Tiger Rune, the vanishing tiger memory
Welcome to the WeChat public account [Sasu] (sasutime)
It is said that Trump's visit to China made a joke that was not too big - no matter where he went, there was a bodyguard with a black suitcase, and one of us security guards did not know what he was doing, went up for cross-examination, and almost caused a conflict.
It turned out that this person was carrying a lockbox for US nuclear missiles, and according to the regulations, he had to be inseparable from the president
In addition to caring about who is better at kung fu at home and abroad, the public is also very curious about what is in the lockbox. According to the information disclosed, in addition to the communication equipment and instructions for use, the most important thing in this lockbox is a special card, which is used to verify the identity of the president, thus confirming that the instructions he gives to the armed forces are not impersonated by others. This card can be called the key to starting a war.
In ancient China, there was also a military aircraft key similar to the authentication card in the nuclear lockbox, which is the famous tiger charm.
The Tiger Charm, a relic of the ancient Chinese monarch's mobilization of the army, is usually shaped like a fierce tiger made of metal, which can be divided into two halves, and has a unique tenon inside to ensure that it can be closely combined. A number of physical tiger charms have been found in China, which proves that its use has lasted for a long time
The legend of the tiger rune was invented by Jiang Ziya of the Western Zhou Dynasty, which was usually separated when the army was sent, the right half was stored in the imperial court, the left half was issued to the general of the army, and when the monarch gave orders to the army, he needed to send someone to the army with the right half of the tiger rune, which needed to match the half in the hands of the general, and confirm that the closeness was consistent with the inscription, and the order could take effect. Only with the Tiger Rune can the army be mobilized, so there is the saying that the Xin LingJun stole the charm to save Zhao.
Although there were no nuclear weapons in ancient times, the Tiger Charm can determine the command of thousands of troops and horses, and its role is similar to that of the US president's lockbox.
Why was the Tiger Rune made into the image of a tiger? This is because the tiger was a sacred beast in ancient China that was regarded as a representative of conquest and bravery.
Tiger Rune inscription rubbing
Among the four elephant divine beasts in ancient China, there are "left green dragon, right white tiger, former suzaku, and later Xuanwu". The White Tiger is responsible for guarding the West, and in the Five Elements, the West is Gengxinjin, and the weapons are made of metal, so the White Tiger of the West has also become a symbol of mighty conquest - which is also consistent with the characteristics of the tiger in nature.
Early tiger fossils found in Gansu, China
China is the homeland of tigers, the oldest tiger fossil found in the Yellow River Basin, it is speculated that it evolved along three lines, one south through the Malay Peninsula into the Nanyang Islands, one east to Korea and even Japan, one west to the shores of the Caspian Sea. China once had a number of subspecies such as The Siberian Tiger, the South China Tiger, the Bengal Tiger, and the Xinjiang Tiger, and their images seem to be similar, but some subtle differences still exist.
Interestingly, based on these differences, from the shape of the tiger symbol, we can also roughly judge which kind of tiger the ancient Chinese used as the prototype of the tiger symbol, that is, the South China tiger known as the "South Chinese Tiger".
A South China tiger in a zoo
The South China tiger is a unique tiger species in China, which was widely distributed in the Yellow River, Yangtze River and Pearl River basins of China, but because of the competition for human survival, the destruction of the environment and its organized hunting as a pest, their distribution area and number shrank a lot in the late twentieth century.
In 1915, a South China tiger entered the New Territories of Hong Kong and was shot and killed
In 1983, a young South China tiger was caught at the Baihuwan Forest Farm in Enshi City, Hubei Province, which was the last South China tiger to be caught so far, and the last tiger recorded to have been shot died in 1994 in Guangdong. According to the statistics of experts on the forest land situation and the distribution of ungulates in southern China, it is believed that the wild no longer has the conditions to support the survival of the South China tiger, and can be regarded as functional extinction. Nowadays, this tiger can only be seen in zoos.
Why do you think that the prototype of the Tiger Charm is the South China Tiger?
The tiger image displayed by the tiger symbol that remains today has two major characteristics, first, the head is narrow and long, almost rectangular; second, the limbs are moderately proportioned to the body, and the body is healthy and slender. This is similar to the tiger above the White Tiger Wadang.
Not only the tiger symbol, but also the Han Dynasty portrait bricks unearthed in Xinye, the tiger also has such characteristics
This is the unique feature of the South China tiger, pay attention to the ancient tiger fossils displayed in front, you will find that its head also tends to be slender. The South China tiger is the most primitive species of tiger, and this feature of the ancestors is more fully inherited. At the same time, it lives in a warmer area, has less body fat and shorter whiskers, making its external appearance more slender and athletic than other tigers.
Note the similarities between the head contour and body shape of the South China tiger and the tiger symbol
Let's take a look at the other tigers that have survived in our country:
Bengal tigers
Siberian tiger
What they commonly feature is a rounded face and a relatively fat body, with shorter limbs that do not quite match the tiger on the tiger symbol. The birthplace of Chinese civilization and the historical distribution area of the South China tiger basically coincide, and it is speculated that most of the tigers in the ancient Chinese people came from the South China tiger.
South China tiger drinking water
There was no shortage of other tiger images in ancient China – such as tigers with round faces.
Liao Dynasty Crouching Tiger - It is speculated that the prototype is the Siberian tiger
Liao Dynasty Khitan Wen Tiger Head Gilded Rune Plate - It is speculated that the prototype is the Siberian Tiger
These "tigers" appear precisely outside the distribution area of South China tigers such as Liaodong, so it can be confirmed that the prototype of the tiger symbol is the South China tiger and not a misidentification.
The wind from the dragon, the clouds from the tiger, the dragon into the sea, the tiger roaring deep into the mountains. In traditional Chinese culture, the tiger is an animal juxtaposed with a dragon and with a supernatural color.
Western Han White Tiger Wadang
They are all regarded as sacred beasts, and the difference between tigers and dragons is that dragons do not exist in reality, while tigers are rare animals in China. This leads to the paradox of how can an existing animal be considered a god? There is a saying that the people around the king are the least likely to regard him as a god, because every day together, you will find that he is also indispensable to the seven passions and six desires, eating men and women, but an ordinary person sitting in a special position. If it exists in the world, people will find that it is only a carnivore, so how can it be worshipped with divinity?
This mystery was not understood until I interviewed Arlov, the leader of the Expedition to the Primorsky State of the Russian Far East, in Moscow in 2017.
China's Siberian tiger is known as the Siberian tiger outside the country, and its main habitat is in the Far Eastern Frontier State, and there are about 500 animals living in local protected areas (compared to less than ten in China, less than ten live in the Changbai Mountains), which is said to be not too small. Arlov had worked in the wilderness of the Far East for forty years, often encountering bears and wolves, but he never had the opportunity to witness tigers in the wild— and the staff of the reserve rarely had the privilege of seeing only the big cats through automatic cameras in the wild.
In areas with small populations, tigers are mysterious and lonely animals. Their intelligence is so high that they anticipate and think before hunting, and most are careful to avoid humans. A tiger's hunting area is usually more than a hundred square kilometers, and it is usually a mountainous or forested area, in which it can easily avoid the eyes of a few outsiders.
Extrapolating from this, the ancient Chinese people did not have much opportunity to really face wild tigers - there were no photos and videos to see, and ancient times basically did not have the conditions to raise tigers, so for ordinary people, tigers and dragons are as mysterious and unknowable, so there is no psychological obstacle to including them in the ranks of gods.
Suddenly there was a glimmer of hope, since tigers are such a good hidden animal, then the twenty years that the wild South China tiger disappeared from the human world is only twenty years that they have successfully avoided humans, and at some future moment, the former South Chinese tiger will return to the human world.
Although this hope is a little dim, we still have deep expectations.
【End】