Китаб Хона

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Элементы "китайских" кожаных панцирей

Scale-armour made of lacquered leather scales is unique to China, and recent excavations have demonstrated that from ancient times until the Warring States period such armour was the principal type in use, although scales of bronze and iron have been found. Traces of painted leather scales were discovered in a Shang tomb at Anyang, while examples from the Zhou dynasty are numerous. The Zuozhuan provides literary evidence of the use of buffalo, rhinoceros and wild ox hide, as well as recording the use of red lacquer as well as recording the use of red lacquer as a protective or ornamental coating. These and other forms of scale-armour (such as bronze and iron) have been fully discussed by Yang Hong (Zhongguo gubingqi luncong, Beijing 1980,p.3ff).
The pieces shown here, being those allocated to the British Museum from the larger number found by Stein, were the first archaeological evidence for scale-armour, and are still important today as the earliest examples of carved lacquer, as will be discussed below.
The smallest piece (Pl. 49-5) was found at Niya by Stein on his first expedition and published by him in Ancient Khotan. Stein’s recognition that the small piece of “green” leather came from a suit of scale-armour was soon confirmed by comparison with a suit of mail from Tibet, in which the scales showed the same disposition of a single hole at the rounded end and three holes down each side; the method of lacing was shown in a diagram by F.H. Andrews in the Addenda (Ancient Khotan, Vol. I, p. xvi), which shows that the rounded end was at the top.
The other scales shown here were found by Stein on his second expedition. The unlacquered ones were again from Niya, and the rest from the Tibetan fort at Miran, a site about two kilometres to the south-west of the temples where he had found the colossal head shown in the previous plate. The construction of the fort began at a time when the earlier temples had been completely abandoned. According to Stein, “everything pointed to the conclusion that the structural remains of the ruined fort and the deep deposits of rubbish ... all belonged to a protracted period of Tibetan occupation which in the light of available historical evidence could safely be assigned to the eighth or ninth century A.D.” (Serindia, Vol. I, pp. 348-49). In all, Stein found a total of some sixty-odd scales of armour: all of those now in the British Museum are illustrated here. They have aroused considerable interest not only as actual examples of the scale-armour seen on many of the Guardian Kings depicted in paintings from Dunhuang, and modelled in clay on stucco figurines from other Central Asian sites (see Pl. 98), but because they also appear to be the earliest examples of carved lacquer.
As may be seen from the Niya examples, the leather itself used of the scales was tough and thick enough to be extremely resistant to penetration. The addition of lacquer further provided a smoother surface even more likely to deflect a blow. The total thickness of lacquer added (for instance in Pl. 49-3, where there are several bands of black and reddish brown) comes to about a millimetre, and Sir Harry Garner has estimated that there between twenty and thirty layers within this thickness (Chinese Lacquer, p. 68). Two or more layers of each colour were applied in turn to make up each band. The bands of colour were exposed again by carving at a shallow angle. As is most clearly seen in Pl. 49-2, the concentric or comma-shaped designs so produced were sometimes enhanced by built-up ridges. On the back, the scales were also lacquered, but there was of course no decoration. Some of the scales are also ornamented with bronze rivets.
Sir Harry Garner has drawn attention to the importance of this type of decoration on armour for the history of carved lacquer, since the necessary thickness of lacquer encouraged carved decoration in a way that would not have been possible with the thinner coating that was sufficient for most decorative pieces. From the record in the Zuozhuan, it would appear however, that xipi originally referred to the use of actual rhinoceros hide for scale-armour. The rhinoceros was part of the North Chinese fauna in the Shang dynasty, and the capture of it is refetted to in the oracle-bone records, while in ritual bronzes it appears both as one of the horned animals common on Shang vessels, and occasionally as a rhinoceros zun, or wine vessel, extremely life-like. There can be no doubt that the tough hide was used for armour, and that its use, probably in association with the techniques of lacquering and carving, was sufficiently established to ensure the survival of the term xipi for carved lacquer long after the rhinoceros had moved south. The material of which the Stein armour scales are made has not been identified with certainty, although it has been suggested that it may be camel skin. The unlacquered examples from Niya, however, do not appear to show the strong furrowing that is characteristic of camel skin (cf. Ronald Reed, [1972], Fig. 3, p. 286). Other armour scales found in the Xinjiang region have included examples made of iron and bronze.

Cuirass, body armour, made of leather, lacquer.
Leather cuirass, consisting of a number of plates sewn together, with loose flexible lower border in 6 overlapping layers; lacquer ornament, red, yellow and black.

Вооружение горцев Гуйчжоу и Юньнани - племен ицзу.

Гийом де Рубрук, “Путешествии в восточные страны”: ... меховые панцири (pelliceas).

A part of a wooden lamellar armour

Элементы "китайских" кожаных панцирей

A RARE HARDENED-LEATHER LAMELLAR COAT
TIBET OR NORTH WEST CHINA, 19TH CENTURY
Comprising four large plates shaped to the back and front of the shoulders with nine rows of smaller overlapping plates below, open at the front, the exterior of each plate with red shellac finish with gilt decoration including flowers, foliage, sacred Lantsa letters, and representations of the Precious Jewel on each rear shoulder-plate and a dragon-mask (tsi pa tra) on each front shoulder-plate, the whole bound with leather cord (some cords incomplete)