The Night Fork is a kind of ghost in ancient legends, a kind of devil in India in ancient times. Slightly different from what is now commonly understood, the Night Fork is an image in Indian Brahmanism, which was later inducted by Buddhism to become the protector of the Dharma, according to Buddhism, the Night Fork is the dependent of the Northern Heavenly King Vishaman, and is one of the eight branches of the Heavenly Dragon.
Ghost Night Fork Portrait at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Night Fork is not a specific ghost, but a race of ghosts. In the Vimalaya Sutra, translated by the high monk Kumarosh, it is said that there are three kinds of night forks: one is on the earth, the other is in the void, and the three days are also night forks. It can be seen that there are many types of night forks. For example, those who fly in the sky, run underground, and swim in the water are the relatively low-level beings in the ghost clan. The well-known story of Nezha in the "Fengshen Yanyi" mentions the night fork swimming in the water - the night fork of the sea patrol. This patrol night fork is also a middle-level leader, who is the god of the water house hand-picked by the heavenly court, and has a name and surname, called Li Gong (gen four sounds, there is a mermaid in the sea called dugong). In the art film "Nezha Noisy Sea" that we watched when we were children, the image of this night fork in the sea patrol was portrayed as brutal and stupid. Nezha was playing in the water at the seashore, stirring the seawater with the magic weapon Mixed Heavenly Aya, the tsunami was moved on the spot in the Dragon Palace, the Dragon King of the East Sea ordered Li Gen to come out to investigate the situation, the law enforcement process was a bit rough, Nezha was not used to his faults, and the night fork brain pulp smashed with the Qiankun circle burst open, and the soul returned to the divine platform. Finally, when Jiang Ziya was canonized, Li Geng, the Night Fork, entered the Heavenly Court as the god of the "Great Disaster Star".
Engraving of Xiong's Zhongzheng Hall during the Ming Dynasty
For the night fork, there are also male and female, and people often use the female night fork to describe the fierce and fierce women. So what's going on here? In the Tang Dynasty Emperor Fu's "Yuanhua Ji", there is such a story: there is a Mr. Wu in Jiangnan who married a woman surnamed Liu in Zhejiang. Mr. Wu later served as a county commander in Shanxi and accompanied his wife. Mrs. Liu originally had a meek personality, but somehow her temper and disposition became more and more strange and violent, often insulting and beating people for no reason, and she did not have a good face for her husband all day. Mr. Wu was very distressed, but he thought that his wife had some strange illness and asked the servants of the family to take good care of her. On this day, Mr. Wu and his military attaché friends went out hunting and took back many hares, pheasants and the like and put them in the kitchen to prepare for cooking and eating the next day. However, the next day, all the prey in the kitchen was gone, and Mr. Wu and the servants were curious. Then he heard a wailing sound in the deer park behind the house, and hurried to see it. At first glance, everyone was surprised. It turned out that Madame Liu was holding a deer, directly biting off the neck of the deer (geng three sounds), drinking deer blood, and then reaching out to take out the deer's internal organs, peeling and swallowing alive, Mr. Wu and the servants were all horrified, and only then did they understand that the wild things in the kitchen were also eaten by Mrs. Liu. When Madame Liu saw that she was recognized by everyone, she no longer disguised herself, revealing the true body of the Night Fork Ghost, only to see the blue-faced fangs, long hair and red body, violent eyes, muscular, and her face was very frightening, and she fled away and never appeared again. It turned out that this night fork on a certain day before, taking advantage of the fact that people did not pay attention to the fact that mrs. Liu had already eaten the real Liu, he transformed into a human form, and Mr. Wu did not know why, but still fell asleep with the night fork. Since then, people have called the fierce and vicious women the mother night fork, and it seems that there is still a source of livelihood.
Guangxu engraving "Detailed Notes on the Different Figures of Liaozhai Zhi"
There is also an article in Pu Songling's "Liaozhai Zhiyi" of the Qing Dynasty that describes the night fork, that is, the "Night Fork Country". It is said that the merchant surnamed Xu in Jiaozhou crossed the ocean to do business, and when there was a strong wind, the boat was blown to an isolated island by the wind, and the people fainted, and when they woke up, the Xu merchant landed on the shore with a boat. Seeing that there was a room halfway up the mountain that looked like a honeycomb, and there was a faint voice, it turned out that he had come to the Night Fork Country. Many night forks found Xu Merchant and prepared to eat his flesh, but fortunately were saved by one of the mother night forks. This mother night fork looks ugly, but the heart is very kind, Xu merchant and mother night fork get along for a long time to get married, find an opportunity for the two to drive a boat back to the homeland. The two lived happily together, their son later achieved the official position of admiral, and the mother Night Fork received the honor of the official edict lady as the godson. In this story, although the image of the mother night fork is ugly, it is docile and kind-hearted, and the mother night fork here is not a derogatory term.
However, the image of the mother night fork is too fierce after all, giving people a deep association, the mother night fork as a fierce and vicious female image or overpowered another kind of good-hearted image, it can be seen that relying on the appearance of the upper position in any era is an important standard ah.