Abstract
AMONG the recent additions of archæological interest, which are described in the British Museum Quarterly, 10, 1, is a striking example of the artistic ability of the early Maya in the form of a cup with painted ornament, which has additional claim to attention in the fact that it comes from so far south as San Salvador. Especially important for students of early Buddhist art in India is a series of stucco figurines, twenty-five pieces in all, of which eighteen are heads, obtained by the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan in 1926–28, at Hadda, about five miles south of Jalalabad. In accordance with the policy, foreshadowed at the time of the acquisition of the Eumorfolpoulos collections, of devoting space in the Quarterly from time to time to descriptions of especially important examples of the art and culture of the Far East, two notes with illustrations deal respectively with a bronze of the Chou dynasty (1123–249 B.C.) and painted bricks of the succeeding Han dynasty. The bronze bowl or tui for holding cereals on ceremonial occasions, such as the worship of ancestors, is one of the finest of the few which exist outside the Peiping Palace collections, and is otherwise remarkable in that it has four handles. It is highly ornamented with conventionalised designs including elephant heads and, possibly, stylised tigers. It has an inscription of sixty-nine characters, which is perfectly legible, though interpretations vary. The bowl would appear to commemorate a grant of land, for services rendered, to the Marquis Hsing by an emperor, conjecturally identified as Cheng (1115–1078 B.C.) The group of three painted bricks form a pediment which comes from a Han tomb. On them is a free and spirited symbolical design which is here interpreted as expressing the form taken by the Taoistic belief in life after death under that dynasty.
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Recent Acquisitions at the British Museum, Bloomsbury. Nature 136, 543–544 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136543c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136543c0