The Origin and Symbol of Tanabata Festival

The Tanabata Festival, also known as the Beggar's Day, the Festival of the Seven Coincidences or the Seven Sisters' Birthday, began in the Han Dynasty, is a traditional cultural festival popular in China and the countries of the Chinese character cultural circle. The following take a look at the origin and symbolism of the Tanabata Festival that I have organized for you, welcome to read, just for reference.

The origin of the Tanabata Festival

Tanabata, originally known as the Begging for Coquettishness Festival. The festival originated in the Han Dynasty, the Eastern Jin Dynasty Ge Hong's "Xijing Miscellany" has "Han color women often wear seven holes on the seventh day of the seventh month needle in the Han Dynasty portrait stone on the cattle host, female host Figure Lapel House, people are all used to" records, this is the earliest we have seen in the ancient literature on the begging for coquettish records.

Later in the Tang and Song poems, women's begging for money was also mentioned repeatedly, Tang dynasty Wang Jian said in a poem, "appendicular stars and buckets decorated with pearl light, Tanabata palace e begging for money is busy". According to the "Kaiyuan Tianbao remains": Emperor Taizong of Tang Dynasty and his consort every Tanabata night feast in the Qing Palace, the palace ladies beg for coquettish, this custom in the folklore is also enduring, and continue from generation to generation.

"Tanabata" first came from people's worship of nature. From the historical documents, at least three or four thousand years ago, with the people's understanding of astronomy and textile technology, about the Altair and Vega star records. People's worship of the stars is not only Altair and Vega, they believe that the east, west, south, north and south of the seven stars on behalf of the direction, collectively known as the twenty-eight constellations, of which the seven stars of the Big Dipper is the brightest, can be used to identify the direction of the night.

What is the symbolism of the Tanabata Festival

1, Tanabata culture glorifies the concept of fidelity and unswerving marriage and love, reflecting people's aspirations and pursuit of the ideal of love, which inherits and carries forward the fine traditional virtues of the Chinese people, reflecting a strong sense of responsibility, unlike the more romantic color of the Western culture of the concept of love. In agrarian society, family is not only a basic unit of production and life, but also a cell of social composition, husband and wife love, family harmony directly affects the stability and development of society. The promotion of the pursuit of a better life and chaste love of marriage love concept advocated by the legend of the story of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden is of great practical significance under the impact of the current Western culture.

Talking about the concept of marriage and love of the Chinese people, we mention the Song Qin Guan's "Magpie Bridge Immortal" in the "two love if it is a long time, but not in the morning and evening". These words both summarize and give a powerful impetus to the Chinese people's concept of marriage and love. Rather than simply sympathizing with the tragedy of the cowgirl, he eulogizes sincere, pure, and chaste love from a new perspective. Driven by the sense of responsibility, although separated by thousands of miles and for a long time, but still able to maintain the stability and longevity of the marriage, not only in the Chinese feudal society, even now this is a very common phenomenon, where the responsibility and love to achieve unity. From another point of view, this is also an important reason for the tragedy of women's marriage and love in Chinese feudal society.

2. Begging and praying for blessings in the Tanabata culture embodies the spirit of the Chinese people who are industrious, intelligent, self-reliant, courageous and creative, and constantly pursue a happier and better life.

The spirit of culture is that it has played a role in promoting the development of society throughout history and has become an internal source of ideas for historical development. The spirit of culture has a strong cohesion and centripetal force, accepted by the majority of the people, and is the life of a nation. A person without spiritual support is like a zombie, and a nation without cultural spirit is equivalent to the disappearance of the nation. Begging and praying for luck in the Tanabata culture is the concentrated manifestation of this cultural spirit. The activity of begging for coincidences is to inspire people to pursue ingenuity, innovation, self-improvement, create a better life, innovate year after year, and pass on from generation to generation, so as to promote the development of social productivity and social progress. People are the first element of social productivity, so the improvement of human quality is the first element of social development, begging activities are precisely to improve the quality of people to carry out.

If the activity of begging for money is further adapted to the needs of modern social production and life, it will have a greater positive effect. The first step is to make sure that you have a good understanding of the situation, and that you are able to make the best use of your time. Praying for blessings is fundamentally praying for peace, happiness, harmony and peace, which profoundly embodies the spiritual essence of the harmony culture of the Chinese nation. In a sense, the value orientation of Confucianism is neutralization, so is the value orientation of Taoism and Mohism, and the spirit of pursuing harmony and perfection in folk culture is the root of the above cultural spirits. Therefore, harmony is the essence of the spirit of Chinese culture. From the information we have recently come into contact with, the folk of Japan, Korea and Southeast Asian countries also attach great importance to praying for peace, happiness, harmony and peace during the Tanabata festival. It is clear that the Tanabata culture of begging and praying for blessing activities for the current construction of a harmonious society.

Folk Tales of the Tanabata Festival

The seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar is the Valentine's Day of the Chinese people, and some people call it the Begging Day Tanabata or Daughter's Day, which is the most important day for the daughters of the family. The reason why the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar is called Begging for Coquettishness, is because the folk belief that on this day the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden will be the River of Heaven, and the daughters of the family in the evening with fruits and melons towards the sky to worship, begging for coquettishness to the goddess in the hope of seeking.

Begging for coquettishness, in addition to begging for knitting skills, they are also begging for the marriage of coquettishness. Therefore, countless men and women in the world will pray to the starry sky for a happy marriage on this night, when the night is quiet and deep.

In Fujian Province, Guangdong Province and Southeast Asia, the most popular in the Tanabata worship seven sisters. This is indeed a great festival for daughters in the old days. Most of the provinces have a Qixiao Festival to celebrate the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, but it is mostly celebrated as a general festival. In the case of Fujian and Guangdong provinces, the festival is very important, especially in Guangdong province, where the festival is organized in a very solemn way.

When it comes to Qixiao Festival, we have to mention the love story of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden that has been passed down in Chinese folklore. They meet once a year on the eve of the seventh day of the seventh month, and are regarded as a symbol of love by sentimental children. The tragedy of their love has left a deep impression on every Chinese soul. Therefore, every night on the eve of the seventh day of the seventh month, lovers would pray to the dark starry night sky for the love to be everlasting. Of course, this is just a legend. The ritual of begging for coquettish originated from the ancient primitive beliefs of the goddess of the Weaving Sang This belief combined with the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden meet every year on the seventh day of the seventh month, and became the Tanabata seven coquettish folk beliefs that we have nowadays.

Legend of Tanabata A long time ago, there was an orphan who lived with his brother and sister-in-law, who was smart and hardworking, but his sister-in-law still disliked him and drove him to the mountains to herd cows before dawn, and everyone called him Cowherd, and after a year, his brother and sister-in-law and Cowherd split up, and his sister-in-law gave him only a broken rowing house and an old cow. From then on, the cowherd would herd cows and chop wood during the day, and at night, he would sleep with the old cow in the broken room.

One day, Cowherd drove his ox into a strange forest, where the mountains were green and the water was beautiful, and the birds and flowers were fragrant. Cowherd saw nine nymphs driving auspicious clouds fell on the grass of the river, and then take off the colorful neon dress, jumped into the crystal clear river water, the cowherd stared at one of the youngest is beautiful nymphs. Co looked mesmerized, when the old ox suddenly spoke, "She is the weaving in the sky, just take away the colorful neon dress, she will be your wife." The cowherd quietly followed the tree from and quietly took away the five-colored neon dress of the weaving maiden. As the day approached noon, the other fairies put on their colorful neon dresses and rode away on the auspicious clouds. The only one who couldn't find the colorful neon dresses was the Weaving Maiden. At this time, the cowherd from the tree to be out of the back, requesting the weaving woman to be his wife weaving woman see the cowherd loyal and honest, hardworking and strong pulse with a shy nod of the head.

Cowboys and weavers after the happy marriage, men plowing and weaving, mutual respect and love. Two years later, the weaver gave birth to a man. However, the Emperor was furious when he heard that the weaving girl was married to the earth. On the seventh day of the seventh month, the Queen Mother was ordered to take the heavenly soldiers to catch the Weaving Maiden, and the grief-stricken Cowherd, with the help of the old oxen, chased his children up to the sky in a basket of roses. See catching up, the Queen Mother dialed down the golden hairpin a stroke, the cowherd feet immediately appeared a rough river in the sky.

Chopped the weaving maiden and picking children of the cowherd, one in the east of the river and one in the west of the river, looking at the sobbing and crying touched the magpies, countless magpies flew to the sky river all of a sudden, built a bridge of magpies, the cowherd and the weaving maiden finally can be in the magpie bridge, the Queen Mother had no choice but to allow the cowherd and the weaving maiden the seventh day of the seventh month of July every year, the bridge will meet once.