Bricks with inscriptions on ancient city walls are also called literary bricks. On the way to Binyang Building in the East Gate and Chaozong Building in the North Gate, the watcher will find text bricks. Text bricks record the long historical process of building Jingzhou city walls in past dynasties, reflect the changes of administrative areas under Jingzhou's jurisdiction, and illustrate the glorious history of Jingzhou's economic development and cultural progress.
According to historical records, the original brick wall in Jingzhou began in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, that is, Gao Jixing was the king of Jingzhou. When the southern part of Jingzhou was established, hundreds of soldiers and civilians were mobilized to dig around the capital and build the capital. At this time, the brick city began to exist. He borrowed bricks from Han tombs to build a city. There are typical Han dynasty patterns on the bricks, but there are no inscriptions, and there are tomb bricks.
In the Southern Song Dynasty, "special city bricks" were fired. There is only a simple responsibility inscription on the brick, but there is no record of the year number.
Brick walls in Jingzhou have experienced hundreds of years of wind and rain changes. The earliest brick with year number on the wall is 1369, which has a history of nearly 700 years. Prior to this, bricks only had the characteristics of the times, and the word brick with year number had not been discovered.
Jingzhou bricks not only come from the original government and counties in Jianghan Plain. Judging from the text bricks found, in addition to more than 20 counties in the Hanshui River Basin and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, there are also counties under the jurisdiction of Xiangyang Prefecture, Yunxian County, Fangxian County, Gucheng County, Zaoyang County and Nanzhang County, far from the northwest.
There are also Jingzhou in the southwest at the junction of Hunan, Guangxi and Guizhou provinces, Changde in the north of Hunan, Chenzhou in the west, Yongzhou in the south, Hengzhou in the middle and Changsha in the east.
At that time, it was not easy to transport bricks from all over the country to Jingzhou, from hundreds of kilometers or even several meters away from Jingzhou to Qian Qian, where land and water transportation was extremely inconvenient.
Judging from the source of writing bricks in Jingzhou, * * * has 8 states and more than 40 counties. It is proved that it was difficult to transport bricks from all over the country to Jingzhou because of its large jurisdiction, wide territory, lack of high sense of responsibility, unified specifications and strict discipline.
Ancient fortifications are an important political task. According to the Jiangling County Records:
It is the usual policy of governors to rule their battlements first.
Therefore, all generations have maintained buildings and city walls in the form of simple or detailed responsibilities, and built cities layer by layer. This shows that the ancient name "Jingzhou made of iron" is not empty talk.
Judging from the written records on the city brick, the inscription is very rigorous and exquisite. The place and time of brick making are clearly recorded, and the names of supervisors, brick makers, kiln workers, brick makers and local officials in charge of operation and handling affairs are all inscribed in detail.
Inscriptions of officials include the names of magistrates, magistrates, magistrates, purlin and Daozhi magistrates, assistant magistrates such as Tongzhi, Tongguan, Li Mu and Xiancheng, courtiers and general clerks.
In addition, the inscription on the brick also records the specific operator. For example, the name of the person entrusted by the government, the name of the supervisor, the name of the village head, the name of the head of the household, the name of the kiln, the name of the grain household or household, and the name of the brick maker are all strictly inscribed.
If there is a brick engraved with this:
Xiangyang House in Yunxian County is the county magistrate, Cheng Kangtai, supervisor, craftsman Wang Cheng, Jia and Hu Xuxing.
Hongwu was built in the sixteenth year.
This brick is intact and has a history of nearly 700 years.
Another example is that there is a brick engraved with:
Jingzhou Municipal Party Committee officials and Jingzhou kiln owner Joe arrived in time.
The first day of June in Wanli decade.
From the inscriptions on these bricks, it can be explained that the practice of "mobilization of the whole people, top-down, clear division of labor, and responsibility to people" was implemented when Jingzhou City Wall was built at that time.
The urban construction projects in Hongwu period were large in scale, with high technical requirements, strict management and detailed responsibilities. The use of "carved bricks" is to ensure the quality of city walls. During the Wanli period, the method of "impression brick" was developed to facilitate maintenance.
It is conceivable that the busy scenes of Jingzhou's prefectures, prefectures and counties mobilizing thousands of troops and transporting bricks from all directions to build a "capital" are spectacular.
There are many kinds of brick inscriptions on Jingzhou city wall, most of which are arranged vertically on one side or both sides of the brick, and a few are arranged horizontally. Some bricks have dozens of words on them, while others have only one word, such as "fish", "dragon" and "clothes", which generally represent the work number or the name of the craftsman's shop, without the year number.
In terms of character seal cutting, there are yin, yang and yin and yang, but most of the words on the brick are yang. In font calligraphy, there are running script, regular script, traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters.
In short, the word bricks on Jingzhou City are all over the city wall, and the inscription bricks reflect that Jingzhou is not only economically developed, but also culturally developed in history, recording the historical process of Jingzhou City construction, and its inscription bricks are "living" city wall files.
Every word brick engraved with inscription is the best physical witness of Jingzhou ancient city in the past dynasties, and it is also an extremely precious historical relic.