The early Chinese believed in the resurrection of the physical man, and
only after many centuries did the idea of mere spiritual survival vaguely
supplant the earlier superstition. To minister to the needs of the dead
the Chinese of the Han period (206 B. C.-221 A. D.) stocked their tombs
with jars containing wine and pickled meats, with articles of jade, with
clothes, mirrors and weapons. To these were added costly treasures,
furniture, chariots, live animals; even immolation of relatives and
retainers was practiced in early times. As the conception of spiritual
survival gradually replaced that of bodily life after death, simulacra of
the objects used in life came to be substituted in burial for real
objects. To this class belongs the horse’s head, illustrated on this
page, intended to take the place of a living sacrifice. The material is a
soft grey earthenware, covered with a layer of buff clay, perhaps an
original slip or perhaps an adhering soil incrustation. The modeling of
the head, which has been made from a mould, combines a close study of
nature with monumental elimination of the non-essential. Designs of the
period engraved on stone show a similar enthusiasm for the horse and a
similar method of treatment, the interest being in the decorative and
linear aspect more than in the realistic and plastic.
[Mortuary Vase. Han Period]