31 8 月 The Design Ideology of the Qin Shi Huang Tomb
On what ideological basis was the Qin Shi Huang tomb designed? This is the primary question to understand the meaning of the architectural layout of the tomb, including the position and role of the terracotta warriors in the tomb. The design ideology of the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang has roughly three aspects:
(1) The Matter of Death is Like the Matter of Life
Since primitive society, China has had a religious concept that the soul does not die after death. Death is only a transformation of the way of life, a transfer from the living world to the death world. Therefore, everything a person needs and has during his life must also have after death. As it is written in Zuo Zhuan, “To serve death as one serves life is also a rite of passage”. This is an essential principle of funeral arrangements in the underworld after death.
(2) The Emperor’s Tomb is Like a Capital
In ancient feudal class society, the size, height, and layout of the tomb are symbols of power and status. In Lv’s Spring and Autumn Period – Death, it is said that “people built tombs which are as tall as mountains, trees planted on the tombs as dense as forest, courtyards, palaces, chambers, stone steps in east and west are all constructed in the tomb which like a capital city.” This means that the design idea of the king’s mausoleum was to imitate the establishment of the capital city.
(3) The Concept of Supreme Imperial Authority
After annexing the other six states and unifying China, Qin Shi Huang thought that his merits were higher than those of the Kings and that he was the supreme emperor of the ages. This thought is not only in the performance of words and actions during his life but also reflected in the scale and connotation of the construction of the mausoleum after his death.
The above three points are the design concepts and principles of implementation of the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum. The first two points are traditional ideas that existed before the Qin Dynasty, while the latter point reflects the characteristics of the Qin Dynasty’s era and is a reflection of the centralized authoritarian system established throughout the country.
The architectural layout and all the facilities of Qin Shi Huang’s tomb were arranged according to the above-mentioned three ideologies, especial the concept of “the matter of death is like the matter of life”, which is the fundamental of the tomb design, which runs through the mausoleum architecture, layout and other aspects. The whole mausoleum is like a map of the capital, which is the embodiment of the idea of the Qin Emperor that “there is no land under heaven that does not belong to the emperor, and there is no person living on the land under heaven that is not a subject of the emperor”.