Water moon in hand
When I decided to follow the guidance of the ancient cultural relics collected by the Forbidden City and retrace the artistic history of our nation, I felt a great strangeness.
This strangeness is brought about by time. For example, the faience geometric bowl was born from 4,800 BC to 3,900 BC, and the distance from our time is as long as 5,000 to 7,000 years. If a person can live to be seventy years old, then he needs to live a hundred times to go from this end of time to the other side of time. For seven thousand years, our eyes cannot penetrate, our memories cannot arrive, and our words cannot record. We put our lives on such a huge scale, like a drop of water, into the rivers, into the sea.
Let's start with a drop of water.
Life begins with water. Even the people of "early China" seven or eight thousand years ago realized this. Raised by primitive agriculture, they are well aware of the role of water. As the later pipe said, "What about the water man?" The origin of all things is also the original room of all beings. As Lao Tzu said, "Good is like water, and water is good for all things without dispute." "Without water, the earth will be devoid of all things, and the world will fall into silence and desolation." Agriculture brought them stable food and a relatively fixed sedentary life, so that they had daily life, and they also had the bottles and cans they needed every day, such as water containers, cookers, and food utensils. The water of the Yellow River rises from the sky, and on both sides of the Yellow River (especially in the middle reaches), large agricultural areas are watered, and cultural areas of different forms are developed.
The water moon is in the hand, and the round pottery is like the palm of the water. People not only filled the water with fired pottery, but also painted water on the surface of the pottery — a trickle was drawn on the rim of the geometric pot of faience pottery. These ripples of water, positioned in four dots, symmetrical to each other, are extremely general, like a child's stick figure, vivid, concise, and naïve. Later, when it came to the Yangshao culture Majiayao culture, the water pattern became more complicated little by little, such as the Majiayao culture Majiayao type of faience water ripple bowl collected by the Palace Museum, the concise three lines, rotating out of the flowing water waves, and on another piece of majiayao culture Majiayao type of faience water ripple bowl, the lines became rough, with the contrast of thick and thin lines, there was a combination of different patterns. In majiayao culture Majiayao type of faience water ripple pot, faience swirling vase, faience swirling pot, faience swirling pot, the water pattern has a richer change, with a sense of volume, with a galloping momentum, with a sense of rustic rhythm, as if the water of the Yellow River, not giving up day and night, rushing forward.
On the Faience pottery of the Majiayao culture mid-levels type in the Palace Museum, the motifs of this combination become more indulgent and bold. Like the faience vortex diamond geometric pattern double series pot, the faience gourd grid pattern double series pot, the faience vortex diamond geometric pattern double series pot, the faience urn, the large drop in the middle of the water flow is mixed with diamond geometric pattern;
Faience with arc pattern double series of jars, two thick lines across the belly of the pot, the clay pot is divided into two, the lower part is a parallel water ripple, the upper part is a V-shaped water wave, like a ripple on the surface of the water, swinging round by round;
Faience mesh water ripple amphora, faience water ripple mesh single-handle pot, faience pot, the combination of water ripple and grid pattern, forming a comprehensive visual effect, but the same is a faience pot, this amphora pot and single-lever pot are not the same, endless changes.
The previously mentioned Majiayao type faience water ripple bowl, faience water corrugated pot, faience vortex diamond-shaped geometric pattern double-series jar, the previous Mid-Levels type of faience polygonal pattern double-series jar, etc., are all the case. However, some faience pottery, especially open bowls, pots, etc., is also ornamented inside, and even the internal ornamentation and the ornamentation on the outer body deliberately form a visual contrast. For example, a faience arc spoon of the Majiayao type, the plain and clean outer body, there are only a few concise water streaks, but there is a large area of blackening on the inside, forming a huge visual tension, and also exerting the "open aesthetics" of the pottery to the extreme.
The Majiayao type faience water ripple bowl depicts the ornamentation in black color on the mouth edge and the outer body, but the ornamentation on the inside is a swirling pattern centered on the bottom center. Although this faience wavy bowl on display in the museum is empty, we should imagine what it looks like when it is filled with water. When the bowl is filled with water, and the water shakes in the clay bowl, the ripples on its inner wall move with it, undulating and undulating, gorgeous and psychedelic. Those fixed ornaments also have the effect of "animation". If we gently rotate the bowl, the pattern inside it will also rotate, and the hand-painted water waves will become a real whirlpool, spinning endlessly like a kaleidoscope.
The directivity of the fish
On the faience pottery of the Yangshao culture, in addition to the wavy patterns and swirling patterns, which hint at their correspondence with the rolling rivers and rivers, many animal patterns can also be seen. "Those unrestrained lines, like the flowing water of the earth, and there are fish in the water, like the clouds in the sky, and the birds in the clouds." The fish and the bird, flowing up and down with heaven and earth, came from the whirlpool, went back and forth, and through the whirlpool, entered the deepest part of the universe, the womb that gave birth to all things. ”
On the Yangshao culture Banpo type of faience pottery, the fish pattern has almost become the most prominent symbol. Some are groups of pisces, such as fish-patterned faience pots and fish-patterned faience pots; some are three or five fish chasing each other, such as the five-fish pattern faience pots collected by the Xi'an Banpo Museum, the fish-patterned faience pots collected by the Henan Museum dating back 7,000 to 5,000 years; and even the faience patterns of the fish body. The first cultural relic mentioned in this book, the faience geometric pattern bowl, has been comprehensively analyzed by archaeologists to confirm that the triangular geometric pattern on the outer abdomen is also abstractly evolved from the fish-shaped pattern.
If we fill these painted clay pots with fish-shaped patterns, through the refraction of light, we can also see the fish swimming in the waves. Because there is water, even the hand-painted fish have life, and they can breathe, swim and play freely in the water.
The fish on the faience pottery are not only engraved with the fishing and hunting life of the early Chinese, as analyzed by some cultural relics experts, but also hint at the dependence of life on water. Especially in the middle reaches of the Yellow River in western Henan, Jinnan, eastern Shaanxi, this piece of the traditional "Central Plains" heartland, here is a typical agricultural area, in Banpo and other places, there have been carbonized millet, millet has been found by archaeologists, of which millet accounted for the main body, as well as cabbage seeds, mustard seeds, etc., indicating that people in Banpo and other places at that time have eaten vegetables, from the discovery of production tools (such as hoes, shovels, stone knives, pottery knives, etc.), the main way to make a living is undoubtedly agriculture, only in the first phase of Jiangzhai, nearly two thousand pieces of harvesting agricultural tools were found. In their production life, fishing and hunting is at best a supplement. Therefore, in my opinion, the popular fish-shaped pattern on Yangshao faience pottery is not only an objective record of fishing and hunting life, but also represents a simple desire - people in the Yangshao era tried to express their desire for life and worship of water through those virtual fish.
Water ripples and fish patterns, in the faience to form a strange causal relationship, water is the source of life, fish can not be separated from water, all creatures on the earth are inseparable from water, this is the most simple truth of nature, many primitive totems, look incomparably mysterious, in fact, just telling a simple truth.
I think of the film "Yellow Land", a film directed by Mr. Chen Kaige in 1984. More than thirty years have passed, and the plot of the film has been basically forgotten, but the thousands of ravines, the reckless loess plateau, and the silhouette of wooden boats swept away by the Yellow River like dead leaves are deeply engraved in the mind. What is particularly memorable is one of the shots, that is, the people of northern Shaanxi get married, and the fish on the wedding banquet are actually carved out of wood. When this shot appeared, I immediately felt numbness, an indescribable shock. The poor in northern Shaanxi could not eat real fish, so they had to use woodcut fish instead. Here, the fish has been given a strong symbolism – it represents a life of abundance, and a life of abundance is premised on water. Later, the fish as an auspicious image was painted on the New Year painting, not only because of the harmonic sound of "every year there is a fish (Yu)", but also because the symbolic identification of the fish has been integrated into the subconscious of our nation.
Many years ago, when I was editing the "Cloth Tiger Essay", I received an essay from Mr. Zhang Chengzhi, "Fish in the Dry Sea". It is written in Xihaigu, Ningxia — there is a sea in the name, but it is actually a dry and thirsty desolate place. Also in 1984, the year Chen Kaige directed "Yellow Land" on the Loess Plateau, Zhang Chengzhi first dived into Xihaigu "this fishless dry sea, this flowerless garden". Many years later, Zhang Chengzhi unexpectedly saw the real fish, the compatriots of Xihaigu, with a stewed fish, to entertain the long-distance traveler. In "Fish in the Dry Sea", Zhang Chengzhi wrote:
"The whole village can't make fish!" My brother pulled out the mystery. Just now, he didn't give me a word until the beginning of Ermari. "Afraid of not doing well? ...... Only one woman in the whole Zhuangzi has worked in Yinchuan, and she made this fish. He said politely, but he made a look at me and urged me to move my chopsticks towards the fish.
The dumb old imam did not move, nor did the old father who held the moon. The guests who were full of kang did not move, waiting for me.
I don't want to play up the atmosphere of the banquet anymore. In the bowl of the sea, the fragrant fish lay quietly, as if announcing some kind of fact. It can't be said that the appearance of the fish is unreasonable, stretch out the chopsticks, I took a bite from the back of the fish.
Fish with red and spicy green onion leaves, such as the white soft sand of potato peeling. The crowd sighed and ate. They are all suffering elders, who are not good at words and never say what they feel in their hearts. Roasted potatoes, syrup noodles, chicken and meat... I secretly counted the meals I had eaten.
Indeed, coarse tea and light rice, year after year, embellish our stories. It is true that I have never thought about fish, and indeed unconsciously, I regard fish as an impossible. No, because of a fish, because it was on the Kang table of the dry sea farmers, the three generations of customers were restrained. The daughters and sons-in-law brought vegetables on a tray, and after they were put on the table, they also crowded around the bottom to watch.
In the waterless Xihaigu, a stewed fish in a coarse porcelain bowl makes eating a ritual.
For some reason, the fish on this table reminds me of the fish pattern painted on Yangshao faience pottery 7,000 years ago.
Looking at the entire Loess Plateau, since the Pleistocene 2.4 million years ago, the process of loess accumulation has begun, but the Banpo site of the excavated faience geometric bowl is located in the area of today's Xi'an, and Xi'an is located in the Guanzhong Basin at the southernmost tip of the Loess Plateau, where the Jing River and the Wei River converge, the so-called Eight Water Run Chang'an, which is naturally a place of abundant water and grass, as Mencius said: "The grass and trees are lush, the animals and animals breed, the grain is not ascended, the animals are forced, the animals and hooves are traced, and the way of the birds and birds is handed over to China." "The remains of animals excavated at the Banpo site in Xi'an, including beavers, raccoons, badgers, antelopes, spotted deer, hares, etc., are like a super zoo, sima xiangru of the Western Han Dynasty wrote "Shanglin Fu", recording the plants in the Shanglin Garden, in addition to the "deep forest giant trees", there are lu oranges, sweet oranges, loquats, pears, bayberry, cherries, grapes and so on. Throughout the Loess Plateau, nature is a "paradise".
In general, fish patterns are the most common and typical of the Yangshao culture (especially in the Banpo type) faience pottery, and Mr. Zhang Guangzhi also said that the fish pattern theme on pottery is particularly common in the sites of the WeiHe River Basin. Fish can not be separated from the water, the spatial distribution of fish pattern faience pottery, with the Weishui River Basin as the center, including the Jinnan, Western Henan and Han Water Upstream area, the so-called Miaodigou cultural source and central area should also be in the central and western Parts of the Guanxi and the upper reaches of the Weishui River. The fish pattern has almost become one of the most typical emblems of Yangshao cultural faience pottery.
The fish pattern has become the "meta pattern" in Yangshao faience pottery, and many other patterns are derived from the fish pattern pattern. Mr. Yan Wenming said: "According to our analysis, the geometric pattern of Banpo faience pottery is changed by the fish pattern. The report "Xi'an Banpo" said: "There are many clues that this geometric pattern is evolved from a fish-shaped pattern... A simple rule, that is, the simpler the shape of the head, the more the fish body tends to be patterned. The pattern pattern formed by the fusion of fish patterns in the opposite direction is more complex in body changes, and the fish patterns that are superimposed and fused in the same direction are simpler. ”
According to their point of view, there should be a figurative fish pattern first, and then there is an abstract geometric pattern, and the geometric pattern is simplified and refined from the figurative pattern, which is consistent with the general trend of our civilization from image thinking to symbolic thinking. Fish, the oldest aquatic vertebrate on Earth, have thus entered the cultural genes of our people.
Chen Kaige's film "Yellow Land" refreshes the narrative mode of revolutionary themes, integrates the two major themes of revolution and root-seeking, and combines Zhang Yimou's oil painting-like photographic composition to form a huge artistic tension. The wood-carved fish at the wedding feast revealed the poverty of the people of the Loess Plateau and reflected the tenacious will of the people to live in poverty. At the Hemudu site, a round carved wooden fish and a ceramic sculpture fish have also been excavated. Fish represent survival, freedom, happiness. This is no different from the fish pattern on faience pottery.
Sub-non-fish, anzhi fish pleasure?
There is also a point to be noted: the fish at the wedding feast, and a more specific point, is that it implies the joy of the sexes. And the result of the joy of the two sexes is that the children and grandchildren are full of children. Chinese often said that having more children and more children has become a major prerequisite for happiness and a major mission in life. The relationship between fish and multiple children is that people think that fish are good at giving birth and have strong fertility, so in traditional Chinese culture, fish naturally become the object of worship, and are given the connotation of mutual pleasure between the sexes, female love and male love, hoping to transfer the strong reproductive ability of fish to humans.
Mr. Wen Yiduo once pointed out this point in a paper called "Talking Fish", and quoted a large number of "Poetry Classics", "Chu Ci", ancient poems, and folk songs as evidence, believing that fish-related events, such as fishing and fishing, cooking fish and eating fish, all contain hints of acacia, such as the Han Dynasty Lefu poem "Drinking Horse Great Wall Cave Line" wrote: A guest came from afar and brought a wooden box in the shape of a carp, and I quickly called on the child servant to open the wooden box, which contained a letter written by the lover in raw silk ("The guest comes from afar, Leave me a double carp. Hu'er cooks carp, and there is a ruler book"). The lover's letter is placed in a wooden box in the shape of a carp, and there is no need to pour it out in the letter, and the carp wooden box itself has already expressed the theme of love in advance.
Mr. Zhao Guohua wrote in the book "On the Culture of Fertility Worship" that the fish sacrifice ceremony of the ancestors of Banpo was very intriguing, that is, "the ancestors of Banpo did not know the relationship between sexual union and reproduction, thinking that women gave birth to people themselves (that is, the so-called 'so-called 'parthenogenesis'), so the practical activities after the women held the (fish sacrifice) ceremony were not combined with male sex, but ate fish." They think that by eating the belly of a fish, they can obtain the exuberant reproductive ability of a fish. In layman's terms, they think that after eating fish, the reproductive ability of fish will 'grow' on their own bodies. The fish on the mouth of the human face on the Banpo faience pottery is a portrayal of the fish to be eaten during the banpo ancestors' fish festival."
Mr. Zhao Guohua also believes that the reason why fish is revered among the ancient ancestors (especially the Yangshao ancestors) is that in addition to having super reproductive ability, it is also quite similar to the female yin in appearance, so the ancestors transferred the worship of the female yin to the fish. He said: The silhouette of the fish, more precisely the silhouette of the Pisces, is similar to the silhouette of the female. "We looked for the silhouette of Pisces on faience and found that he had a certain truth, and it was confirmed by other primitive art. This is also the reason why the ruler biography in the "Drinking Horse Great Wall Cave Line" should be held in a wooden box in the shape of a "double carp".
The Guan Ju at the beginning of the Book of Poetry says, "Guan Guan Ju Dove, in the River Continent", the Ju Dove, is a rare water bird unique to China, often inhabiting the water's edge. It flies on the river in search of (preying on) fish. We already know that the fish is a symbol of women, so some researchers believe that in the whole poem, the fish does not appear, and the poet uses this metaphor to allude to the gentleman's pursuit of a lady without obtaining it, which is a wonderful stroke.
Therefore, many interpreters interpret this sentence at the beginning of the Book of Poetry as saying that the doves only emit a harmonic sound when they are paired, which is to confuse the dove with the mandarin duck, not understanding the habits of the dove, and not realizing that there is a hidden "role" in the poem, that is, fish.
Mr. Shen Congwen mentioned in the article "The Art of Fish": "In the second century BC, the bronze mirror at the time of the Qin and Han Dynasties, the center part of the back of the mirror, often had more than ten inscriptions, making auspicious and happy words, and there must be two small fish juxtaposed at the end. "I think this is a symbol of the mutual pleasure of the two sexes, the love of women and men, and what Mr. Shen calls them "symbolizing the happy desire of 'rich and noble'", but it is just an extension. Mr. Shen mentioned the Song Dynasty catfish pattern porcelain pillow, the pillow is painted with two small fish swimming in the river, but also full of hints of female love and male love, as an ancient "bedding", the direction of the pisces on the porcelain pillow is clear, not just a generalized "like a fish in the water".
Starting from the two-sex meaning implied in the Pisces pattern, some scholars speculate that it is the earliest expression of the ancient ancestors' concept of yin and yang. The Pisces motif, which also rises from the discourse of the two sexes, rises to the philosophical concept of "one yin and one yang is the Tao". "The 'Taiji Diagram' shape characterized by the fish shape in Zhou Yi is a general sign of its entire content. Legend has it that this pattern was created by the ancient sage Fuxi, and the development of archaeology has revealed a large number of fish patterns in Banpo type faience pottery, which have long existed in the symbolic form of 'yin and yang fish', and show the historical origin of this concept. Mr. Jiang Shuqing said:
The fish pattern images in the faience pattern mainly exist in the early Yangshao ruins such as the Banpo site in Xi'an and the Dadiwan in Qin'an. The early Banpo era is more than 6,700 years ago. The concept of yin and yang is expressed as a symbol of the image of the fish pattern, which must be later than the initial stage of rational understanding, so the emergence of the concept of yin and yang goes back to seven thousand years ago, and they have been greatly developed in the era of faience culture.
Mr. Joseph Needham, a well-known expert in sinology and a British scholar, said: "The structure of the world explored by some modern sciences has long been foretold in yin and yang. Judging from the ancient Chinese texts, the intrinsic achievement of the yin-yang doctrine is that it shows that Chinese is to find basic unity and harmony in all things in the universe, not chaos and struggle. "The faience pattern shows the origin of the yin and yang theory in traditional culture, lays the foundation for the characteristics of Chinese culture, pushes open the door to understanding the structure of the world, and gives a profound impact on the later cultural development." Chinese to find a unified and harmonious history and culture, it is necessary to go back to ancient times.
The next question is, in the Neolithic Age, when transportation and information dissemination were not developed, even the most primitive ancient kingdoms had not yet been formed, so why did the same myths, legends and image symbols appear in the vast river basin of the Yellow River? Who is giving the orders? Who is the overriding designer? The British anthropologist James George Frnazer discovered "sympathetic sorcery" as a primitive law of national thinking and behavior, and wrote about this discovery in his magnum opus Golden Branch. He collected numerous cases to prove that primitive tribal peoples often shared some common beliefs. Psychologist Carl G. Jung further proposed the concept of the "collective unconscious", in his view, the charm of literature lies in the expression of the archetype of the collective unconscious (Jung once called it "primordial imagery", Primordial Images), he believed that "a person who speaks with primitive imagery is speaking in the voice of millions of people at the same time." The existence of such archetypes brilliantly explains our question: why do similar mythological motifs and narrative structures appear around the world in the context of space-time isolation and independent development?
It is this "collective unconscious" (or "archetype") that allows the myths, legends, and icons of antiquity to converge across rivers, regions, and even across borders. People have different skin colors and different looks, but their inner instincts are the same. This "collective unconscious" (or "archetype") is the commonality of human culture, which is "a deep structure beyond the surface structure, no matter how rapidly the surface narrative changes, this deep structure remains immovable, like a hard rock foundation hidden deep under the surface", it points to "a powerful synchronic truth", and the history of human civilization (culture) is only the result of the collision, game, and interaction of this cultural commonality and difference.
Symbol of the earth god
Life is inseparable from water, and even more inseparable from the land. When human beings end the era of cave dwelling and primitive hunting, go to the mountains and plains, watch a seed fall into the soil, encounter water, encounter sunlight, will thrive, become human food, their hearts must be incomparably surprised, incomparably shocked. They cannot explain why the land gives birth to all things, just as they cannot explain why mothers are able to give birth to children.
They know that crops grow in the earth and children in the womb of the mother. But they don't look at the two things separately. In their eyes, all life, whether plants, animals, or people, is one thing, governed by the same witchcraft. Of course they know that man is born from the mother, but where does the mother come from? In the final analysis, man is a product of the earth. The production of man, and the production of other life, is attributed to the theme of the earth. The image of the earth has since merged with the image of the mother.
Thus, in the ancient Chinese mythological system, the status of the earth gods was highlighted, and "dramatically simulated the roles of the Creator, the Archaeopteryx Mother, and the Savior." The first heroine of the ancient Chinese mythological system, Nuwa, also appeared with her unique maternal aura.
Since then, generations of Chinese have believed that it was Nuwa who created the "first person" with mud and water.
The story of Nüwa creating a human being is like this - one day, she passed by the bank of the Yellow River, remembering that since the beginning of the world, there have been eagles in the world, and there are fish flying shallow bottoms, no longer a silence, but Nuwa still feels that something is missing. She looked down and pondered, suddenly saw her own reflection from the yellow river, and suddenly woke up to the fact that there was still a lack of "people" like herself in the world. Therefore, Nuwa referred to her own appearance, used the soil of the Yellow River to knead the clay people, and then exerted divine power, and there were human beings in the world from then on.
After the success of creating people, Nuwa thought that they would always die one day, and it was too much trouble to make another batch when the time came. So Nuwa went to heaven and arranged for men to marry women, so there was marriage, and human beings began their own history of reproduction, so Nuwa was regarded as the god of the main marriage and love.
Man is a product of the earth, a mixture of mud and water, so much so that in "Dream of the Red Chamber", Jia Baoyu's most common sentence is: "Daughters are flesh and bones made of water, and men are flesh and bones made of mud." "In fact, the combination of mud and water is a complete person." And Jia Baoyu himself is also a product of the earth--he was born from a stone, and the stone left by Nuwa refining stone to supplement the heavens. Both men and women have a double mother, one is Nuwa, the other is the loess earth, or that nuwa and the loess earth are one, the land itself is female, full of breasts and fat buttocks, with extraordinary ability to conceive, it is the real source of life under the world, of course, including human life.
Some people correspond to the process of Nüwa's creation of man with the production process of Neolithic pottery, and believe that the production of Nüwa's creation of man is derived from the production process of pottery, or that the production of pottery is a simulation of the process of Nüwa's creation of man--the clay itself used to make pottery is the flesh of Nüwa. Mr. Jiang Xun said: "The biggest feature of the Neolithic era is the production of agriculture and the production of pottery, both of which illustrate the discovery of the material characteristic of 'soil' by human beings. The understanding of the characteristics of soil is more complex than that of rocks. The understanding of the rock is to distinguish it directly in its texture and shape, and change its shape by hitting and rubbing. However, the understanding of soil is through its characteristics of water leakage and melting, the characteristics of being kneaded, to the characteristics of forming and fixing after drying or baking, and the process of understanding requires more complex memory accumulation. In short, only by entering the age of pottery and having the accumulation of experience in pottery production can human beings give birth to the imagination of Nüwa's earth-making. The emergence of the myth of Nüwa's creation of man is a vivid example of the economic base determining the superstructure.
In order to express the worship of the fertility of the land, people painted frog motifs on faience pottery. Fish are the most fertile aquatic animals, and frogs are the most fertile amphibians. The emergence of frog patterns, later than the fish pattern, from the fish pattern to the change of frog pattern, corresponding to the main body of the faience ornamentation from aquatic animals to amphibians of the transformation, in the process of human beings from fishing and hunting civilization to land farming civilization, frogs will inevitably gradually replace the position of fish, and eventually by snakes, fish, frogs "evolution" into "dragons" - a collection of snakes, fish, pigs, deer, cattle, sheep, eagles and other creatures of land and water advantages of the comprehensive deity, although there is no frog, but frog as one of the symbols of the gods, It has left an indelible mark on the artistic history of the ancient agricultural era. I am reminded of Xin Zhiyi's "Xijiang Yue Nocturnal Huangsha Road" wrote:
Bright Moon Branches Frightened Magpie,
The breeze chirps cicadas in the middle of the night.
Rice flowers say good year,
Listen to the sound of frogs.
In his words, the frog and the harvest are so perfectly integrated.
Not only Xin abandoned the disease, but the contemporary writer Mr. Mo Yan wrote a long novel with the theme of fertility, called "Frog". Obviously, Mr. Mo Yan, who is well versed in Chinese folk beliefs, knows the symbolism of frogs very well.
It is also worth noting that the posture of women during sex and childbirth is very similar to the shape of frogs, which makes it easy for people at that time to associate with frogs, and to establish a certain connection between the fertility of frogs and the fertility of women, and then think that women are the messengers of the world who reproduce their children.
In this way, the mythical Nüwa was given the function of creating man, perhaps because the ancestors were inspired by the female reproductive scene (similar to the frog shape). The "娲" of Nüwa is homophonous with "frog", Nüwa, will it be a female frog? The Ancient and Modern Rhymes will lift the Ma Yun and say: "Snails and frogs pass." The Orthographic Passage says, "(娲) Sound frog." It can be seen that "娲" and "frog" have the same etymological relationship, and it is conceivable that Nüwa has been given the function of "creating man" because of the role of women in reproduction. In the final analysis, women "create man" through the form of procreation, which is no different from fish and frogs giving birth, while Nüwa's creation of man is just a combination of human fertility and the nurturing function of the earth.
In short, man is made of earth by Nüwa, from the rivers and the earth, water and soil constitute the body of man, and Nüwa is the goddess of human creation. Such imprints have always remained in Chinese subconscious. Isn't there a song singing, "My hometown lives in this tun, I am a native of this tun." "Native-born is not a pejorative term, but a minimum identification of Chinese. In short, in the "soil", Chinese found their own identity. "Humans have found a non-human origin here."
Mr. Zhu Dake said: "For Chinese, the breath of the earth (earth qi) is the source of life, and people's residence must undertake the 'earth qi' in order to continuously obtain energy. This earth energy became, in Greek mythology, a source of power for the Titan giant Antaeus. After the pre-Qin Dynasty, the earth qi entered the homeland of Chinese in the form of feng shui. ”
Mr. Zhu Dake also said: "The biggest difference between the earth god and the water god is that the soil is a solid, compared with the fluid, it is easier to be grasped and pinched, easier to be shaped into a tangible object, and more convenient for human beings to create by hand." It was from the earth god's reward, the earth, that mankind embarked on the path of invention, learning to consolidate and cultivate the land, growing grain, and even directly using the soil to burn daily utensils, crock pots. As shown in the artifacts unearthed in Banpo, Shaanxi, among the oldest and most rustic pottery, the witty face of the god of the earth is superimposed. ”
Frog patterns multiply in large quantities on Neolithic faience, especially in the faience of majiayao culture, which is more eye-catching. Mr. Yan Wenming said that from the perspective of geographical distribution, cultural characteristics and artistic style, Majiayao culture is the development and extension of Yangshao culture. The Majiayao culture inherits two traditional motifs in Yangshao cultural faience pottery, bird pattern and frog pattern. However, the bird patterns in the Majiayao culture are more abstract and geometric, and only the head of the bird can be seen, and by the time of the Mid-Levels type and the Horse Factory type, such ornaments were no longer seen. The frog pattern evolved into the theme ornament of Majiayao culture. The frog pattern of the Majiayao type usually covers the entire inner wall of the bowl or basin, which is vivid and unique. After the Mid-Levels type (including the Mid-Levels type), the frog pattern began to simplify, becoming more geometric, standardized and even personified, generally painted on the outer wall of the faience pot.
In the Palace Museum, there is a piece of Majiayao culture horse factory type of faience abstract frog leg pattern double series jar, for clay red pottery, the outer wall on the orange-red pottery coat, with the pattern depicted in black color, hidden frog body, leaving only the strong frog legs, as if pedaling vigorously, to bounce out of the hidden frog height.
Faience abstract frog pattern double-series pot, faience abstract frog pattern urn, are all clay red pottery, only depicted on the outer wall, is a top view of the frog. At that time, the potters already knew how to depict the world in abstract, geometric, and standardized patterns, creating the "modern art" of that era; they were the Kandinsky of that era. Another faience polyline-patterned double-series pot, which I think is a further abstraction and simplification of the frog pattern.
Before them, or on the faience of the same era, there were still many frog patterns that were figurative and relatively realistic, such as the head being painted in a circle, rather than omitting the head as in the double-series pot collected by the Palace Museum, and some frog legs were not only four, but were painted as six or more.
Like the fish pattern, the frog pattern is also one of the "meta patterns" of faience pottery. Even water ripples, swirls, grid patterns, serrated patterns, concentric circle patterns, etc., as Mr. Shi Xingbang said, "the wavy curve pattern and the hanging pattern are evolved from the frog pattern", some scholars believe that "if placed on the round belly of the pottery itself to observe as a whole, they are all symbolic manifestations of the round and prolific uterus of animals represented by frogs, the womb of people, the womb of plants and the womb of mother earth." ”
In addition to frog patterns, tadpole patterns often appear on faience, which are derivatives of frog patterns. The so-called tadpole pattern is a black dot, dragging out an arc, and some dragging out two or three arcs. The Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture Museum in Gansu Province holds a painted pottery bowl of the Majiayao type of Yangshao culture, and the central part is painted with such tadpole patterns. The tadpoles swim in the water, forming a "concentric circle pattern" and a "spiral pattern". The pattern in the lower part of the instrument table is also composed entirely of tadpole patterns and their evolved "ripples". The little tadpole looked for its mother, found the carp, and found the turtle, but as early as the Yangshao culture era, the ancestors already knew that the tadpole's mother was a frog.
The meaning of frogs representing reproduction, survival, abundance and auspiciousness has been inherited by later generations, and frog pattern decorations can often be seen on Shang Zhou bronzes, such as a bronze pendant on the lifting beam of a bronze vessel in the late Yin Ruins. During the Spring and Autumn Period, before the Yue King Gou trampled on Wu, a ceremony was held to sacrifice the angry frog, coincidentally, in the stone house of the Wu King's Ancestral Hall, the image of Wu Wang Fucha and the frog was also engraved, and even the seal of the Wu King's Lu Lu also had frogs as decorations.
From the Spring and Autumn Warring States to the Wei and Jin Dynasties, frogs were regarded as gods. In the M5 of Shangjiao Village on the east side of the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum, there are silver toads (frogs) attachments on the vessels made by the Shaofu of the Qin Dynasty; in front of the tall and majestic Tomb of Huo Fu of the Han Dynasty, there are also huge stone sculptures of frogs; gilded copper stones excavated from the tomb of the relatives of the King pengcheng of the Eastern Han Dynasty, which are made into the shape of frogs; and the weather wind ground movement instrument made by Zhang Heng is also decorated with statues of frogs.
The reproductive process of plants
"The water moon is in hand", the next sentence is "make flowers full of clothes". It's just a shirt overflowing with the scent of eight thousand years ago, and we can't see it. The only thing we can see is that the flowers on the faience pottery are still fragrant after spanning eight thousand to four thousand years, but this "garment", not the garment of man, but the garment of pottery, on these red clay clay fired faience, enchanting and dense, graceful and colorful, full of vitality.
Common flower and plant patterns are petal pattern, flower leaf pattern, pod pattern, leaf pattern, leaf stem pattern, hook leaf pattern and so on. The pattern, in fact, is the pattern of the flower, and later refers to all the ornaments and patterns. In the Palace Museum, we can see many faience pottery with "pattern" blooming, including: Yangshao culture temple bottom ditch type faience spiral pattern bowl, faience spiral pattern curved belly bowl, Qinglianggang culture faience petal pattern bowl...
Some scholars believe that these flowers and plant ornaments are depictions of female plant genitalia. The flower pattern is somewhat like a deformation of the genitals, and the "genitals" of the plant are hidden in the flower buds. However, some scholars believe that other plant ornaments are also related to reproduction, especially the "leaf-shaped pattern", which is an intuitive reproduction of the genitals. For example, the "variant leaf pattern" of the Majiayao type of Yangshao culture, the "leaf-shaped dot pattern" of the Miaodigou type, the "flower pattern" of the Dadunzi faience pottery, and the "leaf-shaped depiction pattern" of Hemudu faience pottery are all superficial forms of female plant genitalia (or female genitalia), and the "leaf-shaped reticulation" is also extended from the above plant ornaments, constituting a symmetrical combination pattern of multiple female genitalia, and even the oval circle grid pattern is also an abstraction and deformation of the female plant genitalia (or female genitalia).
In the above text, female plant genitalia and female genitalia are compared, because in the eyes of the ancient ancestors, human beings have not yet been distinguished from animals and plants, female plant genitalia, animal genitalia and female genitalia are the same thing, so we regard those floral patterns, leaf patterns, and reticules as plant genitalia, animal genitalia and female genitalia are all correct. "When we say that faience ornament represents the reproductive organs of plants, we are actually saying that it represents the reproductive organs of humans, animals or mother earth."
These floral, leaf, reticulated and other plant ornaments are regarded as the shape of the genitals, which can be found in other primitive art. For example, in the Yinshan petroglyphs, female genitalia are represented in oval patterns. Regarding the use of leaves to represent the female yin, there are also many folk customs as an example, such as the Manchus in the northeast, there are also the tradition of using willow leaves as a symbol of the female yin, the willow branch as the symbol of the mother goddess, and the folk paper-cutting in shaanxi and Gansu regions also uses flowers to symbolize the female yin.
Implicit in the Book of Verses is a verdant world of plants, many of which are used to refer to women and are full of sexual cues. These plants are: mulberry ("Shu feng sangzhong"), mei ("Zhao Nan · Shu You mei"), pepper ("Tang Feng · Pepper Chat"), amaranth (fúyǐ, one said as plantain) ("Zhou Nan Qian"), peony ("Zheng Feng Qin Huan"),...
Ernst Grosse, a German art historian and sociologist and one of the founders of the sociology of modern art, said: "The change from animal decoration to model decoration is indeed a symbol of an important progress in cultural history - that is, from hunting to farming. ”
In addition to the similarity of appearances, there is also a reason for the theme of reproduction with plant ornaments, that is, the flowers and grasses of the plant world look weak and windy, but have a stronger reproductive ability. Animals continue the incense by giving birth to children, and plants reproduce by flowering and bearing fruit. The reproduction of plants is mainly divided into sexual reproduction and asexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction is carried out by teaching pollen, when the breeze blows, people can see the petals flying in the wind, but can not see the mature pollen of the stamens blown far by the wind, or stuck to the body of bees, butterflies, birds, falling on the stigma of the pistil or ovules, when one of the sperm and the ovules are combined, it forms a seed, produces a new fruit, this pollination method, called cross-pollination, rape, sunflowers, apple trees and other plants are cross-pollination plants. There is also a method of pollination called self-pollination, in which the plant transfers mature pollen grains to the stigma of the same flower and can fertilize normally and firmly. Rice, wheat, and cotton are all self-pollinated. Asexual reproduction does not involve germ cells, does not require a fertilization process, and forms a new individual directly from a part of the mother' body.
Compared with the reproductive process of animals, the reproductive process of plants is more secretive and more magical, revealing the great power of nature. The people who have entered the primitive agricultural era, although they have not yet mastered enough botanical knowledge, have already had a preliminary understanding of the plant world, and plants and petal ornaments appear on faience, not only out of aesthetic needs, but also for their desire for their own reproduction.
In the same way, we can understand why bird patterns have also become developed in addition to plant patterns and petal patterns. Bird patterns appeared earlier on the Yangshao culture Banpo type of faience pottery, like this piece of painted bird pattern faience pottery bowl now stored in the Xi'an Banpo Museum, depicting the image of the bird standing on its side, with a round head and a long beak, a body like a crescent moon, wings and tails lifted, still and moving, a look that will fall and fly. In particular, some small hummingbirds, with long beaks on their heads, spread pollen when they ingest nectar, that is, in the process of breeding plants (including crops), birds play a magical role, as if performing some kind of sorcery, establishing a mysterious connection between death and rebirth. In the flight trajectory of the birds, there is a secret of the survival of plants.
Some scholars believe that the bird pattern on the faience pottery represents the image of the male root, and Mr. Guo Moruo believes that it is "a symbol of the genitals, the bird has until now been an alias for the (male) genitalia, and the egg is an alias for the testicles." But this inference process is too simple, and Mr. Zhao Guohua made a more detailed argument: "Because women who have combined sexually multiple times may not be pregnant, because there is a long time between sexual union and female perception of pregnancy, ancient humans did not understand the reproductive role of men at first, only knew that women have reproductive functions." After observing the reproductive process of birds, the first people found that birds did not directly give birth to birds, but lay eggs, and the eggs hatched birds again, and there was a time process. This led them to realize that new life is developed from eggs. Therefore, they thought that the male genitalia also have two 'eggs', and then associated with the similarity of protein and semen, the combination of women and men, and the results of differentiation, so as to understand the unique reproductive function of the male root, that is, to realize the role of 'species'. This is another deepening of human understanding of its own reproductive function and reproductive process, and a deepening of its understanding with a leaping nature. Males have two 'eggs', and in contrast, birds not only give birth to eggs, but also a larger number. Therefore, the ancient ancestors worshipped the bird as a symbol of the male root in order to pray for fertility and prosperity. ”
This is a systematic discussion of the relationship between birds and male roots, and in my opinion, from Mr. Guo Moruo to Mr. Zhao Guohua, although it is conclusive, their judgment is more like speculation. However, the relationship between bird and plant pollination, though not obvious, is at least invisible. As for why the bees and butterflies that also bear the responsibility of pollen transmission have not become patterns on faience, I think this may be because the initial people's understanding of plant pollination is limited and it is impossible to do it in one step, and another reason is that birds reproduce by incubating eggs, in addition to its function of transmitting pollen, its own breeding chain is also clearly visible, so the bird naturally becomes a god in the eyes of the first people.
Another reason why bird patterns appear on pottery is that the movement of birds (especially migratory birds) has a distinct correspondence with the rotation of the seasons. The ancient ancestors discovered this law through repeated observation. The records in ancient texts also prove this. Summarizing the records of the Book of Rites and The Order of the Moon, it can be seen that:
Meng Chun's Moon: Hongyan Lai.
Mid-Spring Moon: Genbird Solstice.
Spring Moon: Voles turn into quails (rú, quail birds).
Midsummer Moon: The chime of the eagle (jú, aka Berau) begins.
The Moon of the Season: Eagles are learning.
Moon of Meng Qiu: The eagle is a sacrificial bird.
Mid-Autumn Moon: The Wild Goose Comes. Genbird returns.
Autumn Moon: Hongyan guests.
Moon of Mengdong: Pheasant into the water as a mirage.
Midwinter Moon: The Wagtails Don't Sound.
Winter Moon: Yanbei Township. Magpies start nesting.
The cyclical activities of birds accurately inform the human world of the changes of seasons, so that birds not only become reliable season forecasters, but even become "prophets", all kinds of news from mountains and rivers, grasses, trees, insects and fish, birds are not unaware. Therefore, in addition to the rise and fall of the sun and the moon, the coming and going of the birds also became the basis for the ancient ancestors to calculate the seasons to arrange agricultural affairs and various human affairs. The whereabouts of birds have great guiding significance for human production and life. In the eyes of the ancient ancestors, although the bird has multiple functions, but it is related to reproduction, growth, human life, the growth of all things, are related to the birds in the sky, human beings also the desire for grain yield, human prosperity, transferred to the bird.
The origin myths of many peoples are implemented in the image of birds. For example, the ancestor of the Yin people, his mother Jian Di, was the second concubine of Emperor Zhao. One day, the three of them went to the river to bathe together, and saw the bird (swallow) drop an egg, and after Jane di swallowed it, she became pregnant and gave birth. Qi grew up to be an adult, helped Xia Yu to control the water, and was sealed in the Shang, so the "Book of Poetry" said: "The Destiny of Heaven Xuan Bird, descended to give birth to the Shang." ”
According to Sima Qian's "Records of History", when the female correction was spinning, the bird dropped an egg, and after the nun swallowed it, she gave birth to a great cause, and the great cause was the ancestor of the Qin people.
In the mythology of the Jurchens, one of the three fairies in the heavens, Fokulun, and her two sisters, Ngulun and Zhenggulun, bathed in the Bulehuli Pond under the Bukuri Mountain, and the sacred bird placed the zhuguo it was holding on fokulun's clothes. Fokulen took the fruit in his mouth and swallowed it. Soon after, she became pregnant and could not fly into the sky. The sisters said: "You are a heavenly pregnancy, and after you give birth, it is not too late to fly back when you are light." They flew away, and Fokulen, shortly after parting, gave birth to a baby boy. The baby boy was the ancestor of the Jurchens, Bukuri Yongshun. As a descendant of nature, he has supernatural powers like the various ancestors of mythology. Therefore, in the city of Orori, the tribes of the three surnames who fought all day long saw him and invariably stopped fighting and worshipped him. He married a woman named Baili and established his own country here, Manchuria.
Later, the descendants of Bukuri Yongshun abused the countrymen, causing the countrymen to rebel and kill the main family, only the young child Fan Cha escaped. Fan cha's descendant, Montemu, used tactics to lure more than forty descendants of his former enemies to Hetuala, more than 1,500 miles west of the city of Ordoli, beheaded half of them, took revenge, and settled here. This Meng Temu was the "Zhaozuyuan Emperor" of the Qing Dynasty. Hetuala, on the other hand, was the capital of the Later Jin Dynasty established by Nurhaci. When Emperor Taiji of the Qing Dynasty presided over the compilation of early Documents of the Jurchens after he ascended the throne, he expressed this origin myth in a strong way, which showed the importance of this origin myth.
Whether it is the Yin people, the Qin people or the Jurchens, there is such a surprising consistency in their origin myths. In ancient societies where information and transportation were extremely underdeveloped, and the possibility of them copying each other was almost zero, then this magical coincidence would remind us to pay attention to the commonality of the thinking of the ancient ancestors, in which the bird became a public symbol that could communicate with each other.
The bird in the sky, with its wings, draws the line between it and humans. As the connection between the earth and the sky, in the early thinking of human beings, the bird became a spiritual creature that transcended reality, a life with supernatural colors. The worship of birds was widespread in the ancient "Nine Yi". For the reference to "Jiuyi", see Book of the Later Han Dynasty? In this book, Dongyi is divided into nine types: "There are nine kinds of Yi, known as Yiyi, Yuyi, Fangyi, Huangyi, Baiyi, Chiyi, Xuanyi, Fengyi, and Yangyi." This division became increasingly popular in later generations. Some scholars believe that the wind is the phoenix, and the fengyi is a tribe with the phoenix as the totem, referring to the Tiangao clan; the Chiyi is the tribe with the Danfeng as the totem, referring to the tribe of the Emperor Shun; the Baiyi is the tribe with the bird as the totem, referring to the tribe of the emperor; the huangyi is the tribe with the yellow warbler as the totem, referring to the tribe of Boyi; the tribe with the bird (that is, the swallow) as the totem, referring to the merchants... Through the names of Jiuyi, we almost witness a complete picture of birds. Birds with different postures in the sky become a sign that distinguishes us from different tribes. However, in the seventeenth year of the "Zuo Zhuan" Zhao Gong mentioned ten kinds of birds, indicating that there may be more than nine kinds of tribes that use birds as totems. In the middle and late Shang Dynasty, the Yi people migrated south for the third time, and their totems also flew across the Bohai Sea and inhabited the Shandong Peninsula. We can still meet the "immortals" in the Shandong coastal area of the Xianxian Fangshu from the cultural relics of the Warring States period, all of which are humanoid figures with hair, wings, and beaks, which is obviously the mutation of the Yiren totem after a long journey of Lawton - even after the disappearance of the crowd that flowed on the long passage between the Liaodong Peninsula and the Shandong Peninsula, the cultural blood connection between the two is obvious. This cultural deformation developed into one of the elements of the religious culture of the State of Qi during the Warring States Period, and exerted an important influence on the cultural style of the Yanqi region.
The "wood carved bird" excavated from the Xinle site in Shenyang may be the earliest bird-shaped cultural relics we can see at present. This is a large bird 38.5 cm long, 48 cm wide and 6 cm thick, which was broken into three sections when it was excavated, and experts have verified that it is the totem of the Xinle people. Almost at the same time, in the pottery patterns of the Hemudu culture, Yangshao Banpo and Liangzhu cultures, a large number of bird images also appeared. However, only the bird in the Xinle ruins appears in a three-dimensional form, which is undoubtedly a special bird. Now, this mysterious bird is magnified on Shenyang's municipal government square and has become a well-known emblem of the city.
In this way, it is not surprising that a bird pattern appears on the faience pottery. Even in the Bronze Age, many bronzes, such as Father Ding FangYi, Father Xin Ding, Father Xin Zun, etc., were cast with the "Four Birds" pattern. The pattern of the bird has shifted from neolithic faience pottery to bronze ware at the time of the Shang Zhou Dynasty, which has not disappeared, reflecting the long history and inheritance of the Chinese national cultural tradition.
Zhu Yong, writer, documentary filmmaker, doctor of arts, ancestral home of Heze, Shandong, was born in 1968 in Shenyang, Liaoning. He is currently a research librarian at the Palace Museum and the director of the Institute of Cultural Communication of the Palace Museum. His major works include: "The Beauty of the Forbidden City's Antiquities", "The Beauty of the Ancient Paintings of the Forbidden City", "The Calligraphy Of the Forbidden City", "Looking for Su Dongpo in the Forbidden City" and dozens of other works. The ten-volume Edition of the Zhu Yong Forbidden City Series was published by the People's Literature Publishing House. He served as the chief screenwriter of many large-scale documentaries such as "Xinhai", "Inflection Point of History", "Su Dongpo", and the chief director of the large-scale documentary "At the Foot of the Tianshan Mountain" by the Information Office of the State Council and CCTV, which was selected as "100 Collected Works of Documentaries in the Seventy Years of New China" and won various film and television awards such as the Golden Eagle Award and the Starlight Award.