What is ancestor worship?

In ancient China, ancestor worship was one of the most important things in the country, a cultural tradition handed down from the very beginning of civilization. In ancient times, people knew little about the natural world and found natural objects and natural forces mysterious, and from reverence and dependence to worship of them, there appeared the worship of the sky, mountains, rivers, land and rocks, fire worship, animal and plant worship, etc. In addition, people felt that their own life phenomena and physiology were very mysterious, and that they had to worship their ancestors. In addition, people feel that their own life phenomena and physiological processes are very mysterious, so the concept of soul and ancestor worship. Ancestor worship is people in the cognition of their own origins in the formation of the worship system, which is not only the mystical understanding of their own life phenomena, but also to the worship of the ancestors of the dead, the prerequisite for its emergence is the emergence of the concept of the soul and the development of the soul. Ancient people believed that the souls of ancestors had a twofold effect on their descendants, benefiting them as well as bringing misfortune to them. In order to pray for the blessing of ancestors, ancestor worship played an irreplaceable role, and sacrifices became a very important thing. Ancestor worship is often combined with rituals, and people in primitive societies believe that through various means of sacrifice, they can seek the protection of their ancestors' souls and maintain the unity and interests of the clan.

Ancestor worship was initially manifested as the worship of the mother goddess in ancient times. The worship of the mother goddess in China originated roughly from the saying that Nuwa rolled up the earth and made man. In the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", it was recorded that Nuwa's intestines were transformed into ten gods; in the late Han Dynasty, Ying Shao's anonymous article on "Customs and Customs" said that Nuwa rolled up the yellow earth to make a human being; and in the "Huai Nan Zi", it was said that Nuwa refined the five-color stone to mend the sky. These earlier mythological accounts all reflect the worship of Nuwa. From the point of view of archaeological excavations, the earliest statue of a mother goddess found in China is the "Mother Goddess of Dongshan Mouth" from the Neolithic Hongshan Culture. Statues of the goddess were unearthed at the Niheliang Red Mountain Culture Site in Liaoning Province, and six stone statues of the goddess were unearthed at the lower level of the Houtaizi Neolithic Site in Luanping County, Hebei Province. The female Fuxi and Nuwa statues are mostly full-bodied, with concise and exaggerated techniques to highlight the features of bulging belly, fat buttocks, abundant breasts, and thick legs. They are mostly naked, face unclear, no eyes, mouth, nose, ears, etc., the two legs are more merged into a thick cone, some like a stick, some cover the stomach, giving people the beauty of primitive and childish. The image of these mother goddess statues reflects people's admiration for the female reproductive function. This exploration of the origin of life and the worship of the mother goddess is the first manifestation of ancestor worship.

With the development of matrilineal clan societies into patrilineal clan societies and the further strengthening of patriarchal authority in the family, the worship of female ancestors was gradually transformed into the worship of male ancestors. There are many important male ancestors recorded in ancient Chinese literature and legends: the Aristotle Clan, the Suiren Clan, the Shennong Clan, the Yellow Emperor, the Yan Emperor, Zhuanxu, ?àòàòàòü, Yao, Shun, and so on. According to Han Fei Zi - Five Lemmings, "the ancient times, the people are few and the beasts are many, the people can not overcome the beasts, insects and snakes, there is a saint made, constructed wood for the nest to avoid the group of pests, and the people are pleased with it, so that the king of the world, the name of which is called Youshao Clan." So people worshiped him as an ancestor; according to "Rituals - Sacrifice Law" records, Shun when Zhuanxu as ancestors, Yao as a direct ancestor; the Xia Dynasty also Zhuanxu as a distant ancestor, and Yu as a direct ancestor.

In this series of mythological ancestors, the Yellow Emperor was the most influential one, and he was worshipped as the ancestor of the entire Chinese nation. Not only was he worshipped in ancient times, he is still worshipped to this day. According to legend, Huangdi's mother became pregnant when she saw lightning in a field and carried him for a full twenty-four months to give birth to Huangdi. Yellow Emperor became the first great military chief among the mythical ancestors after defeating the evil Chi You. At the same time, he was also a great inventor. It is said that water wells, carts and boats, bronze mirrors, houses, markets, laws, rituals, music, money, clothing, cooking utensils, bows and umbrellas were all invented by Huangdi. Like Huang Di, Zhuan Xu and Di ?u are ancestors of ancient China. Huang Di, Zhuan Xu and Di ?u made great contributions to the union and unification of the Chinese nation, and have always been honored and worshipped by the children of the Yellow Emperor. According to the ancient books such as "Shanhaijing" and "Li Sao", the major tribes of Xia, Shang and Zhou and the Chu people along the Yangtze River all regard them as their distant ancestors.

The Shanhaijing-Hai Nei Jing states, "Zhuan Xu, the grandson of the Yellow Emperor, is called Gao Yang." The Yellow Emperor was the main entrepreneur and Zhuan Xu was a heavy remediator. Legend has it that he was twelve years old and the crown, twenty years old to replace the Yellow Emperor on the throne, reigned for seventy-eight years, there is the merit of the rule of literature. He focused on internal governance, integrating society and promoting cultural and spiritual unity in China. He "fixed marriages, organized marriages, studied the differences between men and women, and the order of the young and the old", and formulated a series of social rules. He made the people's life orderly and stabilized the society. He created the calendar, which was honored as "the ancestor of the calendar", and also created the nine states, the first map. Under his rule, the Chinese state was flourishing, vast, "the sun and the moon shine, and no one can be". According to the Records of the Grand Historian, Shun, Dayu and Qin Shi Huang were all direct descendants of Emperor Zhuan Xu.

Di ?u is the great-grandson of Huang Di and the nephew of Zhuan Xu. The merchants regarded Emperor ?ài as their high ancestor. The Records of the Grand Historian describes Emperor ?i?i as, "Cong to know the distance, Ming to examine the smallest detail, obedient to the righteousness of heaven, aware of the people's urgent needs, benevolent and mighty, trusting and beneficent, cultivating his body and the world's obedience." He inherited Zhuan Xu's career and was known for his strict government, especially for his trustworthiness. Several of his sons went on to become ancestors worshipped by various tribes: Yao became one of the five emperors, Houji was the founder of the Zhou tribe, and Qi became the founder of the Shang tribe.

The national beliefs, political inheritance, social structure, and economic structure of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties were all nurtured and molded in ancestor worship. The sense of national identity sustained by ancestor worship was further strengthened in the Zhou Dynasty. Ancestor worship formed a patriarchal social network from the bottom to the top, from the top to the bottom, and from the outside to the inside in the Zhou Dynasty. This network enabled ancestor worship to have a strong vitality and to become the national faith, national spirit, and national cohesion of the Chinese nation in the formation and consolidation of the state, which was passed on from generation to generation.

Sacrificing ancestors is a very important manifestation of ancestor worship. The ancestor worship rituals of the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties showed a high degree of hierarchization. They ranked the status and divine authority of their ancestors based on seniority, and people could only sacrifice to those ancestors whose status and rank corresponded to their own. Only the highest rulers could worship the emperor, mythological ancestors and royal ancestors; royal nobles enjoyed the right to establish ancestral temples to worship distant ancestors; ordinary people could only worship their own fathers and near relatives at home.