Bronze "priest" statue from Sanxingdui

This article presents a brief review of one the most interesting features of Sanxingdui Bronze Age culture, spread in Sichuan province of the PRC - big bronze statue of a man standing on the pedestal, found in sacrificial pit JK2. The lines of the technological evolution of the ways of production of statues like this are outlined in the article and reconstruction of the possible ritual, performed by the “priest” standing on the pedestal is discussed. The bronze figure is tall and large. It has big eyes, a straight nose, square cheeks, and large perforated ears. Upon its head is a crown or headpiece. The body is long and thin; its right arm is held up to its chin while its bent left arm is held out in front of the breast. Both hands are held in a circular grip that originally held an object. The collar or lapel of the long robe is attached on the left. The robe is decorated with meander patterns. The barefoot figure with ankle bracelets is standing upon a square base. The square base is divided into two levels. Each of the four corners of the upper level is an animal mask (a dragon or an elephant) supporting the top. The lover level is plain without any patterns. The total height of the figure and the base is 261 cm. When found, it was already broken at the waist. The hands of the bronze figure are unusually large, obviously out of proportion with the body. This feature made Shen Zhongchang (and many other authors) to believe that the object held in the hands of a statue should have been a jade cong. He wrote: «The two hands hold a сong. Within the hollow axis a wooden post for “communicating with Heaven and Earth” may possibly have been inserted». But such a wooden post, if inserted into the hands of a statue, would diverge by 40 degrees from the vertical position. Besides there is only one jade cong in Sanxingdui, in JK1 sacrificial pit, lacking any bronze statues. And in JK2 sacrificial pit with the large bronze figure standing on the pedestal there are no cong at all. Hsia Nai has thought all Han commentaries on how cong were used to be “no more than the fabrications of Confucianists”. The big bronze statue of a man standing on the pedestal was assembled from pre-cast details, like the bronze “spirit trees” No 2 and No 1 from the same pit JK2. The bent legs of the base the statue is standing on are similar in shape and technology of production to the bent roots of “spirit trees”. So the big statue of a man can be attributed to stage II of the technological evolution of bronze trees. The previous stage of the technological evolution of big statues was represented by a wooden figure with bronze head of Bb type. Its predecessor could be a primitive human figure made of a tree log, like modern Evenk idol chichipkan. According to the author’s opinion two smaller bronze statues from JK2 represented the Lord of the Underworld “Yamaraja” and the Lord of Birds and Heaven “Garuda”. The biggest bronze statue standing on the pedestal could depict the supreme god of Sanxingdui people.