The Study Of Incense Burners Of Wei,Jin,Northern And Southern Dynasties

Incense burning has been existed for a long time since Shang and Zhou dynasty in China.And incense burners play an important role in the operation of incense burning.The incense burners of later periods were related to the Dou style incense burners that began to exist in Eastern Zhou Dynasty.And the development of incense burners in Han Dynasty was quite well,especially the design of Boshan Lu that made the use of incense burners being in an elegant level.Then in the Tang Dynasty,incense burners received a second spring.The development of porcelain manufacture,the introduction of Buddhism and the improvement of Taoism also promoted the use of incense burners in Tang Dynasty.Being in a powerful and united country during Han Dynasty and Tang Dynasty,the development of incense burners showed its integrity.And because of the stability of society,the incenses burners could be manufactured and saved perfectly.But it was the different situation in the period from Wei Jin to the Southern and Northern Dynasties.In these periods,different forces divided the whole nation and the dynasties changes very quickly.Especially after Western Jin Dynasty,north minorities came into the Central Plains.The north minorities were influenced by Han culture,meanwhile they also influenced Han culture.And the Han people who used to be living in the Central plains had to move to the south part of China.Differences between North and South came into being.We tried to figure out the characteristic of incense burners and related questions in these periods by using different materials including ancient remains from archaeological excavation,image materials and ancient texts.The image materials also include cave temples,sculptures,tablets and mural in graves.Firstly,I collected the archaeological material objects and analyzed them by using typological method.Then I introduce some of the typical image materials and discuss some related issues according to the analysis results of the image materials.About the material objects,I put focus on the porcelain making industry,the background of the ancient remains,the level and the location of these graves which had incense burners.After that,the relation between incense burners and daily life and religious life was also being discussed,especially in the image materials.At last,a special kind of incense burners known as long-handle incense burners was being mentioned.From the discovery of incense burners,it is able to find out that most of the graves contained incense burners located in the south part of China.And compared with ceramics,the metal incense burners were not that many.By analyzing the level of the graves,the owner of the incense burners may came from the upper classes of society during the periods.The different live style and different level of porcelain industry during those periods made most of the incense burners were found in the south part of China.The ceramics showed the creativity,on the contrary,even the metal incense burners were quite fine,they were looked like those in the Han dynasty.The differences between south and north could be found in the image materials,as well.It is different from the objects,the image materials in the north part are more than in the south part.The images of incense burners often appear in the religious art,especially the Taoist art in Shaanxi Province and numerous Buddhist art.But the images of incense burners are less in the background of tombs.Burning incense is an important part of rituals,which were showed in religious art.During the Southern Dynasties,most of the incense burners were related to the daily lives or local fantasies.Even some of the images were like the images in Buddhist art,it is still could be treated as an local elements.But in fact,the material objects of incense burners related to religions were found quite limited.And there is an attention should be put to the Boshan Lu in these periods.It is hard to see the material objects of Boshan Lu during that time.But it is possible to observe them in the images,especially the religious images.In fact,Boshan Lu could be traced in different fields.You could find then in the image materials or the real objects,in the daily life or rituals.Boshan Lu was still playing its role at that time.But unlike in Han dynasty,Boshan Lu was walking to the end of its life then.The communication between China and the Western Regions,between China and East Asia were very close.It can be found by studying the incense burners.When we look at the images of incense burners which were found in Shaanxi province,we could find the mix of Buddhism,Daoism and Zoroastrianism.And from the examples of Gandhara incense burner collected by Metropolitan Museum of Art and the bronze incense burner of Baekje found in Korea,it is able to notice that China is the bridge between them,no matter in the geographical field or the cultural field.In summery,from Wei Jin to the Southern and Northern Dynasties,even during the chaotic time,the communication between different cultures never stopped developing.It is a time of connecting local and exotic cultures,a time of connecting past and future lives.The incense burners,as a common object,also reflected the characteristics of the special ages.