This year is the Year of the Tiger, speaking of tigers, what emerges in people's minds is a masculine and powerful image. It is the "white-fronted insect" in Wu Song's tiger fight, and it is the bronze tiger in the tiger cannibal who opens its blood basin and mouth. But mentioning those tiger idioms is very refreshing: tiger tiger wind, dragon tiger spirit, dragon soaring tiger leap. So, what kind of existence does the tiger have in people's minds?
Written by | Lee Shane
Qing Dynasty Yangjiabu Nian painting "Zhenzhai Shenhu".
01
Tiger, king of the mountain beasts also
It lurked in the darkness, its longitudinal stripes merging with the wild grass that grew freely, like a moonlit invisibility cloak, wrapped in majestic power, waiting to jump up and pounce on the prey that had been voyeuring for a long time. However, under the sun, it paced leisurely and majestically on its own territory, the thick flesh pads under its feet stepped on the ground silently, the gorgeous fur on its body was vivid and vivid, and the gold and black seemed to be in harmony with the sun and the night.
Strength and calmness, strength and cunning, the tiger gives man the impression of such a powerful beast. It is the most powerful carnivore on Earth, perched high at the top of the food chain, overlooking enough beings below to feed themselves. It is noble and fierce, is a top hunter, sharp claws and sharp teeth are enough to kill a blow, especially the vertical and horizontal pattern on its forehead, which is misinterpreted as the dazzling word "king", and makes the king of its hundred beasts certified by humans. The so-called "Tiger, the King of the Mountain Beast".
Bengal tiger, painted by Kolkata painters around 1820. Hastings Atlas (Collection of the Marquis and Mrs. Hastings, Bengal, 1813–1823)
The roar of the tiger alone is enough to shock all things. The ancient Chinese believed that the pronunciation of the word "tiger" came from its roar, "tiger, like its sound". The roar of the tiger is truly eerie. The 17th-century naturalist Li Shizhen described the roar of the tiger in the Compendium of Materia Medica as "roaring like thunder, the wind giving birth to it, and the beasts trembling and fearing." Xie Zhaochun, a scribe who was at the same time as him, had personally heard the roar of the tiger, and when he was in the snow peak of the Huangshan Mountains, he could often hear the roar of the tiger, "When the tiger roars in the stronghold, the roof tiles are shaken." Once, near the Huangshan Mountain, there were several people sitting near the Huangshan Mountain, and the cup had just been filled with fine wine, and a tiger roar from the mountain suddenly shattered the atmosphere of the feast and drinking.
Needless to say, the tiger is a symbol of the power of domination and domination. In the Book of Poetry, the brave warriors are praised as "corrective tiger ministers", the Book of Shang shows off the military strength of the King of Wu as "three hundred tigers", and the five heroes of the Shu Han of the Three Kingdoms are known as the "Five Tiger Generals". Li Ke, the fifth generation of Haojie Jin King, entered the account with the dream of the fierce tiger, and indeed gained a brave general An Jingsi. The soldier's deed was cast in the shape of a tiger, known as the "Tiger Rune", and the commander's tent was called the "Tiger Tent". The prestige of the tiger is so great that in ancient Japan, where tigers never inhabited, people would also use the tiger as a metaphor for the hero of the warrior. Toyotomi Hideyoshi's warrior, Kiyomasa Kato, was praised as "The Help of a Thousand Miles of Leaping Tigers".
Bronze Tiger Charm of the Warring States Period.
The tiger's majestic and majestic reputation is outstanding, and human beings also use the tiger's prestige to boast of themselves. But how many people really dare to look the tiger's eyes face to face? Of course, the tiger that has been relieved of its might and tamed by the whiplash electric baton is not among them, because it has long lost the majesty of the tiger and can only be called a huge cat. Perhaps someone once saw the burning existence floating among the grass like ghost fires in the dark mountain forest. Therefore, it has left such a record: "Where the tiger sees at night, one eye shines, and the other looks at things." However, this brief account seems to prove that human beings cannot look directly at the most powerful beings in nature, so they can only hurry by, making up nonsense such as the eyes of a tiger falling underground and turning into amber.
However, even if you can't look directly at this powerful being, you can imagine its powerful eyes. By bringing together the most primal desire for light and the fear of darkness, one can imagine the eyes of the awe-inspiring and fascinated tiger:
tiger! tiger! Scorching light!
Like the brilliance of the flames in the dark night forest.
In which distant abyss or paradise,
Can it be like the flames of your eyes?
02
The tiger's head hat contains the courage and martial spirit in it
No one is afraid to look directly at a child's tiger hat. The five-colored silk thread embroidered the tiger's ears, fangs and eyes on the golden fabric, and there was no doubt that the eyes were so rounded that they must have been full of anger. The word "King" on its forehead also corroborates its noble status as the king of the hundred beasts. But no matter how much it blows its beard and stares at its eyes, it makes all kinds of anger. Its first impression is just to add a little playfulness to the small round face of a child.
The "Tiger Head Hat" makes the child look "Tiger Head Tiger Brain". But few people realize that the source of the tiger hat is not so cute, but full of murderous spirit. The hat first appeared in the record about a bloody raid. In the early winter of September 479, the Northern Wei Emperor Tuoba Hong personally invaded Nanyang, and Nanyang Taishou Fang Boyu refused to be persuaded to surrender, and sent a group of soldiers wearing tiger hats and colorful tiger skin clothes to ambush in the southeast corner of Nanyang City, and when Tuoba Hong's men and horses arrived, they suddenly rushed out. It is conceivable how panicked a group of tiger-headed soldiers suddenly appeared in front of them with knives and guns. The raid was quite successful, and Tuoba Hong was so frightened that he had to retreat temporarily. The tiger head hat was also written into the Book of Southern Qi and the Biography of Wei Yu, so it remained in the annals of history.
Although this is the first time that the tiger hat has been born, it is not a flash in the pan. In the colorful silk paintings unearthed in the Turpan Grottoes, archaeologists have found a portrait of a figure wearing a tiger's head hat, which is believed to be the Protector God of Buddhism, Gandharva. In the murals of The Yulin Grottoes in Gansu Province, the image of the Protector King Kong wearing tiger skin and a tiger's head hat also appears. Along this route, all the way to the east, in the tomb of Wei Chi Jingde, who was buried with the tomb of Emperor Taizong of Tang in Shaanxi, a painted samurai figurine was also found, also wearing a tiger head hat.
Tang Zhaoling funeral tomb excavated tiger hat warrior statue.
After studying these images of tiger heads, the image historian Xing Yitian believed that the tiger head hats worn by these protector gods and samurai should have originally been lion heads. It is derived from the legend of the ancient Greek hero Hercules. It is said that after killing the male lion, Hercules draped the lion's skin on his body as a symbol of bravery and triumph. Clad in lion skin and wearing a lion's head, Hercules was thus enshrined as a symbol of power and glory in the classical world. From the famous conqueror Alexander the Great to the notorious Roman tyrant Commodore, he has created statues of himself in lion's skin to show off his military authority. This image spread all the way to the east and spread to China, which has not yet seen a few real lions, and naturally became a tiger head hat according to local conditions. But the courage and martial spirit contained in it have not changed. It's just that the tigers of the East have replaced the lions of the West. That's all.
James Ward, The Tiger and the Lion, British Museum Collection.
But the seeds of the image spread all the way, taking root and sprouting in different lands, and although the fruit bears a common gene, the native will also be adapted to local conditions to give it more meaning. If the lion is a symbol of bravery in the West, then the tiger in the East adds to the divinity. The so-called "tiger, yang, the head of a hundred beasts, can fight and defeat sharp, eat ghosts and ghosts." A tiger is a mythical beast that can devour evil ghosts. This is also the reason why the samurai wearing the tiger hat were placed in the tombs of the Tang Dynasty, although this is somewhat ironic - because the owner of the tomb of the unearthed tiger hat warrior figurine, Wei Jingde, was himself worshipped in later life as a door god who could expel ghosts and demons. Another contradiction is that in the minds of the ancients, the tomb was the dwelling place of the ghost, and the place of these ghost-devouring tiger hat warriors did not worry about hurting themselves by mistake?
But just as humans make images of tigers that tremble with fear when they hear roars, it is not the tiger that contradicts itself, but the humans themselves. Of course, the contradictions in the imagery of tigers by humans do not stop there.
03
The Tiger of the Divine Beast, the Source of Power
Even though the tiger is a divine beast, it is no different from other beings in the world, and it is also divided into male and female. But as mentioned earlier, "the tiger, the masculine" – humans wishfully see the tiger as a symbol of masculinity and masculinity. The Hindu creator god Shiva, also known as the Beast Lord, is clothed in tiger skin, symbolizing supreme divine might and indestructible destructive power. When Indian Rajasthans brag about masculinity, they call themselves "two-legged tigers." In the cosmic-human view constructed by Chinese Taoism, the white tiger in the mountains and the green dragon in the sea symbolize the two extreme opposing forces of yang and yin. Mastering the path of dragons, tigers, yin and yang is the key for mortals to break through the flesh and soar into immortals. Zhang Daoling, the ancestor of pseudo-Taoism in the Six Dynasties era, wrote the "Yellow Book", which records that "opening the door of life, holding real people, dragon and tiger drama, three five seven nine, tianluodi net", using the dragon and tiger as a metaphor, teaching believers the secrets of monasticism.
The "Dragon and Tiger Intercourse Diagram" in the Ming Dynasty's "Purpose of Life".
The 16th-century Widely circulated Taoist book "The Purpose of Life Gui" regards dragon and tiger intercourse as the way that ordinary immortals must go through, and the white-faced Langjun, who symbolizes masculinity, straddles the white tiger, rides a green dragon with a green-clothed woman who symbolizes yin qi, and together absorbs the yin and yang essence into Danding and transforms into the immortal formula:
The tiger is in the west and the dragon is in the east, and the east dragon and the west tiger are competing for dominance.
If the solution is swallowed together, the immortals will not work hard for a moment.
The masculine qi of Hu xiong can become the reliance of mortals to become immortals, and it also naturally has the great power to incarnate all things. Imagining that everything in the world comes from the operation of a force as powerful as a tiger can make everything born in the world, especially the self-proclaimed spirit of all things, proud. The worship of the tiger spread along with the footprints of the tiger throughout the South Asian subcontinent and between the Pacific islands. The Seno people of the Malay Peninsula worship the tiger as a totem, while the Semans believe that the chieftain is incarnated by the tiger and will incarnate as a tiger after death. The Yi people of Yunnan, China, regarded themselves as tigers, calling themselves "Luo Luo", that is, "Tiger Tribes", and the 16th-century scribe Chen Jiru's notebook "Hu Yun" also believed that the Yi people "turned into tigers when they were old". Every year during the Spring Festival, the Yi people hold a tiger sacrifice ceremony, disguise themselves as tigers, and dance the tiger for the festival. In the Yi creation epic Mei Ge, the tiger created everything in the world:
In ancient times, there was no heaven, and in ancient times there was no earth.
Which one will make heaven? Which one will make the land?
The tiger's eye is not divided, the left eye is the sun, and the right eye is the moon.
The tiger's whiskers are not divided, and the tiger's whiskers are the sun's rays.
Tiger teeth should not be divided, and tiger teeth should be stars.
Tiger oil should not be divided, tiger oil is cloudy.
Tiger qi should not be divided, and tiger qi should become fog.
The heart of the tiger should not be divided, and the heart of the tiger should be the heart of heaven and the earth.
The Yi people's praise for the tiger is also a reverence for the greatness of nature, because it is difficult to find a more powerful and convincing mountain beast than a tiger in the world. Needless to say, the existence of the tiger itself is a creature of nature that manifests its own strength. Although these examples are enough to make people believe that human beings have great respect for tigers, if you think about them carefully, you will find that what human beings love is not the tiger itself, but the power it contains. When the power of the tiger is carried into the palm of human hands, the tiger is the source of respectable power. And when the tiger's power poses a threat to mankind, then the tiger becomes the mortal enemy of mankind.
04
Man and tiger are separated from each other
In the creation myth of the Yi people, the tiger is the ancestor of mankind, and people are willing to accompany the tiger, sing for it, and dance for it. The creation myth of the Nagas in India offers another version of man and tiger. In this story, the ancestor of all things is an ancient pangolin who gave birth to two children in a deep crypt: man and tiger.
Tiger head mask of the Yi people.
The two brothers, man and tiger, came out of the crypt and came to the earth. Humans soon occupied the plains and built houses here, creating a civilization that belonged to mankind. The tiger, on the other hand, enters the dense mountain forest, where the beasts belong. But man's desire for land was endless, and finally his eyes were fixed on the mountains and forests where his brothers lived. So he went into the jungle and challenged his brother. The tiger has the power and claws that nature gives it, while humans have the tricks and tools. Finally, one day, humans used a ruse to trick the tiger into crossing the river, taking the opportunity to shoot their brother with a poison dart.
Humans slaughter tigers for their own greed, and occupy the mountains and forests where tigers live. Although this myth and legend makes human beings behave in a treacherous way, from another point of view, the story of man and tiger is also the process of the development of human civilization. Human killing of tigers runs through the evolution of human civilization. The story of Wu Song fighting the tiger in "Water Margin" has become popular among the population. Shortly after the opening of "Journey to the West", a hunter pierced the heart and liver of the tiger with a steel fork, and wanted to offer the cooked tiger meat to Xuanzang to eat. Sun Wukong, who later became Xuanzang's apprentice, also killed a tiger with a blow to the head, then cut off the tiger's head and tiger claws, peeled off the tiger skin, and made him the standard tiger skin skirt.
Liu Jijian painted "Wusong Fighting Tigers".
Ancient China worshipped tiger fighting as a hero for some reason, mainly because tigers were badly harmed. There was a vicious tiger in the era of King Zhaoxiang of Qin, "four counties, who harmed 1,200 people." Until the Ming and Qing dynasties, the tiger plague in Lingnan was still amazing, and in the 17th century, the missionary who came to China, Arrillo, once heard that there were two or three hundred tigers in the area around eastern Guangdong, and the merchants only dared to pass through if they gathered more than one hundred and fifty people. Therefore, tiger fighters are naturally regarded as heroes. But if you look at it from the tiger's point of view, a hero like Wu Song who fights tigers is an intruder. In the 16th and 17th centuries when the story of Wusong fighting the tiger prevailed, the population of the Lingnan region showed a significant increase, and in order to alleviate the serious population pressure, people continued to go deep into the mountains and forests of the Lingnan region to develop and reclaim, and the means used were rough set of fire. For humans, this can quickly clear up large tracts of fertile land, while for tigers, it's habitat that causes devastating damage.
Some authors who have carefully observed the habits of tigers mention in their records that tigers deliberately avoid human odors and traces, and try not to meet humans. But in the face of the aggressive offensive of humans, they are forced to collide head-on with humans, and confrontation is inevitable. The hunting tiger symbolizes the mighty power of human beings to conquer nature and build civilization. To justify tiger hunting, humans have similarly stigmatized tigers, accusing them of being so-called man-eating beasts. An entry on India in the early 20th century in the Encyclopædia Britannica specifically cites data describing the seriousness of Indian tiger diseases, claiming that a brutal tiger killed one hundred and eight people in three years. In 1869, a tiger maimed 127 people, resulting in the extinction of local roads. Fortunately, a British hunter shot and killed the tiger. Kipling, the most literary advocate of the Imperial Age, in his fairy tale "The Forest Prince", deliberately designed a defiant and murderous villain, the tiger Shelly Khan. It is a "striped worm that eats cattle". At the end of the story, the so-called Forest Prince boy Mowgli leads the tiger into a trap where it is trampled alive by the cattle. He then skinned the tiger himself and sang and danced in this "fancy striped coat," like a 20th-century replica of the Indian Myth of the Creation of the Nagas.
Stills from Disney's animated feature film The Prince of the Forest (1967). The film is based on Kipling's novel of the same name, The Prince of the Forest.
Stepping on the tiger skin to sing and dance, it is human beings who show off civilization over barbarism. But as Patrick Hanri points out, "There are no beasts in the jungle, only animals that have been forced to be barbaric by humans". The tiger is the same, it is the brother of human beings in the creation myth, just like human civilization and nature itself. The might, courage and strength of the tiger are works of natural excellence, but they are also symbolic meanings given by the human will. Humans worship the tiger, hunt the tiger, desire the power of the tiger, and eager to stomp it under their feet to prove the victory of mankind. But mankind will find that in the end, it is necessary to say goodbye to this ancient brother with claws, and watch its noble and gorgeous back, hidden in the mountains and forests that belong to it.