Where is the tomb of the Monkey King in China?

Details: According to Wang Yimin, director of Shunchang County Museum, the tomb of Monkey King Brothers is located in Shuang Sheng Temple behind Nantianmen, the main peak of Baoshan at an altitude of 1.305 meters. Shuang Sheng Temple was built in the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, with a building area of about 18 square meters. There is an ancient tomb in the temple with two stone tablets standing side by side. The tomb is 2.9 meters wide and 1.3 meters deep, and its shape is splayed.

The two tombstones stand side by side on the tomb platform 0.43 meters above the ground, and the height of the tombstones is 0.8 meters. Above the left monument, the small characters "Baofeng" are carved horizontally, the four characters "Qitian Sheng Da" are carved vertically in the middle, and the small characters "Shenwei" are carved horizontally at the bottom of the big characters. The outer frame of the inscription is decorated with embossed grass. On the right tablet, four characters of "Great Sage" are vertically engraved, and two small characters of "Divine Position" are horizontally engraved at the bottom of the characters. The outer frame of the inscription is decorated with embossed grass scroll patterns.

The Monkey King, the Monkey King, is a mythical figure familiar to Chinese at home and abroad, but Wu Cheng'en, a novelist of the Ming Dynasty, has never appeared in The Journey to the West, and almost no one knows it. After textual research, Wang Yimin found the image of "Great Sage" in The Journey to the West Zaju created by Mongolian dramatist Yang Jingxian at the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty.

According to Wang Yimin's textual research, the plot framework of Yang Jingxian's The Journey to the West Zaju is similar to Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West, but the plot is different. There is a confession of Sun Monkey in the play: "There are five brothers and sisters of the little sage, the eldest sister Lishan's mother, the second sister, the witch, the eldest brother, the Monkey King, the little sage and the third brother."

Wang Yimin warned that readers should carefully taste this passage. In his confession, Monkey called the Great Sage of Qi Tian "Big Brother" and modestly called himself "Little Sage".

He also cited quite a lot of evidence: the ranking of brothers in Yang Jingxian's Journey to the West coincides with the ranking of his eldest brother Qi Tianshengda in the tomb, and the "Baofeng" in the tomb clearly shows that the two brothers are Shunchang people.

From the analysis that Monkey King is the prototype of Monkey King, it is obvious that the tomb was written before Wu Chengen's Journey to the West. Even according to the known data of Mr. Wu Cheng'en's birth and death year, this view is supported.

Wang Yimin believes that if the time limit is 139 1), this buried tomb was written in Wu Cheng'en nearly two centuries before The Journey to the West.

In his view, Wu Cheng'en used the title of the Monkey King on Tian Tongwang's head just to describe the character's character, while his brothers and sisters concentrated their skills on the Monkey King in the novel, but buried Tian Tongwang and other brothers and sisters. Baoshan, the birthplace of five brothers and sisters, has also become a real scene in The Journey to the West, Wu Cheng'en.

In this regard, Wang Yimin has also conducted quite in-depth research and raised related issues.

Why did you miss the other three people?

Since monkeys have many brothers and sisters, why are they buried here together? There must be a mystery that leads us to solve the case, which needs further study in the future.

The joint burial of two saints is an important physical verification of the local people's personification of the gods they worship. People created gods according to some phenomena in the world, personified, nationalized and localized them, and transformed and shaped them according to actual needs, which is not uncommon in Chinese folk beliefs and ancient literary works.

Yuan and Ming dynasties

The building area of Nantianmen is about 1.20 square meters, and the main building has collapsed seriously. Wang Yimin and other cultural relics workers found the following inscription on the cave stone components of ancient buildings: "Reconstruction in June of the 27th year of Jiajing in Daming (1548)". Recently, they have found early stone components around the site, as well as intaglio chronologies such as "Initiating a Mountain to Advise the First Sacrifice" and "August 20th of Xinxu in the 24th year of Ming Hongwu (139 1)", as well as stone Buddha statues in relief on the early components.

According to Wang Yimin, according to the figures in the above years, the different styles of stone components in different periods and the construction date of Baoshan Hall from the 23rd year of Yuan Dynasty to Zheng Zheng (1363), the construction time of this group of buildings should be no later than the 24th year of Hongwu in Ming Dynasty (139 1).

Left "Qitian" and right "Tian Tong"

The building area of Shuang Sheng Temple is about18m2. The original imitation wood and stone roof has been destroyed, and now it is added by future generations. Behind the statue of Sun Walker in the temple is an ancient burial tomb with two stone tablets standing side by side.

The shape of the tomb is similar to the stone tomb of the same period in Ming Dynasty in Shifeng Temple in Shunchang. The tomb is splayed, 2.9 meters wide and 1.3 meters deep. The top of the tomb is a stone tomb head (the stone on the top of the tomb), which is roof-shaped, with a gourd-shaped "ridge brake" carved in the center, and the "ridge kiss" at both ends is roughly fishtail-shaped, 0.76 meters long and 0.25 meters high. Wang Yimin has repeatedly seen similar tombstones on ancient tombs in eastern Fujian, northern Fujian, Wuyishan, Pucheng and Ningde in eastern Fujian.

The distance between the two tombstones standing side by side in front of the tombstone is 0. 18m ... The left tombstone is 0.3m wide, 0.8m high and 0.12m thick. It has a semi-circular top, and the flat forehead is embossed with a magical snail pattern, which is trumpet-shaped. The inscription reads "Baofeng" horizontally, "Qitian Sheng Da" vertically in the middle and "Divine Position" horizontally below. The outer frame of the inscription is decorated with embossed grass. The right monument is 0.33m wide, 0.8m high and 0. 1 1 m thick. The top of the monument is shaped like a peach, and the forehead is embossed with floral patterns. The inscription is engraved with four characters of "Great Sage" vertically, and the small character of "Divine Position" horizontally at the bottom of the big character. The outline of the inscription is embossed with grass patterns. Two stone tablets stand on the tomb platform 0.43 meters above the ground.

The tombstone of the Great Sage Temple in Baoshan Temple is that the Great Sage is on the left, which is in line with the etiquette custom of respecting the left in ancient times and the sorting habit in local folk customs. Moreover, among the two stone tablets, there is the word "Baofeng" above the stone tablet of "Qi Tian Da Sheng", while the word "Tian Tong Da Sheng" is omitted, so it is not difficult to understand my brother's obedience to his brother. Judging from the decorative patterns of the two monuments, the monument of "Qi Tian Sheng Da" is obviously richer and more exquisite than the monument of "Tian Tong Sheng Da". These are consistent with the above historical documents and the records of The Journey to the West's zaju.