When it comes to crows, Chinese frown, thinking that this is an ominous bird that can bring obscurity to people, and some areas still have the proverb "the crow cries, and the disaster comes". If someone says something unfortunate, he will be crowned with the title of "crow's mouth". The words "rabble-rousers", "black as crows under the world", and "colorful phoenixes" also reflect people's disgust and disgust for crows. However, the crow in history has not always had this negative image, and for a long time, the crow was deeply loved and was a bird of good fortune.
1. Divine Bird
In ancient times, due to the low level of productivity, people could not correctly understand the natural world, and they feared and admired the natural world. In the long-term production and life, the ancient ancestors gradually realized the magic of the sun, especially in the era of farming, the importance of the sun to human beings became increasingly prominent, and the worship of the sun was born. As anthropologist Edward Taylor said, "Wherever there is sunshine, there is the worship of the sun." "The ancient ancestors did not understand the law of the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, but they still tried to explore this mystery according to their own thinking patterns.
After long-term observations of celestial phenomena, ancient ancestors found that there were black clouds around the sun and sunspots in the sun. In ancient times, totem worship prevailed, and birds were important objects of worship. Located in the east, the Dongyi tribe took the lead in combining sun worship, celestial observation and bird worship, and under the influence of primitive thinking intuition and attachment, they connected the black crow with the sun and created the myth of "Yang Wu Zai Sun". The Classic of Mountains and Seas and the Great Wilderness of the East Classic: "There are fumu on the Tang Valley, one day to the end, one day to the other, all contained in Wu." "The sun is carried by crows every day, so "yang wu" and "golden wu" have become synonymous with the sun, and the crow has also become a kind of sacred bird, which is highly respected.
Yang Wu Zai Ri portrait stone
Legend has it that the Zhou Chamber will be revived, and a red wu will appear. For example, in the "Ruiying Tu" Yun: "Chi Wu, when the King of Wu was in the valley rice to the house, the soldiers did not bloodshed, but obeyed." "The sun is the symbol of heaven, and the red crow is the messenger of the sun, representing the providence of providence. The appearance of Chi Wu indicates that Wang Ye can be successful, which is a kind of auspicious omen.
Crows are "sunbirds" with divinity, so during the Spring and Autumn Period, crows were also used for divination, called "Ubu" or "Crow Bu". Dreaming of crows is an auspicious omen, for example, Song Zhaogong once dreamed of crows gathered on the door, he was very happy, thinking that "Yu Mengmei, Bing". However, with the progress of society and the improvement of people's cognitive level, the sacredness of crows gradually disappeared, from divine birds to mortal birds, and evolved into vicious birds after the Song and Yuan dynasties, which were highly disliked.
Sunbirds
2. Filial piety
Since the Han Dynasty, Confucianism has become the mainstream of social thought and is deeply valued by the rulers. "Filial piety" is one of the core ideas of Confucianism, ancient China is a patriarchal state with blood relations as the link, the family and the country are isomorphic, loyalty and filial piety are connected, and the "filial piety" of maintaining family order can be effectively transformed into "loyalty" to maintain national order. And the crow's habit of feeding back is exactly in line with the needs of the ruler. Therefore, since the Han Dynasty, the crow has been given a distinct ethical color, and the combination with "filial piety" has become increasingly close, becoming a kind of filial piety and a bird of mercy. For example, "Shuowen Ube": "U, filial piety bird also, called its back feeding also." Guangya Shibird: "Loving Bird, Uya." Words such as "Black Bird Private Affection", "Ci Wu Counter Feeding", and "Wu Feeding" have also become fixed images for expressing filial piety for people's descendants, and are widely used, the most famous of which is Li Mi, who used "Black Bird Private Feelings, Willing to Beg for Final Nourishment" in the article "Table of Feelings" to express his determination to be filial to his grandmother and unwilling to come out as an official.
The crow feeds back, its sexual benevolence, is a kind of filial piety with high moral character, so it is also regarded as auspicious and loved by people. Cheng Gongsui of the Jin Dynasty wrote in the preface to the Wufu: "There is a filial bird set Yu Zhilu, nai Er sighed: 'Yu has no virtue of benevolence and benefit, and the auspicious bird is easy to do? ...... If it is a three-legged spirit, the state has the way to see, and the country without the way is hidden. Why should the virtue of the Snai Phoenix be added? In Cheng Gongsui's eyes, the crow is both a divine bird and a filial bird, and its status is comparable to that of a phoenix, and it is a rare auspicious bird.
Wu Lord Xiangrui, people also believe that crows can announce good news, which is also the origin of the piano song "Wu Ye Cry" and the Lefu folk song "Wu Ye Cry". Legend has it that when He Yan, a Wei man of the Three Kingdoms, went to prison, two of them stopped at the house, and his daughter said, "If there is joy in the world, the father will be spared." Therefore, he composed the piano song "Dark Night Cry". During the Southern Song Dynasty, Liu Yiqing, the king of Linchuan, wept because of his meeting with Liu Yikang, and was suspected by Emperor Wen, "returning the house and being afraid", and his concubine heard the cries at night, thinking that he was happy, and said: "Tomorrow there should be a pardon." Later, Liu Yiqing was pardoned and assassinated the history of Southern Yanzhou, so he wrote "Dark Night Cry".
By the time of the Sui and Tang dynasties, the crow was still a kind of auspicious bird in the mainstream consciousness, which was reflected in many literary works. For example, Du Fu's "Western Mountains" said: "Today," Wu Que is happy and wants to repay the triumphant return." Zhang's "Wu Crying" said: "The young woman listened to the night crying Wu, and knew that the official family had a pardon. At the same time, the Tang Dynasty still regarded crows as filial birds. For example, Mengjiao's "Long Journey" said: "Ciwu is not far away, and filial piety will return first." Bai Juyi's "Ciwu Night Cry" said: "Ciwu Fu Ciwu, the bird of the once participated." "Wuxian County was first established in Qin, and is related to the wounding of filial piety. In the seventh year of Tang Wude (624), Wuzhi County was deliberately changed to "Yiwu County", which was intended to highlight the meaning of "filial piety" in Wu, which shows the Tang people's praise for crows.
crow
3. The Bird of Evil
As early as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, there was an "evil" side in the cultural symbolism of crows. Qu Yuan explicitly defined crows as "evil birds". At the end of the chapter of "Leaving the River": "The bird phoenix, the day is far away; the swallow bird and the black magpie, the nest hall altar xi." "Bird bird magpie" is the opposite of "bird phoenix", referring to the vulgar villain, obviously a kind of evil bird. The idea that crows represent ominousness also existed in the Han Dynasty. In "Jiao's Yilin", the records that appear in "There are Wu in the city, they break their homes in their own names, they call ugly poisons, and they suffer disasters for the country", "Wufei foxes are singing, the country is in turmoil, the upper and lower are weak, they are punished by yin", "there is no way to migrate to the south, the crow breaks its nest, the wood is cut down, and it is unfavorable to shake" and other records, which are enough to show that crows are not always a bright and beautiful image in the Han Dynasty.
Crow's Nest
Before the Song Dynasty, although the crow image had an unlucky and ominous side, in general, it was still xiangrui as the mainstream. By the Song Dynasty, the concept of crows being evil birds and crows completely prevailed, and continues to this day, becoming a type of folk taboo. Why is this shift happening?
The first is influenced by geography. In the Song Dynasty, southerners hated crows and liked magpies, while northerners had the opposite attitude. For example, Hong Mai's "Rong Zhai Continued Pen" volume Sanyun: "Northerners take the sound of wusheng as joy, and the sound of magpies as wrong." The southerners are happy when they hear the noise of the magpies, and they spit on the sound of the black, and as for the string crossbow, they will strike away. However, with the southward shift of the economic and political center of gravity of the Song Dynasty, especially the establishment of the Southern Song Dynasty, the southern culture became increasingly prosperous and gradually became the mainstream culture of society, and the concept that the crow is a vicious bird and represents ominous is also widely spread in society.
The second stems from people's fear of death. Crows are omnivorous animals that prefer to eat carrion. Their sense of smell is also very sensitive, and they can smell the faint stench emitted by corpses. Moreover, the crow is very common in daily life and is a bird that likes to live in groups. People gradually discovered that wherever there was carrion, there were crows. Over time, crows are associated with death. Humans fear death, and crows that herald death will naturally cause disgust.
This shift is also related to the color of crows. There are many kinds of crows, the colors are not the same, the saying "the crows in the world are generally black" is not accurate in a sense, but in China, the more common is the black crow. Times are different, and people's attitudes towards black are also significantly different. During the Qin and Han dynasties, under the influence of the Yin and Yang Five Elements Theory, black was advocated in society and black was respected. By the Song and Yuan dynasties, black had become the representative of evil, and it was terrifying. Therefore, the crow, which is not clearly involved with corpses and death, is even more annoyed by its black appearance and sharp and harsh cries. The crow represents the disaster, is an ominous bird, the concept of the crow was finally established in the Song Dynasty, and still affects people's thinking today.
Wen Shijun said
Since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, crows have an "evil" side and are annoyed by people, but some crows are very special, and have always been regarded as auspicious omens and valued by rulers. The aforementioned Chi Wu is the representative. Since the Han Dynasty, Chi Wu has also become the Xiangrui of "the state-owned Tao is present", and has been specially written by the Great Book. During the Three Kingdoms period, Sun Quan, the lord of Wu, directly changed the era name to "Chi Wu" on the grounds that he personally saw Chi Wu gathered in front of the temple. Bai Wu and Cang Wu were later than Chi Wu, but they were also regarded as auspicious, and many local officials also regarded the offering of Bai Wu and Cang Wu to the emperor as a major event. Interestingly, since the Song Dynasty, the records of Chiwu, Baiwu, and Cangwu in the history books have been greatly reduced, and during the Ming Dynasty, there were also cases in which local officials offered Baiwu to the imperial court but were not accepted. In the final analysis, it was influenced by the idea of the ominousness of crows.
White crow
bibliography
Ge Zhaoguang: "Ciwu and the Jackdaw", Chinese Classics and Culture, No. 3, 1996.
Yang Liu, "Analysis of the Cultural Significance of "Crow"",Journal of Philology, No. 2, 2014.
Tian Dongmei: "The Origin of the Symbolism of the "Crow" Culture", Master's Thesis of Nanjing Normal University, 2006.
Qi Ge: "The Rheology of the Symbolic Meaning of the Crow", Shandong University, 2018 Master's Thesis.
(Author: Haoran Wenshi Wei Swift)
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