What is the God of City God?

According to Sui Shu's "Five Elements", "King Liang Wuling offered sacrifices to the city god to honor the gods", it can be seen that the belief in the city god appeared in the Liang Dynasty at the latest. Literally, the word "city" of "city god" refers to the city and the city wall, and the word "yellow" refers to the moat. Shuowen said: "Yellow is the city, and those who have water are called pools, and those who have no water are called yellow."

The emergence of cities is of great significance to the development of human society. Because of limited resources, tribes in primitive times often plundered each other. In order to protect the lives and property of members of this tribe, early humans established villages and erected fences around the villages to prevent foreign invasion. However, this defense is very fragile and easy to break. With the development of technology, people later built stronger walls to protect themselves. Besides the city walls, ditches and pools were dug to protect them. China has a very long history of building cities, and cities appeared as early as Yangshao culture and Longshan culture. It is under the protection of the city that people can live and work in peace and contentment and the population can flourish. Shuowen said: "The city is a place to fill the people." Around the city, the polis appeared.

City refers to city walls and moats.

The safety of a city is closely related to the safety of its residents and the fate of this city-state. Therefore, the ancients believed that there should be gods responsible for guarding the peace and prosperity of the city. For example, the ancient Greeks gave each city-state a patron saint: Athena, the goddess of wisdom, Apollo, the sun god, and Hera, the goddess of Argos. The patron saint of China city is the city god.

Qin, a scholar in the Qing Dynasty, pointed out in the Five Rites of the Country that the belief in the Town God originated from the watery spirit in the Eight Sacrifices of the Great Wax. "Yitai 6, the city after chasing. According to the Book of Rites, the son of heaven has big wax, and water is in the seventh place. Water, water, city, city, also known as the beginning of the ancient city. "

The Eight Sacrifices of Big Wax was a national agricultural sacrifice ceremony held on the 12th of each year in the Western Zhou Dynasty. There are eight sacrificial objects: 1. Xian Si (S, through "Thirty"), namely Shennong; Sisi, the ancestor of Zhou people, Hou Ji who taught human crops; 3. Agriculture, that is, officials who urge people to carry out farming, is called "Tian Tian"; 4. The postal form refers to the junction of Tian Tian, that is, the building complex; 5. Cats and tigers, cats (some people think that "cats" here refer to owls) and tigers will prey on voles and wild boars that harm crops, so the ancients regarded cats and tigers as the patron saints of agriculture; 6. Fang, the water embankment in Tanaka; 7. aqua, that is, field ditches; Insects that eat crops are the enemy of agriculture, so the ancients used sacrifices to appease insects and begged them not to hurt crops.

Water surge refers to the ditch beside the field.

There are many similarities between fields and cities. First of all, human beings have a strong preference for squares, which should be made whether they are building cities or filling the sea. Secondly, the planting area in Tanaka is surrounded by mud, and the material of the city wall is mud and stone. The original meaning of "brave" is the wall rammed with mud; And ditches will be dug outside the city walls and on the edge of the fields. Therefore, it is reasonable to transform the horizontal mediocrity into a city god. Scholars who study the city god in later generations generally agree with this view. However, no scholars cited materials to explain when and how this evolution began.

The word "city god" only embodies the status of this god, not his name. So what's the name of the city god? Or who is he? Historian Ding Shan put forward in his book Textual Research on Ancient Religions and Myths in China that the Town God is Zhu Rong. Its main basis is two materials in Zuo Zhuan:

In the Song Dynasty, Mr. Zhu rode his horse on four ridges and offered sacrifices to Pan Geng outside the West Gate. (Nine years of "xianggong")

Zheng's misfortune was blamed on Xuanming and Huilu, and he prayed for four disasters. (Eighteen Years of Zhao Gong)

Our understanding is that after the fire broke out in the State of Zheng in the Song Dynasty, the two countries held sacrifices to the four dikes ("Dike" is connected with "Yong", and the four dikes are surrounded by city walls), from which it is concluded that the four dikes are Vulcan, and then it is inferred that the city walls and Zhu Rong are the same god.

city wall

However, I think that there are misunderstandings about the above two materials in Dingshan. He regards Siheng as a personified god, and thinks that "Yu Siheng" means "praying to Siyong God". I don't think the four ridges here refer to god, but to places. "On the four ridges" means "on the four ridges".

According to our understanding, the above materials have been translated into:

When a fire broke out in the Song Dynasty, Mr. Zhu (the person who presided over the sacrifice in ancient times) first slaughtered Malay to sacrifice to the four gods, and then sacrificed to Pan Geng outside the West Gate.

When a fire broke out in the State of Zheng, Zhu Shi (who was also the official in charge of offering sacrifices) prayed to Xuan Ming and Huilu to eliminate the fire, and then prayed to the Four Gods.

According to this translation, after the fire, Song offered sacrifices to the four gods and Pan Geng, while after the fire, Zheng offered sacrifices to Xuanming, Huilu and the four gods. Is this too complicated? According to Ding's reasoning, Sihuan is the patron saint and Vulcan of the city at the same time, and Huilu is also Vulcan (some people equate Huilu with Zhu Rong), so we will not repeat the sacrifice to two Vulcan.

If the four ridges are understood as places, it will be better understood:

When a fire broke out in the Song Dynasty, Zhu Zongxian slaughtered horses under the four walls, and then sacrificed Pan Geng outside the West Gate.

When a fire broke out in Zheng State, Zhu Shi held a sacrifice under four city walls, praying for Xuan Ming and Huilu to eliminate the fire.

Song dynasty killed horses because according to the theory of five elements, horses belong to fire, and killing horses symbolizes the elimination of internal heat. Shang Zhouwang Pan Geng was sacrificed because Song people were descendants of merchants, and Pan Geng was sacrificed to ask for the protection of his ancestors. Xuanming is a water god, and Zheng offered sacrifices to him in order to control the fire with the help of water. Sacrificing Vulcan to return to Lu is to ask Vulcan to extinguish fire.

In the five elements theory, horses belong to fire, so killing horses symbolizes extinguishing fire.

Another scholar quoted Lu Chunqiu and Chunqiu's records about the belief in land and city god, and thought that the earliest man who built a city in China was a gun, so he should be the original city god. Then combined with our theory, try our best to prove that the gun is Zhu Rong's.

Here, I don't want to discuss whether Gun and Zhu Rong are the same person-because that would be too far from the point. I just want to make it clear that Gun is not necessarily the earliest city god. Because the first person to build a city is not necessarily the patron saint of the city, just as the person who fights the country may not be able to sit quietly and watch the tigers fight. In ancient Greek mythology, there was a half-man, half-snake god named Keke Ropes. He first invented the methods of writing, calculating, building cities and burying the dead. He founded 65,438+02 cities in Attica, but the status of the patron saint of these cities later belonged to other gods. Although the gun is the first person to build a city in China mythology, from this perspective, he is indeed qualified to be the patron saint of this city, but it depends on whether anyone finally recognizes it. As far as I know, there is no literature saying that guns are the city god or the patron saint of later cities.

Keke Ropes, the earliest builder in ancient Greek mythology.

Although we are not sure who the original city god was, there are some famous city gods around later generations.

For example, Pang Yu, the city god of Shaoxing, was a famous soldier in the early Tang Dynasty. He was honored as a city god after his death because he guarded Huiji (Shaoxing was called in ancient times) "Huize belongs to the people"; Hangzhou Town God was Zhou Xin, the governor of Zhejiang Province in Ming Dynasty. As an official, he is honest and upright. He was framed to death for offending the commander of the Royal Guards, and was later enshrined by the people of Hangzhou. Most of these city gods are famous local historical figures, because they have strong local color. Of course, people in every place will choose the person who best represents the local culture as the city god according to local conditions.

The belief in the Town God was very popular in the Tang and Song Dynasties. Li Bai, Han Yu, Du Mu and others all wrote articles about the Town God. Yakumo in the Southern Song Dynasty wrote in the book "The Biography of Soldiers": "In the Song Dynasty, the city god temples were built all over the world, and the court either granted the temple a quota or conferred a title. Those who are not dead, or attack neighboring counties, or inherit the tradition, vary from county to county. As for the name of god, it is also accommodated to the auxiliary association, each referring to one person. "

city moat

In addition to being the patron saint of the city, the city god later added another function, which is to take charge of the underworld. The Taiping Guang Ji (volume 124) quoted karma to tell a story:

In the Tang Dynasty, Sima Wang of Hongzhou was seriously ill and had a huge tumor in his abdomen. Because his breath hit his internal organs up and down, the tumor hit his heart once, causing Wang to faint. When he woke up, he said that he had met a ghost collector with documents from the underworld, claiming that he had come to arrest him on the orders of the city god. Wang Jian followed the ghost collector to the Chenghuang Temple. People in front of the temple saw Wang Jianyi and said that he had done many good deeds. How did he die so early? . After meeting the city god, Wang Jianyi said to the city god, "I shouldn't have died so early and asked the city god to let me go home." The duke ordered his men to have a look at the life and death book. Sure enough, he found that Wang Jianyi had five years to live, so he sent him home. Five years later, Wang Jianyi died of a heart tumor.

In the same book 303, it is also said that during the Kaiyuan period, a minister of Xuanzhou met the city god after his death and was released by the city god. It can be seen that in the Tang Dynasty, the city god already had the function of managing the dead.

Town God's Temple

City God's management of the underworld is an imitation of human management system. The ancients believed that the god of the underworld was in charge of life and death and was responsible for judging the dead. This is equivalent to household registration management and adjudication in the living world, and these two functions are generally handed over to local governments in the dead world. City God is the god of a city, and its status is equivalent to that of state and county officials in the world, so it is most appropriate to put the work of managing birth and death records and judging the dead by God here. However, as the god of the underworld, the work of the city god conflicts with the kings of the underworld, such as Mount Tai Fu Jun, Du Feng Tian Zi and Wang Yan. People generally regard the city god as an official under the latter three.

According to Volume 79 of the General Examination of Continuing Documents, in the third year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered all states and counties in the world to set up the Town God Temple, and the decoration in the temple must be the same as that of the yamen. Therefore, officials are completely established to govern the world, and the city god is in charge of the underworld.