# 漢受平陽侯 大吉羊



## karlbaker

Hi there everyone, i posted a link for this in the japanese forum but i have now found out it is chinese!

attached are 3 images of what is a han dynasty bronze bowl and i am trying to find out more about the bowl etc


 This is on the inside of the bowl
 The Base
 And the Dragon and Pheonix on the outside edge

any help with regards to this would be great.


----------



## OneStroke

Hi! This is my first day here; I've only just activated my account. I noticed this thread and I believe it means the 'Marquess of Pingyang'. I've searched for '平陽' and it appears Pingyang is an actual place, so you may be looking at the bowl of a Han Dynasty lord! I must confess though, that I don't know anything about bronze bowls, and I can't figure out the character between the 'Han' and the 'Ping'. I hope this helps (at least a little bit)!

Wait... I just searched for the title and it turns out that the Marquess of Pingyang was Cao Shen, a famous Han Dynasty government official who became Chancellor! This looks seriously exciting!


----------



## karlbaker

wow thanks for that, so your saying that it sound like the bowl belonged to Cao Shen? sorry to be thick


----------



## Aoyama

Flaminius (in the Japanese Forum) has already deciphered the hanzis and, not being an expert myself on Chinese antiques, but having dealt in Chinese antiques many years ago and knowing
how *fakes *are produced (in mass) in China, I (unfortunately) agree with him that your bronze bowl is very probably (with all due respect) a well crafted fake.
As to the ideograms (taking Flaminius answers) :
*1.漢乃/之平陽侯*
Marquis of Pingyang of Han Dynasty
*2*.*大吉羊 *(羊-sheep/yang- should be 祥) = "great fortune (happiness)", a common expression often found on coins or potteries in China (but also in Japan, in Korean and maybe in Vietnam as well).
The first "quote" (Marquis of Pingyang of [the] Han Dynasty) already casts doubts on the authenticity of the bowl, obviously ...


----------



## indigoduck

Aoyama said:


> Flaminius (in the Japanese Forum) has already deciphered the hanzis and, not being an expert myself on Chinese antiques, but having dealt in Chinese antiques many years ago and knowing
> how *fakes *are produced (in mass) in China, I (unfortunately) agree with him that your bronze bowl is very probably (with all due respect) a well crafted fake.
> As to the ideograms (taking Flaminius answers) :
> *1.漢乃/之平陽侯*
> Marquis of Pingyang of Han Dynasty
> *2*.*大吉羊 *(羊-sheep/yang- should be 祥) = "great fortune (happiness)", a common expression often found on coins or potteries in China (but also in Japan, in Korean and maybe in Vietnam as well).
> The first "quote" (Marquis of Pingyang of [the] Han Dynasty) already casts doubts on the authenticity of the bowl, obviously ...



Hi all,

I sent a reply to this yesterday but i guess my reply got deleted after my browser crashed on me.

In my opininon, it looks more like 莫*皮平陽真* whereby the first character has a weird radical that i've never encountered before. However, taking Flaminius' logic that if that radical is in fact a water radical, then the character should be 漠. The *真* character is another version that i can't reproduce in my computer. (Edit: I found it! 眞)

漠皮平陽眞

What does it mean? You can do a google search for the two parts 漠皮 and 平陽真 to see if it answers your curiosity.

漠皮 = desert leather?
I have no idea what is 平陽真.


----------



## OneStroke

Sorry! I'm just a stupid teenager with nothing better to do than to look at forums and write nonsense.

I couldn't resist thinking that the character was not nai because it doesn't seem to be a replacement for zhi, or at least not within my extremely limited knowledge of classical Chinese. I also think it's unlikely that it's zhi, because the zhi would be unnecessary. It makes me think of the story of 之乎者也, in which Emperor Taizu of Song scoffed at a sign with an unnecessary zhi.

Yet I should stop playing with my axe in a forum of Lu Bans. I hope you don't mind.

I just read indigoduck's post. I hope it would not be too bold to point out that the 'yang' was a common tongjia of 'xiang'?


----------



## indigoduck

OneStroke said:


> Sorry! I'm just a stupid teenager with nothing better to do than to look at forums and write nonsense.
> 
> I couldn't resist thinking that the character was not nai because it doesn't seem to be a replacement for zhi, or at least not within my extremely limited knowledge of classical Chinese. I also think it's unlikely that it's zhi, because the zhi would be unnecessary. It makes me think of the story of 之乎者也, in which Emperor Taizu of Song scoffed at a sign with an unnecessary zhi.
> 
> Yet I should stop playing with my axe in a forum of Lu Bans. I hope you don't mind.



Well, I'm just another stupid teenager with nothing better to do than to look at forums and write nonsense, as well.

What do you think of 漠皮平陽眞 ?


----------



## OneStroke

I think perhaps the 'zhen' (if it is a zhen) could be a tongjia of some character. Maybe Pingyang was a town at the time and the proper way, with the radical, would be 平陽鎮?

According to Wikipedia, there are four 平陽鎮s!


----------



## karlbaker

WoW this is generating quite an interest 

if it helps this has been in my family for around 150 years, i just dont understand to why there are Cao Shens Name and provinace on there. 

atleast i know now what they text means and have a ground to do a little more research for the bowl.


----------



## OneStroke

150 years! That's around the time of the Anglo-French invasion of China! The one in which the Anglo-French alliance burnt  Yuan Ming Yuan. Could it possibly...

I think it was written in seal script, so I looked it up on Wikipedia, and, by accident, noticed how similar 漢 was to 漠 in Wikipedia's font. I think the radical of the first character looks like how the word '川' is written in oracle script. At least, that's what they say when they are trying to appeal to young children about Chinese characters.

I looked up both interpretations on hanyi.com.cn and I agree with you on 真. However, the first and second characters didn't really resemble the seal script in either version.

There's a Shuowen Jiezi look-up on shuowen.chinese99.com containing the original characters. Since Cao Shen was from the Han Dynasty, this might help a little.

If there is a list of artefacts that were taken by the Anglo-French army, that might contain this bowl.

The bowl, if it did not belong to the Han Dynasty (even if it was the character 'Han' it could have other meanings), might have belonged to Lord Pingyang, son of King Wuling of Zhao.

These are just what I think. Most likely I've got all the facts wrong!


----------



## Aoyama

I agree that the supposed 乃　or 之　looks much more like 皮 , but then I thought that Flam had thought about that ...


----------



## Flaminius

I am pretty sure that the discussion benefits from this site:
http://www.chineseetymology.org/



OneStroke said:


> The bowl, if it did not belong to the Han Dynasty (even if it was the character 'Han' it could have other meanings), might have belonged to Lord Pingyang, son of King Wuling of Zhao.


I wasn't aware that there was another prince bearing the same toponym in an earlier period.  If you are talking about the half brother of 惠文王, then the official title of 趙豹 is 平陽君.

The period in which this artefact was created or this fake is modelled on (my conviction is apparently the latter) is also an important factor to consider.  The first character resembles 漢 more than anything:
Compare 漢 and 漠 in 篆書.
I take this as strong evidence to the Han origin of the object.  The theme of 大吉羊 and two fish is a good supporting piece of evidence.  Plus, 趙豹 was a 君, not 侯.

There seems to be little doubt that the third and the fourth characters are 平陽.  The characters are, however, so poorly written that they cannot be of authentic Han style.

平: Notice that none of the historical forms have the second and third strokes look like the logical disjunction mark (∨).
陽: The eighth stroke and thereafter are very tenuous.

The last character looks more like 侯 than 眞.  For those who are not convinced with an argument based on similarities, 鎭, which may be represented as 眞 in 篆書 for want of historical evidence, did not meant town or fortification until very late in the Chinese history (perhaps Ming?).

The second character is very difficult to identify.  I ventured a guess that it is either 之 or 乃 based more on the overall meaning of the phrase than on the similarity of the character.  The historical shape of 皮 is as far removed from the second character as those of my two candidates.  If you allow flipping characters around the vertical axis (e.g., E and ∃), some of the forms of all the three are somewhat similar to the character on the bowl.

I have checked a few Han seals to find no instance of a genitive particle after 漢.  In fact, some seals have 漢 boated vertially to fit in a two-character column.  So, 漢之/乃平陽侯 may be 之乎者也 as *OneStroke* says.  One curious thing, however, is that it may not be necessarily so in 史記.  Some examples are 陳之賢人, 魯之城, 漢之一郡.


----------



## OneStroke

Thanks, I didn't know that 鎮 is such a modern word. 侯 makes a lot more sense then. (I knew I should stop playing with my axe.)


----------



## xiaolijie

karlbaker said:
			
		

> if it helps this has been in my family for around 150 years


Since the bowl has been with your family for so long, the chance of it being fake is much reduced and you may be possessing something very valuable there. I'd therefore advise to have it looked at by some expert specialising in Oriental antiques. I'd be great if we members can help you in some way but you must have the bowl professionally examined. Is there any chance for it to be looked at by the British Museum?


----------



## karlbaker

xiaolijie said:


> Is there any chance for it to be looked at by the British Museum?



I haave today received an email from the BM and they have requested pictures via email to the Asian dept, will keep you guys updated.

thanks for all help with this


----------



## ilikephoebe

I think is “汉受平阳侯”(Chinese simplified) The second character is "受" meaning "be appointed". Like you said, I believe that it belonged to 曹参(CaoCan). “汉受平阳侯" means "平阳侯"appointed by Han Dynasty and that makes sense.


----------



## 南島君

I agree the last character is 侯 and the second word could be 受. Here is another related collection of Academia Sinica 漢宜侯王大吉羊洗.
However, i believe what 受（授） is trying to compose here is "to appoint", 漢受（的）平陽侯 means as what ilikephoebe said, 平陽侯 which is appointed by 漢.

I would only say these words do not seem like typical Han characters to me. Anyway, i am looking forward to hearing advises from the specialist. 

lc


----------

