Petroglyph is a general term for the color paintings and carving forms carved by ancient ancestors on caves and rock walls. The Taishan rock paintings of Huangzhuguan in Chengxian County, Gansu Province, are ancient rock paintings first discovered in Longnan, with simple, simple lines, deep depictions, and many traces of grinding. It is speculated that the large and small cliff caves in the Shuangyao Gorge of HuangzhuGuan are the mines of the Qin people for gold mining, and the Taishan rock paintings are the remains left by the Qin people when they held a sacrifice to pray that the mine would not be flooded. Professor Cai Vicequan, a local goldstone scholar, has examined the relevant relics, and this article intends to try to read the contents of the petroglyphs from their symbols and texts, and provide some clues to relevant experts for further study.
Inspection site Figure 24
Recently, a petroglyph composed of characters, plants, symbols, etc. composed of characters, plants, and symbols composed of knocking, grinding, and chiseling were found in Taishan Village, Huangzhu Town, Chengxian County, Longnan City, Gansu Province, and the ruins of stone houses, ancient paths, and horseshoe-shaped "Laliucao" were found around it.
Overview of Taishan petroglyphs
The petroglyphs are located at the mouth of an ancient mine on the east side of a creek in The Shuangyao Gorge in Taishan Village, Huangzhu Town, Chengxian County. The mouth is about 5 meters high and about 6 meters wide, and the depth is unfathomable. The body of the tong is a thousand rocks, and a large amount of loess has been poured into the tong due to geological changes, and the high places have formed rocks. The petroglyphs are immediately on a slope of khaki siliceous rock (see Figure 1).
Figure 1
The petroglyphs are divided into two parts, the upper left is scattered text and portrait carvings, and the lower right is a dense petroglyph, with a longitudinal width of 3 meters, a height of 2.5 meters, and a distribution area of about 8 square meters. The characters, figures, and symbols that can be recognized in the petroglyphs are: oracle bone "告" (see Figure 2), deformed ideographic character "禺" (see Figure 3), oracle bone "Dan" (see Figure 4), face painting and deformed ideographic mixed text "father" (see Figure 5), suspected Golden "鼏" (see Figure 6), Wei body "Earth" (see Figure 7), Wei body "Tianxia" (see Figure 8), Wei body "Yang Zhongyuan" (see Figure 9), suspected "Bucket" character (see Figure 10), suspected simplified character "Dragon" (see Figure 11), humanoid symbol (see Figure 12), Flat-topped side portraits (see Fig. 13), tower-shaped paintings (see Fig. 14), seated figures (see Fig. 15), crowns and jewelry symbols (see Fig. 16), plants and "dragon whiskers" (see Fig. 17), mineral tongs (see Fig. 18), dragon and bow and arrow (see Fig. 19), witch-shaped figure (see Fig. 20), and shaped figure (see Fig. 21).
Figure 2: Oracle "Accusation"
In the valley ditch about 30 meters northwest of the petroglyph, more than 70 horseshoe-shaped chisel holes were found, with more than 30 eyes in the upper section of the ditch and more than 40 eyes in the lower section, with a pore diameter of 20 to 25 cm, a spacing of 15 to 50 cm, and a depth of about 20 to 30 cm, and some of them had one or two small holes of different sizes at the bottom (see Figure 22). These horseshoe-shaped perforations are estimated to be remnants of the ancients when flotation ore. About 40 meters south of the petroglyph, there is a section of the ancient path with a width of 0.5 meters and a length of 8 meters (see Figure 23), and a conjoined double hole was found in the middle of the cliff wall on the east side of about 20 meters south of the petroglyph, the cave is 4 meters high, 3 meters wide and about 6 meters deep, the south cave is slightly lower, the north cave is slightly lower, and there is a stone platform kang at the end of the north cave, which can accommodate four or five people to sleep, and the ventilation and lighting in the cave are good. The entrance to the cave leads up to the summit and down to the river valley. This cave should be used by the ancients. (See Figure 24)
Figure 22
Text icons are read
Figures 2 and 3 show the word "Zhiyu" engraved by knocking and grinding. "Confession" is very similar to Oracle. "Accusation" is the original word for "祰". The mouth, which is both a shape and a sound side, indicates speech. The upper part of the oracle bone is "ox" (sacrifice), and the lower part of the mouth (blessing prayer) indicates that the cow is sacrificed to pray for blessings. Jin Wen inherits the oracle bone glyph. The Lishu writes the "cow" in the form of a golden script as "admonition", and the original meaning of "blessing prayer" disappears. Here, the top of "Yu" is slightly decorated with a small crown, and the lower part is raindrop-shaped, which should be the earliest example of the method of creating words for "asking for rain".
Figure 3: Deformed ideograph "禺"
Figure 4 The word "Dan" is consistent with the Oracle. Dan, the oracle bone is a finger word, and the glyph is to add a finger symbol in the middle of the mine to indicate the minerals in the mine. The word "Dan" appears in ancient ore tongs, especially the vertical mark at the bottom right of the ore map, which should be the specific location of the gold or copper mine. These special handwritings, it is difficult for posterity to establish this intention and engrave, so it should be the original handwriting of Yin Shang or earlier.
Figure 4: Oracle "Dan"
Figure 5 shows the "human face" and the "parent" stroke intertwined graphics, which are rarely found in the pattern of drawings borrowed from the strokes. The word "father" in Jin Wen is the father of the axe, and the "father" in the Taishan rock paintings becomes the cross-body writing of the "wen" character, which is similar to the ideographic method of the "Yu" character, which has the meaning of praising the wisdom and elegance of the elder.
Figure 5: Face painting and morphing ideography mixture "parent"
Figure 6 is suspected of being "鼏", which is similar to the glyph of "簋" in "Qin Gonggui". "Mole", Ding Li. Gu Tong "power", a scarf covering things. The "Qin Gonggui" is believed by most scholars to be a sacrifice made by The Duke of Qin Xianggong for the ancestors of the Zongmiao Temple in 770 BC on the occasion of the founding of the Qin State in the Western Qin Dynasty. Xi'an passes through Qishan Road to 80 kilometers to Huangzhu Pass, and its raw materials should be taken from Huangzhu Taishan.
Figure 6: Suspected Kim Wen "Mole"
Figures 7, 8 and 9 are three groups of Wei scripts of "Earth", "Tianxia" and "Yang Zhongyuan", which are obliquely collected and indulgent, and should be left by Yang Zhongyuan (no historical record) and others when they patronized this place to interpret the petroglyphs.
Figure 7: Wei body "earth"
Figure 8: Wei Body "Tianxia"
Figure 9: Wei Body "Yang Zhongyuan"
Figures 10 and 11 are suspected to be the words "bucket" and "dragon", and the handwriting of the pointed object proves that it has been of much concern to the world since ancient times. Figure 12 is a humanoid silhouette and Figure 13 is a flat-topped sideways figure, which are very similar to the human face of the Ningxia Zhongwei Damaidi petroglyph (see Figures 25 and 26). The thickness of its lines, the changes of virtual reality are exquisite and subtle, making the people on the stone full of movement. This sacrificial "artistic schema is of an unrealistic humanoid being, which may have a totemic connotation." (Note: Yang Chao, "A Preliminary Study on the Mythical Dating Method of Rock Paintings: A Case Study of The Rock Paintings of Human Faces in Helan Mountain", Three Gorges Forum, No. 2, 2012, p. 89)
Figure 25
Figure 25
Song Yaoliang said in his book "Chinese Prehistoric Divine Human Face Rock Paintings": "It can be said with certainty that the human face rock paintings are part of the sacrifice. The sacrifice at that time must have been divided into two parts: one was the ritual and process of sacrifice in which the shamans and the people participated; the other was the carved petroglyph, which was to inform the heavens, so that the gods would know, so that the content of the sacrifice ceremony or prayer would be legally recognized by the religion." (Note: Song Yaoliang: "Chinese Prehistoric Divine Human Face Petroglyphs", Shanghai Sanlian Publishing Bookstore, October 1992 edition, p. 285) "Ethnologists, archaeologists, and petroglyphists around the world have found many icons composed of face statues in areas where witchcraft once flourished, which is undoubtedly the image of the gods made by ancient wizards. Idols of gods are made and sacrificed to achieve the purpose of 'assimilating the forces of nature'. This is one of the main functions of a wizard. (Note: Gaishanlin: "A Preliminary Study of the Wizarding Rock Paintings of Helan Mountain", Ningxia Social Science, No. 3, 1992, p. 6) It can be seen that the faces of Figures 12 and 13 should be the earlier petroglyphs in Taishan Petroglyphs, and also indicate that this is an important place of worship.
Figure 12: Humanoid symbols
Figure 13: Flat-topped side portrait
Figures 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21 are a set of mysterious drawings in which the figures, plants, symbols, mineral figures, witches and dragon symbols, etc., cannot be isolated symbols, but should be depicted for sacrifice. Mr. Yuan Ke, a mythologist, said: "Mythology is the sum of the cultural ideas of the primitive ancestors." (Note: Yuan Ke: History of Chinese Mythology, Chongqing Publishing House, 2007 edition, p. 4) Mr. Shen Bingyan, a literary scholar, also said: "Our ancient history, at least before Yu, is really a myth." (Note: Lu Sixian: "Afterword" of "Mythological Archaeology", Cultural Relics Publishing House, 1995 edition, p. 369) The civilization era has a history of only three or four thousand years, and the cultural form before the emergence of writing may have belonged to petroglyphs.
Figure 14: Tower painting
Figure 15: Seated portrait of a figure
Figure 16: Crown ornaments and jewelry symbols
Figure 17: Plants and "dragon's whiskers" shaped drawings
Figure 18: Ore map
Figure 19: Dragon and bow and arrow diagram
Taishan petroglyphs appear in ancient mining tongs, and if they are myths, they should be mining and casting related themes. When consulting many myths and stories related to mining and casting, it was found that the three myths of "Yellow Emperor Dingcheng Chenglong", "Yu Mu Swallowing Coix Pearl Shengyu", "Wuyi Sword and Sword Girl" basically coincided with the scenes in taishan rock paintings. "History of the Book of Feng Zen" Yun: Gongsun Qing said: "The Yellow Emperor mined the copper of the first mountain and cast it under the Jingshan Mountain. Ding is complete, with a dragon hanging beard, and the Yellow Emperor is greeted. The Yellow Emperor rode on the horse, and the harem of the group of subjects was more than seventy people from above. The dragon is up, Yu Xiaochen is not allowed to go up, but he holds the dragon's hair, and the dragon's hair is down, and the yellow emperor's bow is fallen. The people looked up to the Yellow Emperor and held his bow and beard, so the future generations called dinghu lake and his bow wu number because of his name. "The meaning is that after the Yellow Emperor mined copper into the ding, there was a dragon bowing its head to greet him. The Yellow Emperor rode the dragon, the dragon took off to fly, and more than seventy of the courtiers could not get on it, tearing off the dragon's whiskers, pulling down the Yellow Emperor's bow, and holding it and crying. The bow and arrow then turned into a mulberry, i.e. Usan. The Taishan petroglyphs include dragons, moles, dragon whiskers, bows and arrows, and Sangtuo, among which the dragon-shaped figure is similar to the "Taiji Dragon Diagram" in the Yahe rock paintings in Nanyang, Henan (see Figure 27). These drawings are most likely sacrificial petroglyphs of sacrifice to the "Yellow Emperor" praying for the safety of miners.
Figure 27
Rong's Note on the Mountain: "Female Di Twilight Draws Stone New Mountain Spring, the moon essence in the water, like a chicken, loves and contains it, swallows unconsciously, and then has a wife, and in April, gives birth to Xia Yu." (Note: Yuan Ke: The Great Dictionary of Chinese Mythology, Huaxia Publishing House, August 2015, p. 121) In ancient texts, there are many Yu mothers and Xin daughters, called Di Mo and Xiu Ji, in addition to the legend of swallowing the moon spirit beads and pregnant Yu, there are also said to have eaten coix pregnant Yu. The meditator in the Taishan petroglyph, with a triangular face, unclear facial features, wearing a high flat crown, similar to the Qiang female crown ornament, holding a treasure in his hand and staring at it, with a coix mixed with a dragon's whisker-like plant on the left. These images may be rock paintings that sacrifice "Yu Mu" and tell Emperor Yu, and the word "Yu Yu" should be the inscription of the sacrifice of the subsequent rock paintings of the Xia and Shang Dynasties to tell Yu Mu and Emperor Yu.
Figure 20: Witch figure
Figure 21: Diagram
Figures 20 and 21 are witches and figures. The body of the witch is the oracle bone "Wen" character, with long hair at the top of the peak, and the hands are clenched, in a stunned shape. The man's small head is unadorned, wide chest and thin legs, and he is pulled sideways as a running witch. The Wuyuan rock paintings have nothing to do with the above two myths, but they are similar to the early myths of the ancient Qiang people in Chengxian County, "Wuyi Sword and Sword Girl". The Later Han Shu Xi Qiang Biography says: "Qiang Wuyi sword bearer, Qin Li was bound by Qin during the reign of Duke Li, thinking that he was a slave. I don't know the difference between swords and swords. After the death, the Qin people chased the urgency and hid in the cave to avoid it. Qiang Renyun: 'The sword was first hidden in the cave, and the Qin people burned it, and there was a scene like a tiger, which covered the fire for it, so that it could not die.' Both out, and with the concubine encountered the wild, so they became a couple. The woman was humiliated and covered with hair. The Qiang people thought it was customary, so they all died in the Three Rivers. When the Qiangs saw that the sword was burned to death, they blamed their gods, feared things together, and prided themselves on it. "The woman is ashamed of herself and is covered with hair." The Qiang people think it is customary." (Note: Zhao Kuifu: "The Origin of the Three-Eyed God and the Kryptonians", Wenshi Publishing House, June 1997) The Qiang people called slaves "Wuyi" and the leader "Wuyi Sword", so it was called "Wuyi Sword". When Qin was a slave, he learned many agricultural techniques, and when he fled to danger, he shielded a tiger-shaped monster from the flames to save him, and his descendants became a tribe of their own, living in the Bailongjiang River Valley, becoming an important part of the Qiang people in Ganqing and Diebu. The second picture of Wu Qian may be a petroglyph carved by the ancestors of the Qiang Dynasty during the sacrifice of their ancestors and swordsmen in the place of ancient sacrifice.
The above three myths, as an important part of prehistoric mythology, are engraved in Taishan, a place where gold and silver are sacrificed, and analyzed from various angles, they are in line with the characteristics of prehistoric culture.
Huangzhu, Chengxian County, Longnan
Huangzhu Town, Chengxian County, Longnan City, Gansu Province, is an ancient historical and cultural town, and is famous for its lead and zinc mines, which rank second in the country. Huangzhuguan still has a "Baoyang Yongsi Monument" engraved in the thirty-eighth year of the Wanli Calendar (1610), which records the history of Mining Silver Mine and Quelling the Struggle for Mineral Weapons in Gao Rusong, Zhixian County, Chengxian County. Huangzhu mining metallurgy, silver, copper, tin and iron have a long history. In particular, the famous Xicheng mine fields are rich in sphalerite, galena, pyrite, brassite, tantalite, spotted copper, etc., and the rock gold and sand gold of Liangdang, Huixian, Xihe, Wenxian and other places centered on Huangzhu in Chengxian County are widely distributed in the valleys of Xihanshui, Bailongjiang, Baishuijiang and Liangdangdonghe. Wenxian Gaoloushan's gold reserves are known as the largest in Asia, and the famous geologist Li Siguang called this place a "treasure zone". Wenxian Bikou tianliang copper mine, Kangxian Yangba copper mine, Shaanxi Ningqiang Maoping copper mine, Xujiaping copper mine, etc. are all large copper mines. These places are less than 100 kilometers away from Xuanyuan's hometown of Tianshui Qishou, the capital of the Western Zhou Dynasty Fengxiang, the qin people's hometown of Xi'an, Baoji, and Xianyang, and only 300 to 400 kilometers.
Yanhuang Group belongs to the Xianqiang ethnic group and is the predecessor of the Huaxia ethnic group. The history of the development of the Yanhuang Group's migration from the northwest to the east has become the basic viewpoint of the Three Emperors Doctrine, and the Xuanyuan Kingdom, XuanyuanQiu, Xuanyuan Valley, Jiang Shui, Zhuolu, and Qiaoshan contained in the ancient books are all the places where the Yellow Emperor resided. The "Chinese Jin Yu IV" says: "The Yellow Emperor is made of Ji Shuicheng, the Yan Emperor is made of Jiang Shuicheng, so the Yellow Emperor is Ji, and the Yan Emperor is Jiang.". Among them, the word "Cheng" is the source of the word "Cheng" in the ancient Chengzhou and present-day Chengxian County. As an important pass on the "treasure zone" and the Qishan Ancient Road, the early Yellow Emperor involved in this or ordered others to mint copper and cast the ding here, and later generations continued to do so, and sacrificed and carved, leaving this picture and text, it is normal.
The Chronology of the Six Kingdoms of History reads: "Yu Xing yu Xi Qiang". In the "Mozi Cultivating Pillar", it is said: "In the past, after the summer, the emperor made the emperor collect gold in the mountains and rivers, and the pottery was cast in the ruins of Kunwu,...... Jiuding was established and moved to the Three Kingdoms. From these records, it can be seen that Emperor Yu and the ancestors of the Qin people, Li Lian, both had a history of mining gold (copper) and casting ding, so in the historical materials of QinDi, there are sentences such as "By the Mandate of Heaven, Yu Zhao Yu (績)", "Following the traces of Yu, also lai fu of the world", "The tomb leads the yang, and the east flows is Han". The ancient mountain name of "嶓冢" is marked in the northeast of present-day Chengxian County (Note: Xinhua Dictionary, 10th edition, page 35), that is, the boundary of Huangzhu In Chengxian County.
The well-known scholar Su Haiyang said: "During the Xia, Shang, and Western Zhou dynasties, the Xia culture of the Central Plains, the Siwa and the Early Qin culture in the northwest were closely related to the Early Shu civilization through Tianshui and Longnan. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, on the basis of regional transportation, cultural transmission routes formed an international trade channel connecting Sichuan and Shu through Longnan and Tianshui through Central Asia, West Asia and North Asia. (Note: Su Haiyang, Yong jichun: "The Formation of the Qishan Road on the Silk Road from an Archaeological Perspective", "Silk Road", No. 4, 2009) "It is this special geographical location that makes longnan society and culture form distinct marginal and pluralistic characteristics. There is not only the fusion of ancient Qi, Qiang, tibetan and Han cultures, but also the great intersection of Qin culture and Bashu culture. (Note: Liu Jiping, "The Legacy of Qiang and Qiang: The Cultural Origin of The Sacred Art of the Adjacent Regions of Shaanxi-Gansu-Sichuan", Journal of Hubei University for Nationalities, No. 4, 2015, p. 11)
conclusion
Through the above analysis and trial reading, it is preliminarily determined that the Huangzhu Taishan petroglyphs in Chengxian County, Longnan, Gansu Province, are sacrificial petroglyphs with the themes of "Huangdi Dingcheng Chenglong", "Yu Mu Swallowing The Pearl Shengyu", "Wuyi Sword and Sword Girl", and with the continuous development of the mining and foundry industry, a petroglyph integrating symbols, ancient characters and modern characters has gradually formed.
As a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural intersection zone and a land of rich resources, Longnancheng County is one of the 100 "thousand-year-old counties" with a long history, profound cultural accumulation and rich connotation of geographical names culture among the more than 800 ancient counties existing in China in accordance with the "Standard System for the Identification of Geographical Names And Cultural Heritage of China" and the "Identification Standards for Key Protection Objects of Geographical Names And Cultural Heritage". The discovery of mythological rock paintings in this area is consistent with the myths and stories of the local peoples in ancient times and should be valued by relevant experts and scholars. At the same time, this petroglyph has very important reference value for calligraphy, fine arts, mythology, ethnology and religion.
(The author is a professional policeman, a director of the All-China Public Security Literary Federation Calligraphers Association, a member of the Fourth Jian Mu Committee of the Gansu Calligraphers Association, and a writer of literature and history of the CPPCC LongnanCheng County.) ）