History With Pictures: A Study Of "Xungetu"

'Left Picture and Right History" is a tradition for Chinese historiography recordtation,which also makes the history of graphic evidence a method of historical research.In the twelfth year of the Republic of China(1923),on the eve of Cao Kun's election as president,he ordered people to paint a set of images in accordance with the Qing Dynasty's Royal Tribute Picture of Qing Dynasty and The Picture Book of the Miao Minority.Xunge Tu(the picture album of governance in minority areas)is a continuation of this tradition.After comparative studies,we found that the images of Xunge Tu were copied and imitated from the Royal Tribute Picture of Qing Dynasty and The Picture Book of the Miao Minority.However,the contents of the text annotations were selected by Xia Shoutian from relevant works of previous people,which made Xia wrote 72 bamboo stick words and made the book innovative in form and rich in content.The book description for us the mountainous landforms,production,living scenes,and social customs of various ethnic minorities in YunNan,GuiZhou,GuangXi and other places.Especially in Zhuang-Dong ethnic group,which have high research value.The first chapter of the thesis starts from the content of Xunge Tu and introduces its basic situation.Exploring the background of the book's time according to the information such as July 1923 given in the atlas.Using genealogy,diary and posterity research as materials,carding Xia Shoutian's life as an interpretation of Xunge Tu.Finally,the types of nationality in Xunge Tu were counted,which laid the foundation for the later writingThe second chapter of the thesis takes the detail of Xunge Tu as the research content.The image parts can be regarded as two parts:the first 12 pictures and the last 72 pictures,therefore it is devided into two sections.The comparison of these two sections of the images shows that The GuiZhou Annals(KangXi Epriod),as the earliest picture book of the Miao minority,laid the foundation for the later characterization of the picture book of the Miao minority.Royal Tribute Picture of Qing Dynasty is the standard of reference for all images in later generations;The Picture Book of the Miao Minority(residual version)and The Picture Book of the Seventy Miao collected by Liu Yong,are the main versions referenced in the creation of Xunge Tu.In the last section,statistics on the content of the interpretation were sorted out,and 97 paragraphs of the 19 kinds of literature appeared.The third chapter of the thesis revolves around the Zhuang-Dong ethnic group customs recorded in the Xunge Tu,and discusses from four aspects:the dietary habits mainly based on rice culture,the stilt style architecture featuring people living above and animals living below,the bronze drum culture and divination sacrifice culture with the unique characteristics of the Zhuang-Dong ethnic group.These aspects highlight that the significance of Xunge Tu is different from other atlases.In the end,by analyzing the social customs of the Zhuang-Dong ethnic group,the purpose of evidence history by picture is achieved.The conclusion of the thesis supposed that the Xunge Tu,completed under the background of the great era,is not only a map book that inherits and develops the previous map book of ethnic minorities,but also a document material with special era significance.This is the precious cultural heritage of the Chinese nation,and it is worthy of further excavation,research and utilization.