Traditional Implements In Wallpaintings Of Shanxi From Song To Qing

Shanxi province is one of the birthplaces of agricultural civilization in China.Many wall paintings, which include the burial and temples’ wall paintings, show the real farming scenes that we can see some farm implements. They give us a good way to study the history of farm implements in China.This thesis focuses on the farm implements from the Song to Qing Dynasty. Based on the process of farming, they will be classified into four types, ploughing and leveling implements, sowing and earthing implements, cultivating and irrigating implements,processing and cleaning implements. The wall paintings in Liulang Temple in Taiyuan city and Jiyi Temple in Xinjiang County show the different type of ploughs with a incurved shafts. The wall painting of Jin Dynasty of Song Village in Tunliu County has the only image of plough with wheels in ancient China. The wall paintings of Jin Dynasty in Song village and Ligao village of Tunliu county has the images of square frame leveller which was the great progress after rodlike leveller in Han and Wei-Jin period. Sowing plough had been appeared in the wall paintings of Song village, Ligao village and Liulang Temple and it has more complicated structure than the image in Lishou tomb of Tang Dynasty. There are the earliest picture of Dun Che as one compacting tool in the Jin dynasty wall paintings of Song village and Xiaoguan village in Zhangzi county. The windlass with crank had been used in the Jin dynasty wall paintings of Song, Xiaoguan and the Song dynasty in Guzhang village of Guzhang county. This tells us it had been used to lift water in the 11 th century. The wall paintings of Yanshan Temple in Fanshi county has the only one picture of trip hammers and mill by water, especially which show the two hammers and the rotating way of below mill stone. The winnowing fan of tiger head had been emerged in Liulang Temple firstly,which together with the wood carving images in Jiwang Temple say that Shanxi province is the birth place of this type winnowing fan.This thesis adopts the way of using the images as the historical evidences and compare with th book of Shanxi Nongxue Nongju Tushuo to investigate the traditional farm implements in the wall paintings of Song to Qing dynasties in Shanxi. Thematerials will promote the study of history of farming implements and history of technology in China.