The thick horse-shoe shaped bronze chariot fittings are of sturdy structure and inlaid with abstract patterns of bold cloud scrolls issuing trident-shaped elements. The inlaid patterns are confined by pencil-thin linear borders to the upper curved surfaces, leaving the undersides undecorated and bordered well short of the ends of each. The bronze visible in the areas that are undecorated has oxidized to a deep brownish-red color. Fashioned as yoke brackets for guiding the reins, the brackets were cast with short projections that would have been tied to the yoke bar and functioned as guides for the reins passing through them.
The reconstruction of a somewhat later chariot published in Kaogu 1997:3, pp. 16-26 includes a drawing of the yoke, indicating how the present pair of attachments could have been used (fig. 1). Two reign guides inlaid with gold and silver are also illustrated in the study (fig. 2).
The Kaikodo pair is similar in shape to gold and silver inlaid bronze fittings said to have been excavated at Jincun in Loyang in Henan province, datable to the Eastern Zhou dynasty (fig. 3). At first glance such fittings appear as if they might have been used as pulls on a container, such as a lacquer box or chest. Yet, as suggested in the entry for a group of bronze fittings in which the Jincun group was included, they were accoutrements for a chariot.1
Another group of gold and silver inlaid bronze fittings include five horseshoes or “half-moon hoops,” four with projections similar to the present and the slightly smaller of the five the same size as the present (fig. 4). According to Rawson and Bunker, “These fittings are some of the parts from a miniature chariot made for burial. The five half-moon-shaped hoops would have been used to guide the reins……The parts have been identified from the miniature chariots recovered at the tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi and from the chariot parts buried in the Western Han tomb at Mancheng.”2
Cary Liu refers to the burial of miniature chariots in Han tombs, and discusses the difficulty in identifying objects made for the living that were interred with the deceased and those made specifically for burial, mingqi .3
1.See Chugoku Sengoku Jidai no Bijutsu, Osaka,1991, p. 120.
2. See See Jessica Rawson and Emma Bunker, Ancient Chinese and Ordos Bronzes, Hong Kong, 1990, p.186.
3. See Cary Liu, Recarving China’s Past, New Haven and London, 2005, pp. 207-210.
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Fig. 1: Diagram of a yoke from Cui Dayong’s reconstruction of a Han-dynasty horse-drawn carriage excavated from a tomb in Shandong province, after Kaogu 1997:3, pl. 9, p. 215.
Fig. 2: Two gold and silver inlaid bronze reign guides, Han dynasty, Shandong province, after Kaogu 1997:3, pl. IV:7.
Fig. 3: Four bronze fittings inlaid with gold and silver, Eastern Zhou dynasty, Warring States period, 4th-3rd century BCE, Loyang, Henan province, after Chugoku Sengoku jidai no Bijutsu, Osaka,1991, no. 195, p.121.
Fig. 4: Five fittings inlaid with gold and silver, Eastern Zhou dynasty 4th-3rd century BCE, after Jessica Rawson and Emma Bunker, Ancient Chinese and Ordos Bronzes, Hong Kong, 1990, no. 95, p.187.
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