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Wei Bin's Temple Bell has been in a collection in the
The carved words on the bell state that Wei Bin's Temple Bell was made in the 13th year of 
Wei Bin's Temple Bell has been in a collection in the Royal Ontario Museum
The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is a museum of art, world culture and natural history in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of the largest museums in North America and the largest in Canada. It attracts more than one million visitors every year ...
(ROM) since 1920. It is located on the first floor near the Chinese Galleries entrance and belongs to the George Crofts Collection (Ref No.: 920.1.20.). Wei Bin's Temple Bell is made of Bronze, is 200 cm in height, 114 cm in diameter, and is cylindrical in shape with a domed top and flared wavelike rim.Ruitenbeek, Klaas (2006) "Wei Bin's Bell" Orientations Vol. 37 no.3 pp.66-69
Historical background
The carved words on the bell state that Wei Bin's Temple Bell was made in the 13th year of Zhengde
Zhengde () (24 January 1506 – 27 January 1522) was the era name of the Zhengde Emperor, the 11th emperor of the Ming dynasty of China.
Comparison table
Other eras contemporaneous with Zhengde
* China
** ''Mingzheng'' (明正, 1511): Ming per ...
(In Chinese:正德) Period of the Ming Dynasty
The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last ort ...
(1518) and was bestowed by the Director of Ceremonial Wei Bin (In Chinese: 司禮監 韋霦, Wei Bin appears in other books with different characters: 韋彬,魏彬).
Zhengde
Zhengde () (24 January 1506 – 27 January 1522) was the era name of the Zhengde Emperor, the 11th emperor of the Ming dynasty of China.
Comparison table
Other eras contemporaneous with Zhengde
* China
** ''Mingzheng'' (明正, 1511): Ming per ...
delegated his powers to his chief Eunuch
A eunuch ( ) is a male who has been castrated. Throughout history, castration often served a specific social function.
The earliest records for intentional castration to produce eunuchs are from the Sumerian city of Lagash in the 2nd millennium ...
Liu Jin
Liu Jin (; 28 February 1451 – 25 August 1510) was a powerful Ming dynasty Chinese eunuch during the reign of the Zhengde Emperor.
Liu was famous for being one of the most influential officials in Chinese history. For some time, Liu was the em ...
. Wei Bin was under the Chief eunuch Liu Jin
Liu Jin (; 28 February 1451 – 25 August 1510) was a powerful Ming dynasty Chinese eunuch during the reign of the Zhengde Emperor.
Liu was famous for being one of the most influential officials in Chinese history. For some time, Liu was the em ...
and after Liu Jin
Liu Jin (; 28 February 1451 – 25 August 1510) was a powerful Ming dynasty Chinese eunuch during the reign of the Zhengde Emperor.
Liu was famous for being one of the most influential officials in Chinese history. For some time, Liu was the em ...
died in 1510 Wei Bin took his place and became the Ceremonial Director (a kind of Eunuch
A eunuch ( ) is a male who has been castrated. Throughout history, castration often served a specific social function.
The earliest records for intentional castration to produce eunuchs are from the Sumerian city of Lagash in the 2nd millennium ...
) (In Chinese: 司禮監). Wei Bin was regarded as one of the Eight Tigers
The Eight Tigers (), sometimes referred to as the Gang of Eight (八黨), were a powerful group of Eunuch (court official), eunuchs that controlled the Chinese imperial court during the reign of the Zhengde Emperor (r. 1505–1521) of the Ming Dyn ...
(In Chinese: (In Chinese: 八虎), also referred to as the "Gang of Eight" (In Chinese: 八黨).
Temple location
As stated on the bell, it was suspended, with imperial permission, in the Hongshan Si (Chinese: 弘善寺; Temple of Great Bounty) in Beijing, just outside the Zuoan Gate Chinese: 左安門). In the Ming Dynasty, this area was a suburb of the palaceForbidden City
The Forbidden City () is a Chinese palace, palace complex in Dongcheng District, Beijing, China, at the center of the Imperial City, Beijing, Imperial City of Beijing. It is surrounded by numerous opulent imperial gardens and temples includ ...
.
Museum
George Crofts (1872–1925) acquired the bell for the museum. He found it in the former Austro-Hungarian Legation, where it had been brought, reportedly by Italian troops, after the Boxer uprising of 1900.Patterns on the bell
On the top of the Bell, a 2-heads-no-tails dragon appears, with four legs and five toes on each leg. The wall is divided into panels and bands by raised lines and filled withcartouche
In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oval with a line at one end tangent to it, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name. The first examples of the cartouche are associated with pharaohs at the end of the Third Dynasty, but the fea ...
s containing a dedicatory inscription. Around the lower edge, the eight trigram
Trigrams are a special case of the ''n''-gram, where ''n'' is 3. They are often used in natural language processing for performing statistical analysis of texts and in cryptography for control and use of ciphers and codes.
Frequency
Context is ...
s in a band separated by cloud, and a band of waves runs around the lower edge. Most of the text is from the Sutra of the Names of the 35 Buddhas and the Vinaya Sutra.
References
{{reflist Collections of the Royal Ontario Museum Individual bells Ming dynasty art