| The offering shrine was a major form of monumental structures during the Eastern Han (25-220 A.D.), and bas-reliefs carved on these buildings demonstrate the excellence of Han pictorial art. My dissertation has attempted to undertake four major tasks which are crucial for the further progress of scholarship. These are (1) to examine and synthesize primary data, (2) to place Eastern Han shrines in their historical and ceremonial context and their carvings in the evolution of early Chinese pictorial art, (3) to analyze the underlying structure of carvings on individual shrines, and (4) to study the historiography of Han art history.; Established in 151 A.D., the Wu Liang Ci is considered the most important Eastern Han shrine. It provides the richest evidence for studying Han iconography and its carvings are regarded as works of art embodying the most advanced degree of artistic excellence. My analysis of the Wu Liang Ci carvings reaches a conclusion concerning its pictorial style, symbolic structure, authorship, multiple function, and political and ideological implications. After identifying each motif, I was able to find the internal logic in the overall arrangement of the carvings. The ceiling carvings are all representations of the signs of Heaven's will. Engravings on the two gables are centered on two rulers of immortal lands, who are also symbols of the Yin-Yang opposition. The forty-four scenes on the three walls constitute a coherent representation of the history of mankind in Han thinking, starting from two creation gods and ending with the self-portrait of Wu Liang, the Confucian scholar who designed the carvings on his own memorial shrine. What these carvings represent, therefore, is the Universe, with its physical, ontological, historical, ritual, political and ethic dimensions, as conceptualized during the Han. In the epilogue, I proposed that the Wu Liang Ci carvings indicate an "archaic revival" in pictorial style during the Eastern Han. The strong ideological imagery of the Wu Liang Ci suggests that this archaism was a reaction against the more representational style which had developed during the Western Han. |
