The Fengshen Yanyi says that Dai Ji is a nine-tailed fox spirit.
For a long time, the "Fox Spirit" and the "Nine Tails" have been closely linked. When it comes to the thousand-year-old fox essence, it must be the "nine tails", and the dry brides of the two kings of the golden horn and silver horn in "Journey to the West" are also a nine-tailed fox.
In fact, in the legend of the ancient times, the nine-tailed fox is not a monster, but a beast of auspicious rui (this ancient period refers to the real ancient period, not the ancient period imagined by the Ming Dynasty people in the "Fengshen Yanyi", do not be confused). For example, Dayu, thirty years old, did not have a wife, and was considered a leftover man at that time. In a hurry, he prayed to heaven and said, "Do I still have hope of marriage in this life?" ”
As soon as the words fell, a cute nine-tailed white fox sneaked into Dayu's room. Dayu was very happy, because at that time, this was not a banshee to confuse him, but a symbol of having a family and a room, and the prosperity of his descendants. So Dayu sang a song:
Sui Sui White Fox, Nine-tailed Pang Pang. My family is Jiayi, and the guests are king. When I start a family, I build Pichang. On the occasion of heaven and man, Yuz does.
The sign of the white fox was soon fulfilled. Dayu married a girl of the Tushan clan and gave birth to a son, Qi.
So Ban Gu said this in the "White Tiger Tongyi":
Who must be the Nine Tails? The nine concubines have their place, and their children and grandchildren will also flourish. Where is the tailer? Ming Hou Dang Sheng also.
That is, the nine tails represent the nine concubines. The tail grows behind the body, so it represents future generations. Therefore, the nine-tailed fox represents a large number of wives and grandchildren.
The Classic of Mountains and Seas also records that there are nine-tailed foxes on the mountain of green hills. This nine-tailed fox, studied by scholars, is likely to be a totem of nine clans, or a local clan worshipper.
Even King Wen of Zhou once presented a nine-tailed fox to king Huan. King Wen of Zhou was imprisoned in the trap by king Huan, and in order to save him, Xiqi went around looking for rare birds and beasts. San Yisheng got a nine-tailed fox and presented it to king with other treasures. As soon as king Huan was happy, he released Ji Chang. The original text is:
King Wen was confined to the throne, on the shore of the West Sea of Sanyisheng, and took the white fox Qinghan offering, and the Great Joy of The Great Joy. ("The Great Biography of Shang Shu", Qinghan, Cyan Pheasant)
Sanyi was born to Wu and received a nine-tailed fox to sacrifice him. (Notes on "Youtong Fu")
Some say it is in the West Sea, and some say it is in Wu. Personally, I think this may be the prototype of the story that Daji is possessed by a nine-tailed fox.
The story of the nine-tailed fox of the pre-Qin and Han dynasties, and some more. At the time, this was all a symbol of auspiciousness. Otherwise, if San Yisheng was sacrificed to the Fox king of Sui, how could he redeem Ji Chang?
Probably during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, foxes and even nine-tailed foxes were gradually demonized. This process of demonization is a long story, and poor Dao intends to open another article to talk about. I won't talk about it today. The story of Dai Ji being possessed by a nine-tailed fox also began to appear from the Southern and Northern Dynasties period.
However, it is strange that from the Han Dynasty to the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the history books have repeatedly recorded that nine-tailed foxes appeared everywhere, and even offered nine-tailed foxes to the emperor.
Like what:
Emperor Yuan of Han Zhang and Zhong, the Nine-tailed Fox is now a county state.
Emperor Wen of Wei saw Zhen Cheng in November of the first year of the Reign of Emperor Huang, and saw Zhen Cheng.
In August 2018, 2019, Koshu's Nine-tailed Fox.
In July of the fourth year of the balance, Gwangju offered the nine-tailed fox.
In May of the third year of Xinghe, Sizhou presented the nine-tailed fox.
In the tenth year of Taihe, Jizhou was offered the Nine-tailed Fox.
……
This is all recorded as a true thing in the history. How can there be such a fox in reality? In other words, even if there is such an animal, how did the "nine-tailed" of this nine-tailed fox grow on its butt?
I remember that Poor Dao talked about nine lions in "Li Tianfei Talks About Journey to the West", and suspected that the nine heads of nine lions were difficult to grow on a neck. Finally, combined with various literature, it was concluded that the nine-headed lion was only nine lions, which was a mistake in folklore. The head is a quantifier, not a noun. Does this nine-tailed fox have a similar problem?
The nine-tailed fox in today's anime
If we look at the portraits of the Han Dynasty, we can see that the nine-tailed fox in people's minds at that time did not have nine real big tails like the above picture. Instead, it looks like the following image:
Or something like this:
These foxes, still a tail, but the hair on the tail is divided into nine short forks, and to be honest, in this case, dogs also have it. As long as the tail is wet, or dirty, hairy and hairy, or dedicated to the emperor a few times, a nine-tailed fox appears!
Therefore, the nine-tailed fox dedicated to the emperor everywhere is likely to be an ordinary fox, but the tail is a little mutated, or it is simply dirty and forked. It can't be like a big lump like a peacock opening the screen. Such a fox is nowhere to be found!
This understanding of the nine-tailed fox probably lasted for hundreds of years.
However, the paper can not contain the fire, this kind of impersonation of the nine-tailed fox, after all, people will lose interest in it. You can't look at dirty tail dogs for a thousand or two thousand years.
In the Ming and Qing dynasties, some changes took place in this problem. For example, the novel "The Complete Biography of the Fox":
However, it is said that there is an ancient cave in this mountain, and because there is no real person living in cultivation, there are many demon foxes in the cave. One of the leaders was the Nine-tailed Xuan Fox, and the demons called him the Jade-Faced Fairy.
In the following paragraph, gray is often gray and gray is often worth noting:
The fur of the great fox is full of flower spots, white matter and black chapters, take its skin, cut it with a knife, and make various colors of fur... The nine-tailed fox in this saga cave is black, and the nine-tailed fox is born with nine thousand years of Daoist behavior, which will last for ten thousand years, and black will turn white, because it first changes from the surface, so it is called jade face.
Is there a problem with this passage? Very problematic!
Because we are common foxes, the coat color is usually reddish brown, gray or white. Here suddenly came a sentence "The fur of the great mortal fox is full of flower spots, white matter and black chapters", which is obviously contrary to common sense. Why does the author show such an understanding of the fox?
In order to write this article, poor Dao also specially collected a variety of foxes and made a map. However, none of them are like he said, "full of flowers, white matter and black chapters"!
We usually say that foxes refer to the fox subfamily of canines, in this subfamily, there are a total of seven genera, and the largest family is the fox genus. There are ten species in the genus Fox. The poor road was all pulled out.
According to Baidu Encyclopedia, there are 10 species of foxes under the genus: Bengal fox vulpes bengalensis, Afghan fox vulpes cana, South African fox vulpes chama, shuffle fox vulpes corsac, Tibetan fox vulpes ferrilata, cang fox (pale sand fox) vulpes pallidus, Lü's fox vulpes ruppelli, grassland fox (min fox) vulpes velox, Red fox vulpes vulpes, broad-eared fox vulpes zerda.
Why are there no Arctic foxes among the 10 fox species on the picture? Because the Arctic Fox is another genus, called the Arctic Fox, it is a close relative but a different genus.
So let's list all seven genera in the fox subfamily to see if there are any similar ones?
Nothing! The fur of the fox is not like the "Fox's Complete Biography" said: "the flowers are all over the body, the white matter is black chapter"!
And in the "Complete Biography of the Fox", it is repeatedly said that this fox "gave birth to nine knots of tails", so it is called "nine-tailed demon fox". They all specifically pointed out that the tail of this "fox" is divided into sections!
There is a similar record in the Ming Dynasty's "Ear Talk Class Zeng Zhuwei Fox Demon":
The tail knot has thirteen, and the cover is hundreds of years old fox also.
Check the literature and find that there are still many records of the "nine-section fox"!
Nine knots of fox tail, hitting the stone out of the fire. (Bird worm description)
Nine-knotted fox, red fox, black fox... (Tsuji)
There are nine sections of the fox, nine sections of its tail, and the kidney is also musk. (Daoguang", "Zunyi Fu Zhi")
These are monographs devoted to animals, or local chronicles of local products, which cannot be made up.
In fact, the so-called "nine-section tail" is a ring on the tail. Many small and medium-sized mammals have rings on their tails, such as this one called the ring-tailed lemur:
Don't think it's an African animal, Chinese don't know. In fact, Lang Shining also painted a painting for Qianlong:
(Cross toe photo)
Another example, the red panda:
Another example is this one, this is the little raccoon:
And the "Zunyi Fu Zhi" "has nine sections of foxes, its tail nine knots, the kidney is also musk", which reminds us even more: this animal has incense glands!
The "Description of Birds and Insects" also says that "the fox tail has nine knots, and the stone strikes the fire", indicating that this animal is often electrostatic.
With the collection of literature, various information about this animal gradually outlined its outline:
What is this animal with "spots all over the body, white matter black chapters", long incense glands, nodular rings on the tail, often with static electricity?
The answer is about to come out, this is the spirit cat!
The family of civet cats is divided into large civet cats and small civet cats. The big spirit cat is commonly known as musk cat, Jiujiang beaver, nine-knotted fox, spirit cat, belongs to the spirit cat family, spirit cat genus. There are tan body spots. The tail has a black and white color ring. There are aromatic glandular sacs under the anus.
The ancients were not so strict about animal taxonomy and did not distinguish between felines and canines, especially in the face of a rare species. Therefore, it is futile for us to go to the fox subfamily to find it.
The ancients were not accustomed to calling it a big spirit cat, but calling it "Nine Section Fox", in fact, its most commonly used name was "Nine Section Fox", which was recorded in various Fang Zhi in the south, even in Mr. Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica". Like what:
Nine sections of tanuki skins ten sheets. (Ba Min Tong Zhi)
Nine sections of tanuki skins Thirty-five sheets. (Ba Min Tong Zhi)
Xiuning County... There are twelve live nine-knotted beavers. (Huizhou Fuzhi)
This animal, with its secretive activities and special appearance, is very normal to be treated as a god by people who are not familiar with it. And the aroma of its own body adds to its mysteriousness.
(You're obviously a cat, don't pretend the fox is okay!) ）
More critically: this cute creature is different from other cats and tigers in that it is born with a longer mouth and a larger tail. Obviously a cat, pretending to be a canine! No wonder the ancients saw it and thought it was a kind of fox!
(Finally, one more sentence: during the Ming Dynasty, a cult was popular, called "Smelling Incense Sect", also known as "Eastern Mahayana Religion", and the leader of the religion, Wang Sen, claimed to have saved a fairy fox, and the fairy fox cut off its tail and gave it to Wang Sen, which had a different fragrance.) Many letters can be smelled. Poor Dao suspected that Wang Sen's incense might be the incense gland of the great spirit cat. ）
About author:Li Tianfei, Editor of Zhonghua Bookstore, Master of Classical Philology of the Department of Chinese of Peking University, annotated author of "Journey to the West" by Zhonghua Bookstore, author of the 100th issue of "Li Tianfei's Journey to the West".
【Interested in fairies and ghosts?】 You may wish to pay attention to my WeChat public account Li Tianfei (litianfei99) to see all the wonderful content]