In Wu Yao in the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, it has been listed that there were many gunpowder weapons in the army at that time, indicating that as early as AD 1044, the army of the Northern Song Dynasty in China had been equipped with a variety of gunpowder weapons of considerable scale. However, a mature technology needs to go through an embryonic stage of trial and error. As early as the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, there were also examples of gunpowder used in war in the literature, but they were all too brief. Until Wu Yao's period, only the burning and explosives made by the principle of burning and exploding black powder were used in the war, and there was no record of tubular shooting firearms. It is generally believed that the "musket" made of giant bamboo in the third year of Shaoxing in the Southern Song Dynasty (1 132) is the earliest known example of using tubular firearms in the world. The "muskets" recorded in ancient literature are generally divided into two categories in terms of usage. The first category is the "flying musket" mentioned in the Golden History, that is, a barrel (usually made of paper) filled with gunpowder is tied behind the head of an ordinary pike. When fighting, ignite the gunpowder in the barrel, spray flames and burn the enemies who come to fight. After the powder burns out, you can fight and stab like a common pike. The second musket is made of huge bamboo. Each musket is carried and fired by two people. After being ignited, the flame sprayed at the enemy. This is already a primitive tubular gunpowder firearm. In A.D. 1259, Shouchun Prefecture (now Shouxian County, Anhui Province) made a kind of "musket" for firing "Zike", which was made of a large bamboo tube, filled with gunpowder and equipped with "Zike". Some people verified that it was ceramic particles, which ignited gunpowder in the battle and fired Zike by the power generated by the burning of gunpowder. If the conjecture that Zike is the prototype of a bullet is correct, then this "musket" can be regarded as the predecessor of modern firearms. This kind of bamboo musket was later called "fire tube" and will be used many times in future wars. With the development of science and technology, at least in the middle of Yuan Dynasty, this kind of tubular firearm was made of bamboo instead of metal, that is, from the side of "gold", but it still used the sound of "barrel", that is, the word "spear". Many bronzes and ironware from Yuan and Ming Dynasties were handed down and unearthed. It is now recognized that the earliest bronzes were made in the third year of Yuan Zhishun (1332). Recently, new discoveries have been made. According to the investigation and appraisal by authoritative experts and scholars, a "Yuan Dade Two Years" (1298) bronze collected by Inner Mongolia Mengyuan Culture Museum is the earliest bronze with a definite date found in China so far. These guns are generally divided into two types. One type is a small-caliber, slender and light manual gun with a wooden handle at the end, which fires a stone or iron shotgun. One is a large-caliber, short and heavy bowl spear, which needs to be installed on the frame to launch spherical projectiles. These two kinds later evolved into guns and cannons respectively.
The above briefly introduces the development history of firearms in China. In the west, the earliest record of the invention of guns is 1326. There is a picture of an iron arrow shot by a gun on a handwritten scroll in Britain. Therefore, there is no doubt that the tubular musket weapon first appeared in China. So, is it possible to advance the invention record of tubular firearms in China? The answer is yes.
Western scholars who study the history of the East found a silk-painted Buddhist magic map lost from Dunhuang to foreign countries in a museum in Paris. This painting has a grand scene and many characters, depicting the story of Sakyamuni's demon surrender on the eve of enlightenment. In the painting, the Buddha of Sakyamuni showed dignity and sat in the center, and countless grotesque demons swarmed in with various weapons. Of course, in front of Buddhism, the demons finally fled in confusion. All kinds of buddhas and demons in the painting have different shapes and are lifelike. According to the characteristics and styles of painting, it can be inferred that it was made from the Fifth Dynasties of the 10th century to the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty. What is particularly surprising is that in the upper right of the picture, among the demons who attacked Sakyamuni, there is a demon with three poisonous snake heads on his head, wearing only a pair of shorts, revealing his upper body. It holds a strange fire-breathing weapon in both hands. Its body is cylindrical with a bowl-shaped opening in front. The barrel is like an iron ring, with a thin bamboo or wooden handle behind it, and a blazing fire spews from the mouth of the barrel. The weapons in this magic painting have attracted the attention of some western scholars. Dr Joseph Needham, an expert in British oriental history, once pointed out that the invention of musket should be pushed forward for 200 years. In addition to gunpowder, this musket also contains metal pellets or broken cermets. These are fired together with the flame, and they must be muskets filled with gunpowder and metal pellets. Needham's conclusion may be somewhat arbitrary, but judging from the image drawn in the picture, its shape is quite similar to that of a spear in the Yuan Dynasty, with a spear body in front and a spear handle in the back, and the magic hand seems to be the medicine room in the middle of the spear body. But from the picture, this weapon spews flame, and there is nothing else, which is more in line with the performance of the eight-legged fire-breathing bamboo tube musket, and no bronze ware has been found throughout the Song Dynasty, so it is likely to be a fire-breathing weapon made of bamboo tube, which uses gunpowder like the eight-legged fire-breathing musket. Assuming that the speculation is correct, the history of the invention and use of gunpowder tubular weapons in ancient China can be traced back to around 1 132, when muskets were finalized. Of course, it is difficult to draw a definite conclusion only by an isolated card in a religious painting. But this picture, as a precious material to explore the invention of ancient tubular shooting firearms, can prompt us to keep thinking and exploring along this clue.