中国古代曾经流行一种叫船棺的安葬方式,把死者放置于一条像船的棺木中,希望他死后能够漂洋过海,回到家乡。不过,船棺却不是在水里漂的。巴人的船棺一般挂在悬崖上,以致明朝人误以为是船在崇山峻岭之间搁浅了;蜀人与巴人习俗迥异,他们的船棺深埋在土中,上面还有宗庙。船棺迄今已在成都、荥经、蒲江、大邑、广元、新都、邛崃等地屡有发现,种种迹象表明,这些船棺分布的疆域,事实上就是开明王朝的国界。 In ancient China, there was a popular method of burial called a coffin. The dead were placed in a coffin like a boat, hoping that when he died, he would be able to sail across the sea and return to his hometown. However, the ship’s coffin is not floating in the water. The boat coffin was generally hung on a cliff, so that the Ming Dynasty mistakenly believed that the ship ran aground between the mountains. The Shu people and the Palestinians had very different customs. Their coffins were buried deep in the soil and there was an ancestral temple above them. The ship’s coffin has so far been found in many places such as Chengdu, Baoding, Pujiang, Dayi, Guangyuan, Xindu and Xunyi. There are various indications that the boundaries of the distribution of these coffins are, in fact, the national boundaries of the Ming dynasty.