Many, many thanks,

Carol

People would go to a Daoist temple and either bring with them or purchase a ceramic from the temple. The calligraphy is from a practiced hand, so chances are there was someone at the temple who'd (for the right price) write an inscription for these needing it.

They'd also need help from a Daoist priest to select the exact right moment to make the offering. In this case I think it'd be calculated based on the person's time/year of birth, and Daoist priests held the monopoly on understanding how to do that, and were the only ones with the proper astrological charts etc. The importance of the timing is really underscored by the fact that 2/3rds of the inscription focuses on that. 

The offering probably concluded with the bowl left on the main altar of the temple, probably with some fruit or something in it. It wouldn't have sat there for very long, though, maybe a day or so and then it'd be cleared to make room for more. Again with the timing, it only needed to be there for one particular moment to be an effective offering.

By the way, they still make these Daoist almanacs and they're really neat. If you're ever in a Chinatown or even a large Chinese/Asian grocery store, look around for the incense, paper money and other ghost offering things. You're looking for a book with a red cover, and as thick as an old phone book. They're usually printed on very cheap, often yellow paper. They're filled with all sorts of diagrams, talismans, line drawings of gods and spirits. Fun to flip through, but impossible to understand! Still, one would make a nice companion for this very nice bowl.

Enjoy!

If not funerary, do you know what sort of occasion might have prompted such an inscription? An offering ritual, perhaps? I find this fascinating and am so glad you took the time and trouble to work on this. 

This forum is a goldmine of information to all of us.

Thanks again,

Carol

I will disagree that the inscription is funerary in nature. I think this stems from an understandable misreading of the 受生大数終 phrase mentioned above.

I will say, this one really had me stumped! But I've made some progress. Unfortunately the exact date will still require some work or luck, but what I do have is I think very interesting.

This phrase at the end was the main challenge: 受 生 大 数 終

Typically these inscriptions are written in straightforward vernacular Chinese. That's what I was at first expecting (and trying and failing) to translate. It just wasn't making sense grammatically, until I realized it makes sense in Classical Chinese. (Character pairings work differently between vernacular and the more formal Classical Chinese.)

That phrase basically means "to repay the debt owed upon birth". It's a Daoist concept in which everyone is born owing a debt (to the Dao) to repay the gift of life.

All the characters preceding it 乙 丑 年 十 月 初 五 申 時 are the year and time this "repayment" was made. Unfortunately, there's no clear indication of when in the cyclical 60-year calendar it was written.

That covers everything except for the very first character, 熈. This is an old variation of 熙 (see extra stroke on right). Well what's that? It's the Xi in Kangxi 康熙 as in the Kangxi emperor.

I could not find any sources suggesting that Xi (by itself) is shorthand for Kangxi. But if that's what it means here, then 1685 would be the year.

Otherwise, and what I think is more likely, is that the Xi comes from the (very esoteric) dating formulations used in Daoist almanacs. Daoists were very concerned with the precise timings of rituals and used a wide variety of almanacs to correlate our earth years (and the sexegenary cycle) with their views on astronomy and astrology. My guess is that's what the 熈 is doing here. 

Sorry I couldn't really pin it down, but I hope that's at least interesting!

By the way, have you ID'd the bowl? Looks Ming to me, but curious to hear what you know.

Craig

I just got a reply from Jan-Erik Nilsson and yes, the bowl did once belong to him. He wrote:

"Dear Carol,

"Yes, the sticker is mine, and this bowl came from an eBay auction maybe 20 years ago. I found it interesting because there is a date mentioned in the description. At the time, this was a largely unknown type of ware, and having it identified and dated to the 24th year of Kangxi’s reign was quite remarkable.

"As you can see from my label, I initially thought it was late Ming, but when looking more closely at the width of the foot ring, it appears more typical of a Qing date. The inscription itself is funerary in nature, and the bowl may well be earlier than the date mentioned. In any case, I find it a very interesting historical piece.

"It was sold since I could not keep everything I bought to learn, and once I had figured it out, I passed it on. It was a big unknown at that time and nobody would have wanted to consider this as "Kangxi porcelain", I'm happy to see it has found a new home.

"JE"

I am always glad to know more about a piece, and this makes it even more interesting to me.

Best regards,

Carol

Carol

You're correct about the cyclical date. I'm still scratching my head over the first character, and then the second to last.

The first I think might refer to the reigning emperor, but it doesn't use the typical two-character convention. 

It may take me a few days to dig them out, but I have some old notes that should help narrow it down. I'll let you know what I find.

As you can see, the only really unusual thing about this piece is the extensive calligraphy on the bottom. I would love to know when and why it was done. Thanks for your translation expertise, Craig!

Carol