The Study Of Chinese Ancient Typical Incense Utensils Before The Fourteenth Century

China has a long history of using the incense.The culture of the incense has been an important part of Chinese culture and an embodiment of Chinese national character and emotional spirit.As an important carrier of conveying material civilization,the incense utensils exist for the incense,the incense and its containers are interdependent,mutually reinforcing and evolving.It is a precious treasure that needs to be excavated and sorted out,inherited and developed.The incense culture has been evolving over thousands of years,and it has been the integration of the material culture.Therefrom we can see the historical changes of the social life,economic situation,production process,religion and aesthetic taste behind the use of the incense utensils in different period.As early as the ancient times,the ancestors has begun to burn aromatic plants.Indoor incense burning started in the warring states period,with the purpose of cleaning,bacteriostasis,expelling parasite and other functions.During the Han dynasty,incense was gradually becoming popular from the aristocracy to the common people.Besides,“Dou” furnace with a shallow body and the ability to smoke and burn herbaceous plants appeared.With the opening of the Silk Route,there were trades between China and the Western Regions,and the resin spices of the foreign lands began to enter China.Accordingly,the shape and structure of the incense appliances was also changing,boshan furnace appeared,which can store incense ashes in the incense burner,refine the resinous perfumes and burned with charcoal fire.During Wei,Jin,Southern and Northern dynasties,as Buddhism diffusing more widely in China,buddhist elements gradually appeared in the production of incense utensils.During the Sui and Tang dynasties,due to the integration of the foreign culture and the flourishing of Buddhism,burning incense,as an important activity of paying respect for Buddha,attracted people from all walks of life.What’s more,the use of exotic incense utensils also became popular with Buddhism in China.Under the open,inclusive and prosper social background,the production of incense utensils is extremely luxurious,especially exotic metal incense utensils which were very popular.The atmosphere of adoring literacy in the Song dynasty made the educated literati become the elites of politics and culture.Their aesthetic led the fashion and became the ruler in this era,and the system of incense appliances in the Song dynasty which conformed to the aesthetic taste of the literati had formed.After the rise of epigraphy in the Northern Song dynasty,bronze wares in the Shang and Zhou period were first used as incense utensils by the literati.Because of the development of porcelain industry in Song dynasty,it was more popular to use incense utensils that is made of porcelain imitation bronze ware in the Southern Song dynasty.With the prosperity of the commodity economy and the formation of the urban citizen stratum,the group of using incenses also expanded from the literati to the Ordinary people,the appearance of a lot of interesting folk incense appliances is another direction of the development of incense utensils in Song dynasty.The activity of incense burning of the Ming and Qing dynasties inherited the flourishing of incenses in marketplaces since the Song and Yuan dynasties,and still focused on the secular sentiment,the pursuit of the spiritual level became vague,incense burning went deep into the folk and became a normal way of life.The article selects the representative incenses which were digged and had important historical nodes in the evolution of incense culture since the founding of the People’s Republic of China As research objects,combines literature and other related images,and through the method of experimental archaeology,simulates and produces a model of the typical incense utensils which were discussed,designs all kinds of scientific experiments,and analyzes laboratory data,makes theoretical contact with practice.Therefore,it is more scientific,intuitive and rational to judge the origins,using methods and using principles of the selected typical incense utensils.It provides more entry points and windows to understand and explain ancient Chinese civilization by finding the cultural connotation,the flavor of the times which were hidden under these incense utensils and the vein of the development history of Chinese incense culture.