Introduction: In order to emphasize the fact that Empress Huayang was born in the Chu Kingdom, the Great Qin Fuzhong placed a lot of cultural relics from the Warring States chu land in the Huayang Palace, one is the Chu-style town tomb beast recognized by everyone, but the other is rarely known, the question is whether it is appropriate to put it like this?
01. Chu-style town tomb beast
Town tomb beasts, as the name suggests, are generally placed in the tomb chamber, used to drive away evil spirits for the tomb owner's town tomb, and its circulation has been around for a long time. In the Warring States period, the town tomb beasts in Chudi were very different from those in the Central Plains, thus forming a very distinctive Chu style. For details, please refer to the previous article: Evil spirits retreat: such as dragons, such as deer and tigers, why is the image of the tomb beast in Chu guo town so peculiar?
In fact, a simple summary can be seen that the most amazing thing about Chudi's town tomb beast is the pair of huge antlers on the top of the town tomb beast's head. This is also the main basis for us to identify it at a glance from the Great Qin Fu. In the play, it is placed behind the seat of empress Dowager Huayang of the Qin Kingdom, and it is secretly intertwined with the Xuan bird totem advocated by the Qin people on the wall.
It is not difficult to speculate that in the play, this town tomb beast excavated from the M6 of Yutai Mountain in Jiangling walked out of the dim burial chamber and came to the palace of Empress Huayang of Great Qin, probably mainly to show the Chu origin of Empress Huayang. As for the burial beasts in the tomb, it is naturally not very appropriate to place the tomb beasts in the dwelling places of the living. But this is not the point, the question that Yang Sir wants to discuss is, why do the Chu people so like to let the town tomb beast top a pair of big antlers?
As we all know, the Chu kingdom has always had a prevalence of witchcraft, and its worship of ghosts and gods, worship of witchcraft, and obscene shrines, "as for the common people, who dares to be respectful and dedicated to God", the whole society from top to bottom is full of a mysterious atmosphere, from the state's guidelines and policies, as small as traveling diseases, they must pray to ghosts and gods before they can make up their minds ("Bu Yi Zhi Doubt").
This feature of the Chu people worshiping witches is carefully displayed in the play through Lady Huayang, for example, before seeing Lü Buwei, Lady Huayang was carrying out a divination activity, and after seeing the turtle shell, she muttered to herself: "Heaven, don't you really want me to have children for An Guojun?" Obviously, at this moment, her heart is extremely entangled, because the will from the gods will directly determine whether she accepts the act of recognizing the mother of the stranger.
In holding witchcraft activities, it is sometimes impossible to complete it by relying on its own strength, so it will use dragons, phoenixes, cranes, tigers, deer and other animals to channel in order to travel through the void and communicate with the gods. For example, the "Chu Ci" "floating clouds and mist into the meditative union, riding a white deer and accommodating", the deer has a very special magical power for the Chu people. If considered from this perspective, it seems to be possible to explain that the Tomb Beast of the Great Antlers Town was used as the background for Empress Huayang's divination at this moment.
Compared with the Central Plains, the southern region where Chu is located is widely covered with swampy lakes, and Yunmeng Daze is more famous, which is an excellent environment suitable for deer to survive. Therefore, for deer, the Chu people are quite familiar and loved, and the various deer relics excavated from the Chu tomb can be seen. In addition to a large number of burial antlers, deer are painted as ornaments, and there are even examples of directly using them as wood carvings for burial.
It can be seen that the extremely exaggerated and extraordinarily gorgeous antlers are the parts that are highlighted. As for the role of antlers in witchcraft, there are two points.
First, the antlers can attack and defend
Second, the antlers drive snakes to ward off poison
First of all, the antlers were recognized as powerful weapons for defending the enemy very early because of their developed eyebrows, such as the "Chronicle of History": "Many beasts and beasts are in it, Kou comes from the east, and another elk is enough." On the one hand, when the deer encounter danger, they will form a defensive formation and touch people with their horns; on the other hand, the elk are also good at running quickly in the mountain woodland, so that they can escape from the dangerous situation.
This characteristic is just in line with the Chu people's hope that the deceased can live in the underground built mansion and not be disturbed by ghosts and evil spirits, so the wizard skillfully uses the magical characteristics of the antlers, and then transplants it to the head of the town tomb beast with the same function, and after the double effect is superimposed, it can not only highlight the characteristics of Chudi, but also greatly increase the degree of peace of mind.
On the second point, the ancients believed that antlers themselves also had the effect of repelling snakes and repelling poisons. In Ge Hong's "Baopuzi" of the Jin Dynasty, you can also see such a practice of driving snakes in the wild: "Or burning cattle, sheep and antlers to smoke the body... And musk, that is, wild boars, are snakes, so they are disgusted." Not only is mentioned here, but also the musk, a kind of deer, is said to be a snake repellent by applying musk to the hands and feet.
In the Chu people's god and ghost world, the snake is undoubtedly the most terrifying existence. In the "Chu Ci Summoning Souls", it is said that "the male nine heads, the back and forth, swallow people to benefit their hearts", so the Chu-style town tomb beast chose real antlers to prevent snake poison from infringing on the tomb owner. Because deer can eat snakes, deer hooves can step on snakes, and have sharp horns to drive snakes, and burning antlers can ward off snakes, deer are simply treasures.
02. Tiger Bird Drum
After talking about the Chu-style town tomb beast in the Huayang Empress Palace, there is actually another artifact that reveals its Chu identity, which is the Tiger Seat Bird Drum that serves as the background for Empress Huayang and her brother Yang Quanjun when they talk, why does it appear here, and what meaning is hidden in it?
Like the Chu-style town tomb beast, this tiger bird drum was also excavated from the Chu tomb (Xinyang Changtaiguan M1), the lower part has two tigers lying on their backs, the two birds stand on the tiger's back, the tail is connected by a mortise, and the drum frame has three copper rings, which are tied to the bird's crown and the bird's tail connection, so that the drum can be suspended between the two birds, in addition to a pair of drumsticks.
There is no doubt that the Chu-style town tomb beast was used as a burial vessel, but there is more controversy about this tiger bird drum, because it is not excluded that it was once used as an everyday practical instrument, and then it was buried in the burial chamber. In the Shanghai Museum, there is a "carved Yanle Portrait Cup" from the Warring States period, on which there is a suspension drum with "two birds connected by tails, hanging with a drum".
As for the role of this tiger bird drum, after testing and percussion, it was found that its center of gravity is very stable, as a daily use of the "hanging drum" is completely no problem, as to why it appears in the tomb, it is likely to be related to the Chu people worshiping witches, after the burial of the owner of the tomb, it may be attached to call the deceased gods, entertain the gods and guide the spirit of the undead to ascend to heaven.
Why did the Chu people deliberately choose two animals, tigers and birds? A more popular saying is that this kind of shaping of birds and beasts riding each other without fighting is the beautiful wish of the ancients for different spiritual creatures to be able to be close to each other and complement each other. The Tiger Bird can be seen as a recombination of Chu Wu Fei (Phoenix) and Ba Wu Fei (Tiger).
This reorganization comes from the habit of transforming spiritual objects that prevailed in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, which was manifested in the fusion and shaping of foreign gods and national gods, so as to strengthen the divine characteristics of the two spiritual objects, which could greatly improve the effect of sacrifice activities, and the mutual assistance and cooperation between different witches made the ancients believe that the resulting path to heaven would be smoother.
03. Warring States Qin and Chu
There is an idiom called "Chao Qin Twilight Chu", which closely combines the Qin state and the Chu state during the Warring States period, and in fact it is the same. In "Great Qin Fu", there is always a Chu force hovering behind the scenes in front of the qin court, from Empress Qin Xuan to Empress Huayang, and even Yingzheng's wife Mi Hua, all of whom are Chu women. Chu's genes and bloodlines have long been integrated into Qin's bones and blood, resulting in a splendid phenomenon of cultural fusion.
For a small example, before we said that the hair bun of the Qin Terracotta Army is more biased to the right, which is difficult to find records and things about "partial bun" in the Han hair style customs, then the Qin people up to the noble secretaries down to the soldiers and soldiers, why are the right bun popular? The right is naturally related to the right, but what about the bun?
According to the "Imperial Qing Gongtu" recorded: "the natives knotted in the right, the Han knot in the middle", the "natives" mentioned here like to comb the right bun, so who are the natives referring to? In the "Miao Costumes", there are texts and images of the "crooked comb miao" of the Miao people in Guizhou, indicating that perhaps the Miao people in the Guizhou area are the original "crooked bun people".
But how did the customs of the southwestern peoples spread to the Qin land? Nature is through Chu this springboard. In the Chu tomb of the Spring and Autumn Warring States period of Hubei Jiangling Horse Factory No. 1, it was found that the owner's hairstyle was partial bun, and another Chu tomb also had a "partial bun" pottery figurine, not only in Shanxi Changzhi City, Shanxi Tongchuan City and Qin Apan Palace site, but also unearthed partial bun pottery figurines.
A partial bun hairstyle is just a small cut of Qin Chu blending. The reason why Qin and Chu in the Warring States period gave people a feeling of "loving and killing each other" was that their political core almost represented two extremes:
The State of Qin almost completely abandoned the political legacy under the feudal system of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and from the beginning of the shang martingale's comprehensive implementation of the idea of the legal family, it was destined to embark on a different path from the Six Kingdoms;
The State of Chu developed a fully developed the Chu version of the feudal system comparable to that of the Western Zhou Dynasty, which can be seen from the high degree of autonomy of the great feudal lords represented by Qu, Jing, and Zhao in controlling the government and fiefdoms.
The most interesting thing is that this contradiction formed the most peculiar and intertwined era of Qin-Chu relations during the period of King Qin Zhao. On the one hand, the foreign relatives born into the Chu royal family always occupied a high position, affecting the situation in the court; on the other hand, during the qin zhao king period, the encroachment on the chu state was unprecedented, the qin state almost took half of the chu state, and repeated wars forced the chu royal family to move the capital.
"Although Chu has three households, qin will die in Chu", this simple sentence contains at least two meanings.
One was Chu Guo's extreme resentment of Qin's betrayal. This gives us reason to believe that the relationship between Qin and Chu for thirty years, from the late qin zhao king to the twenty-second year of qin wangzheng, was very harmonious, thanks to the efforts of the Chu clan headed by Empress Huayang, so after Yingzheng suddenly turned the gun, the Qin army cut down Chu and attacked the capital of Qin, the Chu state may be the country that felt the strongest sense of betrayal for the Qin state.
The other is the self-confidence to control the world's public opinion and strength. As the base camp of the anti-Qin and Supporting Zhou, the State of Chu had a unique influence on public opinion, whether it was Chen Sheng and Wu Guangzhen who chose to use "Zhang Chu" as the name of the regime after a call, or Xiang Liang and Xiang Yan who won the grain in the world after they played the banner of supporting the "King of Chu Huai". The Chu people were regarded by the remnants of the Six Kingdoms as a model of the system and guardian of strength for the restoration of the Zhou system.
The struggle between the old and new systems was epitomized in the case of Qi Qi, the prince of Changping, who was the chancellor of the Qin state but rebelled against the last king of Chu. Although he could not change the rolling torrent of history in the end, and died and the country was destroyed, it seems that he also responded to the slogan "Although Chu has three households, Qin will be Chu" in the end. At least, the State of Chu had already demonstrated the old world of the Zhou system that he represented, and still had the ability to inflict heavy damage on the new world represented by the State of Qin.
Just like Zhou Xingchi's head was hit to the ground by the Fire Cloud Evil God, he also had to pick up the wooden stick and knock on his head again!
Of course, the system struggle has never stopped, and at the beginning of the unification of the Six Kingdoms and the establishment of the empire, Wang Xi and Li Si at that time were arguing; and in the later years of Qin Shi Huang, the Confucian Chun Yu Yue and the Legalist Li Si were still arguing. What kind of system to choose to build the foundation of the Empire State Building will always be the most worthy of consideration for rulers.