Back in the light years of the Qing Dynasty, it was spring, and Dong Chunsheng, a villager in Dongjia Village in Qishan County, Shaanxi Province, was rummaging through the land in the west of the village and moving a large stone in the field, he was suddenly stunned, and he saw a round and rolling guy, as if it was a bronze object. Dong Chunsheng brushed away the dirt above with his hand, which turned out to be a ding, and there were many words densely packed on it.
After he carried Dading home, the villagers who heard the news came to "identify" it. And the next day, an antique dealer who claimed to be surnamed Niu appeared at Dong Chunsheng's home, he was very good at looking at Dading, and saw that there was a large ancient text densely packed in the Ding, knowing that it was "Baoding", so he immediately offered Dong Chunsheng a price of 300 taels of silver to buy his Ding.
You should know that the annual income of a Qipinzhi County in the Qing Dynasty at that time was 45 taels of silver plus 45 pieces of rice, and 300 taels of silver was of course a huge amount of money.
Dong Chunsheng was overjoyed and sold on the spot. And the antique dealer was even more pleased, he got the Ding, after identification, found that this Ding is actually the world's unparalleled Mao Gong Ding, can not be overjoyed.
Later, the antique dealer sold Mao Gongding to Chen Jieqi, a famous epigrapher of the Qing Dynasty, at a high price.
The Qing Dynasty's "Great Qing Laws" stipulate that private individuals are not allowed to collect precious cultural relics unearthed underground, and the dark atmosphere of society is corrupt, so there is "fear of Huaibi". In order to prevent the unexpected Chen Jieqi pole to reduce the influence of the outside world on Mao Gongding as much as possible. Even to his friends and family, he flatly denied that he had collected Baoding. For the cultural relics collected by Chen Jiefu, most of them are happy to be published in the world, printed into a catalog, and made known to the world, only for Mao Gongding, he always locks the secret and does not show people. Even Mao Gongding's inscription was expanded in only four copies at the beginning of the Ding. At present, there are only two Mao Gongding inscription rubbings in China, each priced at more than one million yuan.
As soon as Mao Gongding's commentary was published, it immediately caused a sensation, and many scholars wrote articles on it, and Mao Gongding was indispensable in all monographs on the study of Jinwen. However, the main focus is on the interpretation of inscriptions, and other issues are rarely covered.
Chen Jieqi received Mao Gongding for only a year, and his mother died of illness. In the fourth year of Xianfeng, he took the opportunity of his mother's illness and returned to his hometown to mourn, resigned from the government and returned to his hometown, focusing on the collection and examination of antiquities.
Because he lived in seclusion and rarely interacted with people, he did not cause any waves. Mao Gongding had been collected by Chen Jieqi for 30 years, and he not only collected Mao Gongding, but also hid Mao Gongding secretly in the Wanyin Building of the county, and carried out many interpretations with great historical research value. In order to ensure that Mao Gongding is foolproof and his academic research is not disturbed, Chen Jieqi also invented a kind of ladder, so that the upstairs and downstairs are completely isolated in normal times, but as long as the situation requires, as long as the situation requires, you can freely go upstairs and downstairs according to the organ.
It was in the mysterious space of the Wanyin Building that Chen Shi completed a series of works that established his status as a master of epigraphy: "The Interpretation of the Golden Stone Literature of The Qizhai Dynasty", "the Tibetan Pottery of the Qizhai Temple", the "Sealed Clay Examination Strategy", and the "Ten Bells Mountain House Seal". Among them, the latter was compiled by classification, the first scientific research of ancient Indians, and was praised by Xuelin as "the crown of ancient indian genealogy". Under the influence of Chen Jieqi, the famous seals of Weixian County emerged in an endless stream, and before the Republic of China, a broad and profound culture of Wanyinlou printing was formed.
Chen Jieqi died of illness in the tenth year of Guangxu (1884), and the ancient relics he collected were distributed to three sons, of which the second son, Chen Houzi, was given the Mao Gongding Instruments. He has always remembered his father's teachings before his death, and is at ease with the peaceful life of reading and keeping his profession.
Before his death, Chen Jieqi laid down three rules for his descendants: first, they were not allowed to become officials; second, they were not allowed to engage in business; third, they were not allowed to study Buddhism and religion, hoping that their descendants would be able to do their own learning in peace. His sons were obedient, but when Chen Houzi's second son, Chen Xiaosheng, the Chen family's peaceful days were broken. Chen Xiaosheng was a loser, and he knew that the Baoding that his grandfather had passed down was worth a fortune, so he wanted to sell the Baoding to make a lot of money.
It was Yu Baoding who was "tricked" by the officer Rui Fang, and then Baoding became the object of the major warlords to seize. After several storms and rains and several reversals, Mao Gongding was purchased by Shanghai businessman Chen Yongren. After the victory of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, Chen Yongren went around bribing Kuomintang officials in order to avoid punishment under the national law, and at the same time handed Mao Gongding over to the Shanghai Pseudo Materials Management Committee.
Later, on the occasion of Chiang Kai-shek's sixtieth birthday, the Ministry of Education of the National Government and the Academia Sinica jointly held the "Exhibition of Cultural Relics and Capital", which lasted for one month, and Mao Gongding was listed among them.
Later, Mao Gongding and a batch of national treasure heavy weapons were transported to Keelung, Taiwan. In 1965, the "National Palace Museum" in Taipei was officially completed, and Mao Gongding was placed in the most conspicuous position of the Bronze Exhibition Hall of the Shang Zhou Dynasty. Today, Mao Gongding is the treasure of the "National Palace Museum" in Taipei.