OK, herewith the promised thread, on tomb figurines and how realistic they were (or weren’t) supposed to be: Ancient Chinese elite tombs (of the prehistoric and Shang periods and into the early Zhou) often included two kinds of dead people besides the principal tomb occupant. (1/n)
This is 100% true and it makes me think about one of the great questions of Chinese tomb art, which is how realistic do your little guys need to be in order to ensure that they turn up in your afterlife? This is a placeholder post for a thread to be named later (tomorrow) because it is late.
The first kind were 人祭, human sacrifices who were treated much like animal sacrifices, and the second kind were 陪葬, those who accompanied the deceased into the tomb - servants, entertainers, charioteers etc. Presumably the latter were meant to accompany the deceased in the afterlife as well. (2/n)
Early tombs also contained a range of real things a person might need (food, clothing, money, weapons, horses etc), suggesting an afterlife much like this life, with similar needs for sustenance, shelter, travel, and entertainment. Later descriptions of life after death support this. (3/n)
However, as (I assume) in other cultures which permitted this kind of thing, eventually the morality of killing perfectly good humans in order to provide servants for other, more high-status humans after the latter’s death seems to have been increasingly called into question. (4/n)
By the middle Zhou, increasingly, elite burials were furnished instead with *replicas* of things the deceased might need in the afterlife, including miniature figures of servants, entertainers, charioteers etc. This was probably a great relief to servants, entertainers, and charioteers. (5/n)
The replicas, usually made in pottery (north China) or wood (south China), were usually recognizable but simplified representations of the things they were meant to provide, such as this 5cm pottery figurine from a Zhou tomb, which has a rudimentary face and no hands or feet. (6/n)
Wooden figurines from the region of Chu in the south were often more detailed and painted beautifully in lacquer, but they were still stylized representations, and rarely more than 30cm in height. (7/n)
Wang Chong 's Lunheng comes to mind
Especially Ch 76 Sacrifices to the Departed—Siyi 祀義
But also Ch 67 Simplicity of Funerals—Bozang 薄葬
(Like me, he must have been dyslexic, perhaps that why I ekil mih ¡ 😎)
For ToC see
quirinpress.com/ISBN/9781922...
P.P.S.
On making dummies for the dead, here is the opening pp. of Ch 67
See 2nd paragraph on p. 684
'pologies for 5am [AU time] rambling, i'll stoop now😎‼️
Thank you very much for this thread, a like and a repost doesn’t come close to express how much I liked it.
The interplay between the material culture and the written record is fascinating.
