Death and the dead: practices and images in the Qin and Han

DEATH AND THE DEAD: PRACTICES AND IMAGES IN THE QIN AND HAN∗

Michèle Pirazzoli-t’Serstevens

Funerary practices and beliefs in the other world

Introduction

Th e care brought to the construction, decoration and interior arrange-ment of the tombs in China explains for a large part the privileged place occupied by funerary archaeology. One need only dig a little in North or Central China to encounter a tomb, oft en a rich one. For just the period of the Qin and Han (221 BC–220 AD), several tens of thousands of tombs have been discovered during the last 50 years. It is this prodigious work of the archaeologists that allows us to measure the importance of the funerary culture at the beginning of the imperial period.

We may say that the tombs, their décor and their furnishings together constitute a compendium of the cosmological beliefs, the conceptions and the rites linked to death, but also of the myths, divinities and demons that peopled the Han imaginary world. Han texts on funeral practices are quite scattered and allow neither an understanding of how these practices evolved nor an analysis of the reasons behind the choices. Archaeology, by virtue of series of data covering a long span of time, enables us to retrace the evolution, to make clear the articula-tions and the points of rupture, to get an idea of the social or regional variations and to document the aspects which the texts do not touch on: the internal organization of the tomb, beyond the notions of inner and outer coffi ns, the various grave goods, the iconography of the tomb and the monuments erected around the burial mound.

∗ Translation by Margaret McIntosh. Th e original French paper, “Autour de la mort et des morts. Pratiques et images à l’époque des Qin et des Han,” was published by Editions Le Cerf in a book entitled Religion et société en Chine ancienne et médiévale (Paris, 2008).

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950 michèle pirazzoli-t’serstevens

It is no longer possible to treat the four centuries under consideration as a single block, as has so oft en been the case, overlooking the cultural diversity of the regions even within the only well-explored zone—that where a Chinese population dominated. It has also become impossible not to take into account social diversity, even if it is mainly rich tombs which have been excavated and therefore the privileged classes—from the members of the imperial family to the small landowners—which are the best represented. Th e two extremes of the social ladder are less well known: no imperial tomb has been opened, and the tombs of the poorest have oft en been neglected.

I shall begin by presenting, in its main lines, the evolution of the structure of the tombs, their decoration and furnishings, and then look at the tomb as a cosmological system, the objects and apotropaic images it contained, and the exorcist rites practiced there. Finally, I will try to see what this ensemble, interwoven with the texts, reveals of the beliefs in the next world, taking into account the diff erent interpretations which have been advanced. In a fi eld of studies which evolves very quickly, this short synthesis has no other pretension than to indicate the state of the fi eld and to propose some working hypotheses.

Burial practices

Structure of the tombsDuring the Han period the structure of the tombs underwent radical transformations. Between the 2nd century before and the 1st century of our era, they went from hermetically-sealed burials, vertical pits centered on nested coffi ns (guomu ) (Fig. 1), to constructions devel-oped horizontally (shimu ), rock-cut or more oft en subterranean, conceived in the image of the dwellings of the living. Th e tomb was entered by way of an entrance corridor, and it was possible to circulate inside the tombs, most of which were organized around a central axis. Th e prototype of this form of sepulchre, or catacomb-tomb (hengxue mu ), as opposed to the vertical pit tomb (shuxue tukeng mu

), appeared in Qin and more largely in the Yellow River valley in the 4th century BC,1 but took its fi nal form only in the Han. From

1 Lothar von Falkenhausen, “Mortuary behavior in pre-imperial Qin: a religious interpretation,” in Religion and Chinese society, vol. 1: Ancient and medieval China, ed. John Lagerwey (Hong Kong, 2004), pp. 109–72; 139.


death and the dead 951

then on the “horizontal” tomb was dug into a mountain, as is the case with numerous princely tombs at the beginning of the Han (Fig. 2),2 or constructed in brick or in stone. It included, aft er the entrance corridor, a door, one or several chambers along the central axis and sometimes a gallery or lateral chambers disposed symmetrically (Fig. 3).3

Th is evolution is of capital importance, with its profusion of inter-mediate solutions and variations, according to the rank and the wealth of the deceased but also natural conditions and regional traditions—all solutions which make the Han the period in Chinese history in which the types of sepulture were the most diversifi ed.

Th e new form allowed the living to easily enter and leave the tomb at the time of the funeral—a veritable revolution. Th e fi rst signs of the open tomb with interior circulation, an imitation of a dwelling, appeared in Qin in the 6th century BC4 and then, from the 5th century on,5 in Chu, where it involved the division of the outer coffi n (guo ) into compartments with doors. But this arrangement remained purely symbolic until the 2nd century BC.

In the Yellow River valley, particularly in Henan and in the Chang’an area, the formula of the catacomb-tomb spread and was perfected at the end of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC in tombs of small and medium dimensions. On the other hand, the former Chu region (in the middle course of the Yangzi) and Shandong remained faithful longer to the traditional formula of the outer coffi n with wooden compartments. Th is was, however, reinforced in the princely tombs by a massive barricade

2 E.g., for the 2nd century BC, the tombs of King Xiao of Liang and his principal wife at Bao’anshan (M1 and M2), Yongcheng county in Henan, cf. Yongcheng Xi Han Liang guo wang ling yu qinyuan (Zhengzhou, 1996), those of the kings of Chu at Xushou in Jiangsu, particularly that of Beidongshan (cf. Xuzhou Beidongshan Xi Han Chu wang mu (Beijing, 2003), and those of the king of Zhongshan and his wife at Mancheng in Hebei, cf. Mancheng Han mu fajue baogao, 2 vols (Beijing 1980). On these princely tombs, cf. Jessica Rawson, “Th e eternal palaces of the Western Han: a new view of the universe,” Artibus Asiae 59.1–2 (1999), 5–58, and Susan N. Erickson, “Han dynasty tomb structures and holdings,” in Th e Chinese fi rst empires: a re-appraisal, eds Michael Loewe and Michael Nylan (Cambridge, Eng., forthcoming).

3 Huang Xiaofen, Han mu de kaoguxue yanjiu (Changsha, 2003).4 Tomb 1 of Nanzhihui at Fengxiang in Shaanxi, which could be that of Duke Jing

(r. 577–537) of Qin, cf. Falkenhausen, “Mortuary behavior,” p. 118.5 E.g., tomb of the Marquis Yi of Zeng (ca. 433 AD) at Leigudun, Suizhou, Hubei.

On this tomb, see the work of Alain Th ote, re-used and quoted in Alain Th ote, “Burial practices as seen in rulers’ tombs of the Eastern Zhou period: patterns and regional traditions,” in Religion and Chinese society, vol. 1: Ancient and medieval China, ed. John Lagerwey (Hong Kong 2004), pp. 65–107.



of aligned logs (huangchang ticou ) that formed a real structure and was completed by a surrounding gallery. Certain princely families, as much in northern as in central China, combined the two systems (Fig. 4).6

Th e 1st century BC saw not only the spread of the custom of cel-ebrating funeral rites inside the tomb rather than outside, meaning that a part of the front of the tomb needed to be spacious enough to receive the offi ciant and those close to the deceased, but also of bury-ing the wife with her husband in the same tomb. Th ese changes in practice brought with them architectural modifi cations. From then on the hypogeum had to be able to withstand the re-opening for a second coffi n—whence the choice of constructions in little bricks or in stone. Th e funeral chamber was enlarged and oft en divided in two: one space in front for the rites and one chamber in the back for the coffi n. In the same way, the enlargement of the space stimulated the development of the mural and architectural décor. It also privileged, in the long term, the axial plan to the detriment of that of the surrounding gallery, the space of the tomb modelling itself in this way always more closely on the house of the living (Fig. 5).

It may be said that around 25 AD, with the exception of certain zones at the periphery, the various regions of the north and center went, each in its own manner, from the tomb as a vertical pit with an outer coffi n to the hypogeum. From then on, brick dominated, in competition with stone, which was reserved for rich sepultures or for the vital parts of the tomb, particularly the door.

In the 2nd century AD, the rich tomb includes an antechamber (symbol of the court), a reception room (chao ) where the rites took place, on the medial axis, then a chamber in the back for the coffi n or coffi ns (symbol of the private apartments qin ), fi nally the reserves and annexes along the sides. In the same period, the fashion for sumptuous burials, the constant desire to enlarge the interior space and to increase the height of the ceilings led to the adoption of the raised barrel vault or the cupola (Fig. 6) in brick chambers and the nested coff ered ceiling (zaojing ) in the stone-built chambers. Th ere, too, the movement

6 Tomb of Dabaotai, Hebei, apparently belonging to King Jing of Guangyang and built around 44 BC (cf. Beijing Dabaotai Han mu (Beijing, 1989); but also tomb 1 of Xiangbizui at Changsha in Hunan, tomb of a king of Changsha in the second century BC, cf. “Changsha Xiangbizui yi hao Xi Han mu,” Kaogu xuebao 1981.1, 111–30.



to extend the height of the ceiling seems to have originated in the metropolitan region.

Th e evolution of the form of the sepulture reveals several social developments which I will enumerate and to which, at least for some of them, I shall return:

1) Th e entire evolution indicates the primacy given to the tomb over the ancestral temple7 and the accent placed on the deceased as an individual. Th e dead person is no more just a link in the chain of ancestors, honored as such in the lineage temple. He is also and above all a particular ancestor worshipped individually in a specifi c place. By contrast with what happened under the Shang and the Zhou when, sealed forever, the tomb was a place for the dead only, it has become, thanks to the rites and off erings repeated there, a place where living and dead communicate.

2) Th e Han, in promoting the burial of the couple from the 1st century BC and then the family tomb in the 2nd century AD, made the choice for a tomb with an “open” structure, into which one can enter again, to bury other dead and, at times, to rearrange the sepulture for them. Th is choice raises the problem of the renewed contact of the living with the space of the dead and therefore the need, for protection, to have recourse to talismans, formulas of exorcism and attitudes and ritual practices ever more vital, even if they varied according to the regions and the social classes.

Décor of the tombsUntil the 2nd century BC, the ornamentation of the tombs was con-centrated on the coffi ns—in wood lacquered or painted or hung with painted silks—and on the banner which could be placed on the inner coffi n (containing the deceased). Th is banner, according to the most commonly admitted interpretation, showed the three levels of the uni-verse, the heavens, the world of men and the underworld. Th e deceased (a woman in the case of tomb 1 at Mawangdui, a little aft er 168 BC, in Changsha, Hunan) is shown receiving homage and off erings from her

7 Wu Hung, “From temple to tomb: ancient Chinese art and religion in transition,” Early China 13 (1988), 78–115, and Wu Hung, Monumentality in early Chinese art and architecture (Stanford, 1995).



relatives before her soul ascends to paradise (Fig. 7).8 Th ese banners disappeared at the end of the Western Han, and their iconography was redeployed on the tomb walls.

Along with the horizontal development of the sepulture, in the 1st century BC in the Yellow River valley there spread a mode of decora-tion carried out in series and stamped on the large hollow bricks which formed the walls and ceilings of the tombs. Th e motifs, geometrical or fi gurative, already included certain themes which would be developed in the tombs of the Later Han: the porch fl anked on either side by gate pil-lars que (Fig. 5 right) and guards, the carriages, the hunting scenes, the protective animals and objects. Th e fi rst theme, long considered a sign of the deceased’s social rank, is now identifi ed by a number of authors as tianmen , the gate of paradise, particularly since the discovery of the same motif accompanied by an inscription on sarcophagi and cof-fi ns of Sichuan dating to the Eastern Han (Fig. 8/1–4).9 In this reading, the themes evoked on the bricks all concern the deceased’s ascension to paradise. But the gate pillars que also mark, in a more global way, the entrance into another world, a sacred gate, that of the tomb.10

In the second half of the 1st century BC, the richest tombs in the same region associated with this standardized, stamped décor a painted ceiling decoration whose iconographic program centered on the evoca-tion of the heavens, the voyage of the deceased, and his/her protection, with a strong cosmological orientation (Fig. 9).

From 50 AD on, the decoration of the tombs diversifi es and becomes more complex, with marked specifi c regional diff erences, especially in style. Th e décors may be stamped or painted on the bricks, carved or painted on the stone slabs. Th ey occupy more space than before. Th e décor may now take over the entire tomb or spread, in Sichuan for example, to the sarcophagi and the metal ornaments applied to the wooden coffi ns. Th e apogee of these parietal decorations is reached in the second half of the 2nd century AD and is linked to the fashion of luxurious burials.

8 Changsha Mawangdui yi hao Han mu (Beijing, 1973); Michael Loewe, Ways to paradise. Th e Chinese quest for immortality (London, 1979), pp. 17–59; Michèle Piraz-zoli-t’Serstevens, La Chine des Han (Paris, 1982), pp. 46–48, 57–58.

9 “Chongqing Wushanxian Dong Han liujintong paishi de faxian yu yanjiu,” Kaogu 1998.12, 77–86; Lei Jianjin, “Jianyang Guitoushan faxian bangti huaxiangshi guan,” Sichuan wenwu 1988.6, 65.

10 Liu Tsengkuei, “Handai huaxiang que de xiangzheng yiyi,” Zhongguo shixue 10 (Dec. 2000), 97–127.



Th ese decorations belong to rich but not princely tombs. Th e walls of the princely tombs were oft en painted in red cinnabar on a support (wood or a coating) covered with lacquer. Th ey could also be hung with silks which have left only traces. Certain rich tombs in the met-ropolitan region adopted this method in the 2nd century AD for the principal chambers of the sepulture. Th is is the case of tombs 1 and 2 at Mixian in Henan.11

A certain number of pre-occupations are at the center of the funerary programs of the rich tombs: insertion of the deceased into the cosmo-logical system; protection of the deceased (signs, animals and plants of good omen), of his tomb and of his voyage to the other world, but also protection of those who participated in the rituals performed during the funeral; evocation of the rites (homage, banquet) which sometimes merged with the evocation of the deceased’s social success, his wealth and the pleasures which it was hoped he would fi nd again in the other world; and, fi nally, exaltation of Confucian virtues, in the form of his-torical or legendary anecdotes, exemplary lives or heroic acts to which the ruling class of the period liked to refer. Th e evocation of the cosmos and the deceased’s ascension occupy the ceiling of the antechamber or that of the rear chamber; the depiction of the rites and of historical anecdotes appears on the walls of the principal chamber.

A number of these themes have multiple connotations, and diff er-ent, non-exclusive ideas—religious or profane—may be represented in the same images. Th e cavalcade and the procession of carriages could thus suggest the voyages of the deceased during his offi cial career, the funeral cortège, the deceased’s voyage to paradise, or the arrival of the banquet’s participants, oft en evoked following the cavalcade (Fig. 10). But who were the participants and at which banquet? It may be the deceased’s family and friends paying him homage; or it may be the deceased advancing to receive the sacrifi ces of his descendants or arriving in paradise. As for the banquet itself, it may represent earthly celebrations, a banquet (funeral or commemorative) off ered to the deceased, or a heavenly banquet, but also a symbol of opulence and therefore, among others, a sign of power.

11 Michèle Pirazzoli-t’Serstevens, “A Later Han cemetery at Mixian,” in Th e Chinese fi rst empires: a re-appraisal, eds Michael Loewe and Michael Nylan (Cambridge, Eng., in press).



If there is a consensus that the décor, hidden and shut up in the dark-ness of the tomb, was destined for the deceased or for the other world, its interpretation has evolved greatly over the last 50 years, although we still do not have a global understanding of the programs. Until recently there was a tendency to interpret the decoration of the tombs in the context of social life and a paradise of immortality: the representations were thought to evoke the status and wealth of the deceased, calling them to the attention of the heavenly bureaucracy, and an ideal daily world which the deceased was to fi nd again on the other side. Other authors saw in the décor of the tombs the evocation of the deceased’s life in the underworld. Divinities such as Xiwangmu, the immortals and the apotropaic animals were all seen as helping and protecting the deceased on his voyage to the paradise of immortality.

Th e present tendency is to interpret the décor in a more exclusively religious sense, less idealistically, as a cosmological system and as the representation—and also the prolongation—of the mortuary rites. Nevertheless, the social interpretation has not been eliminated (the deceased’s life before and aft er his death), nor ideas of the voyage to the other world and the paradise of immortality. An attempt is made to allow the various interpretations to coexist, without always successfully articulating them the one with the other.

At the same time, there has been a great deal of interest in those who ordered the tombs with storied décor in the 2nd century AD and in the social groups behind these tombs.12 Th is is an aspect which I shall not touch on here, but the stereotypical, codifi ed aspect of the iconographic program should not be lost sight of. Th e personal choice of those order-ing the tombs was rather limited. In the same way, regional diff erences consisted in variations or accentuations of a common message. I believe we must read these décors as a ritual text with obligatory formulas, each part of the tomb and, we shall see, of the off ering chamber, being decorated with a restricted repertory of motifs, some of them fi xed, others interchangeable.

12 Wu Hung, Th e Wu Liang shrine (Stanford, 1989); Martin Powers, Art and political expression in early China (New Haven, 1991).



Arrangements and practices of deposit

Protection of the bodyAside from certain practices (treatment of the corpse, protection of the tomb) inherited from Chu and found in tombs of the beginning of the Han in ancient Chu territory (the tombs of Mawangdui, Fenghuangshan, etc.), the Han witnesses, whether textual or material, of the preserva-tion of the body of the deceased concern emperors, princes and certain high dignitaries.

Th is protection consists, on the one hand, in the reinforcement of the wooden inner coffi n by a huangchang ticou—a usage which comes from the ancient territories of Chu—and, on the other and above all, in protection of the body by a shroud, like complete armor, made of some 2,000 plaques of jade stitched13 together (Fig. 11). Founded on the belief in the virtues of jade and in the benefi ts resulting from being “buried in jade” (lianyu ), the practice derived originally from the custom which consisted in covering the dead with jade objects, a custom which we already fi nd in the Neolithic culture of Liangzhu.14 Later, starting with the Western Zhou, jade was used to cover and ornament diff erent parts of the deceased’s body. As for the fi rst complete shrouds, they appeared very late, in the second half of the 2nd century BC, and disappeared defi nitively with the end of the Han. Th ese jade suits (yuxia ) were reserved for members of the imperial family and for certain of their “allies,” such as the second king of Nanyue (d. 122 BC). Th e relation of the yuxia with the armor of the living, as James Lin noted, made it an armor for the other world, gift ed with magic powers against the demons. Th e shroud was accompanied by jade bi disks placed on and under the body, on the shroud, and inlaid on the coffi n, according to a very ancient tradition.15 It was oft en completed by nine obturators in jade, which were also used alone for the burial of less important persons.

It is clear that, at the time, jade was considered to have virtues either of directly conserving the corpse or as protection against the demons responsible for its decomposition. Its cost naturally made it the

13 On these yuxia, cf. Michael Loewe, “State funerals of the Han empire,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 71 (1999), 5–72; pp. 12–34; James Lin, “Jade suits and iron armour,” East Asia Journal 2003.2, 21–43.

14 Li Ling, Zhongguo fangshu kao (Beijing, 2000), pp. 314–17.15 Cecilia Braghin, “Polychrome and monochrome glass of the Warring States and

Han periods,” in Chinese Glass, ed. C. Braghin (Florence, 2002), pp. 22, 25–26.



prerogative of the wealthiest. Cinnabar, mentioned in the texts as the best drug for warding off putrefaction and used in China from Neolithic times in funerary practices, is less visible in the tombs because the excavation reports pay little or no attention to it. We know, however, that the principal chamber of the tomb of the king Liu Dao (r. 150–129 BC) of Chu at Beidongshan in Jiangsu was painted in cinnabar red over a lacquered base,16 and the same was true of the tomb of King Xiao (r. 168–144) of Liang at Yongcheng in Henan.17 Th e choice of red to heighten the decoration of the walls of the more modest tombs, but also for the interior of the lacquered tableware is certainly linked to beliefs concerning cinnabar.

Already in the Warring States period, two types of deposit—objects of daily use and “brilliant artifacts” (mingqi )—made specifi cally to accompany the dead were supposed to bring with them wealth and com-fort to the deceased in the other world18 and make manifest his social status. Th ey were also intended to concretize the deceased’s separation from the world of the living.19 During the Han the dead continued to be supplied both with real objects having belonged to him (shengqi ) and substitutes made especially for the tomb. In addition, with the development of the space reserved for the rites celebrated in the tomb, the food containers for the off erings destined for the dead took on a greater importance. In the Later Han they were grouped together on a kind of ritual platform in brick built in the antechamber, in the central chamber or in front of the coffi n.20

Th e use of mingqi was generalized during the 1st century BC, illustrat-ing a more extensive repertory of activities of daily life and including a number of objects of cosmological value. In the tombs with an axial

16 Xuzhou Beidongshan Xi Han Chu wang mu (Beijing, 2003).17 Yan Genqi, ed., Mangdangshan Xi Han Liang wang mudi (Beijing, 2001).18 Poo Mu-chou, Muzang yu shengsi: Zhongguo gudai zongjiao zhi xingsi (Taibei,

1993), pp. 199–201. For a recent study of the mingqi, see Cary Y. Liu, in Cary Y. Liu, Michael Nylan, Anthony Barbieri-Low, eds, Recarving China’s past. Art, archaeology, and architecture of the “Wu Family Shrines” (New Haven, 2005), pp. 205–221.

19 Lothar von Falkenhausen, “Sources of Daoism: refl ections on archaeological indi-cators of religious change in Eastern Zhou China,” Daoist Resources 5.2 (1994), 1–12; 4; Lai Guolong, “Th e Baoshan tomb: religious transitions in art, ritual, and text during the Warring States period (480–221 BCE),” PhD Dissertation (University of California, Los Angeles, 2002), pp. 67–90.

20 Huang, Han mu, p. 215.



plan, the mingqi were placed in the side chambers; in tombs with only one chamber, the off ering containers were placed in front of the coffi n, the mingqi near the door. With the even greater vogue of costly burials, the importance of the burial objects grew during the two fi rst centuries of our era. Moreover, at the end of the Han, the funerary models in a number of regions included fi gures of exorcists and divinities responsible for warding off evil spirits, guardian animals and lamps with symbolic and apotropaic decoration. Th e effi cacy of the statuettes placed near the dead thus redoubled that of the representations which ornamented the walls of the tombs.

Th e funerary complex and luxurious funeralsTh e Han, as before them the Qin, buried their dead outside the urban centers, generally to the north or northwest, oft en in cemeteries, the tombs progressively occupying the space from east to west.21 Th is system did not include the emperors, whose place of burial was regulated by the zhaomu system.22

Th e imperial funerary parks are quite well known, with, at least until the middle of the 1st century BC, agglomerations attached to each imperial complex. Here also archaeology, over the last thirty some years, has enabled us to complete the descriptions in the texts of the period.23 Th e surveys and excavations in the funerary park of Qin Shi huangdi, the First Emperor of the Qin, who died in the year 210 BC, and those carried out in the park of Emperor Jing (r. 156–141) of the Han are, in this respect, exemplary.24 Th e mausoleum of Emperor Jing (Fig. 12)

21 Th is is the case in the Shaogou cemetery to the west of Luoyang, for example, cf. Yang Zhifeng, “Guanyu Luoyang san zuo Han bihua mu de niandai xulie wenti,” Wenwu 2003.3, 59–62; p. 61.

22 Th e term zhaomu refers to the ritual system of the Western Zhou in which the ancestors were assigned, according to alternate generations to the left (zhao) or the right (mu) side of the temple of the ancestors, to be honored, cf. Chang Kwang-chih, Shang civilization (New Haven and London, 1980), pp. 176–79, 353. For a diff erent vision of the disposition of the mausoleums of the Western Han emperors, cf. Huang Zhanyue, “Xi Han lingmu yanjiu zhong de liang ge wenti,” Wenwu 2005.4, 70–4.

23 Yang Kuan, Zhongguo gudai lingqin zhidu shi yanjiu (Shanghai, 1985); Liu Qingzhu and Li Yufang, Xi Han shiyi ling (Xi’an, 1987); Wu, “From temple”; Michael Loewe, Divination, mythology and monarchy in Han China (Cambridge, Eng., 1994); Michael Loewe, “Th e imperial way of death in Han China,” in State and court ritual in China, ed. Joseph P. McDermott (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), pp. 81–111.

24 For a synthesis of the numerous publications on the mausoleum of the First Emperor, cf. Lothar Ledderose and Adele Schlombs, Jenseits der Grosses Mauer: Der Erste Kaiser von China und Seine Terrakotta-Armee (Dortmund, 1990); Wang Xueli,



and that of his empress were built inside an enclosed funerary park (lingyuan ) covering an area of 12 km2. Both mausoleums faced east and were surrounded by a wall of rammed earth with a gate fl anked by pillars (que) with buttresses on all four sides. Four roads led to the quadrangular burial mound. Th e two mausoleums were surrounded by subsidiary pits (86 for Jingdi containing in particular human and animal statuettes) and numerous tombs belonging to the members of the aristocracy, tombs arranged according to a pre-established layout and, in some cases, themselves accompanied by subsidiary pits. Ritual buildings were constructed in the enclosure of the funerary park and in the surroundings. Th is scheme remains valid for the following emperors, except that aft er Jingdi, the empress was buried in a separate funerary park. In the same way, the burial mound raised above the tomb, quad-rangular during the Western Han, was circular under the Eastern Han, most likely in order to conform to cosmological conceptions and the image of a round heaven above a square earth.

Th e dukes of Qin, during the Warring States period, seem to have been the fi rst to erect ritual buildings on the sites of their tombs and to design a funerary park. Th e First Emperor represents the culmination of this manner of affi rming his power. Th e idea of making the tomb the center of a ritual was taken up by Huidi (r. 195–188), who decreed that sacrifi ces would be made to his late father and to the ancestors at the tomb site, in the interior, and nearby the funeral park.

From the 2nd century BC the nobles imitated the emperor’s system, with the construction of an off ering shrine (citang ), which fulfi lled at once the roles of ancestral shrine (miao ) and “chamber of rest” (qin )25 in both the imperial and princely tombs.26 At the end of the 2nd century BC, the custom of building a citang, most oft en in front of the burial mound, sometimes to one side, spread widely. It is there that the family sacrifi ced to the deceased and that the community of his descendants met before his tablet.

Th e off ering shrines of the Western Han were made of wood and earth, decorated inside with mural paintings and covered with a tiled

Qin Shihuang ling yanjiu (Shanghai, 1994); Qin Shihuang ling tongche ma fajue baogao (Beijing, 1998); for the works at Yangling, cf. Han Yangling (Chongqing, 2001).

25 Th e miao is the equivalent of the offi cial part of the palace, the qin of the private apartments. In it there were sacrifi ces four times a day; in the miao, 25 times a year.

26 For the vestiges of the cultual complex of the funerary park of King Xiao of Liang and his wife, cf. Yongcheng Xi Han Liang guo wang ling yu qinyuan (Zhengzhou, 1996).



roof. Some of them, in southern Shandong, northern Jiangsu and Anhui, were built in stone starting in the second half of the 1st century BC. Others were built in brick. In Sichuan, in the rock-cut tombs of the Later Han, the vestibule served as citang. Th e off ering shrines were constructions of widely varying dimensions and complexity according to the social rank and wealth of the deceased, but all of them had an open façade (Fig. 13). Th e entry was sometimes so low that the rites were performed on an altar in front of the building, which in this case was just a repository for the deceased’s tablet.27 Th e slabs of the stone citang—the only ones which have survived—were sometimes decorated with carved motifs that completed and matched the décor of the tomb. Th eir iconography obeyed certain fi xed rules with, as an obligatory motif on the principal wall—the one at the rear before which was placed the tablet—a scene of homage in a pavilion (Fig. 14). Th e image has been diversely interpreted, but one of the most coherent readings sees in it the deceased receiving the sacrifi ce off ered by his descendants.28 At times the scene is accompanied by an inscription. Below it, still on the rear wall, a procession of carriages may symbolize the voyage of the deceased couple coming from the underworld to receive the off erings in the citang. To these representations is added, on the ceiling and on the upper part of the lateral walls, evocations of the heavenly world and of paradise and, on the walls, scenes from the world of the living.

When this culture of the tombs had reached its apogee, in the 2nd century AD, the tomb of an offi cial with a salary of 2,000 bushels (dan

) and more, or of a rich landowner, would be marked by a burial mound and, leading to it, one or several access ways or “spirit roads.” Th e funerary park, planted with trees, especially cypress trees, could form a cemetery with several tombs. It was enclosed, at least symboli-cally, by a pair of que pillars at the entrance of the spirit road(s) (Fig. 15). Th ese stone pillars, sometimes inscribed, were sometimes decorated with the same motifs as the walls of the tomb or of the off ering shrine. Th ey marked the entrance to a sacred space, that of the post-mortem residence of the deceased. Outside the que sometimes stood a pair of animal sculptures on either side of the access road. Th is led to the burial mound, in front of which was placed a stele bearing the geneal-ogy and an encomium of the deceased. Th e off ering shrine completed

27 Xin Lixiang, Handai huaxiangshi zonghe yanjiu (Beijing, 2000), p. 81.28 Xin, Handai, p. 92.



this complex. As Xin Lixiang has underlined,29 a very strong symbolic link united the three ritual constructions—the tomb beneath the earth, the off ering shrine and the que—a link which was materialized by the correspondences existing in the iconographic program of the three ensembles.

I will add only a word about luxurious burials (houzang ). Th e phenomenon existed well before the imperial epoch.30 However, at the end of the Han it reached unprecedented proportions and this despite calls for moderation on the part of the court and from diff erent reli-gious movements, as witnessed by the Taiping jing or Scripture of Great Peace, which dates from the 2nd century AD.31 Th e phenomenon con-cerns the great clans of the rich regions (southern Shandong, northern Jiangsu, Henan and the Red Basin in Sichuan) and has naturally made for a golden age of décor and tomb furnishings. It is to be explained not only by the wealth of certain families and by their desire thus to affi rm their status, but also by the institutionalization of virtues such as fi lial piety. It is symptomatic that from the 1st century AD, the names of those close to the deceased appear on the buildings of the funerary complex, the que for example, evidence of a more marked attention to the survivors.32 In a society ruled by recommendation, the descendants eff ectively used the monuments thus erected to distinguish themselves in the eyes of the authorities and to acquire present and future renown. Th ey also used it to tighten political links. Th ose who participated in the grandiose funerals of a local potentate renewed in this way their allegiance to the deceased’s family.33

Th e transformation was total aft er the fall of the Han, especially in North China. Th e ruling classes recommended simple burials and themselves set the example: no more burial mounds, no more trees, citang or steles; no more que or jade shrouds, and fewer mingqi in the tomb. Th is choice was naturally due to the hard times, but also to a realization that the luxurious burials were of no benefi t to the deceased. Th ose who saw the innumerable tomb robberies occasioned by the wars

29 Xin, Handai, pp. 322–23. 30 Jeff rey K. Riegel, “Do not serve the dead as you serve the living: the Lüshi chunqiu

treatises on moderation in burial,” Early China 20 (1995), 301–30.31 David C. Yu (trans.), History of Chinese Daoism, vol. 1 (Lanham, 2000), p. 131.32 Yang Aiguo, “Handai huaxiangshi bangti luelun,” Kaogu 2005.5, 59–72; pp. 65, 70.33 Miranda Brown, “Men in mourning: ritual, human nature, and politics in War-

ring States and Han China, 453 BC–AD 220,” PhD Dissertation (Columbia University, 2002), pp. 197–98.



at the end of the Han—robberies which continued throughout the 3rd century—did not want their own tombs violated. Th is choice can also be explained by a change in the practices and expression of mourning among the elite, a change caused, among other factors, by a reaction against the ritualism of the end of the Han.34

Th e tomb as a cosmological system

Th e result of a very ancient current of thought, correlative cosmology (yinyang wuxing shuo ), was generalized and systematized during the Western Han. Toward the end of the period, this cosmology took on an ethical coloring: the fi ve agents were from then on under the supreme authority of Heaven and embodied its moral intentions. Analysis of the tombs, their décor and their furnishings, shows that in the same period (the second half of the 1st century BC), the elements of a cosmological program, not previously found in this form, took over the sepultures in the metropolitan region. Th is new tendency was accen-tuated and spread during the 1st century AD, with a more structured program, and it reached its peak of formalization in the 2nd century.

By means of a certain number of architectural choices, graphic or carved representations, and objects charged with cosmological powers or symbols, the tomb became a sort of cosmic mandala. I will touch successively on the animals of the four directions, the heavenly symbols and objects such as the shipan and the mirrors. We could add as well the frequent themes of the storied slabs in the tombs of the second half of the 1st and the 2nd century, such as Fuxi and Nüwa (yang and yin divinities) associated with Pangu , the cosmic giant,35 to which I will return when I discuss the gods and their representation.

Th e emblematic animals of the four directionsWe must distinguish two groups of divine animals. Th e animals of the fi rst group (siling ), which includes the unicorn, the phoenix, the tiger and the dragon, have the virtues of good omen. Th e animals of the second group (called also siling or more frequently sishen ) are directly linked to the four directions and include the green dragon of

34 Brown, “Men in mourning,” pp. 222–27.35 Marc Kalinowski, “Mythe, cosmogénèse et théogonie dans la Chine ancienne,”

L’Homme 36.137 (1996), 41–60; p. 51.



the east, the white tiger of the west, the red bird of the south and the black warrior of the north (Xuanwu ). Th e oldest mention of this group is found in the Huainanzi.36 It is, roughly, in the 1st century BC that the symbols of the four directions, symbols of the four seasons too, were integrated into Han society.

Th e oldest complete representations of the sishen come from tombs in the middle of the 2nd century BC in the region of the capital, but the motif did not become popular for tomb decoration until the second half of the 1st century BC and apparently only in the middle valley of the Yellow River (Fig. 9). From Wang Mang, the theme spread, and the four animals are associated with other divinities or mythological images (immortals, Fuxi, Nüwa, Xiwangmu and Dongwanggong, Chiyou, hybrids). Th ey are represented at the entrance and in diff erent parts of the tomb (particularly the ceiling), as well as on coffi ns (Fig. 8) and sarcophagi, on a number of objects deposited in the tomb (head-covers, mirrors, pillows, ceramics), and fi nally on the que of the burial precinct. Th ey indicate the orientation of the tomb and ensure the protection of the deceased’s soul.

When, for reasons of practical contingency, the directions do not correspond, the animals are grouped and opposed by pairs in accord with yinyang notions. Th is explains why Xuanwu is always represented on the lower part of the door or on the back wall of the tomb, generally conceived to be to the north.

Th e celestial symbolsAt the end of the Western Han, in the metropolitan region, in the framework of this conception of the tomb as a microcosm, the ceiling came to symbolize the heavens and the sishen were represented there together with the sun and the moon and images of stars and clouds. Several sepultures in the Luoyang region are typical of this iconographic choice: those of Bu Qianqiu (32 BC–6 AD) (Fig. 9), tomb 61 (48–7 BC) and tomb CM1231 (32–6 BC) at Qianjingdou.37 On the ceilings of these tombs, the sun and the moon face each other in the midst of clouds, or “energies” (qi ). A crow fl ying is depicted in the interior of the solar disk and, in the moon, a toad.

36 Ch. 3, “Tianwen xun” and ch. 15 “Binglue xun” , cf. Philosophes taoistes II Huainanzi, eds Charles le Blanc and Rémi Mathieu (Paris, 2003): 3.24b, p. 132; 15.16b, p. 732.

37 Wenwu 1993.5, pp. 1–16; Yang, “Guanyu Luoyang.”



It is likely that the development, in Henan, under Wang Mang (r. 9–23 AD), of a ceiling in cupola form, mounted in four parts above a more or less square chamber—a formula which allowed the vault greater height and solidity—also responded to the intention of representing the cosmos. Th e cupola (or later the raised vault) permitted the representation of a round sky above a square earth (the chamber) and the unfurling of the symbolic imagery on the vault of heaven in a coherent fashion.38 We may recall here that in the same period builders of tombs went from a quadrangular burial mound to a round one: here too the dominant idea was that of heaven conceived as circular above the square (here the underground tomb) earth.

A prefi guration of this map of heaven appeared in the tomb of the Transportation University in Xi’an39 (Fig. 16). Th is is still a simple bar-rel vault, but already includes, around the sun and moon, the stars of the 28 mansions (xiu ).Th e cupola of the tomb C1 M689 and that of Yintun40 at Luoyang, two tombs from the fi rst decades of the 1st century AD, represent, along with the sun and the moon among the clouds or the qi, personages which have oft en been identifi ed as the two deceased but who could also be divinities traveling in the empyrean.

Th e ambivalence between clouds and “breaths” (or “energies”) qi, two co-extensive terms, appears from the 2nd century BC and perhaps ear-lier. Th eir image as motif constitutes, without any doubt, a major theme of Han iconography, the background on which are represented all the heavenly excursions, the fantastic animals and a number of divinities.

By the 1st century AD, representations of the stars not only decorate the vault of the tombs; they are also used for the ceilings of the old-est stone off ering shrines. Later, during the 2nd century, although the evocation of stellar phenomena was not abandoned, it was preferred to represent the celestial world, as much in the tombs as in the citang, by the heavenly divinities and signs of good omen, with the former, most oft en in human form, occupying an increasingly important place to the detriment of the latter.41 I will come back to the divinities (the duke of thunder, the prince of the winds), who are linked to natural phenomena

38 Lukas Nickel, “Mortuary architecture in northern Henan at the time of Wang Mang,” paper presented at the European Association of Chinese Studies Conference in Barcelona, 1996.

39 Xi’an Jiaotong daxue Xi Han bihuamu (Xi’an, 1991).40 Zhongguo zhongyao kaogu faxian 2003 (Beijing, 2004), pp. 99–103. 41 Xin, Handai, pp. 164–66.



(and calamities). We may say that the coexistence of heavenly bodies and the powers of nature, personifi ed, persisted on the ceilings of the rich tombs of North China in the medieval period.

Th e shipan and mirrorsA certain number of objects deposited in the tomb would seem, either in themselves or by virtue of their decoration, designed to integrate the deceased into the cosmos. Here again the tendency is much more evident from the second half of the 1st century BC than before, not that the objects were new, but because they became much more frequent in the tombs and because their decoration, as at times the inscriptions they carried, is explicit. Th e vogue for these objects coincided, as Anna Seidel noted, with the apogee of the apocryphal scriptures.42

Th e shipan (Fig. 17) is a divining instrument conceived on the model of the universe. It consists in a square tray (the earth) with a mobile disk (the heavens) inserted in the center. Th e tray is divided into four zones associated with a sector (N, E, W, S) and including the elements of computation (two stems, three branches and seven man-sions). On the disk are deployed, around the pivot of the Big Dipper, the 12 months and the 28 mansions. By turning the disk above the tray and looking for a favorable position, the user could determine an auspicious time and direction for a future action43 without recourse to a diviner. In addition, it allowed the user to bring many kinds of things into correspondence, and we may say that this divination by the shi was the background from which emerged the theory of yinyang wuxing.44 Numerous studies have been devoted to the shipan,45 which in a certain way is a concrete representation of the microcosm. Th e oldest known examples, found in tombs of the ancient kingdom of Chu, date to the 3rd century BC.46 If many Chinese from the Han period placed this instrument in the tombs, it is because of the effi cacy they attributed to

42 Anna Seidel, “Kokuhô, note à propos du terme Trésor national en Chine et au Japon,” Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient 69 (1981), 229–61; p. 235.

43 Wang Aihe, Cosmology and political culture in Early China (Cambridge, Eng., 2000), pp. 120–27.

44 Li, Zhongguo. 45 As well as Li, Zhongguo, cf. Marc Kalinowski, “Les instruments astro-calendériques

des Han et la méthode Liuren,” Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient 72 (1983), 309–419; Marc Kalinowski, “Les traités de Shuihudi et l’hémérologie chinoise à la fi n des Royaumes combatants,” T’oung Pao 72 (1986), 174–228; Yan Dunjie, “Shipan zongshu,” Kaogu xuebao 1985.4, 445–63.

46 Wang, Cosmology, p. 118; n. 87.



it as a regulator of the cosmic order and an integrator into the cosmos. Th e role of protection against evil infl uences must also have played a part—a point to which we will return.

Th e bronze mirrors in the form of game-boards (boju jing ) (Fig. 18), are circular, decorated on the back with cosmological motifs. Known in the West as TLV mirrors and, in China until recently as guiju jing , they are in some sense an elaboration of the shipan and, beyond that, of a very ancient diagram called “two cords-four hooks” (ersheng sigou ), from which the shipan, the liubo and the mir-ror in the form of a game-board all seem to have derived.47

Th e decoration on the back of the boju jing evokes the celestial vault above the earth (the square part in the center). Also pictured are clouds, immortals traveling across the sky, and the animals of the four directions (on the circular part), corresponding with the 12 branches (on the square part). Th e V or “hooks” position the four anchors (siwei

) which link the earth to the sky at the four intermediate angles of the sky (NE, SE, SW, NW); the Ts, with eight nipples on either side, are thought to symbolize the pillars supporting the sky at the four cardinal points.

Th e mirrors were destined to ward off harmful infl uences—“this engraved mirror expels all that is evil” [ ] [ ], as certain inscriptions indicate—but they were also the symbolic representations of space and time in the framework of the cosmological conceptions of the time.48 Originally elaborated in the metropolitan region, they were especially in vogue at the end of the Western Han and the begin-ning of the Eastern Han, which corresponds well to the period of the greatest attention to the correlation of the tomb with the categories of the cosmos. Later they were simplifi ed (with a stylization of the motifs), before progressively disappearing between the end of the 2nd and the middle of the 3rd century. Th ey then gave place to other types of cosmological mirrors such as those with the divinities and animals holding a T-square.

Th e space-time diagram on these mirrors is accompanied, as we saw, by the animals of the four directions and oft en by an inscription of wishes. One of them, on a mirror from the Wang Mang reign, the

47 Marc Kalinowski, “The Xingde texts from Mawangdui,” Early China 23–24 (1998–99), 125–202.

48 Loewe, Ways to paradise.



period when a number of the most perfect of these objects were cast, formulates thus its wishes:

Th e Xin dynasty has good copper which is extracted at Danyang [Anhui province]; when it is mixed with silver and tin, it is very pure and bright. May you long conserve your two parents, may your brothers be prosper-ous, may your children and grandchildren become government offi cials

, , , .49

In certain cases the inscription elaborates on the idea of the position in the center [of the universe] for the mirror’s owner or the deceased, of the light dispensed by the cosmos, and of the voyage in the empyrean of the immortals but also of the possessor of the mirror.50 Th e inscrip-tion thus redoubled the idea of the tomb as a mandala within which the deceased is placed in the most favorable possible conditions, in correspondence with the cosmic order. Evolving in peace within this order, he will ensure the prosperity and fortune of his descendants.

Rites of exorcism

We have seen that a number of mirrors from the Han period were used to chase away demons and evil infl uences. Other objects placed in the tomb also played this role—the head-covers or wenming 51 (Fig. 28), for example, but also a number of protective images: the animals of the four directions, the ring-holder masks pushou represented on the doors, the guardian and apotropaic divinities, certain animals (bears, deer, rams, etc.).

49 Mirror from Beijing daxue Saikele kaogu yu yishu bowuguan (Arthur M. Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology of the University of Peking), cf. Yanyuan juzhen. Beijing daxue Saikele kaogu yu yishu bowuguan zhanpin xuancui (Beijing, 1992), n° 109.

50 Cheng Linquan and Han Guohe, “A study of gaming board (TLV) mirrors unearthed in the northern suburbs of Xi’an,” Archaeology and Art Digest 4.4 (2002), 97–110. See also the inscription on the mirror in tomb 4 of Yinwan, cf. Wenwu 1996.8, p. 8, and Yinwan Han mu jiandu (Beijing, 1997), pp. 47, 171, 160–61. For a translation of the inscription, cf. David T. Liu in Liu, Nylan, Barbieri-Low, Recarving, p. 375. See also Loewe, Ways to paradise, pp. 103–04.

51 Th e head-cover (modern name mianzhao ) was a sort of square open-bot-tomed box in lacquered and painted wood which was deposed in the coffi n above the deceased’s head; a mirror or a disk of jade or glass was placed against each of the interior walls. Th ese objects with an apotropaic function have been found essentially in Jiangsu in the tombs of the end of the Western Han and of the Wang Mang period, cf. Braghin, “Polychrome,” p. 27; Erickson, “Han dynasty tomb.”



Th ese forms of protection did not eliminate the need for constant recourse to exorcism ( jiechu ) and, more widely, to magico-reli-gious practices. Th e mental universe and, therefore, Han daily life were peopled with a great number of divinities, demons and ghosts. Th e frontier between these categories, moreover, was of the vaguest,52 and their “extra-human” character implied no ethical connotation. Divinities, spirits and demons were conceived as acting for themselves. It was they who provoked calamity, illness, grief and death, but it was also possible to thwart or even kill them. Th us there existed numerous recipes to exorcise them.

For the last 20-some years, a number of works, especially in the West, have been devoted to exorcisms practiced in the tomb or around the dead, drawing not only on transmitted texts but also and above all on the texts found in the tombs and on the wall decorations of the tombs. We add immediately that the documentation concerns mainly the end of the Han (from the end of the 1st to the beginning of the 3rd century). I will return to the extremely localized character of some of this docu-mentation, as regards both time and space, and within the society.

Rites before, during, and aft er burialDiff erent rites were done, fi rst, in the vicinity of the corpse to help separate it from the living—the most important being the zhaohun or summons of the soul—and then, while the tomb was being dug or aft er it was fi nished, to appease the god of the earth (tushen or dizhu ) and, fi nally, at the moment of burial. Th is last took place aft er a more or less long period of time, which could go from several months to several years, the delay allowing for the construction and decoration of the tomb, the carving of the stele and the collecting of gift s off ered the deceased and his family. Th e delay also allowed those who were going to participate in the funeral—several thousand in the case of a powerful family—to make the trip.53

Aft er leading the procession to the tomb, the exorcist ( fangxiangshi ) or the funeral director (zhongren ) was supposed to practice

52 Cf. Donald Harper, “A Chinese demonography of the third century B.C.,” Har-vard Journal of Asiatic Studies 45.2 (1985), 459–98; Poo Mu-chou, “Popular religion in pre-imperial China: observations on the almanacs of Shui-hu-ti,” T’oung Pao 79.4–5 (1993), 225–48; and Poo Mu-chou, “Ghost literature: exorcistic ritual texts or daily entertainment?” Asia Major 13.1 (2000), 43–64.

53 Brown, “Men in mourning,” pp. 11–12.



several rites, one, an exorcism which consisted in striking with his hal-berd the four corners of the funeral chamber to chase away the tomb demons and evil infl uences.54 In the 2nd century AD, armed guards or Chiyou (Fig. 19), or yet again images of exorcists were oft en found pictured on the frame posts or around the door of the tomb, and we may suppose that the association of the exorcist—or of the divinity in charge of banishing evil infl uences who is his prototype—with the animals of the directions, is the repetition, fi xed forever in the stone of the door, of the ritual performed during the funeral.

Another rite, attested by short texts on bamboo or wood found in several tombs from the beginning of the Han in former Chu terri-tory,55 consisted in announcing the arrival of the deceased, giving his identity to the otherworld bureaucracy and also sending it a list of the goods deposed in the tomb. Th ese “declarations to the authorities of the underworld” (gaodi ce ) were modeled on the administra-tive documents of the time and indicate, as Marc Kalinowski says, the process of bureaucratization of the contractual relations between men and the gods.56

Several researchers have recently tried to interpret the iconographic program of certain rich tombs of the 2nd century AD as the representa-tions of the great stages of the funeral ritual which took place in front of and within the tomb.57 Th e imagery of the tombs, made operational by the ritual, would then function as a permanent manifestation of this ritual, which in itself is by nature transitory. Th is inscription in eternity of the funeral ritual, with the magical effi cacy which this implies, would be destined for diff erent publics: for the living who participate in the rituals during the funeral, and for the next world, that is for both the

54 Zhouli (Rites of Zhou), cf. Zhouli zhengzhu (Taibei, 1979) 31, 6b, 7a; Mark E. Lewis, Sanctioned violence in Early China (New York, 1990), p. 191.

55 For example, in tomb 168 at Fenghuangshan (167 BC) in Hubei (cf. “Jiangling Fenghuangshan 168 hao Han mu,” Kaogu xuebao 1993.4, 455–513) and in tomb 3 of Mawangdui (168 BC), in Hunan (cf. Fu Juyou and Chen Songchang, Mawangdui Han mu wenwu (Changsha, 1992), p. 37.

56 Marc Kalinowski, “Bibliothèques et archives funéraires de la Chine ancienne,” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Paris, 2003), 889–927; p. 908.

57 Th is is the case of Lydia duPont Th ompson, in “Th e Yi’nan tomb: narrative and ritual in pictorial art of the Eastern Han (25–220 CE),” PhD Dissertation (New York University, 1998), for the tomb of Yi’nan, of Kim Irene Nedra Dramer, in “Between the living and the dead: Han dynasty stone carved tomb doors,” PhD dissertation (Columbia University, 2002), for the decoration of the doors.



deceased and for the powers on whom he will depend in the other world. Nedra Dramer goes further: she believes the successive doors of the tomb are the sites for diff erent rituals to ensure protection and the success of the initiatory passage of both the chief mourner toward his new status as family patriarch and of the deceased toward the state of ancestor. Th e rituals practiced at the doors and the motifs on these doors are there to materialize and reinforce this process of transformation.

Once the burial with its funerary ritual was over, the tomb was sealed, both concretely and ritually. As the inscription in the tomb of Cang-shan says “[But you, the dead] have entered into the world of shadows, completely separated from that of the living.”58 In sealing the doors, the fangxiangshi made certain the dead will not go back through the gates to return to the world of the living. Other examples of these ritualistic readings of the décor of the rich tombs could be given, and we will return to these rites in our discussion of the ideas of the other world.

In addition to the rites done at the time of burial, the family wor-shipped regularly using libations and sacrifi ces to the deceased on the site of the tomb, either outside on the tomb itself, or in the citang. Th e deceased was also worshiped in the lineage temple, where the social identity of the departed within his lineage was celebrated.59

In the 2nd century AD, the three-year mourning which, during the Western Han, was followed almost exclusively by the members of the imperial family, spread throughout the ruling class. Moreover, people did not wear mourning for three years just for a father or mother, but also for a superior or a protector.

Th e xiaochu wen texts for elimination (or extermination)Th e term xiaochu wen designates, during the Han, the exorcistic texts which are called today jiechu wen (elimination text) or zhenmu wen (tomb-stabilization text). Th ese texts were found in a limited number of tombs, painted on bottles or jars (ping ) (Fig. 20), oft en referred as zhenmu ping. Some of these jars contained medicinal drugs, others cereals or grain (used to pay taxes in the next world). Still others contained thin lead plaques in human form (qianren ) (Fig. 21), plaques thought to replace the dead for the corvées and punishments

58 Wu, Monumentality, p. 244.59 K.E. Brashier, “Han thanatology and the division of ‘souls,’ ” Early China 21 (1996),

125–58; pp. 152–57.



of the other world, in the manner of Egyptian oushebti.60 Th ere may have been several bottles or jars in a tomb.

Several themes appear in these texts:

• the idea that the dead should not be allowed to contaminate (zhu ) the living (and thus harm them) and that it is essential therefore to sever the ties between the worlds of the dead and the living;

• the idea that the living must be freed from all responsibility with regard to the deceased, that is, to avoid the living being implicated in the faults of the dead and, for example, having their lifetime shortened because of the bad actions of the dead. Th e idea is that death annuls everything: the dead should not be blamed for past faults, and the living do not have to pay the debts of the dead;

• the fear that the destinies of the dead and the living be mixed. It was therefore requested of the masters of the underworld registers to sever the “resemblance,” the “link,” to remove the repetition (chongfu ) of name and death date that caused a second person to die, and to keep strictly separate the registers of the living and the dead;

• these texts were also aimed at facilitating the victory of the fi ve agents the one over the other, to reinforce the yang and to eliminate the miasmas of the yin.

Th e exorcist who directed the ritual called himself in these texts “the envoy of Tiandi” (Tiandi shi zhe ), or messenger of the Lord of Heaven. The document is written for the administration of the other world, as are the inventory lists. Tiandi’s representative orders the celestial administration to deliver the deceased from punishment and the living from calamity, that the sepulture may be maintained in peace and the descendants be happy.61 Th e text ends with an adminis-trative formula copied from offi cial documents: “Promptly, promptly in accordance with the statutes and ordinances” ( jiji ru lüling ). It is oft en accompanied by a talisman in the form of archetypical char-acters. On the whole, these exorcist texts are rather standardized and very coherent.

60 Poo, Muzang, p. 220.61 Zhang Xunliao, “Dong Han muzang chutu de jiezhuqi cailiao he Tianshi dao de

qiyuan,” Daojia wenhua yanjiu 9 (1996), 253–66; p. 257.



Anna Seidel62 was the fi rst in the West to study these texts—she calls them “celestial ordinances for the dead”—and to use them to under-stand and defi ne the beliefs in the other world of the ordinary people of the Han period. Th is pioneer study has had considerable infl uence. I will return to it when examining the various interpretations of these beliefs.

I have already indicated that the jars for exorcism were found in a limited number of modest tombs,63 from a period, also limited, between the end of the 1st century AD (60 AD) and the end of the 2nd century AD (with a peak between 156 and 190) and in a clearly delimited region: Shaanxi and Henan above all. Th en there was a sort of resurgence of the texts on jars of a similar type at Dunhuang, in Gansu province, between the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 5th century, likewise in the tombs of the middle and lower classes. Seidel, followed by Peter Nickerson,64 considered the texts at Dunhuang as the descendants of the Han xiaochu wen.

A number of themes and formulations of the Han exorcist texts have been taken up in the later Daoist texts, although modifi ed and adapted. Wu Rongzeng65 and Seidel saw there the expression of popular ideas which Daoism would later appropriate. Angelika Cedzich,66 who calls these texts “grave quelling texts,” and Lai Chi Tim67 have elaborated on Seidel’s thesis, showing the diff erences which exist between the rituals of Daoism at its beginnings and the Han popular religion of the exorcistic texts. By contrast, other specialists such as Zhang Xunliao68 see the Han texts as vestiges of a branch of the Daoism of the Heavenly Masters at

62 Anna Seidel, “Traces of Han religion in funeral texts found in tombs,” Dôkyô to shûkyô bunka, ed. Akizuki Kan’ei (Tokyo, 1987), pp. 21–57.

63 Zhang Xunliao in 1996 counted 70 jars (Zhang, “Dong Han muzang,” p. 256). Lu Xiqi has inventoried about 40 tombs, cf. Lu Xiqi “Handai maidiquan de shizhi, yuanyuan yu yiyi,” Zhongguo shi yanjiu 2006.1, 47–68.

64 Peter Nickerson, “Daoism, death, and bureaucracy in early medieval China,” PhD dissertation (University of California, Berkeley, 1996).

65 Wu Rongzeng, “Zhenmuwen zhong suo jiandao de Dong Han daowu guanxi,” Wenwu 1981.3, 56–63.

66 Angelika Cedzich, “Ghosts and demons, law and order: grave quelling texts and early Daoist liturgy,” Daoist Resources 4.2 (1993), 23–35.

67 Lai Chi-tim, “Th e Demon statutes of Nüqing and the problem of the bureaucratiza-tion of the netherworld in early Heavenly Master Daoism,” T’oung Pao 88.4–5 (2002), 251–81.

68 Zhang, “Dong Han muzang,” pp. 259–65.



its beginnings in North China, among low-level government offi cials and landowners.

Let us say once more that in the 2nd century AD, the xiaochu wen, like the anthropomorphic lead plaques, appeared only, with few excep-tions, in the tombs of modest people. Seidel69 thought these texts were representative of the religion of an educated class, but outside of the world of government offi cials: village elders, exorcists and specialists in funeral rites. She does not take into account the very local distribution of these texts, and no one since seems to have taken this into account.

Th ese texts may actually be the result of a local tradition of funerary exorcisms linked to a religious movement and spread within a social class or in very particular cases of death (violent or premature death). Th is tradition naturally borrows a great deal from a common base of beliefs, particularly the idea of an otherworldly bureaucracy modeled on that of this world, an idea attested from the end of the 4th century BC.70 Nevertheless, it seems to me dangerous to extrapolate and apply the priorities of this tradition as well as its formulations to all of China and to the whole of the Han period, as is the present tendency, assuming the various texts found in the Han tombs—texts of diff erent epochs, regions and social milieu—to be indicative of the same beliefs and practices which are imagined to be uniform and unchanging. In addition, it is very likely that there was in China during the Han a hierarchy among the dead, in accordance with the social hierarchy of the living and the causes of death. We may suppose there were therefore diverse types of funeral rituals adapted to the circumstances.

In the same way, we may ask, as Nickerson71 suggests for the medieval period, whether the deposit of documents in the tomb did not replace, in certain cases, the descent into the tomb of the exorcist himself.

Contracts to buy land (diquan or maidi quan )Th ese texts were most oft en written on ceramics or on tablets of wood or lead. Placed in the tomb, they specifi ed, in imitation of a contract used in the world of the living, the names of the seller and the buyer, the date of purchase, the cost, the place and the surface area of the

69 Seidel, “Traces of Han,” pp. 27–8.70 Donald Harper, “Resurrection in Warring States popular religion,” Taoist Resources

5.2 (1994), 13–28.71 Peter Nickerson, “Th e great petition for sepulchral plaints,” in Early Daoist scrip-

tures, ed. Stephen R. Bokenkamp (Berkeley, 1997), pp. 230–74; 256, n. 30.



land; they were designed as evidence of the rights of the deceased to the land of his tomb so that he could avoid long lawsuits in the other world and protect his descendants from the vengeance of the gods of the earth.72 Th e oldest maidi quan known dates to 81 AD and comes from Shanxi. Th ey remain very rare in Han tombs, multiplying, spreading and evolving during the Six Dynasties, with clear regional variations. Like the zhenmu wen, with which they share a number of similarities of formulation, the contracts were most oft en used in medium-sized tombs, perhaps in the tombs of those whose rights to the land could be questioned.73

Perception and representations of the other world

Th us there existed during the Han an extremely strong tomb culture, but it expressed no single, coherent vision of the other world. Th is fact naturally infl uenced the role and the place of the tomb in the Han imagination. Not only do the received textual sources give heterogeneous and contradictory descriptions of the deceased’s fate, archaeology, as much in the texts which have been discovered as in the décor of the tombs and the objects deposed in them, also reveals very diverse and contradictory conceptions—a fact neither exceptional nor peculiar to China. In what follows, I will summarize the most widespread Han beliefs in this regard.

To begin with, several texts written by literati, the Huainanzi, for example, of the 2nd century BC, and the Liji (Book of rites) of the following century, describe the human being as having two distinct souls, one refi ned hun , of the yang essence, the other coarse po , of the yin essence. At death, the refi ned soul returns to heaven, while the coarse soul returns to earth. Th e underground world where the po soul goes is imagined as ruled by a bureaucracy conceived on the model of that of the living. To reach the heavenly world, imagined as a sort of paradise, the hun soul passes through the magical isles of the eastern sea, especially the isle of Penglai , which tradition places in

72 Ikeda On, “Chûgoku rekidai boken ryakkô,” Tôyô-bunka kenkyûjo kiyô 86 (1981), 193–278; Terry F. Kleeman, “Land contracts and related documents,” in Chûgoku no shûkyô shisô to kagaku: Makio Ryôkai hakushi shôju kinen ronshû (Tokyo, 1984), pp. 1–34.

73 Stanley K. Abe, Ordinary images (Chicago, 2002), p. 91. Th e best recent study of the maidi quan is the article of Lu Xiqi, “Handai maidiquan.” I thank Olivier Venture for pointing it out to me.



the sea off Shandong. During or at the end of the 1st century BC, this imaginary land was transformed and, as it were, displaced toward the far west, to Kunlun , the cosmic mountain, domain of the goddess Xiwangmu, who reigns over a paradise inhabited by immortals. Th is vision is expressed, as Seidel74 noted, by the iconography of the rich tombs of the Later Han. I will come back to these “eminent paradisiacal places of immortality.”

Other texts, as for example the xiaochu wen of the 2nd century AD, depict the two categories of soul of the deceased dependent on two departments of the underworld. Th e hun soul is registered at Liangfu

, near Mount Tai, which in this way becomes the capital of the ruler of the dead, the lord of Mount Tai , aided by a bureaucracy along the lines of the Han bureaucracy. Th e po soul, by contrast, is overseen by a separate department of the underworld administration, the Yellow Springs, which can also be associated with Gaolishan or Haolishan , another sacred place at the foot of Mount Tai. In this conception, the details of which vary according to the traditions, the deceased is shut up in a netherworld ruled by strict bureaucratic structures within which he is judged and from which he will not leave. For Seidel, the relegation of both souls to a rather disheartening under-world is an idea which belongs to the common religion, in opposition to the duality of the souls with their diff erent dwellings aft er death, a duality imagined and theorized by the literati.

Th e analyses of Seidel, subscribed to in the work of Donald Harper, have led to the adoption of this vision of the next world by a number of Western scholars. Harper has shown that certain elements of the rites refl ected in the zhenmu ping, such as the bureaucracy of the next world or the registers of life and death, were already present in texts exhumed from tombs of the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. But we could, in the same way, note the continuity of certain elements from the exorcistic texts of the end of the Han with medieval Daoism without assuming—and here everyone agrees—we are dealing with the same religion.

Moreover, other texts do not make a distinction between the two types of souls, but between the two souls considered as one entity and the body.75 Still other sources, such as the funerary steles of the 2nd

74 Anna Seidel, “Post-mortem immortality or the Daoist resurrection of the body,” Gilgul (Leiden, 1987), pp. 226–27.

75 Brashier, “Han thanatology,” p. 138; Poo Mu-chou, In search of personal welfare: a view of ancient Chinese religion (Albany, 1998), pp. 62–66, 163–65.



century AD, associate the hunpo with the body, which they distinguish from the spirit (shen ).76

Finally, several texts, some from the beginning of the period and others from the end seem simply to relegate the deceased (body and soul) to the tomb: “Th e living have their dwellings, the [dead] tombs. Do not let the living have dealings with the dead ,

. .”77 Th e inscription on a ceramic bottle says much the same thing: “Th e living have their district, the dead have the tomb. Th e living go forward, the dead backward. Dead and living follow dif-ferent roads. Let them not meet , ,

, .”78 But there again, certain sources present the deceased as no more able to leave the tomb, while others say he is free to go. Th us, for the Taiping jing,79 the deceased can come back among the living, for better or for worse.

At present, scholars have a tendency to adopt one or another of these conceptions and apply it to all Han social classes and the entire period, taking a belief attested to by texts or iconography as a totally integrated and universal concept—an error that Seidel did not com-mit. Jessica Rawson and Lothar von Falkenhausen,80 for instance, think that the tomb was the fi nal resting place of the deceased, from which he was unable to leave. Michael Loewe,81 Yü Ying-shih,82 John Major83 and many Chinese specialists have adopted, with nuances, the vision proposed by the Huainanzi.

76 Brashier, “Han thanatology,” p. 149. 77 Manuscript entitled Cheng (Designations) of the tomb 3 at Mawangdui (168 BC),

quoted by Robin D.S. (translated with an introduction and commentary by), Five lost classics: Tao, Huanglao and Yin-Yang in Han China (New York, 1997), pp. 164–65.

78 “Xianyang Yaodian chutu de Dong Han zhushu taoping,” Wenwu 2004.2, 86–7. Th e bottle, found in a tomb at Xianyang in Shaanxi, bears, beside the inscription, a painted image of the Big Dipper and talismanic characters.

79 Zhang, “Dong Han muzang,” p. 262.80 Jessica Rawson, ed., Mysteries of ancient China, new discoveries from the early

dynasties (London, British Museum, 1996), pp. 24–27; Falkenhausen, “Sources of Daoism,” p. 7.

81 Loewe, Ways to paradise; Michael Loewe, Chinese ideas of life and death (London, 1982); Loewe, “State funerals.”

82 Yü Yingshi, “ ‘O Soul, come back!’ A study in the changing conceptions of the soul and aft erlife in pre-Buddhist China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47.2 (1987), 363–95.

83 John S. Major, Heaven and earth in early Han thought (Albany, 1993).



It is very likely that diff erent concepts co-existed84 and that one of the major preoccupations of the families was to ensure by all the means at their disposal comfort and happiness for the deceased, so that no misfortune would befall the living.85 It is also certain that each vision of the world beyond left traces in later conceptions, Daoist and Bud-dhist, whether it was the idea of the diff erent souls with their diff erent destinations or that of a bureaucracy in the next world.

It is diffi cult to imagine that the tomb was the ultimate and only resting place of the deceased. Th is extremely reductive explanation is contradicted both by the representations accompanied by inscriptions on sarcophagi and the ornaments of coffi ns in Sichuan (Fig. 8); it is also contradicted by the inscriptions on the boju jing mirrors and, fi nally, by the steles standing before the tombs, which speak of the “spirit” (shen

) of the deceased traveling in highest heaven.86

Th ere are at least two alternatives to relegation to the prison of the tomb. In several texts and in later Buddhist rituals87—which we may imagine were adopted on the basis of existing beliefs—death is consid-ered as a passage. Th e soul of the deceased, at fi rst unstable and in transit, then rejoins the world of the ancestors. It is this passage which the rituals performed in the tomb in front of each door, according to Dramer,88 were designed to protect and facilitate and that the iconography of the doors would materialize and reinforce. We fi nd the same conception of death as a passage in ancient Japan.89 In this conception, the funeral rites are destined to protect the living from the death, from its stain, its contagion, the disasters which it brings. Th e desire for protection is turned against the deceased in his dangerous mutant state, before he becomes an ancestor whom one can venerate. If death is a passage, the tomb constitutes the intermediary stage par excellence.

Another alternative explanation for the dilemma of the other world is that of “post-mortem immortality,”90 through the idea of a false death

84 Loewe, Chinese ideas, p. 114 ; Wu Hung, “Art in ritual context: rethinking Mawang dui,” Early China 17 (1992), 111–44; p. 142.

85 Abe, Ordinary images, p. 90.86 Brashier, “Han thanatology,” pp. 147–58.87 Stephen Teiser, “Ghosts and ancestors in medieval Chinese religion: the Yü-lan

p’en festival as mortuary ritual,” History of Religions 26.1 (1986), 47–67; p. 64.88 Dramer, “Between the living.”89 François Macé, La mort et les funérailles dans le Japon ancien (Paris, 1986), pp.

329, 334, 341.90 Seidel, “Post-mortem,” pp. 230–31.



that developed in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. Th e just man who, his whole life long, has accumulated merit and rid his body of all the “biodegradable” elements, pretends to be dead but in reality, delivered from his corporal envelope, becomes an immortal of a lower rank in the paradise of immortals or an offi cial in the next world. Th is idea of “liberation of the body” (shijie ) may be considered as a form of resurrection, originating in the milieu of those who, in the 1st century AD, studied the Dao, practiced macrobiotic hygiene, and believed in the immortals.91 Th e ancient Daoist texts make a clear distinction between adepts who are thus reborn and ordinary people who have not accu-mulated merit and who, when they die, go to the underworld.92

I should like to conclude by insisting on the conceptual diff erences found in the various socio-cultural environments at the end of the Han. Anna Seidel had already realized there were diff erent deaths and diff erent conceptions of death according to the social milieu in the Han period and that the tradition which said that the soul rose to the paradise of the immortals was a well-anchored one among the aristocracy.93 Th e idea was taken up more recently by Poo Mu-chou.94 Th is idea of diff erent social milieus is in some sense denied by Donald Harper, who defi nes as members of the elite all the owners of the excavated tombs of the Han period.95 But social milieu explains at least in part the divergent conceptions between certain texts coming from the rich classes, the décor of the tombs of these same classes (with their representation of Xiwangmu and the immortals) and, on the other hand, the exorcistic texts placed in some tombs of a modest social milieu. Th e Liji makes a clear social distinction when it says that “the lower offi cials and the common people have no off ering shrines for their ancestors and, when they die, they are called gui .”96

Th ere was most certainly yet another hierarchy of beliefs and prac-tices, one which depended on the cause of death. Th erefore, during the Han—and this is clearly visible at the end of the period—we have

91 Harper, “Resurrection,” pp. 26–27.92 Commentary Xiang’er to the Laozi, Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Early Daoist scriptures

(Berkeley, 1997), p. 135.93 Seidel, “Traces of Han,” p. 48.94 Poo, In search.95 Donald Harper, “Contracts with the spirit world in Han common religion: the

Xuning prayer and sacrifi ce documents of A.D. 79,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 14 (2004) 227–67; pp. 230–31.

96 Liji 20, “Jifa,” quoted by Cedzich, “Ghosts,” p. 28.



very diff erent concepts of death and modes of worship of the dead, each system being designed to calm the fears of the living in a time of terrible disorders and anxiety throughout the whole of society.

Religious iconography in the Han dynasty

Introduction

Study of images and their place in the Han religious imagination and ritual is in its infancy and the archaeology which documents above all the tombs, enables us to make out only a certain number of divinities linked to the common religion and, more particularly, to dealing with the dead and death. For the moment, we have no image directly relevant to the imperial cult, for example, nor to the holy sites.

Apart from this fi rst diffi culty, we are faced with two other problems: the fi rst concerns the correspondence between the received sources and the images. Th e images oft en seem disconnected from the texts; they appear to come from a parallel discourse, coherent and autonomous with regard to the texts. Th e case of the immortals is, we shall see, exemplary in this regard. We may think spontaneously that it is our interpretation of these representations which is at stake and that we have not found the key that would bring texts and images into correspondence. Th at we fi nd such a key is not to be excluded, but when the images are accompanied by an inscription which identifi es them, it does not refer to ideas found in the written sources.

Our incapacity satisfactorily to decode the Han religious iconography remains, thus, a major handicap. If the iconography of Xiwangmu is from now on well known, although its evolution97 is rarely dealt with, that of other popular divinities, frequent on the walls of the tombs, has not been studied systematically. I shall therefore limit myself here to taking stock of the most frequent representations, whose interpretation also seems to be the best founded, and to indicating a certain number of other images for which our understanding is much less certain. I shall try, in the same spirit, to remain on the grounds of attested fact, without allowing myself (nor taking into account) overly risky interpretations.

97 Th e best recent study on Xiwangmu is that of Li Song, Lun Handai yishu zhong de Xiwangmu tuxiang (Changsha, 2000). I thank Marianne Bujard for referring me to it.



Th e Han most oft en conceived the universe as a structure in three levels:

• on high, the world of the spirits of Heaven, over which presides Shangdi , the Lord on High, also called, according to the sources, Tiandi , Tiangong , Tianjun , or Huangdi . Th e gods of nature over whom he rules in their turn rule over the universe, not just the physical world, but also the social order of humans;

• in the middle, the world of humans;• and, fi nally, down below, the underworld where the souls of the dead live.

Th e three levels of this cosmology are interdependent and infl uence one another through the principles of yin and yang and the theory of the fi ve agents.

Xin Lixiang introduced a fourth level, between Heaven and the world of men, where he placed the immortals reigned over by Xiwangmu,98 thus separating the paradise of the immortals from the heavens.

Divinities and propitiatory images

Xiwangmu: her image and its evolutionSeveral divinities, at least one with a terrible appearance, correspond-ing to diff erent traditions, coexisted before the Han under the name of Xiwangmu , Queen Mother of the West.99 Th e fi rst direct allusions to Xiwangmu as the goddess who gives immortality appear in texts of the second half of the 2nd century BC, in the Huainanzi at fi rst, then in the “Daren fu” (“Rhapsody of the great man”) by Sima Xiangru (179–117 BC). Th ese mentions should be read in the context of the vogue for mystic journeys and quests for immortality that was current among the aristocracy during the reign of Emperor Wu (r. 140–87 BC). It is, however, only at the end of the Western Han that a veritable cult takes form, linked to the idea of a paradise of immortality. At the beginning of the Han, two sacred mountains, one in the east, the island-mountain of Penglai, the other in the west, Kunlun, were identifi ed with this paradise. During the 1st century BC Kunlun, over which Xiwangmu reigned, as she is oft en pictured, partially dethroned

98 Xin, Handai, p. 60.99 Riccardo Fracasso, “Holy mothers of ancient China. A new approach to the Hsi-

wang-mu problem,” T’oung Pao 74 (1988), 1–46.



the island of Penglai. However, in the 2nd century AD when Xiwangmu was endowed with a consort, Dongwanggong , the Royal Father of the East, he was associated with Penglai.

Th e fi rst representations of Xiwangmu appear in tombs of the region of Luoyang and Zhengzhou in Henan, built in the last decades of the 1st century BC.100 Th e tomb of Bu Qianqiu and his wife at Luoyang is an example of this.101 It is attributed to the period of 32 BC–6 AD. On the ceiling of the chamber (Fig. 9), the two deceased are shown in their ascension to the heavens, escorted by mythical animals (the siling) and welcomed by Xiwangmu, shown in a three-quarter view. Several of the future acolytes of the goddess—the nine-tailed fox, the toad (associated with the idea of birth, death, rebirth and longevity), the hare holding herbs in its mouth—accompany her. Th e hare, holding or crushing the drug of immortality, is, moreover, in these early depictions of the goddess, an obligatory image which may suffi ce, only by its presence, to evoke her.102

Representations of Xiwangmu are still quite rare at the end of the Western Han. Without doubt they correspond to the popularization of the divinity, whose worship, however, remains circumscribed to the Central Plain. Representations multiply under the Eastern Han and spread throughout the empire, at least into the areas peopled by the Chinese, and the theme’s vogue reached its apogee in the 2nd century AD,103 with a particularly important development in Sichuan and Shan-dong. By contrast, Xiwangmu appears very little in textual sources of the period.

During the 2nd century on the goddess is most oft en pictured full face and enthroned. She is recognizable from her headdress sheng ,104 her short-feathered cape, or the wings with which she is endowed. She is always shown seated, on the summit of a mountain (Fig. 31), the top of a tree representing the axis mundi (and sometimes interpreted as the

100 Th e geographic origin of these fi rst representations may indicate, as Li Song sug-gests, that the movement of 3 BC which claims this goddess started in Henan and not in Shandong, cf. Li, Lun Handai, p. 31.

101 Yang, “Guanyu Luoyang”; Loewe, Ways to paradise, fi g. 16.102 Li, Lun Handai, p. 223.103 Loewe, Ways to paradise; Luo Erhu, Chûgoku Kandai no gazô to gazôbo, trans.

Watabe Takeshi (Tokyo, 2002), vol. 1, pp. 120–24.104 In the form of ends of the beams of a loom.



“heavenly pillar”),105 or on a throne combining two animal forequarters, one of a dragon, the other a tiger (Fig. 8/1, 22). She may be sheltering under a canopy. Several acolytes accompany her, generally a hare who is grinding the herbs of immortality which he and his companions have gathered, a dancing toad, a fox with nine tails (an auspicious animal) or a three-footed crow (the goddess’s messenger).106

In Sichuan, two gate pillars que sometimes stand on either side of the image of Xiwangmu.107 Th e que, which as we saw connotes the entrance to a sacred space (imperial palace, temple, off ering shrine, tomb), here symbolize the gate of paradise (tianmen ). It is guarded by a heavenly offi cial, the da siming ,108 the director of destiny, upon whom depends the life span of each individual (Fig. 8/1–4). As we shall see, immortals are very oft en associated with the image of the goddess, as are the sun, the moon, numerous auspicious signs and the representation of a fangshi holding an insignia and standing or kneel-ing before her.

Xiwangmu was, during the Han, a goddess essentially linked to beliefs concerning death and immortality. Queen of the immortals in the paradise of the west, her image decorates tombs or off ering shrines; when she is pictured on objects, which may be the case in the 2nd century AD but very rarely before, they are above all objects destined for the tomb (money trees, lamps, mirrors). Representing and venerat-ing Xiwangmu in the sepulture must have helped the deceased attain Mount Kunlun, considered as an axis mundi, and enter into the world of the immortals. Her worship, at the end of the Han, touched the entire upper class and certainly presents multiple facets. Her association with Dongwanggong109 is linked to the myth which makes the smooth course of the universe depend on the meeting of two divinities, real cosmic forces whose periodic union brings about the annual renaissance of nature’s cycle.110 In certain regions, such as Sichuan, Xiwangmu was perhaps also revered as a divinity helpful to men and the souls of the

105 Li, Lun Handai, pp. 156–59.106 Lucie Lim, Stories from China’s past (San Francisco, 1987), Pl. 61, 62, 63; Abe,

Ordinary images, p. 31, fi g. 2–20, 43, fi g. 2–36; Luo, Chûgoku, vol. 2.107 Xin, Handai, fi g. 148, 149.108 Liu, “Handai.”109 Frequent in the north of Shaanxi, rare in Sichuan, cf. Li, Lun Handai, pp. 133,

172.110 Kominami Ichirô, “Seiôbo to shichi seki denshô,” Tôhô gakuhô 46 (1974), 33–82;

Loewe, Ways to paradise.



dead, a popular divinity whose worship corresponded to the need for a personalized deity whose aid could be invoked.111

Divinities presiding over the cosmic order; divinities of the celestial worldTh e primordial couple Fuxi and Nüwa is abundantly represented in Later Han tombs.

Th e two divinities have a human head with the body of a serpent which sometimes has legs. Oft en enlaced, they hold in their hands, the one a T-square symbolizing the earth, the other a compass symbol-izing the sky, but also at times the plant of immortality112 or a musical instrument,113 for Fuxi and Nüwa are at one and the same time the fi rst ancestors and the divinities who regulate Heaven and Earth.114 Th e divine couple may merge with the sun and the moon, likewise represented at times as fi gures with the body of a serpent, each carrying the relevant image, of the sun or the moon115 (Fig. 23). Th ese cosmic couples, whether Fuxi and Nüwa, Heaven and Earth, yin and yang, or Xiwangmu and Dongwanggong, are at once the originators and maintainers of the ordering process of space and time. Th ey are also thought to rule over the destiny of humans and to have therefore the power to prolong life. Th eir presence in the tomb would bring a double protection; to help the deceased on his voyage toward immortality and off er to those who survived him happiness and long life.

Other natural divinities are represented on the ceiling of some off er-ing shrines of the 2nd century AD, above all in the region of Nanyang in Henan, as well as in Shandong and Jiangsu.116 Th ey are identifi ed as Leigong , the duke of thunder, Yüshi , the master of rain, Fengbo , the prince of the winds, Shandian , the lightning; and so on. Leigong is recognizable by the drum he beats, Fengbo by

111 Jean M. James, “An iconographic study of Xiwangmu during the Han dynasty,” Artibus Asiae 55.1–2 (1995), 17–41.

112 Wang Jianzhong and Shan Xiushan, Nanyang liang Han huaxiangshi (Beijing, 1990), Pls 159–62; 167–70.

113 Lim, Stories, Pl. 66; Wang and Shan, Nanyang, Pl. 164.114 Kalinowski, “Mythe,” pp. 51–53 ; Marc Kalinowski, “Fonctionnalité calendaire

dans les cosmogonies anciennes de la Chine,” Etudes chinoises 23 (2004), 87–122; pp. 92, 104.

115 Wang and Shan, Nanyang, Pl. 176; Lim, Stories, Pl. 66.116 We shall mention as examples the ceiling slabs of the off ering shrine of Hongloucun

at Xuzhou in Jiangsu and of the Left Chamber of the Wu family shrines at Jiaxiang in Shandong, cf. Xin, Handai, fi g. 100.



the wind which comes out of his open mouth and Yüshi by the vase of water he pours (Fig. 24). Th ese divinities depend upon the supreme divinity of the Han pantheon, Tiandi, of whom they are the messengers and whose orders they execute. Th ey are associated with the stars, in the same way as Tiandi is with the seven stars of the Big Dipper (Beidou xing ) which form, in certain images, his carriage.117 Th e reading and, above all, the interpretation of these representations is not always unanimous. Certain authors118 interpret these divinities as helping the deceased in their ascension to Heaven. Xin Lixiang, by contrast, sees them as terrifying, responsible for punishing humans for their faults, with Tiandi sending natural calamities in response to the evil actions of men.119 But it is perhaps dangerous to privilege a single reading of these divinities who are, in certain texts,120 associated with mystical wanderings throughout the cosmos. In these voyages they open the way, serving as escort and protection to the poet-traveler. It is true that some three centuries separate texts such as the “Far-off journey” and the representations of the 2nd century AD tombs, and it cannot be excluded that the vision of the pantheon has changed, at least in part, during this period.

Th e celestial divinities travel between the heavens and the world of men in the midst of clouds, oft en in cloud carriages or carriages har-nessed to dragons, tigers, deer or fi sh; all animals serving as mounts and messengers between the diff erent worlds. Th e divinities are also aided by divine beings, such as the immortals who can mount dragons, deer or fi sh.121 To these voyages are undoubtedly linked the representations of rivers crossed by bridges which mark the frontiers between the dif-ferent worlds. Divinities and the dead are thus depicted in their voyages between the underworld, the earth, and the heavens.122

Many other gods and spirits are represented on the ceilings and walls of the tombs and off ering shrines. A number of these divinities,

117 Ex. ceiling slab of the Front Chamber, that of Wu Rong, died in 168 AD, of the off ering shrines of the Wu family at Jiaxiang in Shandong, cf. Xin, Handai, fi g. 100.

118 Li, Lun Handai, p. 95.119 Xin, Handai, pp. 61, 164, pp. 177–83.120 Th is is the case, for example, of the “Yuanyou” (“Far-off journey”), very prob-

ably from the 2nd century BC, translated in Rémi Mathieu, Qu Yuan. Élégies de Chu, translated from the Chinese, presented and annotated by Rémi Mathieu (Paris, 2004), pp. 147–48.

121 On the symbolism of fi sh, see Kim Daeyeol, “Poisson et dragon: symbole du véhicule entre l’ici-bas et l’au-delà,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 14 (2004), 269–90.

122 Xin, Handai, pp. 332–34.



which we are not able to identify with certainty, are probably local, linked to sacred places. I will return to this problem when treating the immortals.123

Demons and exorcistsHan funeral art also shows demons (xiegui ) or exorcists thought to chase them away. Th ese evil spirits most oft en take on the appear-ance of animals such as dogs or snakes. Th e distinction between these demons and the celestial divinities is a fl uctuating one. All belong to the supernatural world, and each is more distinguished by his pow-ers than by his nature.124 In the same way, it is not easy to detect the diff erence between the image of the evil spirit and that of the exorcist ( fangxiangshi) who has taken his form and is responsible for eliminat-ing or at least controlling him.

One of the animals who most oft en takes on the role of the exorcist or of protector against demons is the bear. Th us the exorcist in the Danuo

, the great exorcism, which aims at chasing away the pestilences on the eve of the new year, wears a mask and a bearskin. Th e image of a bear standing on its hind legs (or of a man disguised as a bear) appears, for example, on the ceiling of the left chamber125 of the Wu family off ering shrines at Jiaxiang (Shandong).126 Th e animal carries a crossbow on its head and arms in each of its paws (Fig. 24). Other very similar representations, but in the form of a tiger, are found in tombs at Yi’nan127 (Fig. 19), in Shandong, for example. Identifi ed as the messenger of Tiandi by Hayashi Minao,128 as Chiyou (inventor of arms, god of war and rain and mythical prototype of the exorcist) by a majority of scholars,129 they doubtless have a role of guardian against

123 On the local cults, see the work of Marianne Bujard and what she says of the state of the question in Bujard, Le sacrifi ce au Ciel dans la Chine ancienne. Th éorie et pratique sous les Han Occidentaux (Paris, 2000), pp. 221–25.

124 Poo, “Popular religion,” pp. 231–35. 125 Th e Left Chamber is renamed chamber 2 in Liu, Nylan, Barbieri-Low, Recarving.126 Th ird register of the north slope, west section of the ceiling, cf. Xin, Handai, Fig.

96, p. 171; cf. Liu, Nylan, Barbieri-Low, Recarving, particularly cat. 1.32.127 Central panel of the north wall of the antechamber, cf. Zeng Zhaoyue, ed., Yi’nan

gu huaxiangshi mu fajue baogao (Shanghai, 1956), Pl. 33.128 Hayashi Minao, “Kandai kishin no sekai,” Tôhô gakuhô 46 (1974), 223–306; pp. 225–28.129 Derk Bodde, Festivals in classical China (Princeton, 1975), pp. 122–26; Lewis,

Sanctioned violence, pp. 189–95; Lydia Th ompson, “Demon devourers and hybrid crea-tures: traces of Chu visual culture in the Eastern Han period,” Yishu shi yanjiu 2001.3, 261–93; Richard von Glahn, Th e sinister way, the divine and the demonic in Chinese religious culture (Berkeley, 2004), pp. 39–42; Liu, Nylan, Barbieri-Low, Recarving.



the demons and expeller of pestilences.130 Another quite frequent image in the tombs in the region of Nanyang131 consists in fi guring the com-bat of a bear (or of an exorcist disguised as a bear) and a fantastic ox endowed with a frontal horn.

Auspicious omensTh e bad conduct of men, we have seen, arouses the wrath of Heaven, who punishes them by sending catastrophes announced by presages of ill fortune. But Heaven also sends marks of its contentment with virtue, particularly that of the emperor and his ministers. Th ese auspicious omens (xiangrui ) could be animals, fantastic (dragons, phoenix, unicorns, etc.) or rare, strange plants, objects which are exceptional or have a mythical connotation (gui tablets and bi discs of jade or glass, divine tripod, pearls), natural phenomena (clouds, stars, sweet dew). Th e Han texts are full of these auspicious apparitions understood as a favorable response from Heaven. Th ey are essentially political in nature, insofar as they serve within the framework of the theory of the heavenly mandate to legitimize the sovereign and his actions. Being integrated within the concept of the resonance between Heaven and humans (tian-ren ganying ), they also acquire, with their opposite the signs of ill omen, a moral dimension which the Han elite exploited extensively, above all in the two fi rst centuries AD. Finally, and more generally, the auspicious apparitions bear witness to the magico-religious strain which ran through all Han society.

Certain auspicious omens appear on objects or on the walls of the tombs as early as the Western Han, although it is not always possible to attribute to them the status of auspicious omen and to make therefore the distinction between a message sent by the heavens and a simple sign of good fortune or protection. Th e status of celestial message is, however, entirely clear in certain tombs and off ering shrines of the 2nd century AD,132 when the images, probably copied from illustrated catalogues now lost, are accompanied by a short inscription identifying them (Fig. 25).

130 Seidel, “Traces of Han,” pp. 34–35. On the apotropaic function of the bear image, cf. Abe, Ordinary images, pp. 44–47.

131 Wang and Shan, Nanyang, Pl. 93, 202, 214.132 Th is is the case in tomb 1 at Wangdu in Hebei, in that of Helinge’er in Inner

Mongolia and in the off ering shrines of the Wu family at Jiaxiang, cf. Martin J. Powers, “Hybrid omens and public issues in early imperial China,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 55 (1983), 1–55; Wu, Th e Wu Liang shrine, pp. 73–107.



Th e immortals

One of the recurring images in mortuary art, as also of Han art and literature generally, is that of the immortals. Th ey are pictured on the walls of the tombs and on a number of objects, according to a stable iconographic canon. Th ey are winged or dressed in a short cape and skirt of feathers, their bodies covered with down or long hairs. Th ey have large ears and wear their hair swept back into a point. Th ey are oft en depicted as moving in the midst of clouds and sometimes hold-ing what is interpreted as the plant of immortality (Fig. 26). At times these images are accompanied by an inscription which identifi es them without ambiguity as xian (“immortals”). Once constituted, their iconography, although it does evolve, and there are regional variations, kept the basic characteristics we have mentioned.

Origin of the themeTh e theme was born in the Warring States period. In fact, a considerable body of cultural data bear witness to the development of the search for immortality among the masters of recipes ( fangshi) at the court of the kings of Qi and Yan in the second half of the 4th century BC.133 Th ese masters said that in the middle of the Bohai Sea there were sacred mountains in which lived immortals and which harbored drugs of immortality. Th ey also pretended to have the methods that would enable humans to communicate with the immortals, reach their paradise, and benefi t from their longevity.

Th e masters of recipes of Qi and of Yan, who combined their prac-tices with cosmological theories, were very active at the court of the First Emperor (r. 221–209 BC). He sent people out several times in search of the immortals. Th is quest for immortality was intensifi ed at the court of the Han emperors, particularly under the reign of Wudi. He imagined himself capable, with the help of the fangshi, of renewing the exploit of the legendary Yellow Emperor who, the fangshi at court claimed, had risen to heaven on a dragon’s back, accompanied by his companions and his wives.

Th e fi rst evocations of the immortals in the transmitted literature appear in the Zhuangzi,134 in the “Far-off journey” of the Chuci,135 and

133 Yü, “O Soul.”134 Zhuangzi, ch. 1, cf. Wang Xianqian, ed. Zhuangzi jijie (Taibei, 1972, vol. 26) p. 4a.135 Cf. Mathieu, Qu Yuan, pp. 145–46.



in the Huainanzi.136 Th e immortals are described there as roaming freely in the air, peaceful, nourishing themselves on wind and dew, riding clouds and dragons, united to the Dao and, like it, without beginning or end. Th ese texts show a desire to transcend the world and evoke the possibility of humans freeing themselves from their form and, by tra-versing the cosmos, reaching immortality.137 Texts from the 2nd century BC, such as the “Far-off journey” and the Huainanzi mention several immortals, Wangzi Qiao ,138 Prince Qiao, Chisong zi,139 Master Red Pine, Han Zhong, and, of course, the Yellow Emperor, Huangdi, who, with dozens of others, will become the subject of worship and hagiography in the following centuries.

Th e fascination with the immortals and their world disappeared from imperial ideology following the criticism of the scholars and the reforms they promoted in the 1st century BC. But it remained alive in the private worship of the aristocracy and spread throughout the entire society between the second half of the 1st century BC and the 2nd century AD. Th is diff usion was oft en accompanied by an adaptation to new models and religious practices. Th e ancient fi gures of immortality were transformed by “reincarnating” themselves as scholar-magicians venerated locally for having accomplished prodigious acts and acceded to immortality or, as in the case of Wangzi Qiao, into a pious son.140

In addition, several texts from the end of the Han, like the Scripture of Great Peace presented to Emperor Shun (r. 126–145), re-organized the world of the immortals according to their merits. Th ey distinguished between celestial immortals, the highest in the hierarchy, those who could wander in the empyrean and ascend to highest heaven, the earthly immortals who continued to live among men and haunted the moun-tains and, fi nally, at the bottom of the scale, the immortals who, aft er feigning death, were delivered from their bodily envelope. Th e latter became offi cials in the underworld. Th e idea of a hierarchy is evidence of the bureaucratization of the cult of the immortals at the end of the Han. It puts as much stress on moral criteria—on good actions—as on the alchemical and physiological practices for attaining immortality.

136 Huainanzi, cf. Philosophes, p. 173 (chs 4, 9a), 493 (chs 11, 13b), 965 (chs 20, 10a).137 Michael J. Puett, To become a god. Cosmology, sacrifi ce, and self-divinization in

early China (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), pp. 221, 239–45.138 Marianne Bujard, “Le culte de Wangzi Qiao ou la longue carrière d’un immortel,”

Études chinoises, XIX, 1–2 (2000), 115–58.139 Max Kaltenmark, Le Lie-sien tchouan (Paris, 1987), pp. 35–42.140 Bujard, “Le culte,” pp. 124–25.



Th is hierarchy will be taken up again by Ge Hong (283–343) and by the various Daoist schools of the Six Dynasties.

Th e iconography of the immortals and its evolutionTh e oldest representations of spirits possessing certain attributes which will become characteristic of the immortals come from the coffi ns of tomb 1 at Mawangdui in Changsha (a little aft er 168 BC) (Fig. 27). Th ey are, on the coffi n with a black background, creatures who are moving in the midst of volutes of clouds, along with other hybrids. Th eir untied hair forms a point behind the head, and they have tuft s of hair on their elbows.141 Th ese tuft s, like the hair gathered in a point, are also to be seen on the spirit on the coffi n with a red background in the same tomb142 and on some contemporary lacquers. Th ese images from the 2nd century BC, exceptional and coming from tombs linked to the aristocracy,143 have certainly contributed to the constitution of an iconography of the immortals. However, we must wait until the end of the 1st century BC before this takes shape. One fi nds the image, still quite rare, painted or stamped on the walls or the ceiling of certain tombs in Henan and on a larger number of precious objects. In the majority of cases, the immortal is pictured riding a dragon.144 At this time also appear two classical attributes of the immortals of the Later Han: big ears and wings.145 Th e most frequent image shows a slender, naked creature, its limbs covered with down or hair, winged, with a sort of tail and its hair fl oating into a point, bounding among clouds and fantastic

141 Mawangdui M1, cf. Changsha, I, fi g. 17–21, Sun Zuoyun, “Mawangdui yi hao Han mu qi guan hua kaoshi,” Kaogu 1973.4, 247–54; fi g. 5/1–5.

142 Mawangui M1, cf. Changsha, I, fi g. 25.143 I shall mention also a gilded bronze plaque, a carriage ornament, in the subsidi-

ary pit n° 1 of tomb 2 at Bao’an shan, at Mangdangshan in Henan. Th e tomb is that of princess Li, wife of King Xiao of Liang, who died in 123 BC, cf. Yan, Mangdangshan, fi g. 21/5.

144 Tomb 61 in Luoyang (cf. “Luoyang Xi Han bihuamu fajue baogao,” Kaogu xue-bao 1964.2, 107–25; Pl. IV/3 and Pl. VIII), tomb of Qianjingtou, also in Luoyang (cf. “Luoyang Qianjingtou Xi Han bihuamu fajue jianbao,” Wenwu 1993.5, 1–16; fi g. 25 and Pl. I); cf. also Yang, “Guanyu Luoyang.”

145 For ex. the pair of zun vases of Youyu (Shanxi) dated 26 BC (cf. Guo Yong, “Shanxi sheng Youyu xian chutu de Xi Han tongqi,” Wenwu 1963.11, 4–12, fi g. 4–5, Pl. I-II); the lacquers of tomb 101 at Yaozhuang, in Jiangsu, second half of the 1st century BC (cf. “Jiangsu Hanjiang Yaozhuang 101 hao Xi Han mu,” Wenwu 1988.2, 19–43); the silk embroidery of the tomb of Yinwan in Jiangsu, 9–23 AD (cf. “Jiangsu Donghai xian Yinwan Han mu jun fajue jianbao,” Wenwu 1996.8, 4–25; color Pl. II).



animals (Fig. 28). Th ese immortals are ethereal, disincarnated, half-way between man and animal. At times they hold something resembling a plant (the drug of immortality).

Th e image also appears on a number of mirrors in the form of a chessboard (boju jing), along with the animals of the four directions (sishen) or the fi ve auspicious animals (wuling , that is those of the four directions plus, in the center, the unicorn, symbol of the earth) in relation with the fi ve agents146 (Fig. 29). Th e inscription on some of these mirrors evokes the immortals represented on the object. Th us it is said that

they do not know old age. When they thirst, they drink at the springs of jade. When they hunger, they eat jujubes. Th ey roam at large throughout the world. Th ey wander between the four seas. Th e dragon on the left and the tiger on the right chase [the evil infl uences] and protect the Way. May your longevity be equal to that of metal or stone, which are the precious goods of the country.147

Another inscription says “they rove at will on the celebrated mountains, gathering the plant of immortality.”148 Th ese inscriptions insist on a certain number of themes and associations. Besides the association of the immortals with the sishen and the wuling which was maintained on other types of mirrors during the fi rst three centuries AD, their link with the sacred mountains, particularly with Taishan, is noteworthy, as is the theme of the immortals harnessing dragons and riding the clouds. Finally, the idea that the immortals help give longevity and the hope of joining them in their happy life without constraint are leitmotifs of the inscriptions on the mirrors.

Th e image of the immortal underwent its greatest expansion in the 2nd century AD. It ornamented a variety of objects, above all lamps, and was a part of the décor of the tombs in proportions and following associations which varied according to the regions. On a certain number of lamps from this period, the immortal plays the role of lamp-holder149 (Fig. 30). His pointed hair, high ears, feathered cape and skirt and his wings are all utterly typical of the 2nd century immortals. Th e immortal

146 Sun Ji, “Ji zhong Handai de tu’an wenshi,” Wenwu 1982.3, 63–69.147 Mirror C 3201 in Loewe, Ways to paradise, pp. 198–99.148 Mirror C 4102 in Loewe, Ways to paradise, pp. 198–99.149 Ex. lamp discovered at Wuzhou in Guangxi, cf. “Guangxi Wuzhou shi jinian

lai chutu de yipi Handai wenwu,” Wenwu 1977.2, 70–1; Pl. 3/1; for another example (attributed by error to the Western Han), cf. Chine des origines (Paris, 1994), n° 47.



of these lamps has acquired a sort of bodily density which shares in the tendency to anthropomorphize the divinities characteristic of ico-nography at the end of the Han. In addition, this immortal, perfectly humanized despite his wings, ears, his feather clothes, is sometimes endowed with several non-Han features such as a big nose or a large moustache, which make him look like a hu barbarian.

In 2nd century tombs the immortals are associated with Xiwangmu and Dongwanggong and with the animals and divinities—henceforth endowed with wings (Fig. 24, 31)—who protect the deceased, his tomb, and his voyage to the other world. Th ese immortals decorate above all the doors, and they are very oft en associated with the east. For example, they appear on the east leaf of the doors or, in Sichuan, on the long east side of the sarcophagi.

Th ese characteristics form in a sense the common basis of the dif-ferent representations of the immortals in the 2nd century tombs, but within this homogenous framework, the variations are major and quite complex. Th ey involve the iconography itself, the gestures,150 and the associations with other divinities. For instance, the direct association with Xiwangmu or her consort varies largely from one region to another: quite plentiful in Shandong, it is rarer in Shaanxi and in Sichuan, rarer still in Jiangsu, non existent in Henan.

If we try now, on the basis of the component elements of the theme and of their evolution, to understand how the iconography of the immortals was constituted, it appears clearly that it is a combination of autochthonous elements and others which were imported. Th e man-ani-mal hybrids at the origin of the fi rst images are native.151 Th e link with birds, in particular, is very ancient. Th e long ears as a sign of wisdom,152 of which we possess examples from antiquity, are also native,153 as was

150 Th e immortals in Sichuan are very oft en, much more than in other regions, pictured playing at liubo.

151 Th e hybrids are not absent either from the repertory of the steppes; see, for example, a small plate from the Scythian goryte (ca. 350–325 BC) of Soboleva Mohyla, in Ukraine, of which a good number of characteristics foreshadow the Han immortals. Cf. L’Or des rois scythes (Paris, 2001), n° 154.

152 A characteristic of Laozi, cf. Anne Cheng, Histoire de la pensée chinoise (Paris, 1997), p. 177.

153 At Sanxingdui, in Sichuan, for the 12th c. BC, these ears characterized the heads and masks in bronze, cf. Alain Th ote, ed., Chine, l’énigme de l’homme de bronze (Paris, 2004). Th e divinity of the ge from Jingmen, in Hubei, dating from the Warring States period, and identifi ed by Li Ling as Taiyi is also endowed with large ears (cf. Rawson, Mysteries, p. 149 n° 68). Finally, still in Chu, one fi nds this feature on the hybrids on



the hair fl owing to a point, characteristic of demons and the possessed, but also of “uncivilized” people154 and therefore of the barbarians. Th e attribute “wings,” on the other hand, is a borrowing from the repertory of the steppe population, which they themselves had adapted from a very ancient tradition from the Middle East. Th e wings were fi rst applied in China to various animals, real (felines, rams, horses) or fantastic (drag-ons, unicorns), all quadrupeds for which the addition of wings made them a part of a supernatural world (Fig. 8/4–5, 9, 24, 25, 29). Little by little they became the characteristic of a number of divinities linked to the other world (Xiwangmu, Dongwanggong) and of divine beings such as the immortals who in some sense play the role of messengers between the celestial world and mankind155 (Fig. 24–26, 29–31).

Similarities and diff erences between the visual art and received textsWang Chong (27–c. 97) consecrated a chapter of his Lunheng (Balanced assessments) to refuting the idea that one can modify one’s destiny and attain immortality.156 In this chapter he evokes the fallacious paintings which show the immortals, their bodies covered with hair, their upper arms transformed into wings, traveling in the clouds (Fig. 28). Th e image corresponds to that on the objects or in the tombs of the 1st century AD. Th e correspondence between image and text is remarkable here. By contrast, the descriptions in the Liexian zhuan (Biographies of arrayed immortals; 2nd century) are, in some regards, without their equivalent in the visual culture of the Han. If one certainly fi nds the hairy bodies, the big ears and the fl owing hair,157 the square pupils are unknown in the Han images. Th e Liexian zhuan immortals, like those in the poems at the end of the Han, ride dragons or white deer, as in the representations (Fig. 29), but they are also said to ride cranes, a subject which does not appear, to my knowledge, on any Han image.158

the inner coffi n of the marquis Yi of Zeng’s tomb at Leigudun (ca. 433 BC), in Hubei (cf. Zeng Hou yi mu (Beijing, 1989), II, Pl. coul. II, Pl XI/2–3).

154 Harper, “A Chinese demonography,” p. 476.155 Michèle Pirazzoli-t’Serstevens, “Inner Asia and Han China: borrowings and

representations,” Proceedings of the symposium New frontiers in global archaeology: defi ning China’s ancient tradition, Arthur M. Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology at Peking University, 2004, ed. Th omas Lawton (Tokyo, in press).

156 Ch. 2, Wuxingpian, cf. Wang Chong, Lunheng (Shanghai, 1974), pp. 21–24.157 Kaltenmark, Le Lie-sien tchouan, pp. 78–79, 168–69, 179–80.158 Kaltenmark, Le Lie-sien tchouan, pp. 109–10. Ge Hong in his Baopuzi also evokes

the immortals mounted on cranes.



Th e association immortals/clouds (Fig. 24, 26, 28, 31) appears as an obligatory formula, both in the texts and in the images. Th e clouds are, to take up the description of Jean-Pierre Diény, the escort or a part of the equipment of the space wanderers.159 Th e association of the immor-tals with mountains is much more marked in the literature than in the visual culture,160 while the association with auspicious animals—a real topos of the Han representations—is virtually absent from the descrip-tions in the texts.

Th ese diff erences are not surprising. Th e West has known a com-parable autonomy of religious representations by comparison with texts.161 Moreover, the divergences exist too, during the Han, in the heart of the written traditions. Marianne Bujard has already remarked a similar phenomenon concerning the fi gure of the immortal Wangzi Qiao, between the Liexian zhuan, the stele consecrated to Wangzi Qiao in the 2nd century at Mengxian, near Shangqiu in Henan, and other sources. She attributes these variations to “the geographical dispersion of the places of cult linked to the immortal.”162

Th e relative autonomy and specifi city of the images by comparison with the texts of the literati and the divergence between diff erent tradi-tions of worship are phenomena that cannot be ignored for the Han period. We have seen that they also concern the image of Xiwangmu. Nevertheless, the multiplication of the representations of Xiwangmu and of the immortals in the tombs of the 2nd century AD, and still more perhaps in the second half of the century, is an indication of the vogue of the quest for immortality and paradise, particularly marked, it seems, in the upper classes. It also expresses, in its fashion, the eschatological pre-occupations of the period and, more generally, the religious anxiety which characterizes the “disordered landscape” characteristic of north and central China at the end of the Han.

159 Jean-Pierre Diény, “Esquisse d’une poétique des nuages,” T’oung Pao 80.4–5 (1994), 377–99; p. 387.

160 For example, remember that the images of immortals are rare on the incense burn-ers in the form of a mountain (boshanlu). However, one may believe that these incense burners evoke the mountains where the immortals and the hermits lived, in search of the plant of immortality. On the boshanlu, cf. Susan N. Erickson, “Boshanlu—mountain censers of the Western Han period: a typological and iconological analysis,” Archives of Asian Art 45 (1992), 6–28.

161 Jean Delumeau, Que reste-t-il du paradis? (Paris, 2000), p. 12.162 Bujard, “Le culte,” p. 122. Th e identifi cation of the immortals with local cult centers

was already emphasized by Anna Seidel, cf. A. Seidel, “Chronicle of Daoist studies in the West 1950–1990,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 5 (1989–90), 223–347; p. 248.



Fig. 1. Cross-section of tomb 1 at Mawangdui, Changsha, Hunan, a little aft er 168 BC, aft er Changsha, 1973, I, fi g. 3.



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Fig. 12. Plan of the mausoleum of emperor Jing (157–141 BC), from Han 2001, p. 8.

1—burial mound; 2—access road; 3—door with gate pillars que on either side; 4—burial pits.



Fig. 13. Plan of three off ering shrines (citang), 1st–2nd century AD: 1—stone citang of Xiaotangshan, Changqing county, Shandong; 2—stone citang from the tomb at Baiji, Qingshanquan, near Xuzhou, Jiangsu; 3—earthenware model (mingqi) of a citang, tomb at Jinlingzhen, Zibo, Shandong. From Huang

2003, fi g. 118, p. 273.



Fig.

14.

Ink

rubb

ing

of a

carv

ed st

one s

how

ing

a sce

ne o

f hom

age (

1 m

20 ×

74 cm

), re

ar w

all o

f a sm

all o

ff erin

g sh

rine (

citan

g);

the s

tone

was

use

d ag

ain

in a

later

tom

b, d

iscov

ered

at S

ongs

han,

Jiax

iang

coun

ty, S

hand

ong.

Fro

m Z

hu X

ilu, J

iaxi

ang H

an

huax

iang

shi,

1992

, fi g

. 63.



Fig. 15. Right-hand pillar from a pair of gate pillars que from the funeral precinct of the tomb of Gao Yi, governor of the commandery of Yizhou, d. 209 AD.

Sandstone, H. 5.75 m, Ya’an, Sichuan, from Luo 2002, fi g. 403, p. 290.



Fig. 16. Drawing of the map of the sky on the vault of the tomb of Jiaotong University, at Xi’an, Shaanxi, end of the Western Han, from Xi’an 1991, p. 25.



Fig. 17. Shipan in lacquer, tomb 62 of Mozuizi, Wuwei county, Gansu, ca. 8 BC, from Wenwu 1972.12, p. 15, fi g. 8.



Fig. 18. bojujing mirror, bronze, D. 19.6 cm, Wang Mang interregnum (9–23 AD), Department of Archaeology, Beijing University, from Yanyuan 1992, no. 109.



Fig. 19. Ink rubbing of the central panel (carved stone) of the door linking the antechamber to the central chamber: Chiyou, with, above, the red bird of the south and, underneath, the dark warrior (Xuanwu) of the north. Tomb of Yi’nan, Beizhai, Shandong, second half of the 2nd century AD, from Zeng

1956, Pl. 33.



Fig. 20. Zhenmuping of tomb 5 at Zhangwan, Lingbao county, Henan, 2nd century AD, from Wenwu 1975.11, p. 79.



Fig. 21. Small lead plates in the form of a man; inscribed on the back, “living he depended on Chang’an, dead he depends on Taishan,” 2nd century AD, Musée

Guimet, Paris (inv. MA 2995–2998).



Fig.

22.

Mou

lded

bric

k (H

. 40.

3 cm

, l. 4

5.5

cm) r

epre

sent

ing

Xiw

angm

u, h

er a

coly

tes,

a fa

ngsh

i and

pra

ying

fi gu

res,

tom

b 1

of

Qin

gbai

xian

g at

Che

ngdu

, Sic

huan

, 2nd

cent

ury

AD

, Pro

vinc

ial M

useu

m o

f Sic

huan

, Che

ngdu

. Fro

m L

im 1

987,

Pl.

63.



Fig. 23. Moulded brick (H. 39.2 cm, l. 47.9 cm), from a tomb in Chongqing county, Fuxi and Nüwa: Fuxi holds a drum and is supporting the sky; Nüwa holds a Pan’s pipe and supports the moon with his left hand; 2nd century AD. Provincial Museum of Sichuan, Chengdu. From Bagley, ed., Ancient Sichuan

(Seattle, 2001), n° 109.



Fig

. 24.

Dra

win

g of

the c

eilin

g (N

orth

slop

e, W

est s

ectio

n) o

f the

Left

Cha

mbe

r (or

Cha

mbe

r n° 2

) in

the o

ff erin

g sh

rines

of t

he

Wu

fam

ily ce

met

ery,

Jiaxi

ang,

Sha

ndon

g, m

iddl

e of t

he 2

nd ce

ntur

y A

D. F

rom

Xin

, 200

0, fi

g. 9

6.



Fig.

25.

One

of t

he au

spic

ious

om

ens (

xian

grui

), he

re a

win

ged

roe-

deer

(zha

ngzi

), re

pres

ente

d in

the

ante

cham

ber o

f tom

b 1

at

Wan

gdu,

Din

g cou

nty,

Heb

ei, p

erha

ps th

e tom

b of

the D

uke o

f Fuy

ang,

ca. 1

80 A

D. F

rom

Chû

ka Ji

mm

in K

yôwa

koku

Kan

Tô h

ekig

a te

n (T

okyo

197

5), n

° 7.



Fig. 26. Drawing of an immortal fl ying in the midst of clouds, on a carved stone of the tomb of Yi’nan, Shandong, second half of the 2nd century AD.

From Zeng 1956, p. 57, fi g. 25.



Fig. 27. Above, drawing of the decor painted on the long left side of the coffi n with red background of tomb 1 at Mawangdui, Changsha, Hunan, a little aft er 168 BC, from Changsha 1973, I, fi g. 25; below, drawings of spirits and hybrids painted on the coffi n with a black background in the same tomb, from Sun

1973, fi g. 5.



Fig. 28. Above, drawing of the decor painted on the side of the head cover (wenming = mianzhao) in lacquered wood of tomb 101 at Yaozhuang, Hanjiang county, Jiangsu, second half of the 1st century BC. From Jiangsu 1988, fi g. 27, p. 35; below, reconstruction of the head cover of the wife in the couple tomb

M102 at Yaozhuang, ca. 9 AD, from Kaogu 2000.4, p. 59, fi g. 18.



Fig.

29.

Imm

orta

ls as

soci

ated

with

the fi

ve a

uspi

ciou

s ani

mal

s (w

ulin

g): a

t le

ft , o

n bo

jujin

g mirr

ors,

fi rst

quar

ter o

f the

1st

cent

ury

of o

ur er

a; at

righ

t, on

four

-nip

pled

mirr

ors,

1st–

2nd

cent

ury

AD

. Fro

m S

un 1

982,

fi g.

4 an

d 7.

[th

e im

ages

of t

he im

mor

tals

are i

ndic

ated

by

an ar

row

]



Fig. 30. Th ree-branched lamp carried by an immortal, bronze, H. 36 cm, 2nd century AD, Wahl-Rostagni collection. From Chine 1994, n° 47.



Fig. 31. Ink rubbing of a carved stone from an off ering shrine (citang), re-used in tomb 1 at Songshan, Jiaxiang county, Shandong: In the upper register, Xiwangmu enthroned on the Kunlun, accompanied by acolytes (among them the hare crushing the drug of immortality), immortals, and a winged divinity with the head of a cock, 2nd century AD. From Zhu Xilu, Jiaxiang Han

huaxiangshi, 1992, fi g. 46.



Death and the dead: practices and images in the Qin and Han

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