国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

It is possible to add considerably to the number of parallels between China and Eurasia. But until now we have not been able to show any resemblance

between the artistic forms of pre-Han China and those of Siberia. We have no

right, however, to affirm a complete absence of style connection. There are forms in Chou art that are also found in the north, but an insufficient knowledge

of small Chinese bronzes of an early date still prevents a definite statement. We shall confine ourselves to enumerating briefly some resemblances still too isolated. There are those we might choose which support the theory of an influence from Siberia upon China, others which seem rather to show the contrary.

I) The Museum of Far Eastern Art in Cologne owns a bronze (unpublished) with animals along its narrow edge. This is a typical arrangement on boilers from the circle of the Steppes.

z) We find on pierced bronze plaques (belonging to a Paris dealer, unpublished) the recumbent body in low relief of a tiger, the neck and head of which are in the round. We shall speak later on of Eurasiatic parallels. (Cf. Pl. XIII, no. I).

3. The Cauri shell appears in China as well as in Siberia imitated in metal. It may be found realistically represented on a Chou bell that otherwise has only strictly stylised ornamentation (35). This motive may be the survival of a more ancient tradition, but it may also be connected in some way with the north.

4. Although no other geometrically stylised animals are known from Siberia, there has been found near Krasnojarsk a grasshopper in stone so treated. This insect, by the way, is unknown in the art of northern Asia. Perhaps this tiny object was imported from China (36).

5. Among the jade objects unexplained until now, there is a slightly flattened cylinder, open at both sides, one side overlapping the other, and the wider side sometimes covered with a monster-masque (37). This object astonishingly resembles the hoes of the bronze age in the Eurasiatic Steppes. We know of examples from the Volga, particularly from the region of Kazan and Ananino (38). Tallgren refers to Finders Petrie who finds this type in the Mediterranean Basin of about the year 1300 B.C. (39). Similar implements from Minnussinsk carry us towards the socketed axe (40).

6. There is in the G.L. Winthrop collection (New York), a jade pole-top (unpublished). It is in the form of a human bust, negroid type, usually of the Chou period. This bust has a full face monster-masque on the breast, arms in the shape of animals in profile, all stylised in the Chou manner. The same composition of human and animal motives appears towards the end of the I millennium A.D. in the region of Tomsk (41).