The Liang King's Jade Burial Suit

Turning the corner and coming face-to-face with a jade burial suit for the first time, even one behind glass, with the hum of the museum crowd in the air, stopped me cold. Its solemnity was almost overwhelming. 2,000+ years old from China’s Han Dynasty. An Imperial extravagance from shortly after the end of the 100 Schools of Thought Period when the foundations of the Chinese society we know today were coalescing.

As I get ready to return to China next week, today’s issue spotlights the jade burial suit of a Liang King, son of an emperor, that I encountered at the Henan Museum in Zhengzhou last year. I cannot wait to see what new-to-me discoveries await during this China trip.

Jade in China embodies the essence of heaven and earth (天地之精). It has long been revered. Confucius held jade in high esteem, noting that among its attributes are benevolence, propriety, intelligence, and morality.

With such a position in ancient society, it is not surprising that jade was used in elite burial rituals from time immemorial. Jade bi discs, cong tubes, amulets, pendants, necklaces, and axes were placed with, on, in, and under the body for protection from decay and to accompany the deceased in the afterlife. All of this jade was also intended to protect that part of a person’s soul that remains on earth after death. Evil spirits had to be kept at bay.

Jade face covers were used early on. Pieces of jade sewn into clothing of the decreased were added later. Full jade burial suits were the final extension of this practice. When more complete suits began being used, silk thread was initially used before transitioning in the early Han Dynasty to full suits threaded with gold, silver, and copper wire depending on the deceased’s rank.

Jade burial suits were the perfect fit for a thriving Han Dynasty that witnessed expanded and more complex burial protocols and tomb construction. These were attempts at harnessing jade’s power, at seeking immortality. They were status symbols.

The body’s nine orifices within the outer suit were themselves covered and/or plugged with jade. Proof of this came from a Han tomb in what is now North Korea. Art historian Osvald Siren had this to say in 1929 about the body found in situ:

“The eyes had been covered with two elliptical leaves; the nostrils had been stopped with two octagonal pieces; a couple of similar pieces had been placed in the ears; a cicada-shaped piece of jade had been laid on the tongue; the rectum had been stopped by an oblong, flattened plug. A round sculptured reclining bear was held in one hand. A pi [bi] placed under the back or on the chest. Beside the corpse lay the sword equipped with a scabbard buckle and belt fittings of jade.”1

Jade burial suits were intricate and elaborate, time consuming, and incredibly expensive even for royalty. In fact, the labor and cost required to make them were so great that the practice did not survive the end of the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD). Subsequent Dynasties banned them. About two dozen have been unearthed so far.

Jade burial suit and wire threading examples (Capon and MacQuitty, Princes of Jade)

This jade suit was designed for a Liang King and interred deep within a rocky mountain in Eastern Henan Province sometime between 206 BC and 25 AD. The suit consists of twelve interlocking pieces. The preparation time for both tomb and suit were measured in years, maybe decades.

The following is my theory of one of the early to-do checklists when one became a Liang King:

1. Begin excavating burial chamber complex in the family mountain cemetery region;

   
   

2. Obtain a large supply of jade rocks (not nephrite from the northwest, but Xiuyan jade from the northeast, which today is more commonly accepted as serpentine) and then begin cutting, grinding, shaping, drilling, and polishing thousands of small, mostly rectangular jade plaques;

   
   

3. Sew the head, torso, arms, hands, legs, and feet already sized for the future occupant with, in this case, gold wire through the small holes bored through the four corners of each plaque; and

   
   

4. Hope everything is complete and in order before death arrives.

The eight peaks of the Mangdang Mountains in Yongcheng City of eastern Henan Province, almost 500 miles east of the then Han capital at Chang’an (now Xi’an), were where the Liang Kings chose to build their tombs. The expansive Yongcheng City region (think a county) is also where my wife spent her formative years growing up more than nineteen centuries later.

This jade suit was buried at Xishan Mountain. Here, untold thousands of laborers spent their productive years chiseling out a palatial stone burial chamber complex deep within the body of the mountain. Though the tomb was robbed in times gone by, stunning artifacts were still found during excavations in 1986, including the dusty and collapsed piles of more than 2,000 small jade plaques that make up the now restored jade burial suit.

Jade Bi disc, Western Han Dynasty, Xishan Han Tombs

The Book of Rites, Liji, one of the five classics of Confucianism, summarizes the honor of jade, in part, as having “purity of soul in its rarity and immaculateness, eternity in its durability, [and] moral leadership in the way in which it passes from hand to hand and remains without a blemish.”2 This is what the members of the Han Imperial Family were attempting to capture when they were buried in full suits of jade.

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Notes

1 Osvald Siren, “Jade” in A History of Early Chinese Art, London, 1929-30, as quoted in Gerald M. Born, Chinese Jade: An Annotated Bibliography, Celadon Press, Chicago, 1982, Page 312.

2 Judith and Arthur Hart Burling, Chinese Art, The Studio Publications, Inc., New York, 1953, Page 251.