Taiyuan unearthed Spring and Autumn Wuguo bronze ware and related problems
Shanghai Wenbo Series, 2010.03 Li Xiating
During the Spring and Autumn Period, wu bronzes were excavated in Jindi, such as the Wu Wang Fu Cha Jian excavated from Mengwang Village in Dai Prefecture, Shanxi, the Wu Wang Lightsaber unearthed from YuanpingZhiyu, the Prince Yu Ge unearthed in Wanrong Miaoqian Village, the Wu Wang Gufa Sword unearthed in Yushe, and the Wu Wangfu Chajian and Sword unearthed in Hui County, Henan. Mr. Zhang Hao, Tao Zhenggang, Lao Bomin and others have a special article on this in detail (1), which will not be repeated here, and now only the newly excavated Wu bronze ware in Taiyuan will be introduced.
At the end of the 1980s, the Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology and the Taiyuan Municipal Cultural Management Commission excavated a number of ancient tombs in Jinsheng Village, the southern suburbs of Taiyuan, of which the M251 Spring and Autumn Tomb was eye-catching, and the owner of the tomb was Zhao Martin (Zhao Jianzi), the ruling secretary of the Jin Dynasty in the late Spring and Autumn Period. The excavation report was published in 1994 and, for various reasons, the excavation report at the time reported only the information on the tomb (2).
In 1994, in the slope of one hundred and ten meters east of M251 was found a number of Eastern Zhou tombs, of which 4 are bronze tombs, the tomb owner may be Zhao Jianzi's clan or companion, the four tombs unearthed hundreds of bronzes, for various reasons, the excavation data has not been systematically sorted out, the vast majority of bronzes have not been repaired, in this batch of bronzes, found several pieces of Wu bronze with inscriptions, after the conquest of the excavation host Huiyun, here is the early introduction and discussion.
Wu Wangfu Chajian
Tomb No. 673 of Jinsheng Village was excavated, the same pair, a piece of residue has not been repaired, renovated a piece of 38.5 high, caliber 62.7 cm (M673:1), with symmetrical animal ear rings, jian neck decorated with horizontal scales, abdomen decorated with cockroach patterns and hanging leaf patterns, the inner wall of the vessel has an inscription of three lines and 13 words: "Attack Wu Wangfu sent Qijijin to make his own imperial book." (Figure 1)
Covered
Tomb No. 674 of Jinsheng Village was excavated, the same as 3 pieces, broken, all repaired, according to observations they are of different sizes, perhaps a set of columns, the specimen in the figure (M674:3) restored to a height of 53.5, caliber 42.8 cm, covered with 3 animal-shaped buttons, the cover has a silk cord pattern collar, the instrument and cover are buckled with a mother-daughter buckle, there are ornaments on the inside and outside of the ear, the high foot outer skim, the heel is decorated with animal face patterns, the inner wall of the ding has two lines of inscriptions, the inscription seems to be filed, so it is unclear and difficult to interpret, but the left side vaguely seems to have the word "King Wu", The shape and ornamentation are typical of the late Spring and Autumn Wu style. In particular, the ornamentation is a fine S-shaped pattern unique to Wuguo bronze ware (Figure 2).
About Wu Wangfu Chajian
In addition to the above two newly excavated pieces, there are 4 more known pieces, including 1 excavated in Mengwang Village, Dai Prefecture, Shanxi during the Tongzhi Period of the Qing Dynasty, and 3 pieces unearthed in Hui County, Henan Province in the 30s and 40s of the last century. The whereabouts of the Daizhou excavators are unknown, and it is said that they have been lost overseas, and only rubbings exist in the Beijing Library. Of the 3 pieces unearthed in Hui County, Henan Province, 1 is now in the National Museum, and the other 2 are now in the Shanghai Museum (3). On all 6 Wu Wangfu Chajian, there is the same 13-character inscription: "Attack Wu Wangfu Cha Qi ji jin to make his own imperial jian", but the number of inscription lines is two lines and three lines (Figure 3).
From the styling point of view, the six pieces of Fu Cha Jian can be divided into two modes, Taiyuan 2 pieces are a model, the main feature is the double animal ear ring, the ornament is the single-layer flat carved cockroach pattern, heavy ring pattern and hanging leaf pattern that prevailed in the middle and late Spring and Autumn Period; the other 4 pieces of Fu Cha Jian are another mode, that is, 4 ears, of which 2 ears are the double ring of the animal head, 2 ears are tiger-shaped ears, and the body ornament is the emerging multi-layer embossed feather pattern and hanging leaf pattern in the late Spring and Autumn Period, and although the last 4 instruments are the same pattern, the size and ornamentation details are slightly different (Table 1, Figure 4, 5, 6).
It is worth noting that Daizhou Fuchajian only has two ears, but through comparative research, combined with the weld marks on the abdomen of Daizhou Fuchajian, it is speculated that it should have had a pair of tiger-shaped ears, or later fell off, or was not welded at that time and is not known. In short, from the perspective of modeling and ornamentation, Daizhou Fu chajian and Huixian fu chajian should be the same model, but they are slightly different in size and ornament details.
However, in the inscription format, Taiyuan Fu Cha Jian and Dai Zhou Fu Cha Jian are like one model, that is, three lines of 13 characters, read left; Huixian Fu Cha Jian is two lines of 13 characters, read right. Nevertheless, the contents and fonts of the inscriptions of the 6 inscriptions are identical, indicating that these inscriptions are from the same workshop of the same period, but the same inscriptions are used on utensils of different shapes, in other words, the inscriptions can be selectively used for different utensils.
In addition to the above 6 pieces of Fu Cha Jian, the author has seen a large bronze jian (Figure 7) in the Beijing Capital Museum, its shape is almost exactly the same as the Huixian Fu Cha Jian, but the size is unknown, it is said that the jian is intercepted smuggled cultural relics, the time and place of excavation are unknown, and no inscription has been found, but it is produced in the same period Wu Guo Should undoubtedly, it seems that Wu Guo once cast a lot of this shape of the jian.
About Wu-style Gaiding
Due to geographical relations, Wu-style Ding and Jin-style Ding are quite different in shape, and closer to Chu-style Ding. As was common in the period, the Jin-style cover is mostly flat and spherical, the whole resembles a persimmon, the feet are thick and short, and the ornamentation is mostly a wide-bodied animal pattern. The common Wu-style cover is a flat top, a deeper abdomen, a slender appearance of the feet, and a very fine ornament. In particular, the S-shaped pattern is considered to be unique to the Wu kingdom (Figure 8), but this ornament is also occasionally found on the bronze vessels excavated from Jindi, such as the copper boat unearthed by Liu Zhuang in Yuanping," which is the most common type of vessel in Jindi during the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, and is almost absent in the Wuyue region, so it should be a Jin system and a product of the integration of Jin-Wu culture (Figure 9).
Jindi Wuqi related issues
Together with the two new pieces from Taiyuan, a total of 6 pieces are known to have ming Wu WangFu's messenger. They all came from the territory of the Jin State at the time of the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, but they were rare outside the Jin Dynasty.
Although the six pieces of Fu Cha Jian all indicate that Fu Cha is "self-acting", it is not necessarily fu cha for his own use, and at the same time, it shows that the number of Fu Cha Jian cast by Wu Guo at that time was far more than these. In addition, there are still many bronzes cast with the name of Wu Wangfucha, in addition to the ceremonial instruments such as Jian and Lu, there are more than 10 copper swords (5), which naturally cannot be the exclusive property of Fu Cha, but more like today's registered trademarks, or symbols of royal workshop products when Fu Cha was in power. Relatively speaking, the proportion of inscriptions in the bronze ware of the Wu kingdom is large, and the makers are mostly members of the royal family and nobles, and it seems that the production and domination of the bronze ware of the Wu kingdom is under the high control of the royal family. The quality of the bronze ware seen is also very good, most of them are practical instruments.
Spring and Autumn Jinguo bronze ware is less likely to have inscriptions, known to have inscription bronze ware in the Jinguo Gongfu only see the Early Spring and Autumn Jin Jiang Ding and Jin Gongdian, the bronze artifacts from the cemetery of the Jinguo Gongfu in the new Liuquan Jinguo Gongfu also have no inscriptions, and there are also only a few inscriptions belonging to the Jin Guoqing Doctor. Early inscriptions inherited the tradition of the Western Zhou Dynasty, often have the name of the maker, the number of late inscriptions gradually decreased, and there is no name of the maker, some of the name of the master of the instrument is only a pronoun, such as "The Bird of the Son", "Zhi Junzi Jian", etc., in short, the few Eastern Zhou Jin State inscription bronze ware relative to thousands of huge Jin dynasty bronze ware is really rare, even such as Taiyuan Jinsheng Village M251, Jixian Shanbiao Town M1, Huixian Liulige M60 such large Jinqing tombs (6), the bronze artifacts produced are also rare inscriptions, It is impossible to provide direct evidence of the identity of the tomb owners, so these tomb owners are still debated to this day.
Existing data show that the Jinguo has more inscribed bronze ware more refined, no inscription bronze ware is more than a bright ware, generally rough, even if the Jinsheng Village M251 such a large tomb excavation of bronze often has unfilled sand holes, such as the tomb out of the 4 large square pot and 4 pieces of copper jian that is left with sand holes and unpurgeed fan soil, this situation is not limited to Taiyuan, in other places in Jindi are common, so these bronzes may be designed for sacrifice or burial.
At present, there are thousands of bronzes in the Jin Dynasty during the Spring and Autumn Period, and the vast majority of them should be produced in Xintian (today's Houma). Although the Jin state in the middle and late Spring and Autumn Period was politically "politically out of many doors", its bronze culture was the same, from Linyi Cheng Village to Hou Ma Ma, from Hun Yuan Li Yu to Taiyuan Jinsheng Village, from Changzhi Watershed to Huixian Liuli Pavilion... The bronzes seen in the Spring and Autumn Period are similar to those produced by Xintian, which may reflect one side of the production and domination of bronze in the Jin Dynasty, that is, no one in the Jin Dynasty can absolutely control the dominance of bronze, and the way of copper possession may be rationed, purchased or exchanged according to hierarchical power and strength. From the jin state burial bronze ware is mostly unused this point, they are likely to have the form of primary commodities, so the tomb unearthed bronze ware in addition to a few belonging to the deceased's favorite utensils, such as specially customized "getware" and weapons, most of the ceremonial tools should be through the purchase or exchange of openware, only with the differentiation of the domestic politics of the Jin dynasty, the strong family themselves cast copper ware has become possible. In short, if the production of bronze ware in the State of Wu is compared to "Wang Youzhi", can the production of bronze ware in the Jin Dynasty be regarded as "state-owned system" or "state-owned system"?
As for the addition of Wu bronzes in Jin, there have been many expositions by scholars of previous generations, such as Mr. Dai Zunde: "During the Jin and Wu dynasties, through alliances, envoys, and concubines, it was very likely that jin and Wu bronzes were introduced to each other by means of gifts, bribes, etc." (7), Mr. Zhang Said: "At the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, there was Yanling Jade among the Zhao Xiangzi conspirators of the Jin Dynasty, and there was Yanling Jun among the Zhao Xiaocheng kings during the Warring States period, and during the Western Han Dynasty, there was Yanling County (the land was in Datongtian Town, Shanxi), according to the "Tongzhi Clan Strategy", because Wu Jizi lived in Yanling, and then he thought that he was a clan. From these clues, it can be inferred that after the fall of the State of Wu by the State of Yue, the clan of Yanling Jizi fled to the Three Jins region and there were many people who served as servants, so it is very likely that the Wu State Sect Instrument was brought to today's Shanxi region."