Zodiac and Totem
The Yi people in Daliangshan, Sichuan Province still have a long history of astronomical knowledge. They mark the day with twelve animals. Today is the day of the rat, tomorrow is the day of the ox, and the day of the tiger drives the street (market) and the day of the pig drives the street. In some places, temples of the Twelve Animals are built, and sacrificial ceremonies are held every year to dance the Twelve Animals.
In ancient times, many clans and tribes thought that their ancestors were rats. The Bai tiger clan believes that its ancestor is the male white tiger, and the tiger will not hurt them. When you want to travel far away, you must choose the day when you belong to the tiger (Yin Day). Some people have to calculate the date when they come back from far away, and only enter the door on a tiger's day. The Bai Chicken Clan is said that their ancestors hatched from the eggs of Golden Flower Chicken, believing that the rooster knows good or bad and will bless them. When migrating, put things in a basket and put a rooster on it. After arriving at a new place, where the rooster crows, it will settle down. In their view, the place where the rooster crows is the most auspicious.
The dragon in China has the basic characteristics of totem, and it is a totem god worshipped by all ethnic groups. The snake is one of the important totems of the ancient Yue people.
in Manchu, the wild boar god is listed as a great god. Some people regard cows as ancient creation beasts, such as Naxi people. The worship of horses is mostly spread among nomadic people and hunting people in the north. Sheep are the totems of many nationalities.
the Han nationality is one of the earliest nations that domesticated dogs in ancient times, and there is a record in Shan Hai Jing that dogs can resist fierce attacks. A Yao myth is described in The Biography of Nan Man in the Later Han Dynasty: Pan Hu, the divine dog, helped Di Ku Gao Xin's family to kill General Wu, and the daughter of Di Ku Gao Xin's family married Pan Hu to breed Yao descendants. As the ancestor myth of the clan or the god of salvation, Pan Hu, the divine dog, was revered as the ancestor of the clan by the Mian branch of the Yao nationality, and was honored as the "King of Panhu" and "King of Panhu". Manchu worshiped dogs since hunting, and regarded them as animals that were indebted to Manchu. Later, there was a legend that a righteous dog saved Nurhachi, so they respected dogs more.
Zodiac and Art
Zodiac culture is one of the important themes of China folk art with a long history.
Many folk paper-cuts of the Chinese zodiac are passed down from generation to generation, with little change. In the form of composition, there are "family portraits", single pictures, and two kinds of zodiac pictures. The most common one is "Snake Rabbit", in which the head of the snake is opposite to the head of the rabbit, and the snake body surrounds the rabbit. Because there is a saying among the people that "a snake dish rabbit must be rich". In addition, there are zodiac signs and characters with the same composition, mostly animal faces, arranged one by one.
In New Year pictures, the zodiac is also a traditional theme. New Year pictures are mostly printed in monochrome or color with carved wood blocks. The Qing Dynasty New Year picture "Lotus-born Guizi Picture" in Wuqiang, Hebei Province is overprinted in four colors: red, yellow, green and purple. Two large circles occupy most of the picture, and two children's bodies are surrounded in one circle to form four children. In another circle, three children's heads and faces and five children's bodies are surrounded to form six children, and the children in the circle are pitching and lying. Above this double circle is the zodiac pattern, with dragons, tigers and rabbits in the center, rats, sheep, cows and horses in turn on the right, and snakes, chickens, dogs, monkeys and pigs in turn on the left. "Give birth to your son in succession" and the zodiac are all available to pray for more children and more women. The lively mouse marries a girl is also one of the most common themes in New Year pictures.
Zodiac and Arts and Crafts
In ancient times, there was a twelve o'clock dish with the design of the zodiac around it. In the Song Dynasty, Tao Gu's "Clear Records and Instruments" recorded: "There is a plate in Tangku, which is yellow in color and three feet round, with objects around it. Yuan and zhong, occasionally use it, and feel that things change with time. For example, in the morning, the flowers and plants are playing with dragons, turning into snakes and turning into horses in the afternoon, because of the name' twelve o'clock'. " The zodiac pattern of this plate changes with the change of time, and the snake pattern appears in the afternoon, and the horse pattern appears in the afternoon.
in p>1971, a set of pottery figurines of the zodiac was unearthed from the tombs of the Tang dynasty in Xiangyin, Hunan Province. They were all animal heads, dressed in wide-sleeved robes, with their hands arched to the chest, leaving a long hole in the middle for inserting objects. These twelve Zodiac figurines were placed in small niches around the tomb wall to indicate the orientation.
There are many Chinese zodiac pictures in the tang dynasty bronze mirror. At that time, the bronze mirror caster was magical, and the sound of the buckle was endless, facing the sun, and the text pattern on the back was obvious in the shadow. The production of bronze mirrors is roughly divided into the north and the south, and the patterns of decorative patterns in different regions are different. The bronze mirrors in the north are simple to each other, while those in the south are exquisite and slender, and the decorative patterns are complicated and gorgeous.
male prostitute, a folk handicraft in Beijing, was recorded in the Qing Dynasty's "The Story of Yanjing's Years": "Every Mid-Autumn Festival, the clever people of the city use loess to make a toad and rabbit image for sale, which is called male prostitute. Those who are clothed and covered, those who ride horses and those who sit silently. The big one is three feet, and the small one is more than one foot. " Riding a tiger, male prostitute, people say that Mao Rabbit controls Yin Tiger. The idiom "spending money on food" describes the dilemma of living beyond one's means, while riding a tiger, male prostitute, lets Maotu control the Yin tiger, which means spending money on food and living a rich life. The clay sculpture of Niejiazhuang in Gaomi, Shandong Province has been produced since the early Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, with dolls, birds, animals, insects, fish and other themes. Until the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, the clay sculpture of Niejiazhuang developed from static to dynamic, barking and fighting fun, and there were tigers, chickens and monkeys. When making, the head and tail are divided into two parts, the middle is connected by leather or kraft paper, and a steel wire spring and whistle are built in, which will make a chirping sound when shaken by hand. For the modeling of mud calling tiger, folk artists think: "This stuff is for children to play with, as long as it is fancy and can scream, it can't be too real, and it will give children a sense of terror." Therefore, the tiger's head, especially the tiger's mouth, is greatly exaggerated to show the majestic demeanor of the king of beasts. The tiger's tail is designed to be particularly small, showing only a short protrusion on the tiger's fur, and its limbs are short and thick. In the center of the disc on the head, there is a gap for inserting the whistle, so that as long as the tiger's head and tail are pressed, the tiger can make a childish sound.
Zodiac and Coin
The Dictionary of Ancient Money quoted the Compilation of History as saying: "Life money has the Chinese zodiac characters on its face. Zhang Duanmu said,' This money used to be called life money, which has twelve characters of earthly branches and the shape of a zodiac.' The theory of the zodiac began in Huainanzi, so the money doesn't have to come from modern times. Today, this money has one word, two words, four words, and twelve gifts, ranging in size and variety. Therefore, the Zodiac Coin, also known as Twelve Money and Life Money, is also an interesting variety in the modeling of the Zodiac.
Zodiac coins were minted in the Song and Yuan Dynasties. One kind is to cast a character on the perforation and the corresponding zodiac sign under the hole, such as the word "Zi" for the mouse and the word "Hai" for the pig. The pattern is relatively simple. There is another kind, the four characters of Zi, Ugly, Yin and Mao are cast on the front, and the four zodiac signs of rat, ox, tiger and rabbit are cast on the back. There is also a form, in which the front is cast with "Wu Sheng" and the back is cast with patterns of people and horses; On the front, "You Sheng" is cast, and on the other side, the pattern of man and chicken is cast, which highlights the relationship between man and the zodiac.
There is a kind of zodiac money, which has a double circle on the front, with twelve characters cast in the inner circle and zodiac characters cast in the outer circle at the corresponding places of the twelve characters; On the back, the word "troublesome" is on the left, and the word "order" is on the right. There are Tota gods on the top and beasts on the bottom.
There is also a kind of Chinese zodiac money with a pattern in the form of serial beads. The zodiac signs on the front of the money are embedded in twelve small circles, with the perforation as the center, six small circles around to form a circle, and the outer circle is surrounded by six small circles, separated by moire patterns, and the twelve zodiac signs are in the shape of beads. Patterns such as lotus, reed and double geese are cast on the back. In addition, some Chinese zodiac coins are cast with Kyrgyz characters such as "long life and wealth" and "peace in the world"; Those with gossip cast on the back are called "gossip money"; On the back, life's core monuments's star official is cast, which is called "life's core monuments Money", and there are Zhang Tianshi's exorcism, tortoise and crane's longevity, promotion of officials and knighthood, dragon descending and tiger crouching, etc.
Rats come first
In the Chinese zodiac, why does the mouse that everyone cries out for beat take the lead?
according to folklore, the jade emperor called the zodiac to hold a ranking meeting, and the eight immortals, such as pigs, rats, cows and horses, crossed the sea to show their magical powers and rushed to the meeting together. Brother Niu was simple and honest, and set off early to fight for the first place, but the clever mouse quietly jumped on the back of the cow and stood on the head of the cow at the critical moment. As a result, Brother Niu had to give way to Brother Mouse, ranking second.
Another legend says that animals have odd and even toes. No matter whether it's bipedal or quadruped, the number of toes is the same before and after, or left and right, except for the mouse, which has four toes in the front foot and five toes in the back foot. Therefore, when arranging the zodiac, the mouse's feet are odd and even, so they are among the best because of their differences.
the origin of the zodiac
the zodiac is also called the genus, or the genus, which is abbreviated as genus. According to the interpretation of Chinese characters, "life" means "birth" and "Xiao" means similarity and similarity.
to talk about the Chinese zodiac in China, we should start with the year of the trunk and branch of the China lunar calendar. The lunar calendar is sometimes called "summer calendar", and the method of chronology in the summer calendar is to use the method of chronology of trunk and branch, in order of cooperation between heavenly stems and earthly branches. There are ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches. Heavenly stems and earthly branches matches, such as Jiazi, Ebony, etc., are arranged in 6 groups by analogy, commonly known as "Sixty Flowers Jiazi". These 6 groups match the year and cycle once every 6 years; Match with the month, and cycle once in June (5 years); Match with the day, and cycle once every 6 days; In line with the time, 12 hours (the ancients counted one hour every two hours) went back and forth once. In this cycle, year, month, day and time have their own calendars. The ancients paid attention to the unity of heaven and man, so they took 12 kinds of animals to match the twelve earthly branches. When calculating the year, all the years with "Chen", such as Jiachen and Bingchen, are called the Year of the Loong, and people born in the Year of the Loong belong to the dragon, and so on. Later, people thought that a certain year of life was just like something, such as Laban Xiao, born in the year of the Dragon, or the Chinese Zodiac for short.
why does the zodiac take twelve?
"Zhou Li" says: "Ten palms are two years old, ten palms are two months old, ten palms are two days old, ten palms are two days old, and ten palms are twenty-eight stars. We can distinguish their narratives so as to know the position of heaven." The division of time is progressive with twelve years, twelve years a year, twelve o'clock a day in December. In ancient times, heaven has always been dominant and earth has always been subordinate. Ten heavenly stems are also called ten mothers, and the corresponding twelve earthly branches are called twelve sons.
The birth of the zodiac has an astronomical background. In primitive times, our ancestors experienced the cycle of alternating cold and summer. In the Song Dynasty, Hong Hao's "The Story of the Song and Mo" said: "The Nuzhen is extremely small, just behind the new moon, and its people don't know the date. When asked, they say,' How many times have I seen the grass?'" In the Song Dynasty, Meng Da Bei Lu also recorded: "Every grass is one year old, and when someone asks about its age, they say how many grasses it is." Another sky watcher found that the moon's profit and loss cycle can be used to measure the length of the year, and that twelve full moons are one year old. This discovery is one of the most accurate achievements of the early calendar, and "twelve" is regarded as "the number of days" that conveys God's will. The sky is dry and the earth needs the support of the earth, the sun and the moon are opposite, and the heaven and the earth are opposite, which is the "Twelve".
There are many animals in the world, so why did the ancients choose these twelve animals as their zodiac signs? In the Qing Dynasty, Liu Xian's Miscellaneous Notes on Guangyang quoted Li Changqing's Superficial Remarks on Songxia Pavilion: "Why is Zi a mouse?" Yue: the sky is born in the child, and if it is not consumed, it will not open. Rats consume insects. So the night is not yet central, and the positive mouse has to wait, so the child belongs to the mouse. The ground is ugly, while the cow opens the ground, so ugliness belongs to the cow. If you are born in Yin, if you are born, you will be killed. The murderer, the tiger, the yin, the fear. If you are awesome, you are a tiger, so Yin is a tiger. At the end of the day, the sun rises. Japan is isolated from the body and contains the essence of Taiyin Jade Rabbit, so it is a rabbit. Chen, the divination of March, is when the dragons are raining, so Chen belongs to the dragon. The last person, the divination in April, is lush at the time, and the snake is in its place. Also, when the snake was not on the road, it was a snake. At noon, the anode is born and the yin is born. Horses are healthy and never leave the ground, and they are also yin, so they belong to horses in the afternoon. A sheep is not a sheep because it bites untimely grass and grows. At the time of applying, the apes crow at sunset, and their arms are stretched out. By analogy, chaos is rampant, so the application belongs to monkeys. Unitary, when the moon comes out < P >, the moon is the body of a golden rooster, so it belongs to a chicken. At that time, the dog kept the house, so it was a dog. At the time of Hai, pigs were eating, so Hai was a pig. "
another way of saying it is that the selection and arrangement of the twelve zodiac animals are determined according to the daily activity time.
There are various legends about the arrangement of the zodiac. These stories are like jokes to amuse people or fables to belittle evil and promote good, with strong literary elements.
In China, everyone has their own animal sign, you are a tiger, he is a rabbit, I am a dragon and so on. To know a person's age geometry, just ask his animal sign and you will probably know. It is said that when former Japanese Prime Minister tanaka kakuei visited China for the first time, he gave Zhou Enlai, then Prime Minister of the State Council, a riddle: There are only twelve in China, but everyone has one, which is rare in foreign countries. What is the answer? Premier Zhou couldn't help laughing after listening, and blurted out: Twelve zodiac signs. This anecdote has become a beautiful talk that shows Premier Zhou's agile thinking and is widely circulated.
Whenever the Spring Festival comes, people love to say that this year is the Year of the Loong, the year of the dragon. Next year is year of the snake, and the year after next is the Year of the Horse. Tracing back to its historical origin and cultural background, it naturally leads to the following topics.
The ancient records of the 12 Zodiacs
Since the reign of Emperor Shun, China has started to use the "Chronology of the Branches and Branches" which combines ten symbols of heavenly stems and twelve symbols of earthly branches. The method of animal chronology originated from the nomadic minorities in the west and north of ancient China. "The Book of the Tang Dynasty" states: "The year of the Year of the Tiger is marked by twelve things. If the year is in Yin, it is called the Year of the Tiger." Zhao Yi, a famous textual research scholar in Qing Dynasty, made a textual research in Yu Yu Cong Kao: "In the early days, the custom of benefiting the northern part of China didn't have the twelve characters of son, ugliness, yin and Mao, but when rats, cows, tigers and rabbits were divided into years, by the time of Han Dynasty, they called Han Xie (Khan) money to live in Wuyuan, which was mixed with Qi people, and it spread in China, so it didn't waste their ears.
The zodiac was first seen in The Book of Songs, the first poetry collection in the world. "The Book of Songs Xiaoya Chegong" says: "It's an auspicious day and it's noon, so I'm short of horses." See also "Book of Rites, Moon Order and Winter Season": "Unearth cattle to send cold air." When did the theory of the zodiac come into being? There is a historical cloud: it should be formed in the Han Dynasty at the latest. Its basis is the cloud in Wang Chong's "On the Balance of Things" in the Eastern Han Dynasty: "Yin, wood, its birds, tigers. Hey, the soil is also, its birds and dogs are also. " Another cloud said, "Afternoon, Ma Ye. Son, mouse also. Unitary, chicken also. ..... Shen, monkey also. " * * * Put forward eleven zodiac names. In addition, in Zhao Ye's "Wu Yue Chun Qiu" in the Eastern Han Dynasty, "Wu Zaichen is the dragon." Just added "Chen Long", and completed the zodiac. It can be seen that the zodiac has been formed in the Eastern Han Dynasty. As for the use of the zodiac, it has appeared at least in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. The Biography of Yuwen Hu, a northern history, records a letter written to him by Yuwen Hu's mother, which reads: "Your brother was born in Wuchuan Town, the eldest was a mouse, the second was a rabbit, and you were a snake." It can be seen that at that time, the Chinese zodiac was widely used by the people to record people's birth years.
However, in the mid-197s, that is, in December 1975, thousands of bamboo slips were found in the unearthed cultural relics of No.11 Qin Tomb in Shuihudi, Yunmeng, Hubei Province. Among them, "Sunrise Thief" clearly records the words used to predict the appearance characteristics of thieves in the zodiac. The appearance of this miracle proves that the zodiac was used in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Because the 11th Qin Tomb was buried in the 3th year of the first emperor, that is, in 217 BC. have