Knowledge of alloying practices is key to understanding the mass production of ancient Chinese bronzes. The Eastern Zhou text, the Rites of Zhou, contains six formulae, or recipes, for casting different forms of bronze based on the combination of two components: Jin and Xi. For more than 100 years, the precise interpretation of these two components has eluded explanation. Drawing on analyses of pre-Qin coinage, the authors offer a new interpretation, arguing that, rather than pure metals, Jin and Xi were pre-prepared copper-rich alloys, in turn indicating an additional step in the manufacturing process of copper-alloy objects. This result will be of interest to linguists, as well as archaeologists of ancient Chinese technology.
Introduction
Conventionally dated to the late Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770–221 BC), the Rites of Zhou (Zhou Li, 周礼) has been a key but problematic text in the chemical study of ancient Chinese bronzes for more than a century (e.g. Chikashige Reference Chikashige1918, Reference Chikashige1936; Liang Reference Liang and Wang1925; Dono Reference Dono1932; Zhang Reference Zhang1958; Zhou Reference Zhou1978; Wu Reference Wu1986; Hua Reference Hua1990; Chen & Chase Reference Yunyun and Chase1991; Sun Reference Sun2011; Yang Reference Yang2015). The section Kaogong ji (Book of Diverse Crafts, also rendered as The Artificiers’ Record or Notes for Examining the Artisan) is generally thought to have been written between the fifth and third centuries BC and subsequently incorporated into Zhou Li (Jun Reference Jun2012). This section provides a series of six recipes (or ‘receipts’, as sometimes translated in the non-Chinese literature) for the manufacture of specific types of bronze object. These recipes are specified in terms of sets of combinatorial ratios for two components: Jin (金) and Xi (锡). In modern Chinese, Jin (金) means gold, but in antiquity it is taken to mean copper (Cu) or copper alloy, or just ‘metal’. Xi (锡) is conventionally interpreted as tin (Sn) (see citations above). The true meaning of these characters, however, has been at the heart of a debate surrounding the six recipes for many decades.
