The pattern on the body, repeated in small rectangular units, called the waffle pattern, appears on a covered ding from tomb no. 13 at Shangmacun, Hou Ma in Shanxi province. Other objects in the same tomb can be dated to the middle of the sixth century B.C., George W. Weber, Jr., The Ornaments of Late Chou Bronzes, 1973, pp. 152-154. The addition of the raised stippling that resembles small beads scattered over the surface is believed to have occurred at a slightly later date, at the end of the sixth and beginning of the fifth century. A covered ding of the latter type is published in, Shang Zhou yiqi tongkao (The Bronzes of Shang and Zhou), Beijing, 1941, no. 107. The present ding, though missing its cover is a fine example of this type

Compare also the slightly smaller but almost identical ding in the collection of Willem van Heusden, illustrated by him in Ancient Chinese Bronzes of the Shang and Chou Dynasties, Tokyo, 1952, pl. XXVIII