古代中國的動物形象與祭祀

Zoomorphism and Sacrificial Religion in Early China

動物和獸形主題是古代中國藝術與物質文化中隨處可見的要素，但關於如何解釋動物圖像學，在方法論上仍存在許多爭議。一個核心問題是：傳世文獻是否能有效地引以為據，充分解釋動物圖像中呈現的象徵與隱含意義呢？文獻記載與圖像資料的關係甚為複雜，透過祭祀與動物犧牲的例子，本文試圖為此課題別進一解。儘管在祭祀的脈絡中，文獻中充斥著關於動物的敘述；在古代中國的視覺材料裡，卻罕見宰殺動物以供祭祀的圖像主題。本文探索此現象的可能成因，並以傳世文獻中保留的訊息為基礎，提出若干假說。

Animals and zoomorphic motifs are omnipresent in early Chinese art and material culture. Yet the methodologies underlying the explanation of animal iconography remain subject to much debate. One core problem is the question whether received texts can be usefully adduced to explain the range of symbolic or intended meanings that might be expressed in iconographic representations of animals. This paper seeks to add a small piece to the complex puzzle of how texts can relate to images. It explores the issue through the example of animal sacrifice. While texts are replete with descriptions of animals in the context of sacrifice, the motif of the sacrificial animal kill rarely occurs in the visual vocabulary of early China. The paper explores why that may be the case and offers a number of hypotheses derived from information preserved in the received textual corpus.