Chinese art / [Stephen Wooton Bushell].

  • Stephen Wootton Bushell
Date:
[1909]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Chinese art / [Stephen Wooton Bushell]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    22/338 page 14
    The five figures are all dressed in the same style with long robes and wear the square-topped hat hung with pendants of jade called mien which was adopted by Huang Ti. This last is a most promi- nent personage at the dawn of Chinese history. His capital was near the modern Hsi-an Fu, in the province of Shensi. Many of the in- dustrial arts are traced back to his time, and his principal consort Hsi-ling Shih, who first taught the people to rear silkworms, is still worshipped as a deity on that account. The Taoists have trans- formed Huang Ti, the “ Yellow Emperor,” into a miraculous being who invented alchemy and succeeded in gaining immortality. He has been identified by Terrien de Lacouperie with Nakhunte, and made the leader of the so-called Bak tribes, which are supposed by him to have traversed Asia from Elam to China and started a new civilisation in the valley of the Yellow River ; while Shen Nung is identified with Sargon who, according to him, ruled in Chaldaea about 3,800 B.c. But such speculations are difficult to follow, although there would really appear to have been some connection between the nascent civilisations of Chaldaea and China at an early period. With the emperors Yao and Shun we stand on firmer ground, as they are placed by Confucius at the head of the Shu King, the classical annals compiled by him, and idealized as perfect models of disinterested rule for all time. Their capital was at P’ing-yang Fu in Shansi. Their memorial temple still stands outside the walls of this city with gigantic images of the two heroes, thirty feet high, erected in the central pavilion of the principal courtyard, before which the reigning emperor Kuang-hsii burned incense on his return journey from Hsi-an Fu to Peking in 1900. Yao set aside his own son, and called on the nobles to name a successor, when Shun was chosen ; and Shun, in his turn, passing by an unworthy son, transmitted the throne to an able minister, the great Yu. Yu departed from these illustrious precedents and incurred the censure of “ converting the empire into a family estate,” and since his time the hereditary principle has prevailed, Yu gained
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3