The tiger in the museum is mighty and romantic

Article\Special contributor to this journal Liu Tingting

At the beginning of the Year of the Tiger in 2022, many museums launched special exhibitions of cultural relics related to tigers. As a symbol of ancient military martial arts and a sacred beast that wards off evil spirits and drives away disasters, the image of the tiger has appeared on various cultural relics such as bronzes, jade and ceramics, deriving different forms of tiger cultural elements such as totem belief and military authority.

"King of the Mountain Beast" and "Heavy Weapon of the Nation"

The Shuowen Jiezi refers to the tiger as "the king of the mountain beasts". As a symbol of the king in traditional culture, the mighty temperament of the tiger has also appeared on the pre-Qin bronze ware known as the "heavy weapon of the country". Among the Shang Dynasty bronzes excavated from the Xingan Oceania Tomb in Jiangxi, the realistic tiger image is one of its unique cultural symbols. Among them, the star relic, the double-tailed bronze tiger of the Fu bird, is a three-dimensional round carved tiger, the tiger's head looks straight ahead, the tooth is grinning, it is crouched, and there are strange parallel double tails at the back. Its body is decorated with cloud thunder patterns and scale patterns, which are more gorgeous than the striped lines of the real tiger, and there is a small bird standing on the tiger's back, with a sharp beak and round eyes, which is very cute, and forms a strong visual contrast with the tiger with a large body and long fangs.

In addition to the double-tailed bronze tiger of the Fu bird, the fang ding and the flat-footed round ding excavated from the Xingan Oceania Tomb in Jiangxi are also decorated with three-dimensional tiger carvings on the ears. Compared with the Central Plains artifacts of the same period, this kind of instrument is decorated with images such as three-dimensional tigers on the ears, and has become an important symbol of the bronze ware of the Xingan Oceania Tomb. According to the literature, in the south of the Shang Dynasty, there was a Fang state called "Tiger Fang". Some archaeologists have studied the tiger culture symbol artifacts excavated from the Xingan Oceania Tomb, and believe that the surrounding Ganpo area may be where the "Tiger Fang" is located, and the tiger is the totem of the "Tiger Fang" tribe.

Historically, the Ba people in the southwest region were also tribes that admired tigers. As the bearer of the Spirit of the Ba people, the tiger stripes on the Ba-style bronzes from the Warring States to the Han Dynasty are far more than other ornamental motifs, which has become a unique mark of the Ba people. For example, the Warring States Tiger Pattern Copper Ge collected by the China Three Gorges Museum in Chongqing, the rear to the inner two sides are cast with a tiger head pattern with a combination of yin lines and reliefs, the tiger's mouth is open, the fangs appear outside, the lines are simple, and the shape is extremely vivid. In the Later Han Dynasty Book of the Southern Manchu Southwest Yi Lie, it is recorded: "The Emperor was then junhu Yicheng, and all four surnames were subjects." When Liu Jun died, his soul became a white tiger. "According to the literature, Liu Jun unified the Ba clan, and after his death, his soul was transformed into a white tiger. Since then, the tiger has become the totemic belief of the Ba people. In the area of activity of the Ba people, many tiger buttons have also been unearthed (a bronze musical instrument in the Warring States period), and the tiger generally stands in a three-dimensional form in the center of the top. As one of the unique percussion instruments in the ancient army, the tiger button hammer may have the meaning of showing the mighty military might.

A common military-related tiger element artifact is the Tiger Symbol, which is generally shaped like a tiger. The Tiger Charm is a relic granted to subordinates and dispatched troops during the Warring States to The Han WuDike period, and is divided into left and right halves. Judging from the Duhu rune inscriptions hidden in the Shaanxi History Museum, the right symbol remains in the center, and the left symbol is in the hands of local generals, and it takes two halves to investigate and verify the truth before the troops can be dispatched.

The most famous story about the Tiger Rune in history is that Xin Lingjun "stole the rune to save Zhao". The Chronicle of the Duke of Wei records that after the Battle of Changping in Qin and Zhao, the State of Zhao faced a crisis of annihilation. As a close neighbor of the Zhao State, the State of Wei also felt cold in the lips. Through Ru Ji's theft of the Tiger Charm of the King of Wei, Xin Lingjun mobilized the Wei army to rescue Zhao and resist the Qin army, temporarily ensuring the stability of Zhao and Wei.

Tiger elements in the lives of the ancients

The ancients believed that the tiger pillow could avoid evil spirits and avoid evil and suppress terror. Tao Hongjing's "Notes on the Materia Medica" has a record of "the tiger's head is used as a pillow to ward off evil spirits; to place the household and ward off ghosts". Ge Hong of the Jin Dynasty also recorded in ge hong's "Elbow Backup Emergency Fang, Cure the Pawn's Nightmare And Sleepless Fang", which also records that "it is especially good to use the tiger's head pillow", which can treat the disease of "lying down and not being lonely".

Judging from the surviving tiger-shaped pillows, most of them are porcelain pillows fired in the Cizhou kiln system during the Song and Jin Dynasties, which are mainly popular in Henan, Shanxi and other places. Judging from the golden and yellow black color goose reed pattern tiger pillow collected by the Shanghai Museum, the whole is molded, making a crouching tiger shape, the eyes are round, the teeth are grinning, the back is a pillow surface with black color on a white background, painted with goose reed patterns, and the yellow color tiger body depicts tiger spots in black color. In order to prevent explosion during firing, the porcelain pillow must be equipped with air holes. The air outlet of the tiger pattern pillow is in the nostril position of the tiger head, because the nose is applied with black color, it is difficult to detect without close observation, hidden and not exposed, and the design is very clever.

In addition to making pillows in the image of a tiger, a porcelain known as "tiger" was also popular during the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Wei and Jin Dynasties, which is generally considered to be the drowning vessel of the ancients, and its shape is said to be taken from the story of General Li Guang shooting a tiger and casting a tiger-shaped drowning vessel. The "Miscellaneous Records of Xijing" records: "Li Guang and his brothers hunted together in the north of the Dark Mountain, and saw Crouching Tiger Yan. Shoot it, shoot it with one shot... The cast bronze is shaped like a vessel, showing the humiliation of also. Judging from a piece of western Jin Dynasty Yue kiln blue glaze "Tiger Zi" collected by the Zhejiang Provincial Museum, the body of the instrument is cocoon-shaped, the round mouth is raised, the tiger's head is open and staring, the limbs are squatting, the back has a bridge-shaped lifting beam that can be held, and the hollow inside can be used as a container, which is very practical.

As the king of the hundred beasts, the tiger was incorporated into the cultural cognition of the ancients very early. Three groups of mussel sculpture dragon and tiger patterns excavated from the Xishuipo site in Puyang County, Henan Province, are artificial relics of the Neolithic era. Among them, the east and west sides of the owner of the M45 tomb are each shaped with mussel shells. Among them, the shape of the tiger is extremely specific, the tiger's head is downward, the body is walking, and the slightly thicker tail end droops. This shape of the left and right dragons and tigers naturally reminds people of the legends of the four spirits of the green dragon, the white tiger, the suzaku and the xuanwu. Archaeologists believe that the owner of the tomb should be the head of the clan tribe, this layout may be a kind of ascension ceremony in the eyes of the ancestors, or through this layout, so that the owner of the tomb can have the ability to communicate with the gods and ancestors after death.

In the early life of Ru Mao drinking blood, the ancients had countless contacts with tigers. The Izumiya Museum in Japan houses the shanghu man-eater, in which the tiger's front paws embrace a man, and the human head is under the open fangs of the tiger's mouth. The "Left Biography" records that Ling Yin Ziwen of the Chu State was once "abandoned by the lady in all dreams, and the tiger milk". This bronze tiger holds the person on the chest and the human hand on the tiger's body, somewhat similar to the scene of the tiger mother feeding the nursing human child. However, this tiger's large mouth and fangs are exposed, which has to make people think that this is more like its eating appearance. Some scholars believe that the people on the tiger's body are painted with strange patterns, more like ghosts, and the tiger's expression is a scene of tiger eating ghosts.

Wang Chong's "On Balance" of the Eastern Han Dynasty quotes the Classic of Mountains and Seas: "In the midst of the vicissitudes of the sea, there is the mountain of Dushuo ... There are two gods and men on it, one is the god, and the other is Yu Lei, and the Lord reads and leads all the ghosts. Evil spirits cling to reeds and eat tigers. It can be seen from this that at least in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the ancients already had the superstitious concept of tiger eating evil ghosts, and the tiger eater was a Shang Dynasty artifact, although the age is earlier, but it is indeed possible to show the image of the tiger eater.

Passing down the jade and the tiger

During the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, there were also many carved jade tiger images, such as the Shang Dynasty jade tiger in the Shanghai Museum, which was carved and concise, with round eyes and large mouths, a strong body, and a tail curled up, and the overall line was quite powerful, like the image of a fierce tiger in a wild run. There is a record in the Zhou Li that "use jade as six instruments to worship the heavens and the earth: to worship the heavens with Cangbi, to pay tribute to the land with Huang Qi, to pay tribute to the east with QingGui, to the south with ChiZhang, to the west with white amber, and to the north with Xuan Huang", of which "white amber" is generally considered to be a tiger-shaped jade.

The Shanghai Museum also houses a beautiful tiger-patterned jade ornament from the Jin Dynasty, which belongs to the category of Spring Water Jade and Qiushan Jade in the Liaojin Period. Chunshui and Qiushan refer to the activities of the Khitan people in the spring and autumn to hunt bowls (Khitan words, meaning the camp of the Liao Emperor). The Liao people were khitans, who originally lived a life of chasing water and grass, and the camp in the place where they moved was called a bowl, which was later inherited by the Jin people and became a hunting activity in the spring and autumn. Chunshui jade generally shows the scene of catching swans with Haidongqing in spring, while Qiushan jade reflects the scene of hunting tiger deer in autumn. In the autumn scenery of the northern country, the leaves are yellow, and the autumn mountain jade is mostly made of jade skin (jade before it is processed, as a natural mineral, often with a layer of stone wrapping outside the jade, commonly known as jade skin) to do autumn color, and uses the beautiful color technique to express autumn leaves. In this golden dynasty beautiful tiger pattern jade ornament, the body and spirit grass of the fierce tiger are carved from the original jade skin of the jade, which is in harmony with the surrounding carved trees, full of the beauty of the autumn cool mountains.

Throughout thousands of years of Chinese history, there have been countless artifacts related to tigers. In the eyes of the Chinese ancients, the tiger was different from other beasts of prey. In addition to the mythical dragons, the zodiac signs are mostly animals closely related to human life, and tigers are slightly different in them. The inclusion of the tiger in the zodiac sign can be seen in the ancients' recognition of the close relationship between the tiger and the person. In addition to the important cultural relics related to tigers, people's love for tigers can also be seen from folk crafts such as cloth tigers and tiger head shoes.

(Hainan Daily)