27 10 月 The Wine House at the Tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi
Yuefu is the official office for managing music during Royal ceremonies and sacrifices. The Wine House was the institution that managed the royal wine. Whether it was a celebration or a sacrifice, music was inseparable from wine and wine was inseparable from music, and playing music and drinking wine were often done together.
The state of Qin is located in the northwest, so the early musical instruments were relatively simple, but they were only string instruments and pottery tiles for tapping. At the meeting of Qin and Zhao in Mianchi, King Zhao of Qin invited King Zhao to play drums and instruments while drinking and ordered the historian to record that in a certain year and a certain month, Qin and Zhao met in Mianchi, and King Zhao played drums and instruments for King Qin. When Lin Xiangru, who was a minister of the state of Zhao saw his king being humiliated, he forced the king of Qin to buckle the fou, which was also recorded. Buckle Fou is actually knocking tile basin. It is said that Qin Shi Huang loved to listen to Gao Jianli percussion of an ancient stringed instrument, and as a result, he was almost assassinated by Gao Jianli.
After the state of Qin became powerful, the music of the eastern states gradually spread to Qin’s capital city Xianyang, and the musical instruments such as Zheng, Xiao, Chi, and bronze zither. The bells and chimes were essential for temple music. In 1986, many stone chimes were excavated from the tomb of Qin Gong No.1 in Fengxiang. The chimes were originally made of clear sounding stone. Its crisp and melodious tone, in the opinion of the ancients, can pass through the gods and reach heaven. Therefore, the ancient people used “the sound of heaven” to describe the sound of the chime. When a single chime is used, it is called a special chime. When multiple chimes are used according to the order of sound is called a chime. With bells and chimes, the sound of music is soft, elegant, solemn and dignified, and it is no longer a simple percussion instrument like the previous one but has the meaning of playing.
Qin Shi Huang once had four bells cast, weighing 120,000 Jin, which is now more than 30 tons now. These bells have not been found yet, perhaps with some exaggeration. The musical instruments in the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, in addition to the bells and drums used in the military command, also found the Yuefu bell, and more importantly, found the site of Yuefu ruins. According to textual research, the Fu appeared in large numbers in the Warring States period, and one of its functions was storage. So the earliest possible place for storing musical instruments was the Yuefu. The Qing Ming in the tomb of the Duke of Qin said that there were “hundred music” at the turn of the middle and late Spring and Autumn period, and the variety of Qin musical instruments should have increased during the Qin dynasty, after several centuries of development. The fact that Yuefu institution first appeared in Qin proves that the Qin people attached great importance to music and that Qin music was highly developed.
In the Spring Festival of 1976, archaeologists found a Qin Dynasty Yuefu bell on the west side of the mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin, that is, on the north side of the food officer site. The bell was cast in bronze with a nose button, 13.3 cm in height, 7.2 cm between the two mills, 5.8 cm between the drums, and 6 x 4.8 cm in dance width. The bell and drum parts are decorated with gold inlaid scroll patterns, the seal characters are decorated with gold inlaid cloud patterns, the bell belt is decorated with silver inlaid cloud patterns, and the dance part is cast with fine cloud and thunder patterns. The inner side of the bell is filled with groups of curling Cobra patterns similar to the cloud pattern. The lines are as thin as hair. There are 4 tuning bands on the inner side of the bell mouth, and there are several marks on the bands, indicating that the tone has been tuned. The bell is tested by musician Mr. Lu Ji, and the sound of the bell belongs to the key of C. The sound is clear and pleasant, and the pitch is accurate.
The character “Yuefu” is engraved in a small seal script on one side of the bell button, which solves a historical mystery. The Yuefu was a music official office in the Qin Dynasty, which was under the jurisdiction of the Shaofu. Because there is no physical proof, later people often think that the Yuefu originated in the Han Dynasty. The unearthing of the bell of the Yuefu is strong proof of the fact that the Yuefu was established in the Qin Dynasty, which is a significant discovery.
This Yuefu bell tells us that in the northwest of the mound of the tomb of the First Emperor of Qin, there was an official office of the Yuefu, which was set up after the capital of Qin Xianyang. There were various ritual musical instruments and a group of musicians who could play well. On the day of sacrifice, bells and chimes were sounded, all the officials were sacrificed together, musicians played music, and there was a scene of singing and dancing, which was unprecedented. Two years after the burial of the Qin Shihuang, Xiang Yu, a noble of the state of Chu entered the pass and burned the Xianyang Palace to the tomb of the first emperor, and the bell was buried in the earth together with the Yuefu. For more than two thousand years, this place of playing music and offering sacrifices has gradually entered the depths of history. The fragments it left behind, some of which are reconnected today, show people the grand space of Qin history.
Coexisting with the Yuefu is the wine house. Wine occupies an essential place in the life of the Chinese people, and there is an old saying that says, “Without wine, there is no ceremony.” As the Qin people lived in the northwest in their early years, it was natural for them to drink wine well. During the reign of Duke Mu of the Qin Dynasty, Duke Mu also gave wine to people who ate horse meat. The wine was required for state ceremonies and foreign receptions. During the second reign of the state Qin, the ministers proposed that in addition to cattle and sheep, they should also offer Zhou wine for sacrifice to the temple of the ancestor emperors. Zhou wine is a good wine that has been brewed many times and is incredibly mellow. This suggestion was certainly intended to please the emperor, and it seems that Qin II was also very fond of wine. In this way, when the mausoleum of Emperor Qinshihuang was built, it was necessary to place the official office for wine making in the tomb, which was the wine house.
On September 23, 1986, archaeologists discovered a pottery plate in the village of Wu, north of the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, with three lines of inscription: “One bucket, two liters, Lisan Wine House.” One dipper and two liters is the capacity of this pottery plate. In the Qin Dynasty, one dipper was about 2,000 milliliters, and one dipper and two liters were 2,400 milliliters, equivalent to two large bottles of beer today. In ancient times, drinking was measured in buckets, and up to the Tang Dynasty, famous poet Li Baistill “wrote a hundred poems with a bucket of wine”. Lishan is short for Lishan Garden. The wine was filtered with thatch to make it clear and mellow, just like ordinary people made vinegar. Jiufu is the management organization of liquor making, and its chief executive is Jiufu Ling. This indicates that there was a workshop for making wine at the tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi for the purpose of sacrifice, and there was a wine house to manage the wine workshop.
The presence of a wine house institution at the tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi is no accident. As early as the time when the Qin people lived in the capital of Yong, two bronze pots with a capacity of three buckets each were unearthed in the Duke of Qin mausoleum here. The measured volume of each bucket was 1,967 ml. This indicates that the ancestors of Qin Shi Huang set up a wine making institution in the mausoleum at an early stage. A flat rectangular bronze pot, 16.1 cm high, was found in the bronze chariots and horses of the mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin, which must have been an apparatus for the carriage riders to serve wine.