Jimu news reporter Huang Zhigang
Video clip Huang Zhigang
Correspondent Chen Dongdong
The year 2022 AD is the Year of the Tiger in the Zodiac. The tiger is the king of the hundred beasts, the tiger is mighty, and it is a spiritual creature worshipped by the ancestors. During the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, not only the Ba people worshiped the tiger, but the tiger was also an important deity worshiped by the Chu people, and the combination of the tiger, the dragon and the phoenix was commonly found in the Cultural Relics of Chu. During the Han and Jin Dynasties, tigers were endowed with a variety of connotations such as devouring ghosts, warding off evil spirits, and celestial divine beasts, and the custom of tiger worship was widely popular.
A few days ago, Jimu News reporters came to the Jingzhou Museum to visit three cultural relics related to "tiger culture", bronze tiger statues, silver belt hooks and celadon tiger-shaped sacred beasts, and understand the historical stories behind them.
In 1993, in the second brick and tile factory of Jiangbei Farm in Jingzhou, the cultural relics of the early and middle Western Zhou Dynasty were excavated. It is 35 centimeters long, 21.8 centimeters high and 9.2 centimeters wide, and cultural relics experts say the relics were used as wine containers during the Western Zhou Dynasty.
The Jimu News reporter saw that the overall shape of the cultural relics was a lifelike tiger. The tiger stands upright on all fours and has a short tail rolled up. The abdomen is hollow, and a mouth is opened in the middle of the dorsal ridge, and there is a lid on the mouth, which is decorated with a bird-shaped button.
The body ornament simplifies the phoenix-like swirling cloud pattern and tabby pattern. The shape is realistic, vivid and the style is bold, which is one of the representative works of bronze heavy ware in the southern region in the middle of the Western Zhou Dynasty. Cultural relics experts said that the tiger statue has no signs of long-term use, and was excavated from the silt layer of rivers and lakes, which can be seen that it was sunk under the water at that time, and should be used to sacrifice rivers, lakes and mountains.
Another cultural relic, the silver belt hook, belongs to the decorative items of the Warring States period. It was excavated in 2000 in the Chu Tomb of Tianxingguan No. 2 in Jingzhou. Silver belt hook length 3.7 cm, width 2.8 cm, height 2.5 cm. This belt hook is a dragon and tiger body shape. Hooktail relief is carved with a tiger head, large eyes, long eyebrows, frontal bulge, a pair of large and wide standing ears, a long nose, and a wide mouth. The hook head is a dragon's head, the apricot eyes are bulging, the nose is long, the nostrils are slightly open, and the two pointed ears are shorter.
According to cultural relics experts, silver belt hooks are generally used to pin around the waist or clothing, and their use is similar to today's buttons, and it can also play a decorative role.
Jimu News saw that a celadon tiger-shaped sacred beast excavated from the ancient tomb of the Western Jin Dynasty was 14.6 centimeters high and 18 centimeters long. The tiger is lying on all fours, staring and spitting out its tongue, its ears are erect, and its head and chest are carved with short horizontal stripes, representing beards and tabby stripes.
The Inba people revere the tiger, with the tiger as the totem, and the utensils of the Ba people are mostly carved with tiger stripes. Cultural relics experts said that at that time, in the territory of the Chu State, there were more Ba people living, and the emergence of the idiom "Lower Riba people" is a clear proof. Cultural relics experts said that Many Ba-style artifacts have been unearthed in Jingzhou, including Ba-style copper swords, Ba-style copper spears, tiger buttons, etc., which are all examples of this.
Image source: Jingzhou Museum