A global covid-19 pandemic has led people to turn their attention to bats that are suspected to be the source of transmission. Bats are not good-looking animals, but they have attracted people's attention, but the time is not short. Recently, reading Mr. Qian Zhongshu's "Pipe Cone Compilation", the content of "talking about bats" made the author feel interesting.
The evil bat that "meets the source left and right"
As far back as the Three Kingdoms period, the famous literary scholar Cao Zhi wrote a "Bat Endowment" specifically for it. However, the description is not very good: "What a treacherous, born this bat!" The shape is peculiar, and every variation is constant. Can't help but fly, fly without false wings. ...... There is no room for mao, and the feather tribe is expelled. "From this point of view, people did not treat it very well at that time. This object has a special appearance, does not move like a walking animal ("can't walk"), and does not fly like a bird ("flying without false wings"). Finally, the bat was not accepted by the beast and was chased by the birds. Although this is Cao Zhi's subjective imagination, the cognition contained in it should be the basic view of people at that time.
After the Three Kingdoms, there are also written accounts. The Fayuan Zhulin, a collection written by The Tang Dynasty, quotes the text of the Buddhist Tibetan Sutra, which also refers to bats: "For example, bats, when they want to catch birds, they enter the cave as rats, and when they want to catch rats, they fly into the air as birds." The West also wrote about bats very early, and in the "Pipe Cone Compilation", Qian Zhongshu continued with the "Buddhist Tibetan Sutra" as an example: "An ancient Roman fable is like this, written by a famous French artist in the seventeenth century, and it is called bat language: 'The body is a bird, please look at my wings', 'The body is also a rat, may my kind live forever!". ’”
Not only in China, but also in the West, there are also "evil bats as monsters of 'treachery'." Therefore, in the painting, the "divine wings" of the gods are normally drawn according to the wings of birds, while the wings of the devil are drawn according to bats. Dante's Divine Comedy describes the demon leader in hell: "Two large winged birds are born, but the wings are featherless like bat wings." ”
Qian Zhongshu continues to give examples: "The famous Italian Renaissance warlocks and heroes fight, invincible, but deformed into monsters, with giant bat wings, fingers like sharp hooks, feet like goose paws and strands like one-eyed insects, long tails like apes." "Monster" is "batwing." Even China's paintings have influenced the West. The paintings of China's great painters Wu Daozi and Li Gonglin spread to the West, and some painters in the western soil "took the shape of their flying dragon wings to paint magic wings."
At that time, it seemed to be rejected by birds and animals (of course, this is human imagination), but later people called some "sleek" people who were "inconsistent" and "bat faction". Qian Zhongshu, seen from the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, Wei Shu, and Liu Ye," believes that "Liu Ye, who was in the same dynasty as Cao Zhi for Cao Cao's courtiers, is such a person." "It's a different evolution of understanding.
Bat Gao Jian Father, 1936
Bats enjoy the "blessing" of harmony
Culture evolves. Later, in China's customs, bats became "auspicious elephants". When such a change occurred, Qian Zhongshu also said: "I don't know when it started." "But then he was familiar with the situation." For example, he quoted a poem by the Qing Dynasty literary scholar Jiang Shiquan in his "Zhongyatang Poetry Collection" entitled "Fei Sheng Tianpeng Painting "Qi Qi Tu" Gifted to Baiquan": "The world loves auspiciousness, and the painter praises and prays; the harmonic sound is taken, and the hidden language is made." Bat deer and hummingbirds, halberds and flowers and birds... To see the cat butterfly, enjoy the birthday examination. Suddenly, some things are not easy to understand, and the Chinese characters are restored, and Fang knows the connotation of the harmonic sound: "bat deer", Fulu also; "bee monkey", fenghou, for the official also; "戟磬" looks evil, in fact, it is just a good word "auspicious". "Cat butterfly", the name of high life expectancy "elderly" is. From this point of view, it is much easier to understand the multitude of animals and flowers on this "Old Mantle Diagram" (the "bat" of bats, because it is homophonous with the word "Fu", it is actually an important image of the Chinese people praying for blessings).
At that time, some people also noticed the fate of bats. The Qing Dynasty scholar Meng Chaoran commented in his "Yiyuan Pavilion Complete Collection of Gua Shed Summer Escape": "The genus of insects is the most disgusting as bats, and now the weaving and embroidery pictures are used to homophonize with 'Fu'; the genus of wood is the most beneficial to Mo Rusang, and today people are afraid of planting it, so as to be homophonous with 'mourning'." "The originally repulsive bat has become a widely drawn image of textile embroidery; for the silkworm, which is the most important one to produce weaving, it is not popular only because it is homophonous with "mourning", and even cultivation is affected.
Qian Zhongshu also talked about his childhood impressions: "When Yu was a child, he still saw people sticking red paper on the door every New Year to cut bats, taking the meaning of 'Five Blessings Linmen'; Later Yu Hu saw collectors in Qing Ren's "Hundred Blessings Map" painting bats or Xiang or ji, just as "Double Happiness Map" painted magpies and "WanliTu" painted lychees, all of which are called 'harmonic sounds' and 'homophonic sounds' as 'song prayer' ears. In fact, this kind of situation that Mr. Qian saw when he was a child has been circulating in the folk for many years, but it has been much less in these years.
Battutch flower paper cuts
The worship of "famous sounds" is consistent between China and foreign countries
Qian Zhongshu further gives more examples of being noble and inferior because of the same voice: "The Quan Sanguowen, vol. 18, Chen Wangzhi's "Treatise on Greedy Birds": 'Those who release birds and finches add Qiluye, and those who get the stings are not tamed and let them go, and they are also beneficial to them'. "Looking at Liu Tian's "Liu Zi And Contemptuous Names" chapter yun: "Those who see the clams in the daytime think that there is a ray of joy, and those who dream of birds at night, think that they are the elephants of the title' then plant the so-called 'liren', that is, the clouds below it: 'Birds, beasts, insects are still different from their reputations', but their names are the same as the words 'joy' and 'jue'." "Chen Wangzhi" is Cao Zhi, who was given the title of "King of Chen" during his lifetime. "Cockroach" is just a kind of spider recorded in ancient books, because "cockroach" and "like" are homophonous and have long been loved. The Tang Dynasty poem also has the sentence: "Last night's nepotism was dissolved, and now the cockroach flies", with the word "cockroach" saying that there is a happy omen. But the "bird" sound, in Mandarin, is not homophonous with "jue", it should be a southern dialect harmonic.
The first volume of the "Records of the Nengjia Zhai Manga" records the words of Wang Yuan's uncle: "Medicine to cure diseases, or to take the meaning of the class, such as 'lily' to cure hundreds of diseases, it seems to take its name." "This is China. The same is true in the West: "The ancient Romans sounded in the shapes of 'lepos' and 'rabbits', so that eating rabbit meat made people beautiful; the name is like a medicine, and the "reputation is different" at one end." The worship of "famous sounds" is actually consistent between China and foreign countries.
Qian Zhongshu found another example from the diaries of the ancients. Volume IX of Ye Sheng's Shuidong Diary of the Ming Dynasty has this account: "Yuan Confucian Sanshan Liang Yi titled Huang Xiao's "Three Birds Diagram" means that the courtyard paintings all have names, which are the meaning of the "Three Lords" of the "Poems", "Rituals", and "Spring and Autumn Biography". Today's 'Three Dukes', 'Five Finches', 'White Heads', 'Double Happiness', 'Sparrow Deer', 'Bee Monkeys', 'Eagle Bears' and the like, are they all called 欤? "Today, we often see the above objects on the ancient window frames, bed frames, bookcases, wall decorations, roofs and other ornaments outside the drawings, and reading Mr. Qian Zhongshu's quotations is of great help to understand the implications.
Later, the emperor also played this trick. In the Qing poet Wang Shizhen's "JuyiLu", the story of the emperor is recorded: "In the Changchun Garden, a painting fan shows the ministers of the Inner Straight. ...... The paintings are two egrets, one green lotus, and the inscription is: 'The road is clean' cloud. "Two "egrets" are pronounced "lulu", and "qinglian" is naturally "clean", is this not to teach the ministers a lesson on integrity?
Qing Liao Fu zhi Jue Lu bee monkey diagram
The harmonic pun has long had a source
Some things, developed to the end, will always reach the extreme. In reading Qian Zhongshu, he saw the most tortuous intention: "It is not as good as Wang Duanlu's "Records of Heavy Papers", volume 41. "Wang Duanlu was a famous bibliophile of the Qing Dynasty," Chen Zhanghou "Kejia Won the First Picture, Tingyang First Picture", nan Yanshi inscription frame first said: "The first painting of this picture is dragonfly, the money is held high by Fei Ming, and it is unparalleled, and its so-called Tingyang is the first." Dragonfly, take the sound of "Ting". "Flying and holding high", take the meaning of "flying". "Peerless" means one, which is the first meaning. Not only to take the harmonic sound, but also to speculate from the graphics, which is only half of the title of the painting. The other half: "... On the front of the lotus leaf there are leaping upwards, Zhan Zhu [toad], is it taken from the family [tadpole]? The leaf edge is hollow, like a honeycomb, and the nest is also. crab...... Non-Ahu? Husband crab solver also. ...... The cicada is embellished with lotus, the proof is harmonious, and the meaning of entanglement is obvious. "A painting that is so inexplicably guessed. Qian Zhongshu's quotations are basically unnotated. He should have understood it by his readers, but in this verse he also notes in square brackets after "Zhan Zhu" as "toad"; "ke" is indicated by "[tadpole]". In order to "get a family of people", not only "cicadas" and "lotuses" were created, but also "toads", (meaning "tadpoles"?). The writer is also guessing. "Crab" takes its "nail" meaning. Good mess.
Next, Qian Zhongshu has some retrospective interest in this: "The painting of harmonic allegory, which has been in existence for five generations, has entered the light and is full of ears." Taste the Forbidden City's collection of "An He Tu", paint quail and rice grass, and spread the Song people's hands. Qian Zhongshu personally saw this painting by the Song people, in which "quail" takes the former word "An", and "Daohe" takes the latter word "and". This is also too much to say. But once things form a tradition, it is so powerful. Look at some of today's paintings of flowers, trees, birds and beasts, but the ancients are also yu Xuye. Finally, he concluded that "such paintings are also the 'puns and two meanings' of the Judas poem 'Wind And Human Body'." In other words, the idea of creating these paintings comes from a poetic technique. Chinese poetry has long enriched the creation with harmonic puns, and "wind and human body" is the summary of this by posterity. Previously, people traced its origins, only to the "Six Dynasties": "The Songs of the Six Dynasties Music House's 'Midnight' and 'Reading Music', etc., are borrowed from puns, and the Tang people call the wind and the human body, and the words of this custom are also." (Qing Zhai Hao's "Popular Compilation") Qian Zhongshu, however, traced the "Book of Poetry" in the "Pipe Cone Compilation", which shows that the origin of this technique has a long history.
Yan Bolong 壬午 (1942) as An HeTu
The author remembers the Poem of the Tang Dynasty Han Yue: "The mountain stone is indeed a small act, and the bat flies to the temple at dusk." "It's a fact, bats are neutral depictions. The Southern Song Dynasty Xin abandoned the disease and had a word: "Hungry rats around the bed, bats turning the lamp dance." "Putting bats and mice together, there is no "blessing" phase. It seems that bats have the auspiciousness of "blessing", the era is not too far away, the earliest, about appear in the frame. However, the harmonic technique that makes the bat salted fish turn into "Fu" has been passed down quite early and even to this day. We nibble on the text of Qian Zhongshu and understand the evolution of culture; we can also say that we have benefited a lot from the bats we see at dusk and the traditional auspicious "bat" elephants that are blessed in the picture scrolls.