In Hall 1 of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Museum. Among the many dazzling collections, it is as restrained and simple as it was in the beginning more than 2,000 years ago. It is the only bamboo musical instrument unearthed so far in Guangxi, a bamboo flute from the Han Dynasty.
In late June 1976, when the fertilizer plant in Guixian County, Guangxi (now Guigang City, Guangxi) was expanding its plant in Dapoling, the excavators inadvertently dug out the glittering gilded carriage and horse tools, and it was discovered that "Dapoling" was actually a huge sealed mound with a residual height of about 7 meters and a bottom diameter of about 60 meters.
Luobowan No. 1 Han Tomb is considered to be the tomb of high-ranking officials at the level of county guard or county captain of Nanyue State in the early Western Han Dynasty, and a large number of amazing burial artifacts have been unearthed, including more than 1,000 cultural relics such as production tools, living utensils, carriage and horse tools, musical instruments, weapons, wooden swords, wooden simples, plant seeds, etc., of which 28 have been recognized as national first-class cultural relics.
In fact, the excavation process of Tomb No. 1 Han in Luo Powan was full of twists and turns. The archaeologists were disappointed to find that the burial chamber and the main coffin had already been stolen, but they did not expect that the next peak turned around, and after they left, the workers accidentally found the burial pit under the rafters. This excavation unearthed seven burial pits.
The seven burial pits are divided into two groups, arranged longitudinally, with a coffin placed in each pit. The bamboo flute appeared in the first burial pit.
In the black dirt of Burial Pit No. 1 is a coffin made of logs cut in half. They continued to clean the soil along the edge of the giant tree, and when all the soil was removed, people could clearly see the word "Hu Yan" engraved on the lid of the coffin.
Prying open the lid of the coffin, I saw that the coffin was filled with clear water, and a skeleton wrapped in a bamboo mat was immersed in the water. The deceased had a lacquer on his left shoulder and a wooden Jian, holding two green plums in his hand, and a bamboo flute placed next to his right arm. The bamboo flute is 36.3 cm long and 2.2 cm in diameter, brown when unearthed, and is made of a bamboo pipe divided into two bamboo segments. In addition to bamboo flutes, funerary artifacts such as lacquered ear cups, wooden combs, and lacquer plates engraved with the character "Hu" were also found outside the coffin.
After expert identification of human bones, the deceased with the word "Hu Yan" engraved on the coffin was a young woman about 152 centimeters tall and about 25 years old.
She has obvious physical characteristics in southern China, (subtitle: Restoration statue of the Gongpiyan site) is relatively close to the Neolithic Zhipiyan people and the modern Han and Zhuang people in Guangxi, and archaeologists analyze that she is likely to be a local indigenous people. And the bamboo flute, green plum, etc. were buried with her, which means that she may have been the favored dancer of the owner of Tomb No. 1 of Luo Powan before her death.
Experts guess that the cultural literacy of this tomb owner should be relatively high, and the musical instruments in the burial things account for a large part of it, such as horn button bells, copper drums, gongs, and funeral musicians, indicating that this tomb owner is also a music fan.
The flute, also known as "Di" in ancient times, was one of the earliest musical instruments produced in China. So far, the earliest flute found by archaeology is the bone flute unearthed from the site of Wuyang Jia Lake in Henan, which can play a complete seven-tone scale, about 89,000 years ago. As a widely spread wind instrument in China, the flute has strong Chinese national characteristics, and its pronunciation is gentle and beautiful, which the ancients described as "the sound of swinging". The flute, played in ensemble with other traditional instruments, is an important part of the ritual.
Bamboo has better vibration properties than bone tools, is easier to pronounce, easier to make, and more accessible raw materials. Using bamboo as a material is a great advance in flute making, but the preservation of bamboo ware is not easy. According to the wooden records of the "Congjizhi" unearthed in Tomb No. 1 of Luo Powan, the list of items buried after the death of the tomb owner is very rich, with more than 70 categories, including a large number of bamboo shoots, baskets, baskets and other bamboo tools. However, at the time of excavation, most of the bamboo tools were so decaying that they could not even be extracted. The bamboo flute unearthed in the No. 1 burial pit is made of purple bamboo, with a tight texture, excellent workmanship, and good overall preservation, which is the only bamboo musical instrument unearthed in Guangxi archaeology so far, which is rare. The excavation of the bamboo flute surprised the archaeological staff. But they soon discovered that the bamboo flute was extremely unusual. It has a total of eight holes, seven of which are on the same section and only one hole is opened outside the bamboo node at the head end. Each aperture is small, only 0.3 cm.
Modern bamboo flutes are usually made of a bamboo pipe, which is hollow into an inner chamber, and 1 blow hole, 1 membrane hole, 6 sound holes, 2 base sound holes and 2 auxiliary holes are opened on the tube body, and a plug made of cork is installed in the upper end of the blow hole. When people pour air into the flute tube through the blowing hole, so that the air column in the tube is vibrate, the flute makes a pleasant sound. And this ancient flute unearthed in Tomb No. 1 of Luo Powan, there is a compartment at the bamboo node, dividing the inner chamber into two parts that are not connected to each other, and the breath cannot flow freely in the bamboo flute, no matter which part you try, people cannot blow this ancient flute.
Puzzled, the archaeological staff could only speculate that this may not be a real practical musical instrument, just a funerary instrument that cannot be blown up. This conclusion has been cited by the archaeological community for more than ten years, until one accidental day, Lu Kegang, He Hong and other professors from the music department of Guangxi University of Arts went to visit the museum.
Several professors have studied musical instruments deeply, and when they saw the bamboo flute unearthed from the No. 1 Han Tomb in Luobo Bay, they could see at first glance that this was an instrument used by a real musician, and it was definitely not just a useless instrument. What is the mystery that the bamboo flute has puzzled archaeologists for many years?
The professors proposed to the museum to measure the size of the bamboo flute, and after getting the size of the bamboo flute, the professors carefully copied two bamboo flutes. They found that this flute was neither like the traditional Dong flute of Guangxi's ethnic minorities, nor the Zhuang flute, and it was far from the Tian screw flute, asparagus and other musical instruments. Later, I thought of the musical instruments of the Kino ethnic minority in Yunnan.
It turned out that the secret of the bamboo flute of the Han tomb of Luo Po Wan was that it was missing a small piece of bamboo when it was unearthed. When this bamboo flute is added to the bamboo sheet, the airflow can pass through the first hole at the upper end, bypass the compartment, through the small channel formed by the bamboo sheet, and enter the lower part of the lumen. The pronunciation principle of this instrument is to form a vortex of air by hitting the edge of the blowing hole of the instrument to impact the air column in the tube and vibrate and sound.
After more than two thousand years of silence, the bamboo flute sounded again, proving his true identity. Its voice is soft and gentle, just like the bright moonlit night of the Han Dynasty, held in the hands of the woman surnamed Hu, who loves to eat green plums and dress up, and plays his favorite melody for the powerful master. The bamboo flute made this woman pampered, and also forced her to the end of her life at a young age. The owner of the tomb used six women and one man for the burial, all seven of whom were between the ages of 13 and 26. After human bone identification, the seven deceased did not suffer injuries or fractures due to struggle, so the bones were intact. It is speculated that they were buried in separate coffins after being poisoned by their owners. The bamboo flute, waiting for the last temperature of an unfortunate woman's life, left an echo of a distant history.
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This Saturday (January 14) at 21:00
"Guangxi Story, Bagui Ancient Music, Bamboo Flute Legend" broadcast by Guangxi Satellite TV