A History of the World in 100 Objects - Dr Neil MacGregor [139]
The two judges of the Chinese Underworld
55
Chinese Tang Tomb Figures
Ceramic sculptures, from Henan Province, China
AROUND AD 728
It’s a sure sign of middle age, they say, if, when you pick up the newspaper, you turn first to the obituaries. But middle-aged or not, most of us, I suspect, would love to know what people will actually say about us when we die. In Tang China around AD 700, powerful figures didn’t just wonder what would be said about them: eager to fix their place in posterity, they simply wrote or commissioned their own obituaries, so that the ancestors and the gods would know precisely how important and how admirable they were.
In the Asia gallery at the north of the British Museum stand two statues of the judges of the Chinese Underworld, recording the good and the bad deeds of those who had died. These judges were exactly the people whom the Tang elite wanted to impress. In front of them stand a gloriously lively troupe of ceramic figures. They’re all between 60 and 110 centimetres (25 and 40 inches) high, and there are twelve of them – human, animal and something in between. They’re from the tomb of one of the great figures of Tang China, Liu Tingxun, general of the Zhongwu army, lieutenant of Henan and Huinan district and Imperial Privy Councillor, who died at the advanced age of 72 in 728.
Liu Tingxun tells us this, and a great deal more besides, in a glowing obituary that he commissioned for himself and which was buried along with his ceramic entourage. Together, figures and text give us an intriguing glimpse of China 1,300 years ago; but, above all, they are a shamelessly barefaced bid for everlasting admiration and applause.
Wanting to control your own reputation after death isn’t unknown today, as Anthony Howard, former Obituaries Editor at The Times, recalls:
I used to get lots of letters saying, ‘I do not seem to be getting any younger and I thought it might be helpful to let you have a few notes on my life.’ They were unbelievable. People’s self-conceit – saying things like, ‘Though a man of unusual charm’, and this kind of thing. I couldn’t believe that people would write this about themselves. Of course no one nowadays commissions their own obituary, and those that were sent always ended up straight in the wastepaper basket.
I used to rather boast that on the obits page of The Times, ‘We are writing the first version of the history of our generation,’ and that is what I think it ought to be. It certainly isn’t for the family or even the friends of the deceased.
The Tang obituaries were not for family and friends, either; but nor were they the first version of history for their generation. The intended audience for the obituary of Liu Tingxun was not earthly readers but the judges of the Underworld, who would recognize his rank and his abilities and award him the prestigious place among the dead that was his due.
Liu’s obituary tablet is a model of colourful self-praise, and he aims a great deal higher than Anthony Howard’s ‘man of unusual charm’. He tells us that his behaviour set a standard that was destined to cause a revolution in popular manners. In public life he was an exemplar of ‘benevolence, justice, statesmanship, modesty, loyalty, truthfulness and deference’, and his military skills were comparable to those of the fabled heroes of the past. In one great feat, we are assured, he beat off invading troops ‘as a man brushes flies from his nose’.
Liu Tingxun pursued his illustrious, if turbulent, career in the high days of the Tang Dynasty, which ran from 618 to 906. The Tang era represents for many Chinese a golden age of achievement, both at