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D. J. FINN, S.J.
5
tion of this occurs on the bronze drum of IV (Chinese) form published in (8), Plate V and p. 23, Drum D. 6.214.20. Now as usual the bell is difficult to date save that it is pre-Han but it sets us on the scent for Chinese in- fluence in our ware and the drum shows that that particular influence work- ed south. Another bell, this time in (3) Vol. I, p. 81, shows a closer similarity Double F but I do not wish to to our pattern of the degraded type of stress that likeness, as the bell pattern in this case is a distinctly zoomorphic silk-worm" type and may have no direct relation to our later forms, as it would seem to have no morphological link with the other bell's pattern. Rather it is by following up the Huai Valley (Chu Kingdom related to the Yuch people with whom we shall later on have to do) clue that we come to a contemporary piece from Li yü which shows on the cover of a vase a design of linked heads," a distinctively Ch'in ornament (see figure 4 prepared as a tracing from the plate 99 in (11). I venture to claim that this is the step immediately leading to the ornament on our vase.
+4
we
Figure 4. Sketch of pattern from cover of bronze vessel from Li Yü (11) plate 99.
now Here again, but
to
within
circle а
not a square area, The and the spaces. must consider the dominant ornament spaces will be found be double-F's with this difference from ours that the points of the arms of any one F are opposed to cach other and not pointing both down. The ornament had best be considered This orna- around one group of two F's in figure 4 and not all at once. ment is a development of the curling zoomorphic type and probably repre- sents a combination of birds (heads and wings, three sets diverging from the centre). The piece itself is regarded as belonging to a group assigned to the third century about the time of Ch'in Shi Hwang, and connected with the Kingdoms of Ch'u and of Ch'in. I think we shall have reason to con- firm that date approximately for our finds (at least in part) on other grounds, and I may point out that in my lecture (text published in (12)) before I had come across this parallel I had already indicated this period as the most probable.
The double-F pattern itself is one that lies very close to Chinese taste, for the Chou vases are full of it in the details of the T'ao t'ie motive where
The Hong Kong Naturalist.
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28.
The Hong Kong Naturalist.
Vol. III, Nos. 3 and 4.
Plate 39.
Fragments 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 and 29.
24.
27.
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29.
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