In which dynasty did Tomb-Sweeping Day worship ancestors and sweep graves rise?

In which dynasty did Tomb-Sweeping Day worship ancestors and sweep graves rise? This has to start from the time when Tomb-Sweeping Day was not a festival.

Tomb-Sweeping Day is only a seasonal solar term at the earliest, and the Cold Food Festival is a day for offering sacrifices to the grave.

Tomb-Sweeping Day is a folk festival that has spread to the present, but Qingming is a folk festival with solar terms and festivals. Tomb-Sweeping Day, as one of the 24 solar terms, is mainly a sign of seasons at first, and the time is from winter to the future 107 days, after the spring breeze 15 days, and around April 5 of Gregorian calendar.

"Huainanzi Astronomical Training" said: On the fifteenth day after the vernal equinox, when the handle of the Big Dipper points to the second place, the Qingming wind will come.

Qingming wind was called one of the eight winds in ancient times. The weather is warm and refreshing. Under the warm spring breeze, the world is bright and clean, the air is fresh, and all natural things are full of vitality. Qingming? The solar term got its name from this.

Before the Han and Wei Dynasties, Qingming mainly refers to natural solar terms, which is a general festival closely related to farming activities.

Sacrificial activities are mainly the activities of another ancient folk festival-Cold Food Festival.

The Cold Food Festival is a day or two before Tomb-Sweeping Day. During these two days, it is forbidden to burn fire, eat cold food, and then sweep graves for sacrifice, even witchcraft. This series of activities is a special landscape of the Cold Food Festival.

Only after the Tang and Song Dynasties did Tomb-Sweeping Day have the dual significance of festivals and seasons, and the Cold Food Festival and Tomb-Sweeping Day became one.

After the Tang and Song Dynasties, Qingming truly became a folk festival. After the Tang and Song Dynasties, Qingming has the dual significance of seasons and festivals, and its festival significance is increasing day by day. People gradually combine the festival content of Cold Food Festival with Qingming Festival.

China people have always attached importance to the sacrifice of their ancestors. At that time, there was no custom of tomb sacrifice. In order to offer sacrifices to their deceased ancestors, they set up a memorial service called. Bodies? The Lord of God offered sacrifices in the ancestral temple.

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the atmosphere of tomb sacrifice became more mainstream, according to a joke described in Mencius.

There was a poor man in the state of Qi, who had nothing to do and a good face. Every time he goes out, he often goes home after eating and drinking. He also claimed that he had many rich friends and bossed his wife around. As a person who knows him very well, his wife was puzzled, so she followed him to see if her husband frequented the rich family, and finally found that her husband was begging for food and drinks in the cemetery.

It can be seen that at that time, there was already a custom of worshipping ancestors with wine and food.

But this custom seems to be limited to families with a certain social status, and it is not common for ordinary people with low status and little money at home.

In the Han Dynasty, with the popularity of Confucianism, clan activities were also expanding, people paid more and more attention to the graves laid by ancestors' souls, and the wind of sweeping graves became more and more popular.

In the Tang Dynasty, the Tang people followed the custom of offering sacrifices to tombs in the previous generation and extended it to the whole society.

According to the Book of Rites, there was no custom of sweeping graves in spring in ancient times, but it became a custom in the Tang Dynasty.

According to the records of Xuanzong in the old Tang Dynasty,

Since there was no cold food in the scholar's family, Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty went to the tomb to offer sacrifices, so he wrote a letter? The home of the Confucians is suitable for going to the grave, and it is made up of five rituals, which will always be a routine?

By decree, the imperial court designated the Cold Food Festival in front of Tomb-Sweeping Day as the folk custom of sweeping graves. Because cold food is associated with Tomb-Sweeping Day, the custom of Cold Food Festival has been associated with Tomb-Sweeping Day for a long time. Cold food forbids fire, Tomb-Sweeping Day needs to burn fire, and grave sweeping has also expanded from cold food to Tomb-Sweeping Day. Since the Tang Dynasty, the Cold Food Festival has merged with Tomb-Sweeping Day.

Bai Juyi described the scene of cold food in "The Wild Hope of Cold Food".

The crow makes the trees faint, and the Qingming cold food cries. The wind blows the paper money in the wilderness, and the spring grass in the tomb is green. Pear blossoms reflect poplar trees, full of parting places. I don't hear the heavy spring crying, but the rustling rain makes people return.

It depicts Tomb-Sweeping Day's ancestor worship and burning paper money.

Liu Zongyuan, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, described everything clearly and clearly in his book with Xu Jingzhao.

The fields and roads are full of scholars and women, the servants of soap merchants are beggars, and they all have their parents' graves.

On the way to the field, men and women went to sacrifice for their parents.

If the cold food in the Tang Dynasty was juxtaposed with Qingming, and the status of Qingming was inferior to that of cold food, then Qingming in the Song Dynasty had basically completely replaced cold food, and Qingming assumed many functions of saving customs belonging to cold food.

Meng Yuan's Dream of Tokyo in the Song Dynasty recorded that people in the Northern Song Dynasty wanted to sweep graves in Tomb-Sweeping Day. As for the purpose and ceremony of sweeping graves, it was also specially explained in the Song Dynasty.

For example, in Wu's Dream in the Southern Song Dynasty, people? The purpose of going to the countryside to sweep graves is to try my best to remember and admire my ancestors? Grave-sweeping, as an important part of Tomb-Sweeping Day, has been going on.