Although Chinese New Year's Eve is the New Year, the week before yesterday is actually going to be busy. For example, at the twenty-third or twenty-fourth hour of the waxing moon, the common people will sacrifice the king of the stove.
I remember when I was very young, on the wall of the pot door at home, there was always a New Year painting on the wall of the pot door, and every New Year's Day would always be pasted. The painting is not very large, but it is very beautiful, there is an old man and an old lady on it, and there are many words around, and I don't recognize it. Later, I learned that it was the King of the Stove.
Yes, the common people want to sacrifice the king of the stove. Even if the intermediate process is omitted, in the end, the stove king must be posted near the stove door, indicating that the sacrifice has been made.
Why did the common people sacrifice the king of the stove? Who is the King of stoves, in what way can he bless the people, and what will happen if he does not sacrifice stoves?
Although it has passed the time of the sacrifice of the stove, but fortunately, before the New Year, today I will talk about the king of the stove.
Vesta Origins
Stove characters, traditional characters above the hole, below the mole, the hole represents the pit, the mole represents the insect, the ancients burned the fire, the following will gather some bugs, especially after the autumn and winter cold. So the original meaning of the stove is to burn the earth pit of the fire. Later, for the sake of simplicity, people created the stove character of huiyi.
Vesta, derived from the worship of fire in primitive times.
Before the fire was used, primitive people lived in caves, drank blood, and had to prevent poisonous insects and beasts, and their lives were very bad. After using the fire, they can not only eat delicious and digestible cooked food, but also use the fire to scare away poisonous insects and beasts, which is safer. So, people worship fire.
Later, people gradually disguised the worship of fire as a human being, so as to worship him. Who is this person? Nature is a person who can produce fire, or a person who is related to fire.
For example, the Huainanzi records that "Emperor Yan made fire, and died as a stove", and Gao Lu also said in the note, "Shennong, Emperor Yan, with the fire of the king of the world, died to worship the god of Vesta". This shows that shennong and yandi are vesta gods.
Kong Yingda of the Northern Qi Dynasty, in the Notes on the Book of Rites, said, "There is a son of the Zhao clan, Yue Li, for Zhu Rong, worshiped as the god of Vesta." This shows that people also regard Zhu Rong (the legendary fire god) as the god of Vesta.
Even before Emperor Yan and Zhu Rong, there was a god named "First Cooking", which was also the predecessor of the God of Vesta. According to the Book of Rites, the Book of Han, Zhuangzi and other records, Xiancao was a woman, very beautiful, wearing fiery red clothes. This shows that the early Vulcan was a woman, which may be a trace of the worship of the goddess during the matrilineal clan.
In fact, many fire-related gods, even goblins, may be considered Vesta.
For example, in the "Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms", it is mentioned that "the demon of Song Wujie, put it into the stove also". At that time, Song Wuji was not a god, just a fire spirit. Song Wujie was mentioned in the "Water Margin", which is also related to fire.
Vesta Story
After it was transmitted to the Tang and Song dynasties, vesta not only became a specific person, but also had a name and a surname and a wife and a story. In the Tang Dynasty Duan Cheng-style "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks", it is said in great detail. Vesta's surname is Zhang, the list, the character Guo, his wife character Qingjie, they have six female daughters, all called Chaqia.
In many places, there are also legends about the god Vesta. One of them, presumably.
The Jade Emperor had a daughter who was beautiful and kind. She often looked at the human world, and every time she saw that those ordinary people were living hard, she sympathized with those people. Later, she fell in love with a young man who cooked for others.
Paper can't contain the fire after all. When the Jade Emperor found out, he demoted her to the nether realm in a fit of rage and let her suffer with the young man. The Queen Mother's mother was distressed that her daughter interceded with the Jade Emperor, and the Jade Emperor was helpless, so she named the young man the King of the Stove and the daughter the Grandmother of the King of the Stove. From now on, they can enjoy earthly offerings and their lives are much better.
However, the husband and wife of the King of Stove were also good to the people, and they went home every day to take good things from heaven and distribute them to the people. The Jade Emperor was worried that the things in the heavens would be divided, so he stipulated that they could only go to heaven once a year.
In addition, the Jade Emperor also said that good things can be taken, but they can only be distributed to good people. As a result, the Stove King and his wife have to comprehensively evaluate the people at the end of each year.
Well, this story used to be heard and felt good, and now I think it is a routine to listen to the story of the Weaver Girl and Dong Yong Seven Fairies.
There is also a story that the god of Vesta is called Zhang Dan and married a girl named Lilac. Zhang Shan began to be poor and lived a life with Lilac An. But then he got rich, so he transferred his affection and forcibly gave Lilac a cow.
After Zhang Dan became rich, he was lazy and lazy, and his family business was ruined and he had to beg. He begged all the way, and at the twenty-third hour of the waxing moon, he begged to lilac's house. It turned out that Lilac had remarried, she was diligent in running the family, and the family business was getting better and better.
After recognizing the lilac, Zhang Shan was ashamed and embarrassed, and he went into the stove door of the lilac family and died. The Jade Emperor took pity on him, and read his surname Zhang, and he was from the Ben family, so he made him the god of Vesta.
Some ethnic minorities also have legends of vesta, but prefer to worship fire.
Vesta functions
Before the Han Dynasty, vesta was mainly responsible for diet. The common people worship the god Vesta mainly in the hope that the god of Vesta can solve their food and clothing and make them live a good life.
Many chinese gods usually have more functions as their fame increases.
The same is true of Vesta. From the Three Kingdoms and Two Jin Dynasties to the Tang and Song Dynasties, vesta gods not only managed the diet of the people, but even indirectly controlled the lives and deaths of the common people. For example, in "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks", this is mentioned.
It is often the case of the white man in the heavens on the obscure day of the moon, the big one wins the discipline, the discipline is three hundred days, and the small one is calculated, and the hundred days are counted. Therefore, he is the overseer of the Heavenly Emperor, and the next is the goblin.
Obscure days are the penultimate day of the month. It is very clear here that the god of Vesta went to heaven every month to report to the Jade Emperor on the situation of the people, and then the Jade Emperor deducted the life of the people according to the size of the people's sins. If there is a big one, three hundred days of life is deducted, and if it is small, one hundred years of life is deducted.
Of course, if you haven't done anything bad, then Vesta will say good things to the Jade Emperor. In this way, the Jade Emperor will make the family safe, healthy, long-lived, and rich.
Vesta can even avoid evil. It is mentioned in the Book of Miscellaneous Five Elements that "if you know its name, you can get rid of evil." Other sources mention that someone used Vesta to curse the emperor.
The increase in vesta's functions is not surprising. Many gods in China are like this, such as Guan Yu, who was only an evil god at first, and later became the god of martial wealth, and even became the Emperor Voldemort, and today many industries also worship Guan Yu, and his functions have also changed greatly.
How to sacrifice the stove
In fact, as early as the Zhou Dynasty, it began to sacrifice stoves, but it was not a major sacrifice. Later, Li Shaojun told Emperor Wu of Han that the stove could benefit life, so the emperor began to sacrifice the god of the stove.
How does the emperor sacrifice the stove? For example, in the Han Dynasty Cai Yong in "Dictatorship", he said that the time of the sacrifice stove was in the summer, and the place was in the east of the temple gate.
Stove, summer for the sun, its qi long nourishment, worship in the stove. Its ceremony, to the east of the temple gate, is first seated at the gate of Ossi, and the east is set up by the Lord in The Lord.
The Book of the Later Han Dynasty mentions that when offering sacrifices, hundreds of officials were also dressed in red. In summer, yellow clothes are worn.
Summer Day... Kyoto's hundred officials are all dressed in red, and the summer clothes are yellow, and the suburbs are suburbs. Rituals: Shrine, Sacrificial Stove.
For specific sacrifices, animal blood is required. For example, the "Explanation of Words" mentions, "Provocation, blood sacrifice also, like sacrifice stove also." Limited to the liturgical hierarchy, the "sacrifice" used in the sacrificial stove is the use of chickens. The White Tiger Tongyi mentions, "Sacrifice animals, and make chickens on the stove." ”
The common people sacrificed stoves, which were different from the emperors.
The first is that time is different.
Folk are mainly waxing moon festival stoves. This custom can be traced back to the Han Dynasty. The Book of Later Han records that when Emperor Xuan of Han was emperor, there was a big filial piety named Yin Zi Fang, and when he saw the god Vesta appearing in the waxing moon, he quickly sacrificed, and later there were two people in his family who were enfeoffed, and dozens of people became high officials.
After the story of Yin Zifang spread, the common people followed his example in the waxing moon festival stove. Later, it was gradually fixed on the twenty-third or twenty-fourth day of the waxing moon.
The Records of Customs and Soils of the Zhou Dynasty of the Jin Dynasty mention that the stove was sacrificed on the night of the twenty-fourth day of the Waxing Moon, while the Qing Dynasty Fucha Dunchong's "Records of the Yanjing Years" said that the twenty-third day of the Waxing Moon was sacrificed to the stove.
Therefore, many places are still the 23rd or 24th festival of the Waxing Moon. From this, it can be seen that this is not a random day, but a reason.
The second is that the way is different.
Initially, during the Han, Jin, Tang and Song dynasties, the common people also used yellow sheep to sacrifice the god of Vesta, such as the Yin Zi Fang of the Later Han Dynasty, who saw the manifestation of the god of Vesta and killed the yellow sheep to sacrifice the stove; the Yanjing Chronicle also said that "the stove was sacrificed, and the yellow sheep was used in ancient times". But later, the people no longer used sheep, but used paper horses, soybeans, maltose, etc. to sacrifice stoves.
At the end of the twenty-third day, the family worship stove, the pole in the courtyard, and hang the sky lantern. The offerings are soup stove rice, sugar melon sugar cake, feeding god horse with fragrant rotten fried bean water Meng. - "Ji Sheng in the Age of Emperor Jing"
The "Chronicle of the Yanjing Dynasty" also says that the folk festival stove only uses southern sugar, Kanto sugar, sugar cake and clear water grass beans.
Why use sugar? Because the common people were worried that the god of Vesta would say bad things to the Jade Emperor, they smeared sugar on the mouth of the god of Vesta, hoping that he could say "sweet words" to the Jade Emperor. Some people simply used distillers instead, which was a lack of heart, and directly drunk the morning, so that he could not talk to the Jade Emperor.
If the family cannot be reunited by the New Year, people in some places blame the vesta god and do not sacrifice to the god vesta.
In other places, couplets are affixed to the stove. On both sides of the statue of Vesta, couplets are pasted, and some write: "Heaven says good things, and returns to the palace to descend auspiciously." Some wrote: "Oil and salt are as deep as the sea, and the area of rice is like mountains." "It is said that this is to invite the god Vesta to come back.
During the Qing Dynasty, when beijing and other places sacrificed stoves, women were not allowed to sacrifice stoves, and men had to sacrifice them. If there are no men in the house, ask a neighbor to take their place. Ji Xiaolan's "Four Libraries of The Whole Book" mentioned.
The residents of Kyoshi are still customary, forbidden women to be the main priest, and there are no men in the family or neighbors to do it.
This is mainly due to the low status of women in ancient times. Similar customs are still left in many places. For example, when I was a child, I didn't let women go to the grave at home, saying that it was "a woman and half a child", and it was okay to go, but it had to be two women to go together. However, there are no such statements now.
By the way, in the past, the stove was sacrificed with a statue of the god of vesta, and if it was really not possible, it was carved with a wooden board. Later, they were simplified, directly the portrait of vesta and his wife, and pasted it near the stove door.