Taotie
Chinese · numen · mythic prehistory · numen
His face is on the bronzes. The standing motif of Shang and Zhou ritual vessels — a frontal mask with huge eyes, no lower jaw, splitting into two profile dragons — has been called the taotie since the Song, when antiquarians attached the literary name to the archaeological ornament; whether the Shang bronze-casters called it that is unknowable and the identification is a scholarly convention rather than a fact. The record keeps the name and the caveat. It is, either way, the single most reproduced image from ancient China.
Domains
- gluttony
Relations
- companion: Taowu
Sources
- Reference treatments of the Four Perils.