There are many Chinese legends about the dragon, what is the origin of the dragon

Chinese myths and legends, is a legendary mythical animal, with a snake body, lizard legs, phoenix claws, antlers, fish scales, fish tail, mouth with tiger whiskers, forehead under the beads of the image. The Classic of Mountains and Seas recorded that Xia Houqi, Matsui, Jumang and so on "took the rain dragon". According to another book, "Zhuan Xu took the dragon to the four seas" and "帝?'?'ü's spring and summer dragons". The dragon is divided into four types: those with scales are called Jiaolong, those with wings are called Yinglong, those with horns are called Qionglong, and those without horns are called chi dragons.

The earliest dragon-shaped motifs found in China come from the 8,000-year-old Xinglongwa culture at the Cha Hai site (the Xinglongwa culture was named after the excavation of the Xinglongwa site in Aohan Banner, Inner Mongolia, which is adjacent to Liaoning Province, and the Cha Hai site is in Fuxin County, Liaoning Province), where a dragon was found that was about 19.7 meters long and was piled up and placed on a reddish-brown stone block. The discovery of this dragon from the Xinglongwa culture pushed the history of the Chinese people's reverence for dragons up to 8,000 years ago. In the early days, the ancients could not make reasonable explanations for most natural phenomena, so they hoped that the totems of their own people would have the power of wind, rain, thunder and lightning, and the majesty of mountains, and be able to swim in the water like a fish and fly in the sky like a bird. Therefore, the characteristics of many animals are concentrated in the dragon, the dragon gradually became "nine unlike" (with nine animal characteristics) appearance, this composite structure, meaning that the dragon is the head of the beasts, the almighty God.

Dragon's image of the ancient records of its image more than one. One of them is said to be slender with four feet, horse head and snake tail. One said that the body clad in scale armor, head with bearded horns, five claws. The Compendium of Materia Medica said that "the dragon has nine similar", for the combination of various animals of different types of strengths. The small one is called Jiao, the big one is called dragon. Legend has it that it can be visible and hidden, fine and huge, short and long. Spring equinox ascends to the sky, autumn equinox submerged abyss, call the wind and rain, omnipotent.

The "Taishang Dongyuan Divine Mantra Scripture" has the "Dragon King Pin", listing the "Dragon King of the Five Emperors", the "Dragon King of the Four Seas", the "Dragon King of the Four Seas", and the "Dragon King of All Things in Heaven and Earth", which are all differentiated by their orientation. There are 54 names of Dragon Kings and 62 names of Divine Dragon Kings distinguished by the heaven and earth. Tang Xuanzong, stuttering ancestral temple Dragon Pond, set up altar officials to sacrifice to the ritual of the Rainmaker sacrificed to the Dragon King.

Song Taizu followed the Tang Dynasty sacrificial system of five dragons. Song Huizong Da Guan two years (1108) micro world five dragons are all the king of the title. The Green Dragon God as the King of Guangren, the Red Dragon God as the King of Jiaze, the Yellow Dragon God as the King of Fu Ying, the White Dragon God as the King of Yi Ji, and the Black Dragon God as the King of Lingze. Qing Dynasty Tongzhi two years (1863) and sealed the canal dragon god as "Yan protection should be obvious water division of the Dragon King of the God", so that the river governor in time to offer sacrifices. In the "Journey to the West", the Dragon King are: East China Sea Aoguang, South China Sea Ao Qin, West China Sea Ao Leun, North China Sea Ao Shun, known as the Four Sea Dragon King.

On the origin of the dragon, after a long period of research and verification, people finally achieved a more consistent **** knowledge: the dragon is a variety of animal complex, is the formation of primitive society, a symbol of totem worship.

The prototype of the dragon in the late Neolithic period has sprouted, is to Xia totem as the main body of the virtual imagination. The ancients had various explanations for it. It was said that the dragon snake had no feet but could fly (see Xunzi - persuasion); those with scales were called jiao dragons, those with horns were called gnarled [qiu prisoners] dragons, and those without horns were called chi dragons [chī eat] dragons. (All see Li Sao, Hong Supplement, citing Guang Ya.) The one with wings is called Ying Long (Tian Man, Wang Note). Some say that the dragon resembles a dog like a cow, while the Lun Heng says: "The likeness of the dragon is the head of a horse and the tail of a snake." Others say that the shape of the dragon is the horns of a deer, the ears of an ox, the head of a camel, the eyes of a rabbit, the neck of a snake, the belly of a mirage [shen even], the scales of a fish, the paws of a tiger, and the claws of an eagle. There are crocodile sayings, lizard sayings, horse sayings, and so on. But generally agreed that the base of the dragon is a snake. The first systematic presentation of this insight was Wen Yiduo's famous article "Fuxi Kao". The dragon is the big snake and the snake is the small dragon. Wen Yiduo believes that the snake clan annexed other clans, "absorbed many other kinds of totem group (clan), the big snake, which accepted the four feet of the beasts, the horse's head, iguana [lie bad] tail, deer's horns, dog's claws, fish scales and whiskers," and later became the dragon. Later generations have made many enrichments and additions on the basis of Wen Yiduo's research.

Archaeological discoveries

Liaoning Fuxin Chahai primitive village site unearthed "dragon-shaped mounding", for our "time positioning" provides evidence. The Chahai site belongs to the "pre-Hongshan culture" remains, about 8,000 years ago. The "Dragon Pile" is located in the center square of this primitive village site, and is made of reddish-brown stones of equal size. The dragon is nearly 20 meters long and two meters wide, with its head raised, mouth open, back bent and tail hidden. This stone dragon, is our country so far found the earliest age, the shape of the largest dragon. (Some articles say, Shanxi Province, Ji County persimmon beach rock cliffs, there is a 10,000 years ago, the fish tail deer dragon petroglyphs, when the earliest prototype of the dragon. Next, there is the Inner Mongolia Aohan Banner Xinglongwa unearthed up to 7,000 or 8,000 years ago pottery dragon, Shaanxi Baoji Beishouling site unearthed up to 7,000 years ago colored ceramic bottles with a thin neck dragon, Henan Puyang Xishuipo unearthed more than 6,400 years ago, such as clams and plastic dragons.

In the 1970s, a C-shaped jade dragon was unearthed in the village of Samsungtala, Wengniuote Banner, Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia, and the archaeological survey later confirmed that the jade dragon belonged to the relics of the Hongshan Culture, which was more than 5,000 years before the present.

Tomb No. 45 at the Xishuipo site in Puyang, Henan Province, was found to be a clam-plastic dragon and tiger in 1987, and the archaeology and carbon-14 determination of the age of the tomb was about 6,500 years ago. According to scholars Li Xueqin and Feng Shi, the clam-plastic dragon and tiger found in Tomb 45 is closely related to the four elephants in traditional Chinese astronomy.

Liaoning Fuxin Chahai primitive village site unearthed reddish-brown stone stacked "dragon-shaped pile molding". The site belongs to the "pre-Hongshan culture" remains, about 8,000 years ago. The "dragon pile sculpture" is located in the central square of this primitive village site, nearly 20 meters in length and two meters in width, with its head raised and its mouth open, its back arched and its tail hidden from view. This stone dragon, is China's earliest age found so far, the largest dragon.

(Some articles say, jixian county, Shanxi province, persimmon beach rock cliffs, there is a 10,000 years ago, the fish tail deer dragon petroglyphs, when the dragon's earliest prototype. This petroglyph has not been published, and it is not known what its face looks like.)

Origin

The Chinese have a deep understanding of the "drought of hope for the clouds," and the "drought and rain" is listed as one of the four great joys of the Chinese people. Rain and wind, often preceded by a "rumble" of the sound of hidden thunder. The Chinese ancestors, who counted on rain for almost everything in their lives, stood in the farmland where they sowed their hopes for the whole year, guarding the wilting seedlings, with no idea what to do, and when they suddenly heard the rumble of thunder in the northern sky, and then saw the golden snakes dancing in the thick clouds, knowing that sweet rains would soon be coming, it must have been engraved in their hearts and souls, and they had infinite reverence for the sound of the rumbling.

There is no doubt that the Chinese forefathers would have abstracted the concept of a tangible (lightning) and audible (rumbling) sound, and named it "rumbling" with onomatopoeia, and looked forward to "rumbling" year after year, hoping for "rumbling" and "rumbling". "year after year, looking forward to the sound of "rumbling" to send rain. After the advent of writing, the ancestors created a character for "dragon" to express this concept and pronounced it as "rong".

Not just a legend

There is another explanation for the origin of the dragon, and many people believe that the origin of the dragon is not just a figment of the imagination of the first people, but that it has a deep cultural heritage, and that it is a synthesis of the first people's understanding of certain powerful creatures that live on the earth, and that some people believe that the creatures in the twelve signs of the Chinese Zodiac are real, and that the dragon would not be the only one that is a fabrication. It is possible that the dragons in the memories of the ancestors and the dragons in our traditional culture are not exactly the same, but it is clear that there is a certain inheritance in between. The author of the novel "The Secret Trail of the Dragon Realm" maintains this view.

There are many different opinions about what kind of animal is the prototype of the dragon, and in order to unravel this mystery, we have to trace the relationship between the dragon and the Yangzi crocodile from the long history of the Chinese nation.

When the primitive human beings shifted from gathering wild fruits and fishing to planting, grains became the main food, and the quantity of the harvest determined the quality of people's existence. Still in their infancy, the wisdom of the ancient people is not yet developed, the face of nature's unpredictable and frequent disasters of all kinds, both unable to understand and unable to control, but also unwilling to listen to the mercy of nature, and then hope that some of the forces of nature can sway to help resist the disaster of the gods, in an attempt to pray for and worship these gods idol to seek blessing.

In the Yellow River basin, the birthplace of the Chinese nation, the temperate monsoon climate, flooding is a great threat to people, so the desire to have a kind of rain can dominate the blessing of the gods of the wind and rainfall is the greatest desire of the ancient ancestors. Ancient mankind in different regions and environments, due to the benefits and harms of different natural objects around them, therefore, people have different objects representing the essence of nature and the spirit of the object, a certain kind of life around the animal is the most commonly used to create the material of the gods, and so our ancestors created a unique alligator reptile Yangzi crocodile as the prototype of our country's allegorical image of the Lord of the Water God!

The Dragon.

How did the Yangzi alligator, a living fossil that lived with dinosaurs for more than 100 million years and still maintains its original form, become a dragon? Before the Xia and Shang dynasties, the environment of the Yellow River Basin like the "Water Classic" recorded "mixed shade, clouds hanging smoke," was a place of beautiful scenery and rich vegetation, ancient meteorology shows that the climate is still quite warm and humid, and therefore live a large number of Yangzi crocodiles. Because of the Yangzi crocodile hideous appearance, can be in the water and land amphibious life of the peculiar habits and often half-diving in the seemingly hidden secretive movements, triggered the ancients to it produced both fear and reverence for the psychological, so in the eyes of the people with a majestic and mysterious sense of the animal - Yangzi crocodile has become the main water gods and god image of the inevitable choice of objects.

Despite the image of the dragon in the ancients in the form of oral transmission in the fusion, merging the content of other animals, artificial distortion, resulting in the loss of the original appearance, but still has all the basic morphological characteristics of the Yangzi crocodile: 1, full of scales and armor of the body; 2, the long jaws of the large mouth and is located in the top of the head of the snout; 3, sharp conical teeth; 4 large and round protruding eyes; 5 long and thick tail; 6 strong limbs and five-fingered sharp claws; 7 a horizontally striped abdomen.

In order to make up for the Yangzi crocodile bald head and pointed tail is detrimental to the defects of the image of the gods, the ancients played a full imagination, to it added horns, whiskers, caudal fins, as well as to the back of the longitudinal arrangement of protruding horny spines are also transformed into a jagged dorsal fins, and lengthening the torso in order to render the momentum, fill the decorative effect, and so the Yangzi crocodile has been shaped into a legend depicted in the claws, the ability to ride on the clouds of the dragon's image. Although after artistic exaggeration, the illusion of the dragon and the reality of the Yangzi crocodile has a lot of differences, but under the comparison, you can still see the Yangzi crocodile - long jaws, sharp teeth, scales, claws and other main features.

Later, the Yellow River Basin, due to man-made ecological damage, slash-and-burn agriculture, indiscriminate logging, resulting in soil erosion, environmental degradation, the climate has become colder, suitable for warm and humid environments of the Yangzi crocodile difficult to survive and then gradually become extinct (now only in China's southern Anhui Province). Because the Yangzi crocodile no longer exist in real life, people's memory of the impression of fading away, leaving only the ancestors to create the image of the dragon passed down from generation to generation, as a result, the dragon and the Yangzi crocodile into two different concepts, the origin of the dragon began to become confusing.

Early dragons were hornless, and a 6,000-year-old tomb unearthed in Puyang, Henan Province, in 1987 was found to be decorated with clamshells in the shape of a crocodile (dragon). The dragons depicted on the colored pottery of the Yangshao culture were also reptiles with large heads and long tails. The Yunlong stone sculpture in Nanshan, Dazu, Sichuan Province, is even a hornless, whiskerless, craggy-eyed, living crocodile. Horned dragon was first seen in the Shang dynasty oracle bones and bronzes, Shanxi province unearthed a Shang dynasty bronze dragon goblet shape that appears double horns, the body decoration is identical to the Yangzi crocodile body lines.

Chinese characters are hieroglyphics, and the word for dragon in the oracle bone inscriptions is the image of an animal with a large mouth and curved body. The pronunciation of the word "dragon" is an analog of the crocodile's call, the crocodile's roar is a low "rumbling" sound, so the "dragon" (dragon) sound became the ancient name for the crocodile, and to this day, the crocodile in the southern part of China's folklore is still commonly known as the "earth dragon". The "dragon" is the name of the crocodile in the southern part of China, which is still commonly known as "Tulong" and "piggish dragon".

The appearance of the gods is not a blind intentional fabrication, it is a true record of human understanding and experience, throughout the ages, many records about the dragon, legends, folklore and Yangzi crocodile habits related.

The crocodile lives in the swampy areas of rivers and lakes, and in Zuozhuan, "the deep mountains and swamps are home to dragons and snakes." This means that dragons (i.e., alligators) and snakes are two animals that live in similar environments and have similar habits.

Yangzi crocodiles in the water to create a labyrinth of underground caves, holes 2-3 meters from the ground, usually also inhabits the water, so people imagine that "the king of the dragon living in the water under the dragon palace," the magical scene. And in the see whenever the flood alligator because of the cave washed away all around to escape, they think "the dragon king in the storm", do not know that the alligator is also a victim of the flood.

The crocodiles feed on fish, frogs and mussels, and there are pearls in their shells, and they are ferocious by nature, killing each other when they are hungry. When someone saw the crocodile fighting for mussels, the mouth spit out pearls, there is a "two dragons playing pearls" said.

Yangzi crocodile is June mating, July eggs, the male crocodile is looking for female crocodiles through the sound of the crocodile (crocodile is the only reptile will be screaming), and every year in June is the Yellow River Basin is the beginning of the rainy summer, so people Yangzi crocodile crocodile screaming and the approach of the wind and rain associated with the storm, every time the wind and rain want to come to the thunder and lightning has also inspired the ancients, that the rain and wind and thunder and lightning and the dragon has a close relationship with the ancient people, so the dragon as the god of thunder and rain. View the dragon as the god of thunder and rain, "Classic of Mountains and Seas" in the "Lei Ze has a god, the dragon body and human head. The record, that "the dragon can call the wind and rain".

The Shuowen Jiezi describes "the dragon ...... ascends to the sky at the spring equinox and dives into the abyss at the fall equinox." There are only two crocodiles in the world, the Yangzi crocodile and the Mississippi crocodile, which live in the temperate zone and need to hibernate. For climatic reasons every early winter they will enter the hibernation period, when the spring (lunar February) when the earth thawed, hibernation in the winter they began to go out activities, but also to the Yellow River Basin began to rain in the season, the pioneers of the two are also linked together, so there is a ritual "February 2, the dragon carries the head," the custom.

There are many such things, not to be listed. As for the dragon and other real animals together in the zodiac is also very natural, because in the summer and Shang Dynasty before, the ancient people referred to the dragon is the reality of the Yangzi crocodile, and the crocodile is one of the global people generally concerned about the worship of the animal, in Egypt as well as the Greek zodiac have crocodiles.

The dragon is a specific product of the culture of worshiping gods, and the ancient texts say, "Water takes the dragon." It can be seen that the dragon was created as the main water deity (the legendary Dragon King), and there is no sound basis for the claim that dragons were associated with the totem worship of ancient clan societies. Since there are written records, the ancient Chinese nation of the clans are Chinese characters for the sign of the family name, there is no record of animal graphics for the sign. Ancient mankind's abstract thinking ability is very low, can not use logic to think about the problem, can only use analogies, representations of the method of understanding things, to create a synthesis of a variety of animal characteristics of the virtual animal image, is difficult to do the ancient forefathers, human imagination will always be subject to some kind of constraints, no matter how strange gods, can only be created with the authenticity of the background, and how bizarre myths, and ultimately can find the original material that constitutes it in the reality. How bizarre the myth is, it can eventually find the original material that constitutes it, therefore, the dragon is not a virtual animal. "Er Ya - wing" talked about the dragon has "nine like" (horns like a deer, neck like a snake, claws like an eagle ......) refers to the dragon's local form and some animal similarity, and does not specifically refer to the dragon is a synthesis of the characteristics of the nine animals created. Even the ancient worship of foreign nations symbols are real animals (eagle, tiger, etc.) or human-animal combination (lion body and human face) of the image.