Likeness of no one: presenting the first emperor's army - re - tomb sculptures form the Qin dynasty

35. E. H. Gombrich, "Meditations on a Hobby Horse or the Roots of Artistic Form," in Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art, London, 1963, 3.

36. Anthropomorphic figurines were unearthed from at least six tombs of Qin state, predating Qin Shi Huangdi's mausoleum. See Hu Lingui, "Zaoqi Qinyong jianshu" (A brief review of the early phase of Qin figures), Wenbo, no. 1, 1987, 23-25.

37. The psychological justifications for this are excellently treated by Freedberg; see esp. chap. 9, 201.

The subterranean army of several thousand life-size terra-cotta soldiers, horses, and war chariots, under excavation since 1974 from the site near the supposed burial chamber of the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi (r. 246-210 B.C.), in Lintong, Shaanxi province, has become famous far beyond the field of Chinese archaeology and early history as one of the grandest archaeological discoveries of this century.(1) Close to the tumulus which, according to historical accounts, should contain the tomb of the First Emperor itself, the terra-cotta army, situated in three subterranean pits, is the most conspicuous part of the entire burial compound, which also includes remains of a funerary precinct with auxiliary burials, sacrificial pits, and many other structures. According to the commonly accepted explanation, the underground army was created as a replica of the Qin army ("First Emperor's bodyguard sculpted in clay"): clay soldiers and horses represent Qin Shi Huang's army and stand in place of the real soldiers who could not have been actually buried.(2) There has not been much doubt about the army's function either: it was buried to the east of the tumulus to guard the tomb and to protect the emperor's eternal sleep.

The striking realism (a characteristics that will require our subsequent attention) of the army has lead some archaeologists involved in the project and some authors to suggest that the figures were modeled after living soldiers, that they were actual portraits of individual warriors. The majority of scholars, however, pointing out that the clay warriors' faces conform to a certain number of stereotypes, is unwilling to regard them as representations of individuals or to consider the Qin terra-cotta figures as portraiture.(3)

Yet if the figures are not portraits (and it certainly cannot be a priori assumed that they are), what then are they? If not portraits, are they generic types? What exactly were they supposed to represent? And what is the function of their likenesses?

Clearly, the common (and often only implicitly assumed) understanding of these figures, which considers them substitutes for genuine models while not accepting them as representations of individual persons standing as such models, is inherently contradictory and raises more questions than it purports to answer. The main reason seems to lie in the fact that current opinions on the subject are based on largely unexamined assumptions and uses of such concepts as "portraiture," "substitution," "replica," and "realism" - in short, on some taken-for-granted conceptions of representation. Moreover, it seems that too much effort has been spent on trying to explain the "meaning" of the army through reference to contemporaneous religious practice, often enlisting spurious evidence of texts, while too little attention has been given to the forms themselves as the very medium in which the work of art signifies.

My aim in this paper is to provide a more adequate account of what the Qin terra-cotta figures represent, and to determine more precisely the ontological and semiological status of the figures and, by implication, of the whole subterranean legion.(4) To a large extent this will amount to reckoning with the complexities of a conceptual and interpretive framework, penetrating through the accumulated layers of predetermined conceptions regarding the meaning of tomb substitutes and seeing beyond the recurrent patterns of assessing the style of the Qin figures as well as inferring their status from such an interpretation of style. On the other hand, it is hoped that the current elusive and unsettled issues of portraiture, resemblance, construal of identity, and other related problems of theoretical interest can be enriched somewhat by attending to the ever more complex artistic tradition, which has been literally surfacing from Chinese soil in recent decades.

The Meaning of Mingqi and the Style of Qin Figures

Much as the sculptures of the Qin terra-cotta legion can be perceived as unique in terms of their dimensions or style, they are just one, albeit one of the earliest, instance of tomb figures widely used in a mortuary context in early China. In addressing the issue of the status and significance of the Qin emperor's clay warriors, one is constrained by the existence of the established, commonly held conceptions of what tomb figures were meant to be and to do.

As in many other ancient cultures, furnishing graves with an elaborate array of sacrificial goods was an essential component of early Chinese mortuary practice. The late Zhou ritual texts Li Ji and Zhouli name a specific category of objects destined to accompany the dead into the nether-world, called mingqi (spirit vessels). The concept of mingqi, both in classical Chinese texts and in contemporary scholarly parlance, is rather elastic: it has been used to designate artifacts serving as substitutes or surrogates for some "real" object that is a living, functional, bigger, or more precious entity. The concept thus covers a variety of objects, including the imitations of utensils in cheap materials, but in the ancient texts and since it has been used above all to refer to the plastic images of humans and animals which began to appear in the late Zhou tombs.(5)