The golden hoop stick is a weapon that fascinated Chinese when they were young, but it does not exist only in myths or novels. Li Ling borrowed to write a book review for the book "Showing Off the Might: An Examination of the Origin of the Scepter" by archaeologist Li Shuicheng, and on the basis of the original book on the origin and comparison of the "scepter" of Chinese and foreign archaeology, he continued to use more documentary materials to supplement and develop them. In particular, the extension of "golden hoop stick" and "golden wheel rod" is quite wonderful.
A new work in Mizujo
I have a lot of friends, except for the children who have been naughty since childhood, mainly the big friends who are engaged in the study of the "Three Ancients", especially those in the archaeological field. It's these kinds of friends that I interact with the most. I especially admire the archaeologists who are fighting on the front line of archaeology and are quite theoretical.
In the past, everyone had the impression that archaeologists were very hard, tired of investigation, excavation, and reporting, and had no time to read, let alone write books, as Mao Zedong said in the poem that he gave to Fu Sinian with his humble self-deprecation, "Liu Xiang didn't read" (Tang Zhangjie: "Book Burning Pit"). But Shuicheng is not, he dug a lot, read a lot, and wrote a lot. In the past, I wrote the lecture notes on Northwest Archaeology, Salt Industry Archaeology, and Archaeology, which were very professional, so that outsiders could not understand them, but the book at hand was a little different. It is about a curious artifact that people pay little attention to and almost become a blind spot in knowledge—the scepter. Before he went to Sichuan, every morning, we often walked in Tsinghua University, chatting while walking, I knew what he was writing, but I was still a little surprised to receive a new book. The book is beautifully printed, open it and look at it, there are many illustrations, footnotes are dense, Chinese materials, foreign materials, everything, from prehistory to the eye, rich in content, vivid writing, very interesting.
《Yao Wu Wei: 权杖源流考》, by Li Shuicheng, Shanghai Ancient Book Publishing House, 2021 edition (来源: dangdang. com)
This book is "dedicated to Liu Yuan", his old classmate. I've met Liu Yuan and we've had dinner together. He had been ill for many years, and before leaving, he said goodbye to Shuicheng on the phone. These four words are full of affection.
Shuicheng is seventy years old, and I want to write something for him, which can be regarded as a birthday celebration. I re-read his new book.
What is a "scepter"
Mizuki speaks of the scepter, "scepter" is a loanword, and the English translation of the title of the book is called Mace-Scepters. The "wedge" in front of the book is the etymology, he treats mace as a primitive and ancient scepter with rough workmanship around the world, some are just sticks for beating people, hammers for smashing things (including hammers for hitting the enemy's brains), scepters are different, they are luxurious and valuable scepters in the hands of kings and religious elites in Europe since the Middle Ages, but I am more concerned about the difference between the former and "殳", the author is in the tenth chapter of the next part.
Ancient Chinese Shapes of Mourn (Source: baidu.com)
What is "Scepter"? From a process perspective, it may not be complicated. In the Paleolithic Age, humans have long played with stones and sticks. Stone turning tools, chopping and smashing tools, scrapers, pointed tools, and sticks, are tools and weapons that can be used. Bronze tools and weapons are an extension of these three types of stone tools. Ancient Chinese weapons, spears, swords, and axes were developed from scrapers and pointed tools, also called bladed tools, and Yan was developed from chopping tools. The word, pictogram, originally resembled a stone block or a processed stone hammer in the hand. What did the ancients do with this thing in their hands? Smash things. Throwing the word from 殳, refers to the action of using 殳, the action is small, smashed from top to bottom, big point, thrown from near to far, out of reach, and catapult. David's victory over Goliath was by catapults. The word dice is from 殳, which is a gambling device used to throw. The cocoon of the gambling is the dice, also called the dice. These words are all related to the word 殳.
However, the "scepter" is the "scepter", and it must first "show off its might" and symbolize "power". Secondly, it has to be a "scepter", the scepter is a stick, with a metal cap on it, the barrel is the simplest, the most complex point, made into a spherical shape, petal-shaped, melon-shaped, and then complex, plus papillae, wolf teeth, sharp edges, ever-changing, all belong to the head of the scepter, and the water city is called "scepter head".
This thing is available in foreign countries and in China, what is the relationship between the two?
The West's "Flaunting Force"
The book of Shuicheng covers a wide range of Chinese and foreign archaeological discoveries, and the lower part talks about comparative research between China and foreign countries.
In the West, this refers to Europa. Anatolia is the old neighbor of Europe, the "East" in the original sense, and from Anatolia to the south, plus the Two Rivers Valley, Palestine and Egypt, it is customary to call it the "Near East". Further east are Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. Further east is the "Far East". When I say "the West" here, I mean from a Chinese perspective. Europe and West Asia, traditionally speaking, belong to the same cultural circle, and West Asia is older and more qualified to represent the West. By "West" I mean the Great West. Iran is close to China, and from our point of view, it belongs to the "Near West".
In the Western tradition, kings show off their might, mainly relying on three things, one hammer (mace), two bows (bow), and three axes (axe), not only in the Near East, but also in Europe and Iran.
Here's an illustrative example. In Iran's Kermanshah province, there is a small town called Sar Pol-e-Zahab. The town is close to Fort Schilling on the Iran-Iraq border (where many people died after the 2017 earthquake) and is home to the famous Anubanini Rock Relief. These three things are on the screen.
Anubani rock carvings
On the left side of the picture is Anubani, King of the Lulupi. He stepped on the enemy chieftain, holding in his left hand a bow and a weapon with what appeared to be a hammer, and in his right hand a two-hole axe with three rivets nailed to a wooden handle.
Anubanini rock carvings (line drawing 1)
On the right side of the picture is Ishtar, the god of war and eros in the Near East. She stood on a small platform, holding a ring in her right hand to congratulate Anubanini, and in her left hand she held two captives, whose hands were tied behind their backs and tied with their nose rings, which were held in her hands. It is worth noting that she has six weapons behind her back, like the flag of Peking Opera: two hammers and an axe are clamped between the left shoulder, and the two hammers are spherical, and the axe is the same as that held by Anubani; The back of the right shoulder is blurred, and it seems to be the same.
At the bottom of the picture, on the left are six captives with their hands tied on their backs, and on the right are the Akkadian inscriptions.
This petroglyph, dated to about 2300 B.C., has a far-reaching influence on its style. For example, the petroglyphs in Bechston, also in the province of Kermanshah, have a similar picture of prisoner sacrifice; Achaemenid stone carving, standing statue of the king, left hand with a bow, sitting statue, right hand holding a round-headed hammer staff; The Sassanid stone carvings, in which the king's horse steps on the enemy chieftain and stands on the left, and the Ahura Mazda gives the ring to the king and stands on the right, it is not difficult to see this influence.
Anubanini rock carvings (line drawing 2)
I would say that all three are important, not just the hammer.
China's "Show of Might"
Shuicheng Yin Lin said that the king itself is the image of the axe. The main symbol of China's "flaunting martial arts" is the axe, which is true.
There is a lot of evidence, first of all, pre-Qin documents.
1. "Poetry, Shang Song, Long Hair": "King Wu is full of piety. If the fire is fierce, then I dare not (contain). "King Wu takes Wu as his name, and the standard image is to stand on a chariot, with a flag on the chariot and an axe in his hand.
2. "Book and Pastoral Oath": "The king's left cane is Huang Yue, and his right is Bai Xuan." "Wuwang Keshang, Chen Shi Muye, the image is holding the "Huang Yue" with a handle in his left hand, and the "Bai Xuan" in his right hand.
3. "Yi Zhou Shu and Kou Jie" talks about King Wu Keshang, "hand Taibai to command the princes", "first enter the suitable king's office, Naike shoots it, three shots, get off, and hit it with a light Lu, and cut it with Huang Yue." Fold, the county Zhu Taibai", "is suitable for the two daughters, both hanging, the king and shoot three shots, is the right hit to light Lu, cut it to Xuanyue, the county Zhu Xiaobai", he is the first to use the "Huang Yue" to cut the king of Shang, hang the head in Taibai, and then use the "Xuanyue" to cut the two women he loves, hanging the head in Xiaobai.
Fourth, "Zhou Li, Xia Guan, Da Sima": "If the teacher is meritorious, then the left is the law, the right is Bingyue, and the first Kaile is dedicated to the society." 5. "The Book of Rites: The King's System": "Princes, give bows and arrows and then levy, give arrows and then kill." "Sixth, "Liutao, Longtao, Lijiang" talks about the general's expedition, before the army to hold a ceremony to worship the general in the temple, the king in the ceremony to symbolize the royal power and the decision to kill the Yue to him, so that he "no heaven in the top, no earth in the bottom, no enemy in front, no king in the back". "Huainanzi Bing Strategy" is slightly the same.
This is followed by the Western Zhou Jinwen.
1. Yu Jizi Baipan says that the king of Zhou rewarded Yu Jizibai, and the inscription says: "The king said that Bai (uncle) father, Kong Youguang." The king rode on a horse, and used the left (Zuo) king; Bow (given) with a bow, Tong arrow its center; Give the use of 戉 (钺), use the government (levy) barbarian prescription, children and grandchildren, 10,000 years without Yi (Xinjiang). ”
Second, Shi Keyun said that the king of Zhou rewarded Shi Ke, and gave him "foal car", "Zhu Yi", "four horses", "Su Hu (Yue)" and so on.
There are three kinds of Yue, "Huang Yue", "Xuan Yue" and "Su Yue". The bow is important, but so is the bow. Shooting salute, the left shoots the song "Pighead", and the right shoots the song "Su Yu", and the one who refuses to pay tribute and call the courtiers ("not the court") is the shooting marquis (arrow target).
The bow and arrow represent the conquest, and the axe represents the punishment, and these are the authority of the king, which is very clear. The question is, where is it going?
From Jin to Jinwu, Guduo, and Golden Melon
"Zhen" is one of the "five soldiers", which is very important, and there are many records in pre-Qin documents.
Shuicheng's book talks about "the fate of the scepter in China" (chapter 10), and it cannot avoid "Yin". The Shang and Zhou dynasties and the Han dynasty "Jinwu", "Guduo" and "Jingua" were suggested by me to be supplemented by him. He consulted Yang Hong, searched exhaustively about the relevant materials, and discussed them in detail. I understand that he regarded the scepter as a foreign object, and the similar excavated objects in the Central Plains of the three generations as "imitation of the scepter", emphasizing transmission, imitation and transformation.
The head of the golden scepter unearthed from the Liujiawa cemetery
In the Western Zhou Dynasty of the Shang Dynasty, he only cited the characters in the oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty and the characters with the characters as the side (there is a difference between the side and the side of the 殳, which seems to be eliminated), indicating that there was a character at that time. In the absence of his own name, out of caution, he did not classify the "stone hammer" and "jade hammer" unearthed in the Shang Dynasty as "Zhen". The same is true of the discoveries of the Western Zhou Dynasty. He talked about the killing, only since the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. The relics of the Shang and Zhou dynasties can only be regarded as "imitation of the scepter", and they are placed before the "scepter", and they are put aside with the "Yue". But this kind of material is very valuable, and Shuicheng has vigorously collected it, and it has been introduced in detail.
Since the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, the tomb of Marquis Yi has its own name, which is naturally "殳". Shuicheng divides the Eastern Zhou Dynasty into two categories: A and B, class A has a spear edge (note: maces since the Song Dynasty also have spearheads), ball hoops are below, spear edges are three-edged, ball hoops are divided into two kinds of thornless and spiny, and class B has no edges and no thorns, just a pointed or round-headed hoop.
Jin Wu, the official of the Han Dynasty has Zhi Jin Wu, Zhi Jin Wu is a kind of military attache responsible for the Beijing Guard, and the weapon he holds in his hand is called "Jin Wu". "Hanshu Hundred Officials and Ministers": "Lieutenant, Qin official, in charge of the Beijing Division, there are two Cheng, Hou, Sima, and a thousand people. In the first year of Emperor Wu's reign, he changed his name to Zhijinwu. "What is Kingo? The description of Jin Cuibao's "Ancient and Modern Notes: Public Opinion" is "The Han Dynasty ruled Jinwu, and Jinwu was also good." With copper for it, gold for two ends, it is called Jinwu". It seems that Jingo is a kind of copper rod with gilt at both ends. Shuicheng Yin Lu Yu's "Book of Tea" has "Muwu", which is a similar wooden stick, which is called "Wu Stick" in the Ming Dynasty, and still maintains historical continuity.
The bone is also known as guanidine, that is, 檛 (read as a melon). The hammer is the head of the hammer. Hammer, also used as a vertebral or mallet. Shuicheng Yinsu Bai's "Baisha Song Tomb", has a detailed study of the etymology and phonetic change of this word, and points out that the bone flower is the cane head and belly like a flower bud (also called a flower bone) and a melon petal. This name is popular in the Song Liao Jin Yuan, the history books frequently see "Zhi Gu Duo", it seems to be the same as "Zhi Jin Wu", but the name of Gu Duo, the name of Jin Wu has not been abolished, the two names are parallel, until the Qing Dynasty, there seems to be still a difference.
Golden gourd, Shuicheng quoted the Song Dynasty "Wujing General Essentials Collection" volume 13, pointing out that the bones are divided into two categories: tribulus terrestris and garlic. The garlic head resembles a flower bud or melon petal, and the tribulus terrestris resembles a mace and pestle stick in the same book, with thorns. "Daming Huidian" and "Sancai Drawing" divide the "golden melon" into "standing melon" and "lying melon", which is different from "bone flower", "my cane", "stirrup cane" and "golden festival". It can be seen that it belongs to the same large category, and there are still many sub-categories below.
The golden gourd general on the Shinto of the Ming Tombs
"Golden Hoop Stick" and "Golden Wheel Stick"
In the past, when we read novels and watched dramas, we had the impression that the Han Dynasty used hammers (such as "Eight Hammers") very late, which belonged to "Hu Feng", and this impression was not necessarily correct.
Finally, let's make a little generalization.
Jinwu, Guduo, and gourd are all used in the honor guard. The guard of honor is a staff, most of them are wooden sticks, with various copper heads on them, Ge has Ge Lian, spear has spear upsetting, and the handle of the axe is similar to Ge Zheng, and there are also copper Gong. Copper can be added to the head of the cane, and the tail of the cane can also be added.
Jinwu is a copper rod, Muwu is a wooden stick, the copper rod is coated with gold at two ends, and the wooden rod often has a copper cap, which belongs to the class of rods.
Bone flowers and gourds are those with copper caps such as buds and melon petals, which belong to the hammer category.
These two categories, morphologically speaking, not only continue to continue the two categories of the Chin, but are also similar to the MACE of West Asia. For example, the famous Lorestan bronzes in Iran, their mace is also divided into cylindrical and spherical shapes, and the spherical shape often has papillae and spikes, which are described in detail in Shuicheng.
Lorestan Bronze, Mace (Source: timevaultgallery.com)
"Urgent" "Iron Gas, 檛, Rod, 梲, 柲, 杸", the hammer type of gas, 杲, 柲, 杸 are classified together, and the 杸 is the same category. "Guangya Release"
, 棓, 桲, 梲, 柍, 欇, 殳, 梃, degree, rod also", also put the 殳 and all kinds of rods and utensils in the same class of rods.
Martial arts are divided into two categories: bare hands and equipment. Since the Song Dynasty, stick art has been popular in martial arts. Stick art is the basic skill of instrumental martial arts. At that time, there was a word called "pole stick". "Pu Dao Stick Stick" is a big category of storytelling, and the stick is a stick. The stick in the hand of the official is called the water and fire stick (black on the top and red on the bottom, round on the top and flat on the bottom), which is also called the killing stick. Sticks and sticks are common names for utensils such as stumps and rods.
In "Journey to the West", Sun Wukong's weapon is a golden hoop stick. The golden hoop rod is a rod with a golden hoop at both ends. The golden hoop, the golden gourd and the Jin Wu sound are close, and the Beijing children's song is also called the golden ring. The golden reeling rod is the "scepter" of this "Monkey King".
In 1900, a missionary who claimed to be Isaac Taylor Headland of the United States from the Beijing Huiwen Academy published a book in New York, which included 150 Peking children's songs. One of the children's songs is:
The golden reel stick, the silver reel stick, the grandfather played the board and the grandmother sang, and sang until dawn. There is nowhere to put it to feed a child, so I put it on the pot and drink rice soup.
The original book is accompanied by photographs and an English translation. Beijing dialect is accustomed to using children's pronunciation, but the word "er" after "grandpa" and "grandma" is redundant. "They place the child by the pot on the ground" is also not very accurate, but it is interesting to translate "gold and silver basket" into gilt-wood mace. In his mind, the stick was a mace with a wooden handle and gilded ends.
The king or emperor of China rarely sits on the throne, and the mace or the axe is given, the axe is given to the general, and the mace is held by the guards, and the appearance of things is similar, but the structural function is different.
I understand that China and the Northwest often come and go, there must be foreign influences, but relay long-distance transmission, I am afraid there is a declining trend, the MACE of the Central Plains is not a direct consequence of embedded transmission, I am afraid that it is the mother plus the father, which belongs to the graft.
("Showing Off the Might: The Examination of the Source of the Scepter", by Li Shuicheng, Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 2021 edition)
* All images in the article without attribution are provided by the author