Bashu people's unique boat burial firmly believe that their souls will never be destroyed
Boat burial was a burial custom among some ethnic minorities in ancient southern China. It is named because it uses a ship-shaped coffin as a burial tool. Boat coffin burials are divided into open air burials and earth burials. Open-air burials of boats and coffins are popular in the southeastern part of the ancient Yue people, mainly in the Wuyi Mountains of Fujian and Jiangxi. The boat coffins in Wuyi Mountain in Chong 'an, Fujian Province are canoe-shaped. Historically, they are known as "Jiachuan Boat Coffins","Fairy Boat","Boat", etc., and were once popular from the Shang and Zhou Dynasties to the Western Han Dynasties.
In recent years, archaeology has discovered that this kind of boat coffin has two parts, which are cut out of a whole piece of wood and nested up and down. The bottom is the main body of the boat coffin, and the middle is a rectangular body holding place; the cover is semicircular, and the inside is hollow like a boat. According to documentary records, similar ship coffin burials are also found in central and southern China: Hubei calls it "the boat", Hunan calls it "the boat", and Guangxi calls it "agarwood boat" and "immortal boat." Boat coffin burial was a burial custom of the Ba people in ancient Sichuan, popular from the end of the 4th century BC to the end of the 1st century BC.
Archaeology found that there are boat coffin tombs in Dongzhu Dam, Ba County, and Baolunyuan, Zhaohua County, Sichuan Province. The boat coffins are huge and heavy. They are made of chiseling an entire section of nanmu or piecing together with 6 whole boards. The middle is the corpse holding place with wooden boards. This kind of burial custom is also practiced in some islands in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. For example, ship coffin tombs have been found in coastal defense in Vietnam, ship coffins have been found in Borneo, and important figures in the Solomon Islands are also buried with ship coffins. The coffins of Tonga and Samoa chiefs are buried offshore or left to adrift at sea.
1: History of ship burial In ancient times, a tomb with canoe-shaped coffins as burial equipment. Among open-air burials and ancient Yue people in mountainous areas, there are hanging coffins (see Hanging Coffin Burial). Documents record similar tombs in central and southern China. In Southeast Asia, the Solomon Islands, and the Samoa Islands, boat coffins can only be used after the death of the leader. If they are not buried offshore, they are placed in the sea and allowed to drift and sink. The ship coffin for earth burial was found in Sichuan in China. It was from the Warring States Period to the early Western Han Dynasty. It was a burial valley for the Bashu people.
It has been unearthed in Chongqing, Guangyuan, Chengdu, Xindu and other places. Among them, boat coffins in Chongqing and Guangyuan are often made of nanmu with a length of 5 meters and a diameter of more than 1 meter. Bodies and funerary objects are placed in the middle "cabin"(rectangular groove) with a wooden cover on it. The tomb is a vertical hole in an earthen pit. Most of the burial objects are bronze and pottery, and a small amount of iron and lacquer ware appeared in the later period. Ship coffin burials are also distributed in Scandinavia, Polynesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and other places.
Boat coffin burial was a funeral custom popular among the ancient Bashu people. At the same time, it was also a unique burial custom among some ethnic groups who lived by the water and were good at boats in ancient China. The vast area south of the Yangtze River in my country has vertical and horizontal rivers, making it easy for boating. Boats and boats are indispensable means of transportation for people living there to engage in production and life. People are good at using boats during their lifetime, but it is natural for them to be buried in boats after their death. However, during the Pre-Qin period, there were not many ethnic groups that used boat coffins for earth burials. Only the Bashu area was the area where boat coffin burials were concentrated in ancient China.
2: Boat Burial Incident In 1987, Sichuan cultural relics and archaeologists discovered a boat coffin burial tomb at the construction site of the residential building in Qingyang Community, Chengdu City. A very beautifully decorated copper pot with lifelike feather-man rowing patterns was unearthed.
3: The inspiration for the custom of ship burial comes from the emergence of funeral rituals and customs, from the belief that "the soul is immortal" and ancestral worship. Before that, after people died, people often abandoned their bodies in the wild. This is just as said in the Book of Changes: "In ancient times, burials wore thick clothes and used firewood. They were buried in the middle of the field without sealing or trees, and there were countless periods of mourning." When the concept of the soul emerged, people placed the body based on various ideas about the relationship between the soul and the body, as well as illusions about the soul's life in the underworld, resulting in various burial methods and funeral rituals. As for the specific burial method used to dispose of bodies and settle souls, it can be said that different ethnic groups and cultural circles are quite different, thus constituting a colorful funeral cultural feature. In the eyes of the ancients, soul and body were two entities that were both interdependent and independent.
Different from the customs of the Han ancestors in the Central Plains during the same period,"sending souls" was an important part of the funeral customs of the Bashu ancestors. According to the "Book of the King of Shu","Li Bing regarded the Qin Dynasty as the governor of Shu, and called Wenshan Tianpeng Castle, known as Tianpeng Gate. Clouds have passed through them all, and ghosts, gods and spirits have been seen many times." This theory seems absurd and nonsense today, but it really existed in the eyes of the Shu people at that time. Therefore, it was widely spread in Shu that the dead and the dead had to pass through the "Tianpeng Gate", so that the ghosts, gods and spirits that haunt it were often seen by people. legend. It reflects from one aspect that the Shu people had a strong consciousness of sending souls.
Where did the ancestors of Shu intend to send their souls? According to documentary records, the location of Tianpeng Gate, which the souls of the Shu people had to pass through, is equivalent to the mountainous area on the western edge of the Chengdu Plain and the northwest Sichuan Plateau in the upper reaches of the Minjiang River. This is the birthplace of the Shu people's ancestors mentioned in the documentary data. Such a coincidence should be a clear reflection of the Shu people sending the souls of the dead to the birthplace of their ancestors. According to some ethnographic survey data, there is also a burial custom among some other ethnic groups in southwest China of sending the souls of the deceased to the place of origin of their ancestors. For example, after the death of an adult, the Naxi people in Yongning, Yunnan, not only cremated the body, they also sent the soul of the deceased to the place where their ancestors had lived in the past to be reunited with their ancestors.
4: The custom of ship burial formed the emergence and popularity of ship coffin burial in the ancient Bashu area. First of all, it was closely related to the production and living customs of the Bashu ancestors. Judging from the natural environment on which people relied for a living, the Sichuan Basin was densely populated with rivers and streams. The ancestors of Bashu mainly used river courses as transportation lines, which required them to rely on boats. Therefore, Bashu was one of the main areas where canoes were used in ancient China. Among the ancient historical legends recorded in the literature, there are records about the ancestors of Bashu living by the water and being good at boats.
Funeral customs are closely related to people's view of the soul to a large extent. Therefore, the Bashu boat coffin burial is undoubtedly a product of the Bashu ancestors being dominated by the nation's concept of "sending souls"; on the other hand, its emergence and popularity are closely related to the production methods and living environment of the ancient Bashu ancestors. This is also the main reason for the formation of funeral customs and culture of many ethnic groups in the world.