What does shocking the world have to do with Thor?

With the first spring thunder of the New Year, the 24 solar terms came to us. Sting is the third of the 24 solar terms and the beginning of the mid-spring season. Tao Qian has a poem saying: "It rains in mid-spring, and thunder starts in the east corner." With the bursts of spring thunder, he experienced ignorance in early spring, and in mid-spring, this spring is getting stronger.

First of all, the climate of fear, which was called "Qi Qi" in ancient times, was changed to fear in the Han Dynasty to avoid the taboo of Han Jing Emperor Liu Qi. There was a brief recovery in the Tang dynasty, and it has been used since then in the name of panic. Generally, the solar term of fright begins around March 6 of the Gregorian calendar every year, when the sun reaches 345 degrees of the yellow meridian. "seventy-two waiting episodes of the moon order" explains: "everything is shocked and shocked by thunder, so it is called a sting, and it is a sting from it." As soon as the spring thunder rings, all the insects sleeping in the soil wake up, so this solar term is called a fright. Of course, today we know that this statement is only the description of natural phenomena by the ancients. Insects naturally can't hear thunder, and the reason why they wake up is the result of temperature changes.

Startled, pale Geng Ming.

The ancients divided each of the 24 solar terms into three periods to describe the climatic characteristics of the solar terms more accurately. The three stages of fright are: "If you wait for it, you will be bloom;" Second, wait for Cang Geng Ming; Three waiting eagles turned into pigeons. " Peach blossoms begin to bloom, which means peach blossoms are in full bloom. Cang Geng is what we often call an oriole bird. It is more interesting for this eagle to become a pigeon. Pigeon is a cuckoo. There is an old saying: "In mid-spring, the trees are lush, the birds' mouths are soft, they can't catch birds, and they are hungry, so they are called turtledoves." This is the kind of bird you are talking about. In mid-spring, there is no eagle flying in the sky, only cuckoo is singing. In the concept of the ancients, it was as if the eagle had become a cuckoo. There are many such expressions in the seventy-two seasons, such as "rotten grass is a firefly" (summer heat), "sparrow enters the water as a clam" (cold dew), and so on. In fact, this also reflects the ancient people's simple understanding of the changes and ups and downs of everything in the world.

Second, shock and insects "run away when they are shocked", and shock is a solar term related to insects. Of course, China is a vast country, and it is said that before and after the sting, thunder rolled and all kinds of insects revived. This is actually only the situation in the Yangtze River basin, which is relatively south. In the Yellow River Basin, the birthplace of the 24 solar terms, a similar situation may be later. However, the influence of the 24 solar terms is enormous. Whether it thunders or not, whether the insects wake up or not, in many parts of our country, some customs related to insects have been formed before and after the fright. Of course, whether spreading diseases or eating crops, insects were mostly bad things for the ancients. Therefore, the custom of shocking insects is also related to insect repellent.

Afraid, all the insects are alive.

For example, in the Hanjiang area of Jiangsu, there is a custom of taking pictures of mosquitoes. On the night of fright, the local people will light the red candles left during the Spring Festival sacrifice, then walk around the house and yard with them, and say, "When mosquitoes are startled, there is no shadow." It is said that this can drive away mosquitoes. Then when the local people send the Kitchen God, they will fry the glutinous rice and sugar together, which is called "frying insects", just like eating insects.

In some places in Jiangxi and Guangxi, local people have the custom of spraying lime to repel insects. It is said that this is the legacy of Sun Simiao, the drug king of the Tang Dynasty. In some places, the houses are covered with lime and sprinkled with the shape of a bow, which may be the remains of some ancient witchcraft. In Liling, Hunan Province, the local people have the custom of setting off firecrackers in the house during the period of fright, which is called "explosion shock", which means to scare away insects.

Pricking, sprinkling lime

In Tianmen, Xiaogan and other places in Hubei, not only insects, but also frogs in the fields have to fight. Locals call it "frog-beating" or "frog-driving". In the Tianmen County Records of the Republic of China, it was recorded that "On the night of Mantis Festival, children beat drums and gongs, singing with sticks, which is called driving frogs." The children beat gongs and drums, and the frogs in the field were hurt.

Some friends may find it strange. Frogs are beneficial insects. Why did you hit the frog? There are two reasons for this. One saying is recorded in Xiaogan County Records in the eighth year of Guangxu: "People near the water hit the pond with thorns and said,' You should be surprised when you hit a frog, but you should be dumb when you hit a frog', which means that hitting a frog is too overbearing because it is too noisy. Another statement is more reliable. During the Guangxu period, Hunan's Leiyang County Records contained: "Your surprise is accompanied by cold. If you don't smell the frog, the seedling won't rot. "That is to say, for agricultural production, it is beneficial to have a slightly cold climate in the thorn season. The frog's habit is to start singing only when the weather is warm. Therefore, if frogs start chirping during the sting season, it often indicates a bad harvest.

Third, if the world is shocked, Raytheon's "Zhou Li" says: "It stinks ... the insects move when they hear the thunder", which shows that the solar terms of thunder are closely related to thunder. Under the influence of rumbling thunder, the ancients naturally constructed the image of Thor. This deification of natural phenomena is also a common phenomenon of many ancient nationalities. Thunder began in thunder, so in ancient times, before and after thunder, there were many folk activities to offer sacrifices to Raytheon, such as putting up a portrait of Raytheon, offering sacrifices, burning incense and praying at the Thunder Temple and so on.

Leigongmiao

Speaking of this Thor, or "Lei Gong", the image of this God has changed a lot since ancient times. The earliest image of Thor was "a dragon with a head". It is said that the image of this dragon built by China ancestors has something to do with thunder, so it is not surprising that the earliest Raytheon had a dragon body.

It was not until after the Han Dynasty that Thor was gradually personified. According to Wang Chong's Lun Heng in the Eastern Han Dynasty, when people draw Thor, they usually draw the image of a big man, with a drum in one hand and an awl pointed up and down in the other. At that time, people thought that Lei Ming Lei was made by Lei Gong with drums; The sharp thunder is the sound of Lei Gong waving a cone. The brave man waved his cone vigorously, and this Lei Gong can be described as a "burst drummer". This statue of Lei Gong has been circulating for a long time, and this is probably the case in Dunhuang Grottoes in the Tang Dynasty. Later, probably in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the image of Lei Gong changed again and became an image with beak, wings and axes.

Lei Gong Tu in Early Tang Dynasty (Cave 329 of Mogao Grottoes)

The ancients in China always liked to add some beautiful things in secular life to the image of God. For example, everyone thinks that harmony between husband and wife is good, so the ancients arranged "objects" for many gods: looking at the lonely Queen Mother of the West, they made her a Dong Wang Gong; Seeing that Lei Gong had no one to accompany him, he designed the Dian Mu. The image of Dian Mu appeared in ancient books, much later than that of Lei Gong. In the history of Song Dynasty, it was said that there was a "Leigong Dian Mu Flag" in the guard of honor at that time, but in the history of Yuan Dynasty, it was not clear that Dian Mu on the flag of Dian Mu was a hero in embroidery, red skirt and white trousers.