The Lunar Year of the Tiger is approaching, in the ancient notes, there are quite a lot of content about "tigers", which can be roughly divided into four categories: one is to talk about tiger plagues, that is, the terrible records of tigers eating people; one is to talk about "Wusong", that is, how the folk tiger heroes use various wonderful methods to eliminate harm for the people; one is to talk about tigers, the legend that people who are eaten by tigers will become a kind of ghost, guiding others to the place where the tiger is for them to eat; the fourth type is the strangest, saying that people will become tigers - and this type of notes is far more than the reader imagines. It can even be said that it is a major item in zhiwei's notes.
Ancient tiger hunting diagram
First, the ironic cool official: life does not rule the people and dies cannibals
The legend of people turning into tigers really deserves the four words of "long history" in ancient China. Liu An's Huainanzi of the Western Han Dynasty records that "the cow mourned for seven days, turned into a tiger, and killed his brother", and the cow lament here refers to the bull mourning of the Lu people in the Spring and Autumn Period; there is a record of "Tengzhou Yiren" turning into a tiger in the Later Han Shu Junguo Zhi; Zhang Hua of the Western Jin Dynasty said in the "Natural History": "Someone in Jiangling turned into a tiger." And the "man turning into a tiger" recorded in the "Book of Qi Harmony" is a relatively detailed article of that period, saying that in the first year of the Taiyuan Dynasty, Xue Daoquan of Anlu County, Jiangxia County, suddenly fell ill with madness, and how to cure it, "suddenly lost track, so he became a tiger; cannibalism cannot be counted." A year later, he returned to his home in human form, became a high official, and when he chatted with people at night, he said that he had "been sick and crazy in the past, turned into a tiger, and eaten people for a year", and listed the appearance and location of the people he ate, who knew that there was a person sitting in the same seat, and his relatives were the victims. In the end, Xue Daoqian starved to death in prison.
Xue Daoqing's note, which is immediately known at a glance, is a metaphor and satire on those corrupt officials and cool officials whose way of governing is "fiercer than the tiger". There are many more such notes, such as the Book of Tang: "During the Wu Dynasty, Chenzhou Zuo Shi, sick tiger, captured is stopped, and the tiger hair is raw." Another example is the Han Xuancheng County Shoufeng Shao in the Southern Dynasty Ren Fang's "ShuYi Ji", "one day suddenly turned into a tiger, eating the people of the county." The common people shouted to him in unison, "Seal the Messenger King", and it did not come back, so the people at that time said: "There is no seal for the king, and there is no rule over the people and death." "It can be seen that people hate him.
Narration
According to the view in the Book of Differences, what kind of person would become a tiger? "A man without virtue is a tiger." In today's parlance, it is the bad guys who "get old" who are the easiest to turn into tigers. For example, in the "Shuyi Ji" (which is not the same as the previous "Shuyi Ji") written by the owner of Dongxuan in the Qing Dynasty, during the Kangxi Dynasty, Laibin County, Liuzhou, Guangxi, "had a villager who came out early every day and returned late, and he would bring dead pigs, sheep, deer, dogs and other things to his home, thinking that it was normal." Later, his son wanted to marry his daughter-in-law and needed pigs and sheep to worship the gods, and his wife told him that it was best to buy live animals, and when he saw that he was embarrassed, his wife was suspicious in his heart, "Everything that is suspected of being in the past is theft", so he let his son follow behind him to observe. "When I reached a mountain, I saw his father enter the cave, and a tiger roared out." The son was frightened, thinking that his father must have died in the cave, and when the tiger went far, he rushed into the hole and saw only his father's clothes. He exited the cave, confused, but saw the tiger return to the cave, and in a moment his father came out of the cave in his full clothes. "His son was horrified, and he was anxious to return to his mother." When my father returned home to see the looks of the mother and son, he knew that his secret had been seen through by them, so he said, "I am waiting for Ru to see through, and I will not return today", and said and walked outside. His wife tugged at his clothes to prevent him from leaving, and he broke free and ripped off only one of his socks. Later, his son encountered a tiger in the mountains, one of whose feet was a human foot, "because this tiger must be its father."
In the forty years of the Kangxi Dynasty, there was also an incident in Dongyang County, Zhejiang Province, where an old man turned into a tiger. There was an old lady surnamed Zhang, who was more than seventy years old, and "he came out for no reason at all times, and he didn't return for several days." Her son did not know what she was going to do, so he secretly followed her, and followed her all the way to the deep mountains, into a land shrine, and then there was a roar from the temple, and the son rushed in to see, "See his mother Fang hesitating into a tiger." The son shouted, grabbed her hair from behind, which had not yet had time to change, and clutched it tightly, "The mother hurt the face of the child with her claws", the son was in pain, let go of his hand, and his mother jumped away. The son returned home, and after the injury was healed, he returned to the mountain to look for it, "seeing a tiger with a hair on his head", followed by several small tigers, and the son did not dare to approach, and returned home in fear.
No wonder those old people who fell down on their own and blackmailed the helpers were always extremely vicious and unreasonable, and it turned out that they were all the reserve team of "turning tigers"!
Second, Yu Lost Virtue: Scolding the mother for turning into a red tiger
However, it is hard to say that the conditions for changing tigers are "bad + old people", not always, in fact, many people who change tigers are not old, and only account for a "bad" word.
The Ming Dynasty notebook "Continued Ear Tan" tells of such a thing:
"Continuing Ear Tan"
There was a woodcutter named Wang San, a "su rogue", who somehow mixed up with Zhang Tianshi to learn spells. Zhang Tianshi later discovered that he was misbehaving, taught him only a little something, and drove him home, and before leaving, he gave him a cloth bag and instructed him: "Let Ru Ping have enough food to eat in this bag." Wang San opened it and looked at it, it turned out to be a tiger skin, and there was a charm. As long as Zhang San put on the tiger skin and read the spell again, he could turn into a tiger. After he returned home, he came out early and returned late every day, turned into a tiger, and went around robbing the pigs and sheep raised by other people in the village. Although his wife did not know it, but seeing so many "harvests" in the family every day, she could not help but be suspicious, so she followed him out of the door, saw him in a dry well to take out the tiger skin cloak, just halfway through the spell, the wife jumped down and grabbed one of his hands, "can not be transformed." Since then, Wang San has become a three-legged tiger and no longer returns home. The people of the village heard about it, occasionally encountered it on the road, and were not afraid of it, but only called it by its name, and it "wagged its tail and left."
In the notebook "The Garden of Foxes" written by Qian Xiyan in the Ming Dynasty, it also records a bad man turning into a tiger in disguise:
《The Garden of Foxes》
"In the thirty-third year of the Wanli Calendar, there were two brothers in a certain county village, and their brother tasted a tiger skin." This man was a scoundrel who one day went into the mountains with tiger skins, and in the deep hazel grass "looked around at no one, he undressed and took off his hat, skinned himself, and transformed into a tiger", met a woodcutter who cut wood and a woman alone, he "grabbed and ate it", and then took off the tiger skin and became a person to go home after eating enough. His wife sensed something and reminded the little uncle, "Your brother seems to be becoming less and less human, you have to be careful." His brother did not believe it, and one day he just followed his brother up the mountain, "walking to the place where the mountains are deep and lonely, and the tall trees are hanging in the shade", and suddenly the brother's figure is gone. He climbed the tree to look at it, saw the whole process of his brother turning into a colorful white tiger, was frightened and scattered, and returned home to tell his sister-in-law. After a while, the brother returned in human form, and his wife angrily scolded: "You have come back after eating people and eating?" He was horrified, "bearded, the corners of his eyes were oblique, and his body gradually became white, so he put up a foot and went out the door", and never went home again.
However, unlike the above-mentioned content of changing tigers into diseases, a note in the Ming Dynasty's "Shuzhong Guangji" says that Shangcang used "changing tigers" to punish bad people. There was a man named Tan Ben, who was vicious and cruel by nature, and one day he came home late, saw his mother standing at the door to greet her, and began to scold her. My mother said that I only have one son, because I was worried that you would return at night, I was waiting for you here, but I didn't expect to be scolded by you, and I cried sadly after saying it. He walked away uncaringly, sat down near the city wall and rested, "suddenly made a big noise, stripped off his clothes and turned into a big red tiger, and went straight to the city", until the next day, when he was still lying on the city, the people shot him to death with arrows.
"Shuzhong Guangji"
This kind of note, in fact, is also a metaphor for those who are not evildoers, bullying men and women, and their various tiger and wolf behaviors cannot but make people think that they are actually some colorful beasts.
3. Thinking of Relatives: An Zhi this tiger is not the Father
However, in the ancient notes of the various "people turning into tigers", there is another category, which is the "change of tigers" of relatives and friends, and from the text alone, it seems that no special meaning can be found between the lines. For example, Wang Shichen recorded several cases in the twenty years of Kangxi in the "Occasional Talk of Chibei": "Jiang Du Yusheng said that he had signed the affairs of Fan Prefecture, and saw the mother of fang FanSi Tuguan turn into a tiger, and when he arrived home on the tenth day of the next day, he spun into the mountains. Tao Sheng of Anshun Province, who has a sister and a suitable person, has a son, and once he enters the mountain with the group of tigers, he is a Judean person, and he walks in a team with the group of tigers, soaring against the cliff, as if walking on the ground. When he arrived home for a few days, he looked after his son and went away. Over time, the gradual tiger shape is no longer there. A peasant housewife in an octagonal well also turned into a tiger. Judging from the three notes, they are just flat and direct descriptions of the feminized tiger.
"Chibei Even Talk"
For example, in Wang Wei's "Autumn Lantern Cong", it is mentioned that a filial piety in Shaanxi was mentioned, he took his servants to rush in the mountains, the wind soared, a tiger shook his head and ran, the servant fled in fright, and Xiao Lian "trembled and could not move." The tiger came to the front and spoke a human voice: "Jun Mo fear, I am the same year's friend Mou Ye." In previous years, Ma Yi fell into shock and changed shape, and the family did not know, and every thought of it was as painful as a cut. Knowing that the king has passed this, he is worried about sending a message to his wife and children, and now he has turned into a foreign object, and there is no need to think of each other, and there are hundreds of gold in the library, which can be excavated as subsistence funds. After saying that, he urged Xiao Lian to leave quickly, saying that he was still quite clear in his heart, and once it was over the afternoon, he would be beastly and could not recognize any friends. Xiao Lian quickly fled, went to the home of his friend of the same year, and told the truth, "and dug the ground to get gold, and began to cry bitterly and believe."
As for these widely circulated legends of the "Huahu" in the folk, how should we understand them, the author thinks that in fact, most of the "origins" can be divided into two types:
One is that the person who "changed the tiger" was actually eaten by the tiger, such as a teenager named Ah San in Guangdong who wrote in the "Record of Hearings", when he was studying in a private school, the teacher had something to go home, he chatted with several classmates, and everyone said that he had not eaten meat for a long time, and his mouth was tight. Ah San said how difficult it was, I had a way, and then walked out of the academy, and after a while, he came back with a dead pig on his back. The students were very happy and took it home and ate it. After half a year, one day the teacher went out again, and everyone asked Ah San to make a pig beating tooth sacrifice again. "When the party is in the middle of the summer, the museum is near the mountain, there is a land shrine next to it", Ah San walked in, and the students "Fang wanted to enter the temple, watch what he was doing, suddenly saw a tiger, and rushed away", frightening the students to hold their heads and scurry, and their liver and gallbladder were split. After a long time, everyone entered the land shrine with trembling, and when they saw Ah San's clothes thrown on the ground, they said that he must have turned into a tiger and left, so they went to tell Ah San's father. The next night, when his father saw a tiger crouching in front of his house, "Don't go, don't hurt anyone," he said to him in a sad tone, "If you are a san, go back to the mountains." The tiger trails its tail and walks, "from the twilight of the morning, the years are often taken for granted, and the townspeople see it, and the name is avoided." Obviously, ah san's first encounter with the dead pig and the murder in the ancestral hall half a year later have nothing to do with it, but writing it in the same note will make people associate the two.
The second is far-fetched because of the thought of a loved one who has lost its whereabouts. In the Qing Dynasty notebook "Jiyi Xinjian", it is written that during the Qianlong Pengshen period, There was a tiger plague in Guizhou, and one day at noon, a colorful tiger ran to the home of a family in Bijie, lay down on the bed in the bedroom and slept, and thousands of mountain people surrounded the house, but none of them dared to enter. One of the hunters came up with the idea that it would be better to rip open the tiles of the bedroom roof and shoot arrows down, when the owner of the house cried and said, "How do you know that this tiger is not made by my father?" So he stopped everyone's attack and expelled them only by beating gongs and drums. It wasn't until the evening that the tiger woke up and slowly got up and walked away. Someone peeked at it from the city wall and found that the tiger turned back three times in one step, "if there is a state of love" - it is not difficult to see that this is just the embodiment of those daring beasts that break into people's homes as the embodiment of their relatives.
Nowadays, people with a little common sense know that it is impossible for people to become tigers, but the legend of "people turning tigers" in ancient notes is really deep and intriguing.