Chapter 34 Section 4 Stele

When people enter the temple, they can often see a stone stele standing in front of the main hall. This kind of stele is called a stele for short (Fig. 35). Names of people who contributed money and efforts to build temples, etc.In larger temples with a long history, there are more than one stele of this kind, and sometimes important steles are erected in specially built stele pavilions for protection. Since the stele has become a form of record, it is not only in temples, but also in other places where records are needed.When Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty inspected the Shenyang Forbidden City, he added a Wensu Pavilion to store the complete books of the Four Libraries, and built a stele pavilion next to the Wensu Pavilion.In Mangdang Mountain in the northern suburb of Yongcheng County, Henan Province, there is a stone tablet named "Sun and Moon Han Gaozu where he cut the snake". According to "Historical Records", one day Han Gaozu drank wine and led his soldiers to walk here at night. The subordinates reported that there was a big snake blocking the way. Gaozu said: "A strong man is going, He Wei", he drew his sword and killed the snake on the road. The blood of the snake flowed all over the ground, so a red grass grew here.Later, someone passed by here and saw an old woman crying: "My son is the son of the White Emperor. He turned into a snake and blocked the road, and was killed by the son of the Red Emperor."Later, Emperor Gaozu of the Han Dynasty became the emperor, and a stone monument was erected at the place where the snake was killed to commemorate it.The original stele has been destroyed, and now this stele was erected in the Ming Dynasty, and this historical story is specially engraved on the stele.

In addition to recording events, steles also have special records of people.There is a Tang Dynasty "Song Jing Stele" in Shahe County, Hebei. Song Jing was a politician in the Tang Dynasty. , the inscription written for Yan Zhenqing, a great calligrapher, has a bold and bold font, so it has special historical and artistic value.There is a "Liulang Stele" in Tang County, Hebei Province, which was built by later generations to commemorate the achievements of Song Dynasty general Yang Yanzhao (Liulang) guarding Sanguan. The merits and virtues will be passed on to future generations. This is "building a stele and passing it on".There is also a type of stele dedicated to a certain place or place.Qingyi Garden (now the Summer Palace) was built in the western suburbs of Beijing in the fifteenth year of Qianlong in Qing Dynasty (AD 1750), and the original Weng Mountain and West Lake were named Longevity Mountain and Kunming Lake. The giant stone tablet (Figure 36) is engraved with the inscription "Longevity Mountain Kunming Lake", and the process of repairing the Qingyi Garden is also engraved on the back of the tablet.In addition to engraved characters, there are also engraved images on the steles, which are called "image steles", which are mainly erected in temples. Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, disciples, and heavenly kings are often depicted on the steles.

The stele has many values. First, it records history. Whether it is a record of events or people, the stele truly records fragments of history. It is preserved longer than the early bamboo slips and later books.Secondly, the stone stele has left the authentic works of calligraphers of past dynasties.Calligraphy art is a very important part of ancient Chinese culture. Calligraphers of all dynasties paid attention to both inheritance and innovation. Personal style and genre.Ancient calligraphy was handed down to later generations through bamboo slips, paper and stone carvings, among which stone carvings are the most durable and not easily damaged.Many of the inscriptions on the steles are being written by famous writers, so the steles often become the collection of authentic works of famous calligraphers in the past dynasties.Lanting in the southwestern suburb of Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province is the place where Wang Xizhi, a great calligrapher of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and his friends made a performance (xi opera) and drank. Every year on the third day of March, the spring is warm, and all friends gather in the wild, sitting around the natural curved water , Put the wine glass on the water and drift with the water, and stop the wine glass in front of someone, drink the wine and chant a poem for pleasure.This form gradually became a kind of folk custom in ancient times, and later turned the natural curved water into a man-made curved canal, forming the "curved water cup" of later generations. There is such a curved water in the garden of Ningshou Palace in the Forbidden City. , named "Xiaoshang Pavilion".But the reason why Lanting is famous is that Wang Xizhi wrote a famous "Preface to Lanting Collection" after drinking here, describing the grand occasion of this repair.Wang Xizhi was revered as a sage of calligraphy by later generations, so since Tang and Song Dynasties, many calligraphers have been fond of copying "Lanting Collection Preface".There are more than 10 kinds of such imitated calligraphy and stone steles in Lanting. Emperors Kangxi and Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty successively came here to inscribe tree steles. , engraved with the word "Echi", which is also said to be written by Wang Xizhi.So many steles are concentrated in the small Lanting Pavilion, which shows the important position of calligraphy art in Chinese culture.Today, there are a large number of steles from past dynasties concentrated in the Forest of Steles in Xi'an and the Dai Temple in Tai'an, Shandong. The authentic works of famous calligraphers such as Ouyang Xun, Yan Zhenqing, and Liu Gongquan in the Tang Dynasty, and Mi Fu, Cai Jing, Su Shi, and Zhao Mengfu after the Song Dynasty are all preserved here.

The stele also has great artistic value, because there are stone carvings for decoration on the head, body and pedestal of the stele, which has left precious materials for ancient carving art.First of all, look at the head of the stele. Among the many stone steles, the most common one is the head engraved with dragon patterns. This form was stipulated in the Song Dynasty's monograph "Zao Fa Shi" that recorded architectural regulations and styles.As shown in Figure 35, there are three intersecting dragons on the left and right, and the sky is left in the center. The dragon is on the side of the stele, with the dragon's head facing down and the dragon's body arched, intersecting each other to form a pattern.Of course, this standard form has also changed in various steles. For example, a thick stele uses four dragons on one side, while a thinner stele only uses two dragons on one side; some dragon heads are displayed on the front and back sides of the stele .Some dragons' bodies are strong and powerful, while others are soft and lacking in strength. There are also great differences in the level of techniques.Naturally, not all stone steles are in the shape of a coiled dragon. Some headstones are made into houses with sloping roofs, and some are in the shape of a regular square shape, with only carvings on the stone surface for decoration.The body of the stele is the main part of the stele. It is the place where inscriptions are carved, so there are relatively few decorations. At most, there is only a circle of carved patterns around the body of the stele as a border.The sides of a small number of steles are also covered with patterns. This kind of carving often bears the imprint of the times. The side decorations of steles in the Tang Dynasty mostly use continuous scroll patterns, with lush and plump branches and leaves, elegant and smooth lines. Relief sculptures show the style of the Tang Dynasty when my country's ancient decorative art was at its peak (Figure 37); the side decorations of stone tablets in the Qing Dynasty, especially on the stone tablets of palaces, tombs, and royal gardens, often use dragon patterns, plus the carvings of middle reliefs. This method makes the dragon body stand out, but loses the subtlety it should have as a frame decoration. Both the artistic shape of the theme and the carving techniques are much inferior to the previous generation.The most common seat of the stele is a tortoise.Turtle is a kind of aquatic animal. It has a long life span and is resistant to hunger. Therefore, although it often lives in water, it can also stay on land. Turtle has a hard armor on its abdomen and back. When it encounters external attacks, its head, tail, and limbs can shrink Entering the armor for self-defense; it is precisely because of these characteristics that the tortoise was regarded as a kind of mythical beast in ancient times. They are the four gods and beasts, which represent the god of the north in Feng Shui, so there have been many mythical legends attached to the tortoise since ancient times.As far back as the Shang Dynasty, tortoise shells were used as a tool for divination, and the content of divination was recorded on the back of the turtle, which was oracle bone inscriptions, which became the written records of early ancient China.The big tortoise that grows in the sea is also called Ao. It is said that Gonggong's anger touched Buzhou Mountain, the pillar of heaven was broken, and the dimension of the earth was flawed. In "Zao Fa Shi" in the Song Dynasty, the stele seat is called "Ao seat", and the weight of the stele is carried by the strength of the Ao to support the sky.There is an interesting legend about the fact that the tortoise became the stele seat. The tortoise has great strength and is good at carrying heavy loads, but it is also famous. It often carries three mountains and five mountains on its back, making waves in the rivers and seas to show itself. Let him push mountains and dig holes.After successfully controlling the water, Dayu moved a big stone for the tortoise to carry on his back, and engraved the tortoise's credit for water control on the stone. It was Dayu's successful practice of mobilizing the enthusiasm of the tortoise and restraining its negativity. Since then, the tortoise has become the base of the monument.This is of course a folk myth, but it also reflects people's understanding of turtles.I don’t know when the tortoise became the son of the dragon again, and it was named “赑屃” [bi xibixi]. Bixi is good at carrying heavy loads, so it is used to support stone monuments.In fact, the tortoise has nothing to do with the dragon. The tortoise is an animal in the sea. The dragon is a kind of totem created by the descendants of the Yellow Emperor. The reason why the tortoise is a member of the dragon family is just a man-made myth.Of course, there are also stele pedestals that do not use turtles. Some stele pedestals are made in the form of Xu Mizuo, and some are just a square stone, slightly larger than the stele body, with some carvings on it for decoration.

It can be said that many stone tablets are a stone history book, which records rich content in history, science, art and other aspects of the past dynasties.The Wuhou Temple in Chengdu, Sichuan is a ancestral hall commemorating Zhuge Liang, the prime minister of the Shu Kingdom. There is a stele of the Wuhou Temple in the temple, which records the merits and virtues of Wuhou Zhuge Liang's life. The craftsman Lu Jian engraved the characters, and Hua Rong, the inspector of Sichuan Province in the Ming Dynasty, wrote a postscript on the stele saying: "People are manifested by writing, and writing is manifested by characters. However, the merits of Marquis Wu, and the writing of Pei and Liu are immortal. "Here, Hua Rong praised Zhuge Liang's merits, Pei Du's articles and Liu Gongchuo's calligraphy at the same time, so later generations called this stele the "Three Wonders" stele, and also called the beauty of Lu Jian's inscriptions a unique one. It is called the stele of "Four Wonders", because no matter how good the writing and calligraphy are, if there is no exquisite engraving skill, no ink marks of famous masters can be left.A small stone tablet has such important historical and artistic value. It can be seen that architectural sketches such as steles are also an important heritage in ancient Chinese culture.