The Birth of Landscape Painting in China

By Michael Sullivan

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1962.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Dec 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520310681

Michael Sullivan

Enter the Author Bio(s) here.

Book preview

The Birth oj Landscape Painting

in China

The Birth of

Landscape Painting

in China

By Michael Sullivan

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley and Los Angeles

1962

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

© 1962 BY MICHAEL SULLIVAN

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-16863

Printed in the United States of America

Designed by Rita Carroll

To KHOAN

PREFACE

WHY DOES THE virtuous man take delight in landscapes? asked the Sung painter Kuo Hsi. He gave several reasons, the chief of which was that the conscientious scholar, tied to his desk, immersed in the world and its troubles, finds in the contemplation of a landscape painting a refreshment of mind and heart as compelling as though he were to wander among the mountains themselves.

The Chinese landscape painter who in his pictures satisfies this longing depicts not merely the outward and visible forms of nature, but the inner life and harmony that pervade them. The picture is, therefore, in a sense symbolic— not in the way in which a European classical landscape is symbolic, for poetic and mythological allusion play little part in it, but symbolic in a wider and vaguer sense. For Chinese landscape painting embodies a total view of life, expressed in the language of rocks and trees, mountains and water.

This book is an attempt to discover the sources of this symbolic language, and to trace its early development. I hope that in due course it will be followed by further studies of Chinese landscape painting in its maturity.

A glance at the table of contents will suggest that the subject has been handled in a somewhat piecemeal fashion. But I have resisted the temptation to force it into a smooth, well-rounded shape, feeling that, with the evidence so scattered and fragmentary, it is better to allow the form of each chapter to be dictated by the material at hand. Partially to remedy this situation, however, I have included at the end a brief summary, which the general reader might be advised to glance through before plunging into the book itself.

This study has been made possible by the help given me by a number of institutions and individual scholars. I have received generous support in the form of a scholarship and research fellowships from Harvard University and from the Rockefeller and Bollingen foundations. To Professor Serge Elisséeff and the staff of the Harvard-Yenching Institute I am deeply indebted for their assistance, and for the privilege of having had the fullest access to the unique resources of that institution. I wish particularly to thank the Librarian, Dr. Ch’iu K’ai-ming, for his constant help.

Above all I am happy to acknowledge my gratitude to the scholars to whose advice and suggestions this book owes so much, especially to Professor Yang Lien-sheng, Professor Benjamin Rowland, Jr., and Dr. William Acker, all of whom read the manuscript in whole or in part; to Laurence Sickman, for his viü Preface

kindness in sharing with me material in which he himself has a deep interest; and to Dr. Valdo Viglielmo, whose generous assistance with Japanese sources often took us far into the night. My debt to the writings of Osvald Sirén, Alexander Soper, and other pioneers in this subject will be acknowledged as occasion arises.

I am very grateful to those who have supplied me with photographs, particularly to Irene Vincent, to Professor Lao Kan and Professor Shih Ch’ang-ju of the Academia Sinica, and to the collectors and museum directors who have allowed me to reproduce photographs of objects in their collections.

The editors of the following journals have very kindly given permission for me to use again, though in rather different form, material which first appeared in their pages: Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America, Art Bulletin, Artibus Asiae, Asian Review, Burlington Magazine, and Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies.

My thanks are due Miss Genevieve Rogers of the University of California Press for her careful editorial work on the manuscript. I should also like to thank Ja’afar bin Haji Omar and Syed bin Ali for secretarial assistance.

This book has been published with the aid of grants from the Harvard- Yenching Institute and the Bollingen Foundation.

Finally, the book will bear witness to the patience and encouragement of my wife, who has helped me at every stage in the writing of it, and to whom I owe far more than the dedication can express.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN

School of Oriental and African Studies London, 1960

Pictorial Art and the Attitude Toward Nature in Antiquity

The Han Dynasty

The Six Dynasties

SUMMARY

APPENDIX THE IDENTIFICATION AND MEANING OF CERTAIN TREES AND PLANTS REPRESENTED IN THE ART OF THE HAN DYNASTY

NOTES

INDEX

ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATES following page 213.

1 Mountain landscape, Hua-shan. (Photo by Hedda Morrison)

2 Mountain landscape, Hua-shan. (Photo by Hedda Morrison)

3 Mountain landscape, Hua-shan. (Photo by Hedda Morrison)

4 Omei-shan, Szechwan.

WARRING STATES

5 Silk square excavated at Changsha, Hunan. (Redrawn.)

6 Detail of painted decoration on bronze mirror. Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, Mass.

6a Painted decoration around a cylindrical lacquer box excavated at Changsha.

7 Detail of decoration on side of lacquer lien excavated at Changsha.

8-11 Details of decoration on inlaid bronze hu. Palace Museum, Peking.

12 Inlaid decoration on side of bronze lien. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

13 a-c Engraved decoration around inside of bronze ewer excavated at Changsha. (13c redrawn.)

14 Spout of engraved bronze ewer excavated at Ch’ang-chih, Shansi. (Redrawn.)

15 Engraved decoration around inside of bronze lien excavated at Huihsien. (Redrawn.)

HAN DYNASTY

16 Detail of wall painting in the Pei-yüan tomb, Liaoyang, southern Manchuria.

17 Funerary clay house. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City.

18 Detail of painted decoration on clay house. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City.

xii Illustrations

19 Detail of painted decoration on clay house. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City.

20 Clay tile with painted decoration. Cleveland Museum of Art.

20 a,b Pottery mortuary jar, with painted decoration over a white slip. (Dr. Paul Singer, Summit, New Jersey.)

21 Fairy mountain. Detail of painted lacquer bowl excavated at Lolang, Korea.

22 Pottery banner-stand (?) in the form of a fairy mountain, from a cave tomb in Szechwan. Szechwan University Museum.

23 Bronze steamer (po) with painted decoration. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

24 Bronze flask (pien-hu) with painted decoration. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

25 Bronze vessel (chung) with painted decoration. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

26 , 27 Bronze vessel (A«) with painted decoration. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

28 Sasanian silver platter. Detail. Hermitage Museum, Leningrad.

29 Embroidered shoe-sole found at Noin-Ula, Mongolia. Hermitage Museum, Leningrad.

30 a-c Cloud-scrolls depicted on painted lacquer objects.

31 Figured silk fabric from grave-pit at Loulan. Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, Mass.

32 Silk damask excavated at Noin-Ula. Hermitage Museum, Leningrad.

33 a-d Designs on inlaid bronze tube. Tokyo School of Art.

34 Decoration on inlaid bronze tube. Collection of the King of Sweden, Stockholm.

35 Woven silk panel excavated at Noin-Ula. Hermitage Museum, Leningrad.

36,37 Stamped clay bricks.

38 Pottery jar with molded design. City Art Museum, St. Louis.

39 Glazed pottery hu with molded design on shoulder. Collection of the King of Sweden, Stockholm. (After Palmgren.)

40 Pottery hill jar with molded design. Cleveland Museum of Art.

41 Pottery hill jar with molded decoration on side. Detail. Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection, Seatde Art Museum.

42 Glazed pottery hu with molded decoration. Cleveland Museum of Art.

43 Bronze hill jar. Detail. Japanese collection.

44 Bronze tube with inlaid decoration. Hellström Collection, Stockholm.

45 Bronze lien with repoussé decoration. Freer Gallery of Art, Washington.

Illustrations xiii

46 Lid of pottery hill censer. Formerly C. T. Loo Collection.

47 a-e Lid of bronze hill censer. Details. Freer Gallery of Art, Washington.

48 Lid of bronze hill censer. Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, Mass.

49 Bronze mirror, TLV type.

50 Raising the bronze tripod of the Emperor Yü. Rubbing of an incised slab from Hsiao-t’ang-shan, Shantung. Detail of central shrine. Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, Mass.

51 Raising the tripod. Rubbing of a stone relief from Wu Liang Tz’u, Shantung. Detail.

52 Raising the tripod. Rubbing of a stone relief from an unknown site in Shantung. Detail.

53 Rubbing of an incised stone slab from Hsiao-t’ang-shan, Shantung. Detail.

54 The battle for the bridge. Rubbing of engraving on left end of main beam of tomb at I-nan, Shantung.

55 Rubbing of relief from Tu-chia-ch’uang, Shantung. Detail. Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, Mass.

56 Relief from unidentified site in Shantung. Detail.

57 Ts’ang Chieh and a companion beneath flowering trees. Detail of an engraved slab from tomb at I-nan, Shantung.

58 Gatehouse with trees beyond. Engraved slab from tomb at I-nan.

59 Calendar plant. Relief from Shantung. (Redrawn.)

60 Calendar plant. Relief from Shantung. (Redrawn.)

61 Mu-lien-li. Relief from unknown site in Shantung. (Redrawn by Feng Yün-p’eng.)

62 Relief from unidentified site in Shantung. (Redrawn by Feng Yün- p’eng.)

63 Relief from Liu-chia-ts’un, Shantung. Detail.

64 Relief on funerary pillar from T’eng-feng-hsien, Honan. Detail.

65 Relief from T’eng-hsien, Honan. Detail.

66 Double interlaced tree. Relief from Tsining-chou, Shantung. Detail.

67 Interlaced tree. Relief from Tsining-chou. Detail.

68 Fu-sang tree (?). Relief from Tsining-chou. Detail.

69 Relief from T’eng-hsien region, Honan. Detail.

70 Relief from T’eng-hsien. Detail.

71 Stone slab from Liang-ch’eng-shan, Honan. Collection of the late Baron Von der Heydt, Ascona.

72 Stone relief from T’eng-hsien region, Honan. Detail.

73 Stone relief from T’eng-hsien, Honan. Detail.

74 Relief carved in honor of Li Hsi, A.D. 171, Ch’eng-hsien, southern Kansu.

xiv Illustrations

75 The chase among mountains. Relief on lintel of tomb at Nanyang, Honan.

76 Fabulous combat. Relief on lintel of tomb at Nanyang.

77 Animal combat. Relief on lintel of tomb at Nanyang.

78 Molded brick with scenes in relief.

79 Relief on vertical panel of tomb at Nanyang.

80 Molded brick with scenes in relief, Honan region.

81 Relief on vertical panel of tomb at Nanyang.

82 Ram and ling-chih (?) on woven panel preserved in Shõsõin Repository, Nara. Eighth century.

83 Molded brick with scenes in relief, from Honan.

84 Stone relief from tomb of Wang Te-yiian, Sui-te, Shansi. A.D. 100.

85 Po Ya and Ch’eng Lien. Rubbing of relief on side of stone coffer from Hsinchin, Szechwan.

86 A fabulous game of liu-po. Rubbing of relief on side of stone coffer from Hsinchin.

87 A fabulous scene. Rubbing of relief on side of stone coffer from Hsinchin.

88 The fu-sang tree. Rubbing of relief on side of stone coffer from Hsinchin.

89 Mythological scene. Rubbing of relief on side of stone coffer from Hsinchin.

90 Shooting and harvesting. Relief on a molded pottery tile from Yang-tzu-shan, Szechwan.

91 The salt industry of Tseliutsing. Rubbing of molded pottery tile from Yang-tzu-shan, Szechwan.

92 The salt industry of Tseliutsing. Rubbing of molded pottery tile from Yang-tzu-shan.

93 Boatman on a lake. Rubbing of molded pottery tile from Te-yang, Szechwan.

94 Driving along a road between trees. Rubbing of molded pottery tile from Yang-tzu-shan, Szechwan.

95 Ritual dance (?) in the fields. Molded pottery tile from Te-yang, Szechwan.

96 Woman in a grove of mulberries (?). Rubbing of molded pottery tile from Chengtu, Szechwan, dated A.D. 226.

97 Gatehouse. Rubbing of molded tile from Te-yang, Szechwan.

Six DYNASTIES

98 Detail of wall painting in Tomb of the Wrestlers, T’ung-kou, Manchuria. Sixth century.

99 Detail of wall painting in Tomb of the Wrestlers, T’ung-kou. Sixth century.

100 Detail of wall painting in Tomb of the Wrestlers, T’ung-kou. Sixth century.

101 Detail of wall painting in Tomb of the Wrestlers, T’ung-kou. Sixth century.

102 The Ruru Jataka. Detail of wall painting in Cave 257, Tunhuang. Ca. A.D. 500.

103 The Ruru Jataka. Detail of wall painting in Cave 257, Tunhuang. Ca. A.D. 500.

104 The Admonitions of the Court Instructress, after Ku K’ai-chih (ca. ZĄy-ca. 406). Detail of hand-scroll, ink and slight color on silk. Late T’ang or tenth century.

105 The Tiger Jataka. Detail of wall painting in Cave 254, Tunhuang.

106 Mountainous landscape on lower part of ceiling of Cave 249, Tunhuang.

107 Detail of lower part of ceiling of Cave 285, Tunhuang.

108 Detail of wall painting in Ming-oi, Karashahr.

109 Landscape detail in Cave 285, Tunhuang.

no Landscape detail in Cave 285, Tunhuang.

in A walled city. Detail of wall painting in the Three-chambered Tomb, T’ung-kou, Manchuria. Ca. A.D. 500.

112 Jataka scenes. Detail of wall painting in Cave 428, Tunhuang.

113 Jataka scenes. Detail of wall painting in the Cave of the Hippocamps, Kizil.

114 Illustration to the Lo-shen fu, after Ku K’ai-chih. Detail of handscroll, ink on silk. Freer Gallery of Art, Washington.

115 Detail of side of engraved stone sarcophagus. Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

116 Detail of wall painting in Cave 302, Tunhuang.

117 Detail of wall painting in Cave 296, Tunhuang.

118 Detail of wall painting in Cave 296, Tunhuang.

119 Detail of wall painting in Cave 296, Tunhuang.

120 Painting on ceiling of Cave 419, Tunhuang.

121 Detail of wall painting in Cave 209, Tunhuang.

122 Detail of wall painting in Cave 217, Tunhuang.

xvi Illustrations

123 The story of the filial Wang Lin. Detail of engraved stone sarcophagus. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City.

124 The story of the filial Ts’ai Shun. Detail of engraved stone sarcophagus. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City.

125 The story of the filial Tung Yung. Detail of engraved stone sarcophagus. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City.

126 The story of the filial Shun. Detail of engraved stone sarcophagus. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City.

127 The story of the filial Kuo Chü. Detail of engraved stone sarcophagus. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City.

128 The story of the filial Yüan Ku. Detail of engraved stone sarcophagus. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City.

129 Detail of painting on north wall of a tomb near Pyongyang, Korea.

130 Illustrated version of the Ingakyõ Sutra of Cause and Effect. Detail of Tempyõ copy of a Suikõ or Chinese Six Dynasties original. Jõbon- jendaiji, Kyoto.

131 Illustrated version of the Ingakyõ Sutra of Cause and Effect. Detail of Tempyõ copy of a Suikõ or Chinese Six Dynasties original. Jõbon- jendaiji, Kyoto.

132 Detail of painting on baldachin over central Buddha figure in Kondõ, Höryüji, Nara.

133 Decorated panels on base of Tamamushi Shrine, Höryüji, Nara. (Redrawn.)

134 The Tiger Jataka. Detail of painting on base of Tamamushi Shrine, Höryüji, Nara.

135 Detail of wall painting in tomb in Korea. (Unidentified.)

136 Detail of engraved stone slab from funerary bed. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City.

137 Sasanian silver plaque. Hermitage Museum, Leningrad.

138 Silver ornament excavated at Noin-Ula, Mongolia. Hermitage Museum, Leningrad.

139 Rubbing of design on a stamped clay brick. Han Dynasty. Art Institute of Chicago.

140 Rubbing of design on a stamped clay brick. Han Dynasty. Art Institute of Chicago.

141 Rubbing of design on a stamped clay brick. Han Dynasty. Art Institute of Chicago.

142 Rubbing of a stamped clay brick. Han Dynasty. Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto.

143 Fu-sang tree. Rubbing of relief in Wu Liang tomb shrine. Detail. Han Dynasty.

144 Rubbing of a stamped clay brick. Han Dynasty. Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto.

145 Rubbing of a stamped clay brick. Han Dynasty. Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto.

146 Stamped and painted clay tile. Han Dynasty. Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto.

147 Rubbing of a stamped and painted clay tile. Han Dynasty. Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Mass.

148 Clay half-tile from north China. Han Dynasty. Japanese collection.

149 Assyrian cylinder seal. British Museum, London.

TEXT FIGURES

1. Motifs on Huai and Loyang mirrors. 20

2. Drawings showing development of landscape motifs from volute. 48

3. Detail of woven silk panel from Noin-Ula. 53

4. The compartmented style on bronze vessels from the ancient Near East

and China. 132

Mountain conventions at Ajanta. 134

5. Detail of Admonitions scroll and tenth-century (?) landscape com

pared with typical Six Dynasties and T’ang foliage conventions. 148

6. Detail (restored) of Han brick found at Bac-ninh, Tonkin. (After Janse.) 170

Pictorial Art and the Attitude Toward Nature in Antiquity

To the Chinese all mountains are sacred, hallowed by a tradition that goes back centuries before the Buddhists and Taoists built their first temples on the hillsides. They are sacred because, since remote times, the Chinese have held that the cosmic forces, the energy, harmony, and ceaseless renewal of the universe, are in some way made manifest in them.* In popular belief the mountain is the body of the cosmic being, the rocks its bones, the water the blood that gushes through its veins, the trees and grasses its hair, the clouds and mists the vapor of its breath—the cosmic breath (rA7),t or cloud-breath (yiin- ch’i), which is the visible manifestation of the very essence of life.¹ Perhaps the peasant making his occasional pilgrimage to the temple on its summit is only dimly aware of the power of the mountain. For him it is enough to sense the magic in the air and to feel, almost without knowing it, that for a short time he has come closer to the mysterious heart of nature. To the Chinese poet, painter, or philosopher, however, to wander in the mountains is an act of meditation, even of adoration. In the procession of the seasons, the rhythm of rain and sun, the endless movement of clouds, mist, and water, he sees a manifestation of the rhythm of the universe itself. By climbing the hills and looking out over range upon range of peaks he discovers man’s true place in

•The scenery of two of China’s most renowned sacred mountains, Hua-shan and Omei-shan, is illustrated in the first four plates in this book. These glimpses may suggest to the reader why it is that the Chinese landscape painter has always looked upon the mountains as the visible embodiment of natural forces. They also show how faithfully the spectacular mountain scenery of certain parts oí China is reflected in the conventions of the familiar Chinese landscape painting.

fFor the romanization of Chinese I have used the modified Wade-Giles system employed in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, except for common place names, which follow the well-known Chinese Post Office spelling.

the scheme of things. When the sun first strikes the high, bare eastern slopes at dawn, while the cloud-filled hollows he dark and hidden, he observes the workings of the cosmic dualism of yang and yin, which, forever interacting yet forever held in balance, set in motion the due process of nature.

India, with her extremes of drought and rain, death and rebirth, tends to seek release from the harshness of the physical world in philosophical abstraction, and, if release from the burden of existence cannot be found, to invest the physical act with a metaphysical meaning. Indian thought thus inclines toward the transcendental. The Chinese, living in a kinder environment, tend to seek Reality not in philosophical speculation but in the natural world. To know nature more intimately, therefore, is to come closer to an understanding of the Reality which is immanent in nature.

The Chinese painter may spend years in wandering among the hills and streams so that this natural order, which is but a visible manifestation of the cosmic order, may reveal itself to him. But how can he express the intensity of the awareness that comes to him in these moments of spiritual revelation before the ultimate mysteries of the universe? The language of metaphysics is too remote, too abstract, to convey an experience that, while partly psychic, is also intensely visual. For the wanderer in the mountains attains awareness through no mere feat of the imagination, but through a journey, in space and time, in a real landscape. Bare rock and green foliage, heat and cold, light and shadow, sound and silence—these belong not to the world of the philosophers and metaphysicians but to a world in which visual and psychic experiences are inextricably interwoven. Such experiences can find expression only in a language that is both visual and abstract—visual enough so that the forms that gave rise to it may be apprehended, conveyed, and recognized for what they are, yet abstract enough to confer upon the forms thus created the validity of a general, eternal truth.

In the art of landscape painting the Chinese have evolved a language of visual symbols which, in fulfilling these conditions, is one of the great achievements not only of the Chinese genius but of the human imagination. It is with the birth and early evolution of this symbolic language that this book is concerned.

Fundamental to any understanding of Chinese culture is the fact that the Chinese are an agricultural people, and have been so since remote antiquity. To belong to a family with a tradition of studying and farming was something to be proud of. Rooted in the soil, aware above all of the recurring pattern of the year, of rain and drought, winter and summer, the Chinese developed an instinctive sense of an endless rhythm, an endless series of variations on the simple theme of the seasons. From earliest times they accepted this rhythm and submitted to it, for they knew that survival and prosperity depended upon their acceptance. Submission to the rhythm of the world as he finds it is the mark of the farmer and gardener, the source of his serenity. The illiterate rustic could scarcely have formulated a philosophy of nature; that was left to the scholars, poets, and painters, who in art and literature found expression for a truth which all instinctively recognized. Their aim was not, like ours in the West, to re-create, to construct, or design the world, but rather to discover, by intuition, what the design actually is. The vast and elaborate ritual established under the Chou Dynasty had as its basic purpose the necessity of making manifest the fact that man had apprehended this grand design—the Will of Heaven—and was acting in accordance with it.

The evolution of the Chinese world view has been influenced also by her geographical position. Protected on two sides by sea, on a third by impenetrable mountain ranges, and on the fourth by deserts, China has remained inviolate for long stretches of time, falling prey to invasions across her northern frontiers only when the government was weak. This isolation has given her security, a sense of permanence and attachment to the land. The Chinese have always been receptive to foreign ideas, often uncritically so; but because these borrowed ideas and artistic forms had traveled immense distances from their source, across mountains and deserts, the Chinese were often able to put them to their own use without becoming subject to the cultures that had produced them. We shall find again and again that landscape painting from the Han Dynasty onward made use of subjects and motifs imported from India or the Near East, but these are everywhere controlled and transformed by a uniquely Chinese attitude toward nature.²

We know little of the religion of China before the Chou Dynasty, except that the Shang people believed in a being whom they called Shang-ti (Supreme Emperor). This deity presided over a hierarchy of spirits; these included the ancestors of the nature spirits and genii loci which have been prominent in Chinese popular belief to this day, and are found in the religious systems of all agricultural people. During the Chou Dynasty the Chinese world view crystallized in the concept Tien (Heaven), related in a dualism with Pi (Earth), which assumed a quasi-female aspect as its consort; t’ien-ti, the divine Father-Mother, produced man, forming the metaphysical triad known as the san-t$’ai, or Three Powers. This Heaven-Earth dualism, with man poised between them, later became the basis for the whole system of Chinese metaphysical belief. It was man’s unique place at the meeting point of these two forces that endowed him with the responsibility and power to order the pattern of life by means of the divine guidance of the ruler, who, while Son of Heaven, was also of the substance of Earth. This concept, moreover, although not formulated in philosophical terms until late in the first millennium before Christ, was the basis for the belief in the intimate relation between man and nature that is one of the unique characteristics of Chinese thought.

In ancient China both philosophical ideas and cosmic events were symbolized by means of hsiang—images or emblems. These might be defined as visible forms that stand for the elements that make up the total cosmic pattern. In one system of thought they are, specifically, the eight trigrams (pa-hua) and the sixty-four hexagrams produced by combining them. The Book of Changes (I-ching) tells us that the basis of all existence is the Great Ultimate (t’ai-chi), which produces the two forms (erh-i), which in turn produce the four emblems (hsiang) from which the eight trigrams were derived and were magically made manifest to man on earth.³ Here the hsiang form a purely abstract intermediary stage between the cosmic dualism and the visible pa-kua. Elsewhere in the I-ching, however, the hsiang are considered as having been created by the divine sage-kings in order to give visible form to all phenomena: "As to the emblems (hsiang), the Sages used them in surveying all the complex phenomena under the sky. Then they considered how these forms could be figured, and made representations of their appropriate forms, which are hence designated emblems. … the appearance of anything is called a hsiang; when it has physical form it is called an object («/«)." ⁴ Here we might translate hsiang as primordial image or archetype—in the Platonic, not the Jungian, sense.

The use of divination to determine the cosmic pattern as it affected man’s immediate destiny carried with it the idea of the hsiang as the visible manifestation of this divine law. According to the Tso-chuan (fifteenth year of Duke Hsi), The tortoise-shell gives its figures, and the milfoil its numbers. When things are produced, they have their figures, their figures go on to multiply; that multiplication goes on to numbers …⁵ We may accept Legge’s translation of the term hsiang as figures only if we bear in mind the cosmic force that the word bears in this context. Here the hsiang are considered as existing as a result of the preexistence of things; these things are not to be regarded as concrete objects to be depicted by visual images, but as events in nature in the most general sense. Thus the hsiang may be taken as forms or patterns which are the visible symbols or emblems of these phenomena, and certainly not as representing or depicting them.

The divine origin of the hsiang is related in a popular myth. The I-ching describes how Fu Hsi, "looking up, contemplated the hsiang [i.e., sun, moon, stars, etc.] exhibited in Heaven, and, looking down, surveyed the patterns shown on Earth. He contemplated the markings of birds and beasts and the suitabilities of the ground … thereupon he first devised the eight trigrams to show fully the attributes of spirit-like intelligence [in its operations], and to classify the qualities of myriads of things. … ⁶ Having done so, he was able to hand on to Shen Nung the means for the creation of the first plowshare, as a concrete particularization of what might be called the plowshare aspect" of the Great Ultimate. Closely related to this is the story of Ts’ang Chieh, minister to the Yellow Emperor, in the early Han work Huai-nan-tzu: "Chieh had four eyes. He looked up and beheld the hsiang in the heavens and looked down and saw the markings of birds and beasts and then determined the forms of the characters. The Creator could not hide his secrets, therefore Heaven rained millet; the spirits and devils could not conceal their forms, and therefore the ghosts cried in the night." ⁷

This concept of the hsiang, whether considered philosophically or in relation to the practical requirements of divination, is of great importance in understanding the traditional Chinese attitude toward visual art. It has given rise to the idea that pictorial representation is not for the purpose of describing a particular object, since individual objects have no significance in themselves, but in order to express the ideal or norm which exists eternally beyond the limits of temporal existence and is manifest in natural forms. The more abstract and unparticularized the pictorial forms, the nearer they approach the true form. Because the long and short lines of the pa-kua are but one step removed from the complete undifferentiation of the Great Ultimate, they approach as near as is possible to constituting its outward and visible symbol. Therefore, as the I-ching says, "what the Superior Man rests in is the order shown in the I, and the study that gives him the greatest pleasure is that of the explanation of the lines."⁸ We shall see later how other schools of thought emphasized that a work of art must be the product of the harmonious interaction of the forces of Heaven, Earth, Man, and so on, but in the meantime it is important to note the profound philosophical idealism of this view, and its crucial role in the emergence of a philosophy of art in ancient China.

The system of the hsiang set out in the I-ching and its appendices may seem to be constructed in an arbitrary and illogical manner. How, one might ask, could such a system satisfy the Chinese intellectual through the centuries? What conceivable order does it offer for the contemplation of the Superior Man? So much of the culture that surrounded and gave birth to the I-ching is lost that we cannot hope to discover its original meaning, but we may still realize the great significance of the pa-Ąua in the history of Chinese thought: it represents an attitude of mind that is uniquely Chinese, an attitude which, once understood, may bring us closer to understanding the attitude toward nature that it revealed in landscape painting. For, when every aspect of nature, both transcendental and phenomenal, could be represented by a combination of the conventional symbols of the pa-Ąua, it became unnecessary to examine these things as external events capable of analysis and of yielding, by induction, general laws regarding the behavior and nature of the universe. Indeed, the existence of such a system, by which an intuitive apprehension of the universal order was brought within man’s grasp, made difficult, if not impossible, the development of a scientific attitude. In such a system no event or object could be isolated or particularized; all were but aspects of a totality that lay beyond logical comprehension. This totality could be expressed only in a language of symbols, which, because they were not representations of individual events, could embrace all events. To one who accepts such a view, the typically Western approach of isolation and classification seems an unnecessary and uncongenial limitation upon the power of the mind to grasp the whole. To the ancient Chinese the forms and colors, the material elements and musical notes, the directions in space and the ethical principles—all were but aspects of the total cosmic pattern, and nothing existed or had meaning apart from that pattern.

The chaotic condition of China during the later centuries of the Chou Dynasty may have contributed much to the development of this nature philosophy. As the feudal system collapsed, the position of the emperor sank to that of a figurehead. The fortunes of the Confucian doctrine likewise declined until it became merely one of the hundred schools that were contending for the support of the feudal princes. As orthodoxy weakened, old folk cults were revived, and, at the same time, metaphysical speculation increased. But even before this period, the popular ballads collected in the Book of Songs reveal that men were turning to nature not only as a manifestation of the eternal powers but also as a mirror for human feeling. Courage in war, the pangs of unrequited love, partings, loneliness, the beauty of a fair maiden, all find their echo in the ever-changing beauty and sadness of nature:

Zip, zip, the valley wind I Nothing but wind and rain. In days of peril, in days oí dread It was always I and you. Now