There are many stories in classical Chinese culture that describe the "love of man and god", such as "Chu Ci Mountain Ghost" in poetry, "Luoshenfu" in the article, "Liaozhai" in the Zhiwei novel, "CowHerd Weaver Girl" and "Legend of the White Snake" in folk tales.
But these stories are often dominated by "gods", the story occurs because God wants to unite with mortals, and God's fate also determines the outcome of this love affair, and people are only used as a foil in the plot, or to follow God's instructions.
However, in the legendary "Biography of Liu Yi" created by Li Chaowei in the Tang Dynasty, the story of the combination of the dragon girl of Dongting and the scholar Liu Yi is told, and the mortal Liu Yi becomes the leading figure of this relationship, and the dragon girl as a god is in a passive position.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" > the tortuous nature of the combination of man and god in "The Biography of Liu Yi" lies in man's subjective rejection</h1>
"The Biography of Liu Yi" belongs to a very thin category among many legends, it actually does not have much content, and the large paragraphs are mainly reasoning and feast descriptions, and the plot is not very prominent.
It is mainly about a scholar named Liu Yi who is about to return to his hometown. When I went to Jingyang to say goodbye to my friends, I met a "shepherd girl".
This "shepherd girl" claimed to be the daughter of Dongting Longjun, and after marrying Jingchuan, her husband and in-laws were not good to her, and they belittled her for coming here to graze "rain workers". So I asked Liu Yi to help her bring a letter to Dongting Longjun and let her mother's family rescue her.
Out of chivalry, Liu Yi rushed to Dongting, completed the mission of passing on the book, received the gratitude of the Dongting Longjun family, lived in the Dragon Palace for a while, and also met the dressed dragon girl.
Dongting Longjun and others took a fancy to Liu Yi's character, so they wanted to marry the dragon girl to him as a wife, and interesting places appeared here.
According to the style of folk tales, perhaps Liu Yi agreed to the marriage here and lived a happy and happy life together, but in the end it is still the "god" who dominates the relationship, and people only have the qualifications to passively accept it. But "The Legend of Liu Yi" made a big move and did not follow the usual plot line.
Although Liu Yi was also impressed by the beauty of the Dragon Girl, he categorically rejected this proposal, and acted righteously and awe-inspiringly, saying that he had passed on the book on behalf of him out of chivalry, and if he finally married the Dragon Girl, wouldn't he become a villain who killed his son-in-law and took his daughter? The nature of the whole thing has changed, contrary to chivalry.
In this way, Liu Yi returned to the human world with a large number of reward treasures from the Dragon Palace, and only sold less than one percent of them to become the richest man in the local area, so he began to arrange marriage. However, what people did not expect was that the Zhang family, who first married into the door, died of illness soon after, and the Han family who married again also died a few months later.
After one such thing happened, Liu Yi naturally moved and has been widowed. Liu Yi's family is extremely rich, and he is a reader, and his age is still relatively young, so naturally there are matchmakers who do not know their previous crimes to come to the door to propose to them. The daughter of Fanyang Lu had an unhappy marriage in the early days, and her husband died early, so she remarried Liu Yi.
After getting married, Liu Yi felt familiar when he looked at Lu Shi, and it turned out to be the dragon girl he had saved that year.
At that time, Dongting Longjun and others proposed to marry the dragon girl to Liu Yi, which was actually the dragon girl's own idea, but she did not expect to be rejected by Liu Yi. Hearing that he had killed two wives in a row, the dragon girl took this opportunity to actively pursue marriage.
That is to say, in the love affair between Liu Yi and the Dragon Girl, although the Dragon Girl as a god takes the initiative, she is in a position of being chosen, and the mortal Liu Yi is the key to determining the direction of this marriage.
It is precisely because of such a setting that "The Legend of Liu Yi" quickly stands out in many "love of people and gods" stories. What it shows is a new expansion of similar subjects.
At the same time, in the "Biography of Liu Yi", we can clearly feel that it seems that the Attitude of the Tang People towards many "immortals" has taken a relatively big turn, the divinity has lost its supreme aura, and human nature has begun to rise.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="23" > the Tang Dynasty culture amplified the "human" nature, Liu Yi became a special "hero"</h1>
In the story narration of "The Biography of Liu Yi", we can often see the content of "fighting each other" between man and God.
For example, at the beginning of the story, the "Dongting Dragon Girl" as a god is in an extremely weak position, and she has to ask for help from mortals, which not only shows that her own strength is inferior to that of mortals, but also reflects that mortals have an ability to change the fate of immortals.
Thus, the tone of the story is determined, God is not a supreme being, they are just two things that are different from man, God has the power of God, and man also has the power of man.
When Liu Yi first arrived at the Dragon Palace, both the emissaries who received him and the members of the Dongting Dragon Jun family showed great respect for him.
Liu Yi did not directly meet the principal when he first arrived at the Dragon Palace, Dongting Longjun was discussing the Fire Sutra with the Sun Daoist at this time, and this Sun Daoist was a mortal, the reason was profound, and the Dongting Dragon Jun was very courteous to him. What is even more interesting is that the attendants in the Dragon Palace have the same respect for mortals as they do for the Dragon King, and they say:
The dragon takes water as the god, and a drop can be used to cover the Valley... Man regards fire as sacred, and a lamp can burn the house.
This put mortals and immortals on an equal footing in dialogue, and the gap in strength between the two was infinitely shortened.
When Long Jun saw Liu Yi, before he knew his purpose, he called him "Master", which seemed unusually polite, without the sense of superiority of the gods in other stories. In particular, Liu Yi, as a common man, was frightened in the face of many spirits, and Long Jun also patiently interpreted it for him, and did not have arrogance.
However, the power of the immortals was indeed much greater than that of mortals, and after Dongting Longjun's younger brother Qiantang Dragon King heard about the dragon girl's suffering, he was furious and instantly killed Jingchuan Xingshi for questioning. The result was not only to swallow the dragon girl's husband in one bite, but also to hurt 600,000 innocent beings and damage crops for eight hundred miles, which showed that there were many mortals among them.
But it was such a brave and violent Dragon King who repeatedly apologized for disturbing Liu Yi, which showed that the immortals respected not all "people", but those with special abilities and special characters.
Liu Yi is just a scholar, and the fall of Keju shows that his talent and learning are not particularly excellent, but his behavior of passing on books far away has a "chivalrous spirit" that the Tang Dynasty people especially respected.
And the "chivalry" that makes the gods bow their heads is the brilliance of human nature. "The Biography of Liu Yi" has repeatedly expressed Liu Yi's "chivalry".
The Dragon King of Qiantang took advantage of the reason of drinking wine to propose to let Liu Yi marry the Dragon Girl, but his attitude was somewhat arrogant, and his words were slightly threatening, and as a result, Liu Yi scolded him mercilessly:
...... In spite of his ways, with the People of Wei jia, the servants are hopeless! If you encounter the public in the midst of the flood waves, between the Xuan Mountains, the drums are scaled, and the clouds and rain are used, and the yi will be forced to die, and the yi will be regarded as a beast, and what hate! ......
These words were loud and clear, showing the awe-inspiring and inviolable courage of human dignity, which made the gods and immortals present feel shocked and ashamed, and quickly apologized.
After the dragon girl married Liu Yi, Liu Yi also got the life of a god, almost immortal, but whether it was when living in the human world, or in the stage of finally living in the cave court in order to escape the harassment of the monarch seeking immortals and asking for medicine, the relationship between the two sides has always been dominated by Liu Yi.
The connotation of the story of "The Biography of Liu Yi" obviously breaks the sense of sublimity of the gods in people's hearts, and raises the spirit of "chivalry" in the human world to the same status as the gods.
More importantly, "xia" is no longer just the kind of jianghu high-roller who "violates the prohibition by force", but has become a kind of mind that embraces the universe and is anxious to be difficult, which is also one of the most important transmutations of the connotation of "chivalry" in classical Chinese culture.
The future is hidden in the night, waiting for the dawn here.
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