the Six Ritual Jades
May. 21st, 2006 06:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat1138Recently, while reading two out-of-print books about jade (both from a library sale), I came across some interesting symbology which I don't recall having seen elsewhere. Both books were essentially targeted to wealthy collectors who were snapping up artifacts from the post-Imperial chaos of China; the one I'm adapting this entry from, Jade: Stone of Heaven, was written by Richard Gump, a scion of the high-end San Francisco store founders.
As a throwaway factoid, Gump illustrates a comma-shaped motif which he refers to as the "silkworm" pattern, but which rather reminds me of the swirly "tomoe" of Japan.
Anyway. Starting from two or three thousand years ago, the affluent dead were buried with six pieces of jade as a slightly expanded set of the better-known set of five Asian elements. The sixth one is what I hadn't heard of before. On p. 62, Gump quotes in (unattributed) translation from Li Chi's "Book of Rites"; my brackets indicate the corresponding elements:
With a sky-blue Pi worship is paid to Heaven. [air]
With a yellow T'sung to Earth. [earth, duh]
With a green Kuei to the East. [wood]
With a red Ch'ang to the South. [fire]
With a white Hu to the West. [metal]
With a black Huang to the North. [water]
I find the blue Pi particularly interesting because it indicates the development of linguistic separation between blue and green, as well as introducing the otherwise missing element of Air compared to the Western quartet of fire, air, earth, and water. The Huang was placed at the head, though I'm not certain whether that nec'ly indicates that the body was always buried with the head to the north.
The Pi disc is a flat torus; the round hole, when held up to the light, mimicks the bright circle of the sun. The T'sung is an odd three-dimensional shape that reminds me of some sort of car part-- it's an elongated tube which, if you view it squarely from one end, looks like a circle inscribed within a square; the ends are cylindrical, but the middle is a rectangular prism. The Kuei is a flat obelisky shape like a vertical cross-section of the Washington Monument, often engraved with a representation of the Big Dipper (the Chinese name for the constellation translates as "the Bushel"; perhaps the shape is meant to represent a pointy sprout pushing up from the ground). The Hu is a carved tiger, sometimes stylized to the point of unrecognizability. The Huang is a flattened half-arc like half of a Pi disc, sometimes decorated/modified to resemble a fish or water-dragon. Gump unhelpfully describes the shape of a Ch'ang as "half of a Kuei", presumably vertically halved into an asymmetrical knife-blade shape?
Whitlock's The Story of Jade, published in 1949 (with some photographs of traditional jade artisans using hand/foot-powered tools; I have to wonder how many of them, their apprentices, or their works survived the Cultural Revolution) says of the Ch'ang, "Of the ritual jade used in the worship of the South, little or nothing is known as no authentic example has survived." Maybe Gump managed to turn some up within the next 15-20 years. Annoyingly, neither of these books has an index, so I can't recall offhand whether Gump has any pix elsewhere in his book of a Ch'ang, however spurious.
As a throwaway factoid, Gump illustrates a comma-shaped motif which he refers to as the "silkworm" pattern, but which rather reminds me of the swirly "tomoe" of Japan.
Anyway. Starting from two or three thousand years ago, the affluent dead were buried with six pieces of jade as a slightly expanded set of the better-known set of five Asian elements. The sixth one is what I hadn't heard of before. On p. 62, Gump quotes in (unattributed) translation from Li Chi's "Book of Rites"; my brackets indicate the corresponding elements:
With a sky-blue Pi worship is paid to Heaven. [air]
With a yellow T'sung to Earth. [earth, duh]
With a green Kuei to the East. [wood]
With a red Ch'ang to the South. [fire]
With a white Hu to the West. [metal]
With a black Huang to the North. [water]
I find the blue Pi particularly interesting because it indicates the development of linguistic separation between blue and green, as well as introducing the otherwise missing element of Air compared to the Western quartet of fire, air, earth, and water. The Huang was placed at the head, though I'm not certain whether that nec'ly indicates that the body was always buried with the head to the north.
The Pi disc is a flat torus; the round hole, when held up to the light, mimicks the bright circle of the sun. The T'sung is an odd three-dimensional shape that reminds me of some sort of car part-- it's an elongated tube which, if you view it squarely from one end, looks like a circle inscribed within a square; the ends are cylindrical, but the middle is a rectangular prism. The Kuei is a flat obelisky shape like a vertical cross-section of the Washington Monument, often engraved with a representation of the Big Dipper (the Chinese name for the constellation translates as "the Bushel"; perhaps the shape is meant to represent a pointy sprout pushing up from the ground). The Hu is a carved tiger, sometimes stylized to the point of unrecognizability. The Huang is a flattened half-arc like half of a Pi disc, sometimes decorated/modified to resemble a fish or water-dragon. Gump unhelpfully describes the shape of a Ch'ang as "half of a Kuei", presumably vertically halved into an asymmetrical knife-blade shape?
Whitlock's The Story of Jade, published in 1949 (with some photographs of traditional jade artisans using hand/foot-powered tools; I have to wonder how many of them, their apprentices, or their works survived the Cultural Revolution) says of the Ch'ang, "Of the ritual jade used in the worship of the South, little or nothing is known as no authentic example has survived." Maybe Gump managed to turn some up within the next 15-20 years. Annoyingly, neither of these books has an index, so I can't recall offhand whether Gump has any pix elsewhere in his book of a Ch'ang, however spurious.
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on 2006-05-22 03:52 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-05-22 03:56 am (UTC)