The Shan-fu Liang Kuei and Associated Inscribed Vessels [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII TEXT].

• Author: COOK, C. A.
• Position: Review

The Shan-fu Liang Kuei and Associated Inscribed Vessels [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII TEXT]. By NOEL BARNARD and CHEUNG KWONG-YUE. Taibei: NANTIAN SHUJU, 1996.

Over two decades of cooperative research between Noel Barnard of the Australian National University and Cheung Kwong-yue of the Chinese University of Hong Kong has culminated in an exhaustive and beautifully produced study of an inscribed bronze vessel-set from the late Western Zhou period. Barnard and Cheung make it clear that their approach throughout is limited to a technical study of the vessels and their inscriptions. The mechanics of their own study as well as the stages of construction involved in the creation of an inscribed bronze vessel are carefully documented and illustrated. Besides the four main chapters dedicated to the analysis of this set of twenty-eight interrelated vessels and their inscriptions, corollary points are amply illustrated in the thirty plates, eighty-seven figures, two maps, six tables, and six appendixes. Barnard organized and wrote the English text. Cheung has provided extensive research and a short Chinese summary, including a commentary on the title shanfu found in the ins criptions. This book is both a scholarly work and a teaching manual for newcomers to the field. The authors have helpfully provided a bibliography, a conversion table of romanization (they use the Wade-Giles system), and an index combined with a glossary of technical terms and archaic Chinese terms from the inscriptions.

In many ways, this book is a work-in-progress. Barnard provides a self-reflective analysis of the stages involved in the creation of this book and makes it clear in lengthy footnotes that many of his views are still open to consideration as new evidence comes to his attention. Barnard's fascination with the process of his own discoveries makes the book as much a testimony of Sinological methodology as it is a manual for the analysis of inscribed bronzes. The first chapter of the book details his and Cheung's international hunt for members of the entire vessel-set which was dispersed after its discovery by villagers in Renjiacun, Fufeng, Shaanxi circa 1940. The search began as part of Barnard's study of a gui vessel shown to him by an Australian collector in 1975. Chapter two consists of annotated translations of nine of the twenty-eight vessels. The third chapter documents and comments on tales that have circulated about the original discovery and...