What do you mean by following the map?

Bole, formerly known as Sun Yang, was a native of Qin in the Spring and Autumn Period. According to legend, Bole was the most famous horse riding expert in ancient China, and he once wrote "Riding Classics". The story of Bole Xiangma is still circulating today.

However, it is said that Bole has a son who is very stupid. According to legend, Bole's son went to look for a good horse after reading his father's Xiang. As a result, he found a rotten horse, which was simply unbearable to use. There is also a legend: In Ma Jing, Bole introduced what a good horse's forehead, eyes and hooves look like. His son keeps these in mind. One day, he and Bole went for an outing and saw a big toad on the roadside. He said happily to Bole, "Dad, this is really a good horse! You see, its forehead and eyes are similar to what you said, but its hooves are different. " Bole was angry and funny, so he could only say humorously, "This' horse' jumped too hard to control!"

This story was recorded in Zhang Zhuo's Book of Ruling and Ruling in the Tang Dynasty and Yang Shen's Cutting Mountains with Forests in the Ming Dynasty. Because of the dogma of rote memorization, I mechanically followed the book of Xiangma Jing to find a good horse, and the result was a joke. This is the origin of the idiom "follow the map".

Then why is it called "following the picture" instead of "following the classics"? Legend: There are eight magical horses in Zhou Muwang. Each horse not only has a very elegant name, but also is very strong and unique. The famous "Eight Horses" is an imaginary picture created by later painters according to legends. Bai Juyi, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, once wrote in his poem: "Mu Wang spent eight days, and later generations loved to write as paintings." Because "Jun" and "Ji" both refer to good horses, the idiom "Take a horse according to the map" came into being.

The will of "following the script" is to criticize people and things that are hidebound, divorced from reality and inflexible. But it was gradually used as another meaning. That is: according to the specific signs, to find what you need, in complex situations can also be found smoothly.