In the second century of the Common Era, China’s Han Dynasty oversaw an unusually long period of peace and prosperity. Nonetheless, military conflicts punctuated the era, and often the elite aristocratic families were involved. The Wu Family Shrines document such events, and featured prominently in one of the stone chambers there, amidst many other bas-relief scenes, is the episode known as “The Battle on the Bridge”, dating to 151 CE.
Looking at a close-up of another depiction of the same Battle on the Bridge featured in a different family shrine from twenty years later (the first picture), we can see in close detail a female warrior figure attacking a chariot with a male official inside. She wields a ringed sword common for the time, called a “dao,” and she is accompanied by six other women warriors.
Historians and archaeologists have tried to interpret this visual, which also appears in other second-century sites. One idea is that there might have been a popular legend about seven daughters who sought revenge for their father’s ignominious death by wrong-headed court officials. Another interpretation is that these female warriors were testing the soul of a deceased man as he was journeying to the land of immortality, ruled over by the Goddess of the West, Xiwangmu. Scholars believe that lintels showing the Goddess were situated above these reliefs.
What are we to make of the fact that weapon-bearing and powerful women feature so prominently in the Wu Family Shrine?
Source(s): “Kung Fu Tea,” @chinesemartialstudies.com, “Recreating the Han Dao and Battles on Bridges,” 7/22/2020, Benjamin N. Judkins
