Lantern Festival Lantern Festival: Originated from the "Meng Chun Yuan Day Pray valley to God", from exorcising evil charms to showing prosperity

This is a scene of the lantern festival taken in the Tengwangge scenic spot in Nanchang on February 12. (Xinhua News Agency reporter Vientiane/photo)

The Lantern Festival is also known as Shangyuan, New Year's Eve, and Yuan Eve, and after the Song Dynasty, it was basically fixed as the Lantern Festival.

This festival is a common traditional culture that was born in China and spread to the countries of the East Asian Chinese character circle.

For example, in the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month in Korea, the ancient Chinese name Ofsay Festival or "Great Hope Day" is used, and the custom of lighting lanterns was learned from the Tang Dynasty from the Silla Period. Before the Meiji Restoration in Japan, the fifteenth day of the first lunar month was called the small new month, and fire festivals were held, new year offerings were burned, and lantern festivals were watched; the Vietnamese Lantern Festival also had the custom of watching the lights. An important feature of the Lantern Festival is to set off the lanterns and watch the lights, which is a common custom of the Chinese Lantern Festival spread throughout East Asia.

Regarding the origin of the Lantern Lantern Culture, some scholars believe that this may be related to the night "burning festival" in the pre-Qin and Qin and Han dynasties. There is a poem in the "Book of Poetry, Xiao ya", which describes the lights in the courtyard at night, and the burning sacrifice is to burn or burn with fire to offer sacrifices to the gods and pray for blessings. The "Book of History and Music" records that "the Han family often uses the Xin Ancestral Temple Taiyi Ganquan on the first lunar month, and the temple at dusk and night to the end of the Ming Dynasty", indicating that the sacrifice of the Taiyi God was held on the eighth night of the first lunar month of the Han Dynasty, and the Book of Han and the Suburban Ancestral Chronicle also has a description of the winter solstice sacrifice "its shrine is full of fire".

In the Song Dynasty Hongmai in the "Five Pens of RongZhai", he believed that "it is his relic for the present people to look at the lanterns day and night on the moon", that is to say, since the Song Dynasty, the Lantern Festival has been a cultural continuation of the Han Dynasty's sacrifice of the god Taiyi. But there is a loophole in this statement, the emperor sacrifices the gods on the first day of the first month, and the altar is full of fire on the winter solstice, which is not the day of the Lantern Festival. What's more, this is only a royal secret sacrifice, and the folk are isolated, and the Lantern civilian lights in the Song Dynasty cities cannot be talked about what is the "relic" of the royal sacrifice of the Han Dynasty, after all, the two are far apart.

Of course, there are various theories about the origin of the Lantern Festival, some people say that this is the Influence of The Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui and Tang Dynasties by Central Asian and Western Buddhism, especially Zoroastrianism (Zoroastrianism) and Manichaeism, which are largely packaged as "Buddhism", and with the collapse of the Persian Sassanid Dynasty, many Persians who believe in sacred fire moved into the Western Regions and Tang Dynasty, which greatly promoted the development of lantern culture. Sui Dynasty Emperor "fifteenth day of the first month in tongqu to build a lamp night to ascend the south tower" poem said that "Brahma sound heavenly, lamp tree thousand light", can see the relationship between the fifteenth day of the first month and the Buddhist "Brahman", Tang Dynasty poet Zhang said in the "Treading Lyrics" described the Lantern Chang'an lantern, mentioned that "the Western Region Lamp Wheel Thousand Shadows" is the description of this Central Asian and Western Elements, which should contain Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and other elements.

It is also said that the Lantern Festival is the shangyuan of Taoism, and it is said that the fifteenth day of the first month is the birthday of Zhang Tianshi, so the Lantern festival originates from Taoism. However, the saying that "the Taoists take the fifteenth day of the first month as the upper yuan" is actually only seen in the Southern Song Dynasty's "Chronicle of the Years" quoting the Northern Song Dynasty's "Miscellaneous Records of the Years", which is not earlier than the Tang. Moreover, the religious rituals of burning lights, both Buddha and Taoism, are difficult to say who originated in the first place, and the most likely is the result of mutual influence. As for the birthday of Tianshi Zhang Daoling, it comes from the Ming Dynasty's "Han Tianshi Shijia", the so-called "Han Jianwu was born on the fifteenth day of the first month of the tenth year", while the much earlier Eastern Jin Dynasty Ge Hong's "Biography of the Immortals" does not see the "fifteenth night of the first month" at all. Highlighting the relationship between Zhang Tianshi and Shangyuan is actually the product of the combination of the three yuan and the three officials after the Tang Dynasty, and only then did the shangyuan tianguan blessing and other contents. Therefore, the so-called "Zhang Tianshi Teacher's Day" theory cannot be established.

The author's point of view is that as a traditional festival, the fifteenth day of the first month should have a more ancient origin, that is, the Mengchun festival and agriculture, spring ploughing and other activities. In early texts such as the Book of Rites and the Moon Order, the LüShi Chunqiu Meng Chunji, etc., meng chun yuan ri prayed for the valley to god, and in the yuan chen, he used the qi qi to persuade the farmers. The ancient New Year is accompanied by the Mengchun season after the spring festival, with the last day of the festival as the end of the celebration, in fact, as the preparation and beginning of the following year's spring ploughing and farming, which has important symbolic etiquette and temporal significance.

The use of fire and the like had the significance of expelling evil spirits in ancient times. Developed to the Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui and Tang Dynasties, it was mixed with Buddhist lanterns and Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and other Zoroastrian beliefs packaged as "Buddhism" from the Western Regions, and finally these contents were mixed with the Taoist three-yuan and three-official beliefs, forming the custom of lantern burning in the folk. These elements are intermingled and influenced by each other, and it is difficult to say which one is the "only source" of the Lantern Lantern custom.

Lantern lanterns in the Tang and Song Dynasties, has long faded the religious color, has become a folk secular culture, the Tang Dynasty still implemented the curfew system in the Middle Ages, at night in the "day" has been exhausted by beating six hundred closed door drums, for violators of curfew to be punished with twenty times of flogging, but only in the Lantern Festival can be an exception. According to the "Miscellaneous Records of Xidu": "In the streets of the Forbidden City of Xidu, there is a call from Jin Wu Xiaoyu to prohibit night travel, but the fifteenth night of the first month is allowed to ban one day before and after the ban, which is called the night", that is, in the Lantern Festival plus a day before and after a total of three days can be exempted from curfew, the so-called "capital moon and the day, decorated with lights and shadows", can allow the people to burn lights at night to celebrate.

The TV series "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an" is set in Chang'an City in the late Xuanzong period, which is the night of the Lantern Festival, and the thrilling part takes place in the "Taishang Xuanyuan Great Immortal Lantern". If it is not set on this day, the story of Chang'an in the Tang Dynasty cannot tell the night part of the "Twelve Hours".

In the Song Dynasty, the curfew system was abolished, and the night outside the Lantern festival was also lit by the lights of the night market, but the Song people still attached importance to the Lantern Festival and made it a legal holiday. According to the "Tokyo Dream Record", the lantern night of the capital city of Bieliang during the Lantern Festival of the Song Dynasty was accompanied by "magic and magic, song and dance, scales and scales, and noisy music for more than ten miles", "thousands of streets and thousands of alleys, all prosperous and noisy", and the lively noise was also accompanied by the high development of the industrial and commercial market, forming a bustling and noisy consumer economy. In the TV series "Qingping Le", the bustling scene of the Lantern Night in the Northern Song Dynasty was expressed, and Renzong and Empress Cao were arranged to travel in micro-costumes to watch the lights, perform, and taste food.

Regrettably, with the demise of the Song Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty restored the curfew system of the Middle Ages, and the "Biography of Zhang Yanghao" records that the Yuan people boasted that "the ancestors of the ancestors have been in the imperial court for more than thirty years, and every New Year's Eve, between Lu and Yan, the lights are also forbidden", that is, after Kublai Khan conquered the Southern Song Dynasty, even during the Lantern Festival, the lights of the city were forbidden. Liu Chenweng, a remnant of the Southern Song Dynasty, has a poem "Bu Operator • Lantern" lamenting that "ten years of waste of the Lantern, full of ears and drums", after the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty, the lights of the lantern were no longer seen, and the drums of the Yuan army's curfew control could only be heard in the cold night.

(This article is only the author's view and does not represent the position of this newspaper)

Li Jingheng