Hearse and 'Soul-Carriage' in Han Dynasty Tomb Art
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Where Are They Going? Where Did They Come From? - Hearse and 'Soul-carriage' in Han Dynasty Tomb Art Wu Hung mages of chariots are abundant in Han period (206 BCE-CE corresponding section of the inscription reads: I 220) tombs and serve ditJerent purposes. Some indicate the official rank of the tomb occupant or pertain to events in his Ascending the bridge over the Wei river, life, while others depict funerary processions as well as imagi Here appear ofticial chariots and horsemen. nary tours taken by the souL This paper focllses on chariot The Head Clerk is in front, images of the second kind. Because of their dual function of And the Master of Records is behind. representing actual ritual events and a fictional time/space after Together with th em are the Chief of a Commune, death, these images link life and afterlife into a continuous The Assistant Commandant of Cavalry, metaphorical journey, in which death is conceived as a liminal And a barbarian drawing his cross-bow. experience. Instead of elaborating on the already rich scholar Water !lows under the bridge; ship on the nomenclature of ancient chariots, therefore, this A crowd of people arc fishing. essay aims to uncover the logic of funerary ritual and ritual art. Servant boys are paddling a boat, In particular, I want to explore the role of chariot images in Ferrying Iyour] wives across the river. signifying movement and time. Moreover, by tracing the devel opment in burial practices from the interment of actual chariots The Wei river was famous during the Han period. Flowing north i.n the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE-CE 9) to the substitution of the Western Han capital Chang'an (present-day Xj'an in of pictorial images during the Eastern Han (25-220), we can Shaanxi province), it separated the city from the royal mausolea better understand an important mechanjsm of aI1istic creation on the river's north bank. Several Han emperors built bridges in Han art. across this river to link the capital with their own tombs, and The most explicit representation ofa bipartite journey - first imperial gUaI'ds and hundreds of officials accompanied their a funerary procession to the grave and then an imaginary tour departed lords across these bridges. The Wei river, then, must in the afterlife - is seen in an Eastern Han tomb located at have become a general symbol of death, and thus it is not Cangshan in southeastern Shandong province, which is se surplising to find reculTing images of a Wei river bridge (Wei curely dated by an inscription in the tomb to 151 . Amazingly, Qiao or Weishui Qiao) in Han dynasty burials. ln the enormous this inscription also explains the tomb's carvings in a coherent Helingeer tomb in Inner Mongolia (c. late 2nd century), a narrative (Wu, 1994). To summarize, the writer of the inscrip depiction of such a bridge appears above the passageway lead tion, who was most probably the designer of the tomb, begins ing from the middle to the rear chamber. Most of the pictures his description in the rear chamber where the coffin lay. Images in the middle chamber illustrate the cities and towns where the in this section are all mystical in nature and include heavenly deceased held office during his career; the rear chamber has no beasts and intertwining dragons. He then moves on to identify such scenes but is embellished with images of an ideal afterlife, the pictures in the main ohamber. Here, human figures become which include a large estate and an immortal 'moon place' . The the principal subject, and one finds a funerary journey repre Wei river bridge painted over the entrance to the rear chamber sented in two horizontal compositions on the east and west thus both separates and connects life and the afterlife. A chariot walls above two niches. The first picture, on the west wall, procession depicted crossing the bridge further supplies a sense shows a chariot procession crossing a river (Fig. I a). The of movement from the former to the latter. (Fig. I a) Rubbing of mural showing the crossing of the Wei river bridge Main chamber, west wall , Cungshan, Shandong province Eastern Han period, 151 Stone carving Height 51 em. width 169 em (After Wu. 1995. tig. 4.49) 22 (Fig. I b) Rubbing of mural showing rhe greeting of rhe funerary procession Main chamber, easr wall, Cangshan. Shundong province Eastern Han period. 151 Heighr 30 cm, widrh 146 em (After Wu. 1995, fig. 4.50) In the Cangshan tomb, the chariot procession crossing the a hearse. This distinction is confirmed by a scene in the Hel bridge consists of male officials, while the wives of the de ingeer tomb, which also depicts the deceased being accompa ceased are taking a boat across the river, shown flowing under nied by his wives during a funerary journey. Here, however, the the bridge. (Perhaps the reason for this aITangement is that yin chariot following the wives' ping-can-iage is a long wagon [female] has to be separated from yang [male], and water covered with a vaulted awning. As I will demonstrate later, this embodies the yin principle.) As the funerary journey continues is a typical image of a hearse in Han art. onto the east wall, however, it becomes more private, and the The funerary journey in the Cangshan tomb ends at a wives take over the main role in the ritual practice, accompa ling-station (see Fig. Ib), which, in earthly life, was a guest nying their husband to the burial ground (Fig. I b) : house for travellers, but is depicted here to symbolize a tomb. Entering the station signifies burial: the deceased will live in [The women] ihen sit in a small ping-carriage; his underground home for eternity. This is why. up to this point, Following a horseman, they gallop to a ling-station. the deceased is represented only by symbols. In the next picture, The awaiting oUker youxi [patrolman [ pays them an audience, however, he is portrayed in his human form. The following And Ihen apologizes for his departure. scenes represent an idealized underworld: the deceased is At the rear [of the chariot procession I, shown accompanied by immortal 'jade maidens' , enjoying Ayong che [ram carriage[ symbolizes a hearse; musical and dance pelfonnances, and he takes a grand outdoor Above, divine birds are tlying among drifting clouds. tour. This last scene on the tomb's fas:ade (Fig. Ic) is described in the inscription: This passage identifies three components of the funerary pro cession represented in the picture: a horseman who guides the The face of the door lintel: procession, a ping-carriage for the wives and a ram-drawn You are now taking a tour. carriage for the dead. Both types of carriage are recorded in Chariots are guiding the retinue out, transmitted texts. Aping-carriage is identified in the Han period While horsemen remain at home. dictionary Shi Ming as a covered sedan for women. The term The dudu flow-ranking military official] is in front. yang che is a pun on xiang che ('auspicious carriage' ), because And the zeicoo [policeman1is at the rear. yang Cram' ) and xian,r;: ('auspiciousness' ) are homonyms. Above. tigers and dragons arrive with good f0l1une ; (This is why so many Han tombs include ram images as lucky A hundred birds tly over bringing abundant wealth. symbols.) A xiang che is recorded in the early Han period text Li Ji as a carriage whose 'seat should be left empty ' during a This chariot procession differs fundamentaUy from the pre funeral (Ruan, camp., p. 1,253). The commentaries explain that vious ones in the main chamber: instead of representing a this is because the carriage was used by the deceased when he funerary ritual. it depicts ajourney taken by the deceased's soul was alive, but as a hun che - a vehicle to transport his invisible after the funeral. Not coincidentally, this joumey reverses the soul - in his funeral procession. This 'soul-carriage', then, is orientation of the funerary procession; running left to right not a hearse: its image in the Cangshan mural only 'symbolizes' instead of right to left, it is directed towards the Queen Mother (Fig. I c) Rubbing of mural showing the posthumous journey of the soul Linlel fa~ade , Cangshan, Shandong province Height 51 cm. width 246 cm Easrern Han period, 151 IAfter Wu, 1995. tig. 4 .52) 23 (Fi g. 2a ) Rubbing of mural showing funerary rituals Sarcophagus, Weishan, ShJndong province Han period, lale 1,1 l:cntury BCE-CE earl y I sl century Sl ll nc carving Heighl SI cm. wi dth 252 em (A fter Wang el aI. , fi g. 3) of the West (Xiwangmu), a principal immOI1al in Han mythol during which guests visited the deceased's home and offered ogy, whose image appears on a column supporting the door gifts to his descendants. Interpreted in this way, this scene leads lintel. logically to the next, which illustrates a funerary procession centred on a large, four-wheeled hearse. The ten people pulling f thc funerary procession is represented symbolically in the the hearse are most Iikely acquaintances of th e deceased, while I Cangshan tomb, it is rendered in more realistic form in other the four men and four women following it may be his family burials. An early example of such realistic representations is members (Wang et al., p. 7(7). The procession moves toward a found on a stone sarcophagus from Wei shan in Shandong graveyard, shown in the third composition, in which a burial province.