Movable type printing is one of the "four major inventions" in China, and papermaking, gunpowder, compass is on a par with the name, and the inventor of movable type printing, Bi Sheng, has also been admired by posterity. In recent years, the tomb of Bi Sheng has been discovered in hubei province, and three mysteries about Bi Sheng have also been unveiled as a result. What's going on here? If you want to know, let Xiaobian reveal the secret for you:
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In the autumn of 1990, Huang Shangwen, a cadre of Caopandi Village in Yingshan County, Hubei Province, went to the fields of Bijia'ao at the foot of Sleeping Lion Mountain in Wuguidun Village, which is under the jurisdiction of the village, as usual, to observe the harvest situation of each household in each village and to strictly prevent the occurrence of autumn fires. For decades, he had been like this, conscientious in his work, and did not dare to be sloppy.
During the inspection, Huang Shangwen only felt that he was tripped by a hard object under his feet and almost fell to the ground. He turned his head to look at it, only to see some stones in the dirt, and the shape of the stones seemed to have carved marks, which should not have been naturally formed. Huang Shangwen didn't say a word, and immediately dug it out of the soil, and sure enough, as expected, what almost tripped him was a stone stele.
As one of the few cultural people in the village, Huang Shangwen had participated in the archaeological work in the county and had some understanding of history, so he washed the stone tablets and examined them carefully. The tombstone is hewn from gray hemp stone, and the whole is in a narrow upper and lower width shape that is approximately vertical, and the upper part is a round head, which looks older. According to the archaeological experts who later heard the news, the stone stele is 113 cm high, 65 cm wide on the top, 70 cm wide on the bottom, and the thickness is about 9-16 cm, the stele frame is decorated with a yang carved curly grass pattern, and the top of the inner line is made in the form of a lotus petal-like spike, as well as a lotus leaf canopy covered with a treasure bead, and a trapezoidal tablet seat underneath. The most eye-catching is the text on the tombstone, which reads "So First Kao Bi Sheng God Lord" and "Gu Xian Fei Li Clan Miaoyin".
It is this short text message that makes the eyes of archaeologists brighten, because the word "Bi Sheng" is exactly the same as the name of the inventor of movable type printing in China, is the tombstone really the burial place of Bi Sheng's bones? In order to be able to uncover the secrets, archaeologists began to excavate at the place where the stone tablets were found, and sure enough, an ancient tomb was found nearby. Unfortunately, the tomb has long been empty, and obviously does not have much research value.
Since there is little hope of studying the identity of the owner of the tomb from the ancient tomb, archaeologists can only turn their attention to the tombstone again. Experts noted that in addition to the name of the so-called owner of the tombstone, there is also information about the name of the person who erected the monument and the time of the monument. There are 7 people on the tombstone, namely Bi Jia, Bi Wen, Bi Cheng, Bi Rong, Bi Wenxian, Bi Wenbin and Bi Wenzhong, the first four are the four sons of the tomb owner Bi Sheng, and the last three are his grandsons. In addition, the time of erection of the stele on the inscription is also very clear, which is "the seventh day of the first month of February in the fourth year of the imperial mouth", in which the word "mouth" is distorted due to its age, and it is difficult to identify the original text. Later, after being tested by a high-tech analyzer, archaeologists concluded that the damaged handwriting was "祐", that is, "the seventh day of the first month of February in the fourth year of the Emperor You", and then according to the year record of the Emperor You's year number (1049 to 1053) in the historical materials, it was determined that the date of Bi Sheng's death was inferred in the historical materials (1051), and then the mystery of Bi Sheng's death time was unveiled.
Judging from this evidence, archaeologists believe that the tombstone of Bi Sheng found by Bi Jia'ao in Yingshan County, Hubei Province, is very likely to be the owner of Bi Sheng, a great inventor in China. In order to confirm this view, archaeologists also deliberately flipped through the "Mengxi Pen Talk" written by the Northern Song Dynasty scientist Shen Kuo. Shen Kuo and Bi Sheng's family tao has a relatively deep relationship, and it is said that Bi Sheng's personal disciples are the ancestors of the Shen family, and they have a lot of intersection with Bi Sheng. Shen Kuo wrote in the "Mengxi Pen Talk" that Bi Sheng was very skilled, often went to various places to preside over the printing work, and eventually died of a sick guest due to overwork, and all the relics left behind were passed on to his disciples, and the reason why Shen Kuo knew the above information was completely informed by the elders themselves.
Archaeologists, after comparing the Mengxi Pen Talk with the tombstone text, also revealed two secrets about Bi Sheng. First of all, there is the word "God Lord" on Bi Sheng's tombstone, and these two words were forbidden to be used by civilians in feudal times, and Bi Sheng, who was a cloth cloth, was no exception. The only time civilians can use the word "God Lord" is to hold a "soul burial". Hubei has always had the trend of "summoning souls to bury", because the productive forces were not developed at that time, the traffic situation was relatively backward, making it difficult for those who died in other places to be transported back to their hometowns for burial, so the family would use the word "God Lord" on their tombstones, hoping to recruit the soul of the tomb owner into the ground. Coincidentally, Bi Sheng, the inventor of movable type printing, was a cloth cloth, and it is recorded in the "Mengxi Pen Talk" that his guest died in a foreign country, and it is very likely that his family held a soul funeral for him with the word "God Lord".
As we said earlier, the place where Bi Sheng's tomb was found was named "Bi Jia'ao", indicating that there were Bi clans settling here, although after many investigations by archaeologists, no one with the surname Bi was found in the village, but in the mouths of the villagers, they learned that decades ago, there was a desolate cemetery in Houshan, and all the names on the tombstones in the cemetery were surnamed Bi, but later they were artificially bulldozed because of the need to open up the wasteland. Experts deduce that the ancients advocated "falling leaves back to the roots", and they all hoped to bury themselves in their homeland, and found Bi Sheng's tomb in Bijia'ao, indicating that his birthplace was here.
After the tomb of Bi Sheng was determined, an uproar was set off in the archaeological community, and people would not have imagined that the famous inventor Bi Sheng would spend a thousand years quietly in a small village. Although he was clothed in cloth, he was not as good as the princes and nobles of the Northern Song Dynasty, but the merits he left for future generations were forever engraved on the sweat and youth of history.