Five stars out of the East lee China "a thousand years ago prophecy?
From October to November 1995, a sino-Japanese joint expedition conducted an archaeological survey of the Niya site in Hetian Minfeng, Xinjiang. On October 14, when archaeologists opened Coffin No. 8, they found a brightly colored tapestry embroidered with the words "Five Stars Out of the East and China", a discovery that caused a sensation in the world archaeological community.
Nya, the forgotten ancient country
When the Western Han Government controlled the Western Regions, there were thirty-six small states on this land, and people collectively referred to them as the "Thirty-Six Kingdoms of the Western Regions". Unfortunately, in the years that followed, with the chaos of war and ecological changes, some of the "Thirty-Six Kingdoms in the Western Regions" maintained their vitality and developed into border towns, while others disappeared into the vast yellow sand of Taklamakan for various reasons.
Located in the Taklamakan Desert, about 150 kilometers north of Hotan Minfeng County, there is an ancient site, the Nya Ruins. It is called "pompeii of the East" by experts and scholars who come here to investigate. It was first discovered by the Englishman Stein in 1901. Stein collected a large number of Chinese documents here, as well as precious cultural relics such as pottery wood carvings and coins, which caused a sensation in the world of scholars. This site, which was forgotten in the vast yellow sand, gradually attracted people's attention.
However, until the 1930s, people could not accurately determine the exact name of this ancient site, and it was not until a few Han Jian found here that people knew that this was one of the thirty-six kingdoms in the Western Regions.
People who come to the Nya site will see that the entire site is distributed on the delta of the lower Nyaya River. It is centered on a stupa more than two meters high, 25 kilometers long from north to south, 7 kilometers wide from east to west, and surrounded by more than 200 relics such as temples, houses, cellar sites, cemeteries, orchards, forest belts, roads, and pools. Judging from the range of distribution, the city had a considerable scale at that time.
This is the last record of the JingzhiGuo, and since then, the Thirty-six JingzhiGuo in the Western Regions have disappeared on the stage of history.
A mysterious tapestry
However, the most influential of the cultural relics excavated at the Niya site is the "Five Stars Out of the East and China" Wenjin. Its appearance has given people countless reverie, and also presented many mysterious colors. "Five stars out of the East to benefit China" Wen Jinchang 18. 5cm, width 2. 5 cm. The blue background is on the top, and the bright white, red, yellow, green and other colors are woven to weave a rich pattern of stars, clouds and peacocks, cranes, evil spirits, tigers and other birds and beasts. The brocade is surrounded by white fabric seams, and 3 long strips are sewn up and down, which are located at the elbow waist of the corpse at the time of excavation. The text "Five stars out of the East and Benefiting China" appears in two rows.
Is this an ancient prophecy? Or was it something that the ancients used specifically for a particular purpose?
"Five stars out of the East to benefit China" is actually the result of a divination account. Another piece of brocade was found in this tomb, which reads "Qiu Nan Qiang", which is the minority of Qiang people who occupied the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in the Han Dynasty, and because they are south of the Hexi Corridor, they are called Nan Qiang. These two pieces of brocade are connected, and the whole meaning is "five stars out of the east, benefitIng China, and seeking the Southern Qiang." That is to say, when the five planets of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth appear in the sky, it is conducive to the government to conquer the Southern Qiang.
Fundamental divination is actually an important means of encouraging morale and reducing morale, if the result of divination is conducive to the dispatch of troops, then morale is high, otherwise morale is low.
According to records, there were many Han troops stationed in the Jingzhi State at that time, and while guarding the frontier to maintain the smooth flow of the Silk Road, they also opened up the land. This piece of brocade may have been left by the Han generals stationed here, and may have been used by the military to encourage morale before the expedition.
The kingdom disappeared due to lack of water
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, with the change of climate, the temperature of the entire Central Asian region gradually changed, resulting in the water flow of the Niya River decreasing year by year, and the oasis gradually retreated. Experts have done a survey, compared with the Han Dynasty, the end of the Niya River retreated by 210 kilometers, compared with 1901, the end of the Niya River retreated by 15 kilometers.
Judging from the records of the Excavation of Therawen Mujian at the site of Nya, at that time, the country was so desperate that corruption was rampant, and a tax collector named Mabaya actually embezzled 4 years of taxes and refused to pay them to the royal court. The king had to come forward to accuse. The trees planted by a resident, Shega, were forcibly cut down and sold by a hundred heads of households, and Shega directly filed a complaint with the king, who immediately issued a proclamation declaring the hundred heads of households illegal. There are even more accounts of ecological problems, and the seeds and water of this kingdom were controlled by the king himself. It often happens that there is no inability to cultivate, and one of Luwen's wooden notes even mentions that "now the country is in need of water."
It can be seen that the serious desertification of the Niya region is the fundamental reason for the disappearance of the elite country. The weakening of the king's power and the corruption of the officials in the kingdom have accelerated the process of the demise of the elite state. Eventually, the elite countries disappeared under the dual pressures of ecological change and invasion by neighboring countries.