Dragon Boat Five Poisons

The Tang Dynasty Wenxiu's "Dragon Boat Festival" poem has a sentence: "The Dragon Boat Festival is self-proclaimed, and it is rumored to be Qu Yuan." Here, the author talks about the "five poisons" of the Dragon Boat Festival.

The Dragon Boat Festival originally referred to the first noon day of the noon month, because the "noon" and "five" were connected, and then it was fixed on the fifth day of the fifth month of the fifth month of the lunar calendar every year. This is the time of day when the weather is hot and the rain is increasing. In the humid and hot environment, it is easy to breed various diseases and poisonous insects that can cause harm to the human body, so May has always been known as the "evil moon". The fifth day of this month is also regarded as the "evil day", the most unlucky day. This child is believed to be "male harm to father, female to mother".

"Dragon Boat Festival, the weather is hot; the five poisons wake up, restless", such "evil moon and evil day", diseases, disasters, dangers occur frequently, therefore, the folk on the Dragon Boat Festival of various festivals and activities, it is mainly around the elimination of poison and evil.

Usually spend money on the image, always some auspicious pattern. However, on the day of the Dragon Boat Festival every year, especially in the northern region with little water, the auspicious pattern on the money worn by people has changed, and it has become five poisons, and the money spent on this day is called "five poisons and flowers" by the people.

The "five poisons" on the "five poisons" usually refer to scorpions, snakes, centipedes, toads and geckos, but in different periods and different regions, its composition is not fixed, and stings, tigers, spiders, lizards, wasps, rats, etc. have also been one of the "five poisons". One of the commonalities among all members of the "Five Poisons" is that they are all known to be poisonous and harmful.

Since the Qing Dynasty, wearing five poisons to spend money has become an important folk custom of the Dragon Boat Festival. In the Qing Dynasty's five poisonous spending money, the more common is the "five poisons to dispel evil money", this kind of spending money is mostly cast for brass, the front of the money is usually snakes, centipedes, geckos, toads image, only there is no scorpion, replaced by a tiger. The scorpion is not spent money, but is taken from its harmonic sound, that is, "to dispel evil (to go to the scorpion)". The reason for replacing scorpions with tigers mainly has two meanings, one is derived from "Ai Hu", which is a tiger woven with wormwood; the other is to "suppress poison" with the help of "tiger poison", that is, "attack poison with poison".

The author's collection of this five-baht back five poison money, diameter 49.5 mm, thickness 3.1 mm, weight 23.5 grams. It is a common form in the Qing Dynasty, and the "five poisons" pattern on the back is slightly different from the one introduced, except for tigers, snakes, centipedes, and geckos, spiders have replaced toads.

A female colleague who did not know how to spend money, saw this money one day, pointed at the joke and said: "The pattern on this side is like a five-poison cake." ”

This also confirms from the other hand that the five poisonous spending money records the evolution of ancient folk nature worship to a certain extent, although it is so, but it still has influence, so this kind of spending money still has a certain folk research value and collection value.

Author: Li Xiankun

Source: Tianjin Daily