In modern museums, a type of Chinese neolithic jades with a cylindrical hollow encased in a square outer surface is often exhibited as jade cong 琮. This image diverges significantly from the descriptions of cong as a flat ritual jade with multiple sides in both classical commentaries and records of state rituals. The discrepancy between these conceptions can be traced back to Eastern Han sources, but it was more directly a result of antiquarians’ redefinition of jade cong in the late nineteenth century to accommodate unearthed objects. This study examines the contention over evidence between China’s classicist and antiquarian traditions in conceptualising cong. It argues that antiquarian scholars distinguish themselves from classicists by treating unearthed objects as alternative evidence, but they also place objects as much as possible under the authority of classical texts. The antiquarians’ deep entanglement with classical tradition needs to be considered when evaluating their legacies in the modern-day naming of unearthed objects.

Qin Yang is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Classics and Archaeology, University of Nottingham. She received her PhD from the Australian National University with a thesis on visual forms of classical interpretation in Song China. She currently works on two strands of research: one is about the transformation of classical learning during the Song period; and the other is about Chinese religions in anecdotal sources in comparison with Greek religion, with a focus on dream production and divine epiphanies.