On November 14, 2021, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage officially announced that the Great Tomb of Bailuyuan Jiangcun in Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province, is the tomb of Emperor Wen of Han, and after the announcement of this news, a puzzle that has plagued Chinese historians for nearly a thousand years: "Where is the tomb of Emperor Wen of Han?" "Finally unraveled.
Among the twelve emperors of the Western Han Dynasty, Emperor Wen of Han was a rather special one.
He was the fourth son of Liu Bang and the third emperor of the Western Han Dynasty in the Zhengshi Dynasty, but before him there were two minor emperors established by Lü Hou.
After Lü Hou's death, the chancellor killed Lü Shi, deposed the little emperor, and chose the low-key acting king Liu Heng to succeed to the emperor's throne, which was Emperor Wen of Han.
During the reign of Emperor Wen of Han, he practiced thrift and thrift, implemented the Yellow Old Policy, allowed the people to recuperate, and once reduced the land allowance to thirty taxes and one; and he also abolished corporal punishment and reduced servitude (during the han Dynasty, men only needed to serve once every three years, which was rare in the entire history of China).
It was under the policy of Emperor Wen of Han that Emperor Wen of Han and his son Emperor Jing of Han created the first prosperous dynasty in Chinese history, the reign of Wen Jing.
Emperor Wen of Han had a very high reputation in the official evaluation, and his reputation in the folk was also very good, and among the famous Twenty-Four Filial Pieties, Emperor Wen of Han, who gave his mother a taste of medicine, was the only emperor selected.
In the story of Ti Qian's rescue of his father, Emperor Wen of Han was also the Ming Emperor who generously abolished corporal punishment.
Such an emperor, when building the mausoleum, also advocated thrift and thrift, requiring all the burial with clay utensils, no gold and silver treasures, and in order to avoid wasting people's labor, he could not afford to ask for a grave.
"The tombs are all made of pottery, and must not be decorated with gold, silver, copper and tin, and do not rule the graves, but want to be a province, and do not bother the people." --Shi Ji Of Emperor Wen
Everyone should note that the record here is still "no cure for the grave".
As a result, in the war at the end of the Western Han Dynasty, the Western Han Emperor's Mausoleum was destroyed, and although the Baling Tomb was not stolen and excavated, the ground building did not exist.
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, when the famous university scholar Ying Shao wrote a commentary on the Book of Han and the Records of Emperor Wen, he recorded that The Baling Tomb "was hidden because the mountain was hidden, and the grave was not raised", but this "because the mountain was hidden" was purely Ying Shao's own thoughts.
Because Emperor Wen of Han once said this in a chat with his own minister Zhang Shizhi:
If you use the stone of the North Mountain as a coffin, stuff cotton wool into the crevice of the stone rafter, and then glue it together with paint, can such a mausoleum still be opened?
Zhang Shizhi said: If there is something that others want inside, even if the entire Nanshan Mountain is sealed up and there are cracks, if there is no one else in it, even if there is no stone rafter, it does not matter.
Shanggu said to the group of ministers: "Oh! Take the north mountain stone as the rafter, use the silk to cut chen, and paint it in between, how can it be moved! Left and right: "Good." Before the interpretation, he said: "Let there be those who are desirable among them, although there is still a desire in the South Mountain; so that those who have no desire among them, although there is no stone rafter, what is the qi Yan!" - "History of Zhang Shizhi's Biography of Feng Tang Lie".
Therefore, Ying Shao imagined that Emperor Wen of Han would follow this line of thinking and no longer build large-scale sealed tombs, but because the mountains were mausoleums.
After Ying Shao, successive dynasties believed that Emperor Wen of Han was very frugal and created a precedent for the mountains as mausoleums.
After that, it was the chaotic Period of the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms, at this time no one could survive, and how the imperial tombs of the Han Dynasty were not a matter of concern to everyone. When Li Daoyuan of the Northern Wei Dynasty wrote the Water Classics, he could only say that Emperor Wen of Han's tomb was on the White Deer Plain, and he did not know where it was.
The people of the Northern Wei Dynasty did not know, and the Tang and Song Dynasties did not know.
In the Yuan Dynasty, Xi'an produced a scholar of local chronicles, Luo Tianjun, who, after research, believed that "Emperor Wen's tomb was under the mouth of the northern phoenix of Bailuyuan, forty miles east of Jingzhao Tonghua Gate"——"Class Editor Chang'an Zhi"
This is a continuation of Ying Shao's theory that the mountain is a mausoleum, and the phoenix mouth at the highest point of the White Deer Plain is considered to be the location of the Baling Tomb, which is also the first time since the Wuhu Chaohua that someone has clearly pointed out the location of the Han Wen Emperor's Mausoleum.
Picture note: The stone stele of the Han Wen Emperor's Baling Tomb erected in the Qing Dynasty
With Luo Tianjun's research, the Ming and Qing dynasties all believed that the Baling was here, and Bi Yuanyuán, the inspector of Shaanxi during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, erected a monument under the phoenix mouth, and the official certification phoenix mouth was here.
Regarding this misunderstanding of the address of Baling, if it is said that it has a history of more than 700 years from the beginning of Luo Tianhua; if it is calculated from the Ying Shao period, there is a history of more than 1800 years, then when did this misunderstanding begin to be solved?
In 2002, an auction house in New York was preparing for a cultural relics auction, and a group of stolen cultural relics happened to be cultural relics from Jiangcun, Shaanxi Province.
After years of investigation, experts found that the specifications of the Jiangcun Tomb were very large, and the entire tomb appeared sub-glyph-shaped, which was the configuration of the Western Han Emperor's Mausoleum;
Secondly, many official seals were found in the outer tombs, which further proved that the owner of the tomb was an emperor;
Third, the Jiangcun Tomb and the Tomb of Empress Dou are in a large mausoleum, in line with the Han Dynasty tradition of the emperor's burial but different caves;
Evidence four, that is, experts through a comprehensive physical examination, found that the phoenix mouth does not have any tombs, the oldest cultural relics are the Ming and Qing Dynasties below the marked Baling stone stele.
As early as 2015, the Shaanxi Provincial Archaeological Research Institute believed that baling was located in the "Jiangcun Tomb" and belonged to the fifth batch of national key cultural relics protection units through archaeological research.
However, on December 14, 2021, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage officially announced that the Bailuyuan Jiangcun Tomb in Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province, is the Tomb of Emperor Wen of Han.
At the same time, the only well-preserved Tuguhun imperial tomb group in Wuwei, Gansu Province, was announced;
The Zhengpingfang ruins of Luoyang during the Sui and Tang dynasties, which used to be the location of the Guozijian, Taimiao, and Taiping Princess Mansions in the Sui and Tang dynasties.