In
ancient China, the White Tiger is a collection of seven stars in the
western group of 28 Constellations (while the eastern, northern and
southern seven-star groups are respectively called Gray Dragon, Black
Turtle and Red Phoenix?China vacation deals).
The White Tiger is said to oversee the weapons and wars of mankind, and
is known as a god of fighting and killing. During the wars of the
Western Zhou (c.1100 BC c. 771 BC) and Shang Dynasty (c.1600 BC c.
1100 BC), a brave and resourceful army got high praise from King Wu of
Zhou, thereby claiming the name of "huben" and "hushi", both meaning
"brave warriors." These were warriors of the ancient Ba people. The
tiger later became an important component of central Han culture.
The
History of the Eastern Han depicts the totems and origins of the Ba
people and their first king Lin Jun. Many historians regard it as an
important source for solving Ba mysteries. The book says, "After Lin Jun
died, his soul turned into a white tiger. The later Ba generations
watered it with human blood and offered human bodies as sacrifices for
it." This gives written evidence that the ancient Ba people took the
white tiger as their totem and thought it to be their ancestors.
Archaeological discoveries in the Three Gorges?Yangtze River tour?area
in 1998 provided further evidence that the ancient Ba people sacrificed
men for the tiger. In a Ba-style tomb, archaeologists found two human
skulls at the foot of the remains of a Ba warrior, besides common burial
articles such as bronze weapons. Obviously, the skulls were sacrifices.
In another tomb, the dead had been cut into several sections to be used
for sacrifice. These accidental or inevitable occurrences gave people
thousands of years later the possibility to decipher its ancient
mysteries.
The
book doesn't give a detailed conclusion about the death of Lin Jun, the
Ba's first king, but you can still imagine the scene then: the Ba
people mastered the skills of fishing and hunting and military conflict
and conquest were frequent among the tribes. As a military leader who
set up the Ba State, Lin Jun could only be thought of to have died in
battle. The later Ba people respected him as their god -- the white
tiger.
In
the minds of the ancient Ba people, the white tiger was the same as
their ancestors and that's why the custom of offering sacrificial humans
to the tiger was handed down.
Qingjiang River, called Yishui in the past, originates from Enshi County of Hubei Province?Public China Holidays?and
flows through such places as Lichuan, Badong, Digui and Jianshi. Most
of these areas hosted the Ba culture throughout history. Today we can
still find the Tujia ethnic group there, who are thought to be the
direct descendants of the Ba. It is completely appropriate if we compare
the present Tujia area as a frozen space in historic time. The
primitive scenes of the Ba culture are preserved well and handed down.
For example, today's Tujia people still imitate the jumping, fishtailing
and face washing actions of a tiger when offering sacrifices to the
dead. Meanwhile, they sing songs about tigers and the tiger also appears
in different images on the front gate of the diaojiaolou (houses seated
on wooden columns) of the Tujia ethnic group. Human were still
sacrificed to the tiger until the 1930s, but today the Tujia people only
have their forehead cut in a gesture of sacrifice to the white tiger.
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