The hanging coffin is one of the burial styles of the ancient ethnic minorities in southern China, and it is one of the cliff burials. Dig several holes in the cliff and nail the stake and place the coffin on it, or place one end of the coffin in the cliff and the other end on the stake nailed to the cliff. People can see the coffin under the cliff, hence the name hanging coffin.

The hanging coffin burial project was difficult and costly, and it was mainly popular among the aristocracy.

The existing hanging coffins mainly include the Shimen hanging coffin in Ningwu County, Shanxi Province, the ancient hanging coffin of Longhushan in the southern suburbs of Yingtan City, Jiangxi Province, and the hanging coffin of Matangba in Jue County, Sichuan.

The word "hanging coffin" comes from the phrase "the house of the earth immortals, and there are thousands of hanging coffins in the middle of the cliff" ("Taiping Yulan" volume 47).

In 1946, when Chinese scholars visited the hanging coffin in Xingwen, Sichuan, they began to use this term as a special name.

Hanging coffins are buried in Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Hunan, Guangxi, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, Anhui, Hubei and other provinces, and also in Shanxi in the north, mainly in the Wuyi Mountain area of Fujian Province and the junction of Sichuan and Yunnan County, Xingwen, Yunlian, Zhenxiong, and other counties. There are also cliff paintings that coexist with the hanging coffin burial in Jue County. There is also a hanging coffin on the mountain in the north of Taiyuan, Shanxi, just on the hill behind Tutang Village opposite North University of China, there is a road leading to the second reservoir of the Fenhe River on the mountain, and you can see the hanging coffin on the cliff along the road towards the second reservoir.

The hanging coffins found in various places have different burial tools and ages. The boat-shaped coffin dug by the whole wood in the Wuyi Mountain area of Fujian Province belongs to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. The burial goods of the hanging coffin of Baiya in this area include turtle-shaped wooden plates, hemp, ramie, silk, cotton textile fragments, and bamboo mats. Sichuan Jue County, Xingwen area of the multi-series whole wood digging rectangular coffin, on which the herringbone slope cover, belongs to the Yuan Dynasty, Ming Dynasty things. The burial goods of the hanging coffin of Luobiao in Jue County are mainly clothes, and the decoration on it is complicated, and the bamboo chopsticks of the burial are written with Chinese characters.

Hanging coffin burial is a special way to dispose of the bones of the deceased, which is mainly distributed in the ancient southern minority areas in China. There are many confusions about this kind of hanging coffin burial style with profound cultural connotations that people today cannot explain. For example, the question of how people in ancient times sent coffins weighing hundreds of kilograms containing corpses and burial objects into high caves is an "elusive" question.

The earliest explanation for this problem was probably Gu Yewang, a native of the Southern Dynasty, who called the cliff cave in Wuyi Mountain where the hanging coffin was placed "the house of the earth immortals", which means the burial place of the gods. The immortals have the ability to soar through the clouds, and of course there will be no difficulty in hanging the coffin. Later generations guessed that "the cloud is the place where the bones of the immortals are buried" ("Taiping Huanyu Ji"), so some caves in Wuyi Mountain also have the reputation of Shengzhen Cave, Xianji Cave, Bone Changing Rock and the like, and there is even such a description in "Ji Shen Lu": "Wuyi Mountain in Jianzhou, or the night of wind and rain, I hear the sound of people and horses pipes, and Ming, there is a coffin on the cliff." "Immortals are already the product of fantasy, and it is inconceivable that immortals who are said to be immortal will die like mortals. However, since these sayings have been circulated, at least it shows that the ancients believed that if it were not for the action of the gods, it would be difficult for ordinary people to implement the peculiar burial method of volleying unsolved cases.

In Tang Zhangling's "The Ruling and the Wild", it was recorded that the ancients dug a stone cave in the middle of the high mountain in Linjiang to bury the dead, and the method was to put a rope from the top of the mountain to hang the coffin. In 1978, the Fujian Provincial Museum used this method to lower the steel rope from the top of the mountain with a roller to remove a complete ship coffin from the Baiyan Cave in Wuyi Mountain. However, the method of hanging the coffin practiced by people today cannot solve all the details of the process of placing the hanging coffin in the ancients, such as how to drill holes in the cliff wall and drive into the wooden stakes to place the coffin, and what method to use to pull the coffin to the predetermined position, which is unimaginably difficult. What's more, how could the ancients three thousand years ago have a steel rope that is enough to lift hundreds of kilograms?

In 1989, experts from Tongji University in Shanghai and Jiangxi Province collaborated with American scholars from the University of California, San Diego, to use winches, pulleys and other mechanical devices to hoist a "coffin" weighing about 150 kilograms into a cliff hole about 20 meters above the surface of the Shangqing River in Xianyan, Guixi, Jiangxi Province. The news media and relevant academic journals have vied to report and publish papers, claiming that this move "reproduces the spectacular scene of the ancient people hoisting the hanging coffin more than 2,000 years ago", thus "solving the mystery of the hanging coffin in China". In fact, it is not fundamentally different from the lifting technology of the Wuyi hanging coffin in the Fujian Provincial Museum, but the operation plan is different. Some commentators have pointed out that because it is detached from the era of thousands of years ago and the social history of the hanging coffin burial people in South China, the claim that the ancients used lifting techniques similar to winches and pulleys actually lacks strong evidence, so it is really difficult to believe that this ancient mystery has been solved.

Qing Xu Zan once recorded in the "East Return Chronicle", there is a "poured water rock" in the Yuanjiang River basin of Changde, Hunan, the stone is all on the waterfront, and the height is wide", there are ten caves on the wall, and there are five coffins hidden in one of the caves, "the old legend is the agarwood coffin", if it is understood that it is made of agarwood wood, its weight is naturally too ordinary wooden coffin. How did such a heavy thing be lifted into the cave? Xu Zan once consulted the locals, who could only provide the legends of their ancestors, and it is said that they were "led up by healthy ghosts" when the water of the Yuan River was rising. If this is true, then there is a way to hang the coffin from the top of the mountain: that is, to use the water level to raise the coffin, carry the coffin in a boat and transport it into a natural cave or artificially hewn cliff sinus, and when the water level is lowered, there is a peculiar landscape of the stone wall hanging under the coffin.

It seems that the above method has not been tried by modern scholars in the field, but some people have hinted at its possibility from the perspective of geomorphological change research. Most of the hanging coffin burial remains in China are located near mountains and rivers, and have a history of at least two or three thousand years (the latest is more than 400 years). In these thousands of years, the river course and landform may have undergone great changes, such as the Jiuqu River in Wuyi Mountain, Fujian, and the Shangqing River, a tributary of the Xinjiang River in Xianyan, Guixi County, Jiangxi Province, have experienced the erosion of the riverbed by the river water in two or three thousand years, and it is entirely possible for the river water level to be lowered under the action of long-term natural forces, so the height of the coffin will not be as high as it sees. In conclusion, the view that most of the hanging coffins in South China have been elevated due to geological changes is of significance in the study of hanging coffins.

Some people also refer to the method of burial urns and coffins of ancient residents in Palawan Island in the Philippines, and put forward another idea: relying on climbing tools such as ropes and long ladders, the sacks and plates, funerary items and necessary coffin-making tools wrapped in the corpses are transported to a pre-selected cave by a single manpower, and then the coffin is made into a burial and buried on the spot. In addition, according to the investigation of the remains of hanging coffins in Sichuan County, Xingwen and Songtao, Guizhou, some people pointed out that there is also the possibility that the ancients erected plank roads to raise hanging coffins.

Hanging coffin burial is a relatively peculiar burial style in ancient times: along the river, choose a cliff with thousands of walls, and use a method that we still don't know about, and hang the deceased with the coffin containing him in the appropriate position halfway up the cliff. The situation of the burial ground is different, and the individual way of burial is also slightly different: either digging holes in the cliff wall, using rafters as stakes, and placing the coffin in the space expanded by the cliff pile, or digging a stone niche in the wall and placing the coffin in the niche, or using the natural rock ditch, rock pier, and cave on the cliff to place the coffin...... When a person dies, he has to find a home, and he has to find a proper way to place the body that has lost his soul, and in this sense, hanging coffin burial is as common as burial, cremation, water burial, sky burial, and other burial ceremonies. However, if we hold our breath and think about it: How could a heavy coffin, a cold corpse, "fly" onto that high cliff? Who is the owner of the coffin? Our limited wisdom is still difficult to decipher this fable written in silence for thousands of years, and we cannot escape the shadow of the hanging coffin in our nightmare. There is such an anecdote: in 1933, in order to explore the mystery of the hanging coffin of the servant, a magistrate surnamed Chen hired two woodcutters to tear down two hanging coffins from the cliff of Dousha Pass, and one of them was transported to Zhaotong Provincial No. 2 Middle School for inspection and exhibition. Not long after, both woodcutters died unexpectedly and tragically. The following year, a large Xiong Tingquan disaster relief official, in addition to official duties, visited the No. 2 Provincial Middle School, saw the hanging coffin and the remains in the coffin, and inquired about the story of the tragic death of the woodcutter. The headmaster had no choice but to bury the remains of the hanging coffin. The bear lord was still unable to feel at ease, and wrote a poem with trembling and frightened: "The frost is miserable and dewy, and the wind and rain are eroding the sun and the moon. The bones of the people are strong, and Hu is not quick to fall in love with this high post. Evil is rewarded, good is celebrated, and the coffin is destroyed and the remains are exposed. The vast expanse of the mountain is boundless, and I think that the house is forever hidden. Zhen Baifu descends to a hundred auspicious, and there is no harm in the thousands of autumns". Worship ghosts and gods and stay away.

In Yunnan, the hanging coffins along the Jinsha River, Baishui River and Guanhe River basin in the Zhaotong area are not unique, but they must be the most distributed and concentrated areas. As far as the known situation is concerned, there are no less than 10 places in Doushaguan, Diping, Coffin Rock, and Lingguan Rock in Yanjin County, Washi and Shidong in Weixin County, and Dihuanghua in Yongshan County; In particular, the hanging coffin of Doushaguan is the most preserved, the most intact, and the terrain is the most precipitous, and it is called "the ancient relics, the miracle of the world" and "the hanging coffin museum" by scholars.

The coffin of Dousha Pass hangs on the cliff on the south bank of the Guan River in Shimen Village, Dousha Township, Yanjin County, close to National Highway 213. Qin Kai's "Five Feet Road", Han Xiu Nanyi Road, Sui Dynasty Liangqiao Pavilion, and Tang Kaishi Gate Road all chose Dousha Pass as the gateway to Yunnan without exception. "Guanjin Hub", "Nanyun Lock Key", worthy of the name. On the north bank of the Guanhe River, the noble relics of "Five Feet Road", the ancient castle of Shimenguan, and the inscription of Yuan Zi in the imperial history of Tang Zhenyuan for ten years are named cliffs, indicating that there has been a prosperity of humanities here. On the south bank of the Guanhe River, cut the wall and rise, rise to the sky, as high as four or five hundred meters, and the hanging coffin is stored in the square rock ridge of the cliff half waist. In the 30s of the 20th century, there were more than 40 coffins, and since then, they have either fallen into the Guanhe River, or been destroyed by the curious and ill-intentioned, and there are still more than 10 coffins today. Looking from afar, under the light and almost transparent sky, in the shadow of the cliff that is about to fall down, the corpses are piled up, suspended in the air, which will indeed make people have many indescribable thoughts and imagine many strange stories of gods and demons.

The study of hanging coffin burial is a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary comprehensive topic, and almost all of its specific projects are unsolved cases, so some people use the "mystery of hanging coffin burial" as a general term. Here is a brief introduction to a question that is most closely related to the study of folklore: how did this peculiar burial custom come about?

The compatriots of the She nationality living in Zhouning, Fuding, Zherong, Pingnan and other areas of Fujian Province have a legend about the origin of the hanging coffin: in ancient times, the ancestor of the She people, King Pang, married the three princesses of Emperor Gaoxin, had three boys and one girl, and the whole family moved to Phoenix Mountain to hunt and farm. Because the king of Pangu was born into the world by the stars, he could not fall to the ground in life or fall to the ground in death, so after his death, his children and grandchildren used wheels and ropes to place the coffin in the cave on the cliff of Phoenix Mountain. Its descendants have inherited it from generation to generation, forming the hanging coffin burial custom of the ancient She people. The character "She" of the She ethnic group, written as the word "輋" in ancient times, also contains the meaning of this story: in Phoenix Mountain, after the death of a big man, the coffin was hung in a cliff cave with a wheel for burial.

The above legend points out the intention of the ancients to carry out hanging coffin burial, in order to "die without falling into the ground". So, how did this concept come about, and did the hanging coffin burial customs of other regions and nations also be governed by the same concept? As far as the author is concerned, it seems that no one has discussed it from this perspective.

On the contrary, it has been argued that hanging coffin burial is a natural development of the custom of burial in the fall, and specifically, it is closely related to Neolithic burial tombs. At that time, the burial tombs in China were all over the country, including the hanging coffin burial areas recorded in the literature and the hanging coffin burial areas found by archaeology. The wooden stick sealing of the door of the Liuwan horse factory type tomb in Ledu, Qinghai and the canoe coffin of the Qijia culture tomb show that as early as the late Neolithic Age, the germ of cave tombs and canoe coffins has appeared in China. The appearance of the hanging coffin cave tomb is essentially a change in lifting the cave chamber and its coffin deep into the ground to the high cave.

Some people also believe that the hanging coffin burial is related to the practice of rock dwelling by prehistoric primitive peoples, and is a reflection of people's cave dwelling life. Since people lived in caves when they were alive, they were buried in their places when they died. Some people also believe that the formation of hanging coffins is actually related to the war and the level of science and technology, and there are no other complicated reasons. However, the retractors pointed out that there is no information so far to suggest that the formation of this burial custom was related to the war.

Others believe that hanging coffins are a sign of "filial piety" or a pursuit of good fortune. For example, the Tang Dynasty Zhang Ling's "Chaoye Zai" recorded the cliff burial customs of the ancients, "those who are high think that they are the most filial", so that the bereaved families compete to hang high; Some people also believe that most of the ancient Yue and Pu and their descendants lived in the high mountains and remote areas, and regarded the high mountains and dangerous peaks and lofty mountains as the basis of life, or because they were difficult to approach and difficult to reach, they had a sense of mystery, and then worshiped it as the residence of the gods or the road to heaven, so they placed the coffins of the deceased in the cliffs of the high mountains and mountains, so that not only the souls of the dead could approach the heavenly kingdom of the immortals, but more importantly, make it easy to attach themselves to the heavenly kingdom of the immortals. For example, Dong Tiangong's "Wuyi Mountain Chronicles" of the Qing Dynasty records the legend that the Queen Mother of the West invited the villagers of Wuyi Mountain to a banquet, and said that the wooden strip used to erect the coffin near the entrance of the cliff cave where the coffin was buried is "Hongqiao Board", and it is believed that the villagers went to the banquet from these "Hongqiao Board". Some scholars have speculated that the real purpose of these wooden strips is to communicate the road, and the rainbow bridge crosses the air, so that the spirits in the cave can freely enter and return to the sky. However, some people reject these views, arguing that the Queen Mother of the West is the goddess of Taoism after the Eastern Han Dynasty, and that the ancient Yue people who lived in Fujian 3,000 years ago could not surpass the development level of Han society in the same period to worship the "Immortal Heavenly Kingdom" in Taoism; as for the meanings of "Tuji", "Zhixiao", and "Filial Piety", they should be the result of the influence of Han culture in the late hanging coffin burial, which reflects the evolution of the religious beliefs contained in the hanging coffin burial, but it is not its original conceptual consciousness.

There is also a view that throughout the distribution of hanging coffin burial remains, almost all of them are on the cliff cliff facing the river, showing that the people who carry hanging coffin burials have the characteristics of "water walking in the mountains", and the form of burial tools is mainly boat-shaped coffins and canoe-type coffins dug with whole wood, if combined with the comprehensive analysis of various situations such as coffin placement methods, burial systems and burial styles, the hanging coffin burial customs should be the reflection of the ancestor worship concept developed on the basis of ghost worship in primitive religion. These peoples, who were accustomed to living on the water and were known for their ability to build ships and use boats, believed that after the death of their ancestors, although their ghosts went to another world separated by humans and ghosts, they did not leave the geographical environment on which they lived, and they would still stay with their families and descendants, and bless them with prosperity. Therefore, the main meaning of the boat-shaped coffin or canoe-style coffin is not to return to the hometown or sail to the other world, as some people believe, but to meet the needs of the ancestors in the underworld; Some people have explored the origin of hanging coffin burials from the concept of primitive fertility worship. For example, when Yang Jun and Zheng Congwu discussed the hanging coffin burial of the ancient Pu people in Sichuan, they believed that the cause of this custom can be explained more correctly in the legend of the Yu people (the Pu people who lived in the present-day Yibin area were also called the Yu people). There is a legend in the collection of servant folklore "The Mystery of the Hanging Coffin": when the servants were threatened by the epidemic, the ancestor goddess told them that the only way to escape the threat of death from the epidemic was to carry out rock burial. It can be seen that the reason for the rock burial is that the rock has a protective effect on them, which is a manifestation of stone worship. The reason why the servants worship the stone is, as they say, on the one hand, to bury the coffin on the cliff in order to beg for peace, and on the other hand, it is to hope that the stone can give them an heir and make their group prosperous. As recorded in volume 53 of the Taiping Yulan, there is a "beggar stone" on the south bank of the Mahu River, and "the servants and beggars have a test here". It is clear that the rock burials of the servants contained a cultural element of seeking children with stones—that is, the pursuit and worship of reproduction.

Longhu Mountain hanging coffin

Longhu Mountain is located in the southern suburbs of Yingtan City, Jiangxi Province, according to the saying of "Confucius in the North (Confucius) and Zhang in the South (Zhang Tianshi)", Longhu Mountain, which was once the treasure place of Zhang Tianshi's cultivation, is the birthplace of Taoism in China. There are 99 peaks and 24 rocks in the area of Longhu Mountain, and the fairy water stream that meanders between the mountains is the clear water color.

The site of the hanging coffin is located in the area of Xianshui Rock. The peaks of Xianshui Rock are steep and dangerous, the ancient hanging coffin of Longhu Mountain-performance rock wall is smooth and flat, and the foot of the rock is the Luxi River.

The cliff cliff near the water is covered with all kinds of caves, and there are more than 100 hanging coffins of the ancient Yue people in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period more than 2,500 years ago, and the height of their burial positions is 20-50 meters. On the large rock wall, the caves are dotted, from the Luxi River boat or the ground, you can faintly see the hole or nail the wooden stake, or seal the wooden board, "hide a coffin and beat half of it" can be seen in many places. Because these caves are unreachable and inhabited, the contents of these caves have been a mystery for centuries. It was not until the end of the seventies that Jiangxi archaeologists used hanging baskets and ladders to enter the cave to solve this mystery. After the stone workers entered the cave, they scientifically cleaned up the hanging coffin burial and unearthed a large number of relics. Its burial system is prevalent in cliff cave joint burial and group burial. In Shuiyan, Xianyan, Fairy Rock, Guzi Rock, etc., there are more than a dozen to dozens of cliff cave tombs in each place. In this cliff cave tomb, there are several types such as single cave single burial, single cave group burial and joint cave group burial. Among them, such as 79 Tomb No. 12, the hole is more than 50 meters wide, the tomb is huge, and there are ten coffins built-in, which is obviously the burial place of several generations of the big family. There are several types of hanging coffins, such as oblate round, cylindrical, rectangular, top cover type and ridge shape, etc., which are mostly hollowed out by giant wood. The wood is mostly nanmu. The burial goods are mostly imitation copper ritual vessels, weapons, pottery, bamboo and wood, bone jade and stone tools. Do not use metal utensils. Guixi hanging coffin is the representative of hanging coffin burial in Wuyi Mountain area, the age is 3000 years ago in the late Spring and Autumn Period, it is the ancient burial custom of the Ganyue people who lived in the eastern water system of Penglize at that time, and is the origin of the hanging burial that is popular in many provinces and regions south of the Yangtze River in China, as well as Taiwan and some Pacific islands. There are a large number of hanging coffins here, rich in burial goods, and its scientific research value is huge, which has attracted the attention of scholars at home and abroad.

Longhu Mountain Xianshui Rock, there are pieces of ancient cliff tomb groups, on the cliff, the jade coffin hangs in the air, mysterious and unpredictable, it is called a great wonder in the history of world culture. The tomb is more than 2,600 years old, and was made by the ancient Yue people in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. How did the coffin be placed in the cave on the top of the 100-meter cliff? Why did the ancient Yue people place their ancestors in the cave? Who could enjoy this kind of honor? It has become a mystery for the ages, and it has not been solved to this day.

There are hundreds of cliff tombs in Longhu Mountain, all of which are embedded in the cliffs, and the whole cliff tombs are closely connected together like a huge picture scroll, which is very mythical. The Longhu Mountain Cliff Tombs are the earliest cliff tombs in China and the birthplace of the cliff tombs in China. In addition to the most concentrated Xianshui Rock, there are hundreds of them, and there are scattered cliff tombs in Matsu Rock, Jinlongfeng and the surrounding areas. Almost all of them are located on the cliffs, ranging in height and size from a distance, and they change with the caves, forming a peculiar landscape.

In 79, the archaeological team of Jiangxi Provincial Museum and the Guixi County Cultural Relics Exhibition Room carried out a large-scale joint excavation of the Xianshui Rock Cliff Tomb Group. In this excavation, a total of 18 Eagle Rock tombs were cleaned, 37 coffins were excavated, and 16 human skeletons were relatively intact. A total of 220 pieces of pottery, primitive porcelain, bone ware, jade, bamboo and wood ware, textiles, textile utensils, and musical instruments were unearthed. These are all precious cultural relics of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Among them was a dried corpse that has been preserved intact to this day. The hair, flesh, and tendons that connect the bones have all disappeared, and the disjointed bones are embedded together like pearls of all size, forming a complete skeleton of a person.

The 220 precious cultural relics unearthed from the Guixi Cliff Tomb include pottery, textile tools, guqin, etc. Among them, there are 124 pieces of pottery. The fine workmanship of these pottery not only reflects the high level of craftsmanship at the time, but also accurately determines the age of the pottery based on its shape and pattern. It is now displayed in the Guixi Cultural Relics Museum.

Most of the "hanging coffins" coffins of the cliff tombs of Longhu Mountain are made of a large section of Nanmu, with different sizes and different forms. There are large "boat coffins" that can accommodate more than 10 people, "roof coffins" shaped like ancient houses, "canoe coffins" with a single tube, "square coffins" that are common today, and miniature "urns" for "secondary burial". Judging from the burial goods excavated by archaeological excavations, the owners of these coffins are all ancient Yue people, who are "accustomed to water warfare, boats instead of cars, and broken hair tattoos", and live in the mountains and rivers.

Ningwu Stone Gate

It is located in the extremely secluded valley in the west of Xiaoshimen Village, 70 kilometers west of Ningwu City, Shanxi Province, there is a secluded alley bend in the depths of the canyon, the entrance stone wall is like a door, the forest in the alley is verdant, the ancient construction experts believe that this is a piece of feng shui treasure land, archaeological experts believe that the Shimen hanging coffin is the earliest cliff burial group found in the north of the Yangtze River so far, and it is of great archaeological research value.

According to the research of archaeological experts, the Shimen hanging coffin is the only cliff burial group found in northern China so far, which is of great archaeological research value. The hanging burial method of the stone gate hanging coffin can be roughly divided into cave type, hanging type, hanging pile type, and plank road type. The cave type is to place the coffin in the natural stone cave or artificial stone cave at the height of the cliff; the hanging type is to hang the coffin with iron chains at the high place of the cliff; the hanging pile type is to dig a hole in the cliff, insert the wooden stake flat, and put the coffin on the wooden pile; the plank road type is to dig a hole in the middle of the cliff and insert the pile, pave a miniature plank road, and rest the coffin on the plank road.

The folk in the area of Luya Mountain are prevalent in earth burial, and the hanging coffin, which the locals call stone burial, may be an abnormal burial custom, according to expert analysis, the people who are buried have the following possibilities:

First: the filial piety of the local people to the elders, after the death of the elders, placed in the hanging coffin, which means ascending to heaven.

Second: soldiers who died on the battlefield. Ningwu has been a battleground for soldiers since ancient times, and has the nickname of "Hundred Battles Building Annoying Land". After the war, the locals could not bear the bones of the deceased, so they used pine wooden coffins to bury them properly, and placed the coffins in stone caves.

Third: It is a monk after his death. This kind of monk has not yet practiced to the extent of building a pagoda and burial, and most of them are buried in coffins made by monks and villagers and placed in stone caves near the temple.

Fourth: It is a lonely old man who has no children. The villagers will take care of the aftermath together, and the coffin will be placed under the stone wall or in the stone cave outside the village.

Fifth, it is a foreign businessman and an overseas Chinese without children. The local people are kind and simple, and the heart of charity and help others is strong.

Sixth: It is an abnormal stone burial of a special age. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Japanese army carried out bacteriological warfare, and the people in the mountains went out to bring bacterial and viral infections into the deep mountains and old forests, and some almost all their families suffered, and only 12 out of 10 survived. After his death, the villagers feared the spread of infectious diseases, and no one dared to bury them, and in the end, the body decomposed, so the surviving family had to carry the body to a stone cliff cave far away from the village for burial.

Although the stone burial hanging coffin does not follow the burial procedures such as tomb feng shui, it is not hasty. In particular, the soldiers who died in battle on the battlefield were to be buried. Generally, the stone cave is placed higher from the ground to comfort the spirit in the sky. The burial of monks is also of high standard. In short, the stone burial coffin reflects the kindness, simplicity and benevolence of the local people. It is said that the age of the stone burial is not very far, as far as the middle of the Ming Dynasty, as close as the Republic of China and the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. Because the Song Dynasty mostly replaced it with cremation, the cremation clay pots excavated in the area of Ninghua today are enough to prove this.

As for the age of these hanging coffins, it is still a mystery, but it is speculated that the age of these hanging coffins is not very long, as far as the middle of the Ming Dynasty, as far as the Qing Dynasty or the Republic of China.

The servant hangs the coffin

The ancient cliff burial tombs before the Ming Dynasty are national key cultural relics protection units. The main concentration of servants hanging coffins in Matangba and Sumawan. It is characterized by the placement of the coffin of the deceased on the cliff face. A total of 265 hanging coffins have been preserved, which is the largest number and the most concentrated place in the door at present. The height of the coffin is generally 10 meters ~ 50 meters from the surface, and the highest one is 100 meters. The way of placing the coffin, one is the wooden pile type, that is, 2~3 holes are drilled in the cliff, and the wooden stake is wedged into the coffin to support the coffin; the second is the hole digging type, that is, the horizontal hole or vertical hole is chiseled on the rock wall to hold the coffin; the third is to use the natural caves and cracks between the rock walls to hold the coffin. The coffin has a large head and a small tail, mostly a whole wood, and is fixed with a child-mother buckle and tenon. Adopt the upright body burial, the body is wrapped in linen, and the burial goods are placed on both sides of the feet, the number is uncertain, there are ceramics, wood and bamboo, iron and linen fabrics, among which the hemp fabrics are the most, and there are a small number of silk fabrics. The family of hanging coffins is quite controversial in academic circles, and there are more concentrated servants and bureaucrats. Its era, the beginning is unknown, and the Ming Dynasty ends.

Matangba Hanging Coffin "Servant Hanging Coffin" is located in the territory of Jue County, which is named according to the "Jue County Chronicles" "Jue Ben Yan Land, Servants Hang Coffin". As early as 1956, it was listed as a provincial key cultural relics protection unit, and is now a national key cultural relics protection unit. The hanging coffin of the servant is known as the world's best and a must in Bashu. Hanging coffin burial is a kind of burial system of ethnic minorities in ancient times. Jue County, Xingwen and Yunnan border, for the ancient southwest Yi hinterland, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty opened the night lang, and placed Qiandao County when the county was placed.

Ethnic minorities such as servants in the past dynasties lived in this area, so there are many hanging coffins remaining, but now the most and most concentrated places should be the first to recommend Matangba in Luobiao Township, Jue County and Sumawan in Caoying Township. Matang Dam in Jue County is long and narrow from north to south, the strange peaks on the east and west sides are upright, between the steep caves, many coffins are half hanging cliffs, and there are more than 160 hanging coffins on the cliffs. More than 10 kilometers away from Matang Dam, in Sumawan, Caoying Township, there are 48 hanging coffins on the steep limestone wall. Most hanging coffins are 26 to 50 meters above the ground, and some are up to 100 meters high. There are many red painted murals on the cliff wall of the hanging coffin, which are rich in content, rough lines, concise in composition, and realistic in image. Hanging coffins and petroglyphs have important historical value and ornamental value, and are also physical materials for studying the historical development of ethnic minorities in southern Sichuan. It has become the center of attention of the world's hanging coffin researchers, and at the same time attracts countless tourists. This scenic spot is full of ancient and mysterious.

The core part of the hanging coffin of the servants of Jue County. Matang Dam in the southwest of Luobiao Town, Jue County. The dam is 300 meters ~ 500 meters wide from east to west, about 1000 meters long from north to south, the crab stream flows through the dam, there are 21 rolling mountain cliffs facing the east and west of the river bank, and the hanging coffins are distributed on the cliff today. There are 223 existing coffins, mainly hanging coffins with wooden stakes. The height of the coffin is generally 20 meters ~ 60 meters, and the height is more than 100 meters. There are also more than 200 pile-hole relics and red-painted petroglyphs on the cliff. The petroglyphs are rich in content, including riding and archery, dance, acrobatics and various animals, weapons, geometric figures, etc., and the image is simple and vivid. The rest of the hanging coffin burial remains also have similar petroglyphs. The hanging coffins of Matangba are relatively concentrated in the coffin shop, the lion rock, the nine lamps, and the big hole. Dengjia Rock, Sanxian Cave, Pearl Umbrella and Eagle Rock, etc.

In 1935, a missionary from the United States, Ge Weihan, who was very interested in China's rich funeral culture, learned that there was a very peculiar funeral custom near the county of Jue in Sichuan, China, and he couldn't wait to start his journey. Although the hardships and dangers along the way almost cost the American his life, when he actually came to the edge of the cliff in Jue County, he still thought that his trip was worth it. Ge Weihan was stunned by his discovery—this was the hanging coffin. The hanging coffins in Jue County contain almost all types of hanging coffins in the world. This is the first time that the hanging coffin of Jue County was discovered by the world, and immediately aroused the strong interest of scholars, in the 40s, 70s, 80s of the 20th century, until the beginning of the 21st century, groups of scientists came here to solve this eternal mystery. Scientists have called the tribes in the hanging coffins the servants and have speculated about where these servants went, what caused their descendants to abandon their funeral habits, and whether this tribe merged with other peoples, or did they all perish?

Matangba is a quiet small mountain village located in the southwest corner of Sichuan Province, for decades, few outsiders have been here, but at the end of the 21st century, a major news broke from here, the unintentional words of the two old people in the mountains caused an earth-shattering shock in the world archaeological and historical circles.

The two old men revealed their family tree and said that they were the descendants of the servants in the hanging coffins of Jue County, so how much do these people know about their ancestors? Can the mystery that has puzzled scientists for many years be revealed?

These simple old men did not know how much shock their casual words would bring to the scientific community in China and even the world. The way of life of these people is practically no different from that of the rest of the village, and how much credibility is there in their family tree?

Zeng Shuixiang, the founder of the Hanging Coffin Cultural Relics Museum, was one of the earliest experts in the study of hanging coffins in China, and he made a special trip to the cemetery near Matangba, where he successfully found the names of the five or six ancestors recorded in the genealogy of the two old men, which confirmed the authenticity of their genealogy, but also showed that in the past hundred years, this family has been using burial.

The family tree in the hands of the two old men can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty, but according to historical records, the servants who owned the hanging coffins were already incompatible with the rulers at that time in the Tang Dynasty.

According to historical records, due to the repeated rebellion of the servants, the Ming Empire launched several attacks on the servants. Scientists in the field of Chinese history and archaeology have visited the military relics left by the servants countless times. In a place called Nine Lights, there are still more than a dozen hanging coffins of servants on the mountain, but it is also one of the most important military bases of the tribe. The junction of this place is secluded and the interior is open, which is typical of the military base of the Servants.

According to historical records, at that time, the Ming Empire mobilized the armies of the three provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan to surround the cottages of the servants, so tens of thousands of servants were faced with two choices, either to fight to the death with an enemy who was ten times more numerous than themselves, and to place the coffins of their ancestors here, or to accept the recruitment of the Ming army and choose to surrender.

Legend has it that the controversy among the servants was carried out in this cave, and hundreds of village owners held their own opinions and discussed here for two days and two nights.

At that time, half of the more than 600 servant cottages chose to surrender to the Ming army. What kind of fate did they choose, did the servants who have always been brave and good at fighting choose this way to leave their descendants?

At the beginning of the 21st century, the Cultural Relics Bureau of Yibin City, Sichuan Province, carried out a rescue excavation of the hanging coffin in Jue County, and this time they had a very unexpected harvest.

At this time, the experts found an obvious question, the descendants of those servants are surnamed He, and the legend says that their ancestor Ha Shisanxiong is surnamed Ha, will this prove that the genealogy in those families is wrong, He Tiquan old man thinks that his family tree will never be wrong, because just a few decades ago, his father also went to worship the ancestors in the hanging coffin, so if this family is really the descendants of the servants in the hanging coffin, why did they change their surname? Is this the same reason why they stopped placing the hanging coffin? According to the elder He Tiquan, their family changed their surname twice, and the reason for their family name change is unknown.

In May 2004, Zeng Shuixiang was sorting out the burial goods of a hanging coffin, and accidentally found a simple servant lacquer bowl, at the bottom of the bowl, he saw several clear Chinese characters - "He Yongjin", which is undoubtedly the name of the owner of the hanging coffin, but these three words also happened to appear in the genealogy of the old man He Tiquan in the same period, which just confirmed that the He family is indeed the descendants of the servants. The news soon spread to the He family in Matangba, and the old man He Tiquan was overjoyed and made a special trip to climb the cliff to worship his ancestors.

At the end of the 20th century, not far from the county, people found the Ming Dynasty set up the Pingban stele, the handwriting on the stele has been blurred, but the general idea can still be barely recognized, this is the Ming Dynasty in order to boast of their own elimination of the servants of the monument. In order to confirm the words on the stele, Zeng Shuixiang, Chen Mingfang and others came to the place where the last bloody battle between the two civilizations began, which was a castle where eagles seemed to be unable to fly.

The late Ming Dynasty was an era of great development of science and technology, people began to pay attention to the development of science and technology, and published a large number of books in this area, for example, in this period, the craftsmen tried for the first time to combine the application of coal and piston bellows, and obtained unprecedented high temperatures, which can make sharper weapons, which greatly improved the combat effectiveness of the army, then, the Ming Dynasty army will rely on this scientific and technological advantage, and captured the cottage of the servants?

According to the experts' appraisal, the smelting technology of the servants at that time was very low, and they had just developed from bronze to iron, and they had not yet fully mastered the control of furnace temperature and raw materials.

This is a duel between two eras, ancient and modern, swords and guns and gunpowder, the victory or defeat is actually predestined, no matter how brave the servants are, the heroes of the cold weapon era will never be able to defeat the Ming army equipped with a large number of firearms and cannons.

In this way, the Ming army relied on its technological lead, and finally won a victory over the barbaric and backward servants.

As the years passed, all the things that should have been forgotten had been forgotten, and only the epics of the servants were still recited by the people, and how the hanging coffins were placed, and how the tribe of the servants eventually disappeared came to be?

Dragon River hanging coffin

The Longhe River hangs in the coffin, the Longhe River - the largest river in Shizhu County, it runs through the central part of the county from northeast to southwest, flows through nearly 10 towns and towns, flows 104.68 kilometers long, and has a natural drop of 1263.3 meters. This river, it has witnessed the change of the starry dynasty, after the ruthless baptism of the golden iron horse beacon fire wolf smoke again and again, in the long history of the dust, the Longhe River basin several times scattered and prosperous, the fireworks in the world have always been endlessly rising and swirling, more than 1000 years, left a rare wonder on the cliffs on both sides of the river - the sarcophagus, only in the Shizhu territory on both sides of the dragon river on both sides of the sarcophagus there are more than 130 places, about more than 1000 holes, known as the "sarcophagus museum" by the archaeological community. What kind of secrets are behind the sarcophagus, and how many thrilling legends and little-known stories are hidden, people do not know! Undoubtedly, all this has made countless people look forward to it for a long time. On April 22, the reporter visited the Longhe Rock Coffin, trying to touch its long historical context......

Whenever there are sarcophagi on both sides of the Dragon River, they are all in the places of cliffs, and some are also located in the deep mountains and valleys. The largest number of sarcophagi in Shizhu County is in the cabinet rock of Yaoerpo in Shuangqing Township, and there are as many as 94 caves in that place alone. The second is the Jade Emperor Hall in Sanxing Township, with 65 caves. Then there are 44 holes near the Sanwu Bridge in Xialu Town. Some of these sarcophagi have weathered due to years of exposure to the sun and rain, while some have basically remained intact.

From Shizhu County, go down along the Longhe River to the cave platform (small place name) of Xialu Town, and there is a relatively well-preserved Longhe Rock Coffin Group here. There are nearly 30 caves in the group, and they are scattered, with cliffs above and the surging Dragon River below, which looks magnificent. The sarcophagi on both sides of the Dragon River are either a group of three or five caves, or connected together, and the picture composed of a group of rock coffins is like an extended historical picture scroll, all of which contain the mysterious color of the ancient culture of the Dragon River sarcophagus.

Judging from the existing sarcophagus, the production technology at that time was advanced. Without hard tools, it would be difficult to carve a 2-meter-deep cave into such a hard and steep mountain rock. What is puzzling is that although Shizhu and the Little Three Gorges both belong to the Wushan Dalou Mountain system, the Shizhu Longhe only has a rock coffin but rarely has a hanging coffin; the small Three Gorges area is just the opposite, only a hanging coffin but it is difficult to see a rock coffin. What is the inextricable connection between the sarcophagus and the hanging coffin, and whether the burials are of the same clan or different tribes? These are all things that need to be further investigated.

The sarcophagi on both sides of the Dragon River are mostly chiseled in the cliff of ten thousand thousands, and the position is higher. The highest is more than 20 meters above the ground, and the lowest is more than 3 meters above the ground. The position of the sarcophagus is so high, and the coffins and bones are so heavy, it is incomprehensible how the ancients thousands of years ago placed bulky things on the cliff wall.

Wuyi Mountain Creek

Like sky burial and water burial, hanging coffin burial is an ancient form of funeral. The coffin is placed in a natural or artificially excavated cave dozens to hundreds of meters away from the water surface, and some are placed directly on the suspended wooden stake. On the cliffs on both sides of Jiuqu River in Wuyi Mountain, there are still more than ten hanging coffin remains.

After carbon-14 determination, the two well-preserved ship coffins of Baiyan and Guanyinyan are more than 3,000 years old, and the turtle-shaped wooden plate buried with it is a relic with the characteristics of Shang and Zhou bronze culture.

Hanging coffin in western Sichuan

In Sichuan, in addition to the "servant hanging coffin" in Jue County, there are also hanging coffins in Ya'an City in western Sichuan. According to legend, the hanging coffin in western Sichuan was placed by the Qiang people. The ancestors of the Qiang people are all descendants of Dayu. Dayu led the crowd to control the water, and his achievements were high, and he enjoyed the prestige of the gods among the Qiang people. After the death of Dayu immortal flying to the sky, the descendants hung their bodies in the hanging coffin of the cliff, after that, the immortal deceased in the Qiang people, all imitated this method to apply the hanging coffin burial, thus leaving a lot of hanging coffins in the western Sichuan area.

According to research, most of the hanging coffins in Sichuan and Chongqing were placed in the Ming Dynasty and before the Ming Dynasty, and have a history of hundreds of thousands of years. What is the mystery of the immortality of the thousand-year-old hanging coffin?

To decipher the mystery of the immortality of the hanging coffin, we must first understand the climatic characteristics of the region where the hanging coffin is located.

Generally speaking, the biggest cause of coffin decay is the local climatic conditions: high temperature and high temperature climate environment, which can easily lead to accelerated decay of coffins and corpses.

From the analysis of geography and climatic environment, the hanging coffins are located in the southern region with high temperature, humidity and rain. For example, Yibin City, where the "Servant Hanging Coffin" is located, belongs to the subtropical humid monsoon climate, the region has sufficient heat in all seasons, the average annual temperature in most areas reaches about 18 °C, and the extreme maximum temperature reaches 41 °C, and the air in this area is very humid, and the precipitation is relatively abundant, with an average annual precipitation of 1000-1200 mm. In such a high temperature and high humidity climate, any bare coffin cannot withstand the baptism of time!

Let's take a look at the climatic characteristics of Ya'an City in western Sichuan. Ya'an, known as the "Rain City", has an average annual precipitation of 1,800 mm, an average of 218 rainy days in 365 days a year, and an average annual temperature of more than 15°C - in such a humid and rainy climate, it is difficult for any coffin to remain unrotten!

But in fact, the hanging coffins in Yibin and Ya'an are well preserved, from the opening part of the hanging coffin, it can be seen that the bones of the deceased in the coffin are countable, the skull and skeleton are well preserved, especially the coffin is dry, and it has not decayed after thousands of years of wind and rain on the cliff, which can not but be amazing.

Since the climatic characteristics of the area where the hanging coffin is located are not conducive to the long-term survival of the coffin, how did the hanging coffin become immortal for thousands of years?

In the historical materials left by the Servant and Qiang people, we can see their original intention of implementing hanging coffin burial: the Servant people believe that the corpse of a person cannot touch the earth after death, otherwise the soul cannot ascend to heaven, and the "hanging coffin burial" can make the soul of the deceased ascend to the fairy world;

In this regard, there are also some superstitious people who believe that the hanging coffin is immortal after thousands of years, and it is precisely because the soul of the deceased has ascended to the fairy world, so the body has been protected by the gods, and the thousand-year-old coffin has been magically preserved. There are also some superstitious legends: the corpse in the hanging coffin collects the aura of heaven and earth, the essence of the sun and the moon, and has been cultivated into a demon after thousands of years.

Of course, these superstitious legends are not credible, and the mystery of the thousand-year-old immortality of the hanging coffin is even more controversial: some people say that there are strange spices placed in the hanging coffin, and there are also people who have the magic function of preventing moisture and keeping dry at the place where the coffin is hanging...... However, through people's scientific research and in-depth analysis, these claims are not credible.

So, what exactly is the hanging coffin immortal?

Since many theories are not true, will the immortality of the hanging coffin be its own reason?

This suspicion was soon confirmed by the antiquarians: the material from which the coffin was made was indeed extraordinary. According to the investigation of cultural relics workers, the wood used to make the hanging coffin is mostly solid wood and good corrosion resistance. This kind of tree has a long growth cycle, and the wood is the best among all tree species, and the coffin made from it can not rot for hundreds of years even if it is buried in the ground. The cultural relics department has opened two hanging coffins, both made of nanmu, each of which still weighs about 500 kilograms, and it takes four workers to lift it. The coffin is generally large and small, and most of the whole wood is fixed with a child and mother buckle and tenon, and the sealing is very good. This structure minimizes the contact between the body and the air, thereby delaying its **, and also helps the inside of the coffin to stay dry.

However, under the humid and rainy climate conditions in the south, the period of preservation of Nanmu coffins in the open air environment is generally not more than 100 years, and most of the hanging coffins have existed for more than 1,000 years.

Jingzhuba Rock

Regarding the origin of the hanging coffin of Jingzhu Dam, people on both sides of the Ning River say that the altar is painted. Some people say that this hanging coffin is made of iron, and it is filled with Lu Ban's "Yuanzi Tianshu"; some people also tell us a legend in a vivid way: Legend has it that a long, long time ago, in a small village covered by green bamboo in the Ninghe Gorge, there was a child with great powers, and a "fortune teller" told him fortune and said that this child has the blessing of the Son of Heaven, but he must start from the first month of a certain year, and the door cannot be opened within 100 days, otherwise it will ...... Three days passed, and on the first day of the first month of the year mentioned by the "fortune teller", the family really closed the front door. The child's mother thought, anyway, today is a hundred days, and her brother has come from afar, how can she let him not go through the front door and the back door? As soon as the door opened, the explosion of bamboo sounded in the pine forest at the door, like thunder. The room full of people was stunned and ran to the pine forest to take a look. The bamboos were all blown up in the sky, and the ground was full of dead soldiers in gold helmets and silver armor.

At this moment, the "fortune teller" came to him with a sigh and said, "Well, ninety-nine days have passed, but you will not be able to survive this last day." Look, these are all courtiers who will assist the Son of Heaven in the future, but it's a pity! It's a pity! He no longer has the rank of Son of Heaven. The child's uncle was very sad and immediately placed some coffins to gather the dead courtiers. The child was so angry that he kicked the coffins with his feet. Strange to say, all the coffins were hung on the rock walls on both sides of the Ning River...... The miraculous and ethereal legend casts a more mysterious color on the hanging coffin, but the legend is a legend after all, what exactly is contained in the hanging coffin? According to the research, the Guninghe area is a place where the ethnic minorities have been inhabited and urged people to live together, and the Ba people have no hanging coffin burial customs, and the Ninghe hanging coffin may be a Pu burial style. Tang Dynasty Zhang Fu once had such a record, in ancient times, after the death of people, "all the production for the coffin, in the Linjiang high mountain half rib digging niche to bury it, from the mountain hanging rope down the hub, the high person thought to be the most filial." From this point of view, the "suspension cable hub" answers the question of "how to hang a thousand catties of things on the hanging rock". We can speculate that thousands of years ago, the Guning River area was still a reckless primeval forest, and on the hanging rock cliff, ancient vines were growing, which was not the favorable conditions for people to "suspend the lower hub" to provide climbing and attaching to the wall?

The deceased is like this, and what kind of technology the ancients' "ingenuity" in this regard is naturally still to be further explored by today's people.