RITES AND FESTIVITIES IN THE ART OF EASTERN HAN CHINA: SHANTUNG AND KIANGSU PROVINCES

The artists of Shantung and Kiangsu provinces produced a great amount of ritual art during the Eastern Han (A.D. 23-220), much of it designed to serve the Confucian cult of ancestor worship. This region, incorporating ancient Lu and Ch'i, was well-known as an orthodox center, but its people also had other concerns, such as the regulation of north China's whimsical climate and the Taoist quest for immortality, which also found expression in the visual art of the period.; Artisans designed ritual art to reinforce and reiterate the ceremonies performed at important seasonal transitions in shrines or at the grave site. These rites focused upon ancestral sacrifice, an act that required a measure of ritual purity attained through periodic exorcism. Such exorcisms were sometimes depicted in Eastern Han art in Shantung and Kiangsu. Occasionally, exorcists are shown purging individual sufferers of pestilence; at other times, the Great Exorcism (Ta No) is shown as a mock battle between female shamanesses, boys, and officials acting as the demons of drought, sickness, and flood. Scenes of this type, coupled with images of guardian archers watching demon trees, assured the ritual structures they decorated of a certain degree of continued purity.; Depictions of the sacrifice itself are the most common theme of Eastern Han art in Shantung and Kiangsu. This often repeated image shows a large central figure, seated within an open pavilion, receiving the offerings of his (or her) descendents. The identity of these central figures has long been a question, since during the Eastern Han, there was a restriction against depicting the ancestor's physical form. Contemporary ritual texts suggest, however, that these figures may represent the impersonators of the dead, used in ancient China to prove that the ancestor had accepted the earthly sacrifice. The resulting scenes generally show large festive banquets, but occasionally the sacrificial pavilion is translated into the air, with the impersonator subplanted by the immortal ascendant himself.; Concern for immortality was an important motivating force for artists during the Eastern Han. The detailing of transcendent realms, the depictions of immortality-granting deities, and the cataloguing of historical quests for the elixir of life were all popular motifs. Together with scenes of exorcism and sacrifice, these visualizations of immortal realms completed iconographic programs whose focus was on the care of the ancestors. The decor of shrines and tombs assured their comfort of stressing purity, sustenance and continuity.; Both tombs and shrines employed a similar limited set of motifs, arranged differently for the two purposes. An analysis of decor shows that tombs were designed primarily to house the deceased as he had been in life and to secure his general well-being. Shrine decor also stressed the unique function of these structures, centering on the act of sacrifice and bolstering it with appropriate scenes of purification and merit.