Do you know what is the doorway for nails to be nailed in coffins?
In ancient Chinese funeral customs, people had to find a good coffin after they died. And when burying the deceased, be sure to nail all the nails on the coffin.
This makes people wonder why it is necessary to check whether the nails are properly nailed. And if you drive the nail so firmly, are you afraid that something will run out?
1. The funeral goods in the coffin of the old man
In fact, in the process of burying the elderly, the nails of these coffins will be driven to death, mainly because ancient China was very concerned about funeral matters themselves. Our country pays attention to treating death as life, simply put, the ancestors are dead, but the younger generations should treat them the same as when they were alive.
So in order to let the elders rest in peace after death, the younger generations will put all the things they liked in the coffin as funeral items, and the things that the elders like are relatively expensive. If the family is relatively wealthy, or even a royal family, the number of funeral goods will be higher.
In the Qin and Han dynasties, it was emphasized that the princes and kings were buried, and they had to wear gold and jade clothes when they were buried. It is a dress composed of jade and gold wire, and this set of gold jade clothes alone is already a priceless treasure. Not to mention that in order to let the elders rest in peace, the children of the powerful will put a priceless soul bead in their mouths after the elders die. This pearl is round and jade, and it can also shine at night, and the soul suppression bead is also worth a lot of money.
However, this cultural tradition of emphasizing funerals eventually gave birth to a new profession, tomb robbers. These tomb robbers make a living by digging up other people's graves to steal property, and over time, in order to protect these burial goods, many people will nail the coffin to death when burying their ancestors, and even multiple coffins are produced later. This is to ensure the safety of the bones and burial goods of the ancestors.
In order to ensure that nothing goes wrong, sometimes these nails are specially made, and there is no way to pull them up without using special large equipment.
Second, the coffin is nailed for the safety of transportation
In ancient China's funeral culture, it was generally important to help ancestors return to their roots and return to their hometowns for burial.
But sometimes the place where the old man dies is very far away from his hometown, especially for the elders of some official eunuchs' families, they are often officials everywhere, and they are very likely to die in a place far away from their hometown.
Then at this time, there is an objective need to transport the remains of these elders back to their hometown for burial. However, the transportation conditions in ancient times were very limited, and although official roads were built in ancient times, most of them were essentially just dirt roads paved with a layer of soil and a layer of stones.
It is very risky to walk on such a dirt road, and besides, the body of a person after death will quickly decay and smell in the natural reaction. Therefore, in the process of transporting the body, it is necessary to seal the body with a coffin.
However, in ancient times, people relied on horse-drawn horses to walk dirt roads, and safety accidents may occur. Therefore, the coffin board was nailed in advance in order to be able to safely transport the remains of the elders back to their hometown.
So from the beginning, nails were put in the coffin board, just to ensure the safety of the remains of the ancestors. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, in addition to nailing nails in the coffin board, there were other auxiliary means that would be used to ensure the safety of the coffin, such as using special wooden ropes to hold the coffin. It's not as subtle as many people say.
But the problem is that these coffins are indispensable to be seen by some surrounding passers-by during their operation. These passers-by see that those coffins are often nailed to death, and even wrapped very tightly with various wooden ropes, some people will think that the coffin may be sealed with something bad for fear and religious reasons, and then these "soul nail" rumors will spread from person to person.
In the end, every family will nail the bodies of their ancestors and tie them up with wooden ropes when they are at the funeral. But in fact, many elderly people in the family do not need to do this after they pass away, because they themselves died in their hometown, and there is no such thing as returning to their roots.
Conclusion:
Therefore, in ancient China, the coffins of the ancestors were nailed to death, and sometimes they had to be wrapped with wooden ropes, not because they were afraid that the dead would get up from the coffin, but more to ensure the safety of the ancestors' bodies and burial goods.
But now this tradition is no longer necessary, and now the state advocates cremation, and cremation does not even need a coffin, only a wooden box. There is no such thing as nailing the coffin board.