Author: Peng Bangben, Professor of History Department of Sichuan University
As we all know, Chinese civilization has long formed a grand pattern of pluralism and integration, and "yuan" refers to the components that make up the above grand pattern, that is, many regions or ethnic groups and their cultures that coexisted in the East Asian continent at that time. This pattern of pluralistic integration also has an ancient process of origin, formation and early development in ancient times, and the Sanxingdui civilization is an important element in the above-mentioned ancient process pattern.
The ruins of the Sanxingdui civilization inherit the late Neolithic strata on the ground, and the Jinsha-Twelve Bridges site in the Chengdu Plain before and after (which coexisted at the time of the Shang Zhou Dynasty), the cultural outlook and style are generally the same, the context is continuous, so it should be completely called the Sanxingdui-Jinsha civilization, which is an early civilization community located in the southwest of the mainland in the pre-Qin period. Scholars usually associate it with the pre-Qin and Shu dynasties recorded in the literature, such as silkworm bushes, cypress irrigation, Yu Kai, Du Yu, etc., which are known as the ancient Shu Kingdom, which generally existed in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, and like the Central Plains and some other regional civilizations that coexisted at that time, they gradually formed many sources of the torrent of Chinese civilization from the Qin and Han Dynasties to the Great Unification very early on, which has a very important historical status and academic research value.
According to the ancient Shudi native document "Huayang Guozhi ShuZhi", the pre-Qin ancient Shu kingdom was once quite extensive, and its land was "bordered by Ba in the east, Yue in the south, Qin in the north, and Xiang Ega in the west". That is to say, in the Sichuan Basin, the Fujiang River is roughly demarcated from the border with Pakistan, the west has penetrated deep into the western Sichuan Plateau, the north has reached the Qinling Mountains, and the south has been adjacent to the future Sino-Vietnamese border, the area is quite vast, and there are many ethnic groups. The book later details the territory of the Du Yu Kingdom period: "with Chu Xie as the front gate, Bear's Ears and Lingguan as the back household, Yulei and Emei as the city, Jiang, Qian, Mian, and Luo as the pond zee, Wenshan as the livestock, and Nanzhong as the garden garden." "This is obviously a vast political civilization community that spans life and ecological zones, that is, an alliance of states and ethnic groups co-ruled by the Du Yu clan and even earlier the Yu Yu dynasty. This description and the radiation range of the Ancient Shu civilization of Sanxingdui revealed by archaeological findings can generally form macroscopic mutual evidence. The site of the ancient capital of Sanxingdui covers an area of about 3.6 square kilometers, and the entire site where the capital is located has an area of more than 12 square kilometers, which is the first-class scale of the East Asian continent at that time, which is enough to show its important position as the center of civilization in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and the great southwest region. A large number of precious cultural relics unearthed in the sacrificial area of the Sanxingdui site also reveal that the rulers of the ancient Shu Kingdom had huge wealth, which also fully shows that the scope of their accumulation is actually the vastness and multitude of the ethnic groups in the territory under his rule. The following is a brief analysis and discussion in the context of archaeological findings and documentary records.
The Han Dynasty Bangu's "Book of Han and Geography" states:
Ba, Shu, Guanghan Ben Nanyi, Qin and thought it was a county.
This theory is based on evidence, and the earlier "Warring States Policy qin ce i" recorded that when King Hui of Qin discussed the matter of cutting down Shu and the strategy of unifying the world with his ministers Sima Que and Zhang Yi, he clearly pointed out:
Fu Shu, the country of the west, and the chief of Rong Di.
It can be seen that in the pre-Qin period, Ba and Shu, as the co-lords of the ethnic alliance of the states in the great southwest region, belonged to the southwest Yi in the vision of China.
Sima Qian, a famous historian of the Western Han Dynasty, was ordered by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty to personally go to the southwest of the great southwest and personally went to the southwest to write the "History of the History of The Southwest Yilie Biography", which roughly divided the ancestors in the southwest region into three categories: First, the farming settlement group that "all knotted, cultivated the land, and had Yiju"; The second is the nomadic group that "all weave their hair, migrate with livestock, and are not always there"; The third is the semi-agricultural and semi-pastoral ethnic group between the first two, "its customary or indigenous, or migratory".
Coincidentally, the hairstyles of many bronze figures excavated from the Sanxingdui site (including crowns and other hair ornaments) (Figure 1) can be said to be in line with them.
Figure 1
In ancient times, the so-called "knot", that is, the hair was fixed to the top of the head with a hairpin or a fence to form a cone (vertebral) shaped bun. This is a typical hairstyle or hair ornament of the farming group, which should be due to the settled production lifestyle of the so-called "face to the loess and back to the sky", otherwise it is at least very inconvenient for production. Such hair ornaments are quite eye-catching in the Sanxingdui ruins (Figures 2 and 3), such as the famous bronze Da li figure excavated from the No. 2 sacrifice pit, which has been presumed by many scholars to be a combination of political and religious authority, and its crown hairstyle is a typical embodiment of such a settled farming group, which can be called its luxurious version. Agriculture has long belonged to the advanced production and lifestyle in the era of agricultural civilization, so such ethnic groups have obvious advantages in geography and livelihood, and the prominent position of bronze statues in their bronze statue group also reflects their ruling identity in the Four Directions of King's Landing. The area of "Jiang, Qian, Mian, and Luo" in the cited documents is the core area of the ancient Shu Kingdom dominated by the Chengdu Plain, and the so-called Chize Yunyun is the historical reflection of the Chengdu Plain as a rice cultivation and ecological area since the Baodun culture.
Figure 2
Figure 3
The records of "Xi'e-Edang" and "Wenshan for Animal Husbandry" in the Huayang Guozhi, and the "braided hair" (haircuts) of Tai Shigong's "migrating with livestock and not being in the usual place", reflect the hairstyles of the nomadic ethnic groups in the higher elevations of western Sichuan and Yunnan, and are also reflected in many of the heads of human gods unearthed at sanxingdui and Jinsha sites (Figures 4, 5). These nomadic ethnic groups or states whose main livelihood is the main subsistence industry, their subsistence economy, especially the monotonous products, are not fully self-sufficient, and must provide relatively complete means of subsistence and resources according to the agricultural groups next to them. They correspond to the woven goldstone figures excavated at the Sanxingdui-Jinsha site, belonging to important allies or ethnic groups, but the relationship with the co-owner may be relatively distant and wandering, and may even be rebellious and uncertain, reflecting the instability of the early confederations.
Figure 4
Figure 5
Somewhere between the sedentary farming and nomadic groups are the semi-agricultural and semi-pastoral groups. They either nomadic and nomadic farming, or even managed livestock while settling in farming, which is called "pastoral production" in historical records, and most of them have a small range of swimming. At least temporary fixation of hair is required when engaged in agricultural production, so the hairstyle and image of coiled hair are found in sanxingdui bronze portraits (Fig. 6). The western part of Sichuan and Yunnan is located right next to the famous Hu Huanyong Line, and the half-moon-shaped cultural communication belt drawn by the famous archaeologist Tong Enzheng, located in and around the Hengduan Mountains, the terrain and climatic conditions are complex and diverse, so it is also an ecological transitional zone for the mixed places of various ethnic groups, which is in line with the historical information provided by the excavated materials and documentary records.
Figure 6
It can be seen from the above that the Ancient Shu Kingdom of Sanxingdui was an early civilization community with a vast area, many ethnic branches, and diverse ways of life and industry in the great southwest region of ancient China. As a regional civilization community with a large scale and almost integration in the ancient southwest region, it has a very important historical position in the grand process of China's early civilization.
It should be pointed out that the Sanxingdui civilization not only has a very important position in the process of early Chinese civilization, but also has very distinct characteristics, which is worth mentioning. Needless to say, the reason why sanxingdui's major archaeological discoveries in recent years have been able to stand out is that it has striden from the closed ivory tower of the academic community to the public's public vision, which is quite eye-catching, in addition to its major academic value and the vigorous publicity of the media, it is undoubtedly inseparable from the unique and diverse large number of bronze statues, gold and jade utensils and precious ivory itself. In the increasing number of archaeological discoveries over a period of time, there are indeed not many cases like Sanxingdui and Jinsha, which are very important and very beautiful, and which always stimulate the viewer's endless speculation and imagination. This undoubtedly constitutes the eye-catching characteristics of the Sanxingdui civilization.
This is still based on the hairstyle or hair ornament of the bronze portrait of Sanxingdui, and discuss it slightly. For example, a small bronze figure (Figure 7) unearthed in 1986, its hairstyle as a whole shows the trend of frontal hair combing and front curling, which is quite peculiar and magical, even today it seems to be quite "avant-garde", reflecting the eternal charm of sanxingdui ancestors' aesthetic art through ancient and modern times.
Figure 7
The hairstyles of the other three bronze portraits released this year are almost strangely distinctive features of buns that soar into the sky and are extremely towering, and the shapes of the three seem to be different, which cannot help but make people think or guess the political and religious implications they contain.
Figure 8
In addition to the hair ornaments of the characters, a large number of animals and plants in the cultural relics excavated from the Sanxingdui site are also very exquisite. For example, its large and small bronze sacred trees, as well as the shape of various birds and other animals, are often beautiful and contain deep political and religious meanings. For example, the extremely exquisite and dynamic "Sun God Bird" gold leaf excavated from the Jinsha site, which is in line with Sanxingdui, has become a symbol of China's intangible cultural heritage. The 143-centimeter-long golden staff of Sanxingdui is also related to the image of the golden crown belt excavated from the Jinsha site later, from the connotation to the form, the pattern on the golden staff includes the portrait of the King of Shu wearing a crown on the head, and the hook-beaked osprey carries the feather arrow that pokes into the fish's body and spreads its wings and flies. According to research, the person wearing the crown may be the image of the Shu king Yu Kai, and the golden staff should be a sacred symbol of his royal power.
As we all know, the Shang Zhou bronze system is characterized by solemn ceremonial vessels such as Ding and Gui, and sanxingdui bronzes are the most eye-catching with a large number of human (god) statues, the latter people-oriented (prototype), lifelike image, it seems to have a "literary and artistic style", which should be the source of the later Bashu culture to promote the characteristics of literature and art. In short, anyone who has visited the Sanxingdui site or its museum will not be difficult to get a deep impression, which is an early regional civilization with a unique style and distinctive personality.
Not only that, but all kinds of indications show that the ancient Shu, represented by sanxingdui and jinsha sites, as an ancient regional civilization, seems to have reached a fairly advanced level of civilization development process of political integration. For example, due to the "three thousand years of sleep", the years are long gone, and the Sanxingdui civilization has long been unknown to the world after the Qin and Han Dynasties, so that the earliest surviving native history book in Shudi, the "Shu King Benji", also regards the ancient Shu civilization as a flood, and even asserts that it "has no ceremonial music". However, the archaeological discoveries of Sanxingdui-Jinsha have completely refreshed people's understanding, and the level of its ritual civilization should already be quite high, and with the King of Shu as the co-lord, a set of unified order norms has been established, showing the strong integration of inter-state ethnic groups. For example, the bronze statue of the King of Shu excavated from the No. 2 sacrifice pit of Sanxingdui in the preceding quotation is 172 cm in height, the height of the base is 90 cm, and the height of the pass is 262 cm, which is not only the co-owner of the ethnic alliance of the Shu states, but also obviously from the farming group with vertebral knot hair, which is the highest bronze figure unearthed in the world so far. At the Jinsha site, which is only thirty or forty kilometers away from Sanxingdui, a small bronze figure of more than ten centimeters high has been unearthed, and its stylistic style and highly characteristic gestures are the same as the Sanxingdui Dali portrait, but there are three long braids dragged behind the head, which are very different from the characteristics of the vertebral knot hair of the Dali people, which are obviously from the braided hair group. The size of the bronze human hair ornaments from Sanxingdui and Jinsha are different and the manners are the same, and the image vividly reflects that in the ancient Shu Kingdom, which has a wide territory and spans the ethnic groups and the ecological area of life and industry, it has a complete set of ceremonial civilizations with considerable uniform regulations, and its level of integration of politics and religion has been quite high, which is consistent with the splendid bronze civilization revealed by the Sanxingdui-Jinsha site and its large number of precious cultural relics.
Figure 9
It should be pointed out that the ancient Shu civilization with a long history not only has very distinct stylistic characteristics, but also has a profound relationship with the ancient Chinese civilization represented by the Shang zhou, and has long accepted the influence of the Central Plains culture and civilization, and has long existed interactive links, which is a yuan in the grand process of diversified interaction and integration of early Chinese civilizations. The Chronicle of the Five Emperors records:
The Yellow Emperor lived in Xuanyuan Hill, and married the daughter of the Xiling clan, for the sake of the ancestors. Concubine Changzu was a concubine of the Yellow Emperor, who gave birth to two sons, and then all of them had the world: the first was Xuanhu, which was for Qingyang, and Qingyang descended to the river; The second is Changyi, descending into the water. Changyi married the daughter of the Shushan clan, known as ChangYi, who was born in Gaoyang, and Gaoyang had a holy virtue.
"Ruoshui" is the famous Yalong River on the Western Sichuan Plateau, which flows into the Jinsha River in the territory of present-day Panzhihua City; The "river water" where Qingyang descends refers to the fact that the Min River is the mother river of the ancient Shu civilization represented by sanxingdui and Jinsha sites, so sima zhen of the Tang Dynasty 'Suo Yin' is just that "Shu has this two waters". In fact, the theory that the second son of the Yellow Emperor "Qingyang descended to the river and Changyi descended to Ruoshui" was not Original to Sima Qian, but actually originated from the pre-Qin classics "Shiben" and "Dai LiJi", and its text was even basically copied from the latter's "Five Emperors" and "Imperial Family Name". In recent years, the Majiayao culture and the faience pottery of the Miaodigou culture found in the upper reaches of the Minjiang River and other places confirm this legend from the macro historical process, revealing the information that two important branches of the Yellow Emperor ethnic group migrated from the Yellow River Basin to Shu land from the Yellow River Basin in about 5,000 years ago, constituting one of the sources of the ancient Shu ancestors. From prehistory to the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the Shudi ethnic groups originating from outside the Bashu region such as the Yellow River Basin were of course more than the above two branches, but because the ancient Shu Kingdom with the Chengdu Plain as the core area was located in the southwest, it became a State of Yidi in the future due to its long-term distance from the Central Plains culture. This shows that the ancient Shu clan of the So-called "Rong Di Zhichang" in the vision of the Chinese state in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, especially in the Warring States period, actually had an extremely ancient relationship with Huaxia, which can be described as homologous and heterogeneous, and in the pre-Qin period, there was a long-term interaction with the Central Plains countries, so that it could be described as blood-linked with the Chinese civilization and had a deep internal relationship for a long time, so that the descendants scattered in the border areas of Sichuan and Yunnan were still known as the "Yellow Emperor's Descendants" until the Han Dynasty.
The cultural factors from the Central Plains in the ancient Shu civilization can be seen in many of the archaeological data of Shudi. Its notable ones, such as the pottery cup excavated from the Sanxingdui site, are obviously from the Yanshi Erlitou culture in Henan. The source of a large number of Jade Zhangs in the Sanxingdui-Jinsha site is also obviously in the Erlitou culture and even earlier sites of the Longshan culture in the Yellow River Basin such as the Erlitou culture and the earlier Shenmu Shi'an in northern Shaanxi. In particular, the bronze ceremonial vessels, pendants, plates and their vessel-type ornaments excavated in the "sacrifice pit" of Sanxingdui are typical carriers of Shang zhou bronze culture. As for the exquisite animal face bronze plaque ornaments of the Sanxingdui site, similar discoveries are also found in Yanshi Erlitou in Henan and Tianshui in Gansu, with the earliest erlitou, followed by the Tianshui excavators, and the latest sanxingdui, according to which scholars speculate that the Tianshui area may be the link between the Central Plains and the Sichuan region for cultural exchanges. This statement is obviously in line with the historical facts of the process of ancient civilization. In contrast to the above-mentioned influence and spread of the Central Plains culture on ancient Shu, the Sanxingdui-Jinsha culture also continued to spread radiation to all sides in its continuous development process, and its east has crossed the Gorge River area, and the north has also crossed the southern Shaanxi to reach the Qinling Weishui, indicating that the interaction of cultures is usually mutual. However, from the perspective of the overall course of the long period of time, the influence of Huaxia with the Central Plains as the core on the ancient Shu civilization has obviously shown a dominant position, especially the above-mentioned gold and jade ceremonial utensils made of precious raw materials such as bronze, such as the above-mentioned zunpan, bronze plaque ornaments and yazhang, as the elite cultural artifacts of the superstructure of Chinese political civilization, which is the materialization evidence of the integration of politics and religion and even the dissemination and infiltration, which strongly reveals the above dominant position, indicating the increasing strengthening and deepening of the interaction between the ancient Shu civilization and the Chinese civilization in Sanxingdui, which will inevitably lead to the historical trend of integration of the two. It has become an important part of the pattern of pluralism and integration of Chinese civilization that has followed, which is the inevitable result of the historical process of early Chinese civilization determined by the geographical and historical conditions of the East Asian continent. (Pang Bang-ben)
Source: Guangming Network - Literary And Art Review Channel