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Taotie
The ''Taotie'' () is an ancient Chinese mythological creature that was commonly emblazoned on bronze and other artifacts during the 1st millennium BC. ''Taotie'' are one of the " four evil creatures of the world". In Chinese classical texts such as the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", the fiend is named alongside the ''Hundun'' (), ''Qiongqi'' () and ''Taowu'' (). They are opposed by the Four Holy Creatures, the Azure Dragon, Vermilion Bird, White Tiger and Black Tortoise. The four fiends are also juxtaposed with the four benevolent animals which are Qilin (), Dragon (), Turtle () and Fenghuang (). The ''Taotie'' is often represented as a motif on '' dings'', which are Chinese ritual bronze vessels from the Shang (1766-1046 BCE) and Zhou dynasties (1046–256 BCE). The design typically consists of a zoomorphic mask, described as being frontal, bilaterally symmetrical, with a pair of raised eyes and typically no lower jaw area. Some argue that the design can be traced back ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Ritual Bronzes
Sets and individual examples of ritual bronzes survive from when they were made mainly during the Chinese Bronze Age. Ritual bronzes create quite an impression both due to their sophistication of design and manufacturing process, but also because of their remarkable durability. From around 1650 BCE, these elaborately decorated vessels were deposited as grave goods in the tombs of royalty and the nobility, and were evidently produced in very large numbers, with documented excavations finding over 200 pieces in a single royal tomb. They were produced for an individual or social group to use in making ritual offerings of food and drink to his or their ancestors and other deities or spirits. Such ceremonies generally took place in family temples or ceremonial halls over tombs. These ceremonies can be seen as ritual banquets in which both living and dead members of a family were supposed to participate. Details of these ritual ceremonies are preserved through early literary records ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ding (vessel)
''Ding'' () are prehistoric and ancient Chinese cauldrons, standing upon legs with a lid and two facing handles. They are one of the most important shapes used in Chinese ritual bronzes. They were made in two shapes: round vessels with three legs and rectangular ones with four, the latter often called ''fangding''. They were used for cooking, storage, and ritual offerings to the gods or to ancestors. The earliest recovered examples are pre-Shang ceramic ding at the Erlitou site but they are better known from the Bronze Age, particularly after the Zhou deemphasized the ritual use of wine practiced by the Shang kings. Under the Zhou, the ding and the privilege to perform the associated rituals became symbols of authority. The number of permitted ding varied according to one's rank in the Chinese nobility: the Nine Ding of the Zhou kings were a symbol of their rule over all China but were lost by the first emperor, Shi Huangdi in the late 3rd century BCE. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ding (vessel)
''Ding'' () are prehistoric and ancient Chinese cauldrons, standing upon legs with a lid and two facing handles. They are one of the most important shapes used in Chinese ritual bronzes. They were made in two shapes: round vessels with three legs and rectangular ones with four, the latter often called ''fangding''. They were used for cooking, storage, and ritual offerings to the gods or to ancestors. The earliest recovered examples are pre-Shang ceramic ding at the Erlitou site but they are better known from the Bronze Age, particularly after the Zhou deemphasized the ritual use of wine practiced by the Shang kings. Under the Zhou, the ding and the privilege to perform the associated rituals became symbols of authority. The number of permitted ding varied according to one's rank in the Chinese nobility: the Nine Ding of the Zhou kings were a symbol of their rule over all China but were lost by the first emperor, Shi Huangdi in the late 3rd century BCE. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liangzhu Culture
The Liangzhu culture (; 3300–2300 BC) was the last Neolithic jade culture in the Yangtze River Delta of China. The culture was highly stratified, as jade, silk, ivory and lacquer artifacts were found exclusively in elite burials, while pottery was more commonly found in the burial plots of poorer individuals. This division of class indicates that the Liangzhu period was an early state, symbolized by the clear distinction drawn between social classes in funeral structures. A pan-regional urban center had emerged at the Liangzhu city-site and elite groups from this site presided over the local centers. The Liangzhu culture was extremely influential and its sphere of influence reached as far north as Shanxi and as far south as Guangdong. The primary Liangzhu site was perhaps among the oldest Neolithic sites in East Asia that would be considered a state society. The type site at Liangzhu was discovered in Yuhang County, Zhejiang and initially excavated by Shi Xingeng in 1936. On 6 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shang Dynasty
The Shang dynasty (), also known as the Yin dynasty (), was a Chinese royal dynasty founded by Tang of Shang (Cheng Tang) that ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty and followed by the Western Zhou dynasty. The classic account of the Shang comes from texts such as the '' Book of Documents'', '' Bamboo Annals'' and '' Records of the Grand Historian''. According to the traditional chronology based on calculations made approximately 2,000 years ago by Liu Xin, the Shang ruled from 1766 to 1122 BC, but according to the chronology based upon the "current text" of ''Bamboo Annals'', they ruled from 1556 to 1046 BC. Comparing the same text with dates of five-planet conjunctions, David Pankenier, supported by David Nivison, proposed dates of the establishment of the dynasty to 1554 BC. The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project dated the establishment to c. 1600 BC based on the carbon-14 dates of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Dragon
The Chinese dragon, also known as ''loong'', ''long'' or ''lung'', is a legendary creature in Chinese mythology, Chinese folklore, and Chinese culture at large. Chinese dragons have many Outline of life forms, animal-like forms such as Bixi (mythology), turtles and Chiwen, fish, but are most commonly depicted as snake-like with four legs. Academicians have identified four reliable theories on the origin of the Chinese dragon: snakes, Chinese alligators, thunder and nature worship. They traditionally symbolize potent and wikt:auspicious, auspicious powers, particularly control over water, rainfall, typhoons, and floods. The dragon is also a symbol of power, strength, and good luck for people who are worthy of it in East Asian cultural sphere, East Asian culture. During the days of Imperial China, the Emperor of China usually used the dragon as a symbol of his imperial strength and power. In Chinese culture, excellent and outstanding people are compared to a dragon, while incapable ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hundun
Hundun () is both a "legendary faceless being" in Chinese mythology and the "primordial and central chaos" in Chinese cosmogony, comparable with the world egg. Linguistics ''Hundun'' was semantically extended from a mythic "primordial chaos; nebulous state of the universe before heaven and earth separated" to mean "unintelligible; chaotic; messy; mentally dense; innocent as a child". While ''hùndùn'' "primordial chaos" is usually written as in contemporary vernacular, it is also written as —as in the Daoist classic ''Zhuangzi''—or —as in the '' Zuozhuan''. ''Hùn'' "chaos; muddled; confused" is written either ''hùn'' () or ''hún'' (). These two are interchangeable graphic variants read as ''hún'' ( ) and ''hùn'' "nebulous; stupid" (''hùndùn'' ). ''Dùn'' ("dull; confused") is written as either ''dùn'' () or ''dūn'' (). Isabelle Robinet outlines the etymological origins of ''hundun''. Semantically, the term ''hundun'' is related to several expressions, har ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sarah Allan
Sarah Allan (; born 1945) is an American paleographer and scholar of ancient China. She was a Burlington Northern Foundation Professor of Asian Studies in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Literatures at Dartmouth College; she is currently affiliated to the University of California, Berkeley. She is Chair for the Society for the Study of Early China and Editor of Early China. Previously, she was Senior Lecturer in Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. She is best known for her interdisciplinary approach to the mythological and philosophical systems of early Chinese civilization. Biography Allan received a B.A. degree in 1966 from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in 1969 and 1974 respectively from the University of California, Berkeley. At UCLA, she studied archaeology with Richard C. Rudolph and took a course in Chinese art history with J. Leroy Davidson, and she studied ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palaeographer
Palaeography ( UK) or paleography ( US; ultimately from grc-gre, , ''palaiós'', "old", and , ''gráphein'', "to write") is the study of historic writing systems and the deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysis of historic handwriting. It is concerned with the forms and processes of writing; not the textual content of documents. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of scriptoria. The discipline is one of the auxiliary sciences of history. It is important for understanding, authenticating, and dating historic texts. However, it generally cannot be used to pinpoint dates with high precision. Application Palaeography can be an essential skill for historians and philologists, as it tackles two main difficulties. First, since the style of a single alphabet in each given langu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tripod For Food (Ding), For Rituals Celebrating The Ancestors
A tripod is a portable three-legged frame or stand, used as a platform for supporting the weight and maintaining the stability of some other object. The three-legged (triangular stance) design provides good stability against gravitational loads as well as horizontal shear forces, and better leverage for resisting tipping over due to lateral forces can be achieved by spreading the legs away from the vertical centre. Variations with one, two, and four legs are termed ''monopod'', ''bipod'', and ''quadripod'' (similar to a Table (furniture), table). Etymology First attested in English in the early 17th century, the word ''tripod'' comes via Latin ''tripodis'' (genitive, GEN of ''tripus''), which is the romanization of Greek language, Greek (''tripous''), "three-footed" (GEN , ''tripodos''), ultimately from (''tri-''), "three times" (from , ''tria'', "three") + (''pous''), "foot". The earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek , ''ti-ri-po'', written in Linear B s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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