The Qianlong rubbings of 13th-century Pictures of Tilling: A Tale of three grandsons

Abstract

The year 1689 marks one of the possible starting points for the story of a pair of newly-acquired rubbing scrolls of the Pictures of Tilling and Weaving (Gengzhi Tu 耕織圖), now re-united in the Huaihai Tang 懷海堂collection of Hong Kong. This is the year that the Kangxi 康熙emperor (r. 1661–1722), while on his second Southern Inspection Tour, received a version of the Song-era Pictures of Tilling and Weaving, which comprises two suites of images and poems representing the procedures involved in the production of silk and the cultivation of rice. Kangxi was so inspired he produced the first Qing (1644-1911) Imperially Commissioned Pictures of Tilling and Weaving (Yuzhi Gengzhi Tu 御製耕織圖). The Qing version of the Pictures of Tilling and Weaving was inaugurated, and the following three emperors (Yongzheng 雍正 [r. 1722–1735], Qianlong乾隆 [r. 1735–96] and Jiaqing 嘉慶 [r. 1796–1820]), would follow suit in commissioning subsequent editions. In 1769, the Qianlong emperor, galvanized by “miraculous events,” determined to produce an even grander architectonic version the Pictures of Tilling and Weaving – a massive commission in which the Pictures of Tilling and Weaving were carved into forty-eight stone stele. They were ensconced in a hall in the Qingyi Yuan清漪園or Garden of Clear Rippling Water, a residential palace presently known as the Summer Palace. Inked impressions of the stones, made by rubbing on paper laid across them, could be made. However, only two copies of these ink rubbings scrolls are known to have survived, and the only complete set of scrolls with all forty-eight impressions is in Hong Kong. This article discusses the appeal of its production for the Qianlong emperor, and outlines the story of its survival to the 21st century.