Posted on 12/14/2013 5:36:32 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Nickel's evidence includes newly translated ancient records that tell a fantastic tale of giant statues that "appeared" in the far west, inspiring the first emperor of China to duplicate them in front of his palace. This story offers evidence of early contact between China and the West, contacts that Nickel says inspired the First Emperor (which is what Qin Shi Huangdi called himself) to not only duplicate the 12 giant statues but to build the massive Terracotta Army along with other life-size sculptures.
Before the First Emperor's time, life-size sculptures were not built in China, and Nickel argues the idea to build so many of them, so suddenly, came from kingdoms in Asia that had been created and influenced by Alexander the Great's campaigns...
The records do not say how this appearance happened, who brought them there, or who exactly the statues depicted; they do reveal the statues werelarger than life, rising about 38 feet (11.55 meters) high, with feet that were 4.5 feet long (1.38 m). They so impressed the First Emperor that he decided to build 12 duplicates in front of his palace by melting down bronze weapons that had been used for war.
On each duplicate an inscription was created telling of the "giants" (the original statues) that appeared in Lintao. The inscriptions, recorded by Yan Shigu, who lived around 1,400 years agoand used an earlier written source, said that in the "26th Year of the Emperor, when he first brought together all-under-heaven, divided the principalities into provinces and districts, and unified the weights and measures, [these] giants appeared in Lintao ..."
(Excerpt) Read more at m.livescience.com ...
About 8,000 Terracotta Warriors were buried in three pits less than a mile to the northeast of the mausoleum of the First Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huangdi. They include infantryman, archers, cavalry, charioteers and generals. Now new research, including newly translated ancient records, indicates that the construction of these warriors was inspired by Greek art. CREDIT: Lukas Hlavac | Shutterstock
It would be interesting to get from writings, the style and who was depicted in the giant statues.
Alexander’s push to the east ended up having a huge cultural impact. The Hellenistic World in the Eastern Mediterranean became a funky place with a lot of exotic oriental influence. And the Asian world was introduced to the achievements of Classical Greece. Everyone came out ahead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhist_art
Kipling comes to mind:
“OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!”
So, let me see if I have this straight: the Chinese were introduced to a new idea from the West, copied it and mass-produced it. Sounds about right...
Heh, heh, good point!
Same here. I occurred to me that the statues weren’t Greek per se, but Buddhist in origin.
I was watching Chinese TV the other day, and they featured a visit to some factory that produces copies of the Terracotta Warriors. Several American folks doing the tour, and they came to the gift shop at the end. Curious thing is that you can buy the smaller versions (1 foot or less) of the warriors.....but they will sell you various full-size ones. The issue is....getting the thing back to the US. It’d probably cost at least $2k to ship the thing back in one piece.
If they could find some way of mass-producing them, and getting them into some US port cheaply....I think a lot of guys would like to have a warrior in their backyard, as a gimmick of some type.
It would make sense but the exact realism isn’t generally Buddhist until quite recently.
I saw the terra cotta warriors in 1983 when just a few of them had been excavated. The uniforms are all different, as are the faces. Some of the faces looked western. I guessed Turkish at the time. They are amazing.
Of course they were painted in bright colors at the time they were buried. There were a few of them where the paint had been restored when I viewed them in 1983.
Sounds great! If they were painted, that would fit the Greek and Roman way of sculpture.
I think a new batch was found in an adjacent area, not that many years ago.
The Greeks arrived and took a lot with them. Central Asia’s depictions of Buddha have been realistic (other than the fact that no one really knows what Buddha looked like) since the 1st c AD, which is not as far back as this, but these giant statues that the Chinese reported as suddenly appearing apparently no longer exist, and may represent the kind of monumental depictions such as were done in the Middle Ages.
The Mauryan Empire ruled a chunk of what is now Afghanistan, and the third ruler converted to Jainism (his grandfather and founder of the dynasty had been Jainist) which is known to have built large images, that’s a possibility as well.
Classical Greeks are also known to have built at least two monumental statues — one was Zeus in the “seven wonders” temple, and the other the Colossus of Rhodes. Maybe there were more, but none come to mind. They did lifesize or somewhat larger than life size images, and pimped them up with paint, shells, and other colorful doodads.
Oops, and there was a big statue of Athena inside the Parthenon.
So, let me see if I have this straight: the Chinese were introduced to a new idea from the West, copied it and mass-produced it. Sounds about right...
**
:)
Yeah, but this was in the days before they discovered the joys of shoddy production.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_of_Rhodes
Preserved in Greek anthologies of poetry is what is believed to be the genuine dedication text for the Colossus.
To you, O Sun, the people of Dorian Rhodes set up this bronze statue reaching to Olympus, when they had pacified the waves of war and crowned their city with the spoils taken from the enemy. Not only over the seas but also on land did they kindle the lovely torch of freedom and independence. For to the descendants of Herakles belongs dominion over sea and land.
...The statue stood for 54 years until Rhodes was hit by the 226 BC earthquake, when significant damage was also done to large portions of the city, including the harbour and commercial buildings, which were destroyed.[9] The statue snapped at the knees and fell over onto the land. Ptolemy III offered to pay for the reconstruction of the statue, but the oracle of Delphi made the Rhodians afraid that they had offended Helios, and they declined to rebuild it.
The remains lay on the ground as described by Strabo (xiv.2.5) for over 800 years, and even broken, they were so impressive that many travelled to see them. Pliny the Elder remarked that few people could wrap their arms around the fallen thumb and that each of its fingers was larger than most statues.
In 653, an Arab force under Muslim caliph Muawiyah I captured Rhodes, and according to The Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor, the statue was cast down and sold to a Jewish merchant of Edessa who loaded the bronze on 900 camels. The Arab destruction and the purported sale to a Jew possibly originated as a powerful metaphor for Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the destruction of a great statue.
The same story is recorded by Bar Hebraeus, writing in Syriac in the 13th century in Edessa: (after the Arab pillage of Rhodes) “And a great number of men hauled on strong ropes which were tied round the brass Colossus which was in the city and pulled it down. And they weighed from it three thousand loads of Corinthian brass, and they sold it to a certain Jew from Emesa” (the Syrian city of Homs). Theophanes is the sole source of this account and all other sources can be traced to him.
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