Concerning Wudang Mountain, the small wooden sign covered with dust in a farmer’s house is actually a 600-year-old holy decree

A cultural relics worker inadvertently saw an ordinary-looking wooden plaque covered with dust in a farmer’s house in Shiyan, Hubei province, and dusted it off to find that it was a 600-year-old holy decree.

The land media Shiyan Evening News launched a series of reports on March 11, introducing the town treasures of the city’s museums. The first one is a lacquer wood carved Gold decree plate.

This lacquer wood carved gold decree plate, more than 600 years old, is an important evidence of the Ming Yongle Emperor’s major repair of the Wenzhi, the construction of ancient buildings in Wudang Mountain, is now a national cultural relics, known as national treasures.

However, this holy tablet was left behind in a farmer’s house for a long Time.

In the 1980s, an official working on cultural relics in Wudang Mountain inadvertently found a red-painted wooden tablet in a farmer’s house near Wulong Palace. After wiping off the dust on the wooden plate, he saw the word “holy decree”, and after careful identification, it was written as follows

Holy decree

Taiyue Taihe Mountain, all the palaces, cultivators, Yi Shen Bao Zhen, hold a keep vegetarian. The outside is far away from the body, and the personnel is shut off. Practice the quiet work, no questions at the moment. The people who should be floating around, and not allowed to cause trouble and noise, disturbing their quiet work, hindering their doctrine, violators are punished with serious crimes. There is a sincere person, the Xuan Guan, think beyond the mortal quality, the real heart to participate in the true question of the Tao, not in the case of prohibition. If the Taoist priest does not serve the religion, causing harm to the group, hurt the ancestral wind, the light is immediately condemned, expelled from the mountain; heavy is reported to the news, punished with a serious crime.

September 18, the 11th year of Yongle

It is said that there are many existing holy decrees in the whole Wudang, among which there are more than 600 holy decrees issued by Emperor Yongle of Ming Dynasty to Wudang Mountain alone. Among these surviving holy decrees, there are 12 stone holy decrees and 3 wooden holy decrees.

This lacquer wood carved gold decree tablet was sent by the imperial palace and is therefore particularly valuable among the many decrees. This decree is 129.5 cm in height and 113.2 cm in width. Its base plates are all made of ginkgo trees over one hundred years old, with a border of cedar wood and a rounded head. It is inscribed in gold on a vermilion background, with a half-arc at the top, and the central part inscribed in regular script with the ban of the Yongle emperor in negative script, with nine dragons carved around the border, while the back border is decorated with a quadruple ruyi cloud pattern.

According to the late cultural relics expert Professor Zhu Jiaqiu, the production of this holy decree plate required 83 processes, and the production process was very elaborate.