Notes: Yu XinFrom Turfan to Nara: Figurines Discovered along the Silk Road

On November 15th, 2007 Professor Yu Xin from Fudan University gave a seminar on a certain type of figurine that has been found in archaeological excavations in sites along the route of the Silk Road, as well as near the Han dynasty (206 BCE -220 CE) foundations of the Great Wall. The key term for these artifacts is dairen (代人, human substitutes), but many other terms have been used to describe them in various studies. These figurines (which is the English term preferred by Yu Xin) are carved from wood into a figure with roughly human features, the bottom half sharply pointed and a face painted on the top in dark ink. Much of the speaker's initial discussion centered on the archaeologist Sir Aurel Stein's 1908 work Serindia,¹ which contains many pictures and descriptions of these artifacts. He also noted that they were produced over a period spanning from the 20^th century BCE to the 12^th century CE. Yu Xin has seen many examples of these figurines which are now located in the National Museum of India, the British Library, and museums in China and Japan. He was also able to access several sites in Northwest China which have restricted access because of their proximity to military bases and research centers.

Yu Xin's main argument is that these figures were used as part of a “life-sustaining religion”, that is, a system of religious belief that chiefly aims to protect and secure the life and prosperity of its adherents. He noted the key fact that most of these figurines were originally produced along the Great Wall, and have been found in great numbers in the ruins of military forts where soldiers would have been stationed. From this and other factors he argues that these figurines were designed as a spiritual protection against invasion. They would be stuck into the ground at intervals along the Great Wall or in the walls of a fort to repel human and spiritual enemies. This is not associated with any particular religious teaching in China, but later examples of the figurines do incorporate Daoist terminology in the characters painted on them. These pieces have also been found along the trade route that brought Buddhism to Japan, and indeed several examples have been found there as well.

The material used to construct the pieces is also significant, as most of them were made of peach wood. Yu Xin connects this material with traditional Chinese religious beliefs that ascribe to it the powers of longevity, part of the practice of fangshu (方術, or popular magical rites). Where the figurines were constructed of other materials, it was only because of the scarcity of peach wood in certain areas. The talk concluded with a list of unanswered questions which the speaker hopes to address in the future, including the significance of using different colored inks for the painted faces, and the whether the ultimate origin of this artform was in China or a foreign country.

1 Sir Marc Aurel Stein (1862-1943), Serindia: detailed report of explorations in Central Asia and westernmost China, carried out and described under the orders of H.M. Indian Government by Aurel Stein (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1980). Sir Stein was also one of the archaeologists who discovered the cache of documents in the Mogao caves near Dunhuang.

Comments

[japanese words]

How long ago were these figures found?

The pictures are small, but they look more bird like to me than human.