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Tomb tile with a qilin
Clay
L. 32.5 cm, W. 17 cm, D. 6 cm
Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 CE) or later
Excavated 1988, Jinqueshan, Linyi Municipality
Collection of Linyi Municipal Museum
(cat. #50)
 

Most likely, the animal impressed on this tomb tile is a qilin—a mythological composite animal with cosmological merit—rather than a lion as listed in the excavation report. In tombs, the qilin is often found in combination with the four directional animals. The qilin shown here has a craggy face like a bulldog, a body like a dog, a tail like a bird, and claws on his feet like a turtle. His face is shown in full frontal view with a broad smiling mouth, high cheeks, and small triangular ears, while his springing body is shown in profile. His long feather-like tail juts out behind him as he prances, acting as a counterbalance to the raised lines forming the whiskers around his face.

The qilin is often depicted with a horn jutting from his forehead like a unicorn.[1] In ancient Chinese literature, this creature is invariably linked to Confucius. The capture of a qilin is credited as the immediate impetus for Confucius’ composition of the Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals).[2] The mythic potency of the qilin during the Han dynasty was derived from its ability to portend either good government or the birth of a virtuous ruler. Such numinous animals were used as auspicious omens (xiangrui) to augur the virtuous and corrupt cycles implicit in imperial rule and dynastic change.[3] In 95 BCE, the Han emperor Wudi issued an edict that gold ingots were henceforth to be made in the shape of horse or qilin hoofs as a reward to the nobility.[4] A gold qilin hoof is in the collection of the Hebei Provincial Cultural Research Institute.[5] The qilin retained its status as an auspicious animal through the Qing dynasty when its image decorated First Rank mandarin squares on the robes of military officials.



all text & images © China Institute Gallery


Footnotes:

1. In Gansu province, unicorns were found in a Han dynasty tomb at Mocuizi, Wuwei, and in a Wei-Jin dynasty tomb at Xiaheqing, Jiuquan. The bronze qilin from Tomb 18 at Xiaheqing was not found with the other grave goods in the back chamber, but rather stood alone in the middle of the front room with its head facing the tomb entrance. Another bronze unicorn, found in a late Han tomb at Leitai near Wuwei, was positioned just outside the tomb door. In the Eastern Han dynasty tomb at Gunzhuang, Mizhi county in Shaanxi, the pictorial images of two charging unicorns were carved at the bottom of the stone doors to protect the tomb entrance and to ward off intruders. See Juliano, Monks and Merchants, p. 44, fig. B; pp. 45–46. Both bronze and wood sculptures of unicorns are in the collection of the Gansu Provincial Museum, and there is another bronze unicorn in the Changcheng (Great Wall) Museum located in Jiayuguan, Gansu province. A goat-like creature with a horn, thought to be a qilin, is incised in the limestone panels of a late Eastern Han tomb at Yinan, Shandong. See Yinan gu huaxiangshi mu fajue baogao [Report of the Excavation of Ancient Stone Pictorial Carvings at Yinan Tomb] (Beijing: Wenwubu wenwu guanliju, 1956), plate 29:8.

2. In the Lunyu as cited by Lewis, Writing and Authority in Early China, p. 235. Lewis further explains that Confucius collected and edited the works of earlier rulers, and himself composed the Chunqiu in order to “complete the Way of the King” and preserve it for the future. Ibid., p. 234.

3. Wu Hung, “A Sanpan Shan Chariot Ornament and the Xiangrui Design in Western Han Art,” Archives of Asian Art 37 (1984), p. 39.

4. The edict says: “We captured a white unicorn and used it as an offering in the imperial ancestral temple. The Wuwa river produced a heavenly horse, and actual gold was discovered on Mount Tai [hence] it is proper that we should change [some] former appellation. Now [we] change [the shape for ingots of] actual gold to that of unicorns’ feet and fine horses’ hooves, in order to accord with these auspicious presages and use them to distribute among the vassal kings as grants to them.” After H. H. Dubs, The History of the Former Han Dynasty by Pan Ku (Baltimore, 1944), vol. 2, p. 110, as cited in Michaelson, Gilded Dragons, pp. 56–57.

5. For more on a gold horse hoof unearthed in 1974 in Xi’an and now in the collection of the Shaanxi Provincial Historical Museum, see Wong, Treasures from the Han, p. 31. For gold horse hoofs, all dating to the Western Han, see Zhongguo wenwu jinghua da cidian, p. 245, no. 15 (single horse hoof in the collection of the Hubei Provincial Cultural Research Institute); no. 16 (Henan Provincial Museum); and no. 17 (this is the only pair in the Nanjing Museum, the rest are single hooves). See ibid., no. 18, for a gold ingot in the shape of a qilin hoof, dating from the Western Han and excavated in 1973, now in the collection of the Hebei Provincial Cultural Research Institute. The hoof is gold and hollow; set on its top is white glass with a gold band surrounding the rim. No. 15 has green glass inserted in the top and a similar band of gold at the rim. The other gold hooves are all empty.


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