Avoidance is a long-standing cultural taboo. In feudal society, the common people avoided the secrecy of the saints, the subjects avoided the emperor, the people avoided the officials, and the children avoided the parents, etc., just like a set of strict system of secrecy. This kind of avoidance is sometimes extremely harmful, such as the prison of words, which often sinned against words; sometimes it also made people spit rice and made a lot of jokes.
Avoidance is mainly based on names
Avoidance is a matter of considerable importance in feudal society, especially at the top. The so-called "avoidance" usually means that when writing an article or speaking, the name of the monarch or the honorable leader cannot be written or spoken directly, and even the homophone cannot be mentioned. The system of avoiding secrets originated from the Zhou Rites, but in order to prevent the expansion of avoidance, the Zhou Dynasty still made various restrictions, such as "poetry books are not secreted, linwen is not secret, two names are not partial, and they have been not secreted" and so on. However, since Qin Shi Huang established the absolute monarchy system, the trend of avoidance is to become more demanding and even form laws, and it has also formed the emperor's language hegemony. For example, the character "朕", which was originally a first-person pronoun in ancient times, has become a special pronoun for emperors since Qin Shi Huang. An extreme example is the "Forbidden Heavenly High Title" in volume IV of the Rong Zhai Continuation: "Emperor Xuan of Zhou claimed to be the Emperor of Tianyuan, and did not listen to people being called heaven, high, high, and great. If an official's name is committed, he shall be changed. Those who changed their surname to Gao were Jiang, and the Nine Tribes called Gao Zu the Changzu. In the middle of political harmony, it is forbidden to use dragons, heavens, kings, jade, emperors, shang, saints, emperors, etc. as names. So Mao Youlong but famous friends, Ye Tian generals but famous generals..." Although this situation did not last long in history, it reflected the souls of the emperors who were distorted by the autocratic system.
Avoidance is mainly based on names, so the study of naming occurs at the same time as the avoidance system. The Book of Rites and The Inner Rules says, "Whoever is named shall not be named by the sun or the moon; nor shall he be named by the kingdom, nor shall he be concealed from the disease." The son of a doctor and a scholar does not dare to share the same name as Shizi. The first three points are aimed at everyone, there is universality, Zheng Xuanzhu said: "In the end, it is easy to be secret." "Sun, moon and country names are common words, which are unusable because they are difficult to avoid; "hidden disease" sentence Zheng Xuan notes: "It is difficult to heal." "This article has the meaning of indecent and inconvenient to use. Shizi, that is, the prince, will be the son of heaven or the prince of princes, and the same name as shizi is easy to be touched.
Ouyang Xiu's "Guitian Record"
Chinese consonant characters are a vast ocean, and the content of the name association can also cause trouble for people. Volume 1 of Ouyang Xiu's "Guitian Record" says: The Northern Song Dynasty poet Song Qi and his brother Song Jiaobu were famous in the world, and they were called "Second Song". When Emperor Renzong of Song was in charge of the song dynasty, Emperor Renzong wanted to reuse him. A villain said: "The surname is Fu Guo, and the name should be suburban." "Suburb" is the name of the southern suburb of Tianzi at the winter solstice, and the analysis of the speakers is to say that the name of Songjiao has the potential meaning of "practicing the position of heaven". He also said: "The suburban, the jiao, the jiao, the alternative name, 'Song Jiao', whose words are unknown (xiang)." This statement made the word "Song suburb" become a rumor of the demise of the Song Dynasty. As a result, Song Renzong did not reuse him for the time being, and Song Jiao changed his name to "庠", the word "Gong Order". Later, the Song Dynasty retired from his position as a priest and ended in a happy life. The analysis of the word "suburb" belongs to the polysemy of the word, and the association of "suburb" and "intersection" belongs to the one-tone multi-word. Such a taboo is difficult for people to predict when naming names.
There was a student who studied in a private school, because his father's name was Gu, and whenever he encountered the word "gu", he had to read it to "father". For example, when you read "Guan Zi Herdsmen", "Those who accumulate in the warehouse that do not dry up, do five grains", and "five grains" are pronounced as "five fathers". Read Liu Yuxi's "Book of Shangdu Situ" "The Anointing Rain of a Hundred Valleys", "Hundred Valleys" is pronounced as "Hundred Fathers". The same window listened and teased him: "You have 'five fathers' for a while, 'hundred fathers' for a while, how many fathers are there?" ”
Five generations of Feng Dao, successive dynasties for the phase. Once, he ordered a disciple to preach the Tao Te Ching. The doorman thought that this was a crime, and even said: "I don't dare to say it, but I don't dare to say it, I don't dare to say it." Feng Dao didn't feel like laughing when he heard it. It turns out that the first sentence of the Tao Te Ching is: "The Tao is the Tao, the very Tao." "Even offend feng Dao's secret."
During the Song Dynasty, there was a state official Tian Deng, who secretly said the word "deng", and was not allowed to mention it together with the phonetic character, and whoever violated it would be severely reprimanded, and many officials were flogged for this. Therefore, people in a state call "lamp" "fire" and dare not violate it. Lantern Festival lights were displayed as usual, so a large book notice was posted on the city, saying: "According to the custom, the state will set fire for three days." Everyone who saw it laughed. The saying that "only state officials are allowed to set fires, and the people are not allowed to light lamps" originates from this.
Southern Song Dynasty Qian Liangchen, secretly speaking of his name. He had a son who was said to be very intelligent, and whenever he read the history of the Bible and saw the word "good minister", he would read it as "daddy". One day, when his son read Mencius' sentence that "today's so-called good ministers, the so-called people's thieves of the ancients", he changed his mouth: "The so-called father of the present, the so-called people's thieves of the ancients." "Originally respected, it was unexpectedly insulted."
There are also strange people who change their names to avoid being secreted by others. Northern Qi had a Xiong Ansheng, who went to meet Heshikai and Xu Zhicai, because Xu Zhicai's father was named Xiong, and Heshikai's father was named An, and he wanted to make xu Zhen with the word "Bear" in his name, and the word "An" was also a crime, so he called himself "Touching Life". Coincidentally, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, there was a Huguang inspector Song Yihe who went to see the governor Yang Sichang, because Yang's father's name was Crane, and in order to avoid secrets, he wrote "Song Yi bird" on the name post.
However, there are also interesting things about the opposite. During the Song Dynasty, there was Xu Shen as the prefect of Changzhou, who secretly pronounced his name. There was a county order under his command to declare the local situation, and after three consecutive reports without seeing approval, he personally went to see Xu Shen. Xu Shen was very annoyed and asked, "As a county commander, don't you know the name of your boss?" This county order did not think so, but said loudly: "If I do not pay attention to the matter I declare to the government, I will apply to the superintendent, and the superintendent will ignore it, and then I will apply to the household department, Shentai, Shen Province, And Shen lai shen, and I will not stop until Shen dies!" Xu Shen had no choice but to laugh at him. This is quite a bit of a "strong order".
Avoidance in life
In the Chinese life customs, carp has many meanings, such as when marrying a wife and welcoming relatives, there must be carp in the dowry; in the New Year's family banquet, there must be a braised carp; there must also be carp on the beam, giving birth to children, and being a guest at the birthday banquet. In this way, there are both "li (carp)" and "yu (fish)", which is a good color head. However, during the Tang Dynasty, the law stipulated that carp was forbidden, and if carp was caught, it should be released immediately, otherwise sixty large plates should be hit. Because, the Tang Emperor's surname is Li, "eating carp" is "eating Li".
The former Qin lord of the Sixteen Kingdoms period, Gong Sheng, was a one-eyed dragon, so he secreted the words "insufficient", "not possessive", "less", "none", "lacking", "injured", "crippled", "destroyed", "partial", "only" and so on. If his subordinates inadvertently commit crimes, they will be tortured by cutting off their legs, breaking their stomachs, pulling ribs, and sawing their necks. Once, when he asked the Tai Doctor to order Cheng Yan to dispense medicine, he asked how much ginseng he needed, and Cheng Yan replied: "Although it is small and not, it can be used by itself." This "no possession" was a big crime, and Xiang Sheng was furious, first chiseling out Cheng Yan's eyes, and then killing him. Therefore, the emperor's avoidance should be especially careful, and if he is not good, he will lose his head. Later Zhao Emperor Shi Hu, "Tiger" was "Wang Meng"; Zhu Quanzhong, a general of the Peasant Army of the Tang Dynasty, was secretly "Zhong" as "Great Sacred Copper"; and Yang Yuqing, the Tang Dynasty Supervisor, was secretly "fish" as "water flower sheep". And so on, clever words, ironic.
Portrait of Emperor Huizong of Song
Even more peculiar, businessmen are forbidden to kill pigs and dogs to avoid it. For example, during the Chongning period of the Northern Song Dynasty, the counselor Fan Zhi was vain and flattering Huizong and said that the saint was born in the year of the Emperor, and the zodiac sign belonged to the dog, and it was not appropriate to kill dogs in the world. The faint-hearted Emperor Huizong listened to him and ordered that the killing of dogs was strictly forbidden in the world. Coincidentally, during the Zhengde period of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Jun, the Duke of Taishi Town, issued a ban on the slaughter of pigs. This year is Zhu Jun's original life year (birth year, the zodiac sign belongs to the pig), and because "Zhu" and "pig" are homophonous, the powerful Zhu Jun strictly ordered the local government not to buy, sell, and slaughter pigs. If there are those who knowingly commit crimes, the whole family will be assigned to the remote areas to charge the army.