Recently, I saw an article about the family issue of the tomb of Hezhang Cola (hereinafter referred to as the tomb of Yelang). According to the article, the tomb belongs to the Miao people. The basis is that the adjacent Nayong pot ring rock unearthed the "bowl and bowl" burial of the Ming and Qing dynasties.
The so-called "bowl and bowl" burial is a kind of "naked burial" treatment without a coffin, that is, some Miao compatriots at that time could not buy a coffin, and when the deceased was buried, only a bowl and some tiles were used to cover the head and ** of the deceased.
This is a very rudimentary burial style.
The author's point of view is that this kind of "covering" is the protection of the remains of the deceased, and has the sustenance for future generations to be deaf and clean. This kind of "jar and bowl" burial is similar in form to the "head burial" (that is, putting a bronze vessel on the head of the deceased) of the cola bronze ware, so it is concluded that the cola burial family belongs to the Miao people.
This argument does not hold water.
First, there is the question of inference. Although the burial custom of Yelang's "head burial" is very peculiar, no similar burial customs have been found so far. However, it does not make sense to equate "bowl burial" with "head burial".
First of all, it confuses the unity and particularity of human burial consciousness.
Almost all forms of human treatment of the remains of the deceased are based on the protection of the remains of the deceased and the consideration of the actual health and future well-being of the living. For example, the Tibetan ** (chopping up the body of the deceased and feeding it to birds), because the burial area has a thin soil layer and scarce wood, it is impossible to carry out burial, coffin burial or cremation, in order to avoid the corpse from rotting in the open air and spreading diseases, ** has become an ideal burial style;The burials in the Han region, the cremation in the Yi region, and the stone burials in the Mongolian steppe are all based on the same principle.
That is to say, human beings dispose of corpses with the common purpose of protecting the tranquility of the deceased and parasitic the happiness of the living, but they have adopted different treatment methods according to their respective living environments, but it is obviously wrong to classify all the people who have adopted the common burial ceremony as the same nation. For example, many ancient ethnic groups in western China practiced cremation, but they are obviously not the same nation, or even the same ethnic group.
There is also the question of what Miao scholars imply, that this "covered" burial style later developed into a custom. That is, the face of the deceased was still "covered" despite the fact that conditions were better later, although the rich used more valuable bronze objects.
However, this logic also does not make sense. Human beings' innate sense of protecting the body is holistic and by no means limited to the part. The Miao people have a wide range of burial and coffin burial customs, and the wealthy can not produce a sense of protection of the coffin and the multi-layer tomb wall inside and outside?**Will you just look at your head and give up other forms of protection?
There is one more point to point out. The "jar" burial unearthed from Nayong Guoquanyan is qualitatively different from the Yelang tomb in form, the pottery "cover" used in the Guoquanyan tomb and the bronze "set" used in the Yelang tomb, regardless of the separation of the value of pottery and bronze, the "cover" and "set" here alone delineate the different properties of the two burial styles.
"Gai" only has the physical effect of preventing soil from eroding corpses, which is the same reason as in the difficult period of the 60s of the last century, when a large number of naked graves with stone slabs directly covered with corpses appeared in rural areas;The "set" is different, this "non-essential" treatment of the corpse is three-dimensional, requiring the whole or part of the corpse to be processed and wrapped, and the cost is much larger than that of ordinary coffin burials, such as the "pullover" burial of Yelang and the mask of the Egyptian pharaoh. Obviously, this kind of burial style is out of a purely spiritual sustenance, with the purpose of making the deceased psychic, only popular at the top of society, no matter which nationality, the funeral style at the top of society will not be "common" in the lower class, regardless of whether the medium of the funeral is valuable or not, because the lower class can not enjoy this privilege.
The above is an inference from the funeral ceremony alone. In addition, from a historical point of view, the Miao people in Yelang's tomb are even more untenable.
According to archaeological definition, the Yelang tomb group is between the Han and Han dynasties. In any classics, we can not find any traces of the frequent activities of the Miao people in northwest Guizhou during this period. At this time, the center of gravity of Miao activities was still between Dongting Lake, the Yuanjiang River Basin, and Wuling Mountain, and it was impossible for such a high cultural "island" to appear in Wumeng Mountain, far away in northwest Guizhou. Moreover, even if the Miao people entered the northwest of Guizhou during this period and became the dominant one, it would not have been possible for the rice-producing people to adapt to and develop the alpine Wumeng Mountains so quickly.
Moreover, judging from the Yi classics, during the Han Dynasty and the Han Dynasty, the Yi Deshi Department (Shuixi, Mangbu, and Yuyabu ancestors) had settled in the western part of Guizhou after competing with the local Pu people. If the Miao people formed a great power in the local area at this time, there would inevitably be a huge conflict, and it would be impossible for historical books and even legends to be unrecorded.
In addition, judging from the ethnic names of the Miao people, most of them call themselves Meng (Mao). Many of the Miao people in the northwest of Guizhou call themselves Azhemao, probably the Miao people living in the territory of Azhe (Shuixi). If the Miao had entered or dominated the northwest region of Guizhou before the Yi, it would not have been possible to form such a self-title.
Judging from the current unearthed cultural relics, the cultural attributes of the ancient Yelang area, including Hezhang Cola and Weining Zhongshui sites, are extremely complex, and there are both ancient Yi people and tiger worship;At the same time, rice production, bronze production, and dry-column architecture have a great relationship with the ancient Puyue ethnic group.
Yelang culture should be related to the ancient Yi people and the Pu people.