What are white horses and green cows?

Among the historical legends of the Qidan nationality, the most widely known is the story of a green cow and a white horse. As early as1930s, Japanese scholar Sukehiro Tamura made a preliminary study on this legend, [1] and domestic scholars also wrote articles on this issue in 1980s, [2] but today it seems that there is still room for further study. In addition to the "green cow and white horse", other legends about the history of the Qidan nationality are also worthy of our attention. This paper will explore the historical memory of the Khitan nationality through these legends. In the story of "Green Cow and White Horse", the deity riding a white horse down from the aggradation river is the legendary ancestor of Qidan, Qi Shou Khan. Aidang Songnan further developed the relationship between Qingniu Baima and two semi-clans, Yelushi and Xiao. He believes that the two words "Lu Ye" and "Shenmi" in the Khitan language come from the totem horses and cows of these two and a half ethnic groups respectively. Please look at his demonstration process:

The medieval sound of "Lu Ye": ia-Ljieu # t→ Mongolian word "horse training" (which should refer to stallion): Jala-ga.

The middle pronunciation of "shenmi" is si[m-mie#t → Mongolian "gunniu": sir-mut.

From this, it can be concluded that "Lu Ye" in the Khitan language means stallion and "Shenmi" means cow. [24]

This argument is not rigorous. First of all, Mongolian "Jala-ga" is a verb and cannot be attached to a stallion; Secondly, there is a very obvious gap between the sounds of Lu Ye and Shen Mi in the Middle Ages and the sounds of horses and cows in Mongolian.

There is Muye Mountain in Yongzhou, on which there is the ancestral temple of Qidan, the strange Khan in the south temple and the Keton in the north temple, with statues of two saints and eight sons painted. According to legend, a man of God rode a white horse from the alluvial river of cocoon to the east, and a goddess drove a green ox cart down from the flat pine forest to the Pan-Yellow River. To Muye Mountain, the two waters meet, meet as spouses, and have eight children. Later, the clan gradually flourished and was divided into eight parts. Every March and spring and autumn, you must use white horses and green cows to show that you will not forget this cloud.

This is undoubtedly the most authoritative and accurate account of the legend of green cow and white horse. Although there is no more primitive historical basis in the Liao literature handed down from generation to generation, I believe that the writing of this oral legend should be quite early. According to the records of Emperor Taizong of Liao Dynasty, in February of four years (94 1), Ding Si wrote the story of Han Zu by Zhao Yousi, and the legend of green ox and white horse probably first appeared in written records at this time. However, when the Yuan Dynasty compiled Liao History, I'm afraid I couldn't see the book "Biography of the Ancestor Strange Khan", and the account of the green cow and white horse in Liao History should come from Ye Luyan's A Record of the Dynasty.

In the literature handed down from the Liao Dynasty and the stone carving materials I have seen so far, I only found a historical material directly related to this legend. "Mourning for the Empress Renyi of Xing Zong" said: "I used to be a saint, and the fairy coffin flowed from water; Say goodbye today, the dragon will fly high. " [3] The last sentence here is obviously a classic of the green ox and white horse. The "chariot" is a covered car that the empresses ride, which is used to describe the green ox cart driven by the goddess. The author of this mourning book is Lu Ye Xiaojie (that is, Miss Zhang), which shows that the Han people in Liao Dynasty are also very familiar with the story of green cow and white horse.

The story of the green ox and white horse has obviously been circulated among the Qidan people for a long time before it became a text. So when did this legend appear? Zhao Zhizhong thought this story happened in Qin and Han Dynasties, but it was just a rumor, so Fan Zhen disagreed. Mr. Cai Meibiao put forward such an inference: "This legend is obviously not as old as theirs. At most, it reflects the memory of moving here in the patriarchal era ... We can infer that the legend was born in the early years of the Northern Wei Dynasty or earlier. " [9] This inference is still too early in time, because the Qidan tribe in the Northern Wei Dynasty mainly lived in the area of Bailangshui (now the upper reaches of Daling River) and has not moved to the Yellow River and Tuhai River basins. Mr. Wang Minxin, a scholar in Taiwan Province Province, thinks that the story of Qingniu Baima is not earlier than Kaiyuan and Tianbao, but later than the era of Bao Ji, and explains the background of this story as follows: After Bao Ji replaced Yao Ti as Khan, he fabricated the stories of' God Man' and' God Woman' for fear that others would not accept it, so as to show the stories of repeated stabbing and Uighur people. [10] According to his explanation, it seems that "Green Cow and White Horse" is a story invented out of thin air in Baoji era. There are many fictional elements in this statement. Green ox and white horse are the totem worship of Qidan people. It's hard to believe that such a widely circulated and far-reaching legend was fabricated by Baoji at will. Moreover, it is a bit far-fetched to link the story of "God Man" and "Goddess Girl" and the cooperation between the overlapping thorns and the Uighurs (fingering).