The chariot is safe, like a reed. The four oysters are both yoke and idle. As for Taiyuan. Wen Wu Jifu, wanbang is the constitution. JiFu Yanxi, who has received many blessings. Come and go from pickaxe, I will do forever. Drink the royal friends, the turtle carp. Hou who is in Yi, Zhang Zhongxiaoyou. - "Poetry, Xiaoya, June"
preface
The Wu Jifu mentioned in the poem is Yin Jifu, the chief compiler of the Book of Poetry, who is also a humeral minister of King Xuan of Zhou, who assisted King Xuan of Zhou in making the Zhou Dynasty realize Zhongxing. Among Yin Jifu's relics is a bronze vessel called the "Xijia Plate". At the bottom of this plate, there is an inscription of 133 characters, which records the conquest of the Zhou Xuan King to collect tribute to the Southern Huaiyi, and this bronze artifact from the late Western Zhou Dynasty can be called a national treasure-level cultural relic.
It was used as a flapjack artifact
During the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, it has become a very common phenomenon to record history on bronzes, so the inscriptions on bronzes have important significance in studying the history and culture of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. The Xijia Plate is a bronze heavy vessel of the late Western Zhou Dynasty, which has high historical research value, and it is rumored that the Xijia Plate was excavated in the Song Dynasty.
After the excavation of the Xijia plate, it did not attract attention, and the Southern Song Dynasty was in war for many years, and the Xijia plate also changed hands several times, and was once used as a tool for baking cakes by a poor couple, and since then the circle foot of the Xijia plate has been missing. During the Yuan Dynasty, the Xijia Plate was rarely collected by the Prime Minister, and later for a long time there was no trace of the Xijia Plate, until the Republic of China Period, the Xijia Plate was collected by the collector Chen Jieqi.
In 2010, the plate appeared at an auction in the United States
Although after the Republic of China, the cultural relics industry has always been very concerned about the whereabouts of the Xijia plate, and there has always been a lot of news about the Xijia plate. There have been many rumors of the discovery of the nail plates in Hong Kong, Japan and other places, but the facts have proved that these plates are forged, which also makes people more curious about the whereabouts of the plates.
A small auction was held in the United States in 2010, and auctions like this naturally invite collectors and enthusiasts to participate, and many foreigners are very interested in Chinese cultural relics. At that time, a Chinese collector living overseas also accepted the invitation to participate in the auction, and unexpectedly, in this small auction, the precious bronze armor plate was also among them.
Bought by mainland collectors for domestic exhibition
Seeing the armor plate at the auction is naturally a very exciting thing, but there have also been fakes of the armor plate before this, so this bronze did not attract much attention at the auction at that time. Especially for foreigners, compared with calligraphy and painting, their enthusiasm for bronze ware is not high if they do not understand history.
At the auction, chinese collectors living overseas still have a certain understanding of the Xijia disk, and at the auction site, it is also carefully identified, and after careful consideration, it is considered to be genuine, and finally auctioned, and now the valuation of the Xijia plate exceeds 200 million. It was later shipped back to China, and after careful identification by experts, it was confirmed to be a treasure, and it was exhibited in China in 2014.
summary
Even if the base of the Xijia plate is missing and difficult to find, which makes the meaning of the Xijia disk as a ding instrument no longer exist, the collection value and research value of the Xijia plate are still very high, and the 133-character inscription on the disk body has historical value for the study of the culture and history of the late Western Zhou Dynasty.
The damage to the xijia plate will naturally be heart-wrenching, and because of the war and other reasons, many precious cultural relics have been lost overseas like the xijia plate. I hope that more cultural relics that have been lost overseas can be returned to the motherland, so that these cultural relics can be better preserved and the meaning given by history can be better inherited.
【References】The Book of Poetry, The Interpretation of the Yi Instruments of the Relics, the Records of the Ancient Records
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