Due to their different status, the materials of silk thread used in gold thread jade clothes and jade articles are also different from those of gold thread, silver thread, copper thread and silk thread.
Because the golden wisp of jade clothes symbolizes the status of emperors and nobles, the requirements for their production technology are very strict.
The rulers of the Han Dynasty also set up the "East Garden" which specializes in making jade clothes. When making jade clothes, the jade materials used must go through cutting, sawing, grinding, drilling and other procedures, and then the jade pieces are designed into different sizes and shapes according to different parts of the human body, such as square, rectangle, half moon and triangle. The largest is 9 square centimeters, and the smallest is less than 1 square centimeter.
Then, use gold thread to pass through the small holes in the four corners of these jade pieces to connect all the jade pieces together.
According to the productivity level more than two thousand years ago, the cost of making a medium-sized jade garment was equivalent to the sum of the property of 100 medium-sized families at that time.
Take the golden jade clothes unearthed from the Han tombs in Mancheng as an example. The total length of clothes in Liu Shengyu is 18m, and there are 2,498 jade articles and gold thread 1 100g. Dou Wan's jade clothes are relatively short, and 265,438+060 pieces of Pian Yu and 700g gold thread were also used.
It took hundreds of craftsmen more than two years to finish a jade garment in Liu Sheng, and the manpower and material resources involved were amazing.
So, why did people in the Han Dynasty pay so much attention to making mourning clothes with jade clothes? It turns out that emperors of all ages long for immortality, which is a great event in their lives.
Emperors tried their best to find elixir before they died, or ordered people to refine pills for health preservation. Even if they die, they will not give up this desire to survive, hoping to continue to maintain their lives before death.
According to the ancients, after death, the soul will separate, the soul will ascend to heaven, and the shape will return to the ground. And how can we make the soul ascend to heaven without rotting?
Only use jade. They believe that jade is the essence of heaven and earth, which has antiseptic effect, can make the body immortal and make people live forever.
In fact, the practice of burying jade as early as 4000 years ago appeared. In the Western Zhou Dynasty, the system of martyrdom with jade was formed, and there was jade in the mouth, jade in the hand and jade cover on the face of the deceased.
The so-called jade cover, also called "face curtain", is to make jade into an adult's eyebrows, eyes, ears, nose and other parts and decorate them on a piece of cloth. During the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, the clothes worn by the deceased were embroidered with some jade, which was the embryonic form of jade clothes.
However, emperors and dignitaries were overly superstitious about the antiseptic effect of jade. After their death, they put a few pieces of jade on their chests and backs, accompanied by jade eye patches, nasal plugs, earplugs, mouthparts, and small boxes and anal plugs to cover their genitals, which is called "nine orifices of jade plug".
One of the most exquisite is to make a jade cicada orally. The ancients believed that cicadas only drank dew and didn't eat. They are noble and clean insects. The jade cicada in the mouth means that the soul leaves the body, just as the cicada is transformed from the shell.
Some scholars also believe that the Han people use the jade cicada as their mouth to realize rebirth from the reincarnation of cicada, hoping that the deceased will only die temporarily and be able to be resurrected and reborn.
However, the beautiful fairy dream was not realized because of the jade cover. Both emperors and nobles, their bodies failed to withstand the erosion of time, and finally they all rotted into a pile of bones.
Because of the high price of gold and jade clothes, the tombs of the Han Dynasty attracted more grave robbers than tombs of other times. The emperor and nobles not only failed to achieve the goal of not rotting the body, but even the skeleton was burned to ashes.
It was not until AD 222 that Emperor Cao Pi of Wei became the Emperor of Wei. He thought the use of jade clothes was "stupid and vulgar" and ordered the abolition of the system of burying jade clothes, so the history of jade clothes was over.