Life under the Han Dynasty

Glancing at the reliefs illustrated in Han Tomb Art one sees at once that the people who produced them loved hunting, eating, drinking, dancing, music, charioteering, parlour games, and ancient stories, and that the world of their imagination was peopled with dragons, phoenixes, gryphons and semi-animal divinities. One sees too that they had mastered many complicated techniques (as shown, for example, in the pictures of the salt industry and of agriculture). But anyone not versed in Chinese history may well ask what relation the remote corner of China where the reliefs were found bore to the rest of the Empire, may wonder whether the people were war-like or peaceful, how they were governed, how educated, what did they think about and say when they were not (as so often in these pictures) playing backgammon, careering in chariots or shooting wild-geese? It is with a view to answering some of these questions and in the hope of throwing a little new light on these interesting reliefs that I have put together the following brief notes on the life and thought of the period.