This article is the fourth article re-lated to the research of “Zhangzhung·rGyalron· Sanxingdui and Jinsha”—Tibetan cultural interpre-tations of relics unearthed in Sanxingdui and Jin-sha. The main focus of the article is Tibetan cul-tural interpretations of the vertical-eyed bronze mask and the copper statue of a man with an ani-mal head crown in Sanxingdui Museum. 1 . Vertical-eyed bronze mask and Miwo Lon-glong The bronze cultural relics unearthed in Sanx-ingdui or even Jinsha have broad and deep links to ancient Tibetan culture. The vertical-eyed bronze mask is the most typical of the numerous bronze objects depicting human heads. In the following discussion, we would like to give an interpretation of the symbolic meaning of the bronze objects de-picting human heads. In order to draw inferences about other cases from one instance, we would like to choose two typical cases: choosing the vertical-eyed bronze mask as our model of cultural relic, and choosing langshi jiazu ( the Lang family clan) as our model of Tibetan ancient literature. It is generally stated that the eyes of the verti-cal-eyed bronze mask kept in Sanxingdui museum roughly meets the appearance of the Shu people ’ s ancestors, the Cancong, who are recorded as hav-ing “vertical eyes” in the historical books. Some people also believe that “vertical eyes” means“upright eyes”, just like the eye in the forehead of the God Erlang in Chinese ancient myth, so the image might be a statue of an ancestor god. Addi-tionally, some connect it with the frontlet of kuilong ( a sacred dragon in Chinese myth ) , and believe that it is related to zhulong( another sacred dragon in Chinese myth) who has a human head, a dragon ( snake) body, and “upright eyes”. Langshi Jiazu is an important document for studying the political and religious unification sys-tem in Tibetan areas during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, meanwhile, it is also an essential material for the study of the Gesar Epic. Langshi Jiazu was published by Xizang renmin chubanshe ( Tibet People ’ s Publishing House ) for the first time in May, 1986, and the whole book is com-posed of three parts. From the perspective of the ancient Indian centralism and Tibetan centralism, Langshi Jiazu has many unique parts, and its con-tent has an unusual connection with rGyarong in the southeastern part of Tibetan areas. For in-stance , the content of the fist part is very similar to shengniao xiongqiongwang zhuang ( Biography of the Sacred Bird Garuda) recently discovered in the rGyarong area. There is a myth in Langshi Jiazu, and the sto-ry is very common in Bon literature. The academic circle calls it the Bon religion’ s view on the crea-tion of world—the universe is oviparous. Most scholars believe that the view of oviparous creation of the world in Bon religion might be Tibetan peo-ple’ s own cognition. We provide translations to some content included in the Langshi Jiazu, and compare them with the vertical-eyed bronze mask, and notice some information which has been ig-
nored by the current academic circle. For in-stance, the vertical-eyed bronze mask symbolizes“”, Chinese phonetic translation Miwo Longlong, which means “may all your wishes be-come truth”. 2 . Copper statue of a man with an animal head crown in the Bon Religion The copper statue of a man with an animal head crown kept in Sanxingdui Museum is not com-plete, with only the upper part of the body remai-ning. The statue wears an animal head crown. On the two sides of the top crown, there stands two an-imal ears, in between of which there is a curly decoration which looks like an elephant ’ s nose. Apart from the previously-mentioned characteris-tics of the sacred bird Gaguda, the copper statue of a man with an animal head crown also has several other outstanding features, for instance, its crown and posture. The crown is not only high, but also has a rectangular hole, on the top of which there are three long strips. The statue is posed in a grasping gesture. This paper gives firstly an overall interpreta-tion of the copper statue of a man with an animal head crown according to the shengniao xiongqiong-wang zhuang, then gives a Tibetan cultural inter-pretation of the details of the statue. Concerning the knowledge of the three long strips on the crown of the copper statue, this article finds some clues from the angle of philology and archaeology, and proves that the origin of this crown is the sacred hat in Bon religion of Tibet. Moreover, this article also discusses the reason why the crown has these three strips on top of it. The author mentions that it is related to the sacred bird Garuda, and the three strips respectively represent the two wings and horn of the bird. In other words, the strips on the right and left side symbolizes the bird opening its wings and viewing the world, while the strip in the mid-
dle symbolizes that the sacred bird is male, not fe-male. From one aspect, the head dress of adult women in the rGyarong area symbolizes the sacred bird Garuda, and from another aspect, in Tibetan culture, including rGyarong culture, only the sa-cred male bird Garuda has the horn. That means the sacred bird Garuda with a horn must be a male one. Concerning the vertical-eyed bronze mask and the copper statue of a man with an animal head crown unearthed in Sanxingdui, there are still many details that need to be explored, and also we feel that it could be differently interpreted. Howev-er, due to the limitations of space, we will not do a long discussion here, but we do hope that from the examples provided in this article, one can draw inferences about other cases from this one in-stance.