Ceremonial bow in a Chinese painting from the year 1053

Dwanyin · Post by **Dwanyin** » Wed Sep 02, 2009 2:22 am

The painting depicting the imperial procession《大駕鹵簿圖》dates from the Northern Song dynasty (北宋 皇祐五年=the year 1053).
Sections of the painting can be seen here.

Dusan · Post by **Dusan** » Wed Sep 02, 2009 7:30 am

Nice pics Dwanyin !

Stephen Selby · Post by **Stephen Selby** » Thu Sep 03, 2009 7:00 am

What I have noticed consistently in these Song/Yuan images of bows is that the string is depicted very close to the grip.

Compare

Artistic convention apart, I wonder if there's anything to that? The string of the bow in this painting would certainly hit the hand painfully at release, unless there's some trick of technique involved.

S

Daniel T. · Post by **Daniel T.** » Thu Sep 03, 2009 7:49 am

As far as I can tell with my limited experience it also makes the bow less stable.

Bede · Post by **Bede** » Thu Sep 03, 2009 4:57 pm

It is unlikely that the bows depicted were braced any lower than current Korean bows. The artists were exaggerating the low brace height for effect. Paintings aren't photographs nor are they engineering diagrams. Chinese artists of the time had different ideas about perspective and representation thna we have now. This is the reason it is so hard to use paintings alone to identify bows.

What you can assume is that the bows had a low brace height. I have a bow that has a similar shape at the handle. The brace height is similar to contemporary Korean bows. The tips are different. It does not have pronounced problems with the arrows passing the bow or the string hitting the arm. Highly reflexed bows have less string movement towards the hand after release than modern recurves and this might explain the lack of string impact on the hand.