"Five claws are dragons, four claws are pythons"?

The Year of the Dragon is here again, and every time the coolest zodiac is on duty, the "popular science" of "five claws for the dragon, four claws for the python, and the five-clawed dragon robe emperor exclusive" will become popular again - however, these "popular science" are actually wrong: in the eyes of the ancients in the Han and Tang dynasties, whether the dragon claw is five fingers or four fingers, it does not affect that it is a dragon, and the most common and classic dragon claw is three fingers. The dragon robe is just an ordinary costume, and the dragon pattern can be used regardless of whether you are high or low. As for the "five claws for the dragon and the royal monopoly" in today's cognition, it is the steppe customs brought about by the Mongol conquest, and the Ming Dynasty quickly abolished these prohibitions in disguise.

The Han and Tang dynasties did not monopolize the dragon pattern

In fact, if you pay attention to ancient paintings, you may have noticed that the emperors before the Ming Dynasty did not seem to wear "dragon robes" at all: Yan Liben's pictures of emperors of all dynasties wore red and black gowns, with elegant and solemn colors and few ornaments, while Tang Taizong in "Bu Yuan Tu" wore dark ochre yellow plain robes, and many court portraits of Song Dynasty emperors have been handed down, and the paintings are basically red or white plain robes.

Of course, this is not because the people of the Tang and Song dynasties did not like dragon patterns, and many Tang and Song dynasty porcelains unearthed by archaeology are decorated with delicate dragon patterns. And these dragon patterns are basically three-clawed, occasionally four-clawed, five-clawed is very, very rare. As for the owners of these dragon pattern items, they are both noble and low, and they have nothing to do with whether they are members of the royal family or not. For example, in 1984, Henan Yanshi excavated an ancient tomb of the Tang Dynasty and unearthed a bronze mirror with a three-clawed dragon pattern. According to the epitaph, the owner of the tomb was only a seven-rank county magistrate before his death.

Coincidentally, the Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi once wrote a "Feeling Mirror": "The beauty says goodbye to me, and stays in the mirror." Since the flowers have gone, there is no hibiscus in the autumn water. After many years, the box is not opened, and the red worm is covered with bronze. Now I wipe it away, and I look haggard. is heavy and melancholy, with a double-disc dragon on his back. It can be seen that the dragon pattern is a very popular classic ornament of the Tang Dynasty bronze mirror.

In fact, the custom of decorating bronze mirrors with dragon patterns has a long history, as early as the Han Dynasty. The people of the Han Dynasty liked to decorate the bronze mirror with carved paintings of "four elephants", that is, "green dragon, white tiger, red bird, Xuanwu", and often accompanied by the auspicious inscription of "left dragon and right tiger to dispel ominous". Obviously, in the eyes of the Han Dynasty, the dragon pattern has nothing to do with the royal family, but represents the auspicious Rui beast like the Vermilion Bird and the White Tiger. The tombs of the common landlords of the Han Dynasty unearthed in the Tengzhou area of Shandong Province can see a lot of dragon patterns in their portrait bricks. The dragons of the Han Dynasty almost all had three claws, and no five-claw pattern has been found so far.

As for the costumes of the Han Dynasty, judging from the various unearthed cultural relics and ancient records, it is not popular to embroider all kinds of huge and conspicuous animal patterns. Instead, they like highly abstract geometric ornamentation, or simply solid colors and dark patterns, so they can't talk about embroidering dragons. This aesthetic in the Han Dynasty also continued into the Tang Dynasty: Tang Dynasty costumes were popular with group patterns, which were also highly abstract and geometric dark patterns, mostly located on the chest and abdomen, with deer, birds, and plants as the most common themes. By the end of the Tang Dynasty, the dragon pattern began to appear, and it influenced the surrounding ethnic groups such as the Uighurs and the Khitans.

Dragon pattern ban

It may be because of the backwardness of the technical process, or it may be because of the difference in aesthetic taste. Most of the Khitan Uighur patterns no longer use abstract dark patterns, and they become larger and more conspicuous. The "dragon robe" in modern people's cognition appeared during this period. But these "dragon robes" are still just ordinary costumes, not exclusive to the royal family. For example, it is recorded in the "History of the New Five Dynasties": "The Khitan plundered Xing, Huan, and Ci in the south, and as for the Anyang River, it was burned and plundered within a thousand miles." Deguang Xi, said Zhao Yanshou said: The Han Er is the same. Because of the dragon and phoenix ochre robe, the clothes were used to appease the Jin army. ”

The costumes of the Song Dynasty continued the traditional aesthetics of the Han Dynasty, preferring geometric patterns of flowers and plants, and still dominated by dark patterns. The steppe tribes continued to pursue the Great Golden Dragon, and the dragon patterns of the Jin Kingdom became more fancy and huge than those of the Khitan. At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, the Mongols united with the Song court to attack the Jin State. The envoy of the Song Dynasty who went to Mongolia wrote the book "Black Tartar Affair" after returning to China, describing the clothing of the Mongols: "The Mongolian robe is very similar to the Hanfu, and it is also handed over to the right side. But the material is very different: in the past, it was made of animal fur, but now it is popular to make silk and gold thread, which must be colorful with red, purple and green, and then embroidered with the sun, moon, dragon and phoenix. ”

Under the attack of the Song and Mongolian coalition forces, the Jin Kingdom soon perished. The Southern Song Dynasty was also conquered by the Mongols after 45 years of hard resistance. The Mongol rulers were very fond of the ornate and huge dragon patterns, and in the various Yuan Dynasty paintings that have been handed down, the Mongolian nobles wore colorful dragon robes on almost every occasion. For example, in the famous "Yuan Shizu Hunting Map", the red dragon robe worn by Kublai Khan is very close to the dragon robe of the Ming Dynasty.

The Yuan Dynasty also promulgated the dragon pattern ban for the first time, and for the first time stipulated that "five claws are dragons", which was the first time in Chinese history that the dragon pattern was bound to the royal privileges. In fact, the Yuan Dynasty banned not only dragon patterns, but also a bunch of traditional Han auspicious patterns. For example, in the second year of the Yuan Dynasty, the Yuan court ordered "to prohibit the use of unicorns, luanfeng, white rabbits, lingzhi, two-horned five-clawed dragons, eight dragons, nine dragons, longevity, Fushou characters, ochre and other clothes".

However, in this pile of auspicious patterns, the Yuan court did pay the most attention to the dragon pattern - in the seventh year of the Yuan Dynasty, it reaffirmed the prohibition of the production and sale of "all kinds of royal sun, moon, dragon and phoenix shoulder flowers and satin satin and satin satin"; in the tenth year of the Yuan Dynasty, it was ordered that "the sun and moon dragon and phoenix satin shall not be woven"; and in the twenty-fourth year of the Yuan Dynasty, it was emphasized again that "only the dragon and phoenix patterns are not allowed to be served, and the dragon is called five claws and two horns" and "the ochre yellow dragon and phoenix pattern shall not be used". In the first year of Dade, he ordered "banning the weaving of the big dragon joke" - it can be seen that no matter how the scope changes, the dragon pattern has always been within the ban of the Yuan Dynasty, and the five claws have been emphasized many times.

However, for the Han people under the rule of the Yuan Dynasty, the ban on the five-clawed dragon pattern may be somewhat inexplicable: on the one hand, the Han people did not like to embroider dragon patterns on their clothes, and on the other hand, the traditional dragon pattern of the Han Dynasty was all three claws and four claws, and the five-clawed dragon pattern was rare.

Python robe of the Ming Dynasty

In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, although the ban on dragon patterns was inherited, it was quickly released due to the flood of clothing, and the so-called "python robe" appeared - originally, pythons had no claws at all. However, the people of the Ming Dynasty renamed the four-clawed dragon and the three-clawed dragon as "python", so wearing a "python robe" is not considered transgression.

However, as mentioned earlier, the dragon pattern from the Han and Tang dynasties to the Song and Yuan dynasties was originally three claws and four claws as the mainstream. In the eyes of the ancients, such a "python robe" is completely a normal dragon robe. What's even more interesting is that the Ming Dynasty also frequently appeared in the record of "five-clawed python robe", and the result was that the dragon robe and the python robe were completely indistinguishable, and they were distinguished only by the identity of the wearer - worn on the royal family is called a dragon robe, and worn on other people is called a python robe.

The Ming Dynasty officials themselves also noticed this problem, for example, the "History of the Ming Dynasty" recorded a period of official complaints: "The first python has five claws and four claws, and there are red and yellow ears." In the first year of Hongzhi, Bian Yong said: There is no python system for the officials of the national dynasty. The python has no horns and no feet, and now the internal officials are more begging python clothes, and they are in the shape of a dragon, and they are not controlled. It is forbidden by edict. In the seventeenth year, Liu Jian, the minister of the cabinet, said: There are many ministers who are arrogant. Here Ming court officials suggested that the so-called "five-clawed python" should be banned, and only those with "hornless and no feet" could be called "python robes" - Emperor Hongzhi initially took the suggestion, and then did not eggs, and soon he himself began to frantically reward low-status ministers with "five-clawed pythons".

Hongzhi's behavior of promulgating the ban on dragon patterns while taking the lead in violating the ban and rewarding dragon robes everywhere was common throughout the Ming Dynasty. It should be explained that the people of the dynasty do not attach much importance to this, and there is even a provision in the "History of the Ming Dynasty and Public Opinion Records" that "one to six products wear four-clawed dragons", which completely confuses the dragon robe and the python robe.

Especially after the switch of Longqing, the commodity economy of the Ming Dynasty was developed, the people became richer and richer, the wind of encroachment prevailed, and the imperial court was completely liberalized. As a result, this atmosphere of "everyone wears dragon robes together" quickly spread from officials to ordinary people. For example, "Records of Staying in the Capital" records that at that time, even the wives of hawkers dared to rent official dresses to wear when they drank wedding wine. (The Chinese family marries women and daughters, all of whom are dressed in gold and sleeves.) There are even wives of public servants and wives of sellers who have wedding banquets and beggars' robes. And "The Remains of Old Beijing" also mentions that single women wearing "big red python clothes" are often seen at festivals, but there are no servants around. Obviously, it was a civilian woman who bought a "cheap python robe" to wear out and show off. (Or there is an auspicious party, the woman takes a sedan chair, wears a big red python clothes, and is extravagant, but she is single and has no servants, and she is a cheap product for the city maid.) ）

However, this process of popularizing privileged clothing eventually came to an abrupt end during the Ming and Qing dynasties. After the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the customs, it began to prohibit the people from wearing python robes/dragon robes again, and it became more and more strict since Qianlong, and also turned out the regulations of "five claws for the dragon and four claws for the python". The Qing Dynasty emperor was also very strict about the management of the service, and the dragon robe/python robe basically became the prerogative of the emperor's relatives and noble ministers in the Qing Dynasty - and many modern people who did not seek to understand it liked to use the Manchu Qing Dynasty to represent the whole of ancient China, so they made all kinds of jokes about "more feudal than the ancients".

• (This article is the author's personal opinion and does not represent the position of this newspaper)

South Sea Ink

Editor-in-charge: Chen Bin