Jessica Rawson, in the Catalogue for the exhibition, Chinese Jade from the Neolithic to the Qing, London, 1995, p.368, discusses the tradition of the use of the sheep or ram, and some other creatures, as auspicious emblems. The ram is linked with peace, prosperity and filial piety. When carved in stone for Spirit Roads, rams represented incorruptibility and stood in lieu of figures of civil officials. It seems likely that jade rams combine two traditions. On the one hand they represent, as do the figures in tombs, the role of sheep in daily life, and on the other, they embody the auspicious associations of the rams on Spirit Roads

For a later steatite ram of smaller size, seated on a rectangular base, found in the Tang period tomb of Li Cun in Yanshi, Henan province, see Jessica Rawson, op. cit., p. 356, fig. 9