Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 18. (Budapest, 1999)

Györgyi FAJCSÁK: The hun soul's wanderings. A pair of Chinese burial jars from the 13th century

art from the early dynasty objects to the Song dynasty burial jars, which were often decorated with depictions of the hun soul's journey to heaven. The hun soul's supposed wanderings to heaven are depicted on a pair of burial jars in the Chinese collection of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts (Fig.l.). These late Song/early Yuan (13th century) burial jars are 73.6 cm and 74.5 cm high respectively. The upper two-thirds part of each of the pink bodies is covered by bluish white (qingbai) glaze, though the base, the high splayed foot and bottom onethird part of each jar is left unglazed. The high pillar-shaped, slightly oval vases at one time had mountain-shaped lids each culminating in a single long-beaked bird figure. The upper part of each vases is decorated with applique figures arranged into horizontal bands. In the bottom part of the decoration there is a projecting edge on which fourteen female figures are standing in long robes and with hands clasped in front of their bodies (Fig 2.). Above them on the tall neck is a band of appliqué figures, such as four animals (snake, bird, dog, tortoise) and an official (Figs. 3-4.). Above them there is a high-relief coiled dragon trailing clouds. The solar disk can be seen on the neck of the vase facing a dragon's head. There is a figure in official robes riding on the back of the dragon and holding a scroll (?) in his hands (Fig.

6.). Beneath the dragon, in the middle of the composition, there is a high-ranking female figure holding a ladle (Fig. 7.). Several cloud motifs can be found around the dragon. Higher up the neck bulges, above which there is a series of rings below a scalloped ledge. Above this neck narrows, then projects vertically to form the lip. The characteristic qingbai (bluish-white) glaze extends to below the middle of the body and the appliqué figures. The thickness is rather different: some areas are covered by rather thick glaze and some parts of the decoration are slightly glazed. In the Song dynasty tombs, burial jars were usually placed in pairs next to the head or side of the deceased. Owing to their typical decorations these high, long-necked objects were called dragon-tiger or sunmoon vases. Another popular Chinese name for the burial jars was hun ping, i. e. 'the vase of the hun soul'/ Formerly the term 'mortuary urns for ashes' (derived from the Buddhist term guiyiping) was used. The burial jars could be found in Song, Yuan (12th-14th century) and Ming dynasty (14th and 15th century) tombs, but undoubtedly a great many turned up in Song and Yuan dynasty tombs, especially in Jiangxi province, where burial customs were deeply inspired by Daoism. The Chinese designations and decorations of the burial jars reflected Daoist beliefs in the afterlife, according to which the hun soul of the deceased left the body after death and rose to the realm of immortals on the back of a dragon accompanied by other animals. Having entered the empire of immortals, the soul then appeared before the Queen Mother of the West, who reigned on Kunlun mountain. Inscriptions on the neck of several burial jars can be read, such as dongcang ('eastern storage') or xiku ('western storage')/ Similar meanings of these characters tend to refer to the storage function of the jars. This idea has been confirmed by excavated charred grains found in the jars. According to one of the explanations, charred grains as food and large jars as granaries were used by the hun souls on their long journey to heaven.

5 Another explanation supposed that hun vases probably contained wine

0 or aromatic oils.

7 According to a third explanation they served as a dwelling place for hun souls returning to the tombs/ The use of jars in pairs was common practice; one funerary vase would have placed on the east side (originally the vase on which there was mounted a dragon) and the other, tiger