Siyang Fangzun is the largest Fangzun among the existing Shang Dynasty bronzes in mainland China, it is 58.3 cm high, weighs 34.5 kg, the body is square, the mouth edge is open, it is trumpet-shaped, the abdomen is bulging, and the square circle foot is square. The whole artifact is dark and shiny, decorated with banana leaf patterns, hammer patterns, and animal face patterns on the four sides, and four three-dimensional dragon patterns coiled around the shoulders, and the dragon head protrudes in the middle of the four sides.
The most delicate part of this figure is the four curled horn sheep's head, the sheep's head and the sheep's neck are extended, the abdomen is the front breast of the sheep, the leg of the lamb is attached to the high circle foot, the back and chest of the sheep are decorated with scales, the legs are decorated with phoenix patterns, and the circle feet are decorated with dragon patterns and cloud thunder patterns.
The ornamental lines of the whole utensil are strong and smooth, the shape is new and chic, and the movement is static, and the flat image is combined with the three-dimensional sculpture, so that the utensils and animal shapes are relied on, and the peaceful and gentle character characteristics of the sheep are portrayed vividly and appropriately. In particular, the zun mouth of the four sheep fangzun is very large, close to the height of the body, and the four-legged sheep designed in the four corners of the zun make the whole artifact become stable, without the feeling of top-heavy, and increase the momentum of majesty, worthy of being the king of honor.
The word "Zun" in the Siyang Fangzun indicates that its use is a wine container, often used with "Yi" as a group of bronze ceremonial vessels. Such utensils were mainly popular in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, generally round, bulging abdomen, large mouth, and there were also a few square figures. The basic shape of the zun is open, high neck, round or square abdomen, and high circle feet. The casting of bronze zuns was in the late Shang Dynasty to the early Western Zhou Dynasty, mainly square zuns and Yao-style zuns, which were decorated with raised ridges, and the body was carved with intricate cloud thunder patterns, animal face patterns, banana leaf patterns, and the whole artifact gave people a sense of majesty and thickness.
During the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, sacrifices were an important part of people's daily lives, and their sacrifices were very solemn, and they would drink happily after each sacrifice. Therefore, many wine utensils have also become sacrificial utensils, and zun is slowly developed from the initial wine container to the ritual vessel for sacrifice.
The honorific becoming a sacrificial vessel casts a mysterious color over it. The integration of the image of the sheep into the production of zun has a special significance in the ancient culture of the mainland. Among the Excavated Shang Zhou bronzes, many of them used sheep as a representation object, and its status in the sacrificial ceremony was second only to that of cattle. In a material about the sacrifice of Wuding by the Shang royal family to Wuding during the Shang Dynasty, it is mentioned that "hundred dogs and hundred sheep are used", and another material mentions "fifteen sheep" and "fifty sheep", which shows that sheep were used in large quantities in sacrifice.
In people's impressions, the sheep has always been the image of kindness and courtesy, softness and inner rigidity; the habit of the sheep "kneeling milk" has become a model of filial piety to parents in later generations. An ancient Chinese unicorn is also believed to be related to sheep, monsters have only one horn, but can distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil. Later, the unicorn evolved into a symbol of law and justice. In the folk, since the Han Dynasty, sheep have been associated with auspiciousness. On the inscriptions of some ancient artifacts, the auspicious is directly written as "auspicious sheep". This is not only a word-to-word falsification, but also reflects the love of sheep since ancient times.
In addition, many primitive peoples worshiped horned animals, and sheep met this standard. There are about forty ways to write sheep in the oracle bone, and the most obvious common feature of the glyph is the protruding double horn. In Yixue studies, sheep is borrowed as a symbol of "yang", and "sanyang kaitai" is often used as an auspicious word at the beginning of the year, symbolizing the renewal of all things. In the Western tradition, goat horn also symbolizes the "sun", which is similar to the Chinese "Sanyang Kaitai" theory.
On the mainland, sheep also represent a "and" culture, "Zhong Lu and Ze Yu Sheep See". Guangzhou has a famous legend of the five sheep, and in Jin Peiyuan's "Record of Guangzhou", it can be seen that the relevant record is "the valley of the five sheep, gathered in the Chu Ting".
The Four Sheep Fangzun is a masterpiece of sheep as the object of artistic expression, which on the one hand retains the original totem worship; on the other hand, it is used as a substitute for sheep to sacrifice the meaning of the gods, and also contains the author's expectation for the prosperity of livestock breeding. Perhaps, the various legends about sheep in later generations are derived from this.
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