Contact and Exchange in Northern China: A Case Study on the Tomb of a Zoroastrian Priest, Kang Ye (512-571 CE)

Summary

In 2004, the grave of Kang Ye was discovered in present day Xi’an, China. According to the epitaph, Kang Ye was a descendant of the kings of Kangju (Kang state, modern Samarkand) and a Zoroastrian priest living in the Northern Zhou kingdom. Inside the tomb were traces of ashes suggesting that Zoroastrian fire ritual had been performed. The skeletal remains were placed over a stone couch-shaped deathbed embellished with ten scenes in linear Chinese-style carvings. Currently, these individual scenes are being interpreted as representations of Kang Ye’s travels and meetings with his visitors, but their sequential order is yet to be reconstructed. In this paper, I will argue that these scenes had illustrated the funerary rite, which was consistent with the Kang Ye’s religious belief. I will reference both Chinese and Sogdian funerary depictions in archaeological and textual materials to explore the underlying factors that had led the Sogdians to selectively adopt Chinese artistic style to furnish the grave. I propose that the Chinese visual languages on Kang Ye’s funerary furniture had provided settings for expressing Zoroastrian beliefs, using a distinct iconographic program to depict the continuous stages of the journey of the deceased’s soul to afterlife.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• The Dynamism of Contact and Exchange in Early Central and East Asia

Keywords

Spatial Coverage