Zoomorphism and Sacrificial Religion in Early China: Roel Sterckx

BIBLID 0254-4466(2012)30:4 pp.
305-334
ISSUE
漢學研究第 30 卷第 4 期（民國 101 年 12 月）
Zoomorphism and Sacrificial Religion

in Early China**
Roel Sterckx*
Abstract
Animals and zoomorphic motifs are omnipresent in early Chinese art and
material culture. Yet the methodologies underlying the explanation of animal
iconography remain subject to much debate. One core problem is the question
whether received texts can be usefully adduced to explain the range of symbolic
or intended meanings that might be expressed in iconographic representations of
animals. This paper seeks to add a small piece to the complex puzzle of how texts
can relate to images. It explores the issue through the example of animal sacrifice.
While texts are replete with descriptions of animals in the context of sacrifice,
the motif of the sacrificial animal kill rarely occurs in the visual vocabulary of
early China. The paper explores why that may be the case and offers a number of
hypotheses derived from information preserved in the received textual corpus.
Keywords: animals, art, early China, sacrifice, iconography, material
culture
　　Manuscript received: February 10, 2012; revision completed: October 12, 2012; manuscript
approved: November 5, 2012.
*　The author is Joseph Needham Professor of Chinese History, Science, and Civilization at the
University of Cambridge and Fellow of Clare College.
**　I am grateful to Eugene Wang (Harvard University) for initially inviting me to write about
the topic, to Professor Hsing I-tien (Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica) for
a formative tutorial in Han visual culture, to the Center for Chinese Studies (National Central
Library, Taipei), for giving me time and space to review the paper, and to the anonymous
reviewer for comments and corrections.
305
306 漢學研究第 30 卷第 4 期
1. Introduction
Historians face a complex task when trying to reconstruct religion in practice

in early China. To resurrect complex religious cultures based on fragmentary
textual and material evidence necessitates interpretative lacunae. Such gaps in our
understanding remain particularly problematic when we come to examine the role
of animal iconography. Animals may be “good to think,” as Claude Lévi-Strauss
once professed, yet identifying the range of symbolic meanings they generated in the
imagination of the early Chinese remains a complex exercise.
While it is difficult to establish with certainty what religious, social or
economic values were associated with individual animal species across time and
space, it is clear that the animal realm formed a potent part of the religious world
in early Chinese society, a world in which they operated as intermediaries with the
spirit world, presented themselves as dangerous game to be hunted, and possibly
1
functioned as emblematic representations of clans, lineages or the royal house. It
is also clear that certain real and imagined animals (e.g. the dragon, tortoise, horse,
or phoenix) appear more significant than others as they are extolled in simile and
metaphor in a centuries-long textual tradition or represented as serial motifs in art.
2. Reading Animal Iconography
Scholars remain divided as to how zoomorphic and theriomorphic motifs

in early Chinese art and material culture — on Shang and Zhou bronzes, on
Warring States and Han murals and artefacts—might reflect the religious world
of the craftsmen, recipients, users and observers of these objects. Invariably, the
1　David Keightley, The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space, and Community in Late Shang China
(ca. 1200-1045 B.C.) (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 2000), pp. 107-113; Yang
Xiaoneng 楊曉能, Reflections of Early China: Decor, Pictographs, and Pictorial Inscriptions
(Seattle and London: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and University of Washington Press, 2000),
pp. 112-118, 197-200, et partim.
Roel Sterckx∕Zoomorphism and Sacrificial Religion in Early China 307
prominence of animal iconography is acknowledged, yet, the frames of reference

and methodologies that allow us to take the conceptual leap from iconographic
representation to religious and ritual practice remain contested and subject to debate.
Most art historians that have touched on the subject accept that zoomorphic
imagery was intended to be iconographically meaningful. Some have argued that
evolving aesthetic perceptions and technological innovations are the main stimulus
2
behind changing trends in zoomorphic iconography. The reality most likely lies
somewhere in-between. For Lothar von Falkenhausen, to quote one scholar, such
at least is the case for early and middle Western Zhou bronzes. He suggests that,
“the Western Zhou transformation of the Shang-derived animal décor into ‘pure
ornament’ must reflect an attenuation of its original religious meaning, whatever
that meaning may have been. Eventually, this meaning was forgotten or became
3
irrelevant to religious practice.” There may be other, more practical, factors that
may account for the fact that animals“mean”in early Chinese art. The technical
skill, material expense and energy required to produce the artefacts they adorn
suggest that those who commissioned the production of zoomorphic objects and
motifs held informed views on the decoration they wished to impart onto them. Add
to this the fact that the animal form itself is a highly elastic medium that lends itself
easily to formal adaptations and we might have another reason for the popularity of
zoomorphic imagery. In short, to claim that all iconographic creation is symbolically
meaningful—and only meaningful in one way—is as problematic as insisting that
technological innovation should account for all trends in iconographic creativity.
Furthermore, we ought to remain cautious in linking the internal architecture
of religious activity directly to a set of zoomorphic artefacts. Each piece or
2　For a summary of the debate see Yang, Reflections of Early China, pp. 36-43; and Elizabeth
Childs-Johnson,“The Metamorphic Image: A Predominant Theme in the Ritual Art of Shang
China,＂Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 70 (1998): 5-172.
3　Lothar von Falkenhausen, Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius (1000-250 BC): The
Archaeological Evidence (Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of
California, Los Angeles, 2006), pp. 43-48.
representation merits interpretation in its particular setting and needs to be judged

against comparable scenes and objects.
But how does one make sense out of zoomorphism beyond its appearance as a
feature of technical craft? One way to help advance our understanding is to explore
textual accounts and search for information that might match text to object. Can texts
help explain the zoomorph and, if so, how reliable or representative are such textual
explanations? In what follows I hope to add a small piece to the complex puzzle
of how textual and visual representation might relate to one another in early China.
I will do so by focusing on the example of animal sacrifice. The use of animals
in sacrifice is richly documented in texts. Yet, despite a wealth of information in
texts, scenes of sacrificial animal slaughter do not appear to be widespread in early
Chinese iconography. This relative absence is noteworthy, or, at least, we are dealing
here with a theme that appears to be underplayed in pictorial culture in contrast with
its prevalence in texts. Before I proceed, some methodological caveats regarding the
role of texts for the study of animal culture merit attention.
3. Animals in Texts
Textual sources can contribute towards reconstructing the mental universe in

which animal imagery originated, yet they also pose significant limitations. The
most important restriction is their dating. This is especially problematic for our
understanding of late-Shang and Western Zhou animal iconography but similar
uncertainties apply to the Warring States and early imperial periods. For instance,
although valuable information can be gathered from Shang oracle bone inscriptions
on the royal hunt, textual references related to the representation of animals
in material culture is sporadic at best and it is limited to sources that postdate
the artefacts by several centuries. Even in cases that have prompted scholars to
thoroughly scan the textual record for information that might elucidate animal
imagery, the results have been mixed. For example, to date, many scholars still mine
the complex Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shanhaijing 山海經 ) as a makeshift
thesaurus for the identification of all that appears strange in the bestiary of ancient
4
China. Another case that illustrates how little transmitted texts have improved our
understanding of iconography is the much discussed and enigmatic animal face
or taotie 饕餮 depicted as two dragonesque creatures facing one another. Only one
passage, in the third century BCE Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋, contains a description
5
that could relate to this omnipresent bronze motif.
Another problem facing the interpreter is that much of the social, ritual,
and religious context in which objects functioned or pictorial motifs developed
is lost or can only be reconstructed from prescriptive texts. And these sources
propose varying interpretations regarding the shape, size, colour, and decoration
of objects. Furthermore, the philosophy that lies behind certain decorative
4　The Shanhaijing, which dates partly to the Warring States and Qin period, is unique in its genre
and has variously been described as a handbook on prodigies, a gazetteer containing a sacred
geography, or explanatory notes on lost images. I have argued elsewhere that one of its functions
might have been to catalogue animal nomenclature and enable its reader to understand strange
creatures through the performative use of names. See Roel Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon
in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), pp. 35-38, 119-120.
5　Chen Qiyou 陳奇猷, ed., Lüshi chunqiu jiaoshi 呂氏春秋校釋 (Shanghai: Xuelin, 1995), 16.
947 (“Xian shi” 先識). An early reference to the taotie occurs in the Zuozhuan 左傳 where it is
identified as one of four evil creatures during the time of the Yellow Emperor. See Yang Bojun
楊伯峻, Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu 春秋左傳注 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1995), p. 640 (Wen 文 18).
The Lüshi chunqiu describes the taotie as a bodiless glutton devouring a man. Wang Tao 汪
濤 has linked the“two-eyed motif＂to a two-eyed graph in Shang oracle bone inscriptions
and argues that it expresses a sense of trepidation, rashness in action, awe and anxiety. See“A
Textual Investigation of the Taotie,” in Roderick Whitfield, ed., The Problem of Meaning in
Early Chinese Ritual Bronzes (London: University of London, 1992), pp. 102-118. The Liji 禮
記 comments on the meaning of gilded eyes represented on vessels associated with the Zhou. It
notes that among the vessels and meat-stands used in the suburban sacrifice, a yellow-eyed (huang
mu 黃目) vase emitting the vapours of fragrant herbs was valued most, yellow corresponding to
the centre in the Five Phase model.“Eyes,＂the text continues,“represent the purest brightness
of qi (qi zhi qing ming zhe 氣之清明者).＂See Sun Xidan 孫希旦, Liji jijie 禮記集解 (Beijing:
Zhonghua, 1995), 26.701 (“Jiao te sheng” 郊特牲), 31.844 (“Ming tang wei” 明堂位). Xu
Shen 許慎 (30-124 CE) glosses lei 櫑 as a“turtle-eyed wine goblet.＂See Shuowen jiezi zhu 說
文解字注 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1983), 6A.46b.
motifs is not easy to interpret. The Lüshi chunqiu, to take one example, offers
several comments on bronze vessel decoration. In one place it states that“Zhou
tripods were engraved with images to illustrate the pervasive nature of the
principles of order inherent in the design. Making such principles pervasive
is the Way of the gentleman ( 周鼎著象，為其理之通也。理通，君道
6
也 .” Elsewhere in the same text we read that“Zhou bronze tripods are
decorated with an insect pattern, wherein the shape is very long but the top and
bottom are both curved, in order to symbolize the defects inherent in what is extreme
7
(周鼎有竊，曲狀甚長，上下皆曲，以見極之敗也).” And again elsewhere it is
noted that“Zhou tripods were decorated with rats and then trampled upon by horses,
because rats are non-Yang. The non-Yang symbolizes the customs of a doomed state
8
（周鼎著鼠，令馬履之，為其不陽也 ; 不陽者，亡國之俗也).” The elastic and
highly moralising nature of such comments suggests that a Warring States observer
or Han literatus may have been prone to the same degree of speculation as a Song
antiquarian or a contemporary observer.
One example of a text that shakes up all expectations for iconographic
certitudes is the“Li qi”禮器 chapter in the Liji 禮記. It argues that ceremonies
require different types of ritual implements according to the circumstances. Hence,
the text claims, in some rituals a multiplicity (duo 多 ) of objects is valued whereas
for other occasions paucity (shao 少 ) is a mark of respect. Some rituals emphasize
greatness of size (da 大), others smallness (xiao 小); some require height (gao 高 ),
whereas others value lowness (xia 下) as in trays and vases without feet. Finally, the
text notes, there are rituals in which ornament or“patterning”(wen 文) is a hallmark
6　Chen Qiyou, ed., Lüshi chunqiu jiaoshi, 17.1110 (“Shen shi＂慎勢); cf. John Knoblock and
Jeffrey Riegel, trans., The Annals of Lü Buwei: A Complete Translation and Study (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2000), p. 433.
7　Chen Qiyou, ed., Lüshi chunqiu jiaoshi, 19.1282 (“Shi wei” 適威); cf. Knoblock and Riegel,
The Annals of Lü Buwei, p. 496. The pattern referred to here is qie 竊, which has sparked endless
speculation among commentators. See Lüshi chunqiu jiaoshi, 19.1291-1292 (“Shi wei”).
8　Chen Qiyou, ed., Lüshi chunqiu jiaoshi, 20.1374 (“Da yu” 達鬱); cf. Knoblock and Riegel, The
Annals of Lü Buwei, p. 528.
of distinction whereas in others the unadorned (su 素) should take precedence. Most
importantly, rituals of the highest reverence are said to require no ornament (zhi jing
wu wen 至敬無文). The text concludes that, in the end, the ancient kings looked for
9
proportion in their ceremonies and thus avoided the extreme opposites listed above.
Leaving aside the problem as to precisely which rituals and what exact timeframe
this Han text might be referring to, we are told here that decorative and ornamental
resourcefulness can have an inverse relationship to ritual gravitas. In the final
section of this paper, I will offer a few thoughts on how this proposition of minimal
ornament might be relevant in the case of depictions of animal sacrifice.
From the examples I have given so far one need of course not infer that texts
are entirely unreliable tools for the interpretation of animal iconography. Many
texts, even those that significantly postdate objects, offer a repository of opinion and
lore that has been transmitted alongside or separately from material and pictorial
representation. Even if they shed little or no contemporaneous light on the intended
meaning of objects and motifs, they can assist us in reconstructing the cultural
context in which they originated and help generate an approximate picture. Again
let us take the case of a decorated bronze vessel. Here the interpreter could relegate
zoomorphic inspiration simply to iconographic invention, or one could attempt to
attribute these motifs to cosmological symbolism or religious practices, the details
of which may escape our present understanding. One could hypothesize that artists
designed zoomorphic vessels in function of the sacrificial contents they were
intended to hold, a question put forward by Chang Kwang-chih 張光直 in the late
1970s:
Was there any attempt to decorate the vessels with images of some of the animals
whose meat was to fill them? On the surface the answer may be an easy no, for
mythological animals are obviously not foodstuffs, and the animals that decorate
the Shang and Zhou bronzes were certainly mythological. But mythological
animals were almost always based on actual animals, the most commonly
9　Sun Xidan, Liji jijie, 23.642 (“Li qi” 禮器).

represented being cattle, sheep, and tigers. They were probably all food animals,
and so were probably the other less frequently represented animals such as deer,
elephants, rhinoceroses, and goats. Birds were among the predominant decorative
motifs. Although their species are difficult to determine, there is no question that
birds of many kinds were a major food item. Thus the question is not one easy to
10
dispose of without much additional research.
Whether or not sacrificial food and alcohol offerings inside bronze vessels were
meant to transmit vessel inscriptions to the spirit world—an idea that has recently
11
been challenged —there is no reason why a link between décor and utility in
12
the case of animal motifs should be excluded. Yet such a relationship cannot be
inferred as a rule applicable in each case. Other ideas may have inspired the choice
of the animal form, such as the notion, again suggested by Chang, that offering
animals in bronze vessels was a concrete means of achieving quasi-shamanic contact
10　Chang Kwang-chih 張光直, ed., Food in Chinese Culture (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1977), p. 49.
11　The argument against food offerings functioning as vehicles to transmit written messages to
the spirit world is set out by Olivier Venture in“L’écriture et la communication avec les esprits
en Chine ancienne,＂Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 74 (2004): 41-43.
Conversely others have argued that, in the case of inscribed late-Shang and Zhou bronze vessels,
decoration on the outside of an inscribed ritual vessel was secondary to the inside space of the
vessel. Maria Khayutina notes that since communication with the spirits happened by means
of sacrificial food inside the vessel:“its internal space was functionally more valuable. The
evolution of the external decoration of vessels from the highly elaborated Shang-style vessels
towards standardisation and simplification through the Western Zhou and Spring and Autumn
periods supposes the decrease of the functional abilities of their external surface in favour of
the inner space.＂See“Studying the Private Sphere of the Ancient Chinese Nobility through
the Inscriptions on Bronze Ritual Vessels,＂in Bonnie S. McDougall and Anders Hansson, eds.,
Chinese Concepts of Privacy (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002), p. 92.
12　For references to zoomorphic vessels see Sun Yirang 孫詒讓, ed., Zhouli zhengyi 周禮正義
(Beijing: Zhonghua, 1987), 38.1514 (“Si zun yi” 司尊彜); Sun Xidan, Liji jijie, 31.851 (“Ming
tang wei”). Rudimentary drawings of some of these vessels appear in the Li shu 禮書 by the Song
scholar Chen Xiangdao 陳祥道 (fl. 1053-1093). The drawings there suggest mostly animal motifs
carved on the surface rather than vases and vessels shaped in the form of animals. See Li shu
(Siku quanshu zhenben wu ji 四庫全書珍本五集 edition; Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu yinshuguan,
1974), 95.1b, 2a, 3b, 4a, 4b, 5a; and 96.2a; 97.4a.
13
with the other world. Possessing bronzes with zoomorphic decorations in this
context may have been a sign of ritual agency, or politico-religious authority.
Other theories have been on offer attempting to explain the attention to
zoomorphism in early China. A number of Chinese scholars continue to claim that
14
zoomorphism has to be linked to archaic and totemic animal worship. Yet although
some animal species were certainly used in an emblematic way, zoolatry, i.e., the
organized worship of animal spirits, did not occupy a dominant role in pre-imperial
15
or early imperial religion. Other contexts that involve more or less ritualised forms
of animal slaughter are documented. One notable one is that of the organised hunt,
an activity which—from the Shang royal hunt through to the hunting expeditions in
Han imperial parks—could function both as a ritual, a military exercise or a simple
16
pastime.
Husbandry and agriculture likewise brought the animal world within the bounds
of human society. Agricultural scenes and animal imagery in Han funerary art
suggest not only that the deceased continued to require nourishment in the afterlife
but also that, as during their lifetime, the onus may have been upon the dead to
continue raising provisions to sustain themselves in the hereafter and offer sacrifice
13　Chang Kwang-chih, Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 44-80.
14　For recent studies insisting on totemism as a universally applicable model for the interpretation
of archaic Chinese animal symbolism see Liu Yuqing 劉毓慶, Tuteng shenhua yu Zhongguo
chuantong rensheng 圖騰神話與中國傳統人生 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2002); and Wang
Hui 王暉, Shang-Zhou wenhua bijiao yanjiu 商周文化比較研究 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe,
2000), pp. 432-447.
15　I discuss textual evidence of zoolatry in The Animal and the Daemon in Early China, pp. 61-62.
16　For a comprehensive treatment of the Shang royal hunt see Magnus Fiskesjö,“Rising from
Blood-Stained Fields: Royal Hunting and State Formation in Shang Dynasty China,＂Bulletin
of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 73 (2001): 48-192. On the hunt in Warring States
and early imperial China see Mark Edward Lewis, Sanctioned Violence in Early China (Albany:
SUNY Press, 1990), p. 150 ff.; and R. Sterckx,“Attitudes towards Wildlife and the Hunt in
Pre-Buddhist China,＂in John Knight, ed., Wildlife in Asia: Cultural Perspectives (London:
RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), pp. 15-35.
in that other world. Han murals with images of fish-ponds and hunting scenes and
scores of clay animal figurines that accompany the dead in their tombs confirm
that animals had gained the status of a symbolic commodity worthy of transfer to
17
the realm of the spirits. Finally, in trying to interpret the zoomorph, one should
take into account that geographic and external influences also helped shape animal
representation over time. From the establishment of the early empires onwards,
increasing contacts with the nomadic economies and steppe cultures of Central Asia
through conflict or diplomatic missions exposed inhabitants of the central Hua-Xia
華夏 region to an exotic fauna that influenced formal imagination both in art and in
18
textual accounts.
4. Animals and Sacrifice
It is with animal sacrifice that we arrive at an interesting juncture in our search
17　An unparalleled find of painted pottery animal figurines was recovered in the early 1990s from
the mausoleum of Han emperor Jingdi 景帝 (r. 157-141 BCE) at Yangling 陽陵 (Shaanxi). It
mainly consists of domestic animals such as chickens, roosters, dogs, pigs, goats, sheep, horses
and oxen. The figurines were lined up in rows and flocks by species. See Shaanxi sheng kaogu
yanjiusuo 陝西省考古研究所, ed., Han Yangling 漢陽陵 (Chongqing: Chongqing chubanshe,
2001), pp. 10-12, 24-25, 51-59, 154.
18　Jessica Rawson has argued that Han carvings of felines were inspired by western and central
Asian influences. See“Strange Creatures,＂Oriental Art 44.2 (1998): 44-47. Similar steppe art
motifs have been identified by Wu Hung 巫鴻 . See“The Art and Architecture of the Warring
States Period,＂in Michael Loewe and Edward Shaughnessy, eds., The Cambridge History of
Ancient China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 689-692. While evidence
does not support the indigenous presence of lions in early China, the issue of whether and how
lions migrated into both the Chinese territory and Chinese literary imagination remains subject to
debate. For a recent assessment of the arguments see Manfred Frühauf,“Vom Stichtwort suanni
in der Han-zeitlichen Synonymik Erya: Zur Frage der Existenz von Löwen im archaischen und
antiken China,＂in Michael Friedrich et al., eds, Han-Zeit: Festschrift für Hans Stumpfeldt aus
Anlass seines 65. Geburtstages (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006), pp. 301-315. For
an example of the cross-fertilisation of Chinese and Central Asian visual language in medieval
times, see Pénélope Riboud,“Bird-Priests in Central Asian Tombs of 6th-Century China and
Their Significance in the Funerary Realm,＂Bulletin of the Asia Institute 21 (2007): 1-24.
to understand animal motifs and the relationship between text and image. For
my purpose, I define sacrifice in its minimal sense as a process that involves the
slaughter, preparation, and offering up of an animal in a ritualized setting. Indeed
one of the most frequently documented contexts in which animals appear in early
Chinese texts is that of sacrificial religion. Sacrifice, the Liji maintains, fulfilled the
multiple function of supplicating in prayer, offering thanks to the spirits and keeping
19
them at bay. In origin the presentation of sacrificial offerings—ji 祭 [*tsiad]—
20
implied the offering of meat. If texts are to be believed, the killing and cooking
of animal victims was a common sight around altars, temples, shrines, tombs and
building sites. Texts offer meticulous accounts of how carefully selected and ritually
cleansed animal victims are prepared for slaughter, offered up to the spirit world,
21
and consumed by ritual participants in banquets. In the works associated with the
Warring States masters of philosophy the fate of sacrificial animals is evoked in
metaphors and moral arguments. The Zhuangzi 莊子 compares the predicament of
being fed and bred in luxury to the fate of a pig ending up on the sacrificial stands.
Elsewhere it is stated that serving in office is equivalent to being offered up in
22
sacrifice. There is the well-known story in the Mencius that stages a seemingly
19　Sun Xidan, Liji jijie, 25.713 (“Jiao te sheng”).

20　The etymology of the graph ji has been explained as a pictograph representing meat being held
by the hands. See Chen Nianfu 陳年福, Jiaguwen dongci cihui yanjiu 甲骨文動詞詞匯研究
(Chengdu: Ba Shu shushe, 2001), p. 130 no. 087; Lei Hanqing 雷漢卿, Shuowen ‘shi bu’ zi
yu shenling jisi kao 說文示部字與神靈祭祀考 (Chengdu: Ba Shu shushe, 2000), p. 91 ff.;
and Zhou Qingquan 周清泉, Wenzi kaogu 文字考古 (Chengdu: Sichuan renmin, 2003), vol. 1,
p. 292 ff. Sacrificial terminology varied from region to region. Xu Shen notes that ji sacrifice
among people in Wu 吳 was known as kui 餽 (a graph that contains the“food＂and“ghost＂
significs and also functions as a homophonic variant for 饋 “to present offerings”). See Shuowen
jiezi zhu, 5B.15a.
21　See Roel Sterckx,“‘Of a Tawny Bull We Make Offering’: Animals in Early Chinese Religion,＂
in Paul J. Waldau and Kimberley Patton, eds., A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion,
Science and Ethics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), pp. 259-272.
22　Guo Qingfan 郭慶藩, ed., Zhuangzi jishi 莊子集釋 (Taipei: Guanya, 1991), 19.648 (“Da sheng”
達生), 32.1062 (“Lie Yukou” 列禦寇).
compassionate king cancelling the slaughter of a bull for the blood consecration of
a bell because he had seen the animal alive and shivering, ...only to replace it with a
23
sheep in the end. And similar comparisons and analogies occur elsewhere:
The ox reserved for the suburban sacrifices is nourished and fed for an entire
year before being bedecked with patterned embroidery and led into the ancestral
temple hall where the chief priest takes his belled knife to lay open its hair. At that
moment, even if it wanted to carry heavy loads while mounting steep slopes, it
24
could not get its wish.
Oxen were important sacrificial victims prior to their use in draft ploughing in
Chunqiu times. With the advent of ox-drawn ploughing and the expansion of
agriculture, their status and value increased significantly and by late Warring States
25
and early imperial times they ranked as the most prestigious sacrificial victim.
Yet, virtually any animal could be turned into sacrificial meat. Shang oracle bones
record offerings of domestic animals including pigs, sheep, and dogs and the
Shang language includes a specialized vocabulary including several graphs to
denote victim animals of a specified colour as well as methods of ritual slaughter
26
(burning, drowning, splitting, cleaving, etc.). These sacrificial techniques appear
23　Jiao Xun 焦循, ed., Mengzi zhengyi 孟子正義 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1996), 3.80-84 (1A.7;“Liang
Hui wang, shang＂梁惠王, 上).
24　Wang Liqi 王利器, ed., Yantie lun jiaozhu 鹽鐵論校注 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1996), 18.231 (“Hui
xue” 毀學).
25　Gu Derong 顧德融 and Zhu Shunlong 朱順龍, Chunqiu shi 春秋史 (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin
chubanshe, 2001), pp. 206-209. Its link with agriculture, among other factors, would
ensure that, throughout most of later imperial history, the ox enjoyed a special status and the
consumption of beef became periodically subject to taboos. See Vincent Goossaert, Le Tabou du
Boeuf en Chine: Agriculture, éthique et sacrifice (Paris: Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises,
Collège de France, 2005); and Goossaert,“The Beef Taboo and the Sacrificial Structure of
Late Imperial Chinese Society,＂in Roel Sterckx, ed., Of Tripod and Palate: Food, Politics and
Religion in Traditional China (New York: Palgrave, 2005), chapter 11, pp. 237-248.
26　See Chang Tsung-Tung 張聰東, Der Kult der Shang-dynastie im Spiegel de Orakelinschriften
(Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1970), pp. 65-73. Wang Tao argues that white animal victims,
especially white oxen, carried high symbolical value in Shang ancestral sacrifices. See“Yin ren
to change little over time. Hence for instance the Warring States divination
records excavated at Baoshan 包山 (Hubei; burial dated ca. 316 BCE) list horses,
water buffalo, pigs, rams, ewes and white dogs as victims. They contain detailed
terminology for specific victim animals within the main animal groups (e.g. gelded
pigs, piglets, sows, etc.), specify a hierarchy of offerings depending on the spirit
addressed, and include various instructions on how to offer up the victim (in its
27
entirety, cut up, dried, together with alcoholic ale, etc.). Dogs and chickens figure
prominently in exorcisms, sacrifices to the roadside (which involved crushing or
breaking the bones and limbs of the victim, and offering the partitioned carcass to
the four directions), in sacrifices to buildings and gates, and in rituals requiring blood
28
consecrations.
Animal blood occupied a central role. Several passages in ritual texts suggest
that blood was conceived as the essence of the victim. A description of a temple
consecration preserved in the Liji concludes by stating that“consecrating a dwelling
by means of blood is the way whereby one communicates with the spiritual
29
luminescences (xin wu zhe jiao shenming zhi dao ye 釁屋者交神明之道也 ).”
30
Animal blood was used in rituals to seal covenants, to consecrate and propitiate
de yanse guannian yu wuxing shuo de xingcheng ji fazhan＂殷人的顏色觀念與五行說的形成

及發展, in Ai Lan 艾蘭 (Sarah Allan), Wang Tao and Fan Yuzhou 范毓周, eds., Zhongguo gudai
siwei moshi yu yinyang wuxing shuo tanyuan 中國古代思維模式與陰陽五行說探源 (Nanjing:
Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1998), pp. 274-284.
27　Chen Wei 陳偉, Baoshan Chu jian chu tan 包山楚簡初探 (Wuhan: Wuhan daxue, 1996), pp.
175-180; and Chen Wei,“Hubei Jingmen Baoshan bushi Chu jian suo jian shenqi xitong yu
xiangji zhidu＂湖北荊門包山卜筮楚簡所見神祇系統與享祭制度, Kaogu 考古 1999.4: 57-
59.
28　Sima Qian 司馬遷, Shiji 史記 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1959), 5.184, 14.573, 28.1360; Yili zhushu
儀禮注疏 (Shisanjing zhushu edition, Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1982), 24.4b (“Bin li” 賓禮);
Shuowen jiezi zhu, 14A. 51b; Sun Yirang, ed., Zhouli zhengyi, 33.1328 (“Da zongbo” 大宗伯);
Shang shu da zhuan 尚書大傳 (Congshu jicheng edition), 7.71.
29　Sun Xidan, Liji jijie, 42.1123 (“Za ji, xia” 雜記, 下). For an account of this ritual, see Sterckx,
The Animal and the Daemon, pp. 76-77.
30　Susan Weld,“The Covenant Texts from Houma and Wenxian,＂in Edward L. Shaughnessy,
ed., New Sources of Early Chinese History: An Introduction to the Reading of Inscriptions and
ritual objects such as vessels, bells, drums and music stands as well as buildings,
31
construction sites and temples. During important sacrifices, animal organs and parts
thereof were to be offered up in various forms of preparation or in sequential stages
32
to address specific spirits: raw or cooked, intact or cut into parts, roasted or boiled.
Sacrificial meat itself could serve to affirm political relationships. In pre-
imperial times overlords distributed sacrificial meats among their feudal lords who
would pass on a share to their respective subjects and, in turn, receive meat offerings
from their followers. Meats were also distributed prior to military campaigns.
These ritualised gifts of meat could consist of broiled, roasted or raw meats.
33
According to some commentators, they were held in a shell of a large bivalve. The
political importance of sharing out sacrificial meats is well attested. Confucius is
alleged to have parted services with his native state of Lu 魯 because he deemed it
34
improper not to be offered a share of the meats following a sacrifice. Shared meat
Manuscripts (Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China & Institute of East Asian Studies,
1997), pp. 156-160. On the history and role of oaths and covenants see Hirase Takao 平勢隆
郎, Yomigaeru moji to jujutsu no teikoku よみがえる文字と呪術の帝国 (Tokyo: Chūō kōron
shinsha, 2001), pp. 145-162; Lewis, Sanctioned Violence in Early China, pp. 45-46, 67-71,
264-265 n. 129 ff.; and Lü Jing 呂靜, “Kodai Chūgoku no meisho ibutsu ni kansuru ichi kōsatsu”
古代中國の盟書遺物に関する一考察, Tōyō bunka kenkyūjo kiyō 東洋文化研究所紀要 150
(2007): 1-47, esp. 1-21. On the animals used in covenants see Okamura Hidenori 岡村秀典, “Sen
Shin jidai no kyōgi” 先秦時代の供犧, Tōhō gakuhō 東方學報 75 (2003): 1-80, esp. 32-54.
31　Technical terms for blood consecrations include xin 釁 and er 衈 (the latter mainly using the
blood of birds). See e.g. Guoyu 國語 (Shanghai: Guji, 1978), 4.181 (“Lu yu, shang” 魯語, 上);
Sun Yirang, ed., Zhouli zhengyi, 37.1506 (“Chang ren” 鬯人). Yang Bojun comments that for
consecration rituals the blood of pigs, goats or chickens was preferred. See Chunqiu Zuozhuan
zhu, 1258 (Zhao 昭 4). For further references see Lei Hanqing, Shuowen ‘shi bu’ zi yu shenling
jisi kao, pp. 104-106.
32　Sun Xidan, Liji jijie, 24.663-664 (“Li qi”).
33　Yang Bojun, Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu, 271 (Min 閔 2), 326 (Xi 僖 9), 427 (Xi 24), 1378 (Zhao
16); Chunqiu zhu, 1593 (Ding 定 14); Guoyu, 11.402 (“Jin yu 晉語 5”); Sun Yirang, ed., Zhouli
zhengyi, 34.1363 (“Da zong bo”), 71.2949 (“Da xing ren” 大行人 ).
34　Jiao Xun, ed., Mengzi zhengyi, 24.834 (6B.6). See also Xiang Zonglu 向宗魯, ed., Shuoyuan
jiaozheng 說苑校證 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1987), 17.415 (“Za yan” 雜言). Allegedly, sacrificial
meats were the only gift from friends Confucius would acknowledge with a bow. See Yang
consumption may also have carried significance as a marker of kin or hierarchy. The
Qin legal code, for instance, stipulates that a wife and children“eating meat”(shi
35
rou 食肉 ) with a guilty husband would be subjected to the same punishment.
Records are too scanty to establish how frequently within the annual cycle
36
elites obtained shares of sacrificial meat during private and public ceremonies.
Yet the repeated recommendation throughout Warring States texts that meat and
ale were to be reserved for the exceptionally worthy or the elderly suggests that
as a nutritional commodity meat was precious. Ritual precept prohibited offerings
destined for sacrifice to be used for secular consumption. Mencius, for instance, is
highly disapproving of an incident in which oxen and sheep that had been presented
37
as gifts were used as food while sacrificial duties were neglected.
While it remains difficult to assess how much of an economic burden the
demands for sacrificial animals imposed on local communities or the state economy,
it is clear that a great deal of human and material resources were needed to
38
sustain the demand. Specialized officials dealing with the practical arrangements
surrounding sacrifice such as the breeding and preparation of victims belong to
Bojun, ed., Lunyu yi zhu 論語譯注 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2000), p. 107 (10.23). Clearly the
ritual gift economy superseded the relative economic value of secular gift giving.
35　Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian zhengli xiaozu 睡虎地秦墓竹簡整理小組, ed., Shuihudi Qin mu
zhujian 睡虎地秦墓竹簡 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1990; rpt. 2001), pp. 97-98 (slips 17-18); A. F. P.
Hulsewé, trans., Remnants of Ch’in Law (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985), p. 125 (D15, D16).
36　According to Vincent Rosivach, a typical fourth-century Athenian would have had access to
meat distributed after public sacrifices on up to forty-five occasions during the year (that is, on
average every eight or nine days). See The System of Public Sacrifice in Fourth-Century Athens
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), pp. 64-67.
37　Jiao Xun, ed., Mengzi zhengyi, 12.431 (3B.5).
38　For a detailed discussion of the economics of sacrifice see Roel Sterckx,“The Economics of
Religion in Warring States and Early Imperial China,＂in John Lagerwey and Marc Kalinowski,
eds., Early Chinese Religion. Part One: Shang through Han (1250 BC-220 AD) (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 2009), pp. 839-880. The clearest illustration of the impact sacrificial obligation might
have had on officialdom can be found in the task descriptions preserved in the Zhouli 周禮.
For a summary, see Roel Sterckx, Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood in Early China (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 137-143.
the earliest examples of bureaucratic office in China. Oracle bone inscriptions

record, among others, dog wardens, animal keepers, and horse supervisors. Bronze
inscriptions mention cowherds and sacrificial stewards. By imperial times, the
professionalization of officials dealing with sacrificial animals was acknowledged
as a hallmark of the idealised bureaucratic state and their activities were included
39
in the ritual calendar or“monthly ordinances”(yue ling 月令). Not all animal
victims were supplied by offices of state. Some were requisitioned through taxation
or levied through tributary missions by foreign subjects or vassals. Records mention
40
the existence of a“victim tax”(xi fu 犧賦). Fields and pasture lands could be
confiscated to supply animals and grains for sacrificial purposes. Although sacrificial
animals were not to be sold at the market together with common animals, there
is evidence that goods required for sacrifices and funerals could be purchased on
41
credit. The requirement to supply animals for sacrifice may have been a harsh
burden on some communities. One account dating to the mid-first century CE
illustrates that the requisitioning of sacrificial victims by local officials could hold
communities ransom. It relates how shamans instilled fear among their community
by warning them that eating sacrificial ox meat would cause death from disease with
sufferers uttering mooing sounds before they died. The incident led the Han court
39　Zuo Yandong 左言東, Xian Qin zhiguan biao 先秦職官表 (Beijing: Shangwu, 1994), nos. 19,
25, 37. For details on these officials and the criteria involved in the selection of animal victims
see Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China, pp. 47-50, 58-61, 76-78. For a
reconstruction of their activities over the course of the ritual year see Sterckx,“The Economics
of Religion,＂pp. 845-851. Zhou Xiaolu 周曉陸 has made the interesting observation that some
animal and plant motifs on Qin eave tiles might depict natural scenes described in the“Xia xiao
zheng＂夏小正 and received versions of the“monthly ordinances.＂These include mating tigers
that appear as interlocking creatures on tiles as well as more abstract motifs such as“hawks
turning into pigeons.＂See“Qin dong zhi wu wen yang wadang de yizhong shidu＂秦動植物紋
樣瓦當的一種試讀, Kaogu yu wenwu 考古與文物 2004.2: 43-48.
40　Sun Xidan, Liji jijie, 5.116 (“Qu li, xia” 曲禮, 下).
41　Sun Yirang, ed., Zhouli zhengyi, 28.1097 (“Quan fu” 泉府); Sun Xidan, Liji jijie, 14.374 (“Wang
zhi” 王制); Kongzi jiayu 孔子家語 (Sibu beiyao edition, Taipei: Taiwan Zhonghua shuju, 1981),
7.6a (“Xing zheng” 刑政).
to dispatch a new governor to the region to suppress the cults, ban the unwarranted
42
butchering of cattle and put a halt to the exploits of the local shamans.
5. Pictorial Absence?
Given the rich documentary record on animal sacrifice sketched out above
and an archaeological record that includes zoomorphic bronze vessels and physical
animal remains, it is noteworthy that scenes of animal slaughter in a sacrificial
context barely figure in currently transmitted iconography. Unlike the rich corpus
of vase paintings and votive reliefs in ancient Greece, where various stages in the
sacrificial procedure (pre-kill, the killing, the post-kill) are illustrated in detail,
early Chinese visual culture appears to reserve little space for representations of
43
animal sacrifice. To be sure Warring States and Han murals contain a good number
of kitchen and banqueting scenes. They depict menials at work slaughtering and
preparing meats while dead animals or parts of the carcass hang down from racks,
holders or stands near them. We find scenes of butchers wielding knives, kitchen
stewards roasting and boiling meat on skewers or in cauldrons, and servants leading
animals to the place of slaughter. Similarly, scenes are preserved that depict animals
during the stages that might precede slaughter either in bucolic settings or in
44
representations of hunts. Yet although texts are replete with records of ancestors
or spirits being feasted with sacrificial offerings before living descendants and ritual
participants are hosted in a banquet, scenes that depict the actual sacrificial slaughter
or offering of animals in a sacrificial setting—in close-up or as leitmotiv—are rare.
In suggesting that the sacrificial scene is not a predominant topos in Warring
42　Hou Hanshu 後漢書 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1965), 41.1397; Ying Shao 應劭, Fengsu tongyi jiaoshi
風俗通義校釋 (Tianjin: Renmin, 1980), 9.339 (“Guai shen” 怪神).
43　For Greek examples see F. T. van Straten, Hierà Kalá: Images of Animal Sacrifice in Archaic &
Classical Greece (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995).
44　For examples grouped by theme see Xia Henglian 夏亨廉 et al., eds., Handai nongye huaxiang
zhuanshi 漢代農業畫像磚石 (Beijing: Zhongguo nongye chubanshe, 1996), pp. 63-132.
States and Han iconography, I do of course not claim that the subject is entirely
visually absent. Significant in this regard is a set of motifs combining hunting,
sacrificial and culinary activity engraved on bronze ladles, trays and utensils, mostly
of mid-Warring States provenance. A well-preserved bronze ladle discovered in
1998 in a private collection in Luoyang contains the hitherto best example of such
45
a scene. Beneath the mouth of the ladle, which is decorated with a fish and four
hunters wielding bow and arrow, it shows what may be a sacrificial scene underneath
what appears to be a roof of an ancestral temple on top of which are perched two
auspicious birds. Inside the temple two human figures, one seated on a stool, are
holding a goblet in their hand facing one empty and one full vessel. Xu Chanfei 徐
嬋菲 and Yao Zhiyuan 姚智遠 speculate that these could represent the invocator and
the impersonator described in ritual texts. On both sides of the temple stand what
could be five assistants to the two central figures offering sacrifice inside, three of
which appear to be leaning on a T-shaped staff. The latter, Xu and Yao suggest, could
represent the so-called bi 畢, a fork- or bow-shaped stick made of wood and used to
help the host pick up the sacrificial meats or draw out and indicate the place where
ritual implements and offerings should be positioned, or where participants should
46
stand. Outside the temple six assistants surround two cauldrons in which offerings
47
are cooking while they hold knives to kill or dissect offerings. A further scene
45　My account is based on a drawing reproduced in Xu Chanfei 徐嬋菲 and Yao Zhiyuan 姚智遠 ,
“Qianshi Luoyang xin huo Zhanguo tong yi shang de kewen tu’an＂淺釋洛陽新獲戰國銅匜上
的刻紋圖案 , Zhongyuan wenwu 中原文物 2007.1: 64-68.
46　Sun Xidan, Liji jijie, 40.1065 ( “Za ji” ).
47　Similar scenes depicting the cooking or lay-out of sacrificial offerings inside or near a temple
can be found on fragments of V-shaped Eastern Zhou bronze ladles elsewhere. See Shanxi sheng
wenwu guanli weiyuanhui 山西省文物管理委員會,“Shanxi Changzhi shi Fenshuiling gu mu
de qingli＂山西長治市分水嶺古墓的清理 , Kaogu xuebao 考古學報 1957.1: 109 (fig. 2, ladle
in tomb 12); Ye Xiaoyan 葉小燕 ,“Dong Zhou kewen tongqi＂東周刻紋銅器, Kaogu 考古
1983.2: 159 (fig. 2; Changsha); Wu Shanjing 吳山菁,“Jiangsu Liuhe xian Heren Dong Zhou
mu＂江蘇六合縣和仁東周墓, Kaogu 考古 1977.5: 300 (fig. 6); Jiangsu sheng wenwu guanli
weiyuanhui and Nanjing bowuyuan 江蘇省文物管理委員會, 南京博物院,“Jiangsu Liuhe
Chengqiao Dong Zhou mu＂江蘇六合程橋東周墓, Kaogu 考古 1965.3: 114 (fig. 13).
shows three figures slaughtering a sacrificial victim, possibly a deer. The register
opposite shows people bringing a tethered deer, birds and a dog to the temple. The
ladle further includes a depiction of an archery target. Shooting ceremonies were
48
often conducted along with a sacrifice.
Engraved bronze ladle. Drawing. Mid-Warring States period.

Xu Chanfei 徐嬋菲 and Yao Zhiyuan 姚智遠,“Qianshi Luoyang xin huo Zhanguo tong
yi shang de kewen tu’an”淺釋洛陽新獲戰國銅匜上的刻紋圖案, Zhongyuan wenwu 中
原文物 2007.1: 65, plate 2.
48　Other examples of the archery target motif occur on a bronze ladle excavated from an Eastern
Zhou tomb in Shanxi; see Li Youcheng 李有成,“Dingxiang xian Zhonghuo cun Dong Zhou
mu fajue baogao＂定襄縣中霍村東周墓發掘報告, Wenwu 文物 1997.5: 15 (fig. 21); and on
fragments of a compass found in a Warring States tomb in Jiangsu. See Huaiyin shi bowuguan
淮陰市博物館,“Huaiyin Gaozhuang Zhanguo mu＂淮陰高莊戰國墓, Kaogu xuebao 考古學報
1988.2: 199 (fig. 12).
Here then we have what appears to be a sequence depicting preparations outside the
temple as well as the actual offering in the temple. It would be difficult to interpret
this scene as anything else but a narrative on sacrifice. It is clearly distinct from
kitchen and banquet scenes and the central figures in the temple appear to be doing
more than simply sharing a meal. Nevertheless the portrayals of slaughter and the
victims themselves remain generic and it is the sequence as a whole that suggests a
sacrificial scene. The fact that this and several cognate scenes appear on ladles and
trays, that is, implements used in sacrifice, also poses questions as to how visible
they were meant to be and whether they can be compared to scenes on murals.
Examples such as the Luoyang ladle do not explain the relative paucity
of depictions of animal sacrifice in the iconography of early China against its
prevalence in textual sources. A question that arises then is whether texts may help
explain why this might be the case. Although textual sources leave many questions
unanswered, a number of themes that transpire in the textual record could offer some
tentative explanations as to why scenes depicting animal sacrifice are relatively
scarce. I would offer four hypotheses.
First, the ritual canon indicates that sacrifice and banqueting were often part
of one and the same sequence. Following the presentation of offerings to spirits or
ancestors participants would join in a sacrificial banquet where the remainders of
49
the offerings would be consumed and/or distributed among participants. It may
therefore be possible that kitchen and banqueting scenes were conceived of as
belonging to the same visual vocabulary as the sacrificial feast since they were part
of one and the same sequence.
A second reason behind the scarcity of sacrificial scenes might be found in
the ideology itself underlying the use of animals as offerings. As I have discussed
elsewhere, ritual texts tend to emphasize that offering an animal implies“de-
49　For a discussion as to how this applies to the distribution of meat see Gilles Boileau,“Conferring
Meat in Archaic China: Between Reward and Humiliation,＂Asiatische Studien 60.4 (2006):
737-772.
animalising”it, in other words, transforming a creature from animal into edible,

or turning a creature with a bodily morphology into an amorphous substance
50
of fragrance and flavour. The ritual canon describes in detail how sacrificial
animals are to be selected and prepared. The slaughter itself however receives less
attention and the bulk of the instructions are devoted to what happens after the
kill: the division of the carcass, the preparation of the offerings, and the ways in
which sacrificial spoils ought to be distributed. One could therefore imagine that
descriptions of ritual preparations as recorded in texts would easily translate visually
into what to the contemporary observer appear as mere kitchen or banqueting scenes.
Third, there is another narrative that runs through Warring States and Han
texts and that may be significant, namely, the idea that the morally accomplished
gentleman or sage should stay away from the place where animals are killed.
Sacrifice may well be presented as an expression of reverence, but several anecdotes
and moralising tales also insist that a virtuous gentleman does not deal with animals
“as animals,” that is, as life victims. Likewise, the kitchen or abattoir is not a space
where a gentleman or ruler should dwell. Zhuangzi, most famously, perverts this
taboo in his story of Cook Ding 庖丁 when he has a prince discovering the deep
truth about self-cultivation through a conversation with a butcher-cook in the
kitchen. The story can be read as a detailed account of butchery, but ultimately it is a
philosophical reflection on spontaneity and technique. Zhuangzi’s choice of subject
and setting may even be a veiled criticism of the idea that the morally accomplished
51
person should shy away from the slaughterhouse. Yet this moral reticence of being
personally involved in the sacrificial kill could suggest that depictions of sacrificial
50　Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China, pp. 56-61
51　Guo Qingfan, ed., Zhuangzi jishi, 3.117-119 ( “Yang sheng” 養生). For a parallel see Liu Wendian
劉文典, ed., Huainanzi honglie jijie 淮南子鴻烈集解 (Taipei: Wenshizhe, 1992), 11.363-364
( “Qi su” 齊俗). For the thesis that the Cook Ding story is an indirect criticism of sacrificial culture
see Romain Graziani,“When Princes Awake in Kitchens: Zhuangzi’s Rewriting of a Culinary
Myth,＂in Sterckx, Of Tripod and Palate, chapter 3, pp. 62-74. For a discussion of the story
in the context of the figure of the butcher see Sterckx, Food, sacrifice, and sagehood in early
China, pp. 49-56.
slaughter were not palatable to elites. It may explain why we have few transmitted
examples and why in examples such as the Luoyang ladle the actors are unidentified.
Fourth and finally, we should not overlook the concept of the ideal sacrificial
offering itself. Above I quoted a maxim in the Liji claiming that the highest form
of reverence requires little or no ornament. This idea is a version of a trope that
is repeated across a number of philosophical texts in Warring States and early
imperial China: the sage as a hidden agent blocking off his senses to communicate
with the deepest elements of the cosmos; or the general contention that the spirit
world responds to human activity through media that are incompatible with the
52
senses of ordinary mortals. The ritual canon suggests that offerings are sanctified
not so much because they have been slaughtered and prepared according to ritual
precept but because they invite consumption. Only the consummate offering, the
offering that establishes sensory contact with the spirits turns the victim animal into
a numinous gift. Hence, the most efficient offerings for communication with the
spirit world are identified as those that are insipid, bland, colourless, formless and
amorph. Therefore it is possible that it is the cauldron, and not the animal victim
itself, that is intended as the final and core moment in the visual sequence. It is not
the lavishly decorated ox paraded in front of the altar, but the sacrificial stew (geng
羹 ) that marks the ultimate transition from animal to edible and that invites harmony
53
amongst celebrants and spirits. It is in the stew—a harmoniously mixed soup
52　For a more detailed discussion of these themes see Roel Sterckx,“Le Pouvoir des Sens: Sagesse
et Perception Sensorielle en Chine Ancienne,＂Du Pouvoir. Cahiers d’Institut Marcel Granet 1
(2003) (Presses Universitaires de France): 71-92; and Sterckx,“Searching for Spirit: Shen and
Sacrifice in Warring States and Han Philosophy and Ritual,＂Extrême-orient, Extrême-occident
29 (2007): 23-54.
53　On the geng stew and its use in political and philosophical rhetoric see Sterckx,“Sages, Cooks,
and Flavours in Warring States and Han China,＂Monumenta Serica 54 (2006): 1-46, esp.
22-31. Gilles Boileau shows that in the sacrificial system of the Spring and Autumn period the
“well-seasoned stew＂was distinguished from the“unseasoned stew,＂also known as the“great
stew＂(da geng 大羹). See“Some Ritual Elaborations on Cooking and Sacrifice,＂Early China
23-24 (1998-99): 113-114.
containing all ingredients, flavours and fragrances in the world—that the animal is
literally and metaphorically boiled down into a substance no longer recognisable
as zoomorph. And so, perhaps, the ultimate sacrificial offering in early China was
meant to escape or indeed transcend iconographic representation.
6. Epilogue
It is not until we uncover more evidence of sacrificial scenes in visual culture or

when our visual literacy of animal culture has reached a stage in which it can benefit
from a more critical scholarly apparatus, that the hypotheses I have offered above
can be fully tested or corroborated. If texts can help inspire our reading of animal
iconography, they can only do so tentatively. Texts show that the animal world in
ancient China provided a source of inspiration for the expression of fundamental
54
cosmological, religious and social values. Whether one opts to resort to legend,
lore and mythology to explain the“animal form,”seeks recourse to texts in order to
interpret décor, or relies on murals and artefacts to substantiate the interpretation of
texts, much more work is needed to advance our visual literacy of the role of animals
in early Chinese art and material culture for it to be cogently linked to descriptions of
hunting, ritual sacrifice, culinary economics, diet and agriculture in texts.
Works Cited
1. Classical Works
Chen, Qiyou 陳奇猷, ed. Lüshi chunqiu jiaoshi 呂氏春秋校釋. Shanghai: Xuelin chubanshe
學林出版社, 1995.
Chen, Xiangdao 陳祥道. Li shu 禮書 (Siku quanshu zhenben wu ji 四庫全書珍本五集
edition). Taipei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan 臺灣商務印書館, 1974.
Fan, Ye 范曄. Hou Hanshu 後漢書. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局, 1965.
54　Cf. Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China.

Fu, Sheng 伏勝. Shang shu da zhuan 尚書大傳. Congshu jicheng 叢書集成 edition.
Guo, Qingfan 郭慶藩, ed. Zhuangzi jishi 莊子集釋. Taipei: Guanya wenhua chubanshe 貫雅
文化出版社, 1991.
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古代中國的動物形象與祭祀
胡司德*
摘　要
動物和獸形主題是古代中國藝術與物質文化中隨處可見的要素，但關於
如何解釋動物圖像學，在方法論上仍存在許多爭議。一個核心問題是：傳世文
獻是否能有效地引以為據，充分解釋動物圖像中呈現的象徵與隱含意義呢？文
獻記載與圖像資料的關係甚為複雜，透過祭祀與動物犧牲的例子，本文試圖為
此課題別進一解。儘管在祭祀的脈絡中，文獻中充斥著關於動物的敘述；在古
代中國的視覺材料裡，卻罕見宰殺動物以供祭祀的圖像主題。本文探索此現象
的可能成因，並以傳世文獻中保留的訊息為基礎，提出若干假說。
關鍵詞：動物、藝術、古代中國、祭祀、圖像學、物質文化
2012 年 2 月 10 日收稿，2012 年 10 月 12 日修訂完成，2012 年 11 月 5 日通過刊登。

*　作者胡司德（Roel Sterckx）為英國劍橋大學漢學教授和克萊爾學院院士。

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BIBLID 0254-4466(2012)30:4 pp.

Zoomorphism and Sacrificial Religion

Historians face a complex task when trying to reconstruct religion in practice

2. Reading Animal Iconography

Scholars remain divided as to how zoomorphic and theriomorphic motifs

prominence of animal iconography is acknowledged, yet, the frames of reference

representation merits interpretation in its particular setting and needs to be judged

Textual sources can contribute towards reconstructing the mental universe in

9 Sun Xidan, Liji jijie, 23.642 (“Li qi” 禮器).

4. Animals and Sacrifice

It is with animal sacriﬁce that we arrive at an interesting juncture in our search

19 Sun Xidan, Liji jijie, 25.713 (“Jiao te sheng”).

de yanse guannian yu wuxing shuo de xingcheng ji fazhan＂殷人的顏色觀念與五行說的形成

the earliest examples of bureaucratic office in China. Oracle bone inscriptions

Engraved bronze ladle. Drawing. Mid-Warring States period.

animalising”it, in other words, transforming a creature from animal into edible,

It is not until we uncover more evidence of sacriﬁcial scenes in visual culture or

54 Cf. Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China.

Humiliation.＂Asiatische Studien 60.4: 737-772.

Shanghai renmin chubanshe 上海人民出版社.

Riboud, Pénélope. 2007.“Bird-Priests in Central Asian Tombs of 6th-Century China and

University of California, Los Angeles.

物紋樣瓦當的一種試讀. Kaogu yu wenwu 考古與文物 2004.2: 43-48.

2012 年 2 月 10 日收稿，2012 年 10 月 12 日修訂完成，2012 年 11 月 5 日通過刊登。

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen

9　Sun Xidan, Liji jijie, 23.642 (“Li qi” 禮器).

19　Sun Xidan, Liji jijie, 25.713 (“Jiao te sheng”).

54　Cf. Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China.