Near the Longquan Temple of Wutai Mountain in Xinzhou, Shanxi, there is a brick pagoda of the Song Dynasty, which has a history of 1,000 years. Archaeologists have found that the pagoda is actually the spirit bone pagoda of the famous Northern Song Dynasty general Yang Jiye, and there is a little-known history behind it. What's going on here? If you want to know the story behind the Spirit Bone Tower, the following xiaobian will reveal the secret to you from the beginning:
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Yang Jiye is a famous person, and he is the core figure of the famous Yang family general in history. Yang Jiye was born in a family of military generals in Taiyuan, and when he was young, he was good at riding and shooting bravely and invinciblely, and later Yang Jiye followed Liu Yan, the founding emperor of the Northern Han Dynasty, and made many military achievements during his tenure as a command envoy, known as "Yang Invincible". In 979, the Northern Han dynasty collapsed, and Yang Jiye was appreciated by Zhao Guangyi, the Emperor Taizong of Song, and appointed him to deploy soldiers and horses for the Three Jiaojiao garrisons and guard the border pass.
In 986, Emperor Taizong of Song sent an army to Daliao, with Yang Jiye as the main general, to retake Yanyun Sixteen Prefectures. Unfortunately, Yang Jiye was victimized by the traitors and mistakenly entered the Liao army to ambush and was captured, but Yang Jiye vowed to die and finally went on hunger strike. After Yang Jiye's martyrdom, the bones were still seized by the Liao army, and it was not until 1005 that song and Liao signed the "Tanyuan Alliance" and were sent back to their hometown, but a trouble also followed.
After Yang Jiye's bones were retrieved, the enemies he killed on the battlefield actually tried every means to harm his body, so the Yang family had to think of a perfect strategy in order to protect the bones from being buried safely. At that time, the person in charge of this matter was Yang Jiye's fifth son, Yande, that is, Yang Wulang. First, Yang Wulang chose a more remote place, and then built the Spirit Bone Pagoda for his father Yang Jiye, because the Spirit Bone Tower is more hidden than the tomb.
Yang Wulang was familiar with history, and he knew the story of Cao Cao's 72 tombs. Therefore, Yang Wulang also decided to build 72 Spirit Bone Pagodas, but this is not a small project, requiring great manpower and financial resources. Therefore, Yang Wulang contacted the people of the nearby ten miles and eight townships to tell his thoughts truthfully, and the villagers also felt Yang Jiye's heroic deeds, so they had money to pay and contribute forcefully, and in less than 2 months, they built 72 identical spirit bone pagodas, and finally even the Yang family themselves did not know which pagoda was real.
From historical records, it can be seen that the 72 spirit bone pagodas are all three-level hexagonal brick towers, with a height of about 12 meters. With the passage of time, due to disrepair, coupled with war and vandalism, some spirit bone towers began to collapse one after another. By the late Qing Dynasty, only 1 of the 72 Lingbone Pagodas remained, the one we see today at Longquan Temple. During the Republic of China period, the descendants of the Yang family also worshiped this only 1 spirit bone pagoda and erected a stone stele with the inscription "Yang Linggong Tomb Tower", so it is now also called Linggong Pagoda.
After the founding of New China, the local cultural relics department protected the tower, and at the same time, the study found that this tower was Yang Jiye's real spirit bone pagoda. Because when building the Spirit Bone Pagoda, the craftsmen know in their hearts that they are building a real tower, or a fake tower, if it is a fake tower, it is naturally more arbitrary, and the use of materials can be saved; but if it is a real tower, the craftsmen will not have the slightest slack and sloppiness, they must be carefully built, and the materials are also full, so the fake towers that are built sloppy have collapsed one after another, and what can be preserved to this day must be the real tower.
Today's Linggong Pagoda has gone through thousands of years of wind and rain, although it still stands as before, but it is old, the base of the tower has sunk, the tower body has also had a large crack and lateral tilt, and the tower brake has long disappeared, replaced by dense weeds, as if to announce to the world that it still has tenacious vitality. In any case, the top priority of the experts is to maintain and rescue the Linggong Pagoda as soon as possible, so that it can be well preserved for another thousand years, or even longer. Otherwise, the tragic history behind the Linggong Pagoda will also be obliterated by time with the collapse of the tower, and our generation will become the "sinners" of history.
Not only the Linggong Pagoda, but also many cultural relics and relics that need to be repaired urgently around us, they are both witnesses of history and history itself, so we must also improve our awareness of protecting cultural monuments in our lives, and strive to make history pass on forever.
Wenlan Hairun Studio Editor-in-Chief Wen Xiucai, this article is written by: Special History Writer: Liu Lijiang's