What were funerals and funerals like in ancient China?

When a person dies, he is called "zhǔ kuàng" (Li Ji Fu Da Ji). Genus means placement, and 纩 is 新絮. (Here silk refers to the silk wool spit out by silkworms, not the cotton we concept today.) The new silk is very light. It is said that the ancients put the new silk on the mouth and nose of the dying person to see if they were out of breath. This does not necessarily become a custom, at most it is only a custom in a few places, but "genus" has become a synonym for dying.

When the ancients first died, the living person had to go up to the house to face the north to summon the soul of the deceased, which was called "fu", which means to summon the soul of the deceased to return to the body. After waking up, go through the funeral.

After the ancients died, bathe him. This is recorded in the Book of Rites and Funerals. This custom continued into later generations. The Book of Jin records that Wang Xiang was about to die and his son said: "He was desperate but washed his hands and feet, and did not need to bathe." It can be seen that ordinary people are bathed after death.

After death, there is a ritual of "mourning". There are small retreats, there are large ones. Xiao Huo is to wrap the corpse in a coat (qīn), and the more nobles there are, the more clothes there are. The big man put the body into the coffin. When the dead are killed, they must have food, so the "Warring States Policy Zhao Ce" says that "zou lu's subjects are not allowed to be fed when they are born, and they are not allowed to eat when they die." (Rice is served in the mouth of the deceased.) Han also wrote 琀 〈琀〈hán), which is to put jade in the mouth of the deceased. ）

After burial, the funeral is called "bìn". "Analects of the Township Party": "When a friend dies and there is no return, he knows: I am buried." Confucius meant, "Just stop the coffin (jiù) in my house!" "Zuo Chuan , Thirty-two Years of the Duke of Jin": "Winter, Duke Wen of Jin." Gengchen will be buried in Quwo. "This means that the coffin of Jin Wengong was sent to Quwo for mourning, not a burial." According to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Zuo Biography, he was buried in April of the following year. The so-called funeral in later generations is to send the coffin to the burial place.

There are also many pomp and circumstance when the nobles are buried, and there is no need to describe them here.

The funeral rule is fú in white. A tassel is the rope that pulls a coffin cart. The original intention of the sticker is that relatives and friends help pull the cart, but in fact, there is only form. Later, when he came out of the funeral, he pulled two straps on both sides of the line of the mourners, which was the legacy of the clinging.

Elegy is said to have originally been sung by the coffin people. The "Xiè( Xiè) Dew" and "Artemisia (hāo) Li" in the ancient music fu xianghe song are all elegy, and Tao Yuanming has three "elegy poems", and the later generations of elegy evolved from elegy.

Let's talk about burial.

As mentioned above, the Yin Dynasty slave owners had a martyrdom system. Later generations knew that manpower was valuable, so they replaced it with "figurines". Figurines are dolls, including wooden figurines and earth figurines. Later, Confucius also opposed the use of figurines, and Mencius said: "Zhongni said: 'The initiator has no consequences!'" 'For its likeness to use it also.' (Mencius Liang Hui Wang Shang)

From the Yin Dynasty to the Warring States, the ruling class also brought the carriages and horses used in their lifetime to the tomb. Other burial items are multifaceted, including bronze eating utensils, weapons, musical instruments, etc., jade and bone ornaments, and other objects. The more aristocratic, the more exquisite the funerary items. There are also some "ming vessels" (utensils for accompanying burials) that are specially made for burial. In the Han Dynasty, things in daily life were imitated into clay models for burial, and the symbolism of Ming artifacts was even more obvious. ("Mingqi" was originally written as "Hades".) "Haunted vessel" literally means "burial object". ）

Most of the tombs of the ancient aristocratic ruling class have guǒ (椁), which is an outer coffin, mainly used to protect the coffin, and some of them are as many as three or four. The Analects of Advancement says that after the death of Confucius's son Kong Li, "there was a coffin but no rafters", which shows that the rafters are not something that ordinary people can have.

All that has been said above is the funeral of the nobleman, and as for the funeral of the commoners, it is another matter entirely. Even the most frugal funerals are already "depleted" for the "piffles". At most, when they die, they can only be "buried in a draft" (hasty burial), and if they encounter famine years, they have to starve to death to fill the gully.

The Book of Rites and The Bow says, "Ancient tombs are not graves." "According to the modern field archaeological work report, we know that the tombs of the Yin Dynasty and the Western Zhou Dynasty did not have graves, and later they were built on the tombs, mainly as a sign of the tomb, and secondly to increase the difficulty of tomb robbery.

There are records of joint burials in pre-Qin literature. For example, the Book of Poetry, Wang Feng, and the Great Chariot says, "Death is the same cave." The Book of Rites and Bows records that Confucius buried his parents together in Defense. Modern field archaeology has found a warring states tomb with a structure of two coffins, archaeologists believe that the general popularity of couple burial is after the middle of the Western Han Dynasty. "Peacock Southeast Flying" said: "The two families seek a joint burial, bury the Huashan Mountain, plant pines and cypresses in the east and west, and plant sycamores on the left and right." Zhongchang Tong's "Changyan" said: "The ancient burial, the pine cypress sycamore to know the grave also." "This custom has also been passed down for a long time.

Funeral dress is discussed in the following "Patriarchy".

In the past, this kind of bottle was usually named "small-mouth pointed bottom faience vase" and used as a water extraction device (bottle used to fetch water in daily life). Scholars believe that the reason why the bottle is made into this strange shape is that after the empty bottle is placed in the well, it will automatically fall flat, and the bottle mouth will fall to the water surface, which is convenient for the well water to be poured into the bottle; when the water in the bottle is filled, the bottle will automatically return to the vertical state, which is conducive to being lifted from the well. The tip of the bottle also facilitates its placement: the tip can be easily inserted in the soft soil.

The problem is that neolithic people basically did not know how to dig "wells", they mainly drew water from the river, and this bottle of water from the river had almost no advantage; the mud floor of the daily residence at that time was stepped on back and forth in life, which would lead to "ground solidification". The difficulty with which pointed-bottom bottles sit upright on cured ground is obvious: the soil is "soft" enough to hold the bottle almost non-existent. It is wrong for academics to interpret it as a water collector for daily life.

This small-mouth pointed bottom bottle looks like a lot of excavations at the Yangshao cultural site, but most of them are fragmented, and few typical complete specimens can be selected. The number and distribution of small-mouth pointed bottom bottles indicate that they are not a largely used daily life vessel, but more like an artifact related to religion or sacrifice. Su Bingqi believes that the small-mouth pointed bottom bottle has the nature of an "artifact" and is dedicated to clergy.

In fact, this bottle should be named "unitary bottle". "酉" is written in oracle bones as "or" (", which symbolizes the shape of a small-mouthed wine vessel with a pointed bottom, and by extension means "wine". The Shuowen also says: "Unitary, just also." In August, it is made of shǔ and can be made of shochu (zhòu) wine. "Sho, the Sayings" says: "Sho, triple alcohol also." "Shochu is a heavy winemaking made by replacing water with liquor (lǐ) with high sugar content and low alcohol content, and adding it to rice and koji. The alcohol concentration of heavy wine can reach up to 10%. The explanation of the word "酉" in the Shuowen is that "unitary" is a heavy wine made of yellow millet that ripens in August. 酉 is the original word for "wine" and "honor". Later, "unitary" was borrowed to indicate the branches of heaven and dry earth, in order to distinguish, people added the side of "water" next to the word "unitary", which is "wine", and the wine container was added next to "unitary" with a pair of hands holding wine " . A very important category of bronze ceremonial vessels in the Shang Zhou Dynasty is the honorific vessel used as a wine vessel.

A unitary bottle is a wine bottle. The unitary bottle of Yangshao culture is an "artifact" specially used to hold wine.

Yangshao culture Majiayao type this unitary bottle was excavated when the surface was covered with earth gray "water rust", and no pattern could be seen. The peasants who found it used it to load mechanical lubricating oil during the "Cultural Revolution", hung it under their own eaves, repaired tractors and threshing machines for three years, and the bottles were not leaked. This unitary bottle was collected by the Longxi County Cultural Center in 1974. The staff of the Gansu Provincial Museum later removed the soil gray "water rust" on its surface with diluted vinegar, and the water vortex depicted by the ink line of the instrument table was revealed.

Yangshao culture Majiayao type this unitary bottle is now rated as a first-class cultural relic. The result of the grading of cultural relics can also be explained from the side, and the specimens of unitary bottles with complete shapes and exquisite ornamentation unearthed are very few.

Dagger, meaning spoon, is used in conjunction with Ding. The Fish Ding Dagger should be an artifact of the Warring States period. Judging from the inscription, the ding that matches this dagger should be the ding of cooking fish.

The inscription of the Fish Dagger reads:

"Yue: There are faint people born, and the king fish is falling." A: Chin-jae, a swimming water bug. The people of the lower people are unwise, and the chī (samsara) is particularly ordered. Thin life into the soup, suddenly in and out, do not (wú) where it is. ”

The meaning of this inscription is: Once upon a time there was a foolish man who fell into the king's cooking fish. He said, "Be careful, you water bugs that roam around. The people at the bottom are ignorant, and you see the fate of Xuan you. When it is time to be thrown into the cooking fish bowl with boiling water, it will float up for a while, sink down for a while, and there is no good end.

In the "Astronomical meteorological miscellaneous" of the Mawangdui Han Tomb Book of the Western Han Dynasty, there is a text under the comet map: "Xuan You Banner, Soldier; Outside, Return." This means that a comet has appeared in the sky, and there has been a scourge of war. If you're outside, hurry home (to avoid getting hurt by a warfight).

The typical artifact jade bracelet in the Liangzhu (zhǔ) culture (late Neolithic period, about 5,000 years ago) in Zhejiang is called "Xuan YouHuan" in the "Ancient Jade Map" compiled by The Yuan Ren Zhu Derun. That is, the folklore of the Yuan Dynasty believes that the four beast heads on this Liangzhu cultural jade bracelet represent the head of Xuan You. Ancient texts record that the clams were transformed into various beasts, such as the head of the turtle-footed snake ("Shu Yi Ji"), the shape of the water beast ("Su Shi Yanyi"), and so on. In the two T-shaped paintings unearthed by Mawangdui, the beast like chī qiú at the foot of Lux at the bottom of the picture should be Xuanyou.

The Yellow Emperor's war was especially a very important event in prehistoric culture, and even if there was no writing and word of mouth, this story was still integrated into the Chinese historical documents after the formation of the text in various forms.

In the book excavated from the Mawangdui No. 3 Han Tomb in 1973, we also saw the story of the Yellow Emperor Zhan Xuanyou. This is a passage from the Sixteen Classics in the ancient texts of the Western Han Dynasty's Lao Tzu Yi Ben:

"The Yellow Emperor met Xuan You, so he captured him. Stripped of its ▉ revolution as a dry marquis, so that people shoot it, and rewards those who are in the middle; the heaven that is built by its hair, known as jīng; the stomach thinks that it is a bow (jū), so that people cling to it, and the one who is more in the middle is rewarded; it rots its flesh and bones, and throws it into the bitterness (hǎi), so that the people of the world will be shà(shà). God forbids. Emperor: Do not violate my prohibition, do not flow my words, do not disturb my people, do not extricate my way. Transgression, wandering, chaos, rebellion, non-compliance, excesses, excesses, arbitrariness is more comfortable, the desire is good, its god is not first and is good at raising soldiers, seeing the clams as a co-worker, bending its spine, making it yú (yú), not dying and not living, and què (què) is the earth (yíng). Emperor Yue: Keep my name correct, and do not lose my eternal punishment to show future generations. ”

The meaning of this startling passage is that the Yellow Emperor and Xuan You clashed on the battlefield, and the Yellow Emperor captured Xuan You. The Yellow Emperor told people to peel off Xuan You's skin to make a target, and told everyone to shoot, and there was a reward for those who shot a lot; the Yellow Emperor cut off Xuan You's hair and hung it in the sky, calling it "Xuan You Banner"; the Yellow Emperor also filled Xuan You's stomach with hay to make a ball for everyone to kick, and the person who could sweep the ball with his foot for the longest time was rewarded. (Press: This is the so-called "cù ju". In the most popular sense, it is an ancient "football game". The Yellow Emperor also made the meat of Xuan You into a meat sauce, mixed it into the bitter vegetable sauce, and ordered all the people to share it. The Yellow Emperor issued a ban under the heavens, and the Yellow Emperor said: It is forbidden to violate my laws, it is forbidden not to eat the bitter sauce of the people I have distributed to you, it is forbidden to disturb my people's hearts, and it is forbidden to do not follow my path. If you violate the prohibition, if you secretly pour out the bitter sauce of human flesh, if you disturb the people's hearts, if you don't listen to me, if you don't obey the rules and time limits, if you know that you have made a mistake, if you cross the line, if you change the system privately to make yourself happy, if you want to do whatever you want, if I have not issued an order and you use the army without authorization, you will see the fate of Xuan you: he is subservient as a slave, he has to eat his own dung, he can't survive and die, he can't make me a stepping stone under the ground! The Yellow Emperor said: You must be careful to obey me, and you must not violate the criminal law I have set, so as to show future generations.

From this, we know that the truth about the origin of the so-called Yellow Emperor's ritual system of "hanging clothes and ruling the world" was nothing more than that. People often can't tolerate violent records in the ancient sage era, so it is not surprising that this text has been scattered after the Han Dynasty.

As to whether Xuanyu refers to a person or a tribe, to the Dongyi tribe (located in present-day Shandong), or to the Miaoman tribe (located in present-day Hunan), none of this has been satisfactorily clarified.

This piece of copper spear shape from the Western Han Dynasty is strangely made. The blade of the spear is in an isosceles triangle, and on each side of the blade is a bronze naked man with his hands cut back. The bronze man's head is combed with a bun, which may show the image of the tortured prisoner of war after the bun is hanging down.

The burial level of this bronze spear unearthed is very high. This tomb also unearthed a snake button seal cast in gold, and the seal was chiseled with the words "Seal of the King of Dian". This shows that the holder of the bronze spear is a figure of the first rank of the king of the Dian Kingdom. The hanging bronze spear is one of the symbols of the political power of the State of Yunnan.

Most scholars believe that the owner of tomb No. 63 in Zhao Village, Quwo North, was the second wife (little wife) of the eighth Jin Marquis (Mu Hou). There is also a "Yang Jiao (jí) pot" unearthed in the tomb, indicating that the owner of the tomb was a woman surnamed Yang Guo before she married. This is also the only tomb owner in the tomb of the ninth generation of Jinhou in Quwo who was buried as a concubine in the tomb of the Marquis of Jin. Under the hierarchical patriarchal system of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the specifications of the burial items of Tomb No. 63 far exceeded that of Mu Hou's lady Zhengfang, and even surpassed Mu Hou himself, bringing endless confusion to future generations.

The ancients used jade as a metaphor for people's beautiful character, gentleness to represent benevolence, consistency in appearance to righteousness, clear voice to wisdom, and so on. The Western Zhou Jade Pendant was used to restrain people's walking manners. The group of jade pendants hung on the body, but when walking, they could not make the sound of jade colliding. (Jade is a relatively brittle material and is easily broken when struck.) Therefore, the Chinese people say that Yu is afraid of "shock", "fall" and "bump". The higher the level of the person, the longer the group jade pendant on the body, the smaller and gentler the walking steps. This set of jade pendants is about 150 cm long, according to which it is estimated that the height of the wearer is at least 175 cm or more, and the figure is tall. When worn, the jade pendant will be suspended from the neck to the ankle (huái), and accordingly, the wearer must walk with gentleness and dignity. Group Yu Pei explains from another angle that when people are like beautiful jade, they are not unable to make sounds, but they absolutely cannot easily make sounds; people who keep making noises all day long are tantamount to "donkey mules and calves" and are not worthy of the respect of others.

The wearing method of this group jade pendant is to hang the group jade pendant around the neck with a ribbon. In the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, the group jade pendant was changed to be tied around the waist and no longer put on the neck.

Many of the jade artifacts in Tomb No. 63 and Tomb No. 8 of Zhao Village in Quwo North (Tomb Master Jin Xianhou) are old jade at that time. We can also see the remnants of the late Shang Dynasty ornaments on these jades. This shows that some of the jades of the Shang Dynasty were collected by successive Jin Marquises, and modified and transformed into their own group of jade pendants that they usually wear.

In the Neolithic Age, the mainland had the practice of putting contents into the mouths of the dead. By the Zhou Dynasty, in addition to placing grain in the mouths of the deceased, it was also popular to use jade as a mouth inclusion. It is the jade that is put into the mouth of the deceased. The "Rites" say that shortly after death, the deceased should be given "xiē teeth", that is, several wedges should be stuffed into his upper and lower teeth to prevent the corpse from stiffening and the teeth closed and unable to eat. In the old days, relatives usually bathed (bathed) the person on the day of his death, and immediately after the bath, he was given a meal, and after the meal was completed, he dressed the deceased.

In the Han Dynasty, yuqi was generally a jade cicada, that is, yuzhi. The ancients believed that cicadas lived by drinking dew and molting their shells, and were a noble and regenerative creature. The jade cicada represents his tongue in the mouth of the deceased, giving the deceased the ability to speak that will never be lost in the netherworld.

In the Han Dynasty, there was also a kind of jade cicada that was a jade pendant, which was a jade pendant hanging on the body of a living person. In general, the jade cicadas in the mouths of dead people are all guī (a jade version below the tip), while the jade pendant cicadas hanging on the living people of the Han Dynasty are relatively thicker and more three-dimensional round sculptures. No matter what kind of jade cicada was in the Han Dynasty, the maturity of its carving knife and the sharp tension of its lines were difficult for later imitators to reach. Nowadays, the "Han jade cicada" sold in the antique market is everywhere, but the number of genuine products is not even one in a thousand.

Liu Yan was the son of Liu Xiu, emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty. This jade cicada unearthed from Liu Yan's tomb is the most exquisite of all the Han Dynasty jade cicadas unearthed in China, and its beauty and quality are rare in all museum collections around the world. This jade cicada is made of Xinjiang's top mutton fat white jade. Its whole body is white and crystalline, and its warm translucency is beyond the imagination of ordinary people, and it can almost bring people a shocking suffocation. The jade cicada's body lines are sharp and square, and all the corners are round and light. If this handsome and upright, rigid and soft work is in hand, the jade cicada is smooth and light, it is simply flapping its wings.

The Yuan An Monument was erected in the fourth year of the Eastern Han Dynasty (92 AD), and was excavated during the Ming Dynasty Wanli Period in the Yan (yǎn) division of Henan. Later, it was moved to the East Cow King Temple in Xin Village, southwest of Yanshi, to make a stone case, and the characters were facing downwards, and slowly no one knew. At the beginning of 1929, the Niuwang Temple was changed to Xincun Primary School. In the summer of 1930, a child in the elementary school went to the school under the stone case to escape the summer, and found that there was a character under the stone case, and The Yuan An Monument was re-known to the world.

In the 1938 War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Yuan Anbei was again unaccounted for, and it was not until August 1961 that it was discovered in the government courtyard of Yanshi Tuotou Township, Henan. The Yuan An Monument is now preserved in the Henan Provincial Museum.

The font of the Yuan An Monument is beautiful and flowing, and it shows dignity and integrity in the flowing and rounding, which is the highest level of calligraphy in the Seal Book Inscription of the Han Dynasty.

There is a hole in the middle of the Yuan An monument, this hole is called "wearing", which is used to wear the reel (lùlu, meaning wooden pulley) to drag the coffin into the burial chamber during burial. After the end of the Han Dynasty, there was no "wearing" on the stele.

Mourning

Mourning clothes is a system of mourning clothes. Due to the differences in the relationship between the living and the deceased, the period of mourning and mourning is also different. Funeral dress is divided into five levels, called five clothes. The names of the five costumes are chopping (cuī), Qi decay, dagong, xiaogong, and 缌 (sī) hemp. The following are described separately according to the "Liturgy and Funeral Dress" section.

Chopping (缞, pronounced cuī) is the heaviest of the five servings. Where the mourning garment is called the tunic (draped over the chest), the lower garment is called the garment. Decay is made of the thickest raw linen cloth, the side and bottom of the clothes are not sewn, so it is called chopping, chopping is the meaning of not sewing. The son is the father, the father is the eldest son are all decapitated (the princes are the son of heaven, the subjects are also decapitated), the wives and concubines are husbands, and the unmarried women are the fathers, in addition to the decapitation of the decapitation, there is also a mourning bun, which is called "zhuā) decline". All are three years of mourning (actually two years).

Qi decay is inferior to chopping decay, which is made of cooked linen cloth. Because the seams are neat, it is called flush decay. The "Ritual And Funeral Dress" chapter records that Qi decline is divided into four grades: (a) Qi decline for three years, which is the funeral dress of the father as the mother and the mother as the eldest son; (b) qi decline for one year, with the staff (held in the funeral), which is called the "staff period (jī)", which is the funeral dress of the father for the mother and the husband for the wife; (c) the decline of the qi for one year, without the staff, this is called the "no cane period", this is the man's funeral dress for his uncle's parents and brothers, the married woman is the parent, the daughter-in-law is the uncle (in-laws), the grandson and the granddaughter are the grandparents are also the no cane period; (Ding) Qi declines for three months, This is a mourning dress for great-grandparents.

The great work is inferior to qi decay, which is made of cooked linen cloth, which is finer than qi decay. Gong refers to the work of weaving cloth. The great merit is the nine-month mourning dress, the man is a great contribution to the married sisters and aunts, the cousins and the unmarried cousins are all great contributions, and the woman is the husband's grandparents and uncles, and for her brothers.

The small gong is second to the big gong, and the small gong suit is more delicate than the big gong suit, which is a five-month mourning dress. Men are from grandfathers (uncles, uncles), from grandmothers (uncles, uncles), from grandfathers (cousins, cousins), from grandmothers (cousins, cousins), from grandparents (from brothers), from fathers and sisters (cousins), from grandparents are all small merits, women are husbands' aunts and sisters, and women are also small deeds.

Hemp is the lightest of the five, more delicate than the small suit, and the mourning period is three months. Men are great-grandfathers, great-grandmothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, fathers, mothers, brothers, grandchildren (sons of women), nephews, sons-in-law, parents of wives, uncles, etc.

The above is a set of mourning clothes system recorded in the scriptures. Although this system was not necessarily fully implemented at that time, although the mourning period of later generations has also changed, we can see the following three points from it:

First, the preference for sons over daughters can be seen during mourning. The wife lives for the husband for three years, and the husband serves the wife for only a period of time. Before the Ming Dynasty, if the father was still there, the son's mourning for his mother was only a decline in qi, not a decline.

Second, in the mourning clothes, it can be seen that the difference between concubines is very strict. Shuzi served the funeral of his mother for three years (after the Ming Dynasty, Shuzi also served three years of mourning for his mother), but Shuzi did not serve the mourning of his mother, and later changed it to a period of annual mourning. The eldest son and eldest grandson are very important in the mourning service. In the mourning system, there is the so-called "burden-bearing grandson", that is, because the eldest son of the concubine is dead, the son of the eldest son should bear the heavy responsibility of the funeral sacrifice (and the zongmiao). There is also the so-called "weight-bearing great-grandson", and the name of the weight-bearing grandson or the great-grandson who bears the weight is listed first in the obituary (fù) wen (obituary).

Third, the hierarchy of blood intimacy is evident in the mourning garment. Therefore, it is customary to take five servings as a relative, and outside the five servings as a neglect. "Erya Shi Kin": "The son of the clan father is referred to as the clan brother, and the son of the clan brother is referred to as the same surname." Note: "Relatives of the same surname do not belong to the genus." That is to say, there is no relationship between the sons of the clan brothers or clan brothers, but only the relationship of the same surname.

When the ancients talked about kinship, they often used mourning clothes to indicate that relatives were distant and close. For example, Li Mi's "Table of Feelings": "There is no period of strength and close relatives on the outside, and there is no servant of the five feet of the door inside." Another example is Du Fu's "Dispatching Xing": "The common refers to the relatives who are big, and the centurion is in the line." In this case, the period of meritorious mai mai does not refer to mourning clothes, but to relatives.