The ship coffin of the Warring States Period

The ship coffin of the Warring States Period

Boat coffin burial is a popular funeral custom of Bashu people in ancient times. It is also a unique funeral custom of some ancient Chinese people who live near the water and are good at boating. In the vast area to the south of the Yangtze River in China, rivers are crisscross and convenient for boating. Boating is an indispensable means of transportation for people living there to engage in production and life. People are good at using boats when they are alive, and it is natural to bury them when they die. However, there were few people who used boat coffins for burial in the pre Qin period. Only Bashu area was the area where boat coffins were widely used in ancient China (see Sichuan Museum's a brief introduction to ancient tombs in Sichuan, archaeology, 1959, issue 8). This is a problem worthy of further study and discussion. The following is a discussion on the funeral custom of ancient Bashu people and its cultural connotation.

Unearthed ship coffin

Ship coffin tomb

In 1987, Sichuan Cultural Relics archaeologists found a boat coffin tomb at the residential building site of Qingyang District in Chengdu City, and unearthed a copper pot with exquisite decorative patterns, on which there was a vivid design of feathered boating (see Zhou ertai's "explanation of bronze pot with Warring States feathered crane decorative patterns unearthed in Chengdu", published in "Chengdu cultural relics" (issue 1, 1988).

At the end of February 2013, at the construction site of Qingbaijiang section of the east section of the Second Ring Expressway in Chengdu, a group of boat coffin tombs of the middle Warring States period was found. It was the first time in Qingbaijiang about 2400 years ago.

Precious historical materials

This discovery provides valuable historical data for the study of the production and living customs of ancient Shu people. The patterns of bronze drums unearthed from the Warring States period to the Han Dynasty by Yuren are common in southwest minority areas. For example, the patterns of Yuren rowing on the bronze drums unearthed in Guangnan area of Yunnan Province show that all the people on the boats are naked, some of them are wearing crowns, and a naked person sits on a well decorated wooden frame in a prominent part of the cabin (see the atlas of bronze drums in Yunnan Museum collection, Yunnan People's publishing house, 1959) Version).

Send soul by boat

According to French scholar v. goloubw, this kind of feathered boating pattern expresses the ceremony of "sending souls by boat", which is similar to the "golden boat" used by dayakes in Southeast Asia to pass the dead to heaven (see v. goloubw's Bronze Age in Tokyo and Northern Annan, translated by Liu Xuehong, published in the translation of National Archaeology, ancient China) (edited and printed by Dai Tonggu Research Association). The "golden boat" used by the dayacs to "lead souls" is also decorated with the head and tail of rhinoceros, so as to send the "dead soul" to the "Kingdom of heaven" in the sea of clouds ([FA] Bao Kelan's "reading the Southeast Asian bronze drum research", translated by Wang Ningsheng, published in the translation of ethnic Archaeology Series 1, 1979 edition, P. 58). The feather (bird) man on board was a participant in the ceremony. As the ancient bronze drum is regarded as a deity among the southwest ethnic minorities, which has the function of communication between man and God, it is not difficult to understand that the design of "sending soul" by boat appears on the bronze drum. It can be inferred that the purpose of Ba people's coffin burial was to deliver souls.

Boat carrying soul

In this regard, Mr. Shi Zhongjian, a senior scholar, had the following statement: "the purpose of [Ba people] using boats as burial utensils is to use boats and waterways to send people's souls back to their hometown." (Shi Zhongjian's research on hanging coffin burial is attached with a discussion on hanging coffin burial and boat coffin burial, published in the first issue of national treatise, 1981). Because of the lack of Archaeology and documents, it is difficult to determine where the hometown of Ba people is. However, the idea of sending the soul back to the imaginary hometown is fully reflected in the fact that ships are used as burial utensils. Mr. Luo Kaiyu once pointed out that the popularity of boat coffin burial in Shu is related to the Shu People's consciousness of sending souls along the waterway (see Luo Kaiyu's Chinese funeral and culture, Hainan people's publishing house, 1988) This is very reasonable. In addition, the geographical location of "Tianpeng gate of Wenshan mountain" mentioned in the ancient literature "the chronicle of the king of Shu" is equivalent to that near the Xuankou of Wenchuan, Sichuan Province (see Huo Wei and Huang Wei's Sichuan funeral culture, Sichuan people's publishing house, 1992, P. 110). There are two peaks towering against each other, and the Minjiang River flows through it. Without boats, it is obviously difficult to cross the torrential river and return to our hometown to share with our ancestors Soul reunion. It is worth noting that the towering mountains were often regarded as the road to heaven by the ancients, while the boat coffin burial of Shu people was actually a "boat carrying soul" (ditto, P. 109), and its religious and funeral customs were clearly revealed here.

A study of Customs

Funeral customs

The origin of funeral custom comes from the belief of "immortal soul" and ancestor worship. Before that, after people died, people often abandoned their bodies in the wild. This is just like what is said in the biography of the book of changes: "in ancient times, those who were buried in thick clothes were paid, while those who were buried in the wild were not sealed or planted, and there were countless funeral periods.". When the concept of soul came into being, people placed corpses according to various ideas about the relationship between soul and corpse, as well as the fantasy about the life of soul in the underworld, resulting in a variety of burial methods and funeral ceremonies. As for what kind of burial style should be adopted to dispose the corpse and settle the soul, different nationalities and different cultural circles can be said to be quite different, thus forming a colorful funeral cultural characteristics. In the eyes of the ancients, soul and body are two interdependent and independent entities.

Send soul

Different from the customs of the Han ancestors in the Central Plains in the same period, "soul sending" is an important part of the funeral customs of the ancestors in Bashu. According to the book of the king of Shu, "Li Bing took the Qin Dynasty as the governor of Shu, and called Wenshan Tianpeng que, named Tianpeng gate. The dead of the clouds have heard of it, and the ghosts and spirits have seen it It seems absurd and absurd today, but it really existed in the eyes of Shu people at that time. Therefore, it is widely spread in Shu that the dead had to pass through Tianpeng gate, so that the ghosts and spirits were often seen. From one side, it reflects that there is a strong sense of soul sending in Shu people.

Funeral custom

Where did the ancestors of the Shu people intend to send their souls? According to the literature, the Tianpeng gate, which the dead of the Shu people must pass through, is equivalent to the mountainous area on the western edge of the Chengdu Plain and the Northwest Sichuan Plateau on the upper reaches of the Minjiang River. This is the birthplace of the ancestors of the Shu people mentioned in the literature. This coincidence should be a clear reflection of the fact that Shu people sent the dead to the birthplace of their ancestors. In addition, according to some ethnological investigation data, there is also a burial custom of sending the soul of the dead to the birthplace of their ancestors in some other ethnic groups in Southwest China. For example, after the death of an adult, the Naxi people in Yongning, Yunnan, not only cremate their bodies, but also send their souls to the places where their ancestors lived in the past to reunite with their ancestors (see witchcraft and witchcraft by song Zhaolin, Sichuan people's publishing house, 1989). The reason for this is that the ancients believed that before life, they had to live together with the clan or family members, and after death, they had to be reunited with the flesh and blood, so that the dead could rest in peace and not become evil spirits to disturb the normal life of the living. Because of this, it has become an important content and activity in some national funeral rites to send the dead to their ancestors' residence. Generally speaking, the vehicle of "soul sending" is the ship coffin carrying the dead body. For example, in zhenkang, Gengma and other places of Yunnan Province, the kilong people (now renamed De'ang people) used a thick trunk to cut the coffin into two parts, and then cut the middle into a single coffin. Its shape is similar to the trough shaped boat coffin used in ancient Shu People's funerals. The meaning of "coffin" in the language of benglong nationality is "boat", which is a tool for the dead to cross the river in the underworld.

vehicle

Coincidentally, in the ancient funeral consciousness and ceremony of Naxi people, it is necessary to cross the river by boat to send the soul of the dead to the birthplace of their ancestors. This point is still left behind in some branches of Naxi nationality in Yunnan. For example, once the Naxi people in Lijiang, Yunnan Province have a funeral, they often put a little silver in the mouth of the dead as the boat fare for the dead to cross the river in the underworld, in case they will be lost in the middle of the river and not be able to live beyond the dead (see "Naxi social history survey", Yunnan Ethnic Publishing House, 1983). These vivid ethnographic materials provide us with useful enlightenment when we interpret the cultural connotation of ancient Bashu people's ship coffin burial customs.

Similar to the ethnographic records mentioned above, the burial utensils of ancient Bashu people used boat coffins to provide transportation for the souls of the dead to reach their ancestors' hometown.

It is closely related to life customs

The appearance and popularity of boat coffin burial in ancient Bashu area is closely related to the production and living customs of Bashu ancestors. Judging from the natural environment on which people depend for a living, Sichuan Basin is densely populated with rivers and streams. The ancestors of Bashu mainly used rivers as transportation lines, which had to rely on boats. Therefore, Bashu was one of the main areas where canoes were used in ancient China. In the ancient historical legends recorded in the literature, there are records about the ancestors of Bashu who lived near the water and were good at boating. For example, the biography of Nanman in the later Han Dynasty quoted the records in Shiben: "Bajun and nanjunman originally had five surnames: Ba, fan, Qin, Xiang and Zheng. All of them come from Wu Luo and Zhong Li mountain Without a ruler, all things are ghosts and gods. It is a total of throwing arrows in the cave, about to be able to, as king. All of them sighed. also

Let each of you take a boat. If you can float, you will be king. Yu's surname is known as Shen, and he is only responsible for his own affairs. Because we stand together, it is for you. It's a boat from Yishui to Yanyang. " This legend is not without mythological color, but the stories of "the earth boat can float" and "the king" leading his troops to migrate along the waterway by "the earth boat" show that Ba can float

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