Legends about Four Holy Beasts

Xuanwu is a spiritual thing composed of turtles and snakes. Xuanwu originally meant Xuanming, and the ancient sounds of Wu and Ming are interlinked. Wu means black; Ghost means yin. At first, Xuan Ming described the turtle divination as follows: the turtle's back is black, and the turtle divination first invited the turtle to ask questions in the underworld, brought back the answers and showed them to the world in the form of divination. Therefore, the earliest Xuanwu is the tortoise. Since then, the meaning of Xuanming has been expanding. Turtles live in rivers, lakes and seas (including turtles), so Xuan Ming became a water god; The tortoise lives long, and Xuan Ming has become a symbol of immortality; The first underworld was in the north. In the Yin and Shang Dynasties, Oracle Bone Inscriptions divined that "divination will point to the north", so Xuan Ming became a northern god again.

Xuanwu, like other three spirits, is also derived from the 28 stars on earth: bucket, ox, female, air, danger, house and wall.

However, people after ancient times have the following explanations for Xuanwu. Xuanwu is a tortoise. "Book of Rites. Quli Shang says: "OK, there are Zhu birds in front, then Xuanwu ..." Xuanwu is a tortoise and snake. Supplement to Hong Xingzu's Songs of Chu: "Xuanwu is called tortoise and snake. Located in the north, it is called Xuan. There are scales in the body, so it is called martial arts. It is a combination of snakes, turtles and snakes.

"Selected Works" Volume 15 Zhang Heng's "Fu Xuan" said: "Xuanwu leaves a shell, and the snake twists and turns." Shan Li said, "The tortoise and the snake met in Xuanwu. "The Book of the Later Han Dynasty, Wang Liangchuan and Hong Fu Fu" says: Wang Liang is the Lord of Xuanwu. " Note: "Wu Wu, the god of the north, is a combination of tortoise and snake." "Xuanwu" is the water god, the god of the north. Wang Liangchuan in the later Han Dynasty: "Xuanwu is the name of the water god." Rebuilding the Integration of Weft Books "Volume 6" The Emperor of the River Map ":"Born in Xuanwu, north of the town, the main wind and rain. 」

However, Xuanwu was upgraded by later Taoist priests to the Northern Emperor-Emperor Zhenwu. Different from the other three spirits. Other green dragons and white tigers only worked as gatekeepers of mountain temples, and Zhu Bird worked as Xuan Nv for nine days.

Xuanwu gained value in the Song Dynasty and was personified. This is inseparable from the help of the emperors of the Song Dynasty. In the early Song Dynasty, Zhenwu and Tian Peng were legendary generals in heaven. In the first year of Tianxi, something happened in the military camp. In the seven-year book The Origin of Things: "Some soldiers saw a snake, and the sergeant built a real martial arts school because of it. In April of the following year, the spring hall was endless, and the sick people drank more. When Zhenzong heard about this, he wrote a letter to build a view at the scene and named it "Xiangyuan". This is probably the earliest Zhenwu Temple in China.

The story of Zhenwu Emperor is often said by later generations. During Yang Di's reign, the Jade Emperor reincarnated one of his three souls as the queen of the music-making country. He was tired of the world and abandoned his position to practice in Wudang Mountain. He successfully ascended to heaven and defended the north, and posthumous title Xuanwu.

A long time ago, hundreds of birds lived in a big forest. After they are full, some sing, some dance, some chase and have fun, and live a carefree life every day.

But there is a simple and unremarkable bird called Phoenix. It doesn't play when it is full like other birds, but collects fruits and food from morning till night. It also picked up the fruits thrown away by other birds one by one and collected them in the cave. The glib magpie laughed at it as a greedy ghost, and even the clumsy crow ridiculed it as a big fool. After listening to these cynicism, Phoenix was neither angry nor discouraged, and still did the work that was looked down upon by birds as usual.

Not long after, the grass on the mountain was burnt and the leaves on the tree could not grow. All the birds can't find food, some are dizzy with hunger, and some are starving. There is crying in the forest. One day, Phoenix came back from far away to eat. Seeing this scene, she quickly opened the cave and distributed the food she had accumulated for many years to all the birds to help them tide over the difficulties.

In order to thank Phoenix for saving his life, all the birds chose the most beautiful feathers from themselves and gathered together to make a colorful and dazzling bird coat for Phoenix. Since then, Phoenix has become the most beautiful bird, and everyone unanimously elected it as the king of birds. Every year, on the birthday of Phoenix, hundreds of birds fly to congratulate it. This is "a hundred birds fly at the phoenix".

White tiger, like the first two, originated from totem culture. The White Tiger originated in the west of Buron, and everyone called this tribe Shenhu. And this statement can also reflect people's worship of animals. In other words, the Queen Mother of the West is a western goddess. According to Shan Hai Jing, she is a strange god who is half man and half beast. Although she looks like a human, she is full of tiger teeth and leopard tail and is good at growling. So the Queen Mother of the West is the God of Tiger and Leopard, but later the image of the Queen Mother of the West became more and more beautiful and became a beautiful goddess. After the rise of Taoism, the Queen Mother of the West was regarded as a god and became the Queen Mother, that is, the first lady of the divine world. Thus, the Queen Mother of the West became an elegant fairy leader. In this way, the white tiger can only degenerate and become the messenger and mount of the Queen Mother of the West. The Taoist book also says, "The God of the Golden White Tiger is the envoy of the Queen Mother, not the true shape of the Queen Mother." In this way, due to the promotion of the queen mother, the white tiger took over the west and became a beast representing the west.

In fact, there are many different kinds of dragons in the development of China society. The Qinglong I introduced is one of the nicknames of dragons. However, in the development of dragon culture, the dragon was deified by people, so the dragon jumped from the spirit beast of the Central Plains to one of the four great beasts in the world. Dragons are arranged as oriental spirit beasts, so they are named after cyan. From then on, the dragon in the sky was called "Qinglong". Also because the dragon is deified, relatively speaking, the mystery is getting stronger and stronger.

Meaning of each era: Dragon is the totem of clans before Shang Dynasty. It was not until the Shang Dynasty that people began to use dragons for other purposes:

First, pray for rain: With the development of agriculture, people should have favorable weather conditions. Because people always think that dragons can cause trouble, people hold Dragon Boat Festival activities regularly. There are forty-three clouds in the classic: Zuo's Spring and Autumn Biography: "Dragon sees it", which means that the moon has been built, and the body of the black dragon has lost sight of the East. Everything is flourishing and it is raining hard, so it is far from a hundred valleys to worship heaven.

Second, the dragon is not like a dragon: from the Shang Dynasty to the Warring States Period, the dragon was not mature enough to be directly comparable to the emperor in all aspects, so it was called "the dragon is married and entrusted by the gentleman" by Wang Yi.

It was not until the Han Dynasty that the dragon was finally directly quoted by the emperor. It is recorded in Hanshu that Gaozu was born in Li Zhongyang, Pei County, and his surname was Liu Ji. Father said Taigong and mother said Liu Wei. First, Wei Liu rested in Osaka Ozawa and dreamed of meeting God. When the thunder was dim, the squire looked at it and saw the dragon on it. I was pregnant and gave birth to my great-grandfather. Gaozu is a man with a long face and a beautiful face. 〃

Gaozu is Liu Bang. His mother met Xiaolong in her dream and gave birth to Gaozu's story (although some people think that this was done by Xiao He for her own publicity), but this concept has a great influence on later generations. From then on, the emperor was a dragon, and the dragon was the symbol of the emperor. The emperor's articles also add dragon characters, such as dragon chair, dragon robe, dragon boat and dragon bed. This is why the dragon symbolizes imperial power.

From the beginning, the symbol of the dragon hasn't changed much. It is only with the reference of the emperor that it becomes more and more noble. But the nobler the dragon is, it doesn't mean that it is becoming less and less common among the people. Although most of the historical relics carved are either officials or rich people. But the application of dragons in art has always been very popular. For example, it is used as a feng shui decoration at home, or there are dragon patterns or dragon dances in the Spring Festival and dragon boat races in the Dragon Boat Festival. All these prove that dragons are gradually being used by civilians, and these uses all take the meaning of auspicious dragons.