In China's profound and profound traditional culture, the theory of yin and yang is the way of thinking that the ancient philosophers summed up to understand the world, and the "heavenly circle place" is a concrete embodiment of this theory. Ancestors used the heavenly circle to interpret the formation and operation of heaven and earth.
This is also embodied in China's ancient architecture, such as the Temple of Heaven, the Temple of Earth, and the courtyard in Beijing, which are built in accordance with the principle of the heavenly circle.
And in the ancient times I lived, there was a kind of jade, its shape was round inside and out, which reminded people of whether the production of this form also had some wonderful connection with the idea of the heavenly circle place?
This inner and outer cylindrical jade is called Yu Chun and was produced in the Neolithic period about 5100 years ago. In the Liangzhu culture in Jiangsu and Zhejiang and the Shixia culture in Guangdong, a large number of jade chun have been unearthed. The Yu chun in the Liangzhu cultural area is considered to be the most developed and representative of the production process. Its number and exquisite production made it unattainable to the later dynasties.
Liangzhu jade is mainly produced in Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas of the buckle flashite jade. The texture of this jade is impure, mostly cyan, partly yellow, and it becomes a misty milky white after being immersed in the soil for a long time.
In the jade chun excavated from Liangzhu, except for a few cylindrical, most of them are in the shape of an inner circle and an outer square, and the cutting is very regular. There are long and short, short as one section, and the long can reach 15 knots. In almost every Quinn, the body is carved with animal face patterns, and the ornamentation is divided into four groups with the four corners of the line as the center, and according to the height of the Jade Chun, it is carved into the same ornament group. Some jade qun are not only engraved with the animal face pattern of the main body, but also engraved with the figure of the god and the cloud and thunder pattern with fine English patterns.
Legend has it that when the ancient ancestors sacrificed, in order to express their reverence for the gods, they usually wore several pieces of jade with ropes together to carry out related prayer activities. Later, people thought that instead of connecting several pieces of jade with rope, it would be better to make a large piece of jade and divide it into several sections, which was the later jade.
In 1986, in a place called Anti-Shan in the lower Reaches of the Yangtze River, archaeologists found a piece of jade in a newly discovered tomb. This piece of jade is yellowish-white, with regular dark yellow spots, intricate and delicate ornamentation, shaped like a square column, with an inner circle and an outer square, a height of 8.8 cm, a round face at the upper and lower ends, and a pair of drilled round holes in the middle, weighing 6.5 kg.
Because of its shape, weight and carving, it is known as the King of Jade Chun among the many excavated jade qun. On the stone surface of the King of Qun there is a set of unusually exquisite and intricate patterns. The upper part of the pattern features a humanoid head wearing a huge crown of feathers, and the lower part is a monster with sharp fangs and claws. This mysterious pattern is known as the divine human and animal face pattern.
In ancient times, ancestors believed that all things have spirituality, and jade is the essence of mountains and rivers, a gift from heaven to mankind, and can communicate with the ghosts and gods of heaven and earth. Therefore, jade is often used as a ceremonial vessel, and jade as a sacrificial artifact has been recorded as early as the Zhou rites.
During the Hongshan culture period five thousand years ago, the climate of the Ancient Liao River Plain was arid, which was undoubtedly a fatal danger to the primitive ancestors. Therefore, the wizard used unimaginable time and energy to make a jade dragon shaped like lightning as a magic weapon to pray for rain.
The same explanation is given for the jade qun used by the liangzhu tribe wizards. This kind of jade that runs through the middle of the outer square and the inner circle is exactly the magic weapon that can communicate with heaven and earth in the eyes of the ancients.
The biggest feature of Yu Chun is that it has the form of a round hole drilled in the middle of the inner circle and the outer square, but how did this form of the inner circle and the outer square come about? Could it be that in the distant prehistoric era, the ancestors already had a cosmology of the heavens and the place?
Some experts believe that the outer and inner circles of Yu chun represent the concept of the heavenly circle place, which is the simple understanding and understanding of heaven and earth by people in the Neolithic era. The round hole in the middle represents the communication between man and heaven and earth, so Yu Chun can become a means or magic tool to penetrate heaven and earth.
In the Neolithic Age, the jade, which was ground according to the concept of the heavenly circle of place, became a magic weapon used by wizards to worship the gods. The ornamentation of the animal face or the god-man beast face carved on its surface is the image of the god that the wizards want to represent. Later, the function of the jade qun evolved from being only a ritual instrument to an instrument that could be used as a decorative ceremony or a symbol of power. However, the shape of the outer square and the inner circle of the jade has always been preserved.
In addition to this statement, there are many speculations in the academic circles about the emergence of the outer form of the inner circle of yu chun, but there is no consensus. Chun is one of the most difficult projects to study in ancient jade, leaving very limited literature. Coupled with the circulation of many antique jade in later generations, yu chun has become a difficult puzzle in ancient jade.
The jade in Chinese's eyes is the aura of heaven and earth, which originates from the gift of nature and has become a rare treasure of the past. In Liangzhu, when the ancestors raised the jade in their hands and prayed to the gods for blessings, the love of jade in the Chinese land was sublimated into the worship of it. For thousands of years, people's love for jade has been accompanied by the footsteps of Chinese civilization, forming China's unique jade culture.