Merchants are heavy on wine, and in bronze they are honored as drinkers; The ancients often said "eating men and women", in fact, human desires have long been vividly reflected in the two ancient dynasties.
Eating men and women, people have great desires
Shang Junwang's "wine pond meat forest" is no stranger to everyone, under the feet is an endless wine pool, in front of the fragrant barbecue forest, surrounded by a slender waist girl, this luxury life is summarized in four words, nothing more than - diet men and women!
Eating meat, drinking alcohol, and mating are the underlying logic rooted in human desire.
In the case of merchants, it is infinitely magnified, and the Shang King mentioned at the beginning is its master. In fact, among these three points, "wine" is the most critical bridge: one end connects diet, the other connects men and women.
Merchants are simply good drinkers, and both men and women are extremely fond of drinking. For example, the owner of the tomb of Yin Wu Wuhao, the wife of Wuding, the king of Shang, and the first female general in history, Wuhao, her tomb has many bronze vessels related to drinking: such as jue, cup, zun, yao, fang yi, etc., a total of 210 bronze containers were unearthed, of which the number of wine vessels accounted for about 74%.
In addition, we can also get a glimpse of leopards from the combination of funerary goods in merchant tombs:
The most common is the "jue" wine vessel, nobles are almost every tomb must, in addition to the "jue" this single wine vessel, "yao" is also very important, and it is used in conjunction with it: it is generally believed that people often need to warm the wine when drinking during the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, warm wine is used Yao, and drinking is used jue.
Therefore, later Confucius, faced with the collapse of etiquette and happiness, issued the so-called "Yao Bu Yao?" 觚哉觚哉", to emphasize the importance of "Yao" to "Jue" in wine vessels.
If we look at the bronzes in the tombs of the Zhou people, and the accompanying aristocratic etiquette, we will find that they seem to attach great importance to "eating": emphasizing how to eat, what to eat, and what to eat! The most unearthed are the utensils for cooking and holding food based on guan and ding, and around this pot and pan, Zhou people can even come up with a set of rules:
"The Son of Heaven has nine dings and eight signs, the princes have seven dings and six signs, the doctor has five dings and three signs, and the warriors use three dings and one tuft."
The Son of Heaven has nine pots and eight bowls, and so on to the point that the scholar can only use three pots and one bowl, and the number of dings and guises between various status levels must not be encroached upon, and the number of food utensils actually reflects the richness of the types of meat eaten by people of different levels of identity.
Wine to enlighten the spirit, food to comfort the people
So why are businessmen so addicted to alcohol? Because "the great affairs of the country are in worship and fighting", whether it is war or sacrifice, anything can be missing, but wine cannot be missing.
In fact, "hallucinogenic, ghost-channeling" was the direct demand for wine by the kings of the Shang Dynasty, and excessive drinking could make people coma and fall into the realm of hallucination, which in the eyes of the ancients was able to communicate directly with the gods. And there are many worship objects of merchants, not only the worship of the Heavenly Emperor, nature worship, but also ancestor worship, especially the latter, no matter what they do, they hope to be blessed by their ancestors, then naturally they need solemn and frequent sacrifices.
There are hundreds of ancestors sacrificed by merchants that can be seen in the divination alone, and there are dozens of different methods of sacrifice, and the wine used at the time of sacrifice is as many as 100 beards. At the end of the sacrifice, the wine and food used for the sacrifice were mostly enjoyed by the participants, and it can be imagined that every sacrifice of the merchants to the ancestors and gods became a fair wine and food reception for the nobles.
Therefore, the most famous cultural conflict between heavy wine and heavy food in Chinese history occurred in the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, when the Zhou people directly issued a strict nationwide "prohibition of alcohol", because the Zhou people believed that the frequent and uncontrolled sacrifice and drinking of merchants were important factors that led to the fall of the Shang Dynasty.
"Shangshu Jiu": "But panic is shy about wine, the crowd is self-drinking, and the smell is on top, so the sky is lost in Yin." ”
Mr. Guo Baojun divided the Western Zhou bronze ware into two periods in "Comprehensive Study of Shang Zhou Copper Ware Group". The demarcation between the two phases is at the end of King Mu, and the biggest difference between the two is the combination of artifacts. The early stage was the same as the Shang Dynasty, it was a "combination of heavy wine", while the later period was a "combination of heavy food". This statement is clearly influenced by the prohibition of alcohol in the early Zhou Dynasty in the literature.
Of course, after the Zhou people replaced the merchants, their abandonment of their cultural form was also obvious. Like the Shang Dynasty, the Zhou people also attached importance to bronze ceremonial vessels, but unlike merchants, the bronze ceremonial vessels of the Zhou people were mainly based on bronze food vessels, and no longer regarded bronze wine vessels as key objects.
The tradition of heavy food of the Zhou people may come from the lineage of their ancestors "Houji", the so-called "millet", in fact, is the name of a grain, the Zhou people attach importance to agriculture and farming, more than merchants understand the importance of food to themselves, at any time, "eating" as a top priority.
For example, the eight political issues mentioned in the Zhou Rules recorded in "Shangshu Zhoushu Hongfan" are the first thing to say is food. And the eight political functions of King Zhou mentioned in the "Li Ji Wang System" are: "food, clothing, things, differences, degrees, measures, numbers, and systems". Food was also listed as the first government here, which shows that the rulers of the Zhou Dynasty attached great importance to the diet of the people.
Zhou people's heavy food, merchants' heavy drink, reflect two diametrically opposed national characters: the former (Zhou people) rational and restrained, always suppressing human nature with etiquette, even if eating, you must eat a three, six, nine, etc., belonging to the "sun god type" cultural model; The latter (businessman) uses the stimulus of wine to temporarily get rid of the suppression of reason, and pursues and experiences the value of life among the wandering remains, which belongs to the "Dionysian type" cultural model.
The ancients said: "There is no beauty and evil in things, but if you pass, it is a disaster", it is true that we can't throw the pot on drinking and eating!