COURT INSTITUTIONS OF THE WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY REFLECTED IN THE INSCRIPTION ON THE XIAOYU-DING-CAULDRON

摘要

The Xiaoyu-Ding-Cauldron was unearthed during the first years ofDaoguang,Emperor of the Qing Dynasty,at Li village of QishanCounty, Shanxi Province.The cauldron itself disappeared in the period of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom(Taiping Tianguo).The current copy of theinscription is the only one preserved. The inscription on the cauldron consists of 400 characters,it is one of the longest texts of those dating to the early period of the Westernzhou Dynasty.Since the text is fragmentary and no joining texts remain,the text can not be read completely.The inscription was first mentioned by Guo Moruo in Research on the Metal Inscriptions of the Zhou Dynasty.Then Chen Mengjia reconstructed the inscription in the 1950＇s in his"Dating on the Bronze Vases of the Western Zhou Dynasty" and further