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A New Probe into the Legends and Images of the Eastern Princes in the Han Dynasty——Taking the \"Confucius Clothes Mirror\" Unearthed from the Tomb of Liu He, the Haihu Marquis of the Western
Date: 2019-12-02       Hits:9873


Picture 1 "Confucius Clothes Mirror" frame

 

  The wooden painted lacquer painting "Confucius Clothes Mirror" unearthed from the tomb of Liu He in the Western Han Dynasty in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province has two sitting figures on the upper part of the frame. They are sitting on the ground facing the viewer, with their heads tilted to the inside, slightly facing each other. There is a vermilion phoenix bird (pictures 1 and 2). According to the text of "Yi Jing Fu", it can be known that the identities of the two are the Western Queen and the Eastern Prince.

 

  Scholars generally believe that the Queen Mother of the West had already appeared during the Warring States Period, and the image of the King of the East was created in the Eastern Han Dynasty to correspond to the Queen of the West. The Mirror of Confucius advances the appearance of the Eastern Prince from the first century to the first half of the first century BC in terms of text and images. The lower limit is the three years (59 years before the death of the god of Liu He), and it proves that the Eastern Prince is a male. The legend and image combination model of the "Yangxian" corresponding to the female "Yinxian" Queen Mother of the West has taken shape in the Xuan Dynasty of the Western Han Dynasty.

 

  The images of the Western Queen and the Eastern Prince are located on the left and right sides of the upper part of Confucius's mirror frame. Although the image is severely damaged and the details of the character are indistinguishable, traces of beards can be seen on the face of the character on the right, and the character is wearing a crown and should be male. The clothes of the figure on the right are light cyan, and the figure on the left is white (pictures 3 and 4). These two colors may intentionally correspond to the cyan in the east and the white in the west in the five elements system. Images of the four gods in corresponding directions are painted around the frame. The person on the right is located above the image of "Blue Dragon" and the corresponding orientation is east; the person on the left is located above the image of "White Tiger" and the corresponding orientation is west. Therefore, we judge that the figure on the right side of the upper part of the frame is the Eastern Prince, and the figure on the left is the Western Queen.

 

  The documents and images of the early Eastern Princes are very scarce. Earlier records about the Eastern Princes can be found in the written book "Wu Yue Chun Qiu" in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the "Shen Yi Jing" and "Hai Nei Shi Zhou Ji" written by the Han people under the name Dongfang Shuo. "Wuyue Chunqiu·Goujian Conspiracy Biography" contains "It is the first technique to set up the eastern suburbs to worship the sun, and the name is called the Eastern Emperor. The western suburbs are set up to worship the Yin, and the name is the Queen Mother of the West. The mausoleum is worshipped in Huiji, and the water is worshiped in the river. State", "East Emperor" is the East Prince. This record shows that the King of the East and the Queen of the West respectively represented the east and west directions in the Han Dynasty, and were the male "Yangxian" and the female "Yinxian" who dominated the yang and yin. There is a clear corresponding balance between the two.

 

  "Shen Yi Jing" uses the Western Queen's record in the "Shan Hai Jing" as a model, and portrays the Dong Wang Duke into a half-god and half-beast with "one foot long, white hair, human-shaped bird face and tiger tail". The formation of the image of the prince is closely related to the Queen Mother of the West. In "The Tale of Ten Continents in the Sea", the image of the Eastern Prince was impaled and became the Prince of the East governing the immortal officials. "Fusang is on the east bank of the East China Sea... There is the Taidi Palace, ruled by the father of Taizhen Dong. The place... true immortal spirit official, changeable, cover impermanent form, and there are also those who can fractal form a hundred feet." The Queen Mother of the West and the Prince of the East recorded in the same book also have a corresponding relationship. Through the literature, it can be seen that in the Han Dynasty, the King of the East and the Queen of the West were not only the symbols of the balance between the yin and yang of the cosmology, the Middle East and the West, but also the male and female masters of the imperial court bureaucracy.

 

  The image of the King of the East described in the literature and its corresponding relationship with the Queen of the West have also been confirmed in the image materials of the Han Dynasty that have been discovered so far. In the ancestral hall of the Wu family in Jiaxiang, Shandong, in the first year of Yuanjia of the Eastern Han Dynasty (151), the image of the Eastern Prince was carved on the upper part of the east wall. In the picture, the King of the Middle East sits just on the treasure couch, with wings on his back and a crown of heaven on his head. There are many feathered waiters and beasts around him, reflecting his high position in the fairy world. At the same time, the image of the King of the East on the east wall and the image of the Queen of the West on the upper part of the west wall form a spatial relationship between the two living things and each other. In addition, in the eighth year of Jianchu (83), the "Zhu Shi" bronze mirror, the East Prince and the West Queen Mother sat opposite each other, standing on both sides of the maid, and decorated the blue dragon and white tiger between the two gods. The yin and yang attributes and the corresponding relationship are clear. It can be seen that the image of the Eastern King as the commander of the immortal world and the image combination mode corresponding to the balanced image of the Western Queen has been finalized and widely distributed in the Eastern Han Dynasty.

 

  The "Eastern Prince and West Queen Mother" on the mirror of Confucius provides new clues for studying the relationship between the image pedigree of the two immortals and the existing documents. The "Shen Yi Jing·Zhong Huang Jing" records "the Kunlun mountain has a copper pillar, which is as high as the sky, the so-called Tian Zhu. It is three thousand miles around, and the circumference is like a cut. There is a return to the house below, the abbot is ruled by the nine houses. There is a big bird, and the name is Xiyou. It faces south. Zhang left the left wing to cover the east prince, and the right wing covers the west queen. There is no feather on the back, and it is 19,000 miles. Comparing the "Picture of the King of the East and the Queen of the West" on the mirror of Confucius with this passage, we can find two points worth noting. The first is the image of the phoenix bird painted between the Eastern Prince and the Western Queen. Although it is called "Phoenix" in "Fu on the Mirror", it seems that the phoenix bird should be regarded as a big bird in this picture. The phoenix bird stands between the east prince and the west queen, with open wings pointing towards the second immortal. It is similar to the description of Xiyou in "Shen Yi Jing" that "Zhang left wing overthrows the east king, and the right wing overthrows the west queen". There are also examples in the stone portraits that are rare to appear at the same time as the Eastern Prince and the Western Queen. For example, the portrait stone of the Eastern Prince and the Western Queen unearthed in Nanyang depicts the two immortals sitting together on the "circle round like a cut" on the inverted cone-shaped Kunlun Mountain. God bird. Although the connection between the phoenix in the Han Dynasty and the big bird Xiyou is still uncertain, these examples at least prove that there is a close connection between the legends of the gods in the Han Dynasty and the images of existence in the "Shen Yi Jing". Secondly, in Confucius's "Eastern Prince and West Queen Mother", the two are not completely facing the viewer directly, but their heads are slightly tilted to the inside, presenting a posture of "looking at each other across the phoenix", which should represent the "Sutra of Miracles" "The Queen Mother of the West will be on the wing at the age of the year, and the Prince of the East will meet", which is the legend of the meeting of the Queen of the East and the Queen of the West. This legend was endowed with symbolic meaning in the cosmological view of the dualism of Yin and Yang in the Han Dynasty. The Japanese scholar Ichiro Konan thinks that the annual meeting of the Eastern Prince and the Western Queen is the same as the annual meeting of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. It symbolizes the "Yang" from the East and the "Yin" from the West. "The meeting and reconciliation of the two cosmic energies, and this combination of yin and yang is indispensable for the generation of new vitality in the universe. From the perspective of current interests, the people of the Han Dynasty believed that the harmony and smoothness of yin and yang were the roots of happiness and longevity. Zang, the right and the left are still more and more prosperous... The air is peaceful, and the yin and yang flows, The [10,000] year old is happy."

 

  The "Eastern King and West Queen's Picture" on the mirror of Confucius provides new hints for the interpretation of other Han dynasty images. For example, there is a picture of two people sitting side by side in the attic portrayed on the west wall of Guanzhuang Han tomb in Mizhi, Shaanxi. In the picture, a woman Dai Sheng sits on the right side, and a man on the left sits with her head facing right. The two are facing each other. This type of image is often considered to be the portrait of the owner of the tomb. However, in combination with the "Eastern Prince and the West Queen Mother" in the mirror of Confucius, we may regard it as a scene where two immortals "meet and sit side by side". The stone portrait on the front of the Eastern Han Tomb in Liujiagou, Suide, Shaanxi, shows the owner of the tomb Shengxian or "Eastern Kings Going to Meet the West Queen Mother", which can be discussed again.

 

  On the upper part of the frame of Confucius' clothing mirror, there is a figure in a yellow shirt painted beside the two immortals. The figure next to Queen Mother West kneels and sits facing Queen Mother West, holding a mortar in his left hand and a pestle in his right hand, as a pounding medicine, or related to pounding the jade rabbit (Figure 5). The figure next to the Eastern Prince sits on his knees facing the Eastern Prince, and a plate is placed in front of him. Raise your hands on your chest, in the form of kneeling or offering (Figure 6). In this way, the two main immortals of the East Prince and the West Queen Mother, with their respective attendants, are on the upper part of the mirror frame of the clothes, each according to one side of the "right and left" image structure. Similar compositions are common in the stone reliefs of the Han Dynasty. For example, the lintel of the Eastern King and the Queen Mother of the Sishilipu carved stone tomb in Suide, Shaanxi depicts the scene of the Eastern Prince and the Queen Mother and the accompanying figures and fairy beasts each occupying the two ends of the lintel. In the stone portrait, it can be seen that the King of the East is accepting a person's kneeling worship, and the Queen Mother of the West also has a jade rabbit using a mortar and pestle to make medicine. The Six Dynasties "Zhen Ming Ju Ming Jujuan I" records the legend of the Eastern Prince and the Western Queen Mother, "There were four or five children in the early Han Dynasty, and there were dramas on the road, and a song said: wear a green skirt, enter the gate of heaven, worship the mother of gold, worship Mugong. It's a hidden word when it comes to the future. People at that time don't know it, but Zhang Zifang knows it, but worships it. This is the Yutong of the Eastern Prince. The so-called golden mother, the Western Queen, the Mugong, the Eastern Prince, and the fairy Worship the prince and the queen mother" may be related to the image of Confucius' clothes mirror and stone relief. This not only proves the speculation that the legends of the Eastern Prince and the Queen Mother of the Eastern Kings and the Queen Mothers contained in the notebook novels such as "The Mystical Classics" and "The Story of Ten Continents of the Sea" have been formed at the end of the Western Han Dynasty, but also provides for the study of the "Eastern Princes and West Queen Mothers" commonly seen in the Eastern Han Dynasty stone portraits. The image prototype of the Western Han Dynasty.

 

  As mentioned above, before the discovery of Confucius' clothing mirror, scholars generally believed that the Eastern Prince appeared in the Eastern Han Dynasty and was created by the mass immortality movement in the middle of the Eastern Han Dynasty to correspond to the Western Queen. The earliest known image of the Eastern Prince is a bronze mirror in the eighth year of Jianchu, which belongs to the early Eastern Han Dynasty; the earliest "Eastern Prince" inscription and image in the stone relief are carved on the east wall of the No. 1 ancestral hall in Xihukou, Tengzhou. The stone was built in Eastern Han Dynasty Emperor Ming to Zhang Emperor period (5788). The earliest examples of the image of the Queen Mother of the West can be traced back to the murals of the tomb of Bu Qianqiu of the Western Han Dynasty in Luoyang, built between Emperor Zhao of the Western Han Dynasty and Emperor Xuan (87-49 BC), and Zou Zou, Shandong, built between Emperor Xuandi and Yuan Emperor of the Western Han Dynasty (74-33 BC). The stone relief on the inner side of the southern coffin of the M2 tomb stone coffin in the city of Wohushan. However, although the creation time of these images is similar to the production time of Confucius' clothing mirror, the Eastern Prince is not seen among them. Looking at the literature again, although the "Han Shu" written in the early Eastern Han Dynasty recorded many records of the West Queen Mother Belief Movement that flourished in the late Western Han Dynasty, it did not mention a word about the Eastern Prince. At least in the 140 years between the three years of the Western Han Dynasty prince buried by Liu He, the prince of Haihun, and the eighth year of the Eastern Han Dynasty built by the "Zhushi" bronze mirror, the Eastern Prince seems to have completely disappeared. During the disappearance of the Eastern Prince, the position of the male "Yangxian" corresponding to the Western Queen in the image data has not been vacant. Jiang Sheng pointed out that the common image correspondence modes of "Fengbo and Xiwangmu" and "Zilu and Xiwangmu" in stone portraits from the late Western Han Dynasty to the early Eastern Han Dynasty were "transitional" combinations that formed a balance of Yin and Yang with the Western Queen before the Eastern Han Dynasty appeared. . However, the discovery of the mirror of Confucius can prove that the Eastern King had appeared in the middle and late Western Han Dynasty and became the yang immortal corresponding to the Western Queen. In this way, the image combination design of "Fengbo and Xiwangmu" and "Zilu and Xiwangmu" in the stone portraits of the Han Dynasty may not be a "transitional product", but a deliberate one. However, the reasons for the disappearance and reappearance of the Eastern Princes need to be further studied.

 

  The "Eastern Prince and the West Queen Mother" on Confucius' Clothes Mirror and the "Yi Jing Fu" are the earliest known images and texts of the Eastern Princes, which advances the appearance of the Eastern Princes from the early Eastern Han Dynasty to the first century BC, and proves The image combination pattern corresponding to the male "Yang Xian" of the Eastern Prince and the female "Yin Xian" of the Western Queen has taken shape in the Xuan Dynasty of the Western Han Dynasty. The correspondence between the image of "East Kings and West Queens Mother" and "Shen Yi Jing" and other documents verified that legends such as "East Kings and West Queen Mothers" existed in the Han Dynasty, providing new clues for studying the images of immortals in the Han Dynasty.

 

Author:

Ziliang Liu (Ph.D. student in the Department of Art and Architecture History, Harvard University, USA)

Yang  jun (Research Librarian of Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology)

Xu Changqing (Research Librarian of Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology)

 

(Source: "Cultural Relics" 2018-11)

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