Relevant viewpoints of Mu Niu

One view is that herding cattle and Liu Ma are ordinary unicycles improved by Zhuge Liang. This theory comes from historical records such as History of Song Dynasty, Talks on Houshan and Historical Records. The wooden wheelbarrow was called a deer cart in the Han Dynasty, and it was called a wooden ox and a flowing horse after Zhuge Liang improved it, but it was called a wheelbarrow in the Northern Song Dynasty. This statement is also supported by historical data such as the relief of the unicycle on the back of the unknown que of the Eastern Han Dynasty in Pujiawan, Quxian County, Sichuan Province, and it is believed that these unicycles of the Eastern Han Dynasty all reproduce the appearance of wooden cows and flowing horses.

One view is that the wooden ox is a novel automatic machine. "The Biography of Zu Chongzhi in Southern Qi Dynasty" said: "Zhuge Liang's wooden ox is a horse, not because of Feng Shui, but because of machines, and no manpower is needed." This means that Zu Chongzhi has built a better automatic machine on the basis of a wooden cow and a flowing horse. Based on this inference, gear manufacturing machinery was widely used in the Three Kingdoms period, and the Muniu Liuma, which was admired by later generations, could not be the existing wheelbarrow in the Han Dynasty, but the automatic machinery made by using the gear principle that Zu Chongzhi was interested in.

The third point of view is that Muniu and Liu Ma are wagons and unicycles, but the views of which is a wagon and which is a unicycle are diametrically opposite. In Song Dynasty, Gao Cheng said in Volume VIII of "The Times": "Those who are wooden cows have a front axle today; The horse is the only pusher today, and the people call it Jiangzhou Car. " On the other hand, Fan Wenlan thinks that cow is a human unicycle with four legs. The so-called one foot is a wheel, and the so-called four feet are four wooden pillars installed in front of and behind the car; Liu Ma is an improved four-legged wooden cow, that is, a human-driven four-wheeled vehicle. Tian Jiangyu, a historian in Jin Dynasty, once thought this was human tricycles. Li Kexi, a writer in the Tang Dynasty, also thought so. I really can't tell who is right and who is wrong.

There is another saying, which is more interesting, that is, whether it is one thing or another. For example, Tan thinks that a wooden cow and a flowing horse are the same thing, and it is a new type of manpower wooden four-wheeled vehicle. Wang Kai believes that wooden cattle and mobile horses are two different things, the former is a human unicycle, and the latter is an improved four-wheeled vehicle. Wang Kui also thinks that the two are the same thing, and made a model of the appearance of a cow and the gait of a horse. Chen Congzhou and others investigated the relics, width, slope and load-bearing data of the existing ancient plank road in Guangyuan, northern Sichuan, and thought it was two things: the wooden cow had a front axle, and when it was introduced, it was pulled in front and pushed behind; The flowing horse is roughly the same as the wooden ox flowing horse, but it has no front axle, does not need to be pulled by people, only moves by thrust, and is shaped like a horse.