A sacred way, spirit way, spirit road, spirit path, etc. (, shéndào) is the ornate road leading to a Chinese tomb of a major dignitary. The sacred way is lined on both sides by a succession of statues, pillars, and stelae. The statues along the spirit way depict real and mythical animals, as well as civilian and military officials.
History
Eastern Han Dynasty
Sacred ways were a well-developed feature of tombs by the time of the Eastern Han Dynasty. A traditional burial site of an emperor or a high official of that era would be typically arranged along the north–south axis; the sacred way would lead from the south to the southern gate of the enclosure within which the tomb itself and the associated buildings were located. This layout, with few exceptions, has persisted since then through the entire history of the sacred way.
A characteristic feature of an East Han sacred way were monumental towers (que), which were much larger and more expensive than the statues and stelae. The que were followed by statues of animals, among whom feline-like creatures were prominent: both fairly realistic-looking tigers (long known to Chinese artists) and lions (a Han Dynasty innovation), as well as more fantastic varieties, provided with wings, beards, and/or horns. The feline-based fantastic creatures were known under a variety of names, among which the most common were tianlu, bixie and qilin. As in later dynasties, the creatures were facing the road, and were designed to be primarily viewed from the sides. There is no definitive information about any elephants appearing on Han Dynasty sacred ways; however, it is speculated that an ancient stone elephant (which may have originally been part of a pair) 2 km south of the Eastern Han imperial mausolea near Mangshan (in Luoyang area) may have been associated with those mausolea: the two elephants may have marked the entrance to the mausoleum area.
As on the later sacred ways, the stone animals on the Eastern Han sacred ways must have been followed by human statues, but very few of those have survived. A pair of well-preserved stone officials from that period are now kept at the Temple of Confucius, Qufu.
The last component of the Eastern Han sacred ways, the stelae are believed to be a stone reproduction of wooden slabs, which in the ancient times were placed on both sides of the open grave during the burial. The coffin was lowered into the grave on ropes passed through holes made in each slab. After the burial, those wooden slabs would be placed upright on top of the tomb, with appropriate text written on them. In reminder of that old custom, early sacred way stelae have a round hole in the middle of their upper parts.
Southern Dynasties
The fall of the Han Empire was followed by a period of upheaval, when China was divided between a number of short-lived Southern and Northern Dynasties. The Wei and Western Jin rulers (3rd century AD) seemed to have frowned upon funeral art extravagance of the fallen Han Dynasty, generally shunning above-ground statuary at their tomb sites. Literary sources attest to the resumption of the sacred way construction already by the time of the Eastern Jin (4th century AD), but the surviving sacred way statuary from the "period of disunion" pertains almost exclusively to the last four of the six Southern Dynasties: Liu Song, Southern Qi, Liang and Chen, which were usually centered around Jiankang (today's Nanjing). Around thirty of their tomb statuary groups, in various degrees of preservation, are known to modern researchers. They are located primarily in the eastern and southeastern suburbs of Nanjing (Qixia and Jiangning Districts) and in Danyang, farther east.
The Southern Dynasties regimes, with their smaller economic base than the mighty Han, did not create as numerous and as grandiose funeral ensembles as the Qin and Han. The use of sacred ways under these dynasties was limited to emperors and their close relatives. The new Buddhist and Daoist currents in the spiritual life of south China greatly influenced the art of sculpture as well. In the words of the art historian Ann Paludan, in Daoism-influenced art, "Han emphasis on spatial relationships, forms, and limits was rejected in favour of flowing lines suggesting flexibility, a lack of clear-cut boundaries, and endless motion". The newly reinterpreted feng shui principles called more attention to orienting the tomb with respect to the terrain than to the strict north–south axis.