Archaeology: Treasure from a Chinese Tomb

To the two Chinese tomb robbers who found it beneath a pile of rotting planks in 1934, the ragged piece of silk bearing strange, barely discernible characters and drawings looked like nothing more than a slimy piece of grave refuse. For three decades, it passed from buyer to buyer, largely unknown to archaeologists or art scholars. Then in 1965, the manuscript was bought by New York Psychiatrist and Art Collector Arthur Sackler. Last week, at a Columbia University symposium, the Ch’u Silk Manuscript, as it is now called, was examined and discussed by 40 of the free world’s leading sinologists, anthropologists, archaeologists and art experts.

Far from flotsam, the 2,500-year-old artifact from the once-barbarian state of Ch’u in China’s Middle Yangtze region promises to provide a key for deciphering archaic Chinese. It may shed light on links between early China and civilizations of the Pacific and South America. And it should surely yield an understanding of early Chinese legends, calendars, religion, society and astrological beliefs.

God & Man. Mounted on a simple wooden frame, the 15-by 19-in. manuscript bears 926 ancient Chinese characters in two blocks, surrounded by sixteen paintings of trees and weird mythological creatures. Dr. Jao Tsung-yi, professor of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong, believes it is “the most valuable find in the history of Chinese archaeology.” His reasons: the Ch’u Silk Manuscript is the earliest and largest of its kind, and the larger the manuscript the easier it is to decipher unknown characters in context with known characters. In addition, says Dr. Jao, “it is a very important astrological and astronomical record. It confirms and adds to many legendary records of the ancient Chinese classics, and it reveals the relationship of God and man in ancient China.”

Until now, scholars have had to work with a Chinese dictionary written about 100 A.D. that provides little or no help in deciphering texts predating two centuries B.C. Jao estimates that the Ch’u Silk Manuscript will reveal the meanings of 300 hitherto-undefined characters. Working with infra-red photographs, which help make the characters legible, Jao has begun translating the manuscript into modern Chinese. Dr. Noel Barnard, a senior fellow in Far Eastern history at Australian National University, is converting it into “pidgin English.”

Auspicious Times. Other experts are attempting to discover the meaning of the twelve creatures bordering the manuscript. Among them are antlered “gods” with long, protruding tongues, which bear a marked resemblance to supernatural creatures appearing in South American art of roughly the same era. “This is the first evidence we’ve had that some of South America’s high cultures and civilizations developed similarly to that of the Chinese,” says Dr. Douglas Fraser, a Columbia associate professor of art history and archaeology. Fraser and most of his colleagues believe the Ch’u Silk Manuscript was “a sacred or special document” that not only contained a philosophical viewpoint on life, but also determined the most auspicious times to engage in a variety of activities, including warfare.

To the Communist Chinese, who have mounted massive searches to unearth a manuscript to match it, the Ch’u silk is as important and remote as Taiwan. But Sackler, who paid more for it than the combined cost of his 10,000-piece collection of early Asiatic paintings, sculptures and other artifacts, intends to make infra-red photographs of the priceless manuscript available to scholars everywhere. Including Red China.