The divine beast "Four Different Elephants" in the "Fengshen Yanyi" is based on the Chinese elk

Fish and Sheep History. See fresh history

Text/Dream Tapir

It is said that Jiang Ziya's initial mount was a green horse, and Zhang Guifang, the general of Qinglongguan, was good at driving strange beasts, and ordinary war horses could not resist the invasion of foreign beasts at all. Just after taking a look, the green horse was soft and crispy, and Jiang Ziya fell off the horse.

Jiang Ziya helped the old man back to the tent, thinking that he should ask for a stronger foreign aid. So he bathed and changed clothes, and secretly borrowed the soil to rush to the Kunlun Mountain Jade Void Palace.

Yuan Shi Tianzun seemed to have known the purpose of his coming here, and before he could speak, he ordered the white crane boy next to him to lead his mount to the peach garden.

Yuan Shi Tianzun's mount is a divine beast called "Four Non-Elephants", only to see it: "The scaly-headed leopard tail is like a dragon, and the foot is auspicious to the nine weights; the four seas and nine states are randomly all over the place, and the three mountains and five mountains are braked at the same time." Since then, Jiang Ziya has lived a small life riding the divine beast around fighting monsters.

The divine beast "Four Different Elephants" in the "Fengshen Yanyi" is based on an elk native to China.

01.

In the pre-Qin period, due to the sparse population, the natural ecosystem of the mainland was well maintained. We can see from the Book of Poetry that the vegetation at that time was very rich, and there were mountains covered with various trees everywhere, and grassland wetlands with lush artemisia commonly found on the plains.

At that time, due to the blessing of climate and vegetation, the species and populations of wild animals were also very diverse. The Oracle Bone Dictionary of the Shang Dynasty records that more than a hundred rhinos were hunted during a hunting expedition in the North China Plain. There is also the "Lü's Spring and Autumn Ancient Music Chapter" Yun: "Merchants serve elephants, in order to abuse Dongyi, Zhou Gongsui chased them away with his teachers, as for Jiangnan." "This proves that during the Shang Dynasty, there were elephant populations in the northern region.

With the continuous development and growth of human society, the area of agricultural reclamation has expanded rapidly, large areas of primary forests have been cut down and destroyed, and the area of vegetation has gradually decreased. For example, it is recorded in the New Book of Tang dynasty Li Gan Biography that during the Tang Dynasty (the eighth century AD), because "the capital division was poorly paid", it was necessary to "open a canal, the mouth of the Xingnan Valley, and the tail into the Yuyuan" in order to transport firewood from other places to Chang'an.

The destruction of primary forests by humans not only causes soil erosion, but also brings trouble to wild animals. Perhaps few people now know that more than 3,000 years ago, the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River were once distributed with wild elephants, rhinos, tapirs and other wild animals. Today, China's rhinos, tapirs and wild buffaloes have disappeared, and wild elephants are left with only a few small populations in the rainforest of Xishuangbanna, Yunnan.

Historically, elk have also suffered devastation, and they have disappeared from the map of China.

02.

According to Oracle experts, the three largest of the deer that are often mentioned in the dictionary are "elk", "deer", and "elk" (jūn, meaning roe deer). The elk, commonly known to our contemporaries as the "four unlikes", has the head of a horse, the horns of a deer, the hooves of a cow and the tail of a donkey.

Hunting was an important economic activity during the Yin Shang period, and the history of captive animals and concentrated hunting can also be traced back to the Yin Shang period. The "History of Yin Benji" describes the King of Shangyi as saying: "Harvest dog and horse strange things, and fill the palace room." Yiguang Sand Dune Garden, take more wild beasts and birds in it. ”

According to the Book of Yi zhou and the world prisoners, after king Wu of Zhou cut the silk, he carried out a large-scale hunting campaign and captured "three tigers, five thousand two hundred and thirty-five, two rhinos, seven hundred and twenty one, one bear one hundred and fifty, eight hundred and fifty, two hundred and fifty, eight, six, fifty musk, and eight deer." According to the analysis of relevant people, these animals were all caught from the garden of the King of Gong.

The records in the "Mammal Group of Anyang Yin Ruins" confirm that during the Yin Shang period, the number of domesticated elk was extremely considerable, "Mei's four are not like deer, and such fossils are the most seen in Yin Ruins." Most of them are angled, and most of them are sawn. "Based on the specificity of these head horns unearthed, I deduce that during the Yin Shang period, the Chinese people had domesticated elk.

03.

Zhou Li Tianguan Li (周礼天官庖人) Yun: "The Cu people hold a total of six animals, six beasts, and six birds, and identify their names." The scribe Zheng Zhong later explained that the so-called six beasts refer to "elk, deer, bear, jūn, wild, pig, and rabbit." The Zhou Li Tianguan Orcs stipulates: "Sacrifice wolves in winter, moose in summer, and beasts in spring and autumn." It can be seen that elk hunting in the Western Zhou Dynasty had become a system of recourse to writing.

Time passed back again, and in 627 BC, a famous battle in the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, the Battle of Qin and Jin, was about to begin.

At this time, the Qin general Qizi and others who were guarding Zheng Guoshu reported to Qin Mugong secretly: "Now that zheng guoren let us take charge of the key to the north gate of the capital, if the king secretly sends an army to come, we should cooperate inside and outside, and Zheng Guo will definitely be able to attack in one fell swoop." ”

Duke Mu of Qin did not heed the advice of his old minister Uncle Jian and sent an army to attack zheng guo through the Zhou Dynasty capital Luoyi.

The Qin army met Zheng Guo's merchant Xiang Gao in the slippery country, and while treating the Qin army, he arranged for a stagecoach to rush back to Zheng Guo to report the incident.

After Zheng Mugong received the news, he asked his subordinates to visit the Qin general QiZi and others in the pavilion, and the subordinates replied: These people have already bundled up their clothes, sharpened their weapons, and fed the horses.

Zheng Mugong then sent Emperor Wuzi to visit them and said to them, "You have been delaying in our country for a long time, and at present we have no dried meat, grain, or livestock. I heard that you are planning to leave our country, so you can't let a few of you go back empty-handed. The original garden of Zheng Guo's hunting ground is the same as the hunting ground of the Qin Kingdom. What do you think the King has asked you to go there to hunt elk, to compensate for your past efforts and to give our country a moment's breathing service? ”

Several Qin generals heard that secrets had been leaked, so they fled from Zheng Guo. After the general of the Qin army received the tip, he knew that Zheng Guo had already taken precautions, so he returned to the division.

Created during the Warring States period, Mozi Gongru describes Mozi traveling thousands of miles to the Chu state to prevent the Chu state from invading the Song state, preparing to lobby the king of Chu to stop this unjust war. In the article, Mozi commented that the Chu state had Yun Mengze, "Rhinoceros, 兕 (sì), Elk, and Lu Manzhi". This shows that in the pre-Qin period, the central region of Hubei was rich in rhinos and elk. No wonder Mozi believes that this is the richest place in the world.

04.

With the advent of the Iron Age, wildlife habitats were constantly destroyed by humans, especially the elk, which habitually lived in the swampy wetlands of the plains, and their populations declined most rapidly. In order to compete for living space, a contest between elk and humans began.

In the book "Natural History" written by tang and Meng in the Western Han Dynasty, it is recorded that the elk are a herd of ten thousand, they feed on digging grass roots, and where they pass, the ground is dug open and trampled by them, as if they have been reclaimed. People call this land "elk", and after they are gone, farmers sprinkle seeds of grain into it.

The grain grown in the elk land does not need to be deeply cultivated to obtain a good harvest. In this way, humans have encroached on the land owned by elk little by little.

According to relevant experts, after the Qin and Han Dynasties, it has been difficult to see the trace of elk in the north of the mainland, and the number of elk in the Yangtze River Basin has gradually decreased. By the tang dynasty at the latest, wild elk populations were already going extinct.

In fact, according to some existing historical data, the time of extinction of wild elk should be much later than experts speculate. The Southern Song Dynasty scholar Luo Wan, who wrote the book "Erya Wing", introduced, "The elk is a yin beast... Today, Hailing is the most numerous, thousands of groups, more mu, less mu. People say: One oyster pays more than ten mu. In some local chronicles, by the 17th century, wild elk herds appeared in Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan and other places on the mainland.

05.

In 1865, a french missionary, Armand David, was observing flora and fauna on the southern outskirts of Beijing when he saw many deer in the distance within a high wall. As a zoologist, he found himself unaware of what kind of deer it was.

After inquiring, David learned that the place where the deer appeared was a royal hunting ground. So he spent twenty-two pieces of silver to buy off the officials guarding the Royal Hunting Grounds, took two sets of specimens of elk skulls and horns, and sent them to Paris.

The specimens were identified by the director of the Musée des éturbés de Paris, Miller Eduardo, and the results showed that this was not only a new species, but also a separate genus. In recognition of David's discovery, the elk's foreign name was Father David's deer.

In 1894, a flood suddenly broke the walls of the Royal Hunting Lodge, and more than 100 elk in the hunting grounds fled, but unfortunately, they encountered the victims.

In 1900, when the Eight-Power Alliance invaded China, the German army occupied the hunting grounds, and they shot and ate what was left of the herd of elk, and the elk have been extinct in China ever since.

Fortunately, however, a small number of elk were forcibly sent to Europe before that. The descendants of these dozen elk have been breeding in a foreign country for nearly a hundred years, and in August 1985, 38 of them ended the "diaspora" life under the fence and returned to the embrace of the motherland.

After more than 30 years of conservation and breeding, there are currently more than 8,000 elk living in more than forty protected areas across the country. I hope that the kindness of our human beings can return this group of ancient and mysterious animals to the natural state of life that their ancestors once lived.

The earliest domesticated poultry of mankind is the first ancient poem you will memorize

Primary school students must memorize the ancient poem "Maple Bridge Night Berth", where is the problem, why has there been controversy for thousands of years

Why hubei people call it a nine-headed bird, it turns out that this is the case

Fish and Sheep History This is a public number that looks good no matter how you look at it

The copyright of this work belongs to the Fish and Sheep History, and shall not be reproduced without authorization, and infringement shall be investigated. Welcome to forward the circle of friends.