Crossing the Ground Boundary: Image, Ritual and Space in Chulan Tomb 2 (171 CE)

University of Chicago's Center for East Asian Studies presents a talk by Shi Jie on one individual shrine/tomb complex in East China dating to the late 2nd century CE.

Shi Jie, PhD Candidate, University of Chicago

Scholars of ancient Chinese funerary arts are often impressed by the shared pictorial motifs carved in the Eastern Han commemorative shrines and in the contemporary front burial chambers. Although both structures were located in the single graveyard, they differed from each other in a significant way: while the shrine stood above-ground and invited public viewers, the tomb chamber always stayed hidden beneath the tumulus. So why did they resemble each other while leaving such an impenetrable boundary between them? Did the similarity suggest a similar function? Or did the separation indicate something more profoundly different?

Triggered by these questions, this paper focuses on one individual shrine/tomb complex in East China dating to the late 2nd century CE. Unlike most of the previous studies that treat shrines and tomb chambers as individual “meaning units,” this paper examines them as a whole ritual and pictorial program. The commemorative shrine and the antechamber, despite their separation in physical space, formed a continuous “supernatural space” connected by continuous and repetitive ritual practice and by related images. Here the shrine served as the liminal space, the very end of either the netherworld or the living world, where both the tomb occupant and the ritual participant would meet with each other. While the deceased rode his chariot travelling through the dark passage and finally entered the dim space of the shrine, he looked out, face to face with those alive who came from the opposite direction — the bright world — to make offerings. Once again, the two separated subjects were reunited across the great boundary (ground boundary) which was supposed to deprive the one of the other permanently.