Twelve Metal Colossi

The Twelve Metal Colossi (十二金人) were twelve metal statues cast after 221 BCE by the order of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. After defeating the other six Warring States during Qin's wars of unification, Qin Shi Huang had their weapons collected and melted them down to be recast as bells and statues. Particularly noteworthy among them were twelve human statues, each said to have weighed a thousand dan (picul).[1][2]

Dates of Conquered States
YearEvent
230 BCE
  • Han was conquered by Qin.
228 BCE
  • Zhao was conquered by Qin.
225 BCE
  • Wei was conquered by Qin.
223 BCE
  • Chu was conquered by Qin.
222 BCE
  • Yan and Dai were conquered by Qin.
  • Wuyue was conquered by Qin.
221 BCE
  • Qi surrendered to Qin.
  • China was unified under the Qin dynasty.

Chinese records

Chinese records mention that the Qin Emperor built the twelve monumental bronze statues for his Palace, and that they represented 12 foreigners of large stature or "giants" (大人 daren) encountered at the western end of the country, in Lintao, Gansu. These bronze statues remained very famous in ancient China and were the object of numerous commentaries, until they were lost around the 4th century CE.[3]

The first known record explains that he made 12 monumental bronze statues as one of the major endeavours of his reign:

Continental Asia in 210 BCE with main polities, and locations of Lintao and Xi'an (red dots )

收天下兵, 聚之咸陽, 銷以為鍾鐻金人十二, 重各千石, 置廷宮中. 一法度衡石丈尺. 車同軌. 書同文字.
He collected the weapons of All-Under-Heaven in Xianyang, and cast them into twelve bronze figures of the type of bell stands, each 1000 shi [about 70 tons] in weight, and displayed them in the palace. He unified the law, weights and measurements, standardized the axle width of carriages, and standardized the writing system.

— Shiji by the historian Sima Qian (c. 145–86 BC), after Liu An in the Huainanzi circa 139 BCE.[3]

According to a 3rd century commentary of the Hanshu, these statues, were inscribed with the following explanatory inscription:

皇帝二十六年, 初兼天下, 改諸侯為郡縣, 一 法律, 同度量。大人來見臨洮, 其長五丈, 足跡六尺。
In the 26th Year of the Emperor, when he first brought together all-under-heaven, divided the principalities into provinces and districts, and unified the weights and measures, [these] giants appeared in Lintao [the Far West]. They were 5 zhang [11.5 meters] high and had feet 6 chi [1.38 meters] long.

— Yan Shigu (581–645 AD), quoting the Sanfu huangtu 三輔黃圖 (“Yellow Plans of the Metropolitan Area”, possibly third century CE) in his commentary to the Hanshu.[3]

These "giants" apparently had foreign clothes, and were replicated by Emperor Qin when he took them as a favorable omen after some victories:[3]

史記秦始皇帝二十六年, 有大人長五丈, 足履六尺, 皆夷狄服,凡十二人,見于臨洮. 天戒若曰, 勿大為夷狄之行, 將受其禍. 是歲始皇初并六國, 反喜以為瑞, 銷天下兵器, 作金人十二以象之.
In the 26th Year of the Emperor (221 BC) giants appeared that were 5 zhang tall and had feet of a size of 6 chi, all dressed in foreign ( yidi 夷狄) robes. There were 12 of them and they appeared in Lintao. A heavenly taboo once said that he who recklessly follows foreign models will encounter disaster. In the same year, however, the Emperor succeeded in subjecting the six states, so he reinterpreted the appearance as an auspicious sign. Therefore, he melted down the weapons of all-under-heaven and cast the twelve bronze men to represent those [the "giants" from Lintao].

— Ban Gu (32–92 CE), Hanshu.[3]

放寫其形, 鑄金人以象之.
He imitated their shapes and cast bronze figures to represent those.

— Gao You (168–212), in his commentary to the Huainanzi.[3]
Two of the The Acrobats, naturalistic statues ordered by the Qin Emperor for his Mausoleum in 210 BCE

The Twelve Metal Colossi were commented upon during several century, and relocated several times by the successive rulers of the country, until the Eastern Han tyrant Dong Zhuo (d. 192 CE) melted 10 of them to mint new coinage, [4] to finance a personal castle in Mei County near Chang'an.[5] This new bronze cash devalued rapidly because the new coins did not weigh the same, had no defined edge, and had no statement of their value on the coin surface.[6][7] The last two statues were eventually melted down by Xuanzhao (357–385) of the Former Qin dynasty.[4]

These records may suggest that the Qin Emperor received from western regions a major impulse for the creation of monumental statuary, which may naturally have influenced the creation of the monumental statues of his Mausoleum, the Terracotta Army.[3]

Hellenistic hypotheses

Coincidentally or not, the Greeks also had a practice of representing their twelve Olympian Gods, the Twelve Olympians, as sculpture in human form.[3] Diodorus Siculus recounts how Alexander, when he reached the easternmost point of his conquests in India established altars to the 12 Greek gods, his idea being to make "a camp of heroic proportions and then leave to the natives evidence of men of huge stature, displaying the strength of giants".[3] Overall, the first Qin Emperor seems to have made monumental statues on a western model for his Palace, which provides an intriguing precedent for the monumental naturalistic statuary of his Mausoleum.[3] Highly realistic statues made by the Qin Emperor, such as The Acrobats, may have received Western influence through the intercultural exchange involved in the design of the Twelve Metal Colossi.[3]

Emperor Wu of Han and golden statues from the west
Mogao Caves 8th-century mural depicting Emperor Wu of Han worshipping "golden man" statues.

The Book of Han records that in 121 BCE, Emperor Wu of Han (156–87 BCE) sent general Huo Qubing to attack the Xiongnu. General Huo Qubing defeated the armies of the prince of Xiutu (休屠, in modern-day Gansu), as a prelude to the establishment of the Dunhuang commandery, and "captured a golden (or gilded) man used by the King of Xiutu to worship Heaven".[8] These golden statues were unlikely Buddhist, as the Xiongnu were unrelated to this religion.[9] The statues were later moved to the Yunyang 雲陽 Temple, near the royal summer palace Ganquan 甘泉 (modern Xianyang, Shaanxi), which had also the capital of the Qin Empire.[8]

A New Account of the Tales of the World (c. 6th century CE) claims that this golden man was more than ten feet high, and Emperor Wu of Han sacrificed to it in the Ganquan 甘泉 palace, which "is how Buddhism gradually spread into (China)."[10] In Cave 323 in Mogao caves (near Dunhuang in the Tarim Basin), Emperor Wudi is shown worshipping two golden statues, with the following inscription (which closely paraphrases the tradional accounts of Huo Qubing's expedition):[8]

漢武帝將其部眾討凶奴,並獲得二金(人),(各)長丈餘,刊〔列〕之於甘泉宮,帝(以)為大神,常行拜褐時
Emperor Han Wudi directed his troops to fight the Xiongnu and obtained two golden statues that he displayed in the Ganquan Palace and regularly worshipped.

— Inscription of Cave 323 in the Mogao caves

The Han expedition to the west and the capture of booty by general Huo Qubing is well documented, but the later Buddhist interpretation at the Mogao Caves of the worship of these statues as a means to propagate Buddhism in China is probably apocryphal, since Han Wudi is not known to have ever worshipped the Buddha.[11]

See also

References
  1. Portal 2007, p. 129.
  2. 收天下兵，聚之咸阳，销以为钟镣，金人十二，各重千石，置廷宫中. Records of the Grand Historian (translation: collect the weapons of tianxia, to amass them to Xianyang, melt them to cast 12 colossus, each weighing a thousand dan, and put them in the palace)
  3. Nickel, Lukas (October 2013). "The First Emperor and sculpture in China". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 76 (3): 436–450. doi:10.1017/S0041977X13000487. ISSN 0041-977X.
  4. Qingbo, Duan (2022). "Sino-Western Cultural Exchange as Seen through the Archaeology of the First Emperor's Necropolis". Journal of Chinese History 中國歷史學刊. 7: 67–70. doi:10.1017/jch.2022.25. ISSN 2059-1632. S2CID 251690411.
  5. 西汉五铢
  6. de Crespigny, Rafe (18 August 2010). Imperial Warlord: A Biography of Cao Cao 155-220 AD. BRILL. p. 55. ISBN 978-90-04-18830-3.
  7. de Crespigny, Rafe (2017). Fire over Luoyang: A History of the Later Han Dynasty 23-220 AD. Leiden: Brill. p. 463. ISBN 9789004324916.
  8. Dubs, Homer H. (1937). "The "Golden Man" of Former Han Times". T'oung Pao. 33 (1): 4–6. ISSN 0082-5433.
  9. Dubs, Homer H. (1937). "The "Golden Man" of Former Han Times". T'oung Pao. 33 (1): 1–14. ISSN 0082-5433.
  10. Zurcher, Erik (2007). Buddhist Conquest of China. Brill. p. 21. ISBN 978-90-04-15604-3.
  11. Whitfield, Roderick; Whitfield, Susan; Agnew, Neville (2000). Cave Temples of Mogao: Art and History on the Silk Road. Getty Publications. pp. 18–19. ISBN 978-0-89236-585-2.

Bibliography
  • Portal, Jane (2007), The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army, Harvard University Press

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