Opening words:
In the middle of the Southern Song Dynasty, Luo Bi's "History of the Road" volume IV "Shushan Clan" article, his son Luo Ping Zhuyun: "In the second year of Yongming (484 AD), Xiao Jian stabbed Yi, ruled the garden of Jiangnan, chiseled stone tombs, and there was no coffin. Thousands of kinds of bronze ware, jade dust three buckets, tens of thousands of golden silkworm snakes, sand for Fu, mercury for the pool, treasures and play are unknown, there are seal clouds: the tomb of the silkworm cong clan. The "Sichuan Tongzhi" quoted the "Book of Southern Qi" records, "In the ninth year of southern Qi Yongming (490 AD), in the reclamation area of Guanghan County, not only a huge and peculiar bronze vessel was found, it was 5 feet high, 4 feet around it, and there were 9 holes on each side. He also found a jade seal, which was 8 minutes square on the wall, with a nose on it, and wen said that the true emperor." This is the earliest record of bronzes, jades, and writings found in the Guanghan Dynasty. According to the literature records and collections of physical objects in the Palace Museum and other places in Beijing, at the latest in the Ming Dynasty five or six hundred years ago, the scholar class played with and collected the ancient Shu culture Sanxing jade. More than 200 years ago in the Qing Dynasty, local officials contributed the ancient Shu culture Sanxingdui jade to the Qing emperors.
I. (1929-1949)
1. In the spring of 1929, the three grandchildren of Yan Daocheng, a squire in Guanghan Moon Bay Township, dug a car puddle at the edge of the Forest Pan Ditch not far from their home, and excavated more than 400 pieces of bi, zhang, chun, gui, circle, ju, bead, axe, knife and jade semi-finished products.
2. In the spring of 1931, the British priest Dong Yidu V.H. Donnithorne, who was preaching in Guanghan County, learned of this and realized that the artifacts must be unusual, so he urgently informed the local government to recover the lost artifacts as soon as possible so that they could be preserved. A few days later, Pastor Dong bought several pieces of jade tools at the market and handed them to the West China University Museum.
3, Dai Qian and Deniel Sheets Dye American physics professor and geologist. After receiving the jade handed over by Pastor Dong, Dai Qianhe immediately identified the jade he brought and immediately concluded that it was a Shang Zhou object. In June 1931, Dai Qianhe, Dong Yidu and Mr. Jin, a photographer from West China University, rushed from Chengdu to Guanghan and, with the assistance of the local garrison, inspected and photographed the ruins of Moon Bay.
4, In the autumn of 1932, Gong Xitai, a famous connoisseur of gold stones in Chengdu, purchased several pieces of jade from Yan Daocheng and called them "valuable". The resulting article "Ancient Yu Kao" was published in the inaugural issue of the chengdu Oriental Art College in 1935. As soon as Gong Xitai said this, it immediately caused a stir among the antique dealers in Chengdu, who rushed to Guanghan to find treasures and yan Daocheng to buy jade, and the Chengdu antique market was stirred up by "Guanghan jade."
Figure (1) The family of Yan Daocheng, the discoverer of ancient Shu jade in 1929.
5, In 1933, Professor David Crockett Graham, an american archaeologist at the West China University Museum, believed that the Guanghan jade was of great archaeological value, and wrote to Pastor Dong for details and personally inspected it. With the consent of the Department of Education of the Provincial Government and with the assistance of the local government, large-scale scientific expeditions and excavations were initiated.
6, the interest of chengdu archaeologists in Guanghan jade has attracted the attention of Luo Yucang, then the county magistrate of Guanghan County. At this time, because a large number of antique dealers gathered in Guanghan, the local people gathered to excavate Guanghan jade tools. After Luo Yucang received the report, he immediately ordered the protection of the ruins of Moon Bay and was not allowed to dig indiscriminately. In early 1933, Luo Yucang, in the name of the county government, invited Ge Weihan to lead the scientific excavation team of the West China University Museum to excavate the site.
7, After March 16, 1933, excavation work officially began. In addition to Ge Weihan, the leading excavators also had Lin Mingjun. At that time, social security was very chaotic, and there were incidents of bandits robbing rich people at night. In order to prevent bandits from interfering with the excavation work, the governor of Luo County sent 80 soldiers to protect the excavation team and excavation site day and night. A total of more than 600 pieces of various jade tools were obtained. At the end of the matter, when Lin Mingjun, a librarian at the West China University Museum, transferred them all to the county government for inspection, Luo County Governor generously said: These artifacts are of great scientific value and sent them to the Museum of Antiquities of West China University.
8. In 1934, Swedish archaeologist Anderson Andersson, based on the jade excavated from the Guanghan Dynasty and the folk, compiled the first archaeological excavation report on the site of the ancient Shu civilization in the Guanghan Dynasty, "Hanzhou Excavation Bulletin", which was published in the "Proceedings of the West China Frontier Research Society" Volume 6 (published in 1936).
9. In 1934, Ge Weihan compiled the first archaeological excavation report on the site of the ancient Shu civilization in Guanghan in history, the "Hanzhou Excavation Bulletin". He wrote: "The artifacts found in the ancient tombs in Sichuan are about the period of 1000 BC.". His foresight is surprising and exclamatory. At that time, Chinese scholars and foreign scholars, ordinary Chinese people, local officials, and local army generals, with strong self-confidence and enthusiastic yearning for Chinese civilization, consciously undertook the obligation of the blue wisps of the Silk Road to enlighten the mountains and forests. This opened the prelude to the archaeological excavation of Sanxingdui for more than half a century.
10. Mr. Wei Juxian is a pioneer of early field archaeology in China and a pioneer of public archaeology. In 1941, the title of the 4th issue of the 3rd volume of the Shuowen Monthly Was titled "Bashu Culture Special Number", and Wei Juxian's "Bashu Culture" had tens of thousands of words, and was accompanied by a large number of depictions of various artifacts unearthed in Sichuan. In the article, based on the bronzes excavated from the Tanjun Temple of The White Horse Temple in Chengdu and other archaeological excavation materials, he believed that the Bashu culture was not only ancient, but also very different from the Central Plains culture, and first proposed the concept of "Bashu culture". In 1942, the 7th issue of the 3rd volume of the "Shuowen Monthly" was still "Bashu Culture Special Number", and Wei Juxian, after a large number of additions, still published it under the title of "Bashu Culture". At that time, there were not many archaeological excavations in Sichuan, and under the influence of the "Central Plains Centrism", most people thought that Bashu was wild and backward.
Figure (2) Ge Weihan and Lin Mingjun, who led the archaeological excavations of Guanghan in 1933.
After Wei Juxian's article was published, it caused great controversy in the academic circles, and his statement was widely questioned, and scholars such as Shang Chengzuo and Zheng Dekun did not agree with Wei Juxian's views, and even disagreed with the reference to "Bashu culture". The discussion of "Bashu culture" initiated by Wei Juxian has effectively promoted the archaeological excavation and research of Bashu culture in Sichuan. The concept of "Bashu culture" was opposed by many scholars at that time, and it was not officially recognized until the 1960s, and it has been used to this day and is widely known.
11. In 1946, West China University published historian Zheng Dekun's "History of Ancient Culture in Sichuan" under the name of "One of the Special Issues of the Museum of West China University", the fourth chapter of which was "Guanghan Culture".