The "TLV" Pattern on Cosmic Mirrors of the Han Dynasty

Abstract

AMONG THE best-known of the Chinese bronze mirrors in our Occidental museums are the socalled TLV mirrors, most of which date from the H:an period (202 . c.-220 A. D.). The general type is quite common, and it has a number of subtypes differentiated by variations in background within the basic pattern.l The latter is characterized by three sets of angles, resembling the letters T, L, and V. These marks have long puzzled the Western Orientalists, though the Chinese connoisseurs, since at least the twelfth century, have merely dismissed them as part of the general decoration on the mirrors included by custom, and have not considered them as establishing a particular category of mirror.2 This later Chinese attitude ignores the fact that in Ancient China almost nothing was ever used for mere ornament, without some symbolic meaning. We shall see that the basic TLV pattern was apparently no exception to this general rule. The pattern in question began in the Early Han period, about the second century B. C.3 In its complete form it has a square frame around the central boss of the circular mirror, with T-shaped projections from each side of the square. In addition, angles like inverted L's project inward from the outer circle below each T, and other angles resembling inverted V's jut from the same circle opposite each corner of the central square. (See fig. 1.) This basic pattern remained fairly con-