Stone lions first appear in China’s material record as early as the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 CE), where they were installed in aboveground monument groups in front of tombs to mark and protect a shen dao, or spirit path leading to the deceased’s final resting place. ¹ Interestingly, lions are not indigenous to China, and were likely first introduced as items of tribute from Central Asian states and semi-nomadic pastoralist groups to the west. ² Because they were rare and foreign, they were regarded as exotica; as tribute items, they were charged with political significance. Along with these attributes, lions were also recognized as powerful predators, and were thus ideally suited to be carved in stone and incorporated into Chinese culture as spiritual guardians of the dead. 

Union College’s Stone Lion is the product of millennia of artistic development and sustained cultural exchange across Eurasia through the Silk Roads. In early Chinese contexts, lions sometimes appear in relatively naturalistic form, but more often they are rendered as composite creatures—combining a tiger-like body with leonine features such as a mane and, at times, wings. A close look reveals that Union’s lion bears a pair of wings delicately incised on its back.

Images of winged feline creatures long predate their appearance in China. Such forms emerged in Egypt, the Ancient Near East, and the Aegean as early as the 4th millennium BCE, flourished in the Hellenistic world (4th-1st c. BCE), and later spread to South and Central Asia and the steppe regions north and west of China. ³ In these traditions, winged lions conveyed not only power and authority but also divinity and transcendence—meanings that accompanied the motif as it moved across cultures.

Lions acquired new layers of meaning as guardians of the Dharma (Buddhist law) with the introduction of Buddhism to China between the 3rd and 5th centuries CE. ⁴ In the centuries following the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE), their image was more fully adapted to Chinese aesthetic traditions. As in Union College’s sculpture, they developed bulging eyes, broad faces, and stylized whorled manes. In addition, their ferocity was symbolically restrained, as they are shown seated rather than walking, and wear collars adorned with tassels and bells.

Although lions continued to appear in pairs before tombs, they also became prominent guardians at the entrances to Buddhist temples, ancestral halls, and—by the Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty (14th-20th c. CE)—gardens, imperial palaces, and government buildings. They functioned as protectors and as visual markers of cosmological order, safeguarding liminal spaces for both the living and the dead.

As male-female pairs, the lions also came to embody the Daoist principle of yin and yang. At the threshold of a traditional south-facing building, the male is positioned to the right (the direction of yang) with his paw resting on a sphere, while the female sits to the left (yin), cradling a lion cub.

Portions of the small cub Union’s Stone Lion once protected were damaged and lost over a century ago, though fragments remain. It therefore represents the female, or yin, component of the traditional male-female pair. Given its style and relatively gentle expression, the sculpture may originally have stood in front of a government building of moderate importance during the late Ming or Qing dynasty (late 17th–20th c. CE). Comparable examples in southeastern China suggest it could also have served as a guardian for a Buddhist temple.

References

1.  Ann Paludan, The Chinese Spirit Road : the Classical Tradition of Stone Tomb Statuary (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991); Wu Hung, Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 191.
    
2. Osama Sudzuki, “Chinese Stone Lions in Tenri Museum,” Tenri Journal of Religion, No. 7 (Dec 1965): 15; Yu Chao, “Carved Lions of China: A primary analysis 浅析中国狮子雕刻艺术,” Journal of Chifeng University (Soc. Sci), Vol. 37, No. 5 (May 2016), 236.
    
3. Sophia-Karin Psarras, Sources of Han Decor: Foreign Influence on the Han Dynasty Chinese iconography of paradise (206 BC-AD 220) (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2020), 57.
    
4.  Angela Falco Howard (ed.), Chinese Sculpture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).