Warriors of Ancient Ba Tribe

cctv.com 09-23-2004 17:12

During the Period of Warring States, a great battle was imminent in the state of Ba.

Before nightfall on a summer day in 1961, a group of children were playing by the river in Lijiaba, Chongqing. Behind them were their homes and crops on a large terrace. A strange object by the riverbed aroused their interest.

It was an age-old short bronze sword.

The river is a tributary of the Yangtze River. In the ancient times, many states and tribes inhabited in the area near the river.

In the 1960s, a small-scale hydropower station was being built on the upper reaches of the river. The unstable flow of water washed down the riverbed at the bottom of the terrace and some strange objects were brought out. One after another, the villagers came to the riverside and picked up many of these objects, but they could not tell what the objects were. Because these objects were always found together with human remains, the villagers believed that these things were inauspicious. They did not dare to take them back to their homes. Some of the villagers were bold enough to sell the objects to the salvage station. They had not a single idea what these objects meant to the world.

In 1961, there was a young teacher named Hu Yaxing who taught Chinese and history in a high school near Lijiaba Village. One day, he discovered something by chance.

Hu Yaxing: I remember it was a summer day.I used to stroll by the river. After school hours, I saw some three or four kids darting knives into the ground. It was a game popular among children in east Chongqing.I found a kid was holding a very strange knife.It was longer than usual ones and entered the soil very fast.It was so queer. An idea occurred to my mind that it might be an antique.I asked the child to show it to me.And he gave it to me. The knife was rusty.

Besides, I found on its surface the pattern of a tiger. A tiger? Instantly I thought that this might be an object that belonged to the Ba people.

Who exactly are Ba people?