Author Xu Jiangwei authorized the release
The Qinghai Museum houses the famous Xindian cultural faience boots, which date back more than 4,000 years and were excavated from the prehistoric cultural site of Liuwan, Ledu, Haidong. But this object makes people feel strange: it can neither be worn on the feet nor used to hold food, is it also a "ceremonial vessel"? Some people even speculate that it is a children's toy made by the ancients.
This kind of faience boots are elaborately made by the ancients to represent the noble sacrificial vessels, which is certain. And this kind of high boots sewn from leather is common to the nomadic people in the alpine region, and when buried, the pottery boots should be filled with wine, milk and other delicacies, which is also certain.
The sole of Xindian cultural faience boots is 14.3 cm long
In this regard, I call it "boot worship" or "foot worship" customs, because the ancestral gods they enjoyed sacrifices had famous names such as boots, shoes, celestial feet, and big feet. As a way of thinking and a habit of expression, it is inherent in primitive Bon, existed in prehistoric times, and has only been perpetuated among the nomadic peoples of the north.
The Xindian culture, known as the Ancient Qiang Culture, was first discovered in the Tao River Basin of Gansu Province, named after the Xindian ruins in Lintao County, but this type of ancient culture is widely distributed on the tributary terraces of the upper reaches of the Yellow River, with the Huangshui area being the most dense, with a lower age limit of 3400 years ago. Making boot-shaped devices to represent the gods of the ancestors is actually to regard the ancestors as the feet of the gods who can conquer all enemies.
The painted pottery boots in the picture above are all red, which is the color of the god of war, and the black double line pattern is painted on it, which is the color of blood, and the lines are embellished with many triangles, which represent reproduction and symbolize the yin and yang of the parents. All of this shows that these faience boots are by no means a sacrificial vessel that ordinary people can enjoy.
As early as 6,000 years ago, this kind of boot-shaped artifacts appeared in the Jade of the Hongshan Culture, and throughout the pre-Qin era, the custom of making boot-shaped utensils to represent kings and conquerors has always existed. This artifact disappeared in the Central Plains around the Han Dynasty, but among the northern nomads, the phenomenon of using "boots" as a honorific title or as a symbol has never disappeared.
This "foot worship" is often associated with the worship of wild yaks, because there is nothing in nature that is more serious, more terrible, and therefore more terrible than being trampled by a cow's hoof:
Pottery birds unearthed from the ruins of the ancient city of Shi'an in Shaanxi Province have bison hooves
Reflected in the oracle bones, the characters for conquest, such as "jin" (進)", "逐", "wu", "xia", etc., are all under a foot symbol for trampling, "stop", pronounced from one of the ancient Tibetan wild yaks called "zhi", and the Tibetan word "trampling" is also called "zhi" (zhi).
The horns on the head of the pottery bird in the picture above have fallen off, but the double horns on the head of the bronze bird excavated from the Tomb of the Lady of Yin Are intact, and the claws are also shaped like cow hooves, that is, they are a combination of bison and Qiong bird, which is an expression of "foot worship", and it is also a direct annotation of the original meaning of the oracle bone "stop" character.
The most famous Bronze Boots of the Shang Dynasty were unearthed at the site of Eight Acres of Liulin in Shanxi, which is a national first-class cultural relic. The head of this boot is rolled up, this is the leather boot style that the nomadic people continue to this day, the upper part has a round hole and a half-moon shaped hole to represent the sun and the moon, the middle of the boot barrel is engraved with three rings, symbolizing heaven, earth and man, there is a vertical line in the middle of the boot barrel, and there are four eight straight lines carved on the left and right, this is the number of kings, the "eight-pillar country" is also, and the sole of the boot has twelve horizontal lines, which represents "all". All of these have divine meanings, and only those ancestral gods who founded the kingdom deserve it.
Left, the Shanxi Museum has bronze boots decorated with sun and moon symbols in the Shang Dynasty, which are 6.3 cm high.
Right, a pair of Warring States ribbon bronze boots.
The Mihide Museum of Art in Japan has three pieces of Warring States bronze wrong gold and silver wine utensils, and a cow's hoof shape is driven by a monkey-shaped bird wing flying like a god of war.
Tracing the origins of this boot-shaped ritual vessel, it all eventually points to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and to the primitive Bon religion. Because the center of the world described by Bon, the Snow Peak of Kailash where the gods descend and ascend to the heavens is located, is called "gang di se" or "di se gang" in Tibetan, also called "Gangchin". Notice that this "gang", although the Tibetan language has the meaning of "snow peak", but the pronunciation is the same as the Tibetan "foot" (gang) pronunciation, that is, as the foot of the god of heaven, you see the snow peak is equivalent to seeing the feet of the god of heaven, worship this sacred mountain, that is, worship at the feet of the god - what a solemn and majestic scene!
Therefore, there are many stories circulating around the sacred mountain of Ganges about how the gods and religious masters left footprints, such as saying that a certain gully was stepped on by Xinrao Miwa and a certain gully left by Milarepa, all of which are related to the double meaning of the pronunciation of "gang" in Tibetan.
Seeing the snow peak straight into the clouds as the foot of the gods and the foothold of the ancestors requires unparalleled imagination, but for the ancient Chinese people, it was naturally produced. In contrast, human beings are so low and small that there is no reason not to worship, and the five-body worship method will naturally arise.
For example, gongbu has an ancient place name "rgang gyag", which means "foot yak". In Baqing County, there is "Gangqin Qu", which means "Bigfoot River"; Amdo has "Gunny Qiongguo", which means "Legs Spring"; and in Linzhou there is "Puyang Gangqin", which means "Heavenly God Bigfoot". There is an ancient temple in Yadong called "Lagang Gongpa", which means "Divine Foot Temple". Many monasteries in Tibet house the boots worn by the ancient living Buddhas.
The highest Tibetan ritual for a guru is to put the guru's feet on his head. Nepali tradition is that when greeting guests, the most respectful elders are saluted, and the juniors should kneel down on their knees and touch the tip of the elders' shoes with their foreheads. All of this helps us understand how faience boots are produced and where the source of this strange ritual vessel is.
The ancient Tibetan book "Ba Xie" records that in the Tubo era, Trisong Detsen sent a large army to march on the Magadha kingdom on the Ganges Plain, the Tubo cavalry was like a bamboo, and the large and small states along the way were surrendered, and the king of one of the city-states was frightened by the power of the Tibetan army and surrendered, he hung Zampu's boots at the palace gate, led hundreds of officials to enter and exit from under the boots and wrote to Zampu: "My land is willing to enter Zampu's feet and pay tribute." ”
In the history of the Ganges Plain, it is reasonable to speculate that the same story has happened countless times, but it has not been recorded. This is also the reason why the ancient kingdom on the Ganges Plain has a strong Tibetan cultural color, so that there will be a "hanging boot palace gate".
A similar story also occurred at the time of the Mongol conquest of the west, according to Arab historical records, in 1253 AD, Hulagu Expedition, Seljuk Turkic Sultan Keka Wusi II, in the face of the fierce attack of the Mongol army, lost confidence, turtles hulked in the castle, more and more frightened, in order to make Hulagu angry, he had his portrait cushioned under the boots, sent someone to present the boots, and begged: "Your slave dares to expect his king, put his honorable feet on the head of the slave, and raise the head of the slave." The Seljuk Turks did this because they were one of the ancient Qiang-Tibetan nomads who migrated from the east to the west, and Hulagu, the founder of the Ilkhanate, is considered to be the embodiment of the Bon god of war, "Baihar".
Manchu Culture Network