Examination of the Ming Dynasty Datong Dynasty Royal Palace
World of Cultural Relics 2010.03 Fengchi
Datong is located between the inner and outer Great Wall, strangling the throats of Jin, Ji and Meng. It is bounded by the Yellow River in the west, the desert in the north, the three passes of The Fallen Horse and the Bauhinia in the east, the danger of Yanmen and Ningwu in the south[1], the Great Wall in the north, the Yanmen Gate in the south, the Shuo Desert in the west, and baideng in the east. The territory of the mountains undulating, ravines and ravines, the formation of many natural passes, in the military to advance there is a support, guard there is a retreat, since ancient times is the place where soldiers must fight, known as the key to the north.
The ancient city of Datong was ruled by the Han Dynasty as the former ruler of Pingcheng County[2], where the Northern Wei Dynasty was established for nearly a hundred years, and the Liao and Jin dynasties also had a history of more than 200 years as the capital of Western Beijing. The mountain ring is cool, and the water is dry. In the Ming Dynasty, Datong City was located on the northern edge of the Datong Basin, on the west bank of the Royal River, and its site was the great general Xu Da, who was "added to the southern half of the old Tucheng" [3]. The long history and special geographical location determine that the historical relics of Datong Ancient City are very rich. This article focuses on the residence of Zhu Gui, the king of Datong after the Ming Dynasty was enfeoffed.
1. The construction of the Royal Palace
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, in order to maintain the unity of the country and facilitate the strengthening of centralized power, Zhu Yuanzhang adopted measures to emigrate to the border areas; at the same time, he established a military guard system to resist the invasion of Yuan and Mongolia. As one of the nine important towns "Datong Town", it sent generals to guard the town and build the ancient city of Datong; 13 guard posts were also arranged around Datong Town, and a large number of military forces were deployed, and the number of soldiers reached more than 100,000 at most, and militarily played the role of the Ping Fan Jing Division. Politically, a system of sub-feudalism was implemented, and the crown prince was enfeoffed to the whole country. The acting king Zhu Gui came to Datong in the first four days of August in the twenty-fifth year of Hongwu (1392).
(1) The construction time of the Daiwang Palace
According to the History of Ming, the Tongzhi of Shanxi, and the Chronicle of Datong County, Zhu Gui, the Daiwang, was the thirteenth son of Zhu Yuanzhang, the ming emperor, and was born on July 18, 1374, the seventh year of Hongwu by Concubine Guo, that is, on August 25, 1374. Hongwu was enfeoffed as the King of Yu in the fourteenth year, and Hongwu was renamed as the Acting King on the fourth day of August in the twenty-fifth year of the 25th year, becoming one of the nine kings of the early Ming Dynasty. He arrived at Datong on September 25, 1392, and thanked Emperor Entu. After entering Datong for a short rest, he led his entourage to rely on the local people and rich families to build a large-scale palace.
According to the "Chronicle of Datong Province" engraved by Ming Zhengde in the tenth year, "The Daiwang Palace was rebuilt in the east of the city of Datong Province, and hongwu was rebuilt in the twenty-fifth year by the Liao and Jinxi Jingguozijian. And the Qianlong edition of the Qianlong edition of the Qing Dynasty "Datong Fu Zhi" also states: "The Liaoxi Jingguo Zijian was in Fucheng Yanghe Street, Ming Hongwu established the house in eight years to study here, and in the twenty-ninth year it was changed to the Daifu, and Emperor Wuzong was fortunate to be in Datong, and tried to stay in Puyan." "According to the chronicles of the two dynasties, the DaiwangFu was rebuilt on the original site of the Liao and JinGuozijian, but the construction time was one was Hongwu twenty-five years, which was 1932 AD; the other was Hongwu twenty-nine years, that is, 1396 AD, a difference of four years. Judging from the principle of "the land is close to the ground, it is easy to be nuclear, and when it is close, it is true", and the Ming Dynasty's "Datong FuZhi" is the closest to the time of the Hongwu period, which should be accurate.
According to the scale of the construction of the Imperial Palace recorded in the Zhishu, combined with the analysis of the Nine Dragons In front of the original Imperial Palace, we believe that the design, firing to construction and completion of only the multicolored glass cannot be completed in just one year. Such a huge royal project should be extended from the twenty-fourth year of Hongwu to the completion of the twenty-ninth year of Hongwu.
(2) The scale of construction of the Daiwang Palace
The identity of the acting king Zhu Gui was more special, first as a prince, then as an imperial uncle, and then as an imperial brother, and his father-in-law was the background of Xu Da, the king of Zhongshan, and his wife and sister were still the empresses of the later Yongle Emperor.
The third figure at the beginning of the volume of Kao Ming Zhengde's "Datong Fu Zhi" is "DaiWangfu Map", the royal palace sits north and faces south, is rectangular, and is bounded by a tall wall, opening four gates in the southeast, southwest, and northwest, and the whole building is spread along three axes. On the central axis, there is the Kowloon Wall in the south of Yanghe Street, and after entering the Yu Gate (main gate), it is followed by Duanli Gate, Carrier Gate, Carrier Hall, Chongxin Gate, Cunxin Hall, Changchun Palace, and Guangzhi Gate (rear gate). The buildings on the east and west sides are arranged and distributed along the other two auxiliary axes; the buildings and structures on the central axis of the east from south to north are, in turn, The Guangzhan Cang, Changchun Palace, Wangqin Lou, Qingju Hall, Zongmiao Temple, Yanju Hall, Apse, etc.; the buildings on the west side are: entering the Qianmen along the axis, there is the Sheji Altar on the left, the Wind and Rain Mountain and River Altar on the right, and then entering the Hall of Dacheng (there are auxiliary halls on the left and right), and the corridor is the Jinde Hall and the Apse. In addition, there are also units in the palace, such as the trial office, the ceremonial dining room, the ancestral hall, the treasure house, the Jishan office, the good doctor's office, the ceremonial office, the Gongzheng office, and the ceremonial and health department, and the Changshi Division, which is in charge of the affairs of the government, is located in the west of the palace. As a structure, there are also many arches built in Fuchu, of which the east side of the gate has the "Qin Cheng Shang Zhi Shi Shou Dai Bang Fang" and the west side of the gate has the "Tianhuang Emperor's Ancestral Fang", the archway is tall and majestic, showing the majesty of the royal palace. The whole building complex is connected by corridors and courtyards, the houses are staggered, the front hall and the back bedroom, the two-compartment room, the temple is deep, the cloister is tortuous, it is a grand scale and complete layout of the prince's mansion.
Examining the existing historical documents and combined with our field investigation, the four solstices of the DaiwangFu are: east to the current Dayoucang and Cangxiang, south to Dadong Street, west to Dabei Street, north to Renhemei Street, 656 meters long from north to south, 264 meters wide from east to west, covering an area of 170,000 square meters, about 256 acres. Including today's Huangcheng Street, Donghuamen, Zhengdian Street, Qianju Lane, Guangsheng Lane, Houzaimen, and the past Xihuamen, Jubao Lane, Jucai Lane, etc. The current Donghua Gate, Xihua Gate and Huangchengkou are the ruins of the four gates of the royal palace in that era.
2. The use and destruction of the Royal Palace
The Daiwang Zhu Gui died on December 12, 111th year of the reign, and was given the posthumous title of "Daijian Wang". He had 11 sons in his lifetime, his eldest son Sunduan took the throne, and the remaining ten sons were all crowned as county kings. His clan continued for 252 years and was passed down for 11 generations from the twenty-fifth year of Hongwu, that is, from 1392 AD, to the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, that is, 1644 AD. Therefore, the family of the king is huge, and the clan branches are numerous. Among these people, the state must build a temple for the legal heirs who inherit the throne, arrange houses for them to live and live; and the local government must also build a royal palace for the princes and princes, and there are still eleven unfinished houses in the three years of Tianshun's capital, Zuo Jindu Yushi Wang Jian. "As a result, public and private consumption, military and civilian distress, and the people are not happy."
It took 252 years from the 29th year of Hongwu, that is, in 1396 AD, until the destruction of Chongzhen in the seventeenth year, that is, in 1644 AD, until the complete demise of the sixth year of Shunzhi, that is, in 1649 AD.
According to the Qianlong Qing Dynasty's "Datong Fu" under the Nine Dragon Wall, there is a record that "the Daiwang Mansion, the end of Chongzhen was destroyed by war", in the seventeenth year of Ming Chongzhen (1644), after Li Zicheng entered Datong, the Daiwang Palace and the descendants of the Zhu family perished. The "Yunzhong Junzhi Reversal" records: "Chongzhen seventeen years of Jia Shenchun, broke into the difficulty, the puppet soldiers came to the west, on February 29 the town lord will surrender, stay in the city for six days, kill the Ming Sect room. "When the Datong rebel army was approaching the city, The Datong general Jiang Ou opened the door to welcome the king into the city, and the Dai Mansion was attacked, and the last Dai Wang was killed. After six days of rest, the Dashun army continued to march to Beijing, leaving more than 10,000 troops led by Zhang Tianlin in the Datong area, and in the following two months, they "killed and violently" Zhu Chuanqi and other Ming dynasty clansmen, killing all the family members of more than 200 families in the Daifu and confiscating all their land and property at the same time. This account does indeed coincide with the archaeological data we currently have. Since the "transmission" of the characters, the tombs, epitaphs and inscriptions of the Zhu family have not been seen in Datong and Zhouzhou areas. It was also at this time that the Datong Dynasty Palace was burned, and according to folklore, the fire burned for three days and three nights, and the light of the fire illuminated the entire ancient city of Datong, turning a grand and magnificent Daiwang Mansion into a ruin.
In summary, the record in the historical records that "chongzhen was destroyed by war" should be credible. But whether it was completely destroyed is still worth examining.
About "Slaughter City". Because Zhang Tianlin and Zhang Blackface were "murderous and violent" in Datong for two months, they severely cracked down on the interests of the large landlord clique, thus causing great panic among jiang ous and others in the border pass landlord clique, and two months later, when Dolgun Dingjing and Li Zicheng returned to Shaanxi, Jiang Ou took the opportunity to enter Datong and kill Zhang Tianlin and Zhang Blackface, and surrendered to the Qing court, which accepted Jiang Ou and appointed him as a former general of the Expedition to the West. In the fifth year of Shunzhi, that is, in 1648, Jiang Ou rebelled against the Qing Dynasty. The Qing court sent heavy troops to surround Datong City, and the regent Dorgon personally supervised the battle. Due to the fortification of the city, the Qing army did not capture Datong for more than nine months. On August 28, 1649, Jiang Ou's general Yang Zhenwei and 23 other people were designed to behead Jiang Ou and his brother Jiang Lin and brother Jiang You, and surrendered to the Qing army. In September, in addition to Yang Zhenwei and 23 other people, his family members and 600 soldiers, the rest of the officials and soldiers did their best to kill, and removed the Datong city wall by five feet, and Jiang Ou and many other generals' mansions and many other buildings were burned down, and three feet were dug into the ground. After the Qing soldiers entered Datong, they carried out the most barbaric retaliatory "slaughter of the city", and the Daiwang Palace was completely reduced to rubble and ruins.
3. Examination of relics of the Royal Palace
In recent years, in cooperation with the urban infrastructure, we have discovered the family cemeteries of Guangling King, Xuanhua King, Changhua King, Raoyang Wangfu, etc., and unearthed many cultural relics and materials.
(1) Remains within the scope of the Daiwang Palace
The current remaining daiwangfuyuan wall, located in today's Renhemei Street, Datong City, is about 50 meters long from east to west, about 4 meters high, about 1.5 meters thick, and the rammed layer is 20 centimeters. From the analysis of rammed layers, it is fully in line with the characteristics of the Ming Dynasty. Since the height of the urban ground of Datong Ancient City has increased by as much as 2 meters from the early days of liberation to the present, it is obvious that the original height of the wall of the Daiwang Palace should be more than 6 meters. After exploring the shovel, there is still an extension of the foundation of the palace wall on the east and west sides, and it is impossible to continue the exploration due to the obstruction of the existing buildings on the ground.
In 1998, when the old city of Datong City was renovated, on the west side of the central axis of the original Wangfu area of Dabei Street, a large number of building components were excavated from the foundation, mainly glazed tiles, bricks, pillar foundations and partridge kisses. Due to the use of large machinery by the construction unit in digging the trench, the excavated partridge was broken, and after the author compared and spliced it, although its original appearance was incomplete, its basic original appearance still existed. The snout is 160 cm high, the width is 80 cm, and the thickness of the porcelain tire is 12 cm. The appearance of glass is brightly colored, and the author believes that such a large number of ancient building components, even in the Ming Dynasty, were not assembled by ordinary people or low-level office buildings. The place where the broken snout was unearthed is located on the west side of the current main hall street, most likely the original "carrier hall" location. A large number of ash-burned remnants of thick rafters have also been found. Due to various factors at that time, it was not possible to carry out further clean-up and excavation of the ruins in a comprehensive manner. In 2004, when we cooperated with the construction unit on the southeast side of the Daiwang Mansion, we conducted an exploration of 300 square meters and carried out archaeological excavations. There are many ming dynasty building components and fragments excavated, especially glazed tiles and bricks. In the ash pit on the north side there is an irregular charcoal ash formed after burning, which is clearly recognizable, and its diameter is about 1 meter after measurement. In the later process of urban pipeline renovation and small-scale engineering operations on Huangcheng Street, the author also saw the excavated burned wood charcoal ash on the north side of the Kowloon Wall.
The zhaobi in front of the palace of Zhu Guidai is the Nine Dragon Wall located in Datong Dadong Street. It has become the coordinates of the study of the ruins of Datong City and Daiwangfu in the Ming Dynasty, and has been announced as a national key cultural relics protection unit, which stands tall and tells people about the prosperity and rise and fall of Daiwangfu.
After the Qing Dynasty, in order to pray for rain, pay dragons, and offer plays, people built an imperial city stage on the site of the Chongxin Gate on the central axis of the Daiwang Palace.
Examination of the relics of the descendants of the Daiwangfu. The tombs of the descendants of The Daiwang Zhu Gui are all large brick chamber tombs. The tombs are all masonry according to the layout and architectural style of the owner's life. The plan layout of the tomb can be seen in the colonnade with the cornice and the bucket, as well as the relief carvings. Wooden beams and pillar roof trusses, four-Arab-style nine-ridge roofs, iris tails, barrel tiles, etc. are basically popular architectural forms in the Ming Dynasty. The tombstone and inscription introduce in detail the specific official positions, merits, and number of kings and grandchildren of each generation of the descendants of the ming dynasty. Unfortunately, the excavated tombs have been excavated by tomb robbers from various periods in history. The tombs of the descendants of the generation of kings are basically the same in terms of the shape of the tomb or the layout of the tomb, the most obvious of which is that the descendants of the generation of kings have gradually declined with the continuous changes of the times.
Fourth, the significance of the study of the royal palace
The Ming Dynasty Royal Palace has been used for nearly 250 years, and it completely records the true situation of the descendants of the Ming Dynasty in many aspects of political, economic, cultural life, etc., which is of great significance for us to understand and interpret the Imperial Palace.
From a positive point of view, first, the construction of the imperial palace is the same as the regulation of the ming dynasty, which completely follows and improves the concept of the central axis of ancient Chinese architecture in terms of architectural layout and shape, forming the theory of architectural centrism; and the appearance of double auxiliary lines on both sides not only sets off the political status of the central building, but also shows the master-slave relationship, objectively reflecting the architectural concept and cultural consciousness of the master-servant relationship of the monarch and the vassal of the feudal society. Second, the DaiwangFu was located in the ancient city of Datong, which was conducive to consolidating the border defense at that time and met the needs of political and military struggle; successive daiwangs who lived here as the kings of the clan would psychologically maintain a certain deterrent power for the army and help maintain the combat effectiveness of the army. The third is the construction of the Imperial Palace, which has left the Nine Dragon Wall, which is of great significance to China's ancient architecture for future generations. The level of craftsmanship embodied in the Nine Dragon Wall has reached the realm of pure fire.
From a negative perspective, the construction of the DaiwangFu first destroyed to a certain extent the original layout and layout of the ancient city of Datong that continued from the Northern Wei, Sui, Tang and Liaojin, and because its area was expanded by dozens of times on the basis of the Liaojin Guozijian and the Yuan Dynasty Fuxue, the original road was cut off. In this sense, the Daiwangfu is a regret for the historical inheritance of the ancient city of Datong; Secondly, the construction of the Imperial Palace and the relocation of the Yuan Dynasty Fuxue (including the Temple of Literature) to the original location of "Yunzhongyi" opposite Yunlufang completely destroyed the architectural complex of the Yuan Dynasty. However, on another level of analysis, it is indeed the truth of history, recording the complete continuation of the Ming Dynasty's feudal system.