Study On The Burial Bells And The Suspended-Bell Tradition In The Western Han Dynasty

The Zhou Dynasty attached great importance to ritual and music and established a musical system for sacrificing the ancestral shrine.The later Han Dynasty followed the basic rules of musical tradition of that in the Pre-Qin Dynasties and represented themselves in a new way.The burial bells as well as the suspended music tradition provides important evidence for the material cultures in the Western Han Dynasty.Based on the archaeological data,this paper classifies bells as practical utensils or funerary replicas from"real-life"originals in the Western Han Dynasty and summaries the shape,motifs and tuning-adjestment techniques.Dating errors of some bells are revised accordingliy.The suspended music tradition,as the core of musical system,is almost absent in historical records,especially the tone row and arrangement in actural performance.The musical system had been destroyed by the Qin Dynasty before the Han,resulting in the blank in the musical system in the early Han dynasty.The set of "5 yong bells and 14 niu bells" and“10 yong bells and 14 niu bells" of four tombs of vassal lords proves that the ruling class had been trying to unify the suspended music tradition in the Western Han Dynasty.The music tradition mixed the orthodox sytle in the central plain in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty and that of the marginal areas.Case studies are carried out in two tombs of vassal lords.The tomb of the Nanyue king at Guangzhou arranged 8 Goudiao,a local musical instrument,in a row as part of its burial bells.The suspended bells at the tomb of Marquis Haihun at Nanchang are of flexibility as well as accordance.On the one hand,it adopts xuanxuan arrangement exclusive for the vassal lord,on the other hand,the 10 yong bells and the "the east and the western"inscriptions indicate the tomb occupant's special identity.The arrangement of the burial bells and the nearby artefacts in the tombs reveal that musical bells tend to separate from the ritual vessels.Instead,the bells serve as part of banquet scene of the underground world.In all,the increasing of commandery-based government and the decline of vassal states had been eroding the living base of the suspended music tradition.As the musical tradition designed for maintaining the hierarchy system.Thus,through the ruling class had tried to revive the ritual and musical system,the dramatic decline of suspended music tradition was prove irreversible.