume hara S., Nihon Sh?cho Shina kod? seika, 6 vols., Osaka, 1959

?1964, vol. II, pi. 130. 10. On the handle of the Ss? Mu Wu fang-ting, excavated from

Wu-kuan-ts'un, An-yang, a human face appears positioned be tween the gaping jaws of two profile dragons (Li Chi, The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization, Seattle [c. 1957], pi. 1: 1). The configuration is analogous to the motif on the Fu-nan tsun, but its reduced and abbreviated form suggests that the An-yang artist was unaware of or uninterested in its deeper implications, whatever they may have been. The two well known yu in the Sumitomo collection, Kyoto, and the Mus?e Cernuschi, Paris, explicitly showing a tiger either embracing or devouring a clinging human figure are not An-yang creations. It is interesting that recently there have appeared undocumented statements to the effect that the Sumitomo yu was actually found in northern Hunan in the region between An-hua and

Ning-hsiang-hsien (Kao Chih-hsi, Wen-wu, I960, no. 10, p. 57). It has also been noted that the "displayed" human figure is exceedingly rare in early Chinese art, the only other ex ample being the figure seen on the unique bronze drum also in the Sumitomo collection (frequently reproduced, e.g., Ume hara S., op. cit., vol. IV, pis. 282?283), an object which also should be attributed to a source in south China on the grounds of its design, style of decor, and quality of casting.

11. The Fu-nan tsun, the Sumitomo and Cernuschi yu, and a few other bronze or jade objects datable to the Shang or Chou dynasties exhibit the earliest surviving examples of this so called "alter-ego" motif (a human figure over whom hovers a monster in either a menacing or protecting position), many other versions of which have been found to exist in various perishable materials of much later date throughout the primi tive cultures of the Pacific Basin. Scholars have assumed that the Chinese examples, being the earliest to survive, must also represent the genesis of the motif, which subsequently spread to areas outside of China where for some reason it endured long after it had disappeared from China itself (cf. D. Fraser, "Early Chinese Artistic Influence in Melanesia?" in N. Barn ard, ed., op. cit., vol. Ill, pp. 646, 650?652; Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, Early Chinese Art and the Pacific Basin: a Photographic Exhibition, New York, [c. 1968], pp. 117?118). This, however, need not necessarily have been the case: the motif and the ideas or ritual practices which it symbolizes could well have origi nated in Taiwan or adjacent lands in the Pacific where their profound significance within a far more static culture than China's caused them to persist until the present day. These motifs might have been adopted only briefly by the peoples of ancient south China, where they were given visual form in imperishable bronze and jade using the prevailing stylistic idiom, but where they remained essentially alien and failed to secure a lasting place. The same process of adoption of foreign motifs into south China from adjacent or peripheral cultures might also explain the bizarre "antler and tongue" wooden guardian figures found in Ch'u tombs of the fourth and third centuries B.C.

12. Shih Chih-lien, Wen-wu, 1972, no. 11, pp. 64?66. Specif ically, it was found that the interior surfaces of the tsun were cast with negative designs corresponding to the relief decor on the exterior, indicating that within the mold assemblage the core or inner mold had been fashioned with a positive pattern rather than with the usual plain surface. Although the in vestigator noted that this technique is extremely rare and that he had observed its presence elsewhere only in connection with another large tsun (unillustrated) and a li known to be from Chu-chou, Hunan (also unpublished), he attributed its use, not to these vessels' non-metropolitan provenance, but to their high relief exterior surfaces. Investigation also showed that the six protruding dragon and tiger heads had been cast-on in a second pour, which also apparently had employed a slightly different alloy; that the outer mold had been joined in four teen places (not counting the cast-on heads) and the inner

mold in two places; and that bronze patches had been applied to holes apparently left by the use of pottery chaplets. Al

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though the investigator of the Fu-nan tsun believed that these features exemplify or typify Shang casting procedures (rather than a regional variation ), it is interesting to observe that the two trumpet-mouthed tsun excavated from Hsiao-t'un M331 were cast using only a three-piece mold and that the three animal heads resting on the shoulder were pre-cast, placed in the mold assemblage, and the vessel then cast to them (Li Chi and Wan Chia-pao, op. cit., pp. 32?34, fig. 17, and pis. 33? 34). The more advanced trumpet-mouthed tsun from Hsi-pei kang M1400 (Ibid., pi. 35) probably employed a six-part outer mold, as indicated by its use of six rather than three flanges; but the heads were still pre-cast and the vessel cast to them. The trumpet-mouthed tsun from An-yang in the Freer

Gallery of Art was also produced from a three-piece outer mold but with the separately cast animal heads attached to small lugs on the shoulder of the vessel presumably with hard solder (J. Pope et al., The Freer Chinese Bronzes, Vol. I: Catalogue, Washington, 1967, pp. 100?102).

13.Hayashi M. ("Ch?sa shutsudo So hakusho . . .," T?h?ga kuh?, vol. 42, pp. 44-45 and note 67) has observed the absence in Shang oracle bones of references to campaigns directed against the regions south of the capital and has con cluded that these southerners were friendly tributaries of the Shang, and that Shang "colonies" or commercial settlements were established in the Hunan area. However, if Shang colo nizers are to be viewed as the instigators and sole patrons of the local Hunan bronze industry, then it would be difficult to explain why none of the southern bronzes has been found to carry any of the longer types of inscriptions (ancestor dedi cations) characteristically cast on Late An-yang bronze vessels, or why the southern bronzes appear not to have been interred in graves in accordance with established Shang practice.

14. Wen-wu, 1972, no. 1, p. 7. 15. Three other unpublished trumpet-mouthed tsun of unknown

provenance on view in the Museum of the Former Imperial Palace, Peking, and in the Shanghai Museum exhibit these same regional characteristics and can reasonably be attributed to the Hunan bronze industry. Though poorly proportioned and crudely cast, all of these vessels are nevertheless impressive for their extraordinarily large size (the Shanghai vessel was estimated at H. 75.0?90.0)?far larger than the typical An yang trumpet-mouthed tsun, the tallest of which are approxi mately 30.0 to 40.0 in height. Another virtually identical re gionally cast tsun (H. 43.5), formerly in the collection of J. T. Tai and Co., New York, is illustrated in Apollo, August, 1966, p. xxxvi.

16. Kao Chih-hsi, Kaogu, 1963, no. 12, p. 648. 17. E.g., a lobed ting with fine Late An-yang t'ao-t'ieh decor and

a swing-handle yu with high relief t'ao-t'ieh, both from Ning hsiang-hsien (Ibid., pp. 646?648); two double-owl yu from Chu-chou (Ts'ai Chi-hsiang, Wen-wu, I960, no. 3, p. 75); a ribbed yu with bird decor from Ning-hsiang-hsien (Wen-wu, 1972, no. 1, pp. 6, 72); a ^?-shaped flanged tsun from Han yang-hsien, Hupei (Hsin Chung-kuo ch'u-t'u wen-wu, Peking, 1972, pi. 44); etc.

18. B. Karlgren, "Notes on Four Bronzes," Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, vol. 26 (1954), pp. 369?374. Karlgren, who failed to recognize the non-An-yang style of the Stockholm p'ou, emphatically rejected the alleged provenance of this vessel from the Ch'ang-sha region in Hunan (p. 372)

?a provenance which now actually seems completely reason able and reliable.

The Princeton University Art Museum possesses a p'ou of unknown provenance which is so similar in style and design to the Stockholm p'ou that a Hunan source is also suggested for it (Archives of Asian Art, vol. 23, 1969?1970, p. 71, fig. 44).

19. Shanghai po-wu-kuan ts'ang ch'ing-t-ung-ch-i, 2 vols., Shanghai, 1964, vol. II, p. 8. There is a very similar p'ou of unknown provenance in the National Palace Museum, Taipei (Ku-kung t'ung-ch'i t'u-lu, 2 vols., Taipei, 1958, vol. II, part 1, pi. 122).

20. In his discussion of this chia, (J. Pope et al., op. cit., p. 128), J. Cahill also noted its non-An-yang features and suggested a southern origin for the vessel.

21. Ibid., pp. 128?131. Technological investigation has shown that three of the chia's five flanges were pre-cast and the vessel cast to them, that the handle was postcast onto the fin ished vessel, and that the bird caps were also separately cast.

One leg of the vessel was not cast integrally with the vessel but added subsequently apparently to correct a casting fault in the initial pour.

22.Kao Chih-hsi, Wen-wu, I960, no. 10, pp. 57?59. The vessel, rescued in a fragmented condition from a scrap-metal heap in Ch'ang-sha in 1959, was thought to have been unearthed not long before in Ning-hsiang-hsien. Two characters equivalent to "large" and "grain" (or "crops") are cast on the interior, to be read either as a kind of prayer for a large harvest or as a single pictogram indicating clan ownership (as is frequent on

metropolitan bronze vessels). 23. Various other explanations for the appearance of the human

faces on this fang-ting have, however, been suggested. It has, for instance been said that the faces must allude to the victim of the sacrifice offered in the vessel, in this case a human sacrifice (W. Watson, The Genius of China . . ., p. 70, no. 79), although such a connection seems extremely unlikely; or that the faces may have possessed some supernatural or shama nistic connotations (Hayashi M., "Ch?sa shutsudo So hakusho . . .," T?h?gakuh?, vol. 42, p. 34)?a suggestion which is not entirely implausible. On the other hand, T'ang Lan ( Wen-wu, 1973, no. 7, pp. 8?11) has recently suggested that the motifs

may distantly reflect influences from the lost bronze vessels (especially ting or fang-ting) of the "Hsia" dynasty?whose existence Chinese scholars now seem willing to claim as fact in their effort to prove the extreme antiquity of China's Bronze Age?a hypothesis which, however, can scarcely be taken seriously at the present time.

24. Kao Chih-hsi, Wen-wu, I960, no. 10, p. 57; idem, Kaogu, 1963, no. 12, p. 648.

25. Kao Chih-hsi and Chang Hsin-ju, Wen-wu, 1966, no. 4, p. 1, Pi. 1.

26. Kao Chih-hsi, Wen-wu, I960, no. 10, p. 58. 27. Inside both the t'ao-t'ieh yu and the ribbed yu with birds un

earthed from Ning-hsiang-hsien in 1963 and 1970 respectively were found items of jade?two strings of jade beads (totalling 1,172 in number) in the first, and 320 variously sized jade rings, crescents, and small jade items in the second. In the p'ou from Ning-hsiang-hsien (Fig. 6) had been stored 224 small bronze axes (Kao Chih-hsi, Kaogu, 1963, no. 12, pp. 646? 648, fig. 2; Wen-wu, 1972, no. 1, p. 6).

28. Numerous small ling bells with suspension loops and clappers have been found in the An-yang burials at Ta-ssu-k'ung-ts'un (Ma Te-chih et al., Kaogu Xuebao, vol. 9 (1955), pp. 51? 52, pi. 15) and Hsiao-t'un (Shih Chang-ju, Hsiao-t'un, Ti-i pen: l-chih-te fa-hsien y? fa-ch?eh: ping pien: Yin-hs? mu tsang chih i: Pei-tsu mu-tsang, 2 vols., Nankang, 1970, vol. II, Dis. 121?122, 129?130, 187?188). Many of these small bells are decorated with t'ao-t'ieh masks executed in rather perfunctory thread relief and invariably placed upside down on the tapered front and rear surfaces. In addition, some also have small flanges and plain lower margins, thus confirming themselves unequivocally as the source for the same features found on the much enlarged southern versions. Small ling bells continued to be made uninterruptedly throughout the Chou and into the Han dynasties and were frequently interred in burials in the same manner as chariot or horse fittings, not necessarily in direct association with interred horses or chariots.

29. The flanges have now been restored from their former frag mented condition?cf. Tch'ou T?-yi, Bronzes antiques de la Chine appartenant ? C. T. Loo et Ci? . . ., Paris and Bruxelles, 1924, pi. 7.

30. Shih Chih-lien, Wen-wu, I960, no. 10, p. 58. Though pre viously unpublished, the bell is known to have been in the collection of Juan Yuan.

31. Similar bells of the same stage of development as the Sackler bell are found in the Sumitomo collection (Umehara S., op. cit., vol. IV, pi. 286), the Fujii Y?rinkan (Ibid.), and the

Museum of the Former Imperial Palace, Peking (Wen-wu, 1966, no. 5, p. 70).

32. Shanghai po-wu-kuan ts'ang ch'ing-t'ung-ch'i, vol. I, pi. 63; vol. II, p. 62.

33. Ch'en Pang-huai, Wen-wu, 1972, no. 6, pp. 14?16. 34. Shanghai po-wu-kuan ts'ang ch'ing-t'ung-ch'i, vol. I, pi. 47;

vol. II, pp. 38?39 (the Ta K'e ting); Ibid., vol. I, pi. 48; vol. II, pp. 40?41 (one of the smaller ting); C. F. Kelley and Ch'en Meng-chia, Chinese Bronzes from the Buckingham Collection, Chicago, 1946, pp. 60?63, 154?157 (the hs?). Photographs of the other bells?two of which are now in the Neiraku Art Museum, Nara, and the Fujii Y?rinkan, Kyoto? have not been published, though rubbings of their inscriptions are well-known (e.g. Shirakawa S., Kimbunsh?, 3 vols., Tokyo,

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1965, vol. 3, p. 12, nos. 310?311; Kuo Mo-jo, Liang-Chou chin-wen-tz'u ta-hsi t'u-lu k'ao-shih, second edition, 8 vols., Peking, 1958, vol. Ill, pp. 93b?97a?with the Tientsin bell inscription shown on p. 97b; vol. VII, pp. 112a?113a). The name of the king (or kings) in whose sixteenth, eighteenth, and twenty-third years the K'e vessels were cast has been much disputed by scholars; but he is reasonably identified as Hs?an wang,d who ruled from 827?782 B.C. The Tientsin bell and the other six obliquely hanging bells were thus cast in 812 B.C.

35. The large and relatively rich burial M1052 at Shang-ts'un-ling, Honan, datable to the early seventh century B.C., contained a graduated set of nine small bells ranging in size from H. 23.5 to 13.4 cm., hung perpendicularly from a simple loop handle and decorated only with two large lax abstract scrolls without bosses (Shang-ts'un-ling Kuo-kuo mu-ti, Peking, 1959, pi. 38). This set of bells?modest in size and unimpressive in design ?represents the earliest Eastern Chou attempt to create a set of vertically hanging bells of a type which had not been cast in the preceding Western Chou period. It seems clear, how ever, that typologically these bells constitute yet another devel opment of the small ling harness bells?but expanded in size, deprived of their clappers, and composed into a graduated set. They do not represent a typological continuation of any of the bells made in either the south or the north during the Western Chou period. Another similar set of four small loop-suspended bells, graduated in size (H. 25.6?14.7) and decorated with seventh century dragon designs without bosses, has been found in Hai-yang-hsien, Shantung ( Shantung-sheng po-wu-kuan, Shantung wen-wu hs?an-chi, Peking, 1959, p. 48, no. 107).

36. The customary maintenance of a general distinction in termi nology between obliquely hanging "chung" and perpendicularly hanging rtpo" is in actuality not justified by the names em ployed in the inscriptions found on the bells themselves throughout the Eastern Chou period. With only three excep tions, all bells, whether suspended at an angle from a hook or hung vertically from a loop, are termed chung in their in scriptions. The three exceptions, in which the term po occurs as the name of the bell in its inscription are the Shu Ie po (Wang Fu et al., Hs?an-ho Po-ku t'u-lu, c. 1125, ch. 22, pp. 5?14; Kuo Mo-jo, op. cit., vol. V, pp. 240b?243b; vol. VIII, pp. 202b?208b), the Mingh po (Ibid., vol. V, p. 251; vol. VIII, pp. 209b?211a), and the Chu-kung sun Pan1 po (Liu T'i-chih, Hsiao-chiao-ching-ko chin-wen t'a-pen, 18 vols.,

Shanghai, 1935, vol. I, p. 45a-b). The first of these was ap parently a large, perpendicularly suspended bell cast in con junction with a set of obliquely hanging bells with which it

was unearthed in 1123 A.D. from Lin-tz?-hsien, Shantung, and with which it shared its long inscription?in a manner exactly analogous to the K'e bells. It is also interesting and surprising that the Shu I po should also have been equipped

with the same high reticulated dragon flanges as the K'e bell in Tientsin, though in other respects its design is different.

However, in the case of the Shu I inscriptions, a distinction in terminology was deliberately introduced between the single "po" and the set of "chung." The Ming po, like the Shu I bells cast in the state of Ch'i and very close to them in date (second quarter of the sixth century B.C.), may also have functioned in conjunction with a set of obliquely hanging bells, twelve of which (uninscribed) were said to have been unearthed with it from Jung-ho-hsien, Shansi, in 1870. The third po was apparently cast in the state of Chu, a small principality located to the south of Ch'i in southern Shantung. From these facts, it might be permissible to conclude that the casting of a single large bell in conjunction with a set of obliquely hanging bells was a practice limited to the state of Ch'i and its immediate neighbors and that consequently the distinction in terminology between "chung" and "po" was neither used nor needed elsewhere.

37. The credit for recognizing the following typological sequence of bells should be given to Ch'en Meng-chia, who first pub lished a similar series in connection with his discussion of the P'u-tu-ts'un chung (Kaogu Xuebao, 1956, no. 3, pp. 124? 127, pis. 11?15). However, he dated the bells to late Shang and early Chou without realizing their southern provenance and non-metropolitan style. In contrast, Hayashi has observed that the bells unearthed in the Hunan region differ from their northern prototypes in a manner which justifies their attribu tion to a local Hunan bronze industry which produced bells

in response to local religious or shamanistic needs (see above, note 3).

38. E.g., the set of three bells in graduated sizes (H. 18.0?13.9) excavated from M312, Ta-ssu-k'ung-ts'un, An-yang (Ma Te chih et al, Kaogu Xuebao, vol. 9 (1955), p. 49 and pi. 10) and another such set from Hsi-pei-kang M1038 (Ch'en Meng chia, Kaogu Xuebao, vol. 7 (1954), p. 28, pis. 32?33). This type of bell placed mouth-upward is not self-named in the Shang period, and neither of the terms nao or cheng found in late Chou or Han texts and referring to bells is defined there with sufficient precision to justify unhesitating adoption.

Although the appearance of the term cheng in the inscription on an Eastern Chou bell of somewhat analogous shape (Jung Keng, Shang-Chou i-ch'i t'ung-k'ao, 2 vols., Peking, 1941, vol. I, p. 487, vol. II, pi. 933) has caused some scholars to prefer this term, Ch'en Meng-chia chose to adopt the term yung1 in his discussion of the large-sized, mouth-upward bells (Kaogu Xuebao, 1956, no. 3, p. 125)?for which, however, other Chinese scholars have retained the term nao (the name which for that reason is used here). For a general discussion of bell terminology, see Hayashi M, "In-Sh? seid? i-ki no meish? to y?to," T?h?gakuh?, (Kyoto), vol. 34 (March, 1964), pp. 281 ?291).

It should perhaps be noted here in connection with bell inscriptions that the unpublished Late Western Chou inscrip tion on the inside of the nao in the collection of the King of Sweden (B. Gyllensv?rd and J. Pope, Chinese Art from the Collection of H. M. King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden [New York, c. 1966] no. 14, p. 127)?in which the term for bell is probably "chung"?is considered here to be a forgery (though the bell itself seems genuine and was probably cast in the south at a time contemporary with the end of the Shang dynasty). Al though the inscription has not been previously questioned, the obviously suspicious facts concerning it are given by B. Karl gren in N. Palmgren, Selected Chinese Antiquities from the Collection of Gustaf Adolf, Stockholm, 1948, p. 13.

39. Kao Chih-hsi, Wen-wu, I960, no. 10, pp. 57?58; Kao Chih hsi and Chang Hsin-ju, Wen-wu, 1966, no. 4, p. 2. The five bells were recovered from a pit in which they had been de liberately interred.

40. Wang T'u-t'o, Kaogu, 1965, no. 5, p. 256, pi. 10: 10?12. Another bell very similar to the von Lochow nao presently in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (Staff of the Far Eastern Department, op. cit., pp. 104?105) is also reported to have come from the region of Hangchow, Chekiang. Yet another such bell now in the Shanghai Museum (Wen-wu, 1959, no. 10, p. 33, fig. 3) was collected from local scrap

metal refuse and may have been unearthed in the Shanghai region of southernmost Kiangsu. One is assuming, for the time being, that these nao known or alleged to have been unearthed in the northern Chekiang area were actually cast in northern

Hunan; but this opinion may require adjustment with the accumulation of additional documented finds from the coastal region.

41. Ch'en Meng-chia, Kaogu Xuebao, 1956, no. 3, pi. 11: 1. 42. Wen-wu, I960, no. 7, pp. 48?49. 43. Wen-wu, 1973, no. 1, p. 62. 44. See above, note 40. 45.Mizuno S., op. cit., pi. 113. Another bell in the Museum of

Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, of this same stage (B. Karlgren, "Some Bronzes in the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities," Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiqui ties, vol. 21 (1949), p. 19 and pi. 37) is clearly a later de velopment of the bell discovered in Ch'ien-shan-hsien, Anhui.

46. Hsieh Yao, Kaogu, 1963, no. 8, pp. 416?417. Two other bells of this stage are illustrated by Ch'en Meng-chia (Kaogu Xuebao, 1956, no. 3, pi. 13: 2 and pi. 14: 1, 2?now in the Sackler Collections, New York).

47. Hsieh Yao, Kaogu, 1963, no. 8, pp. 416?417, fig. 3. 48. Chou Shih-yung, Wen-wu, 1966, no. 4, p. 3. 49. Ibid., pp. 4?5. 50. The burial M3 at P'u-tu-ts'un, exacavated in 1956, is dated to

the reign of Mu-wang by the inscription on a tri-lobed ho which was among the contents of the grave and which men tions the king Mu-wang by name (Ho Han-nan, Kaogu

Xuebao, 1957, no. 1, pp. 75?85, pis. 1?6; Ch'en Meng-chia, Kaogu Xuebao, 1956, no. 3, pp. 121?124; Shirakawa S., op. cit., vol. II, p. 19, no. 265; etc.).

51. Kaogu, 1974, no. 1, pp. 1?5, fig. 7.

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52. E.g., the Hsienn chung, which entered the collection of the Shensi Provincial Museum in 1952 and had probably been unearthed in Shensi ( Shensi-shang po-wu-kuan, Ch'ing-t'ung ch'i t'u-shih, Peking, I960, pi. 126). Although its long in scription is now corroded almost beyond legibility, the script style is that of the reign of Kung-wang and records an award of bronze to Hsien by the king at a certain palace in the capital. Another bell of the same design and with the same inscription (also illegible) and probably from the same find is illustrated by Umehara S., op. cit., vol. IV, pi. 349. Both bells carry the entire fifty-one-character inscription on their central vertical panels and consequently the script is very small. Subsequently, long inscriptions were divided in half and inscribed on two adjacent bells in a set, with the inscribed portions further divided on each bell between the central ver tical panel and the lower left-hand margin (as in Fig. 32).

53. The illustrated Ching Jen An* chung in the Shanghai Museum (Shanghai po-wu-kuan ts'ang ch'ing-t'ung ch'i, vol. II, pp. 60

?61 ) is the largest bell in a graduated set of four?the others of which are in the Sh?d? Hakubutsukan, Tokyo, and the Sumitomo collection, Kyoto, with the fourth and smallest member of the set having just recently been unearthed in Fu feng-hsien, Shensi (Chou Wen, Wen-wu, 1972, no. 7, p. 10 and figs. 4, 9, and 10). Judging from the style of their decor and the superb calligraphy of their inscriptions, this set of bells?like the K'e chung which they closely resemble?should be dated to the reign of Hs?an-wang.

54.The Shih-chi, ch. 40 (Ch'u shih-chia) first provides a legen dary ancestry for the state of Ch'u, descending ultimately from the Yellow Emperor. The personage Hsiung Y- enfeoffed by Ch'eng-wang is subsequently referred to as "Ch'u-tzu"n (Vis count of Ch'u), a title which accords with the feudal rank designated for Ch'u in the Ch'un-ch'iu. The Chi-chieh and Cheng-i commentaries agree in locating Tan-yang in Chih chiang-hsien, Hupei, although an alternate location in the vi cinity of Tsu-kuei-hsien further west on the northern bank of the Yangtze River is also suggested as a possibility.

55. The location of T'an-ch'eng-hsien in southern Shantung has been taken to suggest the approximate whereabouts of the ancient T'an (Kuo Mo-jo, op. cit., vol. VI, pp. 3a?5a; Ch'en

Meng-chia, Kaogu Xuebao, vol. 10 (1955), pp. 76?79; etc.). Campaigns against peoples to the east of the Honan capital also occupied the early years of the reign of K'ang-wang's father Ch'eng-wang?to which period the Ling kuei is frequently mis-attributed. The vessel has also been mis-attributed to the subsequent reign of Chao-wang (T'ang Lan, Kaogu Xuebao, 1962, no. l,pp. 19?20).

56. Kuo Mo-jo, Yin-ch'i-ts'ui pien, Peking, 1937, 1965, p. 280 (no. 1315) and p. 337 (no. 1547). cf. also Ch'en Meng-chia,

Yin-hs? pu-tz'? tsung-shu, Peking, 1956, pp. 267?268. 57. The vessel, a kuei, does not survive; but the inscription has

been discussed by Kuo Mo-jo (Liang-Chou chin-wen-tz'u. . ., vol. VI, pp. 53b?54a), Shirakawa S. (op. cit., vol. II, p. 11, no. 200), etc.

58. The Tzu kuei, now in the Historical Museum, Peking ( Wen wu, 1959, no. 12, p. 59; Kuo Mo-jo, Liang-Chou chin-wen tz'u. . ., vol VI, p. 54b; Shirakawa S., op. cit., vol. II, p. 11, no. 199) and the Kuo-po&d kuei (Kuo Mo-jo, Liang-Chou chin-wen-tz'u. . ., vol. VI, p. 54a?b; Shirakawa S., op. cit., vol. II, P. 11, no. 201?202). These three inscriptions asso ciated with Chao-wang's southern campaigns are remarkably similar in content: in each case the owner states that he fol lowed the King in the campaign against Ch'u Ching or Ching, and that he enriched himself with booty or caDtives?the pre text for his commissioning of the bronze vessel.

The tradition which recalled that Chao-wang had cam paigned in the south (presumably as the first Western Chou king to do so), fighting against Ch'u Ching in the region of the Han River in southern Honan or beyond, was recorded in the Ancient Bamboo Annals, with similar notations in the Tso-chuan, the L?-shih Ch'un-ch'iu, and the Shih-chi Chou pen-chi. One of the three pertinent entries in the Ancient Bamboo Annals referring to Chao-wang's campaign against Ch'u Ching and his crossing of the Han River is dated to his sixteenth year, while a second entry is dated to his nineteenth year and mentions the loss of six regiments in the Han River; the final entry, stating that he did not return from a southern tour, is, however, dated only to "Chao-wang's last year" (Fan Hsiang-yung, Ku-pen Chu-shu chi-nien chi-chiao ting-pu, Shanghai, 1962, p. 25).

59. Wang Yu-t'ung, Wen-wu, 1963, no. 2, pp. 53?55; Li Chien, Kaogu, 1963, no. 4, pp. 224?225, pi. 8.

There was also an assemblage of six Middle Western Chou vessels unearthed in 1118 A.D. from An-lu-hsien in east ern Hupei, whose inscriptions record the King's charges to and subsequent enfeoffment of a person named Chung** during a campaign in the south. This assemblage should be dated either to Chao-wang or to Mu-wang, although the Sung drawings of the vessels and of their difficult (and only partially translat able inscriptions) can provide no conclusive stylistic evidence (Wang Fu et al., op. cit., eh. 2, pp. 17?19, eh. 6, p. 32, etc.;

Kuo Mo-jo, Liang-Chou chin-wen-tz'u. . ., vol. VI, pp. 16a? 20a).

60. Kuo Mo-jo (Kaogu, 1963, no. 4, p. 181) has suggested that the assemblage may represent booty captured by the state of Ch'u; but the stylistic homogeneity of the vessels and their inter-related inscriptions argue against this theory: one might expect captured booty to consist of a heterogeneous assemblage of objects of different periods and sources.

61. Bronze vessels datable to the eighth century and inscribed by personages connected to the ruling class in the state of Tseng have been discovered in Ching-shan-hsien (Wen-wu, 1972, no. 1, P. 75, pis. 5, 6; Kaogu, 1972, no. 1, p. 31; Wen-wu, 1972, no. 2, pp. 47?53, pis. 9, 10), in Sui-hsien (Ngo Ping, Wen wu, 1973, no. 5, pp. 21?25, pi. 4), in Wu-han-shih ( Wen wu, 1965, no. 7, p. 53), as well as in Hsin-yeh-hsien in south ernmost Honan (Cheng Chieh-hsiang, Wen-wu, 1973, no. 5, pp. 14?20, pi. 3). It is now recognized that the state of Tseng (with surname Chi^) located in southern Honan and central Hupei must be distinguished from the state of Tseng (with surname Ss?*-1) located in Shantung. The finds from

Ching-shan-hsien and Sui-hsien also included inscribed vessels naming the state of Huang,am indicating the contemporary ex istence of this small state in the region of southern Honan or northern Hupei. An additional and somewhat later find of eight bronze vessels from Chih-chiang-hsien ( Wen-wu, 1972, no. 3, pD. 65?68)?the region of the alleged Ch'u capital? nevertheless names an otherwise unknown state (?) of Sai.

Archaeologically unattested inscriptions datable by script style to the eighth or seventh centuries B.C. also survive from the small states of Teng,ao located in northern Hupei and ex tinguished by Ch'u in 678 B.C. (Kuo-Mo-jo, Liang-Chou chin wen-tz'u. . ., vol. IV, p. 191b), ChiangaD (Ibid., pp. 186? 187), etc.

62. H. Creel ("The Beginnings of Bureaucracy in China: the Origin of the Hsien," Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 23, no. 2 (February, 1964), pp. 155?183) has drawn attention to the independence of the state of Ch'u from the usual feudal con ventions, as demonstrated by such matters as the rulers' use of the title Wang and the institution of centralized governmental control through the use of salaried officials and territorial divi sion into hsien rather than sub-infeudation and rule by an hereditarv aristocracy.

63. In the Ch'un-ch'iu, the title Ch'u-tzu occurs first in the entry for the twenty-first year of Hsi-kung (637 B.C.), and it is this title which is used throughout the remainder of the text.

64. Kuo Mo-jo, Liang-Chou chin-wen-tz'u . . ., vol. IV, p. 183b; vol. VIII, p. 168b. His identification of the personage named in the inscription as Hsiung Yuan, who ruled from 261-237 B.C. cannot be accepted, since the style of the script is that of the sixth century B.C.

65. The reference to "Ch'u Wu-wang" occurs in the entry for the sixth year of Huan-kung. However, in the entry for the eleventh year of Chao-kung (530 B.C.), the Tso-chuan refers to "Ch'u-tzu," "Ch'u-wang," and then "Ch'u-tzu" in successive passages, showing that the use of the title wang is by no means consistent in the Tso-chuan. The title kung is, however, not used.

66. Kao Chih-hsi, Wen-wu, 1959, no. 12, p. 60. The five-char acter inscription reads "Ch'u-kung Wei (?) ping-ko,"&v "ping" meaning to "grasp" or "hold on to" or possibly here to "ac quire," "possess," or "keep." (The equation of this Duke's Dersonal name with that in the inscription on the Sumitomo bells and his identification with Hsiung Iaw is discussed in the Addendum. )

67. Y? Hsing-wu and Yao Hsiao-sui, Wen-wu, I960, no. 3, p. 85; Kao Chih-hsi and Ts'ai Chi-hsiang, Wen-wu, I960, no. 8-9, pp. 79?80; Feng Han-chi, Wen-wu, 1961, no. 11, pp. 32?34.

68. Shang Ch'eng-tso, Wen-wu, 1962, no. 6, pp. 19?20. (Shang Ch'eng-tso ventures to date the ko to the middle or late West

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ern Chou period and the inscription not earlier than the end of the Western Chou period. He would agree in equating the name of the Duke with that in the bell inscriptions, without necessarily accepting the identification of that personage with Hsiung I.)

69. M. Loehr, Chinese Bronze Age Weapons, Ann Arbor [c. 1956], pp. 50?53, fig. 44, and pi. 21.

70. Although one ko with broad triangular blade and asymmetri cally placed tang has been found at Cheng-chou (Chao Ch'?an ku et al., Kaogu Xuebao, 1957, no. 1, pi. 5: 9) and two others of the same type at Hsiao-t'un (Li Chi, Chung-yang Yen-chiu-y?an Li-shih Y?-yen Yen-chiu-so chi-k'an, vol. 22 (1950), pi. 1: El and E2), with one other at a Shang site in

Kao-ch'eng-hsien, Hopei (Kaogu, 1973, no. 1, pi. 8: 2), they were far outnumbered at these and other early Shang sites by the more usual type of ko with long slender blade and hafting lugs. The only An-yang ko with triangular blade and sym metrical tang was found at Wu-kuan-ts'un (Kuo Pao-ch?n, Kaogu Xuebao, vol. 5 (1951), p. 39 and pi. 24: 1).

71. Wang Po-hung et al., Feng-hsi fa-ch?eh pao-kao, Peking, 1962, pi. 69: 3 (with symmetrically placed tang.)

72. Chu P'ei-chang et al, Wen-wu, 1966 no. 1, pp. 1?3, pi. 1: 4. The triangular bladed ko with symmetrical tang was found among a group of weapons contained within a bronze p'ou of Shang date.

73. Six such triangular-bladed ko all with symmetrically placed tang were discovered in 1959 in an interesting find from P'eng hsien, Szechuan, which also included eight bronze vessels and five other types of weapons?all of which were contained within a large but fragmented pottery urn (Wang Chia-yu, Wen-wu, 1961, no. 11, pp. 28?31, fig. 1 and p. 5, pi. 2). Among the bronze vessels were two large covered lei, decorated with the peculiar coiled dragon motifs favored by the work shops of the Wei River valley during the generation just prior to the Chou Conquest, as well as two chih executed and in scribed in the latest Shang style. These and the other bronze vessels in the find appear to have been imported into Szechuan from the Chou centers in Shensi, while the weapons seem lo cally made and unique to Szechuan?though based on the Shang prototype as it had been transmitted indirectly through the Chou homelands. Thus, the Szechuan bronze industry arose under Chou influence in the period either just prior to or else just subsequent to the Chou Conquest?a fact which lends credence to the long-standing historical tradition that the ter ritory of P'engax in southwest China included itself among the Chou allies in the campaigns against the Shang (cf. Hs? Chung-shu, Chung-yang Yen-chiu-y?an Li-shih Y?-yen Yen chiu-so chi-k'an, vol. 7, part 2 (1936), pp. 150?153 and the

Mu Shih chapter of the Shu-ching ). Whether the P'eng-hsien finds itself is pre-Conquest or slightly post-Conquest, it serves to verify the existence in Szechuan of peoples with cultural affiliations with the rising Chou regime in Shensi.

Other early triangular-bladed ko with symmetrical tangs have been found in Hsin-fan, Szechuan (Wang Chia-yu and Ching Tien-ch'ao, Kaogu t'ung-hs?n, 1958, no. 8, pp. 27?28, fig. 3) and Ch'eng-tu (Feng Han-chi, Wen-wu, 1961, no. 11, p. 6, fig. 6).

14. Ibid., fig. 7 (now in the Chungking Museum). 75. The Warring States period burial Ml72 at Yang-tz?-shan,

Ch'eng-tu, Szechuan (Kaogu Xuebao, 1956, no. 4, pp. 1?20) yielded one fragmented ko (Ibid., p. 6 and pi. 3: 4) with a broad triangular blade, symmetrical tang, and t'ao-t'ieh decor? an object which is clearly a survival from the early Szechuan bronze industry of the late Shang or early Western Chou period and not a product of the Warring States period to which the mirrors, belthooks, and other furnishings of the tomb belong. Failure to recognize this object as a much earlier survival has distorted the correct dating of these Szechuan weapons, causing Feng Han-chi (Wen-wu, 1961, no. 11, pp. 32?33) to place the inscribed ko under discussion within a period ranging from "late Western Chou to early Warring States," thereby confusing the type with the true Warring States triangular-bladed ko?which are designed with con cavely curving blades unlike the simple angular shapes of the early Western Chou examples (cf. Lai Yu-te, Kaogu t'ung-hs?n, 1959, no. 8, pp. 449?450, fig. 1). In contrast, the two tri angular-bladed ko from the Warring States boat burials M9 and Mil at Tung-sun-pa, Pa-hsien, Szechuan, are clearly "archaistic" versions of the earlier type, made?according to

the opinion of the excavators?for burial only (Feng Han-chi et al, Kaogu Xuebao, 1958, no. 2, p. 88, and pi. 5: 5).

76. A few small bronze objects such as knives, arrowheads, and fish hooks have been found in sites associated with the so called "Hu-shu"ay neolithic culture which existed in the Kiangsu-Anhui area contemporaneously with the Shang and Western Chou periods (Tseng Chao-yu and Yin Huang-chang, Kaogu Xuebao, 1959, no. 4, pp. 47?48; Chang Yung-nien, Kaogu, 1962, no. 1, pp. 32?37; Kwang-chih Chang, op. cit., pp. 382?386; etc.) It is this Hu-shu culture which subse quently undertook vessel-casting in the Middle Western Chou period.

77. Wen-wu ts'an-k'ao tzu-liao, 1955, no. 5, pp. 58-62; Kaogu Xuebao, 1956, no. 2, pis. 1?9; etc.

78. Yin Ti-fei, Kaogu Xuebao, 1959, no. 4, pp. 59?90, pis. 1? 18.

79. Wang Chih-min and Han I-chih, Wen-wu ts'an-k'ao tzu-liao, 1956, no. 1, pp. 31?32; Mizuno S., ed., Sekai k?kogaku taikei, 16 vols., Tokyo, 1958, vol. VI, pis. 124?130.

80. Ch'en Meng-chia, Wen-wu ts'an-k'ao tzu-liao, 1955, no. 5, pp. 63?66; idem, Kaogu Xuebao, vol. 9 (1955), pp. 165?167; Tang Lan, Kaogu Xuebao, 1956, no. 2, pp. 79?83; N. Bar nard, "A Recently Excavated Inscribed Bronze of Western Chou Date," Monumenta S?rica, vol. 17 (1958), pp. 12?46; etc. Though variously dated by scholars to the reign of Ch'eng wang or of K'ang-wang, this inscribed kuei is properly viewed as a document of the early or middle K'ang-wang reign. Al though the uninspired design of the vessel and its second-rate calligraphy suggest that the object may not have been cast at the eastern capital at Ch'eng-chou, yet it would be wrong to suppose that it was made in the Yangtze delta area or that the fief of / granted to Nieh was located in that region. The first two lines of the inscription read: "In the fourth month, on the day ting-wei, [while the King was inspecting] the territory where Wu-wang and Ch'eng-wang had defeated the Shang, he came to inspect the territory of the Eastern Regions." The old Shang territory of the eastern regions could refer to a locale no

more distant than western Shantung, southern or southeastern Honan, or northernmost Anhui or Kiangsu: it could not refer to the southeast coastal region, to which Shang political influ ence had not extended. (The possibility that I is perhaDs to be associated with present-day I-vang-hsien in southern Honan is thus not without merit in indicating the general geographical area concerned.) In the time of K'ang-wang, southern Honan

must have represented the most distant southern outpost of Chou political control and one of the last border regions to be enfeoffed to a Chou vassal. With the subsequent revolt of the southern and eastern peoDles during the reigns of Chao-wang and Mu-wang, this region may have slipped out of Chou con trol, with the vessel passing southward as booty into the hands of the peoples who may have placed themselves in opposition to Chou rule?where it was eventually interred among other objects of somewhat later date and of local origin.

81. Hu Wen, Wen-wu, 1965, no. 6, p. 52. The conventionally phrased ten-character inscriDtion, written in the small, precise Shensi style of the reign of Mu-wang, has been published for the first time by W. Watson, The Genius of China. . ., p. 82, no. 97A.

82. The larger (H. 34.5) but awkwardly proportioned and some what crudely cast yu with the identical long-tailed birds and interlocking crests was found in Ml at T'un-hsi but published only in a poor photograph (Yin Ti-fei, Kaogu-Xuehao, 1959, no. 4, pi. 6: 1-2).

83. cf. Kwang-chih Chang, op. cit., pp. 387?389. 84. cf. above, note 40. 85. Ni Chen-k'uei, Wen-wu, 1959, no. 4, pp. 3?5. 86. From Wu-hsing-hsien, northern Chekiang ( Wen-wu, 1972,

no. 3, p. 75). 87. Hamada K. and Umehara S., Senoku Seisho, revised edition,

Kyoto, 1934, pp. 99?100, nos. 139?141 and pi. 35. The fourteen-character inscription133, reads: "I, Wei (?), Duke of Ch'u have had made for myself this precious large chung; may my grandsons and their sons treasure it forever." Two of the Sumitomo bells, identical in design but different in size (H. 51.8 and 36.6) bear the same inscription and must be parts of a three-bell graduated set, of which, however, the third and smallest bell with the same design and inscription was not in cluded in the collection of Ch'en Chieh-ch'i (though it was known to Wu Shih-fen and Fang Ch?n-i, etc. in the nineteenth century?cf. Kuo Mo-jo, Liang-Chou chin-wen-tz'u . . ., vol. IV, p. 177, with the other inscriptions on pp. 178a?b). The

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present whereabouts of this smallest bell of the set is unknown. The third Sumitomo bell (H. 44.3) differs somewhat in de sign from the other two (having dragon motifs in the small panels between the bosses and an engraved elephant rather than a bird on the lower right-hand margin) and carries a slightly differently worded inscription. (Ibid., p. 178b, no. 5).

Discrepancies and variations of this sort are not normal and do not increase confidence in the genuineness of the in scriptions.

88. Ibid., vol. VIII, p. 164b. Kuo Mo-jo has equated the character for the Duke's personal namebb with the character for weihc and suggested that in antiquity wet and fid were similarly pro nounced and therefore the name is that if Hsiung I. Thus, as is frequently the case in the identification of historical person ages from names occurring in bronze inscriptions, the proce dure is quite tenuous and the results by no means certain. One should also note that among the four inscriptions regarded by scholars as genuine, there are substantial and inexplicable varia tions in the formation of the character for the Duke's personal name: the character is, in fact, written differently on each bell and no single version actually appears more convincing than any other.

89. See above, notes 66, 67, and 68. The name on the ko shares the "claws" and "roof" elements with the name on the bells, but the remaining interior elements are not precisely the same.

90. Wu Ta-ch'eng, K'o-chai chi-ku-lu, 1918, vol. II, p. lb. 91. Wu Shih-fen, Ch?n-ku-lu chin-wen, c. 1856, vol. II, ch. 2, pp.

21-22; Fang Ch?n-i, Chui-i-chai i-ch'i k'uan-chih k'ao-shih, [1894], ch. 1, pp. 4?5, Liu Hsin-y?an, Ch'i-ku-shih chi-chin

wen-shu, 1902, ch. 9, pp. 3?5; Teng Shih, Fu-chai chi-chin-lu, 1918, ch. 1, nos. 6?8.

92. Juan Yuan, Chi-ku-chai chung-ting i-ch'i k'uan-chih, 1804, ch. 3, p. 2.

93.Tao-chai chi-chin-lu, 1908, vol. I, p. 17. 94. Kuo Mo-jo, Liang-Chou chin-wen-tz'u . . ., vol. I, p. 12; Y?

Hsing-wu and Yao Hsiao-sui, Wen-wu, I960, no. 3, p. 85. Though very similar in all other respects, in this inscription the character for the Duke's personal name lacks the "claws" element.

95. E.g., the third bell of the graduated set described above, note 87; a much enlarged version of the inscription on the third Ch'en Chieh-ch'i bell, reproduced by Liu T'i-chih, op. cit., vol. I, p. 17a (the history and present whereabouts of this bell are unknown); and as the obviously forged inscription on a very large and seemingly genuine Warring States bell formerly in the collection of C.T. Loo (Tch'ou T?-yi, op. cit., pi. 23).

96. Kuo Mo-jo, Liang-Chou chin-wen-tz'u . . ., vol. VII, pp. 118b ?119a, vol. Ill, pp. 103b?104a. This inscription was also known to Wu Shih-fen and Fang Ch?n-i in the nineteenth century.

97. Ibid., vol. IV, p. 177; vol. VIII, p. 164b. 98. Sun I-jang, Sun Chou-ch'ing hsien-sheng chi, Taipei, 1963, vol.

I, PP. 77?79. 99. The inscription was first published by Hs?eh Shang-kung in

1144 (Li-tai chung-ting i-ch'i k'uan-chih fa-tieh, ch. 6, p. 66), and subsequently by Wang Hou-chih, c. 1162 (Fu-chai chung ting k'uan-chih, pp. 12 and 33) and Wang Ch'iu in 1176 (Hsiao-fang chi-ku-lu, vol. 2 p. 91?a crude copy in which the sequence of the columns of characters has been confused).

100. The expression tz? tso seems to arise in bronze inscriptions as the practice of casting dowry vessels became increasingly com

mon after approximately the year 800 B.C. The expression in dicates that the object was intended for the use of the person who commissioned it and thus does not occur in inscriptions dedicating vessels for a female relative's dowry. It nevertheless does not invariably occur in the inscriptions on the non-dowry vessels.

101. Since the character is not that for chung, scholars have tried to equate it with the character for po; but in actuality it is not that character either.

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