Mouth with money, is a funeral inherited from ancient times, in ancient times, people after death with pearls and jade, called "containing" or "琀", most of the later generations use metal coins.
One
Written in the Warring States period, the "Ram Biography wengong five years" said, "What is contained, the mouth is also true." In the spring of the fifth year of the Duke of Luwen, King Chengfeng of the State of Lu held a funeral for his mother, and Zhou Tianzi (Zhou Tianzi was the nominal "co-lord" of the countries in the Spring and Autumn Period) sent Uncle Rong to the State of Lu to participate, giving him a "Han" and a carriage and horse bundle for funeral assistance. What is "containing"? It is the pearl jade that is placed in the mouth of the deceased. However, giving away these two things at the same time is not in line with the Zhou Dynasty etiquette system. This situation shows the situation of "collapse and happiness" in the Spring and Autumn Period.
Today, it is often said that after the death of so-and-so, there is no money in his mouth, describing this person as extremely poor.
Regardless of ancient and modern times, after the death of a person, the funeral of the rich family is generally very solemn, and the family of the poor can only be hastily buried after death; it is reflected in the mouth of the dead person, in the central and western regions of Inner Mongolia, the mouth of the rich family of the dead is generally the current foreign (silver dollar), and the family without money can only be a few yuan paper money or ordinary coins. Therefore, people often say, "Rich people bury money, and people without money bury people."
In ancient times, there were also strict regulations on the use of "mouth with money", not that money wanted to "contain" what it "contained". According to the "Ram Biography wen gong five years" and the Western Han Dynasty Liu Xiang edited the "Shuoyuan Xiuwen" record, after the death of the emperor contains pearls, princes (princes) after death contain jade, after the death of the scholar and doctor contains jie (uncircular beads) or shells (coins), ordinary people can only contain some grain, grain.
Archaeology has found that "north to the Hetao region of Inner Mongolia, west to Qinghai, south to Guangxi, east to the seaside" (1), after the death of the princes and nobles of the Han Dynasty, many mouths contain jade cicadas, cultural relics and archaeology circles called "Zen".
So, why did the Han Dynasty people have jade cicadas in their mouths? In his book "Ancient Jade Collected by Barr in China," Lovell, an American expert on ancient jade, said: "The larvae of the cicada, which enter the earth and become pupate, become cicadas after excavation, that is, like the souls of the dead, they break away from the dead corpses and begin their new life, so the cicadas become symbols representing resurrection." Therefore, the Han Dynasty people gave the deceased a jade cicada in their mouths because they had a wish to be able to "live in the next life" after the death of the ancestors.
Therefore, jade cicadas of unknown origin generally do not buy collections, because this thing is often a "dark weapon", heavy yin qi, which is not conducive to people's physical health.
Zen
After the Tang Dynasty, some officials and eunuchs were aristocratic families, and the mouth of the dead could not reach the level of using "beads" and "jade", but in order to reflect the difference in the identity of the deceased and the "nobility" of the family, they disdained the use of ordinary copper coins. So early on to collect and buy rare foreign gold coins, some really can't get it, so they get samples to imitate. Of the dozens of Roman gold coins extant on the mainland, some are imitations.
Athena gold coins of the Macedonian kingdom
Two
The word money is often used to satirize greedy people. For example, in our hometown, there are such scoldings: "Quickly you stay and buy a coffin", "Quickly you stay when you have money in your mouth".
This is also a historical tradition.
The first fold of the Yuan Dynasty anonymous opera "Zheng Yuelian Autumn Night Cloud Window Dream", [Sheng Hulu] there was a day when the son called not to go to the ship, the nun boiled the woman, to teach me to be cold and humble to take care of him, to look at the food, to hug a hug to wear clothes, I and you have accumulated some money.
In the Yuan Dynasty, Li Xingdao's "Bao Zhi Zhi Zhi
The qing dynasty Li Baichuan's long novel "The Wizard of Oz" the eighteenth time "Scolding Qian Nu to cut the neck of the whole righteousness, the Spirited Woman poured out her money to help more gold": full of oil slicks also talk about loyalty to Xiao, a body of horizontal flesh can habitually provoke wrongs; the eyes are exposed to copper light, when the woman is used to do autumn waves, the mouth smells of money, and the cold people often remove the cold language...
I. Note:
1. "Huaxia Archaeology", No. 3, 2007, Hu Changchun, Zhang Yun, "A Brief Theory of Cicada-shaped Mouths in the Han Dynasty".
II. References:
"Qunwen Tiandi", No. 8, 2011, Lin Kai (Guangdong University of Technology), "Research on the Modeling and Process of Han Dynasty Zen".