A Study Of The Clay Sculpture Mill And Drinking Music In The Song Dynasty

This thesis focus on the clay sculptures Mohele(Mahoraga or Mah?k?la in sanskit)that were popular in the Song dynasty(AD 960-1279).On the basis of research results,it combines texts such as notebooks,poems,local chronicles,and scripts from the Song dynasty and the relevant materials from the visual culture of the playing children drawings.In order to discuss the relationship between the materiality of Mohele and the human being in the context of the social and historical beliefs of the Song dynasty.Through the analysis of the concept of “toys” and the description of Mohele in the texts,Mohele is reduced to three forms of “objects”:artworks,commodity and the figure of Buddhism.In this way,a logical chain of production-sale-use is constructed.In this logic,as artworks,commodity and the figure of Buddhism,Mohele is actively constructed by three groups of people with different identities: producers,sellers and female in society.After the close reading of the images of clay sculpture Mohele,it can be compared with the playing children drawings in the Song dynasty,the shape of Huasheng or Buddhist children,and the image of a boy holding a lotus on the decorations of objects in the Song and Jin Dynasty(AD 1115-1234)to identify the rules and associations of the change of similar “image” in different media.The interpretation of the stamps on the commodity can be used to address issues of craftsmen's technique and Jiangnan handicraft tradition in the Song dynasty,as well as to discuss the choice of craftsmen's creation.It can be made available for the image system of the Song dynasty to observe the possible correlation between the image and the handicraft production systems.The Mohele that was sold also linked the sellers to a particular economic system,Hang(in Chinese texts),that arose from the urban space of the Song dynasty.The material details of Mohele in the text reflect the identity of the user-female in society portrayed it as secular religious figures,Mohele as an icon has “sacred power”to meet the expectations of female.At the same time,Buddhism figure completed a special game ceremony in the process of being “played” by female,thus consolidating the ideal expectations of female identity in Song society.