A Chinese Buddhist Pewter with a Ming DateAuthor(s): John Alexander PopeSource: Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America, Vol. 16 (1962), pp. 88-91Published by: University of Hawai'i Press for the Asia SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20067044 .

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Brief Notices

In this section are brief communications and shorter articles which

present single objects or specific aspects of oriental art. Curators,

collectors and scholars are invited to contribute.?Ed.

A Chinese Buddhist Pewter with a Ming Date

He who sets out to investigate a piece of Chinese pewter will at once be struck by two

things. In the first place, there is almost nowhere to turn for information. Aside from a few sale catalogues in which some pewters are described, and a one-column

note in the Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for January 1904, there is a five

page article by Grace and Gregor Norman-Wilcox in the magazine Antiques for May 1941 which illustrates some 29 pieces but says very little for the simple reason that very little is known. When he turns to the Chinese sources in the hope of correcting this situation, the investigator finds himself very quickly bogged down in a morass of terminology. For

example: hsi*?tin or pewter, pai-hsih?pewter, chfienc?lead, cbfien-bsid?pewter, lae?

hard tin (whatever that means), hsi-la?pewter or solder, pai-lag?pewter; and finally the seemingly remotely related word fungh?bronze, copper, or brass, turns up in the

expression tien-fung1 in the stamped marks of late pewterers as a technical or trade term to

signify that they have used pewter of the highest quality.

The second point is related to the confusing

questions raised by Chinese terminology. As

commonly used among English and American

antiquarians pewter means an alloy in which

tin is preponderant in the amount of eighty per cent or more with the principal secondary com

ponent appearing as lead or copper; but that is

evidently not the case in China. While no large

body of Chinese pewter appears to have been

analyzed, a number of the pieces that have been

tested have turned out to be mostly lead; and

until much more research has been done on this

subject, it will be simpler to use the word

"pewter" to cover the wide variety of alloys found in these Chinese wares. In much the same

way Western writers, by common consent, use

the word "porcelain" in keeping with Chinese

practice to describe a wide variety of Chinese

ceramics which by no means conform to the

narrow Western definition of that material.

As a result of this paucity of information and

of the confusion about what Chinese pewter

really is, almost no progress has been made on

the question of dating. Lead vessels of the Chou

dynasty, imitating the ceremonial bronzes of

the period, have been published by Jan Fontein in the Bulletin of the Friends of Asiatic Art in

Amsterdam (December, 1957), and under the

loose definition of pewter suggested above, these

may be the earliest pieces we know. Certain

objects have been attributed to the Han dynasty, and others to various later periods; but most of

the Chinese pewter one sees around, and there

is a great deal of it, was probably made in Ch'ing times or later. Some pieces are stamped with

marks which give the name of the maker (in

variably unidentifiable) and perhaps the name

of the town where he worked, but none of those

seen by the writer includes any kind of date. For

that reason a vase belonging to Mr. John S.

Thacher of Washington, D. C. and bearing an

inscribed date in the Ming dynasty is of unusual interest; and we are indebted to the owner for his

kindness in consenting to its publication in this

brief note. (Fig. 1) The piece is sixteen and a half

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inches high and octagonal in section. Including the vertical overhang of the flaring lip, the sur

face is divided into twelve horizontal registers, ten of which are faced with sheets of extremely thin brass. Counting all eight sides, therefore, this means that eighty very thin brass plates have

been applied to the surface of the vessel by some

means that has not yet been ascertained. All dec

orations and all but one of the inscriptions have

been cut into, and often through, the brass with

Fig. 1. Chinese pewter vase with Wan-li date.

Height I6I/2 inches. Collection John S. Thacher, Washington.

a sharp tool. It may be added at this point that

laboratory analysis shows this to be one of those

Chinese "pewters" that is in fact mostly lead.

The decorations and the inscriptions are en

tirely Buddhist in character, and a complete

analysis of the inconography of the forty-eight brass sheets bearing illustrations and of the sixty one on which inscriptions are carved is far be

yond the scope of this note. A summary listing of the main points will serve to indicate the nature of the religious sentiments expressed in

word and picture. The twelve horizontal regis ters may be numbered beginning at the top:

1. The eight panels around the lip are incised with three large double-line characters each; and a small number is cut above each panel in

dicating that the reading is from right to left.

Fig. 2. Detail showing Wan-li date on Chinese pewter vase. Collection John S. T hacher, Washington.

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The twenty-four character inscription begins with the title of the Avatamsaka Sutra (Ta fang-kuang-fo-hua-yen-ching)] one of the lead

ing texts of Mahayana Buddhism. Translated

into Chinese for the first time by the monk Buddhabhadra about A. D. 406 and again by the monk Siksananda about A. D. 700 and again by

Prajna a century later, this sutra became the sub

ject of numerous treatises and formed the basis, in the early seventh century, of the teachings of

the Hua-yen School (Jap., Kegon), one of the im

portant Buddhist sects in the Far East. With the title of this major canonical text given first

place, there can be little doubt that all the illus trations and texts on the vase can be traced to

the teachings of the Hua-yen School.

2. This register consists of eight narrow panels

showing standing figures, six with attendants

and two without. A descriptive text accom

panies each; and the figures evidently represent famous itinerant monks who visited well-known

cities or kingdoms in their travels, at the same

time studying and preaching the doctrine of the

Buddha. These panels are also numbered to read

from right to left, but the numbers do not cor

respond to those above.

3. An unadorned zone of plain pewter.

4. A series of short trapezoidal panels with

illustrations of seated figures in landscape set

tings; and again six have attendants and two

have not. The accompanying inscriptions de

scribe most of these personages as Bodhisattvas.

?. The eight large panels around the widest

part of the vase are more elaborately decorated

than the rest. Each shows a single seated Buddha

with one or more attendants and with the ap

propriate vehicle or throne, gestures and attri

butes. The main figure or group as well as halo,

trees, clouds, etc. are cut out in silhouette allow

ing the pewter of the vessel to show through as

background; and details are filled in with incised lines as in the smaller scenes. There are no texts

with these figures, but with a little study it should not be difficult to identify the Buddhas

by their attributes. The three Hua-yen kings

(Hua-yen-san-wang)k: Vairocana, Samanta

bhadra, and Manjusri are easily recognizable.

Manjusri seated on his lion may be seen in the central panel as the vase was photographed

(Fig. 1), Vairocana is next, to the reader's left.

6. Small scenes of monks and attendants with

descriptive texts, numbered to match the top

register.

7. Eight large double-line characters, one on

each face of the vessel, incised directly in the

pewter.

8. Small scenes of monks and attendants with

descriptive texts.

9. Eight narrow horizontal panels of floral

and geometric decoration.

10. Eight narrow horizontal panels with

curved surfaces showing further scenes of monks

and attendants with descriptive texts. These are

numbered but do not correspond to anything above.

11. Narrow horizontal panels with flat sur

faces. Each bears an inscription of large char acters in a single line; four panels have four

characters each, four have five. The text extols

the beauties of the Pure Land of Vairocana,

Hua-tsang-shih-chieb1 (not to be confused with

the Pure Land of Amitabha) and tells of the in numerable seas of perfumed water to be found

there. These panels are also numbered without

relation to any number series seen above.

12. The curved horizontal panels at the base

are also numbered but do not agree with any of

the above; they have inscriptions written in

short vertical lines and range from nine to

twenty-four characters in length. One of these, the one that makes this piece appear to be unique among Chinese pewters, is that giving the precise date in the opening lines of the text (Fig. 2). It

reads, "on the first day of the eighth moon of the

twenty-seventh year of the Wan-li reign of the

great Ming dynasty . . .", a date that corresponds

to the nineteenth of September A. D. 1599. The

inscription also mentions the Chrih-ni-ssum "Red

Mud Temple", but there is no indication of

where this shrine may have stood. The enlarged view of this inscription shown at the bottom of

Fig. 2 shows the character ni-mud in the

middle of the fifth line from the right. No dic

tionary shows a character ni written like that; the monk, uncertain whether to write the word

with the "water" classifier or the "earth" classi

fier, played safe and used both, squeezing the

earth in almost as an afterthought below. This is

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a minor hazard in reading texts by semi-literate

writers; sometimes you have to guess which

character they had in mind. There are several

such cases on this vase, and the last character in

the next to last line of this text remains a puzzle.

Originally, this vase was no doubt part of a set

that adorned an altar in the Red Mud Temple.

There must have been a pair of these to hold

flowers, perhaps a pair of candlesticks, almost

certainly an incense burner in the form of an

antique bronze ting with either three or four

legs. One day other members of this interesting set may turn up, and further research may even

reveal the whereabouts of the Temple to which it was dedicated.

John Alexander Pope

Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. Chinese Characters

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