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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91
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