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Didactic Art in Han China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2009

Michael Loewe
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Extract

As is usual in texts which were composed more as panegyrics than as strict historical records, the epitaph inscription for Wu Liang , who died at the age of 74 in A.D. 151, tells of his virtues and his qualities as a scholar. But in common with a number of famous men of ability and learning of his time, such as Zhang Heng (78–139), Ma Rong (79–166) or Wang Fu (c. 90–165), Wu Liang showed a persistent reluctance to serve in an official capacity, preferring to devote himself to a study of history and philosophy. In all probability he felt, like the others, that in the prevailing political circumstances, it was not possible both to embark on an official career and to retain a measure of personal integrity. Be that as it may, other members of his family evidently felt no such scruples; his nephew Wu Ban , for example, was appointed to be chief clerk at Dunhuang.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , April 1991 , pp. 93 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1991

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References

1 Hung, Wu, The Wu Liang Shrine: the Ideology of Early Chinese Pictorial Art, pp. xxiii, 412, 151 figs, map. Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 1989. US $60.00.Google Scholar

2 See Loewe, Michael, “The failure of the Confucian ethic in later Han times”, forthcoming in Kuhfus, Peter M. (ed.), China: Dimensionen der Geschichte. Festschrift für Tielmann Grimm anlässlich seiner Emeritierung (Tübingen, 1990).Google Scholar

3 Hou Han shu (Peking, 1965), pp. 1843f.Google Scholar

4 For a recent study of the Queen Mother and her iconography, see Minao, Hayashi Kan dai no kamigami (Kyoto, 1990), pp. 97–126.Google Scholar

5 For representations of the Queen on Han mirrors, see Loewe, Michael, Ways to Paradise: the Chinese Quest for Immortality (London, 1979), pp. 101, 151, notes 74, 75, 163, 168 and 186, s.v. X 1004Google Scholar. A photograph of that mirror appears in Shodó zenshú vol. 2 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1958) no. 29Google Scholar. Its features differ from those of regular TLV mirrors of Wang Mang's time in the following respects: the centre is circular rather than square; there are 7 in place of 12 central bosses; the TLV lines are incomplete, with no Ls; there is no representation of the animal symbols of the four shen; only one side of the Queen Mother's sheng is depicted; the outer inscription is in archaised style, rather than the usual li shu; and the inscription reads in an anti-clockwise direction. In addition, specification of a particular year is highly suspect.

6 E.g. see no. 182, from Jiaxiang , in bowuguan, Shandon and yanjiuso, Shandong wenwu kaogu (ed.), Shandong Han hua xiangshi xuanji (Qilu she, 1982).Google Scholar