The epitaph is a square bluestone engraved with words. This thin stone describes the lineage, life experience, spouse and children of the deceased, and the time and place of burial, and then buried in the tomb of the deceased. A person's long and brilliant life, a person's indifferent and mediocre life, have been condensed into a transparent film and displayed here. People who have pointed out the mountains and rivers, people who have made history shine, literati who have flourished their pens and given birth to pearls, warriors who have lost their heads, monks who fast and recite Buddha, or Taoist priests who travel around the world have all entered the tunnel of time in one form, and Qian Qian's thousands of Tang Zhizhai are their ultimate destination. These stone records were collected by Zhang Fang from all over the country, mainly from Luoyang. Luoyang, the ancient capital of the 13th Dynasty, is a place of outstanding people. Mangshan Mountain, north of the city, stretches from east to west 100 kilometers. It is magnificent and faces each other from afar, with thick soil and low water, which is suitable for funeral. Therefore, all the dignitaries and wealthy businessmen in the past dynasties thought Mangshan was a treasure trove of geomantic omen, and even people far away in Jiangbei told future generations to bury North Mangshan not far away. Therefore, there is a folk saying that "he was born in Suzhou and Hangzhou and was buried in Beimang", so that "the hill of Beimang is full of Luoyang people's old graves" (see Wang Jian's Journey to Beimang).
It is also the tombs of these rich people that lead to the prevalence of grave robbery. Grave robbers are more important than robbing sacrificial objects, while heavy stones are neglected and lost to the people. At the foot of Mangshan Mountain, the excavated stones were abandoned in Tian She. After Zhang Fang saw it, he searched widely, dug up land to build a village and kept it properly. Because he reached an agreement with Yu Youren in advance to return and return to Zhang, thousands of villages became the most concentrated places in the country. The records of the Tang Dynasty collected in Qiantang Zhizhai started from martial arts and Zhenguan, from the prosperous Tang Dynasty to the middle Tang Dynasty to the late Tang Dynasty, including Wu Zetian's Gaiyuan and posthumous title of An Lushan. The main identities of the Volunteers are: a minister with great personality, an emperor who cracked the land, a governor who dominated the party, a satrap who guarded the land, and humble officials who participated in Cao Mo; There are also Chu Shi celebrities who visit the park, temple cave owners who know nothing about Zen Buddhism, who live a miserable life in the inner palace and die of Gong E talented women whose names are unknown. These epitaphs record all kinds of people and their social activities, so they can be regarded as a stone-carved Tang book. These words provided us with extremely rare and precious materials for studying the social, political, economic, military, cultural and diplomatic situation at that time, and played an important role in proving, correcting and supplementing history.
It is said that "Qian Tang Zhi Zhai" is a stone-carved Tang book, which records a large number of historical facts in politics, economy, culture and diplomacy during the 300 years of the Tang Dynasty. The details of these historical facts have been forgotten by the history, and the only historical records are only rough descriptions. Historical records are vertical and sketchy, while epitaphs are horizontal, describing these facts in detail. These Tang people who have crossed the tunnel for more than a thousand years reappear in front of us, making us feel that they are human beings, talking to our wise ancestors, learning from history, understanding the past and enlightening the future. Therefore, Qiantang Zhizhai is an encyclopedia. Interested friends may wish to have a look at the accounts of peasant uprisings in the Tang Dynasty. The Epitaph of the Second Year of Cui Fang's Victory (A.D. 699) records the peasant uprising led by Chen Shuozhen, a heroine (now Jiande, Zhejiang Province), in the fourth year of Yonghui (A.D. 653) against the cruel officials' oppression. In the third year of Fang Tianbao (AD 744), Gao Pei's Epitaph recorded the "pirate" uprising in Yongjia County (now Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province) that year. Both the Epitaph of Wang Cao's Heir Gao Li in the 15th year of Zhenyuan (AD 799) and the Epitaph of Chen Jun in the 20th year of Zhenyuan (AD 804) record their participation in suppressing the Yuan Chao Uprising. These records provide rare evidence for historical records and are of great help to us in understanding the scope, scale and suppression of peasant uprising activities after the middle of the Tang Dynasty. The owner of this epitaph in the upper left of Cui's epitaph in Room 5 is a three-Korean in Liaodong (that is, a Korean). His grandfather was the secretariat of Pyongyang, and later Quannan was born in the Tang Dynasty, merged into an official, and was buried in Beimang, Luoyang. This epitaph is very interesting for understanding the diplomacy and employment system of the Tang Dynasty. You might as well take a closer look.
It can also be seen from these Tibetan records that the Tang government monopolized salt, tea and wine, and the land equalization system gradually collapsed. For example, The Epitaph of Sun Gongyi in Room 8 (AD 85 1 year) recorded the economic depression, barren land and people's displacement in Zhou Mu during Huichang period, as well as Sun Gongyi's measures to promote agriculture, reduce farmers' burden and promote local agricultural development. In addition, the Epitaph of Wang Debiao in the 2nd year of Shengli (AD 699) in Room 3, the Epitaph of Peitong in the 21st year of Kaiyuan (AD 733) in Room 5, the Epitaph of Shouyang in the 4th year of Tianbao (AD 745) in Room 3, and the Epitaph of Zhao Jie in Jinzhou, No.3, recorded the Tang Dynasty and a few frontier people in China respectively. Another example is the epitaph of Zhang Zunshi in the ninth year of Kaiyuan (AD 72 1) and the epitaph of Hou in the sixth year of Kaiyuan (AD 7 18). We can also see the widespread popularity of Buddhism and Taoism in the Tang Dynasty and the struggle between them. If readers are interested in understanding the rise and fall of the gentry in the Tang Dynasty, the origin of surnames, the changes of place names, nature and traffic, it is not difficult to get a glimpse from these epitaphs. To sum up, the collection of thousands of records of Tang Zhizhai is of great value for us to understand the political, economic and cultural situation of the Tang Dynasty in the past 300 years.
Friends who are interested in calligraphy can appreciate the beauty brought by the exquisite calligraphy art in the Tang Dynasty from these dazzling stones, from which we can see the profoundness of our unique calligraphy art in China. However, due to the long history and the passage of time, many beautiful arts no longer reappear, and future generations can't have a comprehensive understanding of these lost things, such as calligraphy art. We can only see most of them, but we can't see many things in the development process. Today, the calligraphy art of these Tang Dynasty epitaphs makes us feel refreshed. "When you become famous, your bones will wither." Every calligraphy art handed down from later generations is a masterpiece of predecessors. The calligraphy art displayed here shows us the whole process of the evolution of calligraphy art in Tang Dynasty. She can not only break many people's cognitive habits of calligraphy in the Tang Dynasty, but also put forward many new propositions to let us know about calligraphy and culture in the Tang Dynasty. In addition, in CaveNo. 15, which is dedicated to calligraphy, painting and stone carvings, you can also see couplets written by Mi Fei in Song Dynasty, sharp axes written by Wang Duo in Ming and Qing Dynasties, screen fans and couplets written by Wang Hong, Liu Yong, Chen Hongshou and Li in Qing Dynasty, and couplets and single stone carvings written by Zhang, Dai Chuanxian. 1 1 Kiln also has a long volume of Dian Lun Thesis written by Dong Qichang in Ming Dynasty, and a stone carving of Immortality Preface written by Jiang Zhongzheng, written by He Yao, and named by many senior Kuomintang officials and social dignitaries to celebrate Zhang Fang's 70th birthday. Other tombstones, such as Zhao Dan, the general of Xuanwu in Yuan Dynasty, are also very precious.
As for painting, although few, they are all rare and good structures. The eleventh room is embedded with the Buddhist story of Han Dynasty line carving, and the fifteenth room is embedded with the relief of the dream scene of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty. There are four screens of rain, yin and yang bamboo posture, one of the eight eccentrics in Yangzhou, and a single bamboo painting stone carving "Xing". The west wall of the third patio is embedded with grass pictures drawn by Wang Chunqian, an official introduced by Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty, all of which are vivid and lifelike. In particular, Zheng Banqiao, one of the Eight Eccentrics in Yangzhou, painted a bamboo painting, which is graceful and slim, with good form and spirit. When we stood in front of the stone carving, we seemed to feel the dense phoenix tails, thin shadows and refreshing brushstrokes, which attracted the infinite charm of famous artists at once.