Category: jade
Year: Western Zhou Dynasty
Funeral objects in Guo cemetery in Sanmenxia, Henan Province.
Collection location: It was unearthed from Guo Cemetery in Sanmenxia City, Henan Province in the second half of the 20th century, and is now in Guo Museum in Sanmenxia City, Henan Province.
Size: 2.6 cm in height and 3 cm in shooting diameter.
Description: white jade, jade is warm and moist, and some of it is red. Short figure, round inside and outside, short shots at the upper and lower ends, perfect figure and flat face. Jade cong, also known as "Yuantou" by later generations. Its use has always been considered as a ritual vessel of "respecting the earth with Huangyan". However, due to the large number of jade cong unearthed in Liangzhu culture, this attachment to Confucian classics in the Warring States, Qin and Han Dynasties is not enough. According to its modeling and decorative features, some scholars speculate that it is an instrument for wizards to connect heaven and earth to sacrifice ghosts and gods, with a strong primitive witchcraft color. Its specific use method remains to be verified. Jade cong was still very common in Shang and Zhou Dynasties, but it was rare after the Warring States and Han Dynasties. Its use has also been incorporated into the Confucian etiquette system, becoming a ritual vessel or burial vessel.
It is worth noting that a composite image of god, man and beast was carved in a straight groove on all sides, with a total of 8 images. The single image is about 3 cm high and 4 cm wide, and is carved with line relief combined with thin lines. The man of God, the subject of the design, has an inverted trapezoid face, round eyes, small triangular angles on both sides, a wide nose hooked out by an arc, and two rows of teeth 16 with a long horizontal line and seven short lines engraved on it. The inner layer of the headdress is a hat, engraved with 8 groups of cirrus patterns, the outer layer is a feather crown, and 22 groups of radial feathers composed of double-edged single lines are engraved in the middle. Face and crown are bas-reliefs. The man of God shrugged his upper limbs, stretched his arms horizontally, flexed his hands, waist and lower limbs, and had three claws like birds. Cirrus clouds, arcs and straight lines are densely covered on all limbs. Chest and abdomen bas-relief animal face pattern, oval convex eyelid, bridge forehead. On the angular convex surface of the jade cong, with the angle as the central axis, every two sections are also engraved with simplified patterns of god, man and beast, with the same four corners and symmetrical left and right, forming ***8 groups. Compared with the ornamentation in the vertical groove, this combination of man and beast retains the basic composition, omits the limbs of the god man, distorts the crown, simplifies the face, and adds a pair of exaggerated bird patterns on both sides of the animal face. The simplified combination pattern of man and beast with the angle as the central axis is the basic feature of jade cong decoration in Liangzhu culture. Many Neolithic jade cong were discovered in Liangzhu. Jade material is tremolite jade produced in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. Its texture is impure, mostly cyan and partly yellow, and it is foggy and milky white after soaking in soil. Except for a few cylinders, most of them are made into regular inner circles and outer circles. The valve body is cut regularly, the middle hole is drilled with a pipe, and two layers are often left at the middle joint. Jade cong vary in size, generally short in the early stage and high in the late stage. From the body decorated with animal facial patterns, divided into four groups with four corners as the center. With the different heights of the cong, they are decorated on the cong with the same decoration score. Jade Cong part uses fine Wen Yin to carve the image of "God Man" and Yun Leiwen, and the yinxian line is carved with pointed stone, with firm lines. The jade cong unearthed from the anti-mountain site in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province is the largest jade cong in Liangzhu culture and is known as the King of Cong.
Antique jade cong appeared after the Song Dynasty, but the imitations from the Song Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty were all decorated with popular decorative patterns at that time. From the late Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, fake ancient jade was mostly short-faced jade cong imitating Shang and Zhou Dynasties, and there were also jade cong imitating Liangzhu culture. The antique jade cong of Qianlong period in Qing Dynasty is particularly good. Because of the different processing tools and habits, most fakes are smooth and full of antique meaning, so it is difficult to be realistic. Cong first appeared in Zhou Li and other ancient books. Its shape is explained in "Zhou Li Kao Gong is based on people": "The big clump of stones is two inches, shooting four inches, and it is thick". "Bai Hu Tong Wen Zhi Pian" says: "The theory of the mysterious tooth body in the circle". Zheng Xuan said in the supplement to Zhou Li: "All sides are like the ground". When Xu Kai explained Yan in the Southern Tang Dynasty, he said, "It looks like an octagon with a circle in the middle." . Later, it was called "returning to the truth" in the Southern Song Dynasty, because it was difficult for later generations to distinguish complex entities. According to Xu Shen's "Shuo Wen Jie Zi" in the Eastern Han Dynasty, to Qing Qianlong, "Cong, Rui Yu, eight inches big, like a car?" According to the statement.
According to textual research, Yu Cong was 4000 to 5000 years ago, and its functions and significance are as follows:
It is also called "six vessels" with Yubi, Yugui, Zhang Yu, Huang Yu and Yuhu. As one of the important ritual vessels in ancient China, "Zhou Li" used Cang Bi as a gift from heaven and topaz as a gift from heaven. Jade cong became a ritual vessel for the ruling class to sacrifice the vast land, and also a tool for wizards to communicate with God.
The shape of the jade cong is outside the inner circle (hole), which seems to confirm the truth that "the round wall is like the sky and the square is like the ground". Wizards also often use inferior jade cong, stone cong, or burnt jade cong to suppress evil spirits, collect corpses for anti-corrosion and ward off evil spirits.
Jade cong is also a symbol of power and wealth. The jade cong unearthed from the tomb has the following characteristics: the tomb has high specifications, large scale and rich funerary objects; The owner of the tomb is mostly male; The bushes are often accompanied by walls, and some tombs are sacrificed.
Various phenomena show that Yan style is closely related to primitive religions and rituals, and its owner must belong to the upper class of tribal chiefs and high priests and wizards. It can be seen from the excavation site that the more prominent the owner of the tomb is, the more Yan and Bi there are in the sacrificial objects, which seems to explain everything before his death. It only shows the original identity of the tomb owner and the degree of wealth and power he enjoys in various tribes, and also represents a tomb system in Liangzhu culture period.
The earliest jade cong was discovered in the third phase of Xuejiagang culture in Anhui buried hill, about 5 100 years ago. In the middle and late Neolithic Age, jade cong appeared in a large number in Liangzhu culture in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shi Xia culture in Guangdong and Taosi culture in Shaanxi, especially in Liangzhu culture, where the jade cong was the most developed and the largest number was unearthed.