Sanxingdui bronzes are just masks used by the ancients to drive away disasters and pray for blessings, not as mysterious as netizens say
In today's northwestern, southwestern and central regions, there is also a dance form called wu dance. This dance is recorded in the Oracle Bone Inscription of Yin Ruins, which is the embodiment of the primitive hunting, totem worship and sorcery consciousness of the ancestors of the Han people we are talking about today in ancient times, and people at that time believed in the power of "witches", believing that as long as they wore the mask of this dance, people would be turned into "gods", and they would have the ability to drive away disasters, dispel diseases, and pray for blessings.
In the Zhou Dynasty, the ruling class incorporated the wu into the state ceremonial system, hoping that through the power of this dance, the yin and yang of the four hours would be adjusted to make the cold and heat suitable, the wind and rain smooth, the grain was abundant, and the guotai min'an was safe. Therefore, it has been elevated to the level of the state, from the top level to the people have attached great importance to it, the state held is called "GuoDao", the folk organization is called "XiangDao", and the official institution in the middle is called "DaDao", all of which are a custom of sacrifice, called sacrifice. According to the Analects of the Xiang Dang, Confucius, the founder of the Confucian school, wore a ceremonial dress and looked respectful when he greeted the Dance.
The Qin, Han, Tang and Song dynasties have always continued the custom of sacrifice, but in the process of continuous development, gradually reduced the component of religious blessings, began to become secularized, to the Ming and Qing Dynasties has become a form of folk entertainment performance, and developed in the direction of opera, in some places known as "Tang Opera", "Ground Opera", such as "White Snake Legend", "Meng Jiang Girl" some classic fragments have also been introduced into the Play, became a performance repertoire of people's New Year's Festival gatherings. In some ethnic minority areas where the region is relatively closed, the dance has been married into the culture of the ethnic group and developed into a unique dance form of the ethnic group, such as the "Qiangmu" of the Tibetan people, the "Shigong Dance" of Zhuang, Yao, Maonan, Mulao, etc., accumulating a profound cultural heritage.
We have noticed that although it has undergone thousands of years of development and changes, and even been connected to a lot of secularized faces, the shape of the dance mask has always revealed the original thickness and roughness, and it is still an exaggerated reflection of the character's personality and identity through the change of facial features. In other words, it has not lost its breathtaking ancient mysterious power as a "witch" and as a "sacrifice". We call this the power of primitive art, simple, exaggerated but majestic, simple, direct but also very shocking, and this reminds us of the bronze mask unearthed in Sanxingdui, Sichuan.
Today's scholars believe that the dance originated in the Yellow River and the Yangtze River Basin, but this is a very general statement, archaeology in recent years has strongly shown that the Yellow River, the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River is the original source of our national culture, the ancestors should have been from the Yellow River, the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River in the western plateau down the river, in the Central Plains and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River to develop and grow. What remains constant is that early humans could not live directly on the plains, they had to rely on mountains, wild fruits of forests, and directly inhabitable caves. This directly determines the order of cultural development, and cannot be changed casually. Therefore, as the oldest dance of the Ancestors of the Han Nationality, the origin of the Dance should be in the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River.
Located on the south bank of the Yazi River in the northwest of Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, Sanxingdui Ancient Ruins has a history of 5,000 to 3,000 years, and is the largest, longest-lasting and most culturally rich ancient city, ancient kingdom and ancient Shu cultural site found in the southwest region so far. Now many people think that its mystery is the shape of the bronze, think that it does not look like Chinese, and even some netizens say that it is an alien, the civilization of this place in Sichuan.
The fact is not so, the earliest ancestors in today's southwest region are called South Asian ancients, they are probably from the Mekong River on the coast of Southeast Asia, the Lancang River Shuo water, and the ancient Qiang people living on the Qinghai Plateau through the Qinghai Plateau and the Loess Plateau in the Sichuan Basin confluence, which formed the Sichuan Basin relatively closed but diverse culture, that is, today people call the ancient Shu state civilization.
If we can seriously investigate and study, it is not difficult to find that there are certain differences between the culture of northwest Sichuan and southwest Sichuan, that is, the branding and traces of the ancient Qiang culture in the northwest region are heavier and are the mainstream, while this is not the case in southwest Sichuan, with obvious traces from the south. These two different cultural areas are also distributed with different groups of people, the northwest region of Sichuan is dominated by the Qiong people, the disciples, the Qi people, the Ran people, the southwest Sichuan region yi people, the Servant people, the Ba people are the main, the diversity of the intersection will turn them into the ancient Shu people, creating the civilization of the ancient Shu kingdom. There is no such thing as aliens, and there is no such thing as an alien civilization.
Most of the bronze artifacts excavated from the Sanxingdui site come from sacrificial pits, and their mask images have exaggerated sacrificial divine powers. If you can combine the Sanxingdui bronze ware with the mask of the dance, you will find that they are all a kind of existence of the "witch" at the beginning of mankind, and more in the reverence of human beings for heaven and earth, which is what we now call art. It's just that the mask of the Dance dance is constantly being developed and changed, and the Sanxingdui bronze ware has maintained its original appearance underground for thousands of years.
The pictures in this article are from the network, thanks to the original author.
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