Most people who like Chinese classical novels have read "Fengshen Yanyi", "Fengshen Yanyi" has a lot of names of gods and immortals, so readers are unclear, so if you have to say that there are those immortals that can make a deep impression, I think it is nothing more than Jiang Ziya, Nezha, Yang Jian, Lei Zhenzi. Among them, the handsome and dashing Yang Jian seems to be particularly eye-catching, the third eye is obviously not an element in traditional Chinese mythology, and the three-pointed and two-edged gun in his hand also has a strong extraterritorial factor, how do these factors combine? Let Wen Shijun take you to find out.
Yang Jian also appears in other folk myths and legends in "The Evolution of the Fengshen Gods", the most famous of which is the classical novel "Journey to the West" and the mythological story "Baolian Lantern". In these two stories, Yang Jian has an additional name - "Erlang God", in fact, Yang Jian is the later name, and the name Erlang God appears earlier.
The handsome Erlang god in the TV series "Journey to the West"
In the novel Journey to the West, when the erlang god appears, a poem reads:
His appearance is clean and handsome, and his ears are shining on his shoulders. He wears a three-mountain flying phoenix hat and a collar of pale goose yellow. Strands of gold boots lined with dragon socks, jade belts with flowers and eight treasures of makeup. Waist slingshot crescent-like, holding a three-pointed two-edged gun.
"The appearance is clean and handsome, and the ears and shoulders are bright." This poem describes the newly appeared Erlang God as a handsome young man with a clean face, which is the same as the image presented by the Erlang God in the current film and television drama. In the classical novels "Fengshen Yanyi" and "Journey to the West", the image of Erlang Shen is also a young handsome man. However, in the earliest portrait of Erlang God in Chinese history, the image of Erlang God is a middle-aged uncle with a full beard, from a middle-aged uncle with a full beard to a young man with a clean face, indicating that the image of Erlang God has a process of change.
Erlang God SlashIng Diagram
Historically, the Erlang God belief mainly occurred in the Sichuan region of China, and three characters were regarded as the Erlang God, who were the second sons of Du Jian, Zhao Yu, and Li Bing.
Du Jian is the "second prince" of the Buddhist Four Heavenly Kings Vishamon Tianwang, in Tang Dynasty legends, Du Jian led divine soldiers to help the Tang Dynasty many times, so Du Jian was slowly sacrificed alone in the Tang Dynasty. However, the name "Dujian" is too difficult to remember, which is not conducive to the spread of this belief, and because he is the "second prince", the Tang Dynasty people simply called him "Erlang God", which is probably the earliest source of the Erlang God.
Buddhist Protector Vishaman
At the end of the Tang Dynasty, the Dujian faith spread to the Sichuan region. We now know that Taoism has "borrowed" a lot of Buddhist things in history, and this time, Taoism in Sichuan began to invent the Taoist "Erlang God" in order to oppose the Dujian faith, which represented the power of Buddhism. They called Zhao Yu, who had left a reputation in Sichuan history, the erlang god. According to Sichuan folk tales, when Zhao Yu was the Taishou of Jiazhou, he once went into the water with a knife in his hand and cut off the dragon's dragon head, and it was too cost-effective to use such a ready-made heroic image to fight against the Buddhist faith, and soon the Erlang god Zhao Yu rose to fame in Sichuan.
In order to oppose the Buddhist belief in Dujian, the local Taoists in Sichuan combined Zhao Yu and Erlang Shen to compete with Buddhism for believers. But at the same time as the rise of Zhao Yu's faith, it clashed with an ancient belief in Sichuan, which is the folk Belief of Li Bing. Li Bing enjoyed an extremely high prestige in the eyes of the people of Sichuan, and the Dujiangyan he built turned the Sichuan region into a country of heaven. For thousands of years, Li Bing's great achievements in controlling water have been praised by the people of Sichuan. In local legend, Li Bing's son Li Erlang once helped his father Li Bing build Dujiangyan, and slowly Li Erlang became the erlang god in Sichuan folklore. In the Erlang Temple in Guanxian County, the birthplace of the Erlang God faith, the ones who are jointly worshipped are Li Bing's father and son.
Statue of Li Bing father and son
Since the Erlang God is Li Erlang, why is it that the Erlang God is generally said to be called Yang Jian now?
Historian Zhang Zhengxiu believes that the Erlang God was a mixture of several folk gods, including Li Bingzhi's second son, Zhao Yu, Yang Jian, etc., and this Yang Jian was the eunuch Yang Jian during the Song Huizong period.
In the Ming Dynasty novelist Feng Menglong's vernacular novel collection "Awakening to the World Hengyan", there is a story called "Kan Leather Boots Documentary Erlang God", saying that there was a Lady Han in the palace of Emperor Huizong of Song, who once recovered from illness in the eunuch Yang Jian's mansion, and after Lady Han was well, she went to the Erlang Temple to burn incense and make a wish, and the temple official sun Shentong in this temple would do the magic, and at night pretended to be the Erlang God to find Lady Han for adultery, and later, Yang Jian looked for a Taoist priest to catch the demon, and finally shot down a leather boot with a stick, and finally caught Sun Shentong after investigation. This story was very widely circulated in the folk at that time, and folklore had a characteristic that the content of the story would change during the circulation process, because the story took place in Yang Jian's mansion, and Yang Jian was actually rumored to be the god erlang.
Yang Jian stills
Finally, let's look at the "Three Eyes" and the "Three-Pointed Two-Edged Gun". We know that the three eyes are a common image in Buddhist tantra, but in fact, we can go back to the influence of Zoroastrianism in Persia, where many gods are three eyes. Historically, the three-pointed two-edged gun can often be seen in the Western Regions and Persia, and these two characteristics make the life of the Erlang god strange.
Erlang God and three-pointed two-edged gun
The situation in Sichuan, the birthplace of the Erlang God belief, may be able to provide us with some clues, during the Tang and Song dynasties, Zoroastrianism was very popular in Sichuan, and the Tang Dynasty poet Liu Yuxi's "Pastoral Protection Song" can reflect this situation, and the "Pastoral Protection" in the poem is a Chinese transliteration of the Persian Zoroastrian priest Mogu. The Song Dynasty Yao Kuan's "Xixi Congyu" also has: "In the fifth year of Tang Zhenguan, there was a transmission of the Fa Mu to protect He Lu, and the Zoroastrian teachings were heard", which can be used as evidence of the popularity of Zoroastrianism in Sichuan. By the Time of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, Zoroastrianism was revered by the Former Shu regime, and there was a relevant record in the Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms compiled by Wu Renchen of the Qing Dynasty:
The emperor was covered with gold armor, a crowned beaded hat, and walked with a sword. The flag is more than a hundred miles away. The people looked up to it and called it "the god of filling the mouth."
The god Vischpacka in the frescoes of the Katazhikent site
"Guankou Zoroastrian God" refers to the former Shu Emperor Wang Yan's dress is considered to be the Zoroastrian god, the Guankou is the Taoist belief in the Erlang God's Dharma, sometimes the Erlang God is also called "Erlang Erlang", the Guankou Zoro God reminds us that the image of the Erlang God is related to the Persian Zoroastrianism. Combined with the three eyes, three-pointed two-edged gun, three heads and six arms and other divine powers, as well as the wheezing dog next to the god Erlang, this image is very close to the image of the Zoroastrian god Vishpaka, and the image of Visperka on the mural of the ruins of Katazhikent (ancient Sogdian city, located in present-day Tajikistan) is three heads and six arms, wearing armor, holding a mountain-shaped fork, and the head of a sharp-toothed dog painted on the arm, which can prove that the image of the god Erlang was influenced by Vischpaka.
The relationship between the gods Erlang and Zoroastrian gods reminds us that in ancient China, there has always been a tradition of continuous communication with the West, which is a broad concept that refers not only to present-day Europe and North America, but also to Central Asia, West Asia and North Africa. In the process of cultural exchange, civilizations influence each other and are also influenced by each other, and history has gradually entered the modern era in the process of such interaction. Not only Erlang Shen, but many characters in classical Chinese novels, such as Nezha and Sun Wukong, have extraterritorial factors on them, and perhaps this is the charm of inter-civilization exchanges.
Wu Cheng'en, Journey to the West, People's Literature Publishing House, 2004
Feng Menglong, "Awakening to the Everlasting Word", People's Literature Publishing House, 1994
Li Fei, "The Spread and Evolution of the Belief in the God from Tang to Yuan Erlang", Studies in Chinese Folk Culture, 2018
Liu Zongdi, "Erlang Rides a White Horse, From Far Away from Persia", Forbidden City, 2018
(Author: Haoran Wenshi Nanhe)
This article is the original work of Wenshi Science Popularization Self-media Haoran Wenshi, and unauthorized reprinting is prohibited!
The pictures used in this article are from the Internet except for special instructions, if there is any infringement, please contact the author to delete, thank you!
We will provide you with wonderful historical articles every day, and we kindly ask all readers and friends to pay attention to our account! Your likes, retweets, comments, this is the best support for us!