190 1 year, an Englishman named Stan began his investigation tour in Xinjiang. This time, he found some wooden slips engraved with strange words and exquisite silk fabrics in the south of Taklimakan Desert. ...
Stein's discovery brought Niya, a site buried in quicksand for nearly 2000 years, into public view, and many archaeological excavations in 100 years made it famous. Various fabrics represented by "five stars go out of the East and benefit China" brocade corset; Many Ruwen bamboo slips (inflected, 1 sound); Glass beads from Egypt ... everything has a history behind it, and every cultural relic has a story.
In this issue, the cook will take you into the Niya site in Minfeng County, Hotan District, Xinjiang, and see the exquisite ancient country on the Silk Road ~
Stein's discovery in Niya shocked him, so Niya became the only place for Stein to visit Central Asia every time. He came to Niya four times in his life and took away a lot of precious cultural relics, including a large number of Sanskrit, Balu bamboo slips, coins, paintings, murals, stone carvings and so on.
193 1 February, Stein found a Han bamboo slip during his trip to Niya. Although it is broken, the words on it are still legible: "Han Jing is definitely from Wang Chengshu ..."
The appearance of the word "Chengshu" shows that the content recorded in this Han bamboo slip is a typical "Xiashu" in the Han Dynasty. Simply put, it is a relatively fixed format for superior officials to give orders to lower officials.
Although this sentence is simple, it illustrates three important things.
First of all-the existence of a perfect state is confirmed.
When it comes to a perfect country, we may think of "ghost blowing lights, ancient city", which is mysterious and has priceless treasures buried underground. But artistic creation must come from reality, and there is indeed a perfect country in history.
The second is to confirm the record of the country in the history books.
Many history books have records about the best country. One of the most famous is Han Shu written by Ban Gu.
Through this record, we can know the location of Gyeonggi from Chang 'an, and combine with several other reference objects to judge the general location of Gyeonggi, but the excavation of Han bamboo slips and more cultural relics confirms that the location of Gyeonggi recorded in historical books is correct, and it also gives people a clearer understanding of Gyeonggi, which is here.
Third, Gyeonggi was a small country managed by the central government in the Han Dynasty.
The bamboo slips in the Han Dynasty say that "Jing Wang Jue" wants to do something, which proves that Jing Jue is under the jurisdiction of the Han Dynasty and is a vassal state of the Han Dynasty. And the leader of the country is called "the king".
In the film and television drama, Hu Bayi and Yang Ping went to Jingjue Ancient City to look for the ghost cave clan. They met a strong sandstorm in the Taklimakan desert, fell into a cave and accidentally found a huge grave … ..
What is the actual perfect country like?
From the sentence of "480 households, 3,360 people and 500 soldiers" in the history books, we can know that Gyeonggi is a very, very small country, with only more than 480 households and more than 3,000 people, which may not be as big as a city in the Central Plains at that time.
Taklimakan desert is not suitable for living, and a few oases are a paradise for people to live in. Jingjue people live in one of the oases. After archaeological exploration, a river passes through the city, and people live on both sides of the river. This river is the Niya River.
Rather than a river passing through the city, it is better to say that the elites chose to settle near the water source. In ancient times when there were few water conservancy facilities, being close to rivers and lakes was an absolute way to survive. In all the stories of ancient civilizations in the world, there is a big river.
As can be seen from the site plan, Jingjue country is long and narrow from north to south and narrow from east to west, which is a bit like the shape of a sole.
Archaeologists have found many houses in the ruins, both in the north and in the south. Many residential areas have fences for raising cattle and sheep. There are all kinds of fruit tree remains in the whole site, as well as some manual workshops, which can be used to make pottery, bows and arrows and other daily necessities.
Abundant archaeological data show that "sparrows are small and complete", and they are found in agriculture, animal husbandry and handicrafts, so life should be good. Compared with other places, there is nothing mysterious.
In the 1990s, China and Japan jointly formed an archaeological team to excavate the Niya site, and gained a lot, especially the two tombs discovered and cleaned by 1995, with high specifications. They are named M3 and M8, and M8 is superimposed on M3.
There are rich funerary objects in the tomb, as well as pottery pots engraved with the word "Wang", and the famous brocade bra "Five Stars Out of the East, Benefiting China" also came from this tomb. Although there are no seals and other items directly indicating the identity of the tomb owner, these high-standard funerary objects indicate that the tomb owner is probably one of the kings of the country.
To say that the most representative objects unearthed from the Niya site, silk fabrics can definitely rank first, especially brocade. The basic pieces are all textbook level, representing the highest technology at that time. Because I wrote a detailed article "Five Stars Out of the East, Benefiting China" ("Today's Five Stars Out of the East, Benefiting China")! Why is there such a magical prophecy? ), I won't say it here, let's look at the others.
First of all, say "Long live the imperial concubine's heirs"
This tapestry was unearthed in M3 tomb and overlapped with M8. This kind of tapestry with the words "Long live the descendants of princes" is a wedding tapestry specially woven by the tapestry department of the Han Dynasty for local princes, which should be given to King Jingjue by the central government.
Most tapestries unearthed from Niya site were made in Chengdu, Sichuan during the Han and Jin Dynasties, and this one is no exception.
Why are you sure they are Shu brocade?
In terms of time, Shu Brocade originated in Chengdu, Sichuan during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, with a history of more than 2,000 years, which is the earliest of the four major Brocades. Historically, the sericulture and textile industry in Sichuan was very developed, and the ancient king of Shu was called Can Cong. From the prosperous period, the Han Dynasty was the prosperous period of Shu brocade, and the government set up Jin officials in Chengdu to supervise the weaving of Shu brocade, which had a far-reaching impact, so that Chengdu is still called Jinguan City and Jincheng City.
Brocade is a colorful jacquard fabric, which is woven very thick. Simply put, brocade is different from other silk fabrics. Its colors and patterns are not dyed after weaving, but directly woven with colored threads.
Warp and weft intersect to form cloth. Imagine that if you want to weave a piece of cloth with a width of 20 cm and a length of 20 cm, there are 100 threads per cm. For each weft, you need to separate these 2000 warps up and down, so that they can form an opening and put the weft in. If it is a monochrome line, it will be easy to operate. Anyway, the number of upper and lower threads is the same. Just have an opening. It's easy to knit.
But if you want to weave a 50-cm-wide horse with 150 threads per cm, and it is not monochrome, what should you do if you want to weave a pattern with five colors of threads?
The original brocade was almost 50 cm wide, and there were 170 warp threads per cm, which were divided into five colors: white, blue, red, yellow and green. Because in the Han and Jin Dynasties, the brocade used warp threads to represent flowers, so to weave different patterns, 8500 threads of five colors had to be rearranged every weft.
This arrangement is astronomical, which is difficult for weavers to remember. Even with the advanced pedal jacquard loom and prefabricated flower books, it is still very difficult to make such a brocade. Therefore, there are dozens of silk fabrics, and only brocade is beside the golden characters. Since ancient times, there has been a saying that "an inch of brocade is an inch of gold".
Pedal loom is essentially a loom that displays vertical warp patterns. Before use, it is divided into different groups according to the arrangement order of each weft and warp, and each group is controlled by a pedal, which is called heald. Generally speaking, controlling the background color is called ground integration; The color of the pattern is called heddle.
If there are too many warp combinations, the loom will be particularly long in the longitudinal direction, and the later combination will not be easy to weave, so weaving a loom can't have too many warp combinations, so the patterns of Han brocade will not be too big, and some tapestries will be very big, but if you look carefully, the patterns are all round, usually a few centimeters.
Every more color in the brocade is not an increase in arrangement and combination, but an increase in calculation. So there were not many colors in the brocade at that time. Brocade in three or four colors is quite powerful. Moreover, this kind of brocade, like the "five-star" brocade, has five colors, which is the most vivid in Han brocade, showing its value.
In addition to this brocade, I personally like this brocade, which was unearthed from Tomb 43 1 of Virginia Site. This brocade is made into the shape of a pillow, with two sides upturned and a chicken head at the top, so it is called a cock crow pillow.
Cock-crow pillow is a burial appliance, which is usually placed under the head of the deceased.
The most common tapestries in the Han Dynasty are based on blue and red, which is also reflected in the tapestries unearthed from the Niya site.
In the Han Dynasty, silk thread was basically dyed with plant dyes. Plant dyes use pigments extracted from stems, leaves, fruits, seeds, skins and roots of flowers, grasses and trees as dyes. Ordinary dyed plants will show many colors with some mordants such as alum.
The blue color of Han Dynasty was generally dyed with bluegrass, and anything that could be dyed blue became bluegrass. Red in Han Dynasty was first colored by madder. However, madder is deeply dyed. Zhang Qian went to the Western Regions, brought safflower and gradually improved the dyeing technology. It was not until the early Tang Dynasty that he got a very gorgeous "Zhen Hong".
During the Han and Tang Dynasties, the red brocade produced in Chengdu was very famous. Dunhuang Museum has a document about the fabrics sold by merchants on the Silk Road at that time, which begins with: "Xichuan Brocade, Hongchuan Brocade, Soft Brocade ...". When talking about Shu brocade, we should also emphasize red brocade, which shows the popularity of red brocade.
In the ruins of Niya, the tapestries of "longevity for a long time", "happiness embroidery" and "all the best" are all red.
This auspicious writing method in the official script of the Han Dynasty, combined with flowers and plants such as "Yun Qi" pattern, beast pattern and dogwood, embodies the aesthetics of the people in the Central Plains of the Han Dynasty.
Weavers integrate this aesthetic into silk fabrics and flow to various places through the Silk Road and the ancient tea-horse road. People who get them use them to make clothes, pants, shoes, pillowcases and wallets ... Silk fabrics are in the Central Plains, but this is also their life.
The dry climate in Xinjiang has made many silks buried deep for more than 1000 years and still bright. They are like a key, you can use it to open 1000 years ago.
Although Gyeonggi was a small country at that time, it was a very important stop on the Silk Road.
According to the east-west direction, the Silk Road can be divided into three sections: east, middle and west. Basically, each road section is divided into north and south roads. The perfect country is located in the south section of the middle section of the Silk Road.
The Silk Road is long and the desert is boundless. No matter businessmen, monks or politicians, this road is not easy to walk, and oasis has become the only place where they can rest along the way.
Exquisite is the most important stop, personnel exchange, goods exchange. Therefore, the cultural relics unearthed here show very diverse characteristics.
One of the most important is Luwen bamboo slips.
Luwen is a kind of writing that looks a bit like a tadpole, but it is no longer used. 190 1 year, Stein first discovered this writing in Niya.
Baluwen is an ancient Chinese character, which originated in ancient Kendra (today's South Asian subcontinent, north of Pakistan, Afghanistan) and gradually became popular throughout Central Asia. More than 2200 years ago, with the migration of a series of nationalities here, Baluwen gradually spread eastward. Archaeologists have found Luwen bamboo slips in the northern foot of Kunlun Mountain, the southern foot of Tianshan Mountain and the coast of Lop Nur in Xinjiang, except Niya.
At present, there are at least 700 Cilu bamboo slips found in the Niya site. According to the interpretation of these bamboo slips by cultural relics experts, we can see that these bamboo slips involve social, political, economic, cultural, military and legal aspects. It can be seen that at that time, Cilu language should be one of the daily languages in China. These materials are of great significance to the study of the country's history and cultural life, and the excavation of a large number of Lu bamboo slips is also helpful to the study of the language itself.
Besides Luwen, there is also a very important cultural element-Buddhism.
People in a perfect country believe in Buddhism.
Looking closely at the plan of the Niya site, it is not difficult to find that all the houses and orchards are arranged around a stupa, which is in the middle of the whole site and must be the center of people's life in the country.
There is a saying in the history textbook: The construction of Baita Temple in Luoyang is a sign that Buddhism was introduced into China. Yes, Buddhism was introduced to China as early as the Eastern Han Dynasty. According to the time when the White Horse Temple was built, it is nearly 2000 years ago.
There are two views on the route of Buddhism's introduction into China: land and sea. Land means entering Xinjiang and then spreading to the Central Plains. Therefore, countries like Jingjue Temple will come into contact with Buddhism earlier than people in the Central Plains. When Buddhism first entered the Central Plains, there should be many believers in Jingjue Temple. They built the stupa in the center, and there were many words such as "monk" and "elder" in the unearthed Bolu wooden slips.
In addition to the silk products in the Central Plains, Baluchin in the West, Buddhism and other particularly obvious cultural elements, many cultural relics unearthed from the Niya site are also related to communication.
A large number of glass beads with dragonfly eyes, helmets and shields on clay seals and reliefs from Egypt, and other gods in Greek mythology; Elephant patterns and winged beasts on furniture, boards and murals; Coins from countries along the Silk Road … ..
In the long river of time, Jing Xuan country was not active for a long time. The Western Han Dynasty was friendly with the Han Dynasty and had a good relationship. But in the Eastern Han Dynasty, it was annexed by Shanshan. Later, with the change of river course and environment, the whole Jingjue country was buried underground.
The perfect country in the long river of time is not so mysterious. It is a country with small "aspects". People here believe in Buddhism, farm land, raise cattle and sheep, and make exquisite tools and handicrafts, which are not much different from those in the Central Plains.
Beautiful countryside in the long river of time, with its well-preserved cultural features, is an important reference for studying the settlement form and production situation in Taklimakan area during the Han and Jin Dynasties. It is also an important evidence for exploring the south of the Silk Road, cultural exchanges between the East and the West, and ethnic integration.
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