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The Antiquity of t'ou hu
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
Extract
Some ten years ago Professor G. Montell published a well-illustrated and highly interesting account of the history of the Chinese game of t'ou hua or Pitch-pot. In this game, practised in China for many centuries, two contestants attempt to toss (t’ou) arrows into the mouth of a narrow necked vessel (hu) according to very elaborate rules of procedure. He began by quoting verbatim Legge's translation of the lengthy description of the game as contained in the Lichi,b taking this as evidence that the game ‘was perfected as early as the Chou period’. He surmised that the game survived the centuries although he knew of ‘no further mention of it in the literature until the time of the Sung dynasty’, his next source dating from the 11th century.
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References
1 ‘T’ou Hu—The Ancient Chinese Pitch-pot Game’, Ethnos, V (1940), 70-83.
2 The Sacred Books of the East, XXVIII (Oxford, 1885), 397-401. Cf. S. Couvreur, Li Ki ou mémoires sur les bienséances et les cérémonies, 11 (Ho Kien Fou, 1913), 591-9. A parallel text from the related Ta-tai li-chi,c ch. 78, has been translated by R. Wilhelm in his Das Buck der Sitte des älteren und jüngeren Dai (Jena, 1930, 333-6. Wilhelm comments that this section is based upon earlier sources.
3 Montell, op. cit., p. 74.
4 Ibid.
5 This is the T’ou-hu hsin-ko by Ssu-ma Kuang.d Cf. the T’ou-hu i-chieh by Wang T’i,e a 16th century work on the game.
6 Cf. James Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. V, The Ck’un Ts’eu with the Tso chuen (Hong Kong, 1872), 639. My wording differs.
7 Hou-han shu, ch. 150.
8 Nan-yang han hua-hsiang hui-ts’un (Nanking, 1937), 66b, 67a. An earlier work on the Nan-yang reliefs, Nan-yang han hua-hsiang chim (Shanghai, 1930), does not contain these scenes.
Although the rich Han reliefs from Shantung published by Chavannes and others, and the virtually unknown Han reliefs from Szechwan (soon to be published by this writer) contain numerous scenes of pastimes and entertainment, none show this game. To my knowledge, the Nan-yang reliefs provide the only illustrations in Chinese art of this game prior to the 11th century.
9 Jung Keng’s monumental work on ancient Chinese bronzes shows a number of very early hu with vertical tubes on the neck, probably used for slinging the vessel. His illustrations also show the change from tubes to free swinging ring handles prior to the Han dynasty. See Jung Keng, Shang-chou i-ch’i t’ung-k’ao n (Peiping, 1944), 11, nos. 704-83. Bronze vessels of the hu type were commonly inscribed but I have looked in vain through collections of inscriptions for reference to the game. Several Chinese works of Han bronzes contain illustrations bearing some resemblance to the two vases shown in our reliefs. One hu in particular bears a striking similarity to the one in Fig. 2. See Shuang-chien-ch’ih chi-chin t’u-lu, o 11, 54. See also Charles Fabens Kelley and Ch’en Meng-chia, Chinese Bronzes from the Buckingham Collection (Chicago, 1946), pl. LXII, LXXV.
10 op. cit., 1,432-5.
11 13 May 1933, p. 694, fig. 5.
12 This game seems to have been widely played during the Han period but early Chinese literature provides but meagre information on it. See Liang-sheng Yang, ‘A Note on the so-called TLV Mirrors and the Game Liu-po’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 9 (1945-47), 202-206.