The Oldest Representation of a Bombard

Abstract

Research Note THE OLDEST REPRESENTATION OF A BOMBARD LU G W E I - D J E N , J O S E P H NEEDHAM, AND PHAN CHI-HSING An outstanding discovery was made by Robin Yates in June 1985, when visiting the Buddhist cave temples at Ta-tsu1 (Dazu) in Szechuan, about 250 kilometers northwest of Chungking (see fig. 1; all super­ script numerals refer to Chinese characters in fig. 1). In the Pei-shan2 (Lung-Kang)3 complex (one of seven), he found in cave no. 149 a high-relief sculpture of a bombard held by a small demon with two horns.® (See fig. 2.) The bombard or handgun is being let off, as appears from the blast issuing to the right from its muzzle, and a projectile is also represented in the flames'5 (fig. 3). This was men­ tioned as appendix A in Science and Civilisation in China, volume 5, part 7.c There was, however, a great deal of uncertainty about the date, so this article’s authors paid a second visit to the cave in November 1986. We now had the advantage of the full description of the cave temples in the General Catalogue of the Stone-Carvings of the Ta-tsu Cave-Temples, issued by the Szechuan Social Sciences Academy at Chungking in 1985.d The result of our investigations, reported here, was a full confirmation of the original interpretation of Yates. The sculpture is indeed that of a bombard, and the date must be as early as a.d. 1128. Dr. Lu is a Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge University; Dr. Needham is Senior Fellow of Gonville and Gaius College, Cambridge University; and Dr. Phan is research professor at the Institute of History of Natural Sciences, Academia Sinica, Beijing. aThe original attribution was thought to be cave no. 146, but this was found to be clearly wrong. Robin Yates’s visit was rather hurried, and he could provide us only with the photography reproduced as fig. 235 ofJoseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China (hereafter SCC), vol. 5: Chemistry and Chemical Technology, pt. 7: Military Technology: The Gunpowder Epic (Cambridge, 1986). bThis ball is half broken off, as if the high relief had come away, so that the ball now appears as a disc. cSCC, Military Technology, pp. 580—81. ATa-tsu Shih Kho NeiJung Tsung Lu.©1988 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/88/2903-0002$01.00 594 / 5. 2. ¿t, uH 3 It */ 22. Z, y 23 6 *7 I fa A 7 MA fa'fc ¿S' if 8 2i 7 & 27 10 2S •U II *7 $ f 12. tit4*7 3a XX ¿1a /7 £· -if 3S~ li X 3& -U Fig. 1.—List of Chinese characters 596 Lu Gwei-Djen, Joseph Needham, and Phan Chi-Hsing Fig. 2.—The demon carrying the bombard, with its flames and ball issuing forth. (Cave temples photo.) Mi Tx ' li ' Z The bearer of the bombard is at the bottom on the right of a group of nineteen statuettes ofcloud-treading personages (thien shen hsiang),4 of whom at least eight are holding weapons: one a bow and arrows, another a battle-ax, another a halberd, another a mace or war-hammer, while others bear straight two-edged swords (fig. 4). Others seem to be military officials. Some flags are also to be seen. Some figures appear to be robed saints, but six of them have horns and look like devils, with skull or demon faces. All this is on the right-hand wall of the shrine, while on the left there is a similar group of figures in three ranks, eighteen images in all, of which ten are bearing weapons and three have devil faces (fig. 5). It was here that one of us (Lu Gwei-Djen) made an important discovery. The parallel figure on the left of the lowest rank, directly opposite the bearer of the bombard, is a figure holding a bomb in his right hand.e (See fig. 6.) This gives us an important assurance that gunpowder is definitely in the picture. The assistant curator, who accompanied us, was quite sure that in modern times the...