The ancient cliff tombs before the Ming Dynasty are the national key cultural relics protection units. Main concentration
hanging coffin
In Matangba and Suma Bay. It is characterized by putting the coffin of the deceased on the cliff. * * * There are 265 hanging coffins, which is the largest and most concentrated place in the door at present. The height of the coffin is generally from 10 m to 50 m, and the highest is 100 m. Coffin placement method: one is wooden pile type, that is, 2 ~ 3 holes are drilled on the cliff and wedged into wooden piles to support the coffin; The second type is digging holes, that is, digging horizontal holes or vertical holes in the rock wall to hold coffins; The third is to use the gap between natural caves and rock walls to hold coffins. The coffin head is big and the tail is small, mostly made of whole wood, which is fixed with snap buttons and tenons. Buried with straight limbs on the back, wrapped in linen and placed on both sides of the feet, the number of funerary objects is uncertain, including ceramics, wood and bamboo, iron and hemp fabrics, among which hemp fabrics are the most, with a small amount of silk fabrics. The clan of hanging coffin burial is controversial in academic circles, among which there are Bo people and modern people. Its age, the upper limit is unknown, and the lower limit is the Ming Dynasty.
Matangba's "Bo people hanging coffins" is located in Gongxian county, and it was named after "Bo people hanging coffins in different places" in Gongxian annals. As early as 1956, it was listed as a provincial key cultural relics protection unit, and now it is a national key cultural relics protection unit. Gelao people's hanging coffins are called the first in the world and the first in Bashu. Hanging coffin burial is a kind of burial system of ancient ethnic minorities. Gongxian and Xingwen, bordering Yunnan, are the hinterland of ancient southwest Yi. When Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty opened Yelang and made Qianwei a county, it belonged to Dao County.
There were Bo people and other ethnic minorities living here in the past dynasties, so many hanging coffins were left behind, but now the most concentrated places are Matangba in Luobiao Township and Sumawan in Gongxian County. The Matangba in Gongxian County is long and narrow from north to south, with towering peaks on both sides. Between steep caves, many coffins are semi-suspended on the cliff, and the hanging coffins on the cliff exceed 160. There are 48 hanging coffins on the steep limestone wall of Sumawan, Cao Ying Township, which is more than 0/0 km away from Matangba/KLOC-. Hanging coffins are mostly 26 to 50 meters above the ground, and the highest is 100 meters. There are many red painted murals on the cliff wall of the hanging coffin, which are rich in content, rough in lines, concise in composition and lifelike in image. Hanging coffins and rock paintings have important historical and ornamental values, and are also physical materials for studying the historical development of ethnic minorities in southern Sichuan. It has become the focus of the world's hanging coffin burial researchers, attracting countless tourists. This scenic spot is full of ancient and mysterious colors.
The core part of the hanging coffin of Bo people in Gongxian County. Matangba, southwest of Luobiao Town, Gongxian County. The dam is 300-500m wide from east to west and about1000m long from north to south. The crab stream passes through the dam, and 2 1 the rolling cliffs confront each other from east to west. Hanging coffins are distributed on this precipice. There are 223 coffins, mainly hanging coffins with wooden stakes. The height of the coffin is generally 20 ~ 60 meters, and the height is above 100 meters. There are more than 200 pile holes and red lacquer rock paintings as dense as bees' eyes on the cliff. Rock paintings are rich in content, including riding and shooting, dancing, acrobatics and various animals, weapons and geometric figures. The image is simple and vivid. There are similar rock paintings in other hanging coffin relics. The hanging coffins of Matangba are relatively concentrated in coffin shops, lion rocks, nine lanterns and big holes. Deng Yanjia, Sanxian Cave, Pearl Umbrella, Eagle Rock.
1935, American missionary Ge was very interested in China's rich funeral culture. He found a very strange funeral custom near Gongxian, Sichuan, China, and he couldn't wait to start his journey. Although the difficulties and obstacles along the way almost cost the American his life, when he really came to the cliff in Gongxian County, he still felt very glad that you came. Ge Hanwei was stunned by his discovery-this is the hanging coffin. The hanging coffins in Gongxian county include almost all types of hanging coffins in the world. This is the first time that Gongxian hanging coffin was discovered by the world, which immediately aroused great interest of scholars. In the 1940s, 1970s and 1980s, until the early 20th century, groups of scientists came here to solve this eternal problem. Scientists call the tribes in the hanging coffins here Bo people. They want to know where these Bo people went and what caused their descendants to give up their funeral habits. Is this tribe integrated with other ethnic groups, or is it completely extinct?
Matangba is a quiet mountain village, located in the southwest corner of Gongxian County, Sichuan Province. Few outsiders have been here for decades, but at the end of 2 1 century, a major news broke out here. What two old people in the mountains inadvertently said caused an earth-shattering shock in the world of archaeology and history.
The two old people showed their genealogy and said that they were descendants of the Gelao nationality in the hanging coffin in Gongxian County. So how much do these people know about their ancestors? Can the puzzle that has puzzled scientists for many years be solved?
These simple old people don't know how much shock their casual words will bring to China and even the world scientific community. The lifestyle of these people is actually no different from that of others in the village. How credible is the genealogy in their hands?
Zeng Shuixiang, the founder of Hanging Coffin Museum, is one of the experts who studied hanging coffins earlier in China. He made a special trip to the cemetery near Matangba, where he successfully found the names of five or six ancestors recorded in the genealogy of the two old people, which confirmed the authenticity of their genealogy, but at the same time it also showed that the family had been burying in the ground for nearly a hundred years.
The genealogy in the hands of the two old people can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty at the earliest, but according to historical records, the hanging coffin Gelao people were at odds with the rulers at that time in the Tang Dynasty.
Chen Mingfang of Sichuan University for Nationalities is one of the most authoritative scientists studying hanging coffins in China. As early as the 1970s, she embarked on the road of studying hanging coffins. After more than 20 years of research, she believes that as early as 65,438+0,000 years ago in the Tang Dynasty, Bo people had been hit hard. The Tang Dynasty is one of the most prosperous dynasties in China's history, and its science, technology, culture and military have all developed to an unprecedented height. Many historical data prove that the rulers of the Tang Dynasty used troops against the Bo people in Sichuan many times. So, did Bo people suffer genocide in the Tang Dynasty?
In the 1970s, at the initiative of many scientists, the government began the first official excavation of Gongxian hanging coffins since the founding of the People's Republic of China. During this excavation, scientists found that Bo people lived frugally, and most hanging coffins contained only a small amount of funerary objects.
But one of the porcelain bowls caught Zeng Shuixiang's attention.
Archaeologists are very happy because the blue and white porcelain bowl is a kind of evidence that can determine the age. Due to the need for special firing technology, it was not until the middle of the Ming Dynasty and the early years of Chenghua that the so-called blue-and-white tribute gradually appeared in the official kiln, and it did not flow into the people until at least 30 or 40 years later. If this blue-and-white porcelain bowl was really made in the Ming Dynasty, then the history of the hanging coffin can be determined, at least after the bowl was burned, which means that the people of Bohai could not have died out in the Tang Dynasty, and the history of hanging coffins in China lasted at least until the Ming Dynasty. In order to confirm their conclusion, scientists sent these blue and white porcelain bowls to Jingdezhen and dated them in Yuan and Song Dynasties. By cleaning up the cultural relics unearthed in the hanging coffin, scientists discovered one thing. A large number of cultural relics came from the feudal rulers of the Ming Dynasty, and all of them came to an abrupt end during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty. Why?
By reading a large number of historical books, Chen Mingfang found that during the Wanli period, the power of Bohai State grew stronger and the contradiction with the central dynasty of Ming Dynasty deepened gradually.
According to historical records, the feudal rulers of the Ming Dynasty attacked Bohai several times. Although the soldiers of the Ming Dynasty were stronger and better armed than Ma Zhuang, they did not take the slightest advantage in several battles with the Bohai people. Scientists in the field of history and archaeology in China have visited the military relics left by Bo people countless times. In a place called Jiudeng, there are still more than a dozen hanging coffins on the mountain, but it is also one of the most important military bases of this tribe.
The intersection here is secret and the interior is open, which is a typical feature of Bo military base. Most historians believe that if there were no surrendered Bohai people to lead the way, the troops of the feudal rulers of the Ming Dynasty would suffer heavy losses here.
According to historical records, at that time, the Ming Dynasty mobilized the troops of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces and surrounded the Miao people's shanzhai, so tens of thousands of Miao people were faced with two choices, either to fight to the death with their enemies ten times their own, and put their ancestors' coffins here; Either accept the call-up of the Ming army or surrender with humiliation.
Legend has it that the debate among Bo people was held in this cave, and hundreds of herdsmen held their own opinions and discussed it here for two days and two nights.
At that time, half of the more than 600 bloggers' shanzhai chose to surrender to the Ming army. What fate did they choose? Is it by this humiliating method that brave and good at fighting Bo people leave their descendants?
According to historical records, no one who surrendered at that time was spared, and the number of people killed almost reached half of the total number of people in this tribe. Almost every blogger's family has relatives or friends killed.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Cultural Relics Bureau of Yibin City, Sichuan Province carried out a rescue excavation of the hanging coffins in Gongxian County, and this time they got a very unexpected harvest.
At this time, the experts found an obvious problem. The descendants of the Gelao nationality are all surnamed He, while their legendary ancestor, Ha Shixiong, is surnamed Ha. Will this prove the genealogy of those families wrong? The old man He Tiquan thinks that his genealogy can never be wrong, because just a few decades ago, his father went to hang coffins to worship his ancestors. So if this family is really descended from Bo people in the hanging coffins, is this the same reason that they stopped placing hanging coffins? According to the old man He Tiquan, his family changed his surname twice, which means that this coffin-hanging tribe was devastated twice in a row. Is it true?/You don't say.
In May, 2004, Zeng Shuixiang accidentally found a simple Gelao lacquer bowl while sorting out the funerary objects of a hanging coffin. At the bottom of the bowl, he saw several clear Chinese characters-"He", which is undoubtedly the name of the owner of the hanging coffin, but these three words also happened to appear in the genealogy of the old man He Tiquan at the same time, which just confirmed that He's really an uncle. The news soon reached the home of Hematangba. He Tiquan was ecstatic and climbed the cliff to worship his ancestors.
At the end of the 20th century, not far from Gongxian County, people discovered the Pingman Monument set up by the Ming Dynasty. The handwriting on the monument is vague, but its general idea is almost illegible. This is a monument erected by the Ming Dynasty to brag about the destruction of Bohai State. In order to confirm the words on the tablet, Zeng Shuixiang and Chen Mingfang and others came to the last bloody battle place of two civilizations, which seemed to be a castle where eagles could not fly.
The late Ming Dynasty was an era of great development of science and technology in the central dynasty. People began to pay attention to the development of science and technology, and published a large number of books in this field. For example, during this period, craftsmen tried to combine coal with piston bellows for the first time, which obtained unprecedented high temperature and greatly improved the combat effectiveness of the army. So relying on this technological advantage, will the Ming army fall?
According to expert appraisal, the smelting technology of Bo people was very low at that time. They have just developed from bronze to iron, and the control of furnace temperature and raw materials has not been fully mastered.
This is a confrontation between sword and gunpowder in ancient and modern times. In fact, the ending has long been doomed. No matter how brave the Bo people are, the heroes in the cold weapon era can never beat the Ming army equipped with artillery.
In this way, the Ming army relied on science and technology to lead and finally won a cruel victory.
With the passage of time, all that should be forgotten has been forgotten, and only the epic poems of Bo people are still being recited. How are the hanging coffins placed, and how did the Bo people, the tribe that eventually disappeared, rise? These puzzles are still unsolved.