Origin of Denison's Chinese Puppets

Daniel Sheets Dye (Class of 1907) and family donated the collection of Chinese Shadow puppets to Denison University in 1967.  The puppets were collected in Chengtu, China during his Baptist missions.  According to his communications, the puppets were costly and had been used to tell stories of the Three Kingdoms, a Chinese historical novel written by Luo Guanzhong in the 14th century, based upon events in the turbulent years near the end of the Chinese Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms Era.  Dye purchased a partial set because "modern silver screen drove these puppets off the road."  His selections date to the late 19th - early 20th century.

There are factual and legendary accounts of when and how shadow puppet theater emerged.  The popular opinion of its origin involves a famous story from the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE).  The tale describes how Emperor Wu was saddened over the death of his favorite concubine and to comfort him, a court magician made the image of the concubine appear from behind a curtain through the use of shadows and light.  Scholars stress that this unlikely origin of shadow theater, and suggest that more likely predecessor for shadow puppet theater occured during the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE).  During the Tang, the art of storytelling was combined with visual components to aid in illustrative narrative.  Paper-cuts were pasted on lanterns, screens, and windows with light illuminating the images from behind.  These images led many researchers to see them as a possible inspiration for shadow puppets.  The first recorded evidence of shadow puppetry in China dates to the Song dynasty (960-1279 CE).  The Mengliang Lu ("A Record of the Millet Dream") was written about the souther Song capital and gives a descriptive account of shadow theatre.  The earliest Chinese shadow puppets know from the Song dynasty are made of paper.