The Chinese Hill Censer, boshan lu : A Note on Origins, Influences and Meanings

Arts asiatiques

The Chinese Hill Censer, boshan lu : A Note on Origins, Influences and Meanings Jessica Rawson

Citer ce document / Cite this document : Rawson Jessica. The Chinese Hill Censer, boshan lu : A Note on Origins, Influences and Meanings. In: Arts asiatiques, tome 61, 2006. pp. 75-86; doi : https://doi.org/10.3406/arasi.2006.1640 https://www.persee.fr/doc/arasi_0004-3958_2006_num_61_1_1640 Fichier pdf généré le 21/04/2018

Résumé Alors que les brûle-parfums sont bien connus dans l'Asie de l'Ouest aux époques anciennes, ils ne semblent pas avoir été en usage en Chine avant les VIe ou Ve siècles avant notre ère, époque où ils sont encore rares. Cet article est consacré à l'introduction en Chine d'un type particulier de brûleparfum dont le couvercle conique en forme de montagne repose sur la coupe où se trouvait l'encens.

Généralement, le pied est haut et peut représenter une créature étrange soutenant la montagne. Cette forme peu commune a souvent été considérée comme le développement d'un type plus ancien ayant un couvercle en dôme de faible hauteur. Dans cet article, il est suggéré que ce brûle-parfum en forme de montagne a été conçu sur le modèle de brûle-parfums utilisés dans l'empire achéménide. Certains de ceux-ci sont connus par la sculpture de Persepolis tandis que d'autres exemples, en argent, proviennent de Lydie. Ils ont un haut couvercle conique fermant une petite coupe soutenue par un haut pied. Il est important de noter que des oiseaux sont perchés au sommet des brûle-parfums iraniens, une caractéristique qui se trouve aussi sur les pièces chinoises. Il y a eu beaucoup d'échanges entre les aires couvertes aujourd'hui par la Chine et par l'Iran, le lien se faisant par la voie de la Sibérie. Des représentations du type achéménide figurent sur des textiles provenant de Pazyryk dans les Altaï. Les Chinois adoptèrent ces formes exotiques pour leurs brûle-parfums une fois seulement que la coutume de brûler de l'encens y eut été bien établie, lorsqu'ils eurent reconnu la fonction de cet objet d'origine étrangère. De plus, la forme de la montagne et le support de celle-ci sont de pures interprétations chinoises. Ces caractéristiques illustrent une croyance selon laquelle les montagnes étaient des lieux où vivaient les immortels. De fait, les brûle-parfums ont probablement été conçus comme représentant les îles imaginaires de la mer orientale où l'on pensait que vivaient les immortels. Lorsque les humains approchaient de ces îles, elles disparaissaient sous les vagues. Les créatures qui portaient ces montagnes à bout de bras pourraient avoir été conçues afin de montrer comment les îles apparaissaient et disparaissaient tour à tour.

Abstract While incense burners were well known in ancient Western Asia, they do not seem to have been used in China before the sixth or fifth centuries BC. Even then, they were rare. The paper explores the introduction to China of one particular type of incense burner, the so-called hill censer. This burner had a coni- cal cover shaped like a mountain sitting on the bowl in which the incense was placed. Such censers often had a tall stem, sometimes shaped like a strange creature, seemingly holding up the mountain. This unusual shape has often been discussed as a simple development from an earlier censer type with a low domed cover. The paper suggests that the censer in the shape of the mountain was in fact stimulated by the example of censors employed in the Achaemenid Empire. Some are known from the sculptures at Persepolis and others from silver censers from Lydia. These censers have tall conical covers on a small bowl supported on a tall stem. Importantly, the Iranian censers had small birds on the top of the covers, something also seen on the Chinese pieces. There was much exchange between the areas of present-day China and Iran by way of Siberia. Illustrations of the Achaemenid type of censer appear on textiles from Pazyryk in the Altai Moun- tains. The Chinese only adopted these exotic shapes for their censers when the practices of burning incense were already well established. That is, when they recognised the purpose of the foreign artefact. Moreover, the mountain shape and its supports were entirely Chinese interpretations and illustrate a belief that mountains were the homes of immortals. Indeed the censers may have been intended to represent the imaginary islands in the east- ern sea thought to be the homes of immortals. When humans approached the islands they disappeared below the waves. The creatures, acting as supports and holding up the mountains, may therefore have been thought to explain the way in which the mountainous isles may have appeared and disappeared.

JESSICA RAWSON

Introduction history.1 In China, By contrast, censers oftheail ancient types hâve andanmédiéval uneven and societies unusual in Central and Western Asia, and indeed in Europe consistently burnt aromatic woods and herbs, what we call incense. We do not know whether or not the courts of the early Chinese dynasties, the Shang (c. 1500-c. 1050 BC) and the Zhou (c. 1050-221 BC), made scented smoke by burning woods or grasses. No spécifie containers hâve been identified, but that does not preclude the use of scented woods on an open fire. It is, however, clear that a new vogue for burning fuels that produced fragrances emerged in the late Eastern Zhou period, from at least the third century BC. As évidence we hâve a small, covered cup-shaped container on a high foot (fig. 1). The lid with an openwork pattern of dragons is of a type known from its Han descendants as belonging to an incense burner. It was found in a third century tomb at Shangwang, Linzi in Shandong province.2 A few similar pièces hâve been excavated.

Thèse incense burners may hâve had predecessors. It seems very likely that truncated bronze cônes in openwork, found in Chu tombs of the fifth to fourth centuries BC or in tombs adjacent to the Chu state, were used for holding burning, aromatic materials. But beyond the form we hâve no strong évidence.3 If thèse pièces were for incense, then they belong with a number of other Chu phenomena that hâve what seem to be connections with Siberia. Traces of incense, or indeed narcotics, hâve for example been found at the Altai site of Pazyryk.4 Herodotus is often cited for his comments on this subject with respect to the peoples he called the Scythians.

Among other Chu features that indicate contact with the north and west are gold as coins and as vessels, and a brief interest in lost wax casting.5 Thèse tantalising subjects hâve barely been examined.

Their relevance hère is to support the suggestion made in this paper that the most spectacular form of Chinese incense burner or container, the so-called hill censer of the Western

Han (206 BC-AD 8), owed its origins to examples from Western Asia transmitted to the Chinese-speaking area by way of Siberia or Central Asia.6 I shall support my hypothesis that sources of this category of incense burner lay in Western Asian examples, by suggesting that the hill censer belonged to a spécifie context. This had both a material and an ideological content. For the material, we shall look to other artefacts popular in the Han period among the élites that clearly had their origins in areas outside the Chinese-speaking world. In other words, the Han were more than ready to employ and remodel luxury goods from other régions, and the hill censer may hâve been one of the artefacts that resulted from such an appropriation. The context of the hill censer was also ideological, in that the Han assimilated this apparently exotic form within local Han concepts, namely those of the rôle of mountains in

Fig.l Bronze incense burner with an openwork cover from Shandong Linzi Shangwang.

Late Warring States Period, 3rd century BC. Height 8.2 cm.

After Shandong 1997, p. 30, fig. 22: 2.

Brûle-parfum en bronze avec un couvercle ajouré, provenant de Shangwan, district de linzi, Shandong.

Fin de la période des Royaumes combattants, m" s. av. J.-C, H. 8,2 cm.

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Fig. 2a Bronze incense burner inlaid with gold, from the tomb of Liu Sheng, King of Zhongshan at Hebei Mancheng.

Western Han period, 2nd century BC. Height 26 cm.

After Beying 1998, fig. 129.

Brûle-parfum en bronze incrusté d'or, provenant de la tombe de Liu Sheng, roi de Zhongshan, à Mancheng, Hebei.

Période des Han occidentaux, n"s. av. J.-C, H. 26 cm.

Fig. 2b Décor on the lid of the bronze incense burner inlaid with gold, from the tomb of Liu Sheng, King of Zhongshan at Hebei Mancheng.

Relevé du décor du couvercle du brûle-parfum en bronze incrusté d'or provenant de la tombe de liu Sheng, roi de Zhongshan, à Mancheng, Hebei.

Opposite: Fig. 3 Gilded bronze incense burner on a tall foot in the shape of a bamboo from the Maoling area at Shaanxi Xianyang.

Western Han period, 2nd century BC. Height 58 cm.

After Beijing 1998, fig. 130.

Ci-contre : Brûle-parfum en bronze doré monté sur un haut pied en forme de bambou, provenant du Maoling, près de Xianyang, Shaanxi.

Période des Han occidentaux, ir s. av. J.-C, H. 58 cm. the universe and of the power of immortals, as we shall see below. The topic of contact between the Han state and its near and distant neighbours is one that has much occupied Michèle Pirazzoli.7 1 offer this paper in acknowledgement of the major contributions that she has made in this area.

One of the most renowned examples of the hill censer type is also one of the ear.liest, namely a bronze inlaid with gold from the tomb of Liu Sheng, King of Zhongshan, buried at Mancheng in Hebei province in 113 BC (fig. 2).8 Craggy mountain peaks pierced with holes form a lid and give the container 76

its current name, hill censer, or in Chinese boshan lu. This was not how the censer was originally described; the term boshan lu was current only from the fifth century AD. The first textual références hâve been examined by Susan Erickson, whose extensive paper on the whole subject forms the basis for my account.9 Inscriptions on Western Han incense burners name them as xunlu, fragrant scent burner.

In Liu Sheng's pièce, the incense sat in a bowl, covered in fine scrolls terminating in small cloud-like forms. Hère, thèse scrolls probably represent waves that rise up in foaming peaks

waves, a visual explanation was thus offered as to how the islands could miraculously appear and disappear.

Two other censers are especially interesting. The most impressive is a gilded bronze pièce discovered near the tomb of Han Wudi and dated to 137 BC (fig. 3). Apart from its striking surface, the long slender stalk shaped as a bamboo is its most noteworthy feature. The bamboo appears to émerge from the jaws of a dragon, whose body forms the openwork foot of the censer. Three dragon heads and their scaly bodies branch out from the bamboo to support the underside of the bowl.11 The second is from the tomb of Dou Wan, consort of Liu Sheng, buried in an adjacent tomb at Mancheng (fig. 4a). A further version of miraculous support for the mountain is seen in this pièce. The bowl sits in the hand of a human-like figure, who

Fig. 4a Bronze incense burner held up by a figure seated on a turtle from the tomb of Dou Wan, consort of Liu Sheng, at Hebei Mancheng.

Western Han period, 2nd century BC. Height 32.3 cm.

After Beijing 1980, p. 256, fig. 170 and p. 257, fig. 171.

Brûle-parfum tenu par un personnage assis sur une tortue, provenant de la tombe de Dou Wan, épouse de liu Sheng, à Mancheng, Hebei.

Période des Han occidentaux, ne s. av. J.-C, H. 32,3 cm.

alongside the lower parts of the mountain. The third élément is an openwork foot of twisting dragons. Thèse seem to lift the mountain out of the foaming seas. This configuration may indicate that such incense burners were often intended to represent the islands of the immortals in the eastern sea.10 The islands known by the names of Penglai, Yingzhou and Fangzhang were thought to be sites where immortals cultivated herbs that coiild prevent death. It was said that when people approached them in boats, they disappeared below the sea.

With dragons supporting the mountain as it émerges from the

Fig. 4b Drawing of the lid of the incense burner in fig. 4a.

After Bejjing 1980, p. 257, fig. 171.

Relevé des motifs du couvercle du brûle-parfum reproduit en fig. 4a.

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Fig.5 Bronze incense burner from Luozhou in Hubei province.

Eastern Han period, lst-2nd century AD. Height 27 cm.

After Luozhou 2000, p. 111, fig. 75.

Brûle-parfum provenant de Luozhou, Hubei.

Période des Han orientaux, ior-ne s. de notre ère, H. 27 cm. rides on the back a turtle. The turtle is in a flat basin, in which traces of a design may hâve suggested water or further mysterious créatures.12 Quite frequently, this strange spirit-like figure is replaced by a bird standing on the turtle, as on less prestigious censers from Yangyuan in Hebei province and Shuo Xian in Shanxi.13 The turtle again draws our attention to the possibility that the mountain rosé out of the sea. Many of the surviving censers also hâve small birds perched on their mountain peaks.

Among such pièces are the censer from Yangyuan and one from Yongzhou city in Hunan province, which is supported by strange créatures on a conical base surrounded by animais (fig.5).14 The origins of the form Thèse hill censers appear relatively suddenly during the reign of Han Wudi (140-87 BC). They were used alongside the earlier form with a domed openwork cover, as, for example, in Dou Wan's tomb. In addition, the hill form was widely represented in later bronze and ceramic copies buried in tombs.15 A very similar mountain shape gained a place as the cover for the circular wine vessels, derived ultimately from a lacquer vessel type, known as a zun.16 The hypothesis presented hère is that this comparatively sudden and influential change in shape was facilitated by models presented by censers employed in Western and Central Asia. Such a form was recognised and appropriated within a local Chinese cluster of beliefs about mountains, already briefly mentioned.

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While incense burners emerged relatively late in the central Chinese state, as mentioned above, they had been widely used in Western Asia. The covered burners employed first by the Assyrians and later by the Achaemenids are shown in carved stone reliefs from their palaces at Nineveh and Persepolis.17 In particular, an Achaemenid relief from Persepolis shows an audience with an Achaemenid King (fig. 6). Two tall censers appear to one side and in front of the throne (this position may indicate that they stood either side of the throne).

Thèse hâve tall slender stands topped by horizontally ribbed collars with tall conical tops (fig. 7a). The Achaemenid type of censer seems to hâve had a very wide geographical distribution. A silver example with a stepped conical top of the Achaemenid type was found in Turkey, probably in a Lydian tomb (fig. 7b).18 Its inscription proclaims it as the property of the Goddess Artemis. The fine horizontal rings around the stem match those on the carved Achaemenid examples. Remains of a chain would hâve originally joined lid and stem. The conical shape, the chain and the small figure of a cock perched on the top of the cône seem to be features that may hâve been borrowed from such censers by the Chinese bronze casters.

The silver incense burner, and those seen in thèse reliefs, belong to a tradition of incense burners that extended from Iran to Egypt and further westwards to Greece, Etruria and Rome and eastwards to the Scythians, and to parts of the north-west of the Indian sub-continent. They were in use over many hundreds of years. Among the more westerly examples is a censer that is supported on small bar rising from the head of a standing figure (fig. 8a). Hère may be the kind of censer that inspired the bronze from the tomb of Dou Wan (fig. 4a).

Fig.6 A stone relief at the Persépolis Treasury, showing a Royal Audience with Artaxerxes I, with two incense burners in front of the throne. 6th-5th century BC. Courtesy of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., Gift of Ernst Herzfeld.

Relief en pierre sculptée provenant du Trésor de Persépolis, montrant une audience royale à la cour de Artaxerxes Ier, avec deux brûle-parfums placés devant le trône, w-v6 s. av. J.-C.

Fig. 7a Drawing of two incense burners from a relief at the Persépolis Treasury.

Drawing by Mélanie Steiner.

Dessin des deux brûle-parfums représentés sur le relief du Trésor de Persépolis.

Fig. 7b Silver incense burner probably from a Lydian tomb in Turkey.

Achaemenid type, 6th-5th century BC. Height 28.8 cm.

After Ozgen and Oztûrk 1996, no. 71.

Brûle-parfum en argent provenant sans doute d'une tombe lydienne en Turquie.

Type achéménide, w-vs. av. J.-C, H. 28,8 cm.

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Fig. 8a Bronze incense burner from Umm Udheinah at Amman, Jordan.

Height approximately 30 cm.

With repositioned cap alongside.

After KhaUl 1986, flg. 1.

Drawing by Mélanie Steiner.

Brûle-parfum provenant de Umm Udheinah à Aman, Jordanie.

H. env. 30 cm.

Fig. 8b Bronze incense burner from the Menil Collection.

After Invernizzi 1997, fig. 11.

Drawing by Mélanie Steiner.

Brûle-parfum, collection Menil, États-Unis.

This censer from Umm Udheinah in Jordan is, like the Achaemenid pièces, considerably earlier than the bronzes and ceramics in China.19 Another Western censer relevant to the early experiments made with Chinese hill censers is one from Turkey now in the Menil Collection (fig. 8b). This pièce, which may be fourth to second century BC in date, has the stepped lid characteristic of the Achaemenid versions, but this time crowned by an animal rather than a bird. Its thin tall stem and small branches that support the bowl seem to be possible prototypes for the Han example from near the Maoling (fig. 3). In the Chinese version, the stem has been translated into a bamboo, and the supports for the bowl are shown as dragons. The Menil collection pièce is supported on a stand with three legs, as is the bronze from Jordan.

This Western Asian tradition of incense burners, therefore, provides the following features that seem to hâve been incorporated in some, though not ail, Chinese examples. Most important was the conical cover that could be reinterpreted as a mountain. A small cock on the tip of the cover and a chain linking the two main parts were also récurrent features of the Chinese versions. The censers tended to hâve a tall stem, but this could be replaced by a figure or by a bar-like support.

There is at least one surviving intermediary between the Chinese and the Iranian and other Western Asian bronzes. A textile from Pazyryk shows, what is clearly, a closely related censer standing on the ground between figures (fig. 9).20 As we shall see below, tombs in the Altai Mountains préserve much material that suggests that Iranian and Central Asian artefacts had been taken eastwards and were available to be copied, in due course, by Chinese craftsmen and their nomadic neighbours. And, indeed, during the fourth and third centuries, animal motifs, seen on wood carvings at Pazyryk, occur on bronzes and jades in the central Chinese area.21 Exotica in Qin and Han China There is plenty of évidence that the third, second and first centuries BC were periods when fashions and artefact catégories typical of Central and Western Asia were absorbed by the inhabitants of the area we now call China.22 Liu Sheng's tomb and the tomb of the second King of Nan Yue (c. 122 BC), in present-day Guangzhou, contain objects that are clear évidence of this contact with the West. A jade rhyton and a silver box with looped repoussé décoration, both in the tomb at Guangzhou, are obvious examples.23 A similar silver pièce has corne from Shandong.24 The tomb at Shangwang, already mentioned, contained a gold pendant or ear-ring decorated with fine granulation, a Western technique, clearly originating outside China. Liu Sheng, himself, owned a pair of strange bronze félines that resemble the Central Asian versions of the figure of the Egyptian goddess Tauert.25 Many élite tombs contained belt plaques and similar ornaments that were versions of the animal plaques of the northern and western periphery.26 Rectangular belt fittings in the Guangzhou tomb appear to hâve been made locally, adapting motifs typical of the Ordos area and further west.27 Other tombs of high ranking élites in the second century BC contained larger and more even sumptuous gold or gilded belt plaques presenting animal motifs that resembled those from the Altai, south Siberia, and Central Asia.28 Scènes of animais and mountains

Fig. 9 Drawing of a textile from tombs at Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains, South Siberia, showing a censer standing on the ground between figures seen in profile. After Ozgen and Oztiirk 1996, p. 117, fig. 152.

Relevé des motifs d'un tissu provenant de Pazyryk, dans l'Altaï, Sibérie méridionale, montrant un brûle-parfum posé sur le sol entre des personnages vus de profil.

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Thèse plaques and other ornaments and vessels indicate a context of foreign luxury goods that were adopted and adapted by the Han. The plaques just mentioned hâve another direct relevance to hill censers. For if we examine the detailed surface ornament of the bronze from Dou Wan's tomb, we find scènes of men and animais that match those on the belt-

Fig. 10a Drawings of cast motifs on a gilded and bejewelled MU censer in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. After Wenley 1947 and Erickson 1996, fig. la.

Relevé des motifs d'un brûle-parfum en bronze doré et rehaussé d'incrustations. plaques from present-day northern China and Inner Mongolia (fig. 4b). The scènes on the incense burner lid, from left to right, show: a man confronting a beast, a man leading a cart, a man and animal in combat, a single full-frontal créature, a lion or tiger attacking a bovine créature, and a féline climbing among the crags. Similar subjects are seen on other hill censers (fig. 10a) and can be matched by motifs current in Western Asia and on bronze ornaments from what I prefer to call the periphery (though to the peoples concerned the margins of the Chinese speaking world were probably their centre). In particular, animais in combat with men, men leading carts and animais in combat with one another are found among the Ordos plaques excavated over the last twenty-five years in régions to the north and west of the main central states (fig. 10b).29

Fig. 11 Drawings of animal figures on a silver alabastron from a tomb in Lydia contemporary with that in which the silver incense burner in figure 7 was probably found. Achaemenid period, 6th-5th century BC. After Ozgen and Ozturk 1996, no. 78.

Relevés d'animaux figurés sur un alabastre en argent provenant d'une tombe en Lydie, contemporaine de celle dans laquelle le brûle-parfum reproduit en fig. 7 a probablement été trouvé. Période achéménide, w-v s. av. J.-C.

Fig. 10b Drawings of bronze plaques found in the Ordos area that carry scènes with animal motifs that are shared with the motifs on some hill censers, such as that in fig. 4 above.

4th-2nd century BC: a) a tiger devouring a horned animal; b) a horse-like créature sprouting horns with birds'heads among a number of other créatures; c) a cart, horses and men in a landscape; d) paired ibex below trees; e) paired camels in a landscape. After Beijing 1986, figs.

45: 3, 46: 4, 61: 3; 64: 1; 64: 4 (note in order of original publication).

Relevés des motifs de plaques en bronze découvertes dans les Ordos, figurant des scènes avec un décor animalier comparable au décor de quelques brûle-parfums comme celui reproduit en fig. 4, iv-ne s. av. J.-C. : a) tigre dévorant un animal cornu; b) créature en forme de cheval avec des cornes d'où émergent des têtes d'oiseaux, figurée parmi plusieurs autres créatures ; c) char, chevaux et personnages dans un paysage ; d) deux ibex sous des arbres ; e) deux chameaux dans un paysage.

The incense burner from Dou Wan's tomb is by no means the only one with this range of embellishment. A fine, bejewelled example from the Freer Gallery, Washington, is of a quality similar to that of the fine Impérial examples discussed and carries exactly the same range of motifs.30 But many others, both excavated in China and those now in Western collections, illustrate the same motifs.

Scènes of animais in combat can, like the censers themselves, be traced back to Western Asia, where indeed the thème has very ancient origins. The subject occurs as early as 3000 BC in Mesopotamia and continued as a common subject right down to the Achaemenid Empire and beyond.31 From the latter period dates an alabastron from the same région of Lydia in Turkey as the censer illustrated above (fig. 11). This pièce

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carries incised ornament of animais, including animais in combat of the types seen on the censer. Other pièces of metalwork from the Lydian tombs and Achaemenid sites in Iran and southern Russia are alive with thèse same subjects. One of the pièces from the Lydian area carries the subject of a man confronting a féline seen on the hill censers. And as Michael Sullivan suggested many years ago, the ancient Near East may also hâve provided examples of the scènes in which animais were set in a mountainous landscape.32 In his discussion, Sullivan cited example of bowls from Nimrud now in the British Muséum.

Meanings The discussion so far has indicated that both the use of incense and of the conical lidded censer may hâve come to China from the West, although at différent times. But if indeed the conical lid was borrowed, the exact form and the meanings of the form — rendered by the Han as a mountain —were almost certainly entirely local.33 It would appear that the Chinese-speaking world did not take over the conical lid turning it into a mountain-peak until the Han could fit this form into their ideological or cosmological framework. As Susan Erickson has indicated in her assessment of the censers, following Rolf Stein and Lothar Ledderose, the tall mountain form probably functioned as a microcosm.34 The préoccupation with landscape microcosms in parks, tombs and artefacts is well attested by several major construction projects. Foremost is the great tomb of the First Emperor. Similar évidence is found in the Impérial Parks that were intended to replicate the mountains and rivers of the Four Quarters of the world.35 I hâve argued elsewhere that two major interests were at work at this time. The first of thèse was a préoccupation with what one might call a systematic universe. One salient feature of this systematic universe is what is called corrélative cosmology, in which several séries of phenomena were linked in sets of fours and fives. More significant was an account of the underlying structure in the Dao, with the forces of qi, yin and yang and the Five Phases ensuring alternation and change.

The model or plan underlying such a scheme was a geometrically ordered universe based upon a square earth and a circular heaven. The features of the heavens and earth were matched to this geometry, if somewhat schematically. Five sacred mountains were thought to punctuate the earth. Probably there had long been notions of important mountains as locations for spirits and deities. But thèse mountains were now brought into the Impérial control and given a firm géométrie rôle in the universe.36 A quite separate tradition seems to hâve linked the figures of xian, translated into English as immortals, with some additional peaks. During the Han two distinct régions were significant: the western mountains thought to be the home of the Queen Mother of the West and the mountains on the islands of the eastern sea, Penglai, Yingzhou and Fangzhang, already mentioned. Sima Qian's famous history, the Shiji, describes thèse islands in the context of the searches set up by the First Emperor and Han Wudi to seek and obtain herbs that would 82

enable them to escape death or, in English, gain immortality.37 While some hâve suggested that the hill censer represented a central sacred mountain, I return to the proposai that the imagery of a mountain contained on an island arising from the sea would appear to refer to the islands in the eastern sea.

If that is the case, then the burning of incense in such censers might hâve invoked the search for contact with immortals on those islands.38 Such a link might also explain the relatively sudden appearance of the hill censers. For while the First Emperor may indeed hâve sent deputations to the islands, it was, perhaps, only in the reign of Han Wudi, the time when the Shiji was finally composed, that thèse ideas were given a formal account. The coïncidence of the writing of the text and the invention of the censer indicates that a concern with sites where immortals might be found was of pressing urgency at the time. As so little concrète évidence of the immortal isles was available, we can understand the censer as being developed to fill a need to represent the invisible concretely for the believers of the day, to make the invisible, visible. To do so the Han seemed to hâve turned to artefacts from the periphery, ever more accessible to them, that made a vocabulary of new forms available for relatively new concepts.

During the reign of Han Wudi, military expéditions to the west no doubt brought the Han into contact with the peoples of Central Asia.39 At the same time the incursions of the Xiongnu also put exotic artefacts near at hand. Both the Xiongnu tombs and those at Pazyryk, already mentioned, contained Chinese artefacts, but also those that showed the close connections of thèse peoples with lands to the west, even as far west as Mesopotamia.40In Han period China, the peoples of thèse border régions were often portrayed in sculptures and tomb reliefs with pointed caps, also seen on so-called Saka or Scythian tribesmen in the Persepolis reliefs.41 Occasionally

Fig. 12 Drawing of a bronze lamp supported by a figure wearing a peaked cap.

Han dynasty, 2nd-lst century BC. Height 23.4 cm.

Formerly Eskenazi London.

Drawing by Métairie Steiner.

Relevé d'une lampe en bronze soutenue par un personnage portant un bonnet pointu.

Dynastie Han, ne-iBr s. av. J.-C, H. 23,4 cm.

Section A-A

Section B-B

Section C-C il

Fig. 13s.Ozgen 6th-5th After Drawing Relevé vie-ve deav.century ofdeux by J.-C. aMélanie and pairtombes BC. Oztûrk of Steiner. stone en1996, linedp. tombs pierre 48-49. à Ikztepe, at <kiztepe en Lydie, in Turkey.

Turquie,Lydia,

such figures in foreign dress were used to support lamps, perhaps an indication that lamps, like hill censers, had connections with the West (fig. 12).42 Foreigners are also described in the Han fu, or rhapsodies, that give an account of the known world, including the strange and wonderful.

It is a modem way of thinking to see a country we know as China as having a discrète boundary, beyond which lay a 'foreign' world. To the Chinese-speaking peoples of the day, it seems that they saw the universe, of which they were the central part, as extending in ail directions. Distant peoples and their products that were beyond the immédiate state borders were simply part of the same universe. Where they provided materials and artefacts that the Qin and Han prized, they adopted them. If necessary, the Qin and Han then adapted them to their own purposes. Belt plaques so much valued by the peoples of Central Asia, Mongolia and Siberia, eventually became signs of rank in the Chinese hierarchical System. They were thus completely accommodated. The conical incense burners became the hill censers at a moment when the mountains of the universe achieved a high status within Impérial ritual and cosmological Systems.

Much more concerning thèse exchanges remains to be explored. And no doubt for every new borrowing of materials from Central and Western Asia, we will find ways in which the Han accommodated them within a completely local context.43 One such issue still remains tantalising and unexplained. The Han seem to hâve developed tombs eut into mountain sides with a number of chambers arranged on a horizontal plane.

This extraordinary innovation had parallels in the tombs of the Achaemenids.44 Yet further west in Lydia are stone-lined tombs, below earthen tumuli, extraordinarily like those of the early Han (fig. 13).45In major élite tombs, such as Beidongshan at Xuzhou in Jiangsu province, the Han even imitated the stone roofing slabs seen in Lydia. Lower down the social scale, thèse stone slabs were reproduced by the Chinese in large slab-like bricks (fig. 14). Are thèse parallels coincidences, two quite separate lines of évolution? The close contacts that we can chart in the introduction and adoption of Western Asian artefacts types suggest that they are not. This then is a topic for further study. The rich thèmes that Michèle Pirazzoli has presented to us in her explorations of exotica thus remain to be further revealed.

JESSICA RAWSON Warden of Merton Collège Oxford

Fig. 14 Drawing of a brick-lined tomb at Zhengzhou in Henan province.

Western Han period, lst century BC. After Zhengzhou 1972, p. 41, fig. 1.

Relevé de l'architecture d'une tombe en brique à Zhengzhou, Henan.

Période des Han occidentaux, Ier s. av. J.-C.

83

Abstract

Résumé

The Chinese Hill Censer, boshan lu: A Note on Origins, Influences and Meanings

Note sur le brûle-parfum chinois boshanlu: origines, influences et significations

While incense burners were well known in ancient Western Asia, they do not seem to hâve been used in China before the sixth or fifth centuries BC. Even then, they were rare. The paper explores the introduction to China of one particular type of incense burner, the so-called hill censer. This burner had a conical cover shaped like a mountain sitting on the bowl in which the incense was placed. Such censers often had a tall stem, sometimes shaped like a strange créature, seemingly holding up the mountain. This unusual shape has often been discussed as a simple development from an earlier censer type with a low domed cover.

The paper suggests that the censer in the shape of the mountain was in fact stimulated by the example of censors employed in the Achaemenid Empire. Some are known from the sculptures at Persepolis and others from silver censers from Lydia. Thèse censers hâve tall conical covers on a small bowl supported on a tall stem. Importantly, the Iranian censers had small birds on the top of the covers, something also seen on the Chinese pièces.

There was much exchange between the areas of present-day China and Iran by way of Siberia. Illustrations of the Achaemenid type of censer appear on textiles from Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains. The Chinese only adopted thèse exotic shapes for their censers when the practices of burning incense were already well established. That is, when they recognised the purpose of the foreign artefact. Moreover, the mountain shape and its supports were entirely Chinese interprétations and illustrate a belief that mountains were the homes of immortals. Indeed the censers may hâve been intended to represent the imaginary islands in the eastern sea thought to be the homes of immortals. When humans approached the islands they disappeared below the waves. The créatures, acting as supports and holding up the mountains, may therefore hâve been thought to explain the way in which the mountainous isles may hâve appeared and disappeared.

Alors que les brûle-parfums sont bien connus dans l'Asie de l'Ouest aux époques anciennes, ils ne semblent pas avoir été en usage en Chine avant les vie ou ve siècles avant notre ère, époque où ils sont encore rares. Cet article est consacré à l'introduction en Chine d'un type particulier de brûle-parfum dont le couvercle conique en forme de montagne repose sur la coupe où se trouvait l'encens. Généralement, le pied est haut et peut représenter une créature étrange soutenant la montagne. Cette forme peu commune a souvent été considérée comme le développement d'un type plus ancien ayant un couvercle en dôme de faible hauteur. Dans cet article, il est suggéré que ce brûle-parfum en forme de montagne a été conçu sur le modèle de brûle-parfums utilisés dans l'empire achéménide. Certains de ceux-ci sont connus par la sculpture de Persepolis tandis que d'autres exemples, en argent, proviennent de Lydie. Ils ont un haut couvercle conique fermant une petite coupe soutenue par un haut pied. Il est important de noter que des oiseaux sont perchés au sommet des brûle-parfums iraniens, une caractéristique qui se trouve aussi sur les pièces chinoises. Il y a eu beaucoup d'échanges entre les aires couvertes aujourd'hui par la Chine et par l'Iran, le lien se faisant par la voie de la Sibérie. Des représentations du type achéménide figurent sur des textiles provenant de Pazyryk dans les Altaï. Les Chinois adoptèrent ces formes exotiques pour leurs brûle-parfums une fois seulement que la coutume de brûler de l'encens y eut été bien établie, lorsqu'ils eurent reconnu la fonction de cet objet d'origine étrangère. De plus, la forme de la montagne et le support de celle-ci sont de pures interprétations chinoises. Ces caractéristiques illustrent une croyance selon laquelle les montagnes étaient des lieux où vivaient les immortels. De fait, les brûle-parfums ont probablement été conçus comme représentant les îles imaginaires de la mer orientale où l'on pensait que vivaient les immortels. Lorsque les humains approchaient de ces îles, elles disparaissaient sous les vagues. Les créatures qui portaient ces montagnes à bout de bras pourraient avoir été conçues afin de montrer comment les îles apparaissaient et disparaissaient tour à tour.

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13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

provide one fixed point that illustrâtes motifs and practices current also in Western Asia that were taken over by the inhabitants of the Altai. Over two thousand years, a number of routes into western China were taken by traders and invaders or simply groups moving from one place to another. Jianjun Mei (2003) sets out some of the most récent évidence for the several routes at an early period. One of the most renowned transfers of a technology and a form is seen in the appropriation of the chariot by the Shang, see Shaughnessy 1988 and Lu 1993.

Pirazzoli 1994.

For the archaeological report on this tomb, see Beijing 1980.

Erickson 1994.

See also Pirazzoli 1982, p. 114.

For the archaeological report, see Xianyang 1982.

A similar pièce is in the Nelson- Atkins Muséum of Art, Kansas City, see Munakata 1991, p. 72, no.

17.

See Hebei 1990, p. 326, fig. 7 and Shuo xian 1987, p. 19, fig. 46: 1.

Hunan 2001, p. 52, fig. 10.

Munakata 1991, p. 78-81, nos. 21-26.

Munakata 1991, p. 83-89, nos. 27-35.

For extensive discussions of Western and Central Asian incense burners, see Invernizzi 1997 and Goldman 1991.

For a description ofthe silverware from Lydia and the tombs from which the silver probably came, see Ozgen and Oztiirk 1996.

The censer and its reconstruction is discussed in Khalil 1986.

Représentations of such censers also appear on small portable objects such as cylinder seals, see Ozgen and Oztiirk 1996, p. 117, fig. 153.

Rawson 1999, figs. 21, 22, 25, 26, 27.

For some gênerai comments on borrowings from the West, see Rawson 1999, p. 21-30. Compare Li Ling 2001 for additional comments.

Beijing 1991, vol. 2, colour pis. 15, 23, see also Pirazzoli 1990.

Zibo 1985, pi. 14: 1.

Beijing 1980, vol. 2, pi.. 54:1. For comparisons with an Egyptian figure, see Rawson 1998.

Sun Ji 1994 illustrâtes the impact of foreign belt plaques over a considérable period.

Beijing 1991, vol. 2, pis. 96: 1, 134: 3, 4. Récent excavation of a tomb at Xi'an of a bronze worker indicates that Siberian designs, including those

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Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae Sarjaser B nide-tome 271. vol. 1, p. 125-136.

Dai Yingxin and SUN Jiaxiang, 1983: "Shaanxi Shenmu xian chutu Xiongnu wenwu", Wenwu, 12, p. 23-30.

ERICKSON Susan N., 1994: "Boshanlu - Mountain Censers of the Western Han Period, A Typological and Iconological Analysis", Archives of Asian Art, vol. XLV, p. 6-28.

ERICKSON Susan N., 1996: "The Freer Gallery of Art Boshanlu, Answers to A.G. Wenley's Questions", Oriental Art, vol. XLII, 4, p. 27-38.

FRANKFORT Henri, 1979: The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books.

GOLDMAN Bernard, 1991: "Persian Domed Turibula", Studica Iranica, vol. 20-IPPI, 2, p.179-188.

■HEBEI, 1990: Hebei Sheng Wenwu Yanjiusuo, "Hebei Yangyuan xian Beiguan Hanmu fajue jianbao", Kaogu, 4, p. 322-332, 321.

HERZFELD Ernst, 1941: Iran in the Ancient Near East, Archaeological Studies Presented in the Lowell Lectures at Boston, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

HSING I-tien, 2000: "Gudai Zhongguo ji Ouya wen-

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Notes 1 I shall use the term China to refer to régions in which Chinese-speaking élites dominated. In addition, during the Qin and Han, those areas which were incorporated into direct administration under the local government System will also be designated China. Despite thèse two conditions, the définition of a border would always hâve been difficult. Indeed, while the discussion in the paper often implies that there was some sort of boundary between the Chinese State and the peoples on the periphery and beyond, in practice the situation along the frontier was fluid. Further, non-Chinese speaking peoples had penetrated far inside what we might regard as the borders and thus brought exotic artefacts to the heart ofthe state.

2 For the excavation report see Shandong 1997.

An incense burner of similar shape and slightly later date was also found in Shandong at Zibo Linzi, Zibo 1985, p. 240, fig. 16: 1; compare a censer from Dou Wan's tomb, Beijing 1980, p. 258, fig. 172: 1.

3 This topic is discussed by the author in Rawson 1989.

4 Rudenko 1970, p. 285 describes the discovery of hemp seeds and the use of hot stones with a cauldron to create narcotic incense and refers to comments by Herodotus that describe similar Scythian practices.

5 This topic has not been adequately examined.

However, the présence of gold, deer figures and the use of lost wax casting (a technique common outside the borders of Chinese cultural practices and presumably introduced from Central Asia), seen in the tomb of the Marquis Yi of Zeng, dated to approximately 433 BC and adjacent to the Chu state, suggests that a complex of materials and techniques from further north and west had reached central China by way of the great tributaries of the Yangtse or some such similar route, see Beijing 1989, vol. 2, colour pis. 17, 18, pis. 69, 83, 142, 143, and discussion in Rawson 1999, p. 21-30. Gold provides a good example of the transition of artefacts from Western Asia through Xinjiang to China, see gold from Alagou in Xinjiang (Xinjiang 1997, pi. 7: 1) that resembles Achaemenid type artefacts attributed to the Scythians (Reeder 1999, p. 320, no. 168).

6 We hâve little évidence of the route taken. The finds in Pazyryk (Rudenko 1970) do, however,

28 29

30

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

with animais carrying horns tipped by birds'heads, were, during the Earring States period, being made well within the area that was to become the Han state, see Shaanxi 2003.

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The Freer example (Wenley 1947, figs. 1-4) and comparable pièces with similar animal motifs are illustrated in Munakata 1991, p. 29, figs. 83, 84, p. 73-74, nos. 18, 19. For further examples and a discussion of Wenleys's dating ofthe Freer censer, see Erickson 1996.

Frankfort 1979, p. 41, fig. 33, p. 330, fig. 393.

Sullivan 1962, p. 131.

For a séminal study of the boshan lu and its relationship to mountains see Stein 1987 (2001), p. 50-57. See also Ledderose 1983.

Erickson 1994, p. 14-20 examines a variety of possible interprétations.

The pioneering discussion of this topic is found in Ledderose 1983.

See Rawson 2000 and Rawson 2002.

Watson 1993, p. 49.

Pirazzoli 1982, p. 187.

For contacts with Western Asia see Sima Qian's account of Bactria in the Shi ji chapter 123, Ed. Beijing 1969, vol. 10, p. 3157ff., translated by Burton Watson 1961, vol. 2, p. 264 ff.

Rudenko 1969, 1970.

For a full survey of such figures see Hsing I-tien 2000.

For a ceramic lamp in which figure with a similar peaked cap holds up the lamp tray, see Taipei 1999, no. 86.

Other examples are the winged beasts of Western Asia appropriated by the Chinese, see Li Ling 2001.

Rawson 1999, figs. 2, 3a, b, c.

The stone slabs which form the roofs ofthe chambers of the Lydian tombs seem to hâve inspired the use both of stone slabs and of large flat slab like bricks, as in the Western Han painted tombs at Luoyang, see Beijing 1996.

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Chinese characters Beidongshan boshan lu Chu DouWan Fangzhang fu Han Wudi Linzi Liu Sheng Mancheng Maoling Nan Yue Penglai Shang Shangwang Shiji Shuo xian xian xunlu Xuzhou Yang Yangyuan yin Yingzhou Yongzhou Zhongshan Zhou

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