Soon it will be the Year of the Tiger in the Lunar Calendar, and "tiger" has become a popular theme.
Today we will talk about the nickname of the "King of hundreds of beasts" tiger - the big worm.
People who have seen "Water Margin" must remember that there is such a description in the chapter of Wu Song Fighting Tiger: "I only heard a sound behind the chaotic tree, and a large white-fronted insect jumped out."
The "big bug" here refers to the tiger.
"Wu Song Fighting the Tiger" (excerpt) Liu Jijie
As one of the largest cats, how did the tiger, Asia's top carnivore, be associated with bugs?
The earliest written record of the tiger being called a "big worm" is the Jin Dynasty Gan Bao's "Search for God", which says that "Fan, the king of Funan, raised a tiger in the mountains, and there were criminals, thrown into the tiger, did not eat, but was a yuzhi; hence the name of the tiger is big worm." ”
In fact, in ancient times people usually used "worm" to refer to all animals. As hao Yixing, a famous scholar of the Qing Dynasty, commented on the chapter of Erya Shi Worm: "Either line or fly, or hair or silkworm, or medium or scale, with insects as elephants." ”
The ancients also classified all the insects: birds as feather worms, beasts as caterpillars, turtles as beetles, fish as scale worms, and artificial worms.
"Double Tiger" Yang Shanshen
And "big" has the meaning of long (zhǎng), such as calling the first of the brothers "big brother"; "big" is also an honorific, such as calling "adult", "doctor", "king" and so on.
Tigers are caterpillars and are the kings of the beasts. The ancients matched the leader of the "five worms" with the five elements, and the god of the West was the white tiger. "Great worm" means the leader of the caterpillar, the king of the beasts. This is the same as the eastern god dragon is the length of the scale insect, and the southern god phoenix is the king of the feather insects and is called "dragon king" and "phoenix".
Therefore, calling a tiger a "big bug" is actually a "honorific title". Do you understand?
(The pictures in the text are from the Internet, if there is infringement, please contact to delete)
Editor-in-charge: Jia Tingyi