How did the zodiac come from?

Do you know how the zodiac came about?

In the traditional calendar of China lunar calendar, the "branch chronology" is adopted, which consists of ten heavenly stems symbols such as A, B, C and D and twelve earthly branches symbols such as Zi Chou Yin Mao. However, there is an animal on every sign of the twelve earthly branches, such as Zi, Ugly, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu and Hai. In the west, it is a habit not to ask each other's age in person, especially for women. China has a similar tradition, but China has a clever alternative: you can ask or tell each other about the zodiac, and then you can calculate your age. The upcoming Lunar New Year is the Year of Ghost Guardian, which corresponds to "sheep" and is called "Year of the Sheep" according to folk customs. On the eve of the Year of the Sheep, there are calendars, gifts, advertisements, mascots and various media on the land of China, such as three sheep in Thailand, auspicious sheep everywhere, and so on.

Why do people choose sheep as the beautiful title in 2008? In China, the word "auspicious" usually represents a symbol of happiness in Fu Rui. Yijingyun: "Good things are auspicious". "Auspicious" ancient artifacts are often used as "auspicious sheep". Some researchers believe that these words originated from people's attention to "sheep", an important food object, during the hunting period in ancient China. "Sheep" has a great influence on the life of ancient ancestors in China, and it is also directly related to people's judgment of artistic emotion and the value orientation of life morality, such as what is "beauty"? "Sheep" is greatly "beautiful"; What is "goodness"? "Sheep" in the mouth is "good". Scholars take "auspiciousness" as their luck, and sacrificing "sheep" as "good luck" (good omen). Of course, it is best to have a "sheep" or a sheep that has worshipped their ancestors-"auspicious" as their luck. Several years have passed and thousands of years have passed, but our ancestors' sincere hope and emotional and moral attachment to sheep still haunt our hearts, words and actions in China.

In fact, China's zodiac folklore and its chronology are gradually formed in its own inherent objective environment, living conditions and primary material production activities. The custom of China people's Zodiac or Zodiac and chronology has a wide influence at home and abroad. But why use twelve kinds of animals to match? And why is the mouse not only on the list, but also on the top? How did the custom of the zodiac come into being? It has become a great mystery in the cultural history of China.

The zodiac has something to do with everyone in China. There are many legends among the people that explain the mysteries of the zodiac. For example, why are there no cats and why are mice so big? There is a folk legend that one day, the Jade Emperor will give priority to twelve kinds of animals and send cats to inform the other eleven kinds of animals that there are no mice among them. The mouse overheard the news that the cat gave it to the cow, so it took the lead and secretly reported it to the Heavenly Palace. The drunken jade emperor, when he saw the mouse barking, did not distinguish between true and false. He ranks first at the moment, and the first cow to be notified becomes the second child instead. The cat rushed to heaven after leaving messages to other animals one by one. Twelve seats have been arranged, and there is no room for them. So the mouse of the zodiac is the boss, but there is no cat. Since then, the cat and the mouse have formed a deep hatred. This is a folk explanation, and some scholars have found another way and reached a satisfactory conclusion. "Song Hongxun? Gu Manlu thinks that the shape of animals determines their order. The ancients divided day and night into twelve hours. " Zi, Yin, Chen, Wu, Shen and Xu are all Yang (positive branches), so they are named after the odd number of genus. Mice, tigers, dragons, monkeys and dogs all have five fingers, and horses also have a hoof; Ugly, ugly, awkward, awkward, ambiguous, all the yin (negative earth branches) in the sea are named after the even number of genera. Cows, sheep, chickens and pigs all have four claws, rabbits have two claws and snakes have two tongues. "In other words, the zodiac is chosen according to the odd and even number of toes of these animals. Rats have four toes on the front foot and five toes on the back foot, which is quite special, so they rank first, followed by cows (four toes), tigers (five toes), rabbits (four toes), dragons (five toes), snakes (no toes), horses (one hoof), sheep (four toes) and monkeys (five toes). Minglangying made an inference based on the activity time of animals. In the seven revisions, he thinks that mice are the most active in the middle of day and night, and "Zi" matches mice; When ugly, cows eat enough grass and are ready to come out to plow in the morning, so "ugly" matches cows; In yin, the tiger is the fiercest, so yin matches the tiger. After five o'clock in the morning, Yuehua still shines on the earth, so it is connected with Gong Yueyu Rabbit when she was "Mao"; Just when the dragon is raining, "Chen" belongs to the dragon; When I was a child, snakes couldn't swim on the road and hurt people, so I was a snake when I was a child. At noon, Yin Qi will give birth. Because horses are "yin" animals, they belong to horses at noon. At this time, eating grass by sheep will not affect the growth of grass, so it belongs to sheep when it is "no"; When applying, monkeys like to crow, so let monkeys match "Shen"; When the chicken started to build a nest, it belonged to the chicken. At that time, dogs began to guard the portal, so "Xu" was associated with dogs; When he was in Hai, all was silent, and the pig slept soundly. He gave Hai to the pig. These statements seem to have some truth, but they do not explain why animals should be used to match each other. In addition, the penetration of the theory of yin-yang and five elements in the discussion also cast a mysterious color on the zodiac.

How did the custom of dating on the zodiac come into being? If we put it back into the practice of our ancestors' production and life and expose it again, we can show its true meaning. China folk custom is spontaneously formed by our ancestors in the social activities of conforming to nature, conquering nature and developing themselves in China. Its appearance is adapted to the level of material production, life content, lifestyle, social psychology, natural environment and political climate in a certain historical stage of the development of the Chinese nation. Zodiac is the product of our ancestors' struggle for the right to live with heaven, earth and animals on the land of China. It is a comprehensive folk custom that our ancestors use their familiar animal names to name, indicate time and mark birth date. In the meantime, the concept of custom is not single, mainly composed of zodiac custom and twelve-arithmetic custom. Let's look at the zodiac first.

Named after animals, people's zodiac signs and chronologies are gradually formed on the premise that our ancestors have close relations with these animals and are related to the existence of our ancestors' lives. It is under this historical premise that human cultural consciousness has occurred. In order to obtain the means of subsistence, our ancestors demanded living space, and hunting livestock became the main activity. Faced with no sharp weapons, unpredictable climate and fierce and strong animals, our ancestors were forced to open their minds and think about how animals could often eat their stomachs. Finally, they found: "People in ancient times ate more natural things. Animals are also a natural thing. In the era of hunting, I was full of enthusiasm, but hunting was impossible and hard to get. And if you get it today, you can eat it today, and if you don't hunt tomorrow, you can't eat it. So I accumulated a lot of experience before I knew about cows, sheep, dogs, horses, chickens, tapirs and so on. For me, it is easy to be tamed by birth, so I decided to be a domestic animal, which is a common occurrence at home. When hunting is insufficient, use it instead. Then the beasts began to be common to me, and the evil species was not enough to be hunted. " (Zhang China Customs History) Even so, it is not safe. For our ancestors, the existence of these livestock was really a crucial event, which led to contradictory psychological behavior. We should not only eat them, but also worship them and pray that they can thrive and provide endless food and supplies for mankind. The earliest taboo of animal belief, totem worship was born. There is no doubt that the animals involved are of course those that are most closely related to people's lives, such as cattle, horses, dogs, sheep, chickens and dogs. In the early days, their value was almost as important as human life, which can be seen in the popular letters circulated in the later period. According to the Chronicle of Jingchu, people gave way to some familiar animals at that time: the first day of New Year's Eve, the chicken's birthday; Two dog's first birthday; On the third day, pig's birthday; The birthday of the fourth sheep; The fifth cow birthday; The birthday of the sixth horse. People are very humble to themselves and put it on the seventh day as their birthday. Ordinary animals in reality are considered to be creatures above human beings. The simple concept of folk customs reveals a philosophy that the historical premise of human existence is the material life itself on which people live. It is accumulated by the empathy of our ancestors in the survival practice of ancient times. The characteristics of animals and their relationship with people determine the degree of people's worship of them and the criteria for being selected as zodiac animals.

There were no cats in ancient China. Today's cats were later introduced from abroad. The mouse-eating cats in our life originated in Sudan, Africa, and then spread to Egypt, and later spread abroad very late, including China. Ms. De Ling recalled the trivia of court life in the Qing Dynasty, and said that the wife and daughter of the Dutch ambassador were once invited to the palace to chat. When Cixi met them, she asked the ambassador's daughter who she was, according to the traditional greeting of China elders who asked about the zodiac when they first met the younger generation. The ambassador's daughter suddenly froze and didn't know how to answer, because the Dutch didn't have the custom of the zodiac, but it was difficult not to answer. She thought she loved fish and cats loved fish, so she made up her mind that she was a cat. Cixi is a typical old school and knows nothing about foreign countries. This problem lacks common sense. When I heard that she was a cat, I was even more surprised: Is she a foreigner or a cat? This joke reflects the ignorance of Cixi, but it also reveals the actual position of cats in the hearts of Chinese people from another angle. Zodiac animals are closely related to the life and survival of our ancient ancestors, and they are respected and concerned by our ancestors. Needless to say, cattle, horses, sheep, chickens, dogs, pigs and rabbits are the dominant totem beliefs in national integration. Although the dragon is virtual, its mysterious authority was closely related to the survival of our nation six or seven thousand years ago. Monkeys are the only animals similar to humans, so it is inevitable to show them presents. As for mice, although their virtues are not widely known, we should know that in ancient times, people were helpless in the face of smart mice with quick actions and rolling their eyes.

Animals that are favored and concerned by people in the practice of material production are treated with courtesy because of their close relationship with people. In the minds of our ancestors, whose rational thinking is not yet developed and whose eyes are full of wild thinking, things and I are one. People often refer to the animals they like and believe in as their own titles in order to pin their good expectations. All nationalities in the world have experienced this stage in their historical development. Morgan described the primitive Indians in "ancient society", taking animals such as wolves and eagles as clan and tribe names. We people of all ethnic groups in China were like this in ancient times. The twelve animal names in the zodiac can be found in most surnames of our past dynasties, which is a strong evidence. If there was a dog in the Han Dynasty, it was called Yang Mi the dog. There is also a kind of dolphin called Dolphin Shaogong. At the end of the Qin Dynasty, the queen of Yao Chang was named snake. In the Yuan Dynasty, there was a county magistrate named Hu Bing in Hanoi. There were also chickens in the Ming Dynasty, which were called chickens at that time. Surname sheep, so that sheep can stand. As for dragons, horses and cows, they have surnames. It can be seen that before the formation of the Zodiac custom, people had the habit of taking some animals with close kinship as surnames and attribution, which paved the way for the formal formation of the Zodiac custom. The real formation of the Chinese Zodiac is the result of blending and reorganizing with another punctuality custom-the calendar calculation custom of twelve cycles. This custom sprouted in people's production practice on the basis that people are closely related to some animals and are used to naming them by appellations.

In the long-term production practice, the ancestors of the Chinese nation gradually referred to the periodic changes of astronomy and meteorology, and created a calendar for calculating the year, month and day. Before our first lunar calendar, that is, the yin-yang calendar (which was mistaken for the summer calendar for a long time), it was said that the mature calendar of our ancestors in Shun Di's time was the solar calendar, or the China calendar, which was different from our lunar calendar in which December was one year and the 10th was the 10th. A year is divided into ten months. The basic time classification is based on twelve divisions, namely, twelve o'clock a day, twelve days and ten days, thirty-six days in January, seventy-two days in a season and three hundred and sixty days a year. There are five seasons in a year, two months in a season, 30 days in January, and five days left, just in time for the Spring Festival. Such as the book of songs "July": "July is full of fire, September gives clothes, one day? Fat, Li Lie the next day. No clothes, no brown, why did you die? On the third and fourth day, I stood on tiptoe. With daughter-in-law, Fujian and other southern acres, fields? I am very happy. " In the whole poem, "July" describes the mid-year action from January to October, without 1 1 month and1February. What does this mean? This is not the negligence of the poet's creation. However, in the era of poetry, there was no concept of 1 1 month and1February at all. In ancient China, the October solar calendar was popular for a long time. This can still be seen in the language remains in our Yi nationality area and some Han nationality areas. The popular saying "360 days a year" coincides with this. While lamenting her tragic fate with fallen flowers, Lin Daiyu also sang "360 days a year, the wind and frost are pressing hard." In China, people have long called the custom of a year 360 days, which is not the abbreviation of the number of days in a year, but implies an ancient festival cultural code. According to the cycle of the sun, there are more than 365 days in a year. There are still five days to celebrate the New Year. China's traditional Spring Festival (New Year's Day) annual leave is usually about 5 days. So the first day, the second day, and so on. It should be the first and second day of a year, which is equivalent to the later first and second days. As for the fourth day, it was a day of sacrifice, praying for smooth farming, Tian? Not agricultural officials, but farmers in China still believe in Tian Shen, who manages the growth and harvest of crops, that is, Tian Tian Po. In fact, it is clearly stated in the Book of Songs that on the second day of the New Year's Day, the north wind blows hard, "How can I die without clothes and brown?" How to spend this year? Mr. Jin Kemu said: "Without paying attention to the culture without' culture' and the longest and largest folk mentality, China's culture with' culture' is unclear and incomplete." (Jin Kemu's "Exploring the secluded places without writing") So much for the ancient calendar in China. It seems that it is unclear to rely solely on literate literature and culture.

Therefore, there is no doubt that the October solar calendar was once popular in ancient China. It is a calendar made with reference to the running laws of the earth and the sun. According to the research of relevant experts, this calendar is quite scientific and advanced, and now it is about ten thousand years apart. There was no printing industry at that time, and the real spread of these calendars mainly depended on word of mouth. Primitive people chose twelve kinds of intimate companions-livestock and animals to match them. In his monograph "A New Exploration of the Source of Civilization in China", Mr. Liu Yaohan collected the calendar of the "Twelve Zodiacs" still left in the Yi people, commonly known as "Black Jiazi", and revealed the information of our ancient ancestors using this calendar. In a nation with extremely low culture and underdeveloped mind, counting is more difficult than killing a wild animal. Primitive people who have just struggled out of the savage animal kingdom, as Laferg discussed in his Theory of the Origin of Ideas, use the actual materials of primitive tribes, and their counting ability is comparable to that of pigeons, so counting to one or two is not enough. The mathematical basis of China's binary Taiji Bagua and Yin-Yang theory left traces of primitive people counting to two. I don't know how many years passed before people moved from two to five. China's theory of five elements left its mark, which is also the basis of the October solar calendar, with one year as five seasons. As for entering the ninth grade, it was extremely high, and finally it surpassed the ninth grade and broke through the tenth grade. I don't know how many years of hard work it took. But even at this stage, the ability to count is still not popular, and it can only be maintained among a few ruling group figures, such as dragons, wizards, historians and others, which is still extremely difficult for ordinary people. Their abstract thinking is still underdeveloped, and their abstract ability can only be included in the existing image thinking. They can only grasp this calendar with the wild thinking of embedding concepts in images, so there are methods to name animals, set dates and calculate years. This "Zodiac" timing method is vivid, concrete and easy to remember, without losing the essence of its counting, and it soon became popular. It is not only a "living fossil" in the remains of the Yi people, but also confirmed in the archaeology of the Han people. Archaeologists from Hubei Provincial Museum, Xiaogan District and Yunmeng County Cultural Department excavated a batch of bamboo slips from Yunmeng Qin Tomb, among which a batch was called "Japanese Book", and the section "Thief" on the back of its species A recorded: "Zishu also. Ugly, cattle also. Yin, tiger also. Hair, rabbits, too. Chen, Long Ye. Already, so are bugs. Afternoon, deer also. No, Ma Ye. Shen, Huan also. Unitary, water also. Hey, old sheep. Hai, dolphin also. " It can be seen that this timing method of unconstrained thinking has a long history. When the ancients rationally regulated it, they had to compare it with the existing folk customs and use it in parallel. The record of The Thief also reveals that the animals with a 12-digit match are not completely consistent with the current popularity. Some of them belong to the ancient pronunciation, such as "unitary, water is also" water, and the ancient reading of pheasant is pheasant; "Shen, Huan also", Huan and Gu Du? & that is, apes, consistent with monkeys; "Third, the worm also", the worm, Xu Shen's "Shuowen Jiezi Insect Department" goes, "the worm is a viper", that is, a snake. But some individuals, such as "deer", are not found in the current zodiac. This shows that the custom of the zodiac has a process of development and change in production and life practice, and it did not stabilize until the Han Dynasty. To sum up, our ancestors used familiar animal names in production practice, outlined abstract calendar timing, and embedded the philosophy of counting calendars into concrete images, forming the time method of the names of the zodiac, and further derived the folk custom of the birth date method of the zodiac.

The formation process of China Zodiac custom further tells us that any custom can always be produced under established objective conditions. As far as the customs of the zodiac are concerned, there are also other ancient civilizations, such as India, Greece, Egypt, Mexico and other countries. In this regard, there are Indian origin theory, Central Asian spread theory, Greek origin theory and so on, but from the time point of view, China ancient customs have existed for a long time. In addition, from the content, some animals, especially the virtual dragon, are native products of our country. There are lions in India, which belong to the zodiac. There are no lions in China, and there is no such animal sign. Egyptians used to worship cats, and cats were included in the zodiac, but China didn't. There are many indications that the custom of the zodiac was produced and exported in China. Many western scholars believe that it originated in China. Mexican professor Kichhoff once said at an academic seminar: "The so-called Aztec calendar used by local residents in China before the European invasion was invented by Americans. Its classification, livestock as evidence, its cycle and other outstanding features all come from China. "

In China's unique ecological environment and production activities, our ancestors not only created the custom of the Zodiac Year, but also formed unique and world-famous special customs such as dragon and phoenix worship, Spring Festival, Lantern Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival and Double Ninth Festival, which still shine in our lives today. They not only make our life more colorful, but also bring glory to the world. They are the bright pearl of maintaining cultural diversity in the global economic integration, and they are also an important symbol of the Chinese nation's self-reliance among the nations of the world. We should cherish and be kind.

Our ancestors not only created the custom of China Zodiac Year, but also formed the unique and world-famous special customs such as dragon and phoenix worship, Spring Festival, Lantern Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival and Chongyang, which still shine in our lives today. They not only make our life more colorful, but also bring glory to the world. They are the bright pearl of maintaining cultural diversity in the global economic integration, and they are also an important symbol of the Chinese nation's self-reliance among the nations of the world.