Five-star out of the East to benefit China, Han Dynasty brocade arm guard, for the national first-class cultural relics, China's first batch of prohibited to go abroad (border) exhibition of cultural relics. It is known as one of the greatest discoveries of Chinese archaeology in the 20th century. In October 1995, members of the Sino-Japanese Niya Site Academic Expedition found the tapestry in an ancient tomb at the Niya Site in Minfeng County, Hotan District, Xinjiang. It is now in the collection of The Xinjiang Museum.
The brocade is rounded rectangular, 18.5 cm long and 12.5 cm wide, with the "Five Stars Out of the East Li China" brocade as the fabric, the edges are trimmed with white silk, and the two long sides are sewn with 3 white ribbons of about 21 cm long and 1.5 cm wide, of which 3 are broken. There are eight seal Chinese characters woven: "Five stars out of the East to benefit China." Because of the brilliant colors, exciting words, mysterious patterns, and magical meanings, it immediately attracted the attention of many people after excavation, and some netizens and even cultural relics experts also gave it many "mysterious" interpretations. But now it seems that it is also very important to have a simple return to the meaning of this document.
The pattern of the brocade is as follows: the right side of the brocade retains the edges of the sheet. Starting from the right side, there is a pair of rare birds, and the male stands at the lower part of the cloud pattern, standing tall. On the top of its head is the seal body "five" character, and a cocoon pattern hangs from the left cloud pattern on the chest. The female stands on a cloud pattern and hangs her head towards the male, with a white circular pattern above its neck symbolizing "Taiyin", a "star" on its back, and a cocoon below its tail. Separated from the word "star" by a cocoon pattern is the word "out". The word "East" is above the gap between the two moirés. At the bottom left of the word "East", above a cloud pattern is a red circle symbolizing the "sun". On the lower left side of the "sun" is an inverted hanging cloud pattern, the cloud pattern is recessed, there is a one-horned beast with a mouth outstretched tongue, a screaming head, a drooping tail, and a wing on the back, which may be "warding off evil spirits". Above the horn is a "square" character. The word "Li" is separated by a cloud in the upper left of the word "square". To the left of the cloud below the word "Li" is a tiger-shaped animal dressed in vertical stripes with rounded leopard eyes, with its right foot on the cloud pattern, and strides to the right, with a towering tail and a strong force. To the right of its tail is the word "Zhong" and to the left is the word "Guo".
The 8 characters of "five stars out of the East to benefit China" also have a source, that is, the Western Han Dynasty historian Sima Qian's "Book of History and Heavenly Officials" said, "The five stars are divided into heavens, accumulated in the East, and China benefits; in the West, foreign users (soldiers) benefit." The five stars are gathered together from the stars, and the country they give up can be brought to the world. The ancient "five stars" refer to the star of the year, the star of confusion, the star of filling, the star of taibai and the star of Chen. The heavens and the earth turned, the sun and the moon passed, and the five stars were difficult to gather. However, in October of the first year of the Han Dynasty, the five stars gathered in Dongjing, which are recorded in the Book of Tiangong, the Book of Han, the Biography of Zhang Er, and the Han Ji.
The first year of the Han Dynasty was not 202 BC, when Liu Bang was proclaimed emperor, but 206 BC, and there was another five years in between, but there was not even a name. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty took 206 BC, when Liu Bang received the Chuanguo Jade Seal, as the first year of the Han Dynasty, that is, in October of that year, the Qin prince Infant Su Cha Bai horse, tied his neck in a group, next to Xuandao (present-day Xi'an City, Shaanxi), presented liu Bang with the Chuanguo Jade Seal, marking the end of the Qin Dynasty. In order to connect the two dynasties of Qin and Han, later history books have also been using the saying that 206 BC is the first year of the Han Dynasty.
"Five stars out of the East" means that five planets appear in the eastern sky at the same time in a period of time, that is, the phenomenon of "five stars in a row" or "five-star gathering"; "five stars out of the east to benefit China", that is, the appearance of five stars to see the east of the celestial phenomenon, is beneficial to the major events of the Chinese military state. This is the result of the Confucians of the Han Dynasty, who believe that the rise of the Han Dynasty is due to the gathering of the five stars in the east in October of the first year of the Han Dynasty.
What makes modern people somewhat confused is that the brocade is produced in Shudi, which is now Sichuan, and why did Shujin run to Xinjiang with the phrase "five stars out of the East and benefit China"? The only plausible explanation is that this is something that the Treasury has allocated. People who are familiar with history know that Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty launched a war against the Xiongnu and opened up the western region, and there was a group of people in the imperial court at that time who believed that it was a laborer and a loss of wealth, which did not make much sense, including Sima Qian, the author of the "History", who was opposed to it, and expressed dissatisfaction with the war in many places in the history. Sima Qian and Emperor Wudi of Han were contemporaries, and they were able to write the phrase "five stars out of the East to benefit China" into the "Records of History", which shows that the phenomenon of "five-star beads" or "five-star gatherings" in the first year of the Han Dynasty was already deeply rooted in the hearts of the people at that time, and as Emperor Wudi of Han, it was nothing wrong to use it as an article for public opinion propaganda.
Chinese brocade is the most technical silk fabric in China, using colored gold threads to weave a variety of patterns of fabrics, hence the name of brocade. Brocade appeared in the silk fabric of the Zhou Dynasty, the pattern was brilliant in five colors, and the technique was mature. In the Han Dynasty, there were weaving rooms and brocade offices, which specialized in weaving brocade for the enjoyment of the court. Since Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Chinese tapestries have been introduced to Persia (present-day Iran) and Great Qin (ancient Roman Empire) through the Silk Road. After Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty opened up the Silk Road, it was too natural and normal for Shudi to produce a batch of silk, weave it with "five stars out of the East to benefit China," and transfer it to present-day Xinjiang to declare the "rationality" of opening up the Silk Road. The people of the Western Regions, in our current words, should be ethnic minorities, they may not know the Chinese characters on silk, and because the Chinese characters themselves are naturally beautiful, they are used as ornaments, made into clothing, and even taken to the grave, as funerary goods, which are no longer natural and normal.
What is more proof of this is that in the ancient tomb where the "five stars out of the East benefit China" Han Dynasty brocade arm guard was found, the tapestry fragment of "Qiu Nan Qiang" was also found, and after the study of experts, the fragments and the brocade arm guard were tied to the same batch of silk, that is to say, the propaganda slogan of "five stars out of the East and Li China" also had the words "Qiu Nan Qiang", which should be "five stars out of the East to benefit China to seek the South Qiang". However, in today's research, perhaps out of consideration for national unity, the words "nanqiang" have been omitted by some people and far-fetched by others.
According to the appendages, "Seeking the Southern Qiang" refers to the Battle of the Western Qiang from April to November of the first year of the Western Han Dynasty (61 BC), when the Han general Zhao Chong guo pinged the Western Qiang. Shenjue (March 61 BC – 58 BC) was the fourth era name of Emperor Xuan of Han and was used for a total of four years. The war, which took place mainly in the area from present-day Lanzhou to Xining, was a large-scale campaign of the Han Dynasty to pacify the Western Qiang. What I want to say is that this matter has nothing to do with the "five stars out of the East to benefit China", and it is aimed at the Western Qiang and not the "Southern Qiang". In the past, people living in the Tarim Basin referred to the ancient Qiang people of the Karakoram Mountains and Kunlun Mountains as the Southern Qiang and Nanshan Qiangs we are talking about today, and geographically, the Karakoram Mountains and Kunlun Mountains are indeed in the south of the Tarim Basin, just as the Zhangye area of the Hexi Corridor still calls the Qilian Mountains Nanshan. Therefore, the "South" of "Nanqiang" should be a geographical concept, and "Qiang" is the Qiang people living in this area at that time.
I would say that the existence of the Qiang people in the Han Dynasty and before was a very broad geographical concept, even including the entire western part of China, during the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, in addition to their living space on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, they also existed in the Hexi Corridor and the Western Regions. In the Tarim Basin in the western region, they should be mixed with the Yueshi people and the Cypriots in the historical records, and they are one of the ethnic compositions in this area. After Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty opened up the Western Regions, the trade route with the Central Plains began to prosper, and the Qiang people at that time clearly wanted to do something to cut off the Silk Road and pluck the hair of the geese. Therefore, ensuring the smooth flow of the Silk Road should be a practical problem that the Han Dynasty had to face at that time, and this was also a reasonable interpretation of the "Southern Qiang", which had nothing to do with what we call national unity today.
Xinjiang's dry and low rain is conducive to the preservation of underground organic matter, especially in the ancient tombs along the Silk Road such as the Tarim Basin, the Lop Nur Desert and the Turpan Basin south of the Tianshan Mountains, a large number of brightly colored and well-preserved textiles have been excavated, of which silk from the Han and Tang Dynasties is the most abundant. Before the Han Dynasty, the Warring States period tombs in the Tianshan Mountains near Urumqi had unearthed phoenix-patterned silk embroidery, in addition, the Quman Cemetery in Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County in Kashgar Region had also found silk remnants from the Warring States period, and silk residues on the surface of bronze artifacts unearthed from the Karasu Cemetery in Habahe County, Altay Region. At the same time, the Tomb of the Shang Dynasty Women's Good Tomb, located in the southwest of the base site of the C Group in the Zongmiao District of the YinXu Palace in Anyang City, has unearthed a large number of jade artifacts in archaeological excavations, of which more than 700 pieces are nephrite jade from Xinjiang. These, although there is a lack of written records, but the gorgeous scales and claws left over from the years illustrate an important thing - the history of the Silk Road is far earlier than that of the Western Han Dynasty. Therefore, it should be the historical mission and responsibility of the Western Han government to ensure that the Silk Road is smooth again.
In 2020, archaeological work excavated more than 700 Tang Dynasty paper documents and wooden tablets at the site of Keyak Kuduk Beacon beacon in Yuli County, Xinjiang. According to Hu Xingjun, deputy research librarian of the Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and leader of the archaeological task force of the Kyak Kuduk Beacon Site, the paper documents were mostly in the form of a clump when they were excavated, and after preliminary interpretation, it was confirmed that this Beacon Site was a place of amusement. The military defense line on the eastern front of the Peacock River Beacon Group may be called "Loulan Road", and this beacon site is stationed along the "Loulan Road", managing a number of beacons and responsible for nearby defenses. The nature of the documents is mainly a military document between the Tang Wuzhou and the various beacon shops under its jurisdiction and the higher-level management agencies between the Tang Wuzhou and the Kaiyuan period, and the content details the names of military facilities at all levels related to the beacons along the Peacock River. [i]
More detailed historical information is as follows: after 670 AD, Tubo controlled the Tuguhun region of Qinghai, opening the gateway to the four towns of Anxi, and the eastern border of Yanqi was already at the forefront of the battle between Tang and Tubo at this time, and as a throat connecting the two major capitals of Anxi and Beiting, it needed to be closely defended. In order to prevent Tubo from sneaking into Yanqi Town along the "Loulan Road", military facilities at all levels were built on the peacock river line in the east of the town, and a police beacon line was set up. The defense of the "Loulan Road" in the Tang Dynasty was actually the inheritance and continuation of the Han Dynasty's "Southern Qiang" to ensure the smooth flow of the Silk Road, and the Southern Qiang was just a reference, and there were different nationalities at different times.
Here, the purpose of Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty's political propaganda has been very clear, and the silk embroidered with the words "five stars out of the East to benefit China and seek the Southern Qiang" was transferred out of the national treasury and reached the Western Regions, and the common people wore them on their bodies, which not only achieved the effect of propaganda, but also allowed the silk to once again light up the civilized trade of the Silk Road, and also created the unprecedented prosperity of the Silk Road.
In this way, it has become a more normal thing for the brocade quilts and brocade pillows of "princes and princes to be married to long live and long live", which appeared in the hometown of the Han Dynasty in the depths of the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang, which not only shows the very active commercial trade activities on the Silk Road and the close relationship between the Han Dynasty and the city-states in the western region, but also provides precious physical materials for people today to study the history of silk weaving and decorative patterns in China. At this time, history no longer needs those far-fetched explanations, because historical events have never existed in isolation, and each historical event has its own distinct theme of the times, and there is no need for the self-inflicted sentiments of future generations of researchers.
The pictures in this article are from the network, thanks to the original author!
[i] Zhang Xiaolong, "More than 700 Tang Dynasty Paper Documents and Wooden Tablets Unearthed at the Keyak Kuduk Beacon Site in Yuli County, Xinjiang", Xinhua Net, 2020-07-16.
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