ming/turkish bow in qing gallery

[Scott M. Rodell]

Peter, thanks for your through review...

...Period artwork falls in certain categories, with one category being generally more accurate than the other...

I don't disagree with you at all, I just don't feel that the first painting or the Freer painting fall into the inaccurate category.

...
1. Manchus hunting tiger
From the looks of it this is an early to mid. Qing painting, non-imperial.
Type of bow: A short version of the Manchu bow is depicted but one can't help to notice that everything is a little awkwardly depicted.

Do you then believe that this is an accurate depiction of short eared Manchu bows?

...
4. Hunters with bow, crossbow and trident.
This is interesting, because the bow depicted is definitely not a downsized version of a Manchu, but a Ming bow that seems quite accurately portrayed... The people are no doubt Manchus as well... It could well be that the artist was depicting Jurchen hunters... that he knew were equipped with bows but had no detail of the bows used and filled in the gap with a Ming bow. The crossbow is also Ming. The Qing used a very similar crossbow, but mounted with a composite bow with ears and string bridges, just like their larger bows. The "carriage spring" style only remained in use for cheaper repeating crossbows and tiger traps.

That's a good theory, but no less a theory than they the artist actually saw bows which he painted accurately.

...5. Details from a Freer Gallery Scroll
Again the bow is definitely Ming and indeed accurately portrayed. The painting style is again very Ming, and may fall in the same genre of ethnic portraits of the late Ming.

It would certainly help to know exactly when the painting was done, the Freer has it as 18th c. It is the accuracy you mention that gives me pause not to write this off too quickly. If was a simple matter of cut & paste would you still expect to see such accuracy?

... there is no doubt that a Manchu may have picked up a Ming bow during the transition phase or shortly thereafter. It would be strange if they hadn't, as an archer people. But so far there is no evidence that these bows were used by anyone much later...

If so the question would be, when did these bows fall out of use entirely &/or did they fall out of use entirely?

If the Ming bow was used much longer, as you suggest these pictures prove, we would expect to find more evidence of this fact ... so far no actual examples of these bows or references to them in period texts have surfaced.

Actually, I'm not suggesting they prove anything, just that they are evidence we should look carefully at.

I think that is the best point made so far against the possibility that shorter Ming style bows remained in any sort of wide spread use. If so, where are actual physical examples?

... there is a tendency in even the most accurate of artwork to make Manchu bow ears shorter than they were...

Even so, these are more than just Manchu bows with shorter ears. In any case, your previous point holds more weight than any other.

All the best,

[Bede]

Scott,
When you make an assertion against the contemporary understanding of a subject, it is up to you to prove your point rather than everyone else to go over the original arguments from the beginning again. If you come up with good ideas, then people will look at the evidence and, if they are intellectually honest, reassess their views.

This class of painting is well known in Chinese art circles and it is worthwhile to look at discussions that come from that point of view as well as trying to draw solely on the paintings themselves. When some of the opinions on the reliability of individual paintings were developed, paintings of this type were part of the view. The other paintings were not chosen because they supported a particular position on archery equipment, but rather the position on archery equipment developed because of the opinion about the paintings.

I am not posting paintings to support my arguments, because where I live, I would be breaching copyright. Most of my access to these paintings is through publications where the right to reproduce is governed by the legal holder of the copyright. The right to reproduce reproductions, in this case photographs of paintings, varies considerable around the world.

However, there are internal details of the paintings that affect their reliability. Two things stand out to me aside from the archery equipment. The stirrups are completely out of proportion to the feet and the shape of the saddle cloths is pre-Manchu. When you add this to the shape of the quivers and the sketchy details of the bows, there is enough evidence to doubt the precision of these paintings.

What I am saying is that there is one group of paintings where a casual or a detailed inspection will show that objects in the painting match surviving object in the real world. There is another group of paintings which do not have that property. The objects in the painting clearly are distorted when compared to actual objects. Using Ockham's Razor, that the simplest explanation that covers all the facts is likely to be the correct one, I think that the assertion that short Ming style bows are being reproduced from life in the Freer paintings is as yet unprovable.

The reason I thought the paintings might have had a Southern origin is, taking your argument as possibly correct, the only places that Ming style bows were likely to survive were Tibet and Southern China. Tibet was very conservative and retained robes related to Ming styles well into the Qing so why not archery equipment? Southern China during the rebellion of the Three Feudatories would have had many pieces of Ming equipment handy.

The real problem with the survival of Ming style short bows is that the Manchus effectively disarmed the Chinese population after the conquest and the government subsequently set the standards for all weapons manufacture. Even the Mongols incorporated into the Banner system had to adopt Manchu military standard equipment. Objects like the Omnogrov bow show that some Mongol equipment survived for a while, but the Mongols were not under as tight control as the Han Chinese.

If I have misunderstood your points, I apologise.

[MJuingong]

Is it a certainty that all the participants in the pictures are Manchu?

Hunting was sometimes done by the native Chinese gentry. Perhaps the paintings represent them. As is known, Manchu dress styles were mandated in the Qing, so a native Chinese hunter might look a lot like a Manchu.