Text/Once Historical View V
Human beings always have an innate sense of intimacy and imagination for the sea, probably because the sea is the cradle of all life. The continent has also been exploring the underwater world it has longed for for a long time.
As early as the "Search for God", it is recorded that "outside the South China Sea, there are fish people, who live like fish, do not waste weaving, and their eyes cry, they can produce pearls". It can be seen that the ancients were always full of curiosity and fantasy about the creatures under the sea.
A picture album during the Kangxi dynasty: 300 years ago, he had drawn the "alien" in science fiction films, is it really black technology? This album is also well preserved today, so what does the "Alien look like" in the album? Let's take a look. ”
Three or four hundred years ago, an odd man wrote a book about the coastal fish of the mainland, called "Sea Fault Map". This strange man, named Nie Huang, was born in Hangzhou in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. He was a folk painter and a lover of biology. Nie Huang was troubled by the fact that not a single atlas of marine life had been circulated since ancient times, so he decided to draw one himself. And this is the origin of "Sea Fault Map".
"Sea Fault Map" is a very rich content, and set scientific, literary and interesting in one, an ancient marine life atlas. Although the atlas was published in the middle of the 17th century and has a history of more than 300 years, there are still 82.6% of the 236 species of marine organisms, metaplasias, legendary animals and non-living substances recorded on it, and posterity can identify families, genera and species according to the taxonomic basis provided by its records and graphics. This is of great significance for future generations to understand the distribution, ecological habits and utilization of ancient Chinese marine organisms.
In the Republic of China, due to the Japanese invasion of China, the cultural relics of the Forbidden City moved south. In the process of wandering, the complete set of four books of "Sea Mistake Map" was divided, and it is gratifying that the first three volumes are now left in the Palace Museum in Beijing, while the fourth volume is hidden in the National Palace Museum in Taipei.
In fact, the most attractive thing about "Sea Fault Map" is some of the animals that can be called "alien", let's take a look at the content of "Sea Fault Map".
The word "wrong" means a multitude of meanings rather than a mistake. This is from the "Shang Shu Yu Gong" in the "Shang Shu Yu Gong Formula, the Sea Thing Is Wrong".
In the "Sea Fault Map", a total of more than 300 kinds of marine life are depicted, which are rich in pictures and texts. Among them, the animals cover almost all the main taxa of the invertebrate phylum and the phylum Chordata, and also record a lot of coastal plants, quite in the style of modern naturalism. Not only that, the text of each creature is not only an observation record, but also a literature reference, and some even have related cooking methods, which is amazing.
During the Kangxi Dynasty, Nie Huang traveled to Hebei, Tianjin, Zhejiang, and Fujian, and inspected coastal creatures. Every time he saw one, he would draw it down, and he would also go through the group books to verify it, otherwise he would ask the local fishermen to verify the authenticity of the ancient books.
Here are two examples of strange creatures depicted in The Sea Fault Map.
Ghost head octopus
According to the description and pictures, this seems to be a strange combination of half-human and half-octopus. Judging from the specific details, in addition to its body and head and shoulders, as well as full of flesh thorns, it seems to be harmless, but it is also caught by fishermen, except for weirdness, and has no lethality. But it's also very much like the scary aliens in science fiction movies.
Similar to the ghost head octopus, there is also an almost humanoid life star octopus, once Nie Huang heard: Kangxi twenty-five years, Songjiang Jinshan Weiwang township eunuch built a garden, suitable for fishermen to net octopus, strange shape, head like a life star, two eyes shining, a mouth of hole, there is flesh, such as the body of the sitting and bipedal, the mask of the octopus is also, the fisherman wrapped his feet around his body, placed on the plate, dedicated to the king eunuch, said "the sky has a long gung star, the sea has an old man's fish."
Money skewer fish
The "Sea Mistake Map" describes the money string fish as follows: "The body is light blue, the ridge is dark blue, the circle is golden, the inside is a little black, and its circle pattern is like money and yellow, so it is called a money string, a money shed." ”
After nie juan had read all kinds of books, he said, "There is no such fish in the fish department of all kinds of books, and there is no such fish in The Only Fuzhou Zhi zai." ”
Nie Huang used vivid pictures and texts to record the various creatures he had seen and heard with his own eyes on the coast of China. Due to the limitations of the times, there are many unreliable accounts in the book, and the records of biological habits are also mixed with true and false.
But it is very interesting and loved by the emperors of the Qing Dynasty. After Qianlong succeeded to the throne, he attached great importance to this set of books. He asked people to keep the album in his room. When I am idle, I always like to turn it over: "Half a life of a horse, this book satisfies yuan's imagination of the sea!" ”
Such a comprehensive and meticulous representation of the bizarre aquarium in "Sea Mistake Map" is rare in the Chinese painting world. It's really a bit like black technology
What do you think about that?
References: "Sea Mistake Map", "Shang Shu Yu Gong", "Search for God"
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