*3.1. Han Rhapsodies That Feature the Queen Mother*

There are a significant number of Han rhapsodies and they have been sorted and compiled through the following dynasties. The Complete Han Rhapsodies compiled and edited by the contemporary scholars Fei Zhengang, Hu Shuangbao, and Zong Minghua is currently the most comprehensive collection of Han rhapsodies and is the basic reference text used in this paper (Fei et al. 1993). Included in the collection are a total of 293 rhapsodies by eighty-three writers from the Han dynasty, of which one hundred are extant in their entirety and twenty-four known only by title, with the rest being fragments. Among the extant rhapsodies, four have literary depictions of the Queen Mother. Specifically, they are: "Daren fu" 大人賦 (Rhapsody on the Great Man) by Sima Xiangru 司馬相如 (ca. 179–118 BC) and "Ganquan fu" 甘泉賦 (Rhapsody on the Sweet Springs) by Yang Xiong 揚雄 (53 BC–AD 18) from the Western Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 24); and "Lanhai fu" 覽海賦 (Rhapsody on Viewing the Sea) by Ban Biao 班彪 (AD 3–AD 54) and "Sixuan fu" 思玄賦 (Rhapsody on Contemplating the Mystery) by Zhang Heng 張衡 (AD 78–AD 138) from the Eastern Han dynasty (AD 25–220) (Fei et al. 1993, pp. 91–96, 230–37, 252, 393–411).

After examining the portrayals of the Queen Mother in the extant Han rhapsodies, several conclusions can be drawn. First, literary works that involve the Queen Mother are only found in the Han grand rhapsody (dafu 大賦). The Han rhapsody has two sub-genres: "the grand rhapsody" and "the minor rhapsody" (xiaofu 小賦), which is also called the "minor lyrical rhapsody" (shuqing xiaofu 抒情小賦) because of its short form and lyrical

content. Sima Xiangru, Yang Xiong, and Zhang Heng were all famous dafu masters, and the four works by them mentioned above all belong to the dafu type. Second, the Queen Mother was a theme for the rhapsody throughout the Han dynasty. There were two periods in the Han dynasty, the Western Han and the Eastern Han. The Han rhapsody flourished throughout the Han dynasty. Sima Xiangru and Yang Xiong were Western Han fu writers, while Ban Biao and Zhang Heng were Eastern Han fu writers. They all wrote about the theme of the Queen Mother. Third, the Han fu writers were aware of but not highly enthusiastic about the cult of the Queen Mother. Among the hundred-odd legible Han fu works, only four of them feature the Queen Mother as a mythological figure. The length of relevant passages is limited, some passages only amounting to no more than a line.

### *3.2. The Image of the Queen Mother in Han Paintings*

Thanks to recent archaeological achievements, the amount of Han paintings that we can study has skyrocketed. In total, 195 archaeological reports on Han paintings have been published thus far, sixty-six of which have reported findings of images featuring the Queen Mother, and fifty-two of which are about carved stone reliefs (Table 1). Judging from the data provided by the archaeological reports, we have the following views:

**Table 1.** Quantity distribution of Han stone reliefs that feature the Queen Mother and the King Father.


First, the images of the Queen Mother are mainly to be found in Han stone reliefs. There are three types of Han paintings: Han stone carvings, Han brick carvings, and Han tomb murals. Han stones reliefs account for about 90% of all images of the Queen Mother. Second, the images of the Queen Mother are concentrated in specific locations. Stone reliefs were common everywhere in the Han Dynasty, but the images of the Queen Mother were mainly found in the Bashu area (including present-day Sichuan and Chongqing, where a total of twenty-one images of the Queen Mother have been found), the Central Plains (including Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Henan, where a total of twenty-seven images of the Queen have been found), Shandong and surrounding areas (including present-day Shandong, the northern part of Jiangsu, and Anhui. A total of eight images of the Queen Mother have been found in the area). These places are also the same areas where large numbers of other Han dynasty stone reliefs have been excavated. Third, the Han artists of stone carvings showed high enthusiasm for the Queen Mother. In the archaeological reports on the Han stone reliefs, one third report finding images of the Queen Mother, indicating that she was highly valued and welcomed at the time. Moreover, the types of depictions were varied. As for composition, there are three types: the Queen Mother in a singular composition, a combination of the Queen Mother and her consort, the King Father, and the single portrait of the King Father, making up a rich collection of her images (see Table 1 below).<sup>1</sup>

As shown in the above table, there are thirty-one pictorial stones bearing the image of the Queen Mother only, whereas only two pictorial stones known to us bear the image of the King Father only. This shows that the Queen Mother was a deity that was of paramount importance in the human pursuit of longevity in the Han period, as she was in pre-Han China. The appearance of the King Father as the consort of the Queen Mother indicates that the male deity began to be entrusted with the divine responsibility of assisting the Queen Mother in delivering mortal beings into immortality.

Through a statistical analysis of the Han rhapsodies and Han paintings, we find that there is a significant difference in number between the two. There are four texts that feature the Queen Mother in the surviving corpus of the Han grand rhapsody, whereas there are fifty-two images of her in the Han stone reliefs. Works of both art forms feature the Queen Mother, albeit with a large gap in the quantity and manner of dissemination.

### **4. Class Discrepancy in Works That Feature the Queen Mother**

The significant difference in number between the Han rhapsodies and Han stone reliefs that feature the Queen Mother reflects the difference in attitudes towards the cult of the Queen Mother and the difference in belief in the goddess among different groups of people during the Han period.
