Rat throwers, timid as rats, roe deer-headed rats, skull-eyebrow rat eyes... When it comes to rats, there are hardly good words. People's dislike of rats has not changed since ancient times, to say that there is any difference, about the ancient people superstition, but also to the rats with several good meanings, and now people do not believe in those, it is really rats crossing the street, everyone shouted and beat.
Just such a small and unsightly mouse, but ranked first in the zodiac, becoming the boss, it is really magical.
Why rats came first is still a mystery, although many legends have been coined for it.
One of the well-known stories is that the animals race, who comes first to the finish line and who is the first, and the mouse climbs on the loyal and honest cow, and when it reaches the end, it takes the first place.
The second story is that at the beginning of heaven and earth, when the chaos was not opened, it was precisely because the rat bit the sky into a hole, so that the sun poured out, and the yin and yang were separated, that is, "the rat bites the sky", so the mouse was listed as the first of the zodiac. From this point of view, the mouse is still a groundbreaking hero.
However, these are only fables and myths, and do not really explain the reason why rats are the boss. Since the history of the zodiac has a long history, there have been many opinions about how the real cause is, and there are several relatively reliable explanations.
The first is to correspond closely with their respective biological habits. The twelve animals are matched with the twelve branches of the earth, so they are also called chengzi rats, ugly cows, yin tigers, rabbits, tatsuni dragons, snakes, noon horses, ungods, Shen monkeys, unitary chickens, dogs, and pigs.
The twelve branches correspond to the twelve hours of the day, represented by rats, which are from 23:00 to 1:00 at night, when humans are asleep, while rats are active, they drill holes through walls, drill boxes into cabinets, and break into human houses to steal food.
The ancients hated rats precisely because they stole stored grain or destroyed crops when people were defenseless at night. The "Book of Poetry" has long revealed the disgust and helplessness of the ancients for the style of rats, "Giant rats and rats, no food for me", "giant rats and rats, no food for my wheat", "giant rats and rats, no food for my seedlings" - you should stop stealing!
Grouping rats and sub-hours together is still appropriate in terms of animal behavioral characteristics.
In addition, the ugly cattle work in the fields, although the time is a little early, but it can also be met; the Yin tiger at dawn patrols the mountains and hunts when the sky is dark; the rabbit who comes out of the nest when the sun first rises in the morning eats fresh grass... The twelve animals correspond to twelve hours, which can basically be explained by their biological habits.
Another explanation is from the toe claw. Some historians have researched that the ground is under the ground, so take the animal's claws to divide the yin and yang.
Zi Yin Chen Noon Shen Shu belongs to the yang, and the number of animal claws matched with it is odd; the ugly one is not unitary hai is yin, so the mate counts the claws of the animal.
Among them, the midfield time is from 23:00 to 1:00, spanning yin and yang, and the mouse in the ancient people's cognition is four claws of the forefoot and five claws of the hind foot, which is both odd and even, just in combination with yin and yang. So this first position is really nothing more than it is.
In any case, the rat's rat peak is probably above the first seat of the zodiac now. But despite the fact that people put it on the first seat, the attitude toward it is still more disgusting: the rat travels day and night, so it is disgraceful; the rat lives in a dirty horn, so it is dark and disgusting; the rat feeds on grains and steals and destroys grain, so it is a thief that everyone shouts and beats.
In the writer's pen, rats also always appear in a negative image. The Book of Poetry accuses the "Shuo Rat" of its behavior, the Book of Han describes it as "a rat worm, sexual theft", and Li Shangyin has a poem "I don't know the taste of rotten rats, and I guess that the osprey has not stopped"...
However, under the tide of bad reviews, the rats have earned a lot of "good names".
While the people scolded and hated the rats for stealing my grain, they raised it to the "warehouse god", saying that the appearance of rats in the warehouse represented a good harvest this year, and next year will certainly not be bad. Because there is food, it will attract rats, this logic is not bad, but how to look at it is more like self-consolation under the heartache but helpless, quite a bit of poison to attack the meaning.
In addition, the ancients also regarded the rat as an auspicious symbol, because the rat has a long lifespan and has many births, and the ancients who pay attention to the many children and many blessings regard it as a symbol of many children and longevity.
It and the bat are a pair of accidentally blessed brothers, bats are regarded as auspicious because of the homophony of "bat" and "fu", and rats are also regarded as the highlight moments of Fury.
The most cattle thing is not that the mouse has become a symbol of good fortune, but that it is even contaminated with the aura of the gods.
Ge Hong of the Jin Dynasty said in the "Baopuzi" that "the rat lives three hundred years old, and when it reaches a hundred years old, it is white"; the Eastern Jin Dynasty "Search for God" records: "The rat of a hundred years, and can be able to buy"; the Song Dynasty Wang Wei has a poem "Immortals Raise Thousand Year Rats"; the Twenty-Five History of the Song Dynasty records that "Emperor Shenzong was born in the PuWang Palace in April of the eighth year, and the xiangguang illuminated the room, and the rats vomited five colors into clouds"...
While disgusted, while hoping that it will be a good rat to admire it, while scorning, but also listing it as the first of the zodiac. The cultural meaning and actual status of rats are really in sharp contrast.