As mentioned, the primitive ritual performer was represented in the ancient writing system by the pictograph for wen. This is evident, as displayed in Fig. 1.1, from the Cangyuan rock paintings, where men performing rituals are rendered in shapes that give primitive forms to wen 文. Before the availability of garments, tattoos functioned as apparel in important rituals. Yet there is an essential difference between primitive tattoos and modern apparel: tattooing afforded man the double roles of man and gods by allowing men to play the role of gods and assuming the descent of divine spirits on men during rituals. While a wen, playing the role of communicator with gods, was a wu 巫 (shaman, a god-substitute), he also doubled as a wang 王 (king, a tribal leader) as far as social roles were concerned. Tattooing in primitive culture implied transforming men's natural bodies in fulfillment of the social, ritual, and conceptual requirements of society in order to obtain recognition of one's identity, and hence symbolized the birth of the "social man" (tribal, cultural) from a "natural man." Being the performer of rituals, the tattooed man held a central position in ceremonial activities. The tattoo symbols were in congruent with those featured in ritual vessels and architecture, as well as homogeneous with ritual music. One might go as far as to argue that the cultural composition of ancient clan-based society which comprised ritual vessels, ceremonial venues, graveyards, villages, and related ornaments was wen. Wen is therefore emblematic of ritual in its entirety, or rites as a whole. As such, it takes on two layers of meaning, referring not only narrowly to the tattooed ceremonial man but also broadly to rites.It is then necessary to view the evolution of wen in both senses. First, let's look at wen as the entirety of rituals, or rites. From this angle, the development of wen equated that of the outer appearances of rites, that is, the aesthetics of the four basic components of rites. Associated with the ritual vessels were expansions of prehistoric rock paintings, painted pottery, jades, and bronzes into sophisticated systems of decrees and institutions, vessels, flags, and vehicles by the pre-Qin period. The ritual performer embodied an evolution from simple tattoos into a hierarchy of ceremonial dress (mianfu 冕服). In the respect of ritual music, crude percussive tones and incantations broadened into, on top of diverse and nuanced musical forms, elegant writing and speech systems as well as body language systems based on physical movement. Finally, architecturally speaking, simple shelters, altars, and platforms developed into elaborate palaces, cities and towns, ancestral temples, and mausoleums.Linguistic evidence shows wen gradually expanding in ancient times, to eventually encompass the entire Chinese society as well as conceptualize the cosmos by the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, becoming a generic term for the aesthetic. In pre-Qin canons, wen is used in relation to men's apparel, physical etiquette, and rhetoric; institutional buildings such as courts, palaces, ancestral temples, and mausoleums; aesthetic objects such as flags, vehicles, vessels, and rituals; and ideological products such as words, treatises, poetry, music, paintings, and dances. And not only that: alongside the invention of the social wen, human beings also viewed nature via a similar lens, observing the wen of the heavens (the sun, moon, and stars) and earth (mountains, rivers, animals, and plants). Confucius so commented on the institutions established by Emperor Yao 堯: "brilliant his cultural achievements" (huanhu, qi you wenzhang 煥乎，其有文章). What translates as "cultural achievements" here come from wenzhang. According to Zhang, wen denotes the hierarchical order of the ruler and courtiers, the court, the honored and humbled, and the noble and lowly as well as the corresponding distinctions in vehicles, clothing, residence, food and drink, and burial offerings; zhang describes -- in the words of "Yueshu" 樂書 (Treatise on Music) in the Shiji 史記 (Records of the Grand Historian) -- the Eight Winds (ba feng 八風) following the 12 pitch standards (shi'er lü 十二律) that correlate to the 12 months and also the hundred du 度, or ke 刻, that measure a day being in correct numbers; wenzhang combined is an alternative term for rites. Likewise, Song Lian of the Ming dynasty said, "Between heaven and earth, all that has an order and is not tangled is wen." The universe in Chinese understanding is one of wen in the sense of beauty. Hence, if wen was equivalent to rites in the early days of primitive society, it gradually developed to be synonymous with "beauty" as time went by; and since the parallel of wen and beauty was derived from the wen of man, the tattooed man provided the basis for the beauty of the universe. This defines the uniqueness of the Chinese conception of beauty. Unlike Western art emanating from figurative sculptures which was initially measured by the beauty of the natural human body, the Chinese notion of beauty descended from ceremonial tattoos and crystallized into court aesthetics as primitive tribes grew into a rational civilization. The essence and significance of the court aesthetics can thus be deciphered by probing into developments of the tattooed man to which we shall now return.The primary meaning of the word wen, tattooing, shall provide hints regarding the development of the ornaments borne by the ritual man. From a semantic perspective, Zang points out that the vocabulary group of wen developed in three categories: The first category, originating from animal tattoos, relates to feather ornaments, such as xing 形 (shape), xiu 修 (ornate), and cai 彩 (colorful patterns). The second originated from paintings and includes words that carry the meaning of "intersecting," such as fei 斐 (brilliantly intersecting colors) and bian 辨 (distinguish). The third pertains to woven garments and originated from agricultural crafts, such as qi 綺 (silk fabrics with colorful patterns), juan 絹 (silk), and fei 緋 (red). The three categories reflect three stages of the evolution of tattooing. The first stage corresponded to the totemic period, when tattooing took the form of permanent carving with the supplementation of ornamental animal feathers in attempts to emulate the totem animals. In the second stage, frequent communication between clans led to the conglomeration of ideas; thus permanent carving gave way to corrigible body painting, which continued to be complemented by ornaments like feathers and tails. By allowing a rigid body to be transformed into one permitting changes and richer possibilities, body painting did stretch human imagination, yet just like tattooing it was restricted by the body shape. The third stage, which saw the adoption of costume masks from woven materials, was an important node in the evolution of wen, for masks extended the size of the natural body, thereby enabling the free expression of cultural concepts beyond the limits of nature.Literary classics show that the change took place approximately 6,000 years BP during the times of the Yellow Emperor. It is written in the Zhouyi (Book of Changes): "Huangdi, Yao, and Shun wore draped upper and neither garments [yishang 衣裳], and all under heaven was well ordered." The distinction between yi and shang, which collectively mean "garments" today, is specified in corresponding annotations collected in the Gujin tushu jicheng (Complete Collection of Illustrations and Writings from the Earliest to Current Times, a.k.a. Imperial Encyclopedia): "The upper part yi and the lower part shang cannot be reversed, so that people knew that the honored and humbled and the high and low could not be jumbled. Then the thinking of the people was fortified, and the world was in order." Here, we see three aspects of significance in the Yellow Emperor's design of apparel: (1) a basis in ideology; (2) a practical function of delineating the social hierarchy; (3) an emphasis on the change in natural physique as a political and cultural symbol. As far as transformation is concerned, it is apparently the last aspect that is of the greatest significance. Legend has it that the four faces of the Yellow Emperor were achieved with the aid of costume masks. If, as discussed earlier, the transitioning from Nüwa and Fuxi to the Yellow Emperor marked the integration of natural totemic animals (such as snakes and frogs) into a unified dragon paralleling the concept of lateral relationships (Nüwa and Fuxi as equals) evolving into one of centrality (the Yellow Emperor as the central king), apparel would have played a crucial role in the accentuation of the center. This thus justifies a logical compression of the evolutionary stages of tattooing by combining the first two, natural shape-based stages of actual tattooing and body painting, highlighting the logical leap from the natural to the cultural in the new era of apparel. Excerpted from The History and Spirit of Chinese Art: From Pre-History to the Tang Dynasty by Fa Zhang All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
