The "three sisters and six wives" mentioned by the ancients are not relatives in the family, but several despicable occupations! Don't be wrong: "Three sisters and six wives" is not your relatives, but a bunch of "bad women"!
There are many relatives in the family, and people often use the term "seven aunts and eight aunts" to describe. The "seven" and "eight" in "seven aunts and eight aunts" have no real meaning, indicating that there are many (relatives), chaos, and miscellaneous, and generally refer to general relatives. And literally similar to it, there is another word, called "three sisters and six wives", in the literal sense, it is similar to "seven aunts, eight aunts", it seems to also refer to a miscellaneous relatives. In fact, this kind of literal understanding is wrong. In ancient times, "three sisters and six wives" did not refer to relatives in the family, but several occupations when women mixed with society.
In ancient times, there was a type of woman who could not be a housewife, in order to show their personality, they would break through the shackles of the family and go to society to engage in some "faceless" work, the most famous of which was the "three sisters and six wives", they were a group of special women who were contrary to the "good family women", and the "three religions and nine streams" had a fight.
Regarding the "three sisters and six wives", the reputation in ancient times was not good. For example, the Qing Dynasty writer Li Ruzhen had this expression in his novel "Mirror Flower Edge": "I have heard that there are three sisters and six wives in your land, and once they are recruited, women are ignorant and often victimized by them, or they cheat money, or abduct clothes." "It shows that the professional ethics of these people are not popular, and they are even regarded as alternative evil people, making people defensive everywhere."
So, what exactly is "three sisters and six wives"? Tao Zongyi, a literary scholar and historian of the late Yuan and early Ming Dynasties, summed it up succinctly in the thirteenth volume of his "Record of Quitting Cultivation": "The three gu, the nuns, the Daogu, and the Guagu; the six wives, the tooth woman, the matchmaker, the master woman, the pious woman, the medicine woman, and the stable woman." ”
The nuns and Taoists in the "Three Sisters" are female monks; guagu refers to women who specialize in divination or fortune telling, which is easy to understand. Ancient men and women paid attention to "not being intimate", so women who went out to "mix society" were generally looked down upon, and even religious people such as nuns, Taoists, and gua were also classified as untouchables.
Compared with the "three sisters", the "six wives" are more difficult to understand, because in modern society, some of the occupations engaged in by the "six wives" have disappeared, and some have been marginalized, so they will become somewhat unfamiliar.
Among the "six wives", people are most familiar with the "matchmakers". Before the Internet culture prevailed, there were still many "matchmakers" in the countryside who went to the villages to help people talk about media, mostly middle-aged and elderly women who could speak the Tao. In the 1962 drama film "Flowers as a Medium", the role played by Teacher Zhao Lirong was the matchmaker Ruan Ma. However, with the popularity of the Internet, the rise of chat software, and the intervention of modern marriage agencies, the ancient "matchmaker" profession has slowly faded out of the stage of marriage and love and become a distant memory of a generation.
In addition to the "matchmaker" in the "six wives", everyone is familiar with them (now renamed "Red Lady"), and the other "mothers" have long disappeared from real life, so listening to "ear birth" and looking at "eye birth". Regarding the other "five wives", Lao Huang will give you a science popularization.
Ya Po: Among the six wives, the tooth po is the most immoral, and in terms of wording, the ya po is a woman who profits from the introduction of human trafficking, in short, a human trafficker. However, the scope of their business is not limited to human trafficking in the modern sense. The job of the tooth wife was to sell rouge, pollen and other women's supplies to survive, but she also introduced the sale in the middle - responsible for intermediary large households to buy pet concubines, song children, dancers, both for the official mansion, but also for the rich private family to win. Therefore, the emergence of the tooth po was very popular with the powerful groups at that time, until the Qing Dynasty, the tooth po for others to buy bridesmaids, buy concubines is still popular. In "Dream of the Red Chamber", jia fu yatou made a big mistake, and he wanted to ask "human teeth" to take away and sell them, and in this kind of human teeth, there was a place for the tooth woman. Where there is a market, there is buying and selling, and where there is demand, there is killing, which is true.
Pious Woman: In ancient times, when scolding a woman, the most poisonous thing is to call her an "old godly woman", which means a treacherous and cunning old woman. The piety of the pious woman is not a pious piety, but another one with other righteousness, and some are called the old bustard. Now it is clear that it turned out to be a pimped "adulterous agent". The word "pious" in "pious mother" has the meaning of forcibly demanding in ancient times, and the mother bustard forced the prostitutes to receive customers and forcibly squeezed money from them, so the family gave the mother of the bustard a title of "godly mother". Pious women are mostly held by unsymogeneous women, and pious women are also extremely immoral. Therefore, the phrase "old godly woman" is sometimes used to scold old and immodest women.
Master: Master has a nickname called "witch", so it is much easier to understand. Witches are another name for teachers, who "cheat" others out of money by pretending to be gods and ghosts, praying for blessings and disasters for others. With the advancement of modern science and medicine, the market for witches shrank and was severely attacked as a feudal superstition, so that for a time it disappeared from China. With the development of the economy, feudal superstitions have been revived, and wizards have quietly revived
Medicine woman: Medicine woman as the name suggests must be to buy medicine, medicine woman and doctor woman are sometimes the same meaning, they are familiar with the number of techniques and prescriptions, a bit like modern female doctors; however, unlike the doctor, the medicine woman sometimes does some drugs (such as aphrodisiacs, ecstasy and the like) to harm others' lack of virtue, so the reputation is not good.
Stable mother: Stable mother, also known as midwife, is a woman who used to deliver babies in the old folk, and is a rather modern midwife. Therefore, among the six wives, only one person calls her a woman who is the most respected and not sick.
In fact, in the "aunt" group, the professional boundaries are not very clear, sometimes it is quite mixed, often there are multiple positions, such as matching Pan Jinlian and Ximen Qing's princess, who is an old lady who opens a tea house, but privately does a lot of harmful things, among which there are many shadows of "aunts": "It turns out that the princess who opened the tea house is not keeping her duty." It is to accumulate years of diligence, to be a matchmaker, to be a selling wife, to be a dentist, and to receive small ones, and will also hug the waist (Note: the assistant of the midwife, who is in charge of holding the waist of the mother during childbirth), and is good at letting go. There is another thing that cannot be said, the bun is green, the yang wax is poured on the head, and the end can't see the ability of this mother-in-law!" ("Golden Plum Words" the second time)
In addition to the above-mentioned "three sisters and six wives", there is also a "three wives", and the "three wives" here are all official personnel with formal establishments. This "three wives" refers to: the grandmother, the doctor, and the stable wife. Don't underestimate these "three wives", they are eligible to enter and leave the Forbidden Palace (the inner courtyard of the palace) -
According to the [Ming] Shen Bang's "Miscellaneous Records of the Wanju And three wives", "Folk women have not been allowed to enter the forbidden place, that is, the women of the palace have been given the name of the gift, and their mothers have not entered unless they have the will, but the three wives have it from time to time." ”
Look, the parents of the women in the palace cannot enter the palace without the holy will, while the third wife can enter from time to time. It turned out that they were all palace workers.
The royal family also has to have children, so it must also have a stable wife that you can trust. The stable wives of the court were pre-selected among the civil midwives, and then the names of the pre-selected stable wives were registered in the register for selection when needed. In addition to seeing "thick milk and hidden diseases" when choosing a milk mouth (nipple) in the inner court, the stable wife who was selected into the inner court also played an important role in the court beauty pageant, not only to participate in the identification of Yan Yan, but also to perform nude examinations on women, such as skin, breasts, genitals, etc. In the Ming Dynasty, where the concept of chastity was very popular, it was also necessary to check whether the women selected into the palace were virgins.
This medical doctor refers to the female medical staff who served in the court, mainly to see the women in the palace. [Ming] Jiang Yikui's "Chang'an Keshu Sanbao": "Folk women have those who are proficient in the square pulse, selected by each yamen, and even selected by the Imperial Physicians of the Si Li Supervisor, the famous ones are waiting for the edict, and the women are many rongzhi, and the name is known as the doctor." They all passed the selection examination to enter the palace hospital, and only female talents could obtain such occupations, so "women are more prosperous."
The nurse is the nurse, and her main job is to feed the high-ranking officials or royal newborns. The "ceremonial room" outside the Dong'an Gate of the Imperial City is inhabited by nursing mothers prepared for the royal family all year round, commonly known as the "Milk House". In the Ming Dynasty, there was an emperor named Zhu Youxiao, that is, the carpenter emperor, who had a wet nurse Keshi, and his power was great. Generally, the grandmother who has milked the emperor will have a good home, such as the "Tang Dynasty Edict Collection" volume 25: "The grandmother Yuanshi, who is in infancy, relies on its care, pushes dry and wet, and has deep love, which can be described as a benevolent person who benefits Maode and can be given to Lady Yingchuan County." Such a reward is also difficult for many veteran cadres who have worked in revolutionary work all their lives to obtain!
(Image from the Internet)