Zhang Dai, a writer in the Ming Dynasty, has an encyclopedic work called A Night Boat, in which Liu Tengxue is about Liu Teng, the snow god. Cheng's "Youth Learning Qionglin" and "Astronomy" say more clearly: "The cloud teacher is Honglong, and the snow god is." China's snow god is Liu Teng.
The name of Snow God is Teng Liuming. Why is Snow God called Liu Teng? Let's talk about why Snow God was named Six.
Normal snowflakes usually fly down in a hexagon, which is why the snow god is called six. The ancients have observed and understood the hexagon of snowflakes. Biography of Chinese Poetry: "Where there are more than five flowers, there are only six snowflakes" (see "Collection of Literature and Art" Volume II under "Heaven"). Herb flowers are mostly five petals, and snowflakes are six petals. So "six" is a description of the external form of snow. In addition, "six" is the cathode and snow is the most cloudy, so it is appropriate to name snow with "six", whether in form or in people's philosophy. The snowflake "six out" became an idiom, flowing in the song. For example, Chen said in Poem on Snow Scene: "The leaves in Qionglin Garden and osmanthus trees are in the south of China. If the sky is bright, rotine is light and the wind is oblique. Farmers in agriculture and rural areas are beaming, and six dances worship flowers. Outside the Ming gate, you should see the Poseidon car. " Before the Sui and Tang Dynasties, "Liu Chu" was a representative word in the description of snow. Even in the Tang Dynasty, "Six Fruits" was still synonymous with snowflakes, and the name of Snow God was six, which had its own reasons.
Why is Snow God surnamed Teng? Tengben was a small vassal state in the East of Zhou Dynasty, and King Teng Wengong was very famous. Teng Wengong in Mencius describes many of his deeds. However, the relationship we see with Xue is not in this version of Mencius, but in a book written by Mencius and his students. It is said that the original works of Mencius can be divided into internal (Chinese) books and foreign books, just like Zhuangzi's internal and external books. Mencius was circulated in the Han Dynasty, but it was rarely seen in the Tang Dynasty. In the Song Dynasty, Mencius came out at once. There is such a record in Wen Shuo pian of Mencius Waishu: Teng Wengong died and was buried one day. It was raining heavily, and it was snowing. Bull's-eye asked the princes to relax, but the prince refused. Huizi remonstrated, saying, "In the past, Wang Ji buried the vortex tail mountain, and the Luanhe River gnawed at his tomb. When he saw the peace in front of the coffin, Wang Wen said, "My late monarch wants to see the minister and the people." It was buried three days later. Today, people want to stay small and care about the country, so the snow is easy. What's more, this article is also king. Mencius said, "courtesy is also."
After Teng Wengong's death, there was a heavy snow, which prevented the funeral from being held on time. Keiko said that this was because the late Duke (Teng Wengong) wanted to stay for a short time to appease his country, so the heavy snow delayed the funeral date. This story reveals an important message: Teng Wengong can change the burial date through snowfall, which can dominate the landing and stopping of snow and ice. Why not be a snow god?
Therefore, this story in Mencius is the main basis for Teng Wengong to become a snow god. The Snow God was named Teng, but in order to distinguish it from the famous one in Mencius, it merged with liuchu, so the Snow God was named Teng and Liu, and the Snow God was born. This is our basic understanding of the origin of the name "Snow God Liu Teng".
Snow God is related to Teng Wengong, but it did not originate in the pre-Qin period. As for the Six Dynasties in the pre-Qin period, China's national sacrificial system included the sun, the moon, mountains and rivers, storms and lightning, but there was no frost and snow. The ancient books Zhou Li, The Book of Rites and Erya described the ancient national sacrificial ceremonies without mentioning the snow god. Why can't snow enter the eyes of the ancients?
As an agricultural society, China conforms to the laws of nature. Spring grows in summer and autumn is harvested in winter. The impact of snow and ice on agriculture is limited. This is just a seasonal natural phenomenon. Comparatively speaking, the sun, moon, stars, wind, rain and lightning are more important. The early cultural center of the Chinese nation was in the Central Plains or Guanzhong. In the past, the climate in the Yellow River basin was much milder than it is now, such as elephants and green bamboos in Henan. Snow and ice did not have much influence in the core area of early agricultural civilization, so snow had no place in the early national sacrifice system.
We only read the information about the snow god in the literature of the Tang Dynasty. The rulers of the Tang Dynasty originally came from the once cold areas. With the development of the frontier, people have learned more about ice and snow, and there are a lot of famous sentences about snow in their poems. On the one hand, Tang people appreciate the beauty of snow, but they have actually suffered from it. For example, frontier wars are often defeated by ice and snow. Snow has a deeper and more complicated experience for the Tang people.
In the novel Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio in the Tang Dynasty, there is such a magical story:
Xiao Zhizhong, secretary of the Tang Dynasty, was appointed as the secretariat of Jinzhou in the first year of Jing Yun's reign. He will travel in Latin America, which will be a great event.
On the first day, the firewood man in Huoshan couldn't return to malaria because he stopped in the cave and groaned. Ai will hear someone's voice at night. At first, I thought the thief was coming, so I crawled in the forest. When the mountains and the moon were bright, there was a man who was more than ten feet long, with a triangular nose and leopard-print stirrups, and his eyes were like electricity, whistling at the valley. There are tigers, deer, tapirs, foxes, rabbits, pheasants and geese in Russia. The leader immediately announced, "I, the messenger of Xuanming, have been ordered by the Northern Emperor. Tomorrow is the twelfth lunar month, and I want you to take care of it at the right time. Some of you died by arrows, some by guns, some by nets, some by sticks, some by dogs and some by eagles. " When the words are finished, all animals will bow down to fear if they beg. When the old elk roamed, the tigers all knelt down and said to the elders, "With some people's lives, we will be divided. However, Xiao Gongren didn't mean to do harm, so he acted in time. If there are few reasons, then stop. Isn't the messenger capable of saving people? " The emissary said, "I didn't want to kill your generation, but now I have been ordered by the emperor to punish you, that is, I have finished what I did, and I have been doing my own thing ever since." However, I heard that the four brothers Dong Guyan are good at calculation and can pray for him. "... the tiger and the old moose knelt down and begged for help. Yan said, "If I make Xiao feel hungry and cold. If it snows for six days and winds for two days, there will be no more hunting. I received six letters from Teng yesterday, knowing that I was widowed. I also heard that the fifth wife of Soquan's family is a singer, so I was jealous. If you pursue beauty, snow will fall. It's good to drink again. If you want wine, the wind will stand. "... Later, the old fox lost his beauty. He was only 18 years old, wearing a red robe and attractive makeup. There is also a fox and two bottles of wine. Brother Yan and a beautiful woman made a beautiful wine bottle, each took a bag, took water with two big characters written on it, and then flew away. ..... Unknown, the snowstorm came, but at the end of the day, Xiaoshijun stopped hunting.
This is a complicated story about Snow God and its related plots. It is said that Xiao Zhizhong, the secretary of the Tang Dynasty, was preparing to hunt when he was making a secretariat of Jinzhou. A woodcutter was trapped in a mountain due to illness and found a strange thing: a long man who claimed to be the messenger of Xuan Ming called a group of animals and told them a different way to die tomorrow, because Xiao Zhizhong was coming to hunt them tomorrow. The animals asked the long man for help, and the long man told the animals to go to Huang Guan's four brothers to find a way. Huang Guan's four brothers told the animals that Xiao Shijun was more sympathetic to his men. If he can pray for "six snows and two winds", he won't hunt when it snows heavily. Huang Guan's fourth brother has just received a letter from Liu Teng, knowing that Liu Teng has just lost his wife. At that time, there happened to be a fifth lady named Suoquan who was demoted because of jealousy. Huang Guan's fourth brother suggested taking this lady to Liu Teng, where it will snow soon. Besides, if you give Aunt Xun good wine, he will be popular. The fox took away the beauty and the wine. Brother Yan put the wine and the beauty in two bags, drew two symbols and offered them to Liu Teng. The next day, as expected, it snowed heavily, so Xiaoshijun stopped hunting and the wild animals were saved.
This story reveals that there may be a ceremony to worship the snow god in the Tang Dynasty. The behavior of Huang Guan's four brothers is a sacrifice to Snow God. The symbols he painted, the beautiful women he painted, and the wine he painted are all prayers to the snow god, which is what he said, "Pray for six snowfalls." This snow god is a bit like the river god of the Yellow River, and he is more interested in beautiful women. And the process of sacrifice, like Hebo married a woman.
This story has some traces of animal stories imported from India, such as the grief that animals will suffer, and even the plot that hunters give up hunting because of heavy rain, which is rich in the Five Classics and some Buddhist stories. Whether the mysterious records are influenced by these stories needs further study.
The story of this legend in the Tang Dynasty seems to be very sudden, and the statement of "Snow God Liu Teng" was not universally recognized in the Tang Dynasty. Liu Teng is rarely mentioned in Tang poetry. Their description of snow is generally expressed by "six out".
At that time, when the sunshine entered the life of Song people, "Liu Teng" had become a common vocabulary in people's poems and songs. Such as Chen Yu's "Niannujiao":
No bars, no nose, at the moment, all over the sky. No matter how high or low, I teach an example for no reason. Encourage Liu Teng and invite Xuner to be the next Zhang Wei. Knowing that he is unbreakable is the only way to be lucky.
It is a fact that Shen Xue Teng Ci was widely used in the Song Dynasty. On the one hand, the Song people's interest in Liu Teng may be due to their deeper contact with the northern snowy nationalities; On the other hand, Mencius was widely circulated in the Song Dynasty, which made the story of the relationship between Teng Wengong and Snow God more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people in the Song Dynasty.
After the Song Dynasty, Liu Teng, the snow god, appeared widely in poems, operas and novels, and entered the belief system and language expression system of China culture. With the publication of encyclopedic works such as Sailing at Night and Swimming in Snow and Qionglin, "Snow God Liu Teng" has become a basic cultural knowledge.
China Snow God originated in the Tang Dynasty, developed in the Song Dynasty, and became a universal cultural knowledge in the Ming Dynasty. This is the journey of Snow God in China.
Nowadays, because we have almost forgotten the legend of Liu Teng, the snow cultural heritage in China is also in danger of being endangered. Therefore, it is necessary for us to strengthen our understanding and research on snow culture.