Ancient Chinese Warfare (50 page)

Perhaps because they lack the gleaming appeal of burnished bronze or the thrill of martial power, shields and armor have rarely been associated with the legendary Sage progenitors of antiquity. (The Spring and Autumn anecdote of penetrating seven layers of armor well illustrates the normal propensity to lionize the bow and arrow while deprecating the role of armor.) However, Shao-k’ang’s son Chu, who eventually restored the clan’s power amid the internal chaos that beset the early dynastic Hsia, reputedly fabricated the first body armor in order to survive the Yu-ch’iung’s deadly arrows.

As attested by vestiges of large leather panels at Anyang, the earliest Shang body armor was apparently a two-piece leather tunic that should have provided some protection against glancing attacks, even though ancient skeletons show that arrows and piercing weapons could penetrate and circumvent it.
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Decorated with abstract
t’ao-t’ieh
designs in red, yellow, white, and black,
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Shang armor seems also to have been sometimes partially adorned, rather than layered, with very small bronze pieces. However, although it appears that additional pieces of leather may have eventually been employed for the shoulders, no major improvements can be proven until the early Chou, when more flexible corsets began to be fabricated by employing lamellar construction techniques that linked small leather panels together with hempen cord. Thereafter, it was merely a question of time before metal plates would
be substituted, eventually resulting in much of the well-known body armor visible on Ch’in dynasty tomb figures.

Although no examples have yet been recovered, shields constructed from interlaced soft wooden materials, leather, or even leather thongs certainly predate the Shang and would continue to be employed for the next three millennia by peasant forces and in isolated localities. Shang variants were apparently produced in two sizes, a moderate version for infantry warriors confined to the ground and a larger version that is still unattested apart from depictions of shields for chariot fighters intended to block incoming arrows and strikes down the full length of the body and perhaps even cover a compatriot fighting alongside. Materials employed to fabricate these shields seem to have again included thin wooden slats, interlaced bamboo or other reedlike materials, and leather, as well as a leather covering on an underlayer or two of fibrous matter, all stretched and affixed to a simple frame consisting of roughly three-centimeter wooden poles.

From depictions preserved in oracular characters and a body buried with a dagger-axe and shield, it is clear that the moderate-sized, single-handed shield was held in the left hand and used in conjunction with a dagger-axe or short spear in the right. Impressions made by a cache of shields somewhat chaotically deposited in tomb M1003 and a famous reconstruction based on vestiges in tomb M1004 indicate that they were slightly rectangular and had rough dimensions of 70 by 80 centimeters (27.5 by 31.5 inches), or about half a man’s height and thus slightly shorter than the era’s dagger-axes and single-handed spears.
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They were held by a vertical handle in the center and had a slight outward bow that should have improved the dynamics of blow deflection while facilitating the warrior’s grasp.

Traces in the compacted soil further indicate that leather versions were also sometimes decorated with
t’ao-t’ieh
patterns similarly painted in vivid red, yellow, white, and black and even tigers or dragons, as described and found in later times.
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The nobility and high-ranking officials apparently affixed small supplemental bronze plates that would certainly, if spottily, have increased the shield’s penetration resistance even though they were probably intended mainly as decorative embellishments. One bizarre variant of the infantryman’s shield called a
ko-tun
(“dagger
shield”) even mounted a dagger-axe blade perpendicularly at the top, but its possible utility except as a sort of jabbing distraction in the enemy’s visual field is difficult to imagine.
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Helmets, presumably of interlaced rattan but possibly leather, also appeared in the Neolithic, and a somewhat lesser-known legendary account appropriately attributes their invention to Ch’ih Yu, even though his aggressive behavior should have prompted others to create them as a defensive measure against his innovative weapons. Whatever form these ancient variants might have taken, no evidence has survived, and the first known metallic helmets appear in the Shang. However, they remain surprisingly sparse in comparison with the vast numbers of weapons that have been recovered and Shang willingness to employ bronze for large ritual vessels, with only one large aggregation having been discovered and a few deposited in the weapons hoards found in scattered high-ranking tombs.
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Although several variants can be distinguished, Shang helmets were basically designed to protect the skull from the forehead upward but also extended downward sufficiently to normally, but not invariably, encompass the ears and the back of the neck. Given that some large
yüeh
and shield decorations were molded with bulging eyeholes, they surprisingly did not provide any integrated means of facial defense, a deficiency that may have been remedied with a bronze face mask in exceptional cases.
³⁵
Cast from bronze as a single unit that weighed from 2 to 3 kilograms (a weighty 4.5 to 6.5 pounds) and averaging some 22 or 23 centimeters in height, they were apparently worn with an inner head wrap or intermediate padding that was designed to cushion the effects of blows and protect the skull against
wounds that would invariably have been caused by the interior’s roughness. In contrast, the exteriors are all smooth, polished, symmetrical executions of somewhat startling designs that feature stylized projections and protuberances that not only augment a warrior’s frightening visage but also strengthen the helmet’s structure and increase the distance between the skull and the strike.

19.

I
N CHINA, THE BOW AND ARROW apparently enjoyed at least limited use by 27,000 BCE, more than twenty millennia before the advent of the Neolithic civilizations with which our study begins.
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Thereafter, ancient sites contain increasingly numerous stone and bone arrowheads coincident with their growing impact in hunting.
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However, as agriculture emerged and began to flourish between 6500 and 5000 BCE, other tools appeared that assumed greater importance, though without diminishing the number of arrowheads.
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Even wooden ones dating back to 5000 BCE have been recovered, virtual throwbacks to the primitive arrows that were fashioned by sharpening and then heat treating the tip of the shaft to harden it.
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Early arrows were probably multipurpose, but the advent of clan conflict and tribal warfare stimulated the development of heads specifically designed for military purposes. These variants gradually came to equal and then quantitatively exceed all other designs, prompting the further evolution of numerous styles and multiple sizes with increasingly differentiated head characteristics (worthy of a lengthy monograph rather than the cursory examination possible here). The discovery of copper and ensuing advances in metallurgical techniques then allowed the Shang to produce bronze arrowheads in significant quantities. Nevertheless, they did not completely displace laboriously fabricated stone and bone points until late in the Western Chou, despite being efficiently cast in multiple-cavity molds.

The earliest Chinese bows must have been simple, minimally effective weapons created by adapting readily available saplings from wood species
with the necessary characteristics of strength and flexibility. Nevertheless, legends claim that either the Yellow Emperor or the Archer Yi invented the bow, and that Yi shot down nine of the ten suns then scorching the earth.
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However, the
Yi Ching
credits Yao, Shun, and Yü with creating the first bows, but the
Shan-hai Ching
claims that two of the Yellow Emperor’s ministers, Hui and Mou Yi, were actually responsible, the former for crafting the first bow and the latter for fabricating the arrows.

In contrast with Western legends that portray knights slaying dragons with magical swords and vanquishing demons with axes, the bow seems to have been valued in China from its inception for its accuracy, power, and ability to destroy enemies at a distance in awesome displays of power. Not surprisingly, when first encountered in Shang oracle inscriptions and archaeological finds, bows and arrows are the weapons of the ruling clan and warrior nobility. In contrast with medieval Europe, where the sword became a highly romanticized, close combat weapon while the bow was condemned for its dastardly ability to kill anonymously and archers were reviled for fighting at a distance,
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archers and archery have always been highly esteemed in China, as well as in Korea and Japan. King Wu of the Chou even emblematically shot the already dead tyrant Chou (Emperor Hsin) with three arrows before decapitating him with a yellow axe.
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Later idealizations of antiquity envision late Neolithic and Shang leaders selecting their officers primarily because they excelled in martial skills vital to the battlefield and the hunt, abilities crucial for surviving amid hostile forces and the untamed environment. Even though these officers might subsequently be entrusted with administrative responsibilities, they were primarily warriors, and it was their “virtue” in wielding a bow rather than a shock weapon that distinguished them.
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This practice apparently continued in the early Western Chou, with formalized archery competitions intended to reveal both skill and character, the various nobles in attendance being penalized or rewarded based on the performance of their subordinates.

Although these claims need not be accepted in detail, the basic impetus to select men through their martial abilities, later understood as their “character,” appears to have been a core element in ancient practices. The
Li Chi
chapter on the archery ceremony states:

Contemporary bronze inscriptions attest to major archery competitions having being conducted under regal auspices from the Western Chou’s inception, implying that they were probably a common practice in the Shang insofar as the Chou adopted many Shang customs. For example, the
Tso Po Kuei
records that the Duke of Tso responded to King Chao’s challenge by hitting the target dead on ten times in a row in just such a contest, thereby garnering all ten of the gold pieces that the king had allotted for successful strikes.
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In addition to impromptu contests, four formalized archery competitions were routinely held during the Western Chou and perhaps the Shang. (Paradoxically, they would become less frequent despite the evolution of permanent armies and an escalating demand for bowmen.) Moreover, despite almost certainly having had their origins in hunting and purely military contests in which military prowess dominated, with the passage of centuries and the increasing pervasiveness of Confucian thought, these competitions would gradually evolve into a stifling, formalized exercise bereft of martial spirit.

At the end of the sixth century BCE Confucius deemed archery one of the six arts essential to self-cultivation, and bows and arrows were often bestowed as special marks of honor, particularly for military merit. King Wen’s appointment as Lord of the West during the late Shang was reportedly sanctified with a bow, arrows, and an axe, and numerous Western Chou bronze inscriptions record the conferring of a bow, often highly decorated and accompanied by a hundred arrows, on various people.
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The practice continued down into the Spring and Autumn, one
Tso Chuan
entry speaking about bestowing a red bow plus 100 arrows and a black bow with 1,000 arrows,
¹²
another recording that the king
awarded a red bow for martial achievement.
¹³
Contrary to impressions that these bows may have been fragile and ephemeral, they were treasured, preserved, and frequently transmitted within families as valuable commemorative items. Thus the
Tso Chuan
notes the recovery of the great bow of the state of Lu that had been awarded for martial achievement generations earlier but stolen the previous year.
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