6 Field Museum of Natural History 



t'ung tree (Sterculia platanifolia), famed in legend and 

 art, and the unicorn Kilin, the emblem of perfect good, 

 that appears only at the birth of a virtuous ruler. 



The high-relief carvings that decorate the horizontal 

 lintels above the passages carry us back to realistic 

 scenes of human life. They are arranged so that war- 

 like scenes are assembled on one side of the gateway, 

 while representations of peaceful pastimes occupy the 

 opposite side. The main themes of the artist are tourna- 

 ments of ancient paladins, thrusting halberds or spears 

 at one another in front of a city-wall, from the rampart 

 of which other grandees eagerly watch the spectacle. 

 Or a cavalier turning backward on his galloping steed 

 sends an arrow^at his adversary, whose helmet is pierced 

 by it, while tents surrounded by standards lend color to 

 the background of the military action. The genre- 

 scenes depict the tribunal of a high official, old men 

 enjoying themselves in a grove, a lady travelling in a 

 push-cart and escorted by mounted lancers, or a monk 

 conducting a dignitary to the gate of his temple, which 

 bears the name "Temple of Sweet Dew" (Kan-lu-se). 



There are altogether twenty-two corbels, sixteen 

 being decorated with designs of a phoenix, and six with 

 interesting scenes describing the pastimes of cultivated 

 gentlemen of leisure, as follows: — Feeding ducks, en- 

 joying a cup of wine in a grove of pine-trees, writing a 

 poem on a rock, painting a bamboo sketch on a scroll, 

 reading in the woods at a table formed by a bowlder, 

 playing the lute, dancing around a rock, taking a stroll 

 in the company of a youth, who carries a pot of peonies, 

 playing checkers on a stone board, planting flowers in a 

 bed, examining the growth of plants, going a-fishing 

 with a long rod over the shoulder. 



It will thus be seen that the art displayed on this 

 gateway is a marvelous embodiment of Chinese life and 

 thought, a record of cosmogony and mythology, of 

 heaven and earth. 



[6] 



