Not That Kind of Big Men: A Response to Lukas Nickel's Interpretation of the Term da ren [phrase omitted] in Lintao [phrase omitted].

• Author: Chen, Frederick Shih-Chung

Lukas Nickel's article "The First Emperor and Sculpture in China" in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies in 2013 has drawn significant attention to the issue of Hellenistic influence on the making of the terracotta warriors excavated from the mausoleum of the First Emperor (Qin Shi huangdi [phrase omitted], r. 221-210 BCE). It even inspired two television documentaries broadcast in October 2016, the BBC's "The Greatest Tomb on Earth: Secrets of Ancient China" and the National Geographic Channel's "China's Mega-tomb Revealed." In his article, Nickel seeks to explain the sudden rise of massive sculpture in China at the time of the First Emperor. Previously, sculpture had occupied only a minor role in Chinese art in comparison with its prominence in the art of ancient Greece. Nickel argues that its emergence in China could have been the result of contact with the Hellenistic world following the conquests of Alexander the Great in the East.

Nickel builds up this argument from three perspectives. First, by demonstrating that there was no significant tradition of making human sculptures in China before the First Emperor, he asks how it is possible that "Chinese craftsmen developed overnight abilities which required a long process of experimentation and discovery in other cultures." To find an answer, he examines all the available terracotta figures excavated in the tomb of the First Emperor. In analyzing them, he seems to apply Ernst Gombrich's distinction between the "Great Awakening" of Greek sculpture and painting in the sixth to fifth centuries BCE and the essentially static quality of pre-Hellenistic (Hellenic) Oriental and Egyptian art in respect of "anatomic accuracy" and "realism." By this standard, the terracotta warriors do not have much in common with Hellenistic art, for their depiction of the proportions of the human body is frequently less accurate. Nickel contrasts the warriors with a small number of half-naked so-called acrobats or exercising men uncovered from pit K9901 that display a greater degree of anatomical realism, more akin to Hellenistic art. In his view, the difference in realism between these two groups of terracotta figures would have required artistic and intellectual development as complex and time-consuming as the process that created the breakthrough from the Egyptian to the Hellenistic style of sculpture demonstrated by Ernst Gombrich. (1) Nickel holds that the acrobatic figures exhibit unique alien features, whose manufacture would very likely have required specialists with first-hand knowledge of contemporary Hellenistic art; he does not think that they could be products influenced by the relatively simple craftsmanship of indigenous nomadic cultures close to China. (2)

In the second section of his article, Nickel suggests that such alien features could have arisen from contact between the Hellenistic world and the Qin Empire at a crucial historical juncture of opportunity, when the conquests of Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) in India brought Hellenistic culture and the Qin into geographical proximity. He points to archaeological relics with Hellenistic features found in such post-Alexander Greek colonies in Central Asia and North India as Ai Khanouma, Takhti Sangin, and Khalchayan, and also to Greek soldier-like figures uncovered in the Ili [phrase omitted] valley of Xinjiang [phrase omitted]. These, he argues, show that direct contact between the Hellenistic world and the Qin Empire was possible in the time of the First Emperor. (3)

In a third section, Nickel addresses one of the primary objections to the notion of Hellenistic influence on the terracotta warriors, namely the different functions of the sculptures. The terracotta figures served in the subterranean domain of the First Emperor's tomb, whereas Hellenistic figures were usually on public display. He counters this criticism by resorting to the example of the twelve "Golden Men" ("Metal Men") commissioned by the First Emperor, an incident mentioned in the earliest historical records, such as the Shiji [phrase omitted] (Record of the Grand Historian) completed by the father of Chinese historiography, Sima Qian [phrase omitted] (145-86 BCE), and the Huainazi [phrase omitted], compiled by Liu An [phrase omitted] (179-122 BCE). Given that the twelve Golden Men were made from melted-down weapons confiscated from conquered states to weaken their capacity for future rebellion, Nickel cites them as the earliest example in China of public sculpture with a distinctly political function, a mirror of Alexandrian practice that "may represent the beginning of sculpture-making in the empire." (4) In addition, he attaches much importance to the earliest report of the appearance of twelve mystical "Big Men" in Lintao, near the western border of the empire, soon after the First Emperor's conquest of the other six states. This report appears in the Hanshu [phrase omitted] (Book of the Former Han dynasty) and in the early commentaries on it. Nickel perceives a connection between the Chinese report of the twelve Big Men and the account given by Diodorus Siculus in the Bibliotheca Historica of the construction of "altars" to the twelve Olympian gods by Alexander the Great at the easternmost point of his expedition to India. This coincidence suggests to Nickel that the twelve "Big Men" mentioned in the Honshu are possibly a reference to large sculptural figures erected on the western border of the empire. These statues, he thinks, might have inspired the twelve Golden Men subsequently commissioned by the First Emperor. Nickel further points out that his conjecture of a link between the twelve Big Men in Lintao and the twelve Olympian gods chimes with Lucas Christopoulos's research, which links the Big Men with a gilt-silver platter uncovered by archaeologists in Beitan Township [phrase omitted], Jingyuan County [phrase omitted], Gansu Province [phrase omitted], an area close to Lintao. The platter shows a figure with the Hellenistic features of Dionysos (or Alexander-Dionysos) sitting on a panther surrounded by the heads of the twelve Olympian gods. (5)

Nickel's emphasis on the link between the sudden appearance of the twelve Big Men in Lintao and the twelve Olympian gods has turned the twelve Big Men in the Honshu into something of a compass keyword to navigate the issue of Hellenistic influence on the sudden rise of sculpture in the time of the First Emperor. However, the crucial assumption that the term da ren implies the existence of material sculptures is linguistically unprecedented and therefore open to question. It is possible that the desire to establish a link between Greek and Chinese sculpture may have given rise to a distorted reading of the Hanshu, which, if uncorrected, could misdirect future research on the...