The explanation of Niu Jinniu

Zhu, a scholar in the Song Dynasty, said of the zodiac: "As far as the image of the Twenty-eight Nights is concerned, only the dragon and the cow are one, and he is not one of them." In ancient astronomy, 28 stars were divided into four images, and seven nights were one image, which had azimuth significance. There is also an animal idol every night. The twelve earthly branches and their zodiac signs are not only ordinal numbers, but also a symbol system representing spatial orientation. As far as orientation is concerned, the two are comparable. As Zhu said, comparing the two systems of the zodiac and the twenty-eight stars, only two things are consistent: one is the dragon, the dragon is in the east, and the seven nights of Qinglong are also in the east; Followed by cattle, ugly cattle, cattle lodging overlap. "Only the dragon and the cow are combined", but the magnitude of the two is different. The black dragon, the dragon in the four elephants and the dragon in one, is a member of the twelve Chen, used to deal with the army of twenty-eight stars-the Oriental Qinglong composed of seven nights; And this oriental dragon located on one side has a large area, which can correspond to the orientation of the three zodiac signs of Yinhu, Maotu and Chenlong. It can be seen that this coincidence is only consistent with the general direction from small to large.

The combination of ugly cattle and cattle lodge is accurate and can be called two-phase coincidence. The orientation of the twelve branches is ugly in the north and ugly in the east. Twenty-eight lodgings and seven lodgings in the northern Xuanwu lie in the northern sky, which are arranged in turn from east to west, namely, bucket, ox, female, virtual, dangerous, house and wall. These seven nights correspond to the three days of hai, zi and ugly. If you sit in the right place, the ugly cow will be in the bucket, and the cow and the woman will stay for three nights; Sit in the middle, take care of both sides, and the ugly cow should sit in the cowshed. In the words of "five elements of justice" in the Sui Dynasty, it was called "being fooled by cattle".

This coincidence caused a special case of the Twenty-Eight Gods-Niu Jinniu.

Among the 28 stars, there are animals with the zodiac, namely the rising sun mouse, the ox and the golden bull, the tail fire tiger, the square rabbit, the Kang Jinlong, the winged fire snake, the star horse, the ghost golden sheep, the gun fire monkey, the Zanri chicken, the Lou Jin dog and the house fire pig. The composition of these names, taking the virtual sun mouse as an example, is the name of the stars, the sun is one of the seven wonders, and the mouse is the animal image taken. Taurus, the first "cow" is the name of the star, and the last "cow" is the animal image taken by this star.

Of the 28 stars, only one uses the animal name, and this is Niu Su. The ugly cows of the Chinese zodiac are just in line with their orientation, thus forming the coincidence of the two cows of "Niu Jinniu". This means that both the cows in the zodiac and the "cows" in the twenty-eight nights are standing in an ugly position. Another coincidence is that there are Taurus in the zodiac of Babylon. Taurus, Taurus, two "golden" cows.