"As I said, all snakes bite people. There are no easy jobs in this world, only people who are greedy for it." Lao Chiri got up early and pointed to the flying squirrels on the top of the cliff. He said to Zhou Zhi and the other two: "Look at them, how busy they are? Aren't they all the same?"
"Yes, Xiaomiao, none of the things you are doing now are easy. I think they are all the same." They have two big heads." Zhou Zhi couldn't help but shake his head: "Even the experts in the ministry praised you."
"That's because you managed it well for me," Mai Xiaomiao felt a little embarrassed by the praise: "I have to do both scientific research and management by myself. , I don’t know what kind of chaos the laboratory is now.”
“Oh, I heard you guys complimenting each other early in the morning?” Chi Xueli also got up and came over when she heard Zhou Zhi and Mai Xiaomiao talking. make fun of.
"You all go and wash up. When you come back and have breakfast, we will open the Buddhist scripture cave."
Breakfast was even simpler. Porridge made from rice, plus pancakes and pickles, it was a simple meal.
After breakfast, Da Wei set up the camera and started shooting the follow-up shots of opening the cave.
The mud bricks were taken out one by one and stacked on the edge. After a night of aromatherapy and breathing, the turbid air in the cave was basically exhausted, and the smell became much better.
Before entering the cave, a ceremony must be held first. Lao Chiri brought a big white rooster. Now he killed it, used chicken blood to sacrifice around the cave, and affixed chicken feathers to the entrance of the cave. After some chanting and dancing, the ceremony ended.
After that, Zhou Zhi held up the photography light and followed Lao Chiri into the cave first, followed closely by Chi Xueli and Mai Xiaomiao, and Da Wei finally followed.
The cave is very dry. In addition to the scriptures, there are also some insect repellent hay stacked between the boxes and shelves.
The cave is divided into three, connected by passages in the middle. It seemed that it should be a natural cave at first. Later, some modifications and expansions were made by manpower, and it became what it is now, one large and two small.
The outermost small room is stacked with some modern hand-written scrolls, as well as local reprints from the Republic of China and even after the founding of the People's Republic of China. Many of them have profound traces of the times. Most of these books were published in the Second World War. It was banned ten years ago, but it has been preserved here.
Zhou Zhi flipped through a few books and found that many of them were written in Chinese on the study of Yi script, but not all of them were in Yi script.
Books from different periods have different names for Yi characters. Zhou Zhi has discovered this before when collecting information.
Some books written in Yi script are called "Yiwen", and some are also called "Cuanwen" and "Yishu". Especially the materials of the Republic of China are the most complicated. Different authors call them "Luowen", "Manwen", "Sanmin" There are "Wen", "Luo Luowen", "Zijun Wen" and "Nasu".
After asking Lao Chi for advice, I found out that different dynasties have different names. "Cuanwen" refers to the pre-Song Dynasty, "Yishu" refers to the post-Yuan Dynasty, and the messy names of the Republic of China are actually more of them. Because when scholars conducted in-depth research, they found that the Yi family branches were different, so they used the names of each family branch.
This system seems quite complicated.
In addition to this kind of printed information, the most stored in the three caves are various handwritten scriptures.
The scriptures also cover a wide range of content. Zhou Zhi doesn’t know the Yi language and doesn’t know what they mean. However, many manuscripts have patterns in the upper part and words in the lower part. They can only tell the difference from the patterns. Zhou Zhi can see that there are several categories such as sacrifice, divination, laws and calendars, history, literature and art, medicine, and mythology.
For example, during sacrifices, the upper part shows Bimo in colorful clothes dancing with various magical instruments in his hands.
For example, in divination, you can see pictures of Bimo holding a cow or killing a chicken. The pictures are all actions that Zhou Zhi watched Lao Chiri perform in practice. History is often drawn together with mythology, with the imagination of the divine tree at the beginning of creation, or the image of water, stars, and the five gods who first appeared from chaos holding tools to open up the world.
The rest also have similar illustrations. The painting style is simple and rustic, and the colors are only ink and cinnabar, but the meaning is still expressed well.
When he entered the second room, Zhou Zhi knew that he would find a big treasure this time.
There are many wooden shelves here, and there are stacks of cloth bags wrapped very carefully on the wooden shelves.
Take out a red cloth bag and open it, Zhou Zhi finds that there are scripture scrolls inside, but they are stored in the unique way of collecting scriptures of the Yi people.
The format of this kind of scriptures is relatively large, about sixty or seventy centimeters in length and width. Twenty or thirty pages are bound into one volume. The paper is relatively soft and thin, and the texture is quite rough. After binding, A bamboo pole is used to press the books, and then the books are rolled around the bamboo pole into a tube shape, then wrapped with cloth, tied with rope around the bamboo pole and cloth, and stacked layer by layer on the wooden frame.
Some bamboo poles carry pieces of paper with markings written in Yi script, which should be the title of the book. Some are written directly on the cloth wrapping the scriptures.
The vast majority of the scriptures are not marked, and many of them are not even wrapped. They are spread out in boxes. Zhou Zhi feels a little numb when he sees such ancient books. Just this sorting and cataloging work is incredible.
After entering the largest cave in the innermost part, the materials piled here are even more outdated visible to the naked eye, and there are even stacks of raw sheepskins.
The methods of processing skins of the Yi people in ancient times were not very developed. Many skins were rotten and the smell could not be suppressed even by incense.
These are the mysterious parchments.
The Yi people are one of the few ethnic minorities in my country's history who have created their own written language and are still using it today.
In ancient times, the Yi people lived a nomadic life, living in pursuit of water and grass. Cattle, sheep and other livestock were inseparable from them. Therefore, the best carrier for their writing at that time was naturally written on cows and sheepskins.
The Yi people attach great importance to knowledge and scriptures. This can be seen from the legend that before and after the "flood", Bimo and divine envoys of various tribes began to focus on collecting and compiling history and knowledge.
Later, the contents recorded in the parchment covered all aspects of social life. In this way, generations of accumulation gradually left behind a vast treasure house of knowledge.
The Yi people have a proverb called "Knowledge is food, life, and water." There are even two gods in charge of them, namely Tuzuzuo, the god of knowledge, and Shechidi, the god of wisdom.
So the Yi people actually worship knowledge as a god. After the master has passed it on to his disciples or borrowed books to copy, he must prepare pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, etc. for sacrifice, and ask the gods of knowledge and wisdom to come and accept them.
When holding a ceremony, two forks should be made from the gall tree and inserted into the ground. A gall crossbar should be built on top, and some branches should be inserted around the two forks.
Each branch represents a god or a great bimo of each sect. Then, five times wood and Coptis chinensis should be peeled and cut into pieces to burn or scatter, which symbolizes honoring them with gold and silver; then order some wine and put some vegetables on the ground, and recite the "Sutra of Offering Wine" and "Sutra of Offering Tea" , pass the book under the crossbar.
After such a ceremony, the scriptures become spiritual. (End of this chapter)