Grass
In the "Wei Feng Bo Xi" of the Book of Poetry, there is a verse that reads," "谖草, the back of the tree of words", and the ancient commentators examined the 谖草 is Xuancao, and because the word "谖" has the meaning of forgetting, so Xuancao has become an ancient forgetful grass on the mainland. Xuancao is a plant of the genus Xuancao in the lily family, with orange and orange flowers, and is now a very common plant, in the summer, the green space of Shanghai can often see the flowers blooming. The flowers and lilies of the grass are similar in appearance, and when I was walking on campus with my classmates in the past, I encountered a situation where my classmates mistook the grass for a lily. In fact, the two are easy to distinguish, the leaves of the grass are slender like orchid leaves, growing from the roots, botanically called leaf basal. The lily leaves are small, much shorter than the leaves of the grass, and grow from the stem, called leaf stems.
lily
After I recognized the grass, my classmates knew the allusion of the forget-about grass and sighed: "I always feel that the forgotten worry grass should be a magical plant, but I didn't expect it to be just a generally beautiful flower." This mood is easy to understand, the name of the forgetful grass gives people a magical association, think it should be a strange flower, where to think that in fact, and the lily looks similar, and the flower color is not as rich and changeable as the lily seen in the flower shop.
The so-called grass forgets worries, but the ancients derived the meaning of the poem and the name of the plant. Naming a common plant as a herb, giving the meaning of forgetting worries, is nothing more than a flattering mentality. Forgetting worries is a thought that cannot be expected, and the mythical and unrealistic name of forgetfulness grass is not as simple and kind as Xuancao.
In Western allusions, plants with the function of forgetting worries are most famous for the fruit of lotus. Homer's epic poem Odyssey tells that on his way back to China, Odysseus encountered a tribe that ate lotus fruit on an island near North Africa, which could forget their worries after eating it, and Odysseus's men were willing to die on the island after eating the fruit, and Odysseus had to tie them to a boat and bring them back to the country. Lotus is a legendary plant, Zhou Zuoren transliterated as Rotos, Lu Gusun compiled the English-Chinese Dictionary translated as Luo Tuo jujube, and in the translation of Maugham's novel the lotus eater, the word was translated as a magic fruit, to show a difference from lotus's common interpretation of "lotus". Zhuang Hecheng's "Interesting Talks on the Etymology of English" translates Lotus eater as "the person who eats the fallen dates" or "the one who forgets the worries".
I loved reading Lu Gusun's translation of "The Man Who Devoured the Devil Fruit", and i wrote "Devil Fruit and Others" a few years ago, talking about the cultural symbolism of this plant, and I did not think of comparing lotus with the mainland's forgetful grass. Now I feel that it is also the meaning of sustenance for plants to forget worries, and the two essentially embody completely different internal logic. The mainland's forgetful grass is to take a plant that exists in reality to take a name of good wishes, this plant can be Xuancao, or it can be any other plant, as Mei Yaochen's "Xuancao" poem said, "People's hearts are not the same as grass, and there are trees that worry about themselves", in fact, we are very clear in our hearts, everyone has troubles, and the so-called "forgetfulness" is an impossible wish.
The angle of "Odyssey" is different, in the legend of Odysseus, eating the fruit of lotus, you can forget your troubles, the price is to forget your relatives and hometown, forget your own history and ideals, forget everything. According to the logic of Homer's epic, forgetting worries is achievable, and losing memory can alleviate troubles, which is the price of forgetting worries. Therefore, the lotus eater has a negative connotation of being unenterprising, lazy and useless in the semantics of Western allusions.
Forget sorrow and loss of memory is the same thing two sides of the same thing, Chinese culture in the forget worry grass biased its positive meaning, so that "forget worry" becomes the legendary good wishes, ancient poetry talk about forget worry grass, is to sigh the world of worries, there is no cure in reality. Homer's epics look at the price to be paid by the eater beneath the carefree appearance of the fruit of forgetfulness. Odysseus, who saw through this, was a hero who led the crowd out of the trap of forgetting their worries.
Xuancao is a common plant in daily life, yellow cauliflower is a variety of plants in the genus Xuancao, pick the buds of the yellow cauliflower that have not yet opened and dried, and when eating, it can be used to stir-fry vegetables, and the Sixi roasted bran in the Shanghai Bengang dish uses this ingredient. When I was a child, I once ate the yellow cauliflower in the Sixi roasted bran with bitter taste, even the sweet seasoning of Shanghai cuisine could not cover up the bitter taste of the yellow cauliflower, at that time, it was said to parents, the elders felt that it was a rare and strange excuse for children, and did not like to eat vegetables. Since then, I have had a psychological shadow over the taste of broccoli and still don't like to eat it.
The "Guangqun Fang Genealogy" quotes the "Song's Planting Book", saying that "there are three kinds of Xuan, the single-petal one can be eaten, the one with a thousand petals can eat the killing, but the color is like honey, the fragrant leaves are tender, can be filled with high fasting, and can also be used as vegetable food." The "Xuanhua" article of Chen Shuzi's "Flower Mirror" of the Qing Dynasty also records that the red Flowers with heavy petals are toxic, "but those who are thousands of leaves and red flowers are not available, and they kill people by eating". The Flora of China mentions that broccoli contains alkaloids, and "flowers should not be eaten much." However, most ancient texts do not clearly distinguish between the various varieties of the genus Xuancao, such as the "Saving the Wilderness Materia Medica" describing Xuancao as "golden flowers, sweet and non-toxic", in fact, golden petals are the characteristics of yellow cauliflower, and Xuancao is mostly darker orange and orange red. Another example is the "Compendium of Materia Medica" "Xuancao" article records that "the people of the Present East pick its flower tarsus, dry and goods, called yellow cauliflower", and take the yellow cauliflower as the title of the flower buds after drying.
In ancient times, there was no clear distinction between the grass and its yellow cauliflower of the same genus, and if the inedible flowers were selected, the taste would not be ideal. In the Ming Dynasty Gao Lian's "Eight Notes on Zunsheng", he quoted the "Seven Signatures of Yundi", saying that in February and March, "do not eat yellow cauliflower during the month". When I read this paragraph, I had some doubts in my heart that Gao Lian may have also suffered the loss of yellow cauliflower, so he was more sensitive to eating yellow cauliflower, and specially picked this sentence from the literature and excerpted it in the "Eight Notes of Zunsheng". But what the ancients did not know was that the edibleness of yellow cauliflower had nothing to do with the season, but with the variety and the way it was handled. Today's nasturtiums are agriculturally grown crops, not from wild picking, and there should be no accidental eating. The yellow cauliflower I ate as a child tasted bitter, probably because it hadn't been soaked well beforehand or because it hadn't been cooked.
Mentioning the plant with the word "forget" in its name, I remembered that there was a flower in Japan called Tokumoki, which was translated Chinese as Forgotten Juju, and in Fukatsu Masa's book "Etymology of Plants and Names", he mentioned the origin of its name: In the thirteenth century AD, in Japan, the Kamakura shogunate took power, and the then Emperor Shunde wanted to regain the power belonging to the imperial family and participate in the rebellion against the shogunate, known in history as the "Chengjiu Rebellion", and after the defeat, he was exiled to Sado Island, and the forgotten Capital Chrysanthemum got its name, which means that seeing this flower can forget the sorrow of leaving Kyoto.
I once asked Hagiwara, a plant-loving teacher, whether it can be understood as a Japanese forget-me-not grass according to the meaning of forgetful chrysanthemum. Hagiwara-sensei replied that it could not be understood in this way, and that the Japanese grass is the grass. I later thought about this problem carefully, and felt that it is indeed not possible to equate the forgotten capital chrysanthemum with the forgotten worry grass because the name has a "forgetting" word, "forgetting the capital" has a specific object of use, and the scope of semantic coverage is very narrow, not like the word "forget worry" is all-encompassing. And the name "Forget The Chrysanthemum", which literally means forgetting Kyoto, actually reflects a kind of unforgettable sorrow.
There are several japanese songs in the "Wanye Collection" that mention Xuancao, such as "The Side of the Fragrant Mountain, the Hometown Often Thinks, the Clothes knot Xuancao, and I want to forget it" (Zhao Leyi translation). Nara has a Manyo Botanical Garden, which plants the plants mentioned in the ManyoShu in one place, and the botanical garden is also planted with Xuancao, and the sign is inscribed with this song, the original Japanese text of The Xuancao is わすれぐさ, and the Kanji is Forgotten Grass. Forget worry grass and forget grass, although referring to the same plant, carefully consider the meaning of the text, but feel that the sense of language expressed is still slightly different.
Author: Yang Yueying
Editor: Wu Dongkun
Editor-in-Charge: Shu Ming
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.