Portraits of Periodical Offering
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China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
dynasties. These paintings were official historical documents used in many Chinese dynasties. The phrase roughly translated to "duty offering pictorial". Throughout Chinese history, kingdoms and tribes conquered by Chinese forces were required to send ambassadors to the imperial court of China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
periodically and pay tribute with valuable gifts (贡品 kungpin).
Drawings and paintings with short descriptions were used to record the expression of these ambassadors and to a lesser extent to show the cultural aspects of these ethnic groups. These historical descriptions beside the portrait became the equivalent of documents of diplomatic relations with each country. The drawings were reproduced in woodblock printing
Woodblock printing
Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper....
after the 9th century and distributed among the bureaucracy in albums. The Portraits of Periodical Offering of Imperial Qing by Xie Sui (谢遂), completed in 1751, gives verbal descriptions of outlying tribes as far as the island of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
in Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
.
The Portraits of Periodical Offering of Liang by the Emperor Yuan of Liang Xiao Yi
Emperor Yuan of Liang
Emperor Yuan of Liang , personal name Xiao Yi , courtesy name Shicheng , nickname Qifu , was an emperor of the Chinese Liang Dynasty...
, dated to the 6th century, is the earliest surviving of these specially significant paintings. The original of the work was lost, and the only surviving edition of this work was a copy from the 11th century, which is currently preserved at the National Museum of China
National Museum of China
The National Museum of China flanks the eastern side of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. The mission of the museum is to educate about the arts and history of China...
. The work originally consisted of twenty five portraits of ambassadors from their respectively country, by the time of Song Dynasty
Song Dynasty
The Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...
some portraits were already missing, and the current version consist only about twelve of them.
Their places of origin are, from right to left: Uar
Uar
The Uar were the largest of three ethnic components constituting the confederation known to the west as the Hephthalites and to the Chinese as Yanda and the dominant ethnicity of Khwarezm...
(Hephthalites); Persia; Baekje
Baekje
Baekje or Paekche was a kingdom located in southwest Korea. It was one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, together with Goguryeo and Silla....
; Qiuci; Wo
Wa (Japan)
Japanese is the oldest recorded name of Japan. Chinese, Korean, and Japanese scribes regularly wrote Wa or Yamato "Japan" with the Chinese character 倭 until the 8th century, when the Japanese found fault with it, replacing it with 和 "harmony, peace, balance".- Historical references :The earliest...
(Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
); Langkasuka
Langkasuka
Langkasuka was an ancient Hindu Malay kingdom located in the Malay Peninsula...
; Dengzhi (邓至) of Qiang ethnic from Ngawa
Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture
The Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture is an autonomous prefecture in Sichuan, whose capital is Barkam town . It has an area of 83,201 km²....
; Zhouguke (周古柯), Hebatan (呵跋檀), Humidan (胡密丹), Baiti (白題, of similar Hephthalite stocks), whom dwell close to Hephthalite; Mo (Qiemo).