A bronze sword excavated from the Nanyang site in Xiong'an New District, Hebei Province. (Xinhua News Agency reporter Mou Yu/photo)
<h3>First, the iron that breaks the sand and sinks is not sold</h3>
Few people, like Chinese, still frequently mention the weapons that have passed away in their daily lives more than a century after the end of the era of cold weapons. When we describe a very ambitious and bold reform above the building, we say "bold". When we mention a tense interpersonal relationship in the workplace in the reinforced concrete forest, we say "the sword is rattled". We use "single knife to the meeting" to praise the lone hero, and also use the "smile hidden knife" to reveal the sinister and cunning villain. Even when few people understand that "giving up" is not a "killer", we still use this idiom to describe all kinds of surprising victories.
The sword seems to be very close to us, so close that if the idioms, colloquialisms, and afterwords related to the sword are all deleted, modern Chinese will lose a lot of color.
The sword seems to be far away from us, we can not connect the iron pieces in the hands of martial arts routine athletes with the divine soldiers in the mind of "a sword frost and cold fourteen states", nor can we read too much useful information from the few lines of text next to the broken iron bars that are sleeping in the corners of major museums as "miscellaneous", and under the influence of the literary exaggeration of novels and interpretations, we even lose the most basic common sense, and it is difficult to carry fifty pounds of flour upstairs. I still firmly believe that the ancients can rotate the large knives that can be hundreds of pounds often like flying into battle.
We seem to be caught in a strange circle, and we have to awkwardly admit that there is a misalignment and fault between history and reality, and we actually know very little about these artifacts that hang on our lips every day. In this awkward circle, we voluntarily or involuntarily see the sharp blade of the Toei island nation famous all over the world, cutting off the human body, cutting off the armor, cutting off other swords, and even cutting off tanks and warships in movies and anime.
We urgently need someone to tell the story of the Chinese sword, to tell the heroic, magnificent, bitter and sad under the thick layer of rust. Gong Jian's "History of Chinese Swords" is such an pioneering work, its research has reached a fairly professional level, and this monograph may not be circumvented to have a more comprehensive and systematic understanding of Chinese swords.
<h3>Second, the upper should be the stars and the lower part is ominous</h3>
The fact that we often use to recall the "sword and light sword shadow" that we often use to recall the ancient battlefield is that in the entire battlefield of the cold weapon era, the sword has never been the protagonist, Chinese sword is classified as a "short soldier", but when it is the real turn of the sword to appear in the "short soldier contact", the battle often tends to be white-hot, and it is nearing the end ((Tang Army) The formation is arranged, the drum sounds, and its crossbowmen go to the thief for one hundred and fifty steps to fire arrows, and the archers go to the thieves to fire arrows in sixty steps. If the thief is within twenty steps, the archer and crossbowman will give up their bows and crossbows, and the garrison will receive them. His crossbowmen each took the sword and stick with themselves, that is, they joined the teams of the battle front to fight the "Wei Gong Bing Fa Ji").
Before the "short engagement", the spear and bow had already harvested most of the casualties, and the slightly demoralized side had mostly collapsed at this time, and as the last weapon of the samurai on the battlefield, the sword, once pulled out, often meant either victory or death.
However, not only in China, but throughout the world, the sword as the "last weapon" enjoys a status and prestige that is not commensurate with its military value, and this phenomenon has evolved into a sword culture in various ancient civilizations, and the long sword with a cross-shaped sword grid is not only the personal weapon of Western European knights, but also an indispensable religious totem for knights to be canonized, prayed, and finalized. The long and short swords are not only a symbol of the identity and privileges of the Japanese samurai class, but also the spirit of Bushido represented by it has been transformed into the highest ideology of the country and the nation by the militarist government of Japan after the Meiji Restoration.
Ancient Chinese the earliest awareness or the color of the supernatural power given to the sword, may come from the Bronze Age when casting the sword, the "copper, lead, tin" three metal elements of the painstaking exploration, after entering the steel age, after repeated attempts on this fascinating and unpredictable metal material, because of the lack of scientific understanding of the carbon content of iron, the temperature of smelting, the number of forgings, the same materials and technological processes, it is entirely possible to get two completely different results, in this difficult to control process, While summarizing the law and improving the level of craftsmanship, the ancient predecessors naturally attributed some incomprehensible and unsubjudicable processes in the forging process to unknowable factors, and those who threw dice in the dark decided which of the ancients' painstaking works were divine weapons and which one was a broken copper and rotten iron " gods" were also called out in the furnace of iron smelting.
The revenge story of being included in many ancient classics such as "Search for God" and later rewritten by Mr. Lu Xun into the novel "Cast Sword" (also known as "Eyebrow Ruler"), is based on such a logic, that is, in the process of casting/forging of swords, there are unknowable supernatural factors, so the production of divine weapons is uncontrollable and difficult to copy, people can use spiritual power to influence and control the quality of the sword, and then infuse spiritual power into the sword, and the sword also has supernatural power.
The "Eastern Han Zhongping Chronicle Ring Head Knife" mentioned in the "History of Chinese Swords" unearthed in the kofun of Todaiji Temple, Nara Prefecture, Japan is a concentrated embodiment and perfect example of this idea, this 110 cm long steel ring head knife is engraved with a twenty-two-character inlaid gold inscription: "Zhongping May C Noon Composition Knife Bai Lian Qing Gang (steel) Shangying Xingsu Under the Unknown (Xiang)", from the inscription, this ring head knife is a high-grade weapon forged in the Eastern Han Dynasty (184-189 AD) using the hundred steelmaking technology, It flowed into Toei (some Japanese scholars believe that the Eastern Han Dynasty court gave the ancient Japanese Yamato Kingdom Queen Beimihu), and was buried in the Kofun of Todaiji Temple.
This sword body is already legendary, if you carefully study this inscription, it is even more mysterious, "May C noon" that is, the first five days of May, "On Balance" pointed out: "Yang flint takes fire in the sky, in the middle of the day of May C, the five stones are refined, cast as instruments, but can get fire", the Han Dynasty people believe that this day is fire, conducive to forging swords, on this day the sword forged, after thousands of hammers and hundreds of spiritual infusions, with "to the yang, to the rigidity, the right" supernatural power, not only can communicate with the heavens, but also can purify the evil and demons in the world, That is, the following "Bai lian Qing Gang (steel) on the stars under the unknown (xiang)".
At the time of the forging of this sword, it was at the time when the Han Empire, which had been strong for hundreds of years, was at sunset on the Western Mountains, the Yellow Turban Rebellion broke out in the seventh year of Guanghe (184 AD), the world was in chaos, the local power was strong, the imperial court was weakened, the Han Ling Emperor prayed for "Han Room Zhongxing, the world was peaceful", so the Guanghe Seven Years was changed to the first year of Zhongping, but the terminally ill Han Room could not be ZTE after all, and the peace of the world was also a distant dream, and the rebellion in Liangzhou was quelled but Dong Zhuo rose, and the Yellow Turban Rebellion was quelled but there was Yuan Shao and Cao Cao, "The First Big Knife of the Eastern Han Dynasty "It was forged at such a time when the country was in turmoil and crisis, and it was not only a weapon, but also the sustenance for the final efforts to support the Han Chamber in a desperate situation and save the country from danger."
<h3>Third, biankou cut and kill to stop killing</h3>
This example of placing one's desire and spirit on the supernatural power possessed by a weapon, although it also exists in other weapons such as guns and bows, is far less expressed and expressed so strongly than in the sword. The reason is that although the sword is not the main weapon on the battlefield, compared with other weapons, the sword production cost is high, the energy consumption is more, the technical content is high, and there are more uncontrollable factors in the production process, which is naturally more precious. More importantly, as a close-fitting object, the sword has been sublimated from a weapon to a symbol of ideal personality and life ambitions, whether it is Liu Bang's "I take the world from the cloth clothes, lift the three-foot sword", or Li Bai's "Ten Thousand Miles Across the Tiger's Den, Three Cups of Sword Dance Dragon Spring", all of which embody the great wisdom and courage of the ancient scholars to cultivate themselves and rule the country and the world. Therefore, pinning emotions on the sword is cultural inertia and historical destiny.
Especially in the Song Dynasty and the end of the Ming Dynasty, when foreign enemies were surrounded, the country was in turmoil, and the situation was critical, patriotic generals and benevolent men poured this feeling into the sword, and Yue Fei's "Treasure Sword Song Book for General Wu's Southward Journey" wrote: "Let the king try this sword, so that the four seas can disappear from the dust, and the people will encourage the song of Tang Yao", pinning the beautiful ideal of peace in the world and the people living and working in peace and contentment on the sword to his friends, praying that he will defeat the enemy on the southern battlefield and return the world to peace, this kind of "destroying war with war." The ideas have been inherited by generations of heroes, who have always been inspired to stand up in times of national crisis. The collector Mr. Ma Yuwei once showed a long knife with a heroic sword posture, the shape should be the late Ming Dynasty, the part of the knife body near the knife is engraved with the inscription "Biankou cut and kill to stop killing", the pen is strong and strong, seeing this eight characters, it is like seeing that there is still an indomitable soul in this knife that bears the hatred of the country and the family, and wants to turn the tide of the fallen with a lonely courage.
Above the swords of the late Ming Dynasty, such words as "Pingkou", "Annihilation" and "Pingyu" abound, and even the weapons of the benevolent heroes of the previous generation have appeared to inspire the present people (Ming people) to save the country, and the "History of Chinese Swords and Swords" believes that the "Song Li Ganggong" collected by the Fujian Provincial Museum was actually made by the Ming Dynasty, in addition to the distinctive characteristics of the late Ming Dynasty, the inscription "Jing Kang Yuan Nian Li Gang System" on the body is also too obvious, the building of "Jing Kang Yuan Nian" will fall, and the heroic aura of "Famous Generals Resisting Jin", All of them show that the author of this tool is in the situation of being at the end of the Ming Dynasty and worried about the country. Therefore, even if this hammer is indeed not made by Li Gang in the Song Dynasty, his fist and fist to save the country will not affect Li Gang's prestige by half a point.
In addition to expressing the desire to eliminate aggression and peace in the world, the ancients also pinned their hatred for the invaders on the sword, hoping that the divine soldiers with the power to ward off evil spirits could also destroy the invaders like the demons. The Song Dynasty interprets Daochuan with a poem: "Three feet of cold light shoots a bull, and the hammer is sad." Barbarians do not know the orders of the army, and mistakenly surround the blood and neck flow", directly comparing the alien invaders with the ghosts and gods. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the country was once again in a state of peril, but this time the enemy was not a horseman from the northern steppe, but a European colonist who sailed from the sea, and some of the Qing army swords that fought against European invaders were engraved with the thunder spell and the Big Dipper Seven Stars that were tired of defeating evil demons.
<h3>Fourth, the self will be polished to recognize the front dynasty</h3>
Whether it is the Han Dynasty's "Han Room Zhongxing, the World is Peaceful", "The Stars on the Top, the Ominous Under the Ground", or the Ming Dynasty's "Biankou Cut Flat to Kill and Stop Killing", or the Qing Dynasty officers and soldiers' Big Dipper Seven Stars and Spells, they have not been able to save the country as desired, with the decline and humiliation of the country in modern times, some of these swords have fallen overseas as a hunting game of the colonists, and some of them have been forgotten and abandoned as a symbol of the backward era, but the heroic spirits of generations of benevolent people are still coiled under the thick rust. Inspire those who follow them to stand up and shine their swords at a time of national peril, and regard death as a homecoming. Exactly the poem of Du Mu used at the beginning of this article:
"Folding the sand and sinking iron is not sold, and the grinding and washing recognizes the former dynasty"
No matter how the times change, how technologically developed, the history of Chinese swords, after the "History of Chinese Swords", someone must continue to write, and it is by no means the sad sentence of "no transmission, no transmission" at the end of "Broken Soul Gun".
Liu He