Cliff Burial

4 min read

On the cliff along the Yangtze River，there were many ancient coffins strewn at random.The weathered coffins are almost shattered，fragile like match boxes，yet they aroused much curiosity.Who put those coffins up onthe cliff and where are they now？What was the fact hidden behind those mysterious coffins on the cliff？

After combining the water of Jinsha River and Min-jiang River，the Yangtze River flows eastwards.In its way，it receives a tributary called Nanguang River，which runs through the Yibin area of Sichuan province.Although Nanguang River is quite ordinary，the strange scenery on its upper reaches attracted much attention of the world.

There locate many mountains，not very tall，but with cliffs everywhere.You many say cliffs are not uncommon，but the coffins hanging on the cliffs are really extraordinary！

They are not left by ETs who visited the earth，but by thesolemn burial service of an ethnic minority-cliff burial，which is the way that put the corpse into the coffin and place the coffin on the cliff.

The cofins on the cliff The coffins on the cliff are all far away from the ground, with a height ranging from 25 meters to more than 100 meters. Most of hose coffins are made of a whole wood, hard and anticorrosive, and without lacquer. They were made into the shape of boat or cuboid, and then were placed onto the cliff. Some of them were inserted entirely into the natural cavities, and some half into the cavities, which probably were shallow or man-made; some were placed on the deck made up of several parallel wood stakes half inserted into the cliffs; and some were put on the protuberant rock directly.

Who on earth put these mysterious coffins up there?

According to the textual research, there was an ethnic mi-nority called”Bo people”, who lived in southwest China in ancient times. Bo people lived in the forests, beat their path through dense bushes to develop their homeland and were very valiant and tough. Those hanging coffins were placed on the cliffs by them. We could find that this way of burial is of high difficulty, but why the Bo people chosethis kind of burial service? In China among the ancient peo-ple there went around such a kind of belief that the higher a person was buried, the more auspicious it would be,i.e. if the deceased were buried high, favor would reach the latergenerations, and his posterity would be affluent and safe.

Bo people had long lived upon their surrounding resources, and had suffered a lot from the wars and natural disasters.

They hoped to return back to the nature after death and gain eternal peace. Placing coffins on the cliff above water andletting the dead rest in peace in the surrounding of moun-tains and water illustrate that the dead people were attached to mountains and water. That’s why some coffins were made into the shape of boat. In fact, putting coffins on the cliff has other advantages which they didn’t expect,i.e.

protecting the corpse from the wild animals, and the mois-ture-proof effect, preventing the corpse from rotting. The coffins strewed on the cliff aroused people’s cu-riosity. In ancient times, there was no advanced mechani-cal equipment, then how were those coffins placed on the cliff? Without any historic records, opinions vary, and there is no reliable answer yet. If Bo people still existed, then they might be able to tell people the truth. However, they disappeared mysteriously in the middle and late Ming dynasty (1368-1644), or to be exact, they were extermi-nated by the Ming government.

Today, there are three most popular explanations:

plank road method, earth laying method and hanging method. Plank road method says that Bo people cut holes on the cliff and paved plank road for people to climb up.

After the coffin was placed into the cave, the plank road was removed; earth laying method is the way that they first laid earth along the cliff for people to climb up, and later dig earth away after the coffin was placed above; hanging method is the way that people hung a long rope from the peak and pulled the coffin up with some kind of primitive mechanism. However, these three ways are merely modern people’s conjectures.

Cliff burial was always covered with a mysterious veil, which inspired lots of legends. It is said that once Zhuge Liang led an expedition southward, however, he who used to predict with miraculous accuracy lost battles repeatedly. Later they found that in the enemy camp there was a wizard man called Xi’ er, who could fly. Every time when Zhuge Liang was deploying the army Xi’ er flew to eavesdrop. Zhuge Liang pretended as if he didn’t notice Xi’ er for fear that if he acted rashly the enemy would be alerted. Meanwhile, he was looking for other methods.

Later Zhuge Liang found out the reason that Xi’ er could fly was because of the position of his ancestral grave, so he said deliberately in a conference that certain cliff was a place with good geomantic potency, which he was sure Xi’ er heard. Knowing that Zhuge Liang had a broad base of knowledge, Xi’ er didn’t doubt his words at all and moved his ancestral grave to that cliff upon his return. Be-cause the position of the ancestral grave was changed, Xi’ er could not fly any more. Without timely intelligence, the enemy was defeated at last.

The story is very interesting, however it is not true. Al-though Bo people were long disappeared, the hanging coffins they left are still high above the Yangtze River, demonstrating the wisdom and courage of the ancient people.