The invention of the "Year Beast" was less than a hundred years ago, starting from the "poodle" of the Emperor Ziwei

Every Chinese New Year, the story of the Nian Beast is told countless times: legend has it that a long, long time ago, there was an ancient monster named "Nian", who would come out to do evil every Chinese New Year's Eve, but it was afraid of loud noises, red and fire, and did not like a clean environment. Therefore, at the end of every year, people clean up at the door of their homes, paste red couplets, set off firecrackers, and hang red lights to scare away the "New Year Beast" so that it cannot do harm. In order to celebrate the defeat of the "New Year Beast", people beat gongs and drums again, calling each other "congratulations", and rejoicing that they had once again escaped the New Year Beast, which is said to be the origin of the word "New Year".

The invention of the Year Beast

However, this story, as long as you think about it a little, you will find that there are many doubts - first of all, the beginning of the story is very unChinese, and it does not say when it happened. You must know that typical Chinese myths and legends always like to set a dynasty, and many of them are even accurate to the year name: for example, Jingwei Reclamation and Houyi Shooting the Sun are set in the era of the Five Emperors, Dong Yong and the Seven Fairies are placed in the Han Dynasty, and the story of Yue Lao takes place in the second year of Yuan He in the Tang Dynasty. Without setting the era, starting with a vague long long ago, it is a typical Western legend routine. Therefore, all "Chinese myths" that begin with this routine are very suspicious in the age of their origin. For example, "Southern Weekly" mentioned before that the story of the cowherd stealing clothes, which also begins with "a long time ago", was made up by Ye Shengtao based on the opera after 1949.

And when it comes to various festival myths, it is customary to quote ancient poems. But who has ever heard of the Chinese version of the story of the Nian Beast, or any verses related to the Nian Beast? In fact, after carefully combing through the literature, scholars and enthusiasts from all walks of life unanimously agree that the story of the Nian Beast first appeared in the Republic of China. For example, the novelist Sun Yusheng said in his 1933 article "Memories of the Customs of the Year of the Old Story": "It has a hanging purple micro star painting scroll, the painter paints a stone pillar every time, and the lock on the pillar looks like a dog and not a dog beast, or the cloud is a beast that is the Tengu star, or the cloud is the name of the beast, often wants to eat people, and the purple micro star is locked to it, so that it does not go to the lower realm to be evil, and makes people not suffer in the New Year, so it is most appropriate to hang this during the New Year." In 1935, he mentioned in a short essay that "(the year beast) is like a lion but not a lion, like a dog but not a dog, and likes to eat people at night."

On December 31, 1939, another article "The Legend of the New Year" was published in the "Declaration", and the author signed "Shen", and the content was even richer: "It is said that more than 4,000 years ago, there was a thing in the world called Nian. This animal is very large, and has a cold nature, and at the end of each year, and on the night of the beginning of the second year, he goes out to eat man, so that the man of that time is a man of fear, and there is no way to restrain his activity. So at this time, everyone regarded him as a pass, which is now called the 'New Year', and because he escaped not being eaten by the New Year, the first day of the second year was called the New Year. ”

This article was published before the Gregorian New Year, and no source is given, only one "is said", and the time setting of "more than four thousand years ago" is even more inexplicable. So in the 1947 "Everybody" magazine, the story of the Nian beast became "According to ancient legends, the year is a fierce beast, cannibalistic and cruel".

Based on these documents, we can determine that the story of the year beast suddenly appeared around the 30s of the Republic of China. This is not an ancient myth with a long history, but a new invention of modern times.

Ziwei the Emperor's "poodle"

However, legends are unlikely to appear out of thin air, and does the Year Beast have an earlier historical prototype?

In this regard, some scholars have proposed that the Nian beast is likely to come from the Tibetan "Nian Shen". "Nian" means wild sheep in Tibetan, and is deified as a mountain god who can bring diseases. The Tibetan Bon scriptures describe the chanting of the gods as follows: "The chanting of the gods occupies the light of the air, but its supernatural powers are displayed in all directions of the world, causing plagues everywhere." Resembling a white yak or wild goat, with a long mane and huge eyes, heavy snow spews out of his mouth and nose, and possesses unparalleled mana that can destroy rocks and cause floods. They wander in the mountains and valleys, and make nests in the crevices of the rocks, in the trees, and in the ravines, and they are easily swept away by men, and then they are sent to sickness and death."

However, this hypothesis is really far-fetched, except for the similar pronunciation, they all belong to the fierce gods, and the Nian God and the Nian Beast have almost nothing in common: Nian Shen looks like a cow or sheep, while the classic image of the Nian Beast looks like a lion; Nian Shen is a mountain god and does not haunt in a specific season, and the Nian Beast only appears at the New Year's Pass; the harm of Nian Shen is to bring diseases, plagues and floods, and the way that Nian Beasts harm the world is mainly to eat people and livestock; the most important thing is that Bon is not strong even in Tibet, and its myth has no way to suddenly spread to the Han people during the Republic of China.

Other scholars have suggested that the prototype of the Nian Beast is likely to be a mandrill. Because many ancient books have recorded that firecrackers are set off during the New Year to scare away mandrills. However, the mandrill is a monster that looks like a man but not a man, an ape and not an ape, and it does not look like a year; on the other hand, all the above Republic of China documents do not mention that firecrackers can scare away the year beast.

Comparing the various editions of the story of the Year Beast in the Republic of China, it is not difficult to see that the articles in these newspapers and magazines are quoting each other, and all the sources point to Sun Yusheng, is this just a joke he made up blindly?

However, when we go back and take a closer look at Sun's earliest article, we will find a detail that is often overlooked—that is, the Nian Beast he recalls is from the Ziwei Star Painting Scroll he saw in his childhood. And specifically mentioned the image of the Nian Beast, which resembled a lion and a dog, and was chained to a stone pillar. As long as we find a few purple micro star painting scrolls from the late Qing Dynasty and look at them, we will immediately realize that there is indeed a monster that looks like a giant poodle painted on it.

The story of Ziweixing comes from Taoism, and he is the emperor of Tianguan Ziwei in Taoism, and he is always accompanied by a tengu in traditional New Year paintings. Similar to Dayu's lock Jiaotu: Huaishui God has no support to pray for harm, Dayu sent troops to conquer, but was defeated by Wuzhi prayer. Dayu sent Gengchen, the god of time, to go, and the god of Huaishui was captured by Gengchen. Dayu ordered the Wuzhi prayer to be locked with iron cables and pressed at the foot of Huaishui Turtle Mountain to stop the flood. The meritorious Gengchen was later also regarded as the Ziwei Star Monarch. In addition, the Ziwei Star Painting Axis was also influenced by the "Hu People and Strange Beasts", which has been very popular since the Han Dynasty, and folk craftsmen confused them all. So in the late Qing Dynasty, the Ziwei Emperor in various New Year paintings often looked like a Hu man, and the Tengu also looked like a poodle - there were no lions in China, and craftsmen could probably only paint like poodles.

After entering the Republic of China, due to the New Culture Movement, New Year paintings began to decline, and there was a fault in traditional culture. Some people still retain the memory of the image of the strange beast in the New Year painting, but they have not been able to figure out the specific source. As a result, the purple microstar and tengu in the New Year's painting were interpreted as a new type of legend of the New Year's beast.

Cultural disconnects

But the evolution of the story of the year beast is not over here. In the 1980s, there was a lot of "popular science" that reinterpreted traditional culture, for example, in 1980, the People's Daily published "The Legend and Customs of the New Year", which wrote: "There is such a legend: In ancient times, there was a vicious monster with a bloody mouth, and people called it Nian. Every 30th day of the lunar month, it will come out from village to village to eat the remnants of the people. Later, everyone learned that the New Year was afraid of sound, red, and fire. In order to protect their own survival, people came up with many ways to resist the New Year, which gradually evolved into the custom of the New Year. ”

The edition of "People's Daily", on the basis of the Republic of China, added the setting that the beast is afraid of red and afraid of ringing - this version was later written into textbooks, and after being recited by generations of primary school students, it was finally regarded as "traditional Chinese culture" by many modern people.

In fact, customs such as sticking red paper and setting off firecrackers during the New Year have their own origins. For example, the red paper on the door began to insert peach charms next to the door: the ancients used peach wood boards to write the names of the two gods of "Shen Tu" and "Yu Lei" respectively on the occasion of saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new, and it is said that the peach wood and the two gods have the effect of suppressing evil spirits and driving away ghosts. Later, the names of the two gods were gradually changed to auspicious words, and they developed into Spring Festival couplets. Some simply painted as gods, and became door gods.

And the origin of firecrackers during the Spring Festival is also very early. By the Southern Song Dynasty at the latest, the Chinese had invented "using sulfur as explosives, which was particularly powerful and called an explosive war." With the passage of time, these customs have been followed to this day, and the image of "firecrackers to remove the old, and the peach charm to renew" has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Although since ancient times, door god paintings and firecrackers have been used to ward off evil spirits, but the object of the drive has never involved the Nian beast, but the mandrill mentioned earlier.

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

South Sea Ink

Editor-in-charge: Chen Bin