As an ancient folk cultural phenomenon, scholars of all ages have different opinions on the origin of the twelve zodiac animals. Some people believe that the zodiac and the earthly branches have the same origin, which can be traced back to the prehistoric legendary era. It is recorded in the "Historical Records" that the Yellow Emperor "built Jiazi to ensure longevity" and "Da Nao made Jiazi" are a reflection of this kind of statement. Scholars believe that what is said here Jiazi refers to the twelve zodiac animals. Zhao Yi, a scholar of the Qing Dynasty, believed that the zodiac originated from the nomadic people in northern my country. He said in "Yu Cong Kao": "In the early days of Northern customs, there was no such thing as the twelve days of Zichou Yin, but the zodiac was divided into periods such as rat, ox, tiger, and rabbit. When I was young, Di Xun spread in China, and it has been passed down forever." (See Qing Dynasty Zhao Yi's "Yu Cong Kao"). Some scholars even hold the view that the zodiac is derived from the zodiac, believing that the twelve zodiac signs were introduced to China from ancient Babylon. The representative of this view is Guo Moruo, who talked about "the twelve portraits" in "Research on Oracle Bone Inscriptions·Shi Zhigan" They existed in Babylon, Egypt, and India, but they were not very ancient and did not originate more than a hundred years after the Western Era. It was assumed that the countries in the Western Regions during the Han Dynasty imitated the twelve palaces of Babylon and then spread them to the surrounding areas. "It is believed that the zodiac was formulated by the residents of the Middle East after imitating the Babylonian zodiac, and it was introduced to China when Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty passed through the Western Regions. The above opinions are subject to different opinions, and the author does not dare to judge subjectively. However, a large amount of literature proves that the zodiac did originate in China and is the crystallization of animal worship, totem worship and early astronomy of the Chinese ancestors.
Among the existing documents, the Book of Songs is the earliest record of the twelve zodiac animals. "The Book of Songs·Xiaoya·Auspicious Day" contains eight characters: "On the auspicious day of Gengwu, my horse will be sent", which means that the auspicious day of Gengwu will be at a good time, and it will be a good day for horses to go hunting. This is an example of correlating Wu with horses. It can be seen that around the Spring and Autumn Period, the corresponding relationship between the earthly branches and the twelve animals had been established and spread. In 1975, bamboo slips unearthed from Tomb No. 11 in Shuihudi, Yunmeng County, Hubei Province further proved that the twelve zodiac signs existed before and after the Spring and Autumn Period. There is a chapter in Category A of the "Rishu" unearthed from the bamboo slips titled "The Thief", which is about divination of the appearance characteristics of the thieves. It records: "The son is a rat, and the thieves are ugly, ugly, and oxen." Ye, the thief has a big nose and long neck,... Yin, tiger, thief, with a gray beard, and a black face. Mao, rabbit, big face. Red... Si, the thief has long and black snake eyes. Wu, the thief has a long neck and a small body, and its body is incomplete. Wei, the thief has long whiskers and ears. Those with round faces..."
The twelve zodiac animals recorded in "Rishu" are generally similar to the current popular sayings. According to research, Tomb No. 11 in Suihudi was buried in the 30th year of Qin Shihuang (217 BC). Therefore, the creation of the twelve zodiac animals can be traced back to at least the Spring and Autumn Period before Qin. Scholars believe that this is the earliest and more systematic record of the twelve zodiac animals found in my country so far.
Exactly consistent with today’s popular view of the twelve zodiac signs is the record of Wang Chong of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Wang Chong’s "Lunheng·Mao Shi" contains: "Yin means wood, and its bird is tiger. Xu means earth. , the bird is also the dog. The wolf is the horse, the chicken is the rabbit. The ox is the ox. Snake. Shen, monkey."
In the above text, eleven zodiac animals are mentioned, but Chenlong is missing. The book "Yan Du Pian" says: "Chen is a dragon and Si is a snake. The positions of Chen and Si are in the southeast."
In this way, the twelve zodiac signs are complete, and they are in line with the popular twelve The zodiac signs are exactly the same. This is indeed the earliest and most complete record of the zodiac signs in ancient literature.
By the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the zodiac had been widely used. In the Southern Dynasties' "Nan Qi Shu·Five Elements Chronicles", there were specific records of people being called certain animals according to their birth year. Chen Jiong, a poet from the Southern Dynasties, once wrote a poem about the twelve zodiac animals, which he said:
"The traces of rats create dust cases, and the cattle and sheep come down at dusk."
Tiger feeds Sitting in the empty valley, the rabbit moon opens to the window.
The dragon is far away and green, the snakes and willows are lingering nearby. >Monkeys and chestnuts are shy of fragrant fruits, and chicken anvils lead to clear cups.
The dogs are carrying things, and the pigs are leisurely.”
This poem is obviously based on the twelve zodiac animals. The order of the animals assigned to the earthly branches was written, which shows that the twelve zodiac signs were already very familiar to people at that time.
From the above literature records, it can be clear that the origin of zodiac culture is in China. According to the external view of the zodiac, the zodiac was introduced to China from the Middle East during the Han Dynasty, about the same time as Buddhism was introduced. From the above documents, we have proven that there were records about the zodiac in my country as early as the Spring and Autumn Period ("Rishu" and "The Book of Songs") ), indicating that the birth of the zodiac and the matching of the zodiac and the earthly branches occurred long before the Han Dynasty. Therefore, it can be affirmed that the zodiac is an ancient culture that originated in our country. So what is the origin of the zodiac? Why did the ancients choose these twelve animals? This issue has always attracted the attention of scholars, and various explanations have been made.
Some scholars believe that the zodiac originated from animal worship in primitive times. Mr. Zhang Binglun of the University of Science and Technology of China holds this view.
He believes that in primitive societies with low productivity and extremely limited ability to understand nature, they develop a sense of dependence on animals that are closely related to their own lives (such as horses, sheep, cows, chickens, dogs, etc.), and develop a sense of dependence on animals that endanger their own safety. A sense of fear (such as tigers and snakes), and a sense of reverence for some animal organ functions that exceed humans (such as a dog's sense of smell, etc.), leading to the worship of animals. The twelve zodiac animals are the animal calendars produced by people under the influence of the original belief in animal worship to mark the years and months.
The animal worship of primitive people is also reflected in primitive dances such as Nuo dance. Nuo originated around the Zhou Dynasty. The protagonists in the Nuo ceremony are Fang Xiangshi and the twelve sacred beasts. The selection of twelve animals in the exorcism dance is an expression of primitive people's reverence for animals. The twelve beasts (or twelve gods) selected in the Nuo ceremony are to take care of the twelve months of the year, to seek peace every month, to drive away plague ghosts from all directions, and to take care of the twelve directions. Of course, the twelve directions involve twelve branches, so they are linked to the twelve zodiac signs. The twelve zodiac signs in the exorcism ceremony are used to turn bad luck into good luck. It can be seen from this that the twelve divine beasts and the twelve zodiac signs are of the same origin, and their common source is primitive animal worship.
Ethnologist Mr. Liu Yaohan believes that the twelve zodiac signs are related to the Yi people’s “Twelve Beasts” calendar and the “October Calendar”. The Yi people who live in the Daliang Mountain area of ??Sichuan have a calendar based on twelve animals. They mark the days with twelve animals. Today is the day of the rat, tomorrow is the day of the ox, and so on. Three rounds make up a month, which counts thirty. Six days, thirty-six days in a month, and ten months in a year. This was the later "October Calendar". Mr. Liu Yaohan believes that the ten-month calendar based on the twelve zodiac animals came into being in the Xia Yu era (see Liu Yaohan's "Collection of Research on the Social History of the Yi Nationality") and is related to primitive totem worship. The twelve zodiac signs of the Han people are influenced by the "October Calendar" Due to the influence of the Yi people, the twelve animals later developed into the twelve zodiac signs.
When talking about the origin of the zodiac, we must connect the zodiac with the heavenly stems and earthly branches. The oldest existing list of stems and branches in my country unearthed at the Yin Ruins in Anyang in modern times shows that the stem and branch calendar was already proficient in the Yin and Shang dynasties. Later, as time went by, the functions of the stems and branches gradually diversified. As a label serving as a time unit, on the one hand, it expanded and was used to record the year; on the other hand, it shrank and was used to record the time (the twelve hours of a day). According to historical records and research, the zodiac appeared after the establishment of the "Stem and Branch Calendar". The twelve animals correspond to the twelve earthly branches one by one, and animals are used as symbols of the earthly branches. A person born in a year has an animal assigned to the earthly branch of that year. Twelve animals are used to record the year, date and calculate the zodiac sign of each person. It can be seen from this that the twelve zodiac signs and the twelve earthly branches are inseparable. For a long time, scholars have discovered that the ancient characters of the twelve branches contain information about the zodiac. They compared the twelve branches with the ancient characters of the twelve zodiac signs and found that the ancient characters of the twelve branches have some connections with the twelve animals. Careful observation can reveal that there are indeed similarities and minor differences. Xu Shen of the Eastern Han Dynasty mentioned in "Shuowen Jiezi" that the character "巳" is the pictogram of snake, as well as "hai" and "豕". Recent studies have also verified that the characters for earthly branches and zodiac characters in oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions are similar, which makes people wonder whether the twelve branches are the pictograms of the twelve zodiac animals. Since the twelve branches, ugly, Yinmao, are easy to remember, people use twelve animals instead. , using animals to borrow ordinal symbols, and matching with the earthly branches, it became a symbol system for chronology. Although the above conjecture has a certain degree of credibility, if you think about it carefully, you can make a judgment. The twelve branches cannot be the pictograms of the twelve animals, because as mentioned before, the twelve branches were skillfully used in the Yin and Shang Dynasties, and the zodiac signs were in the Spring and Autumn Period. The two have different origins. If the earthly branches were related to the zodiac when the characters were created, wouldn’t the zodiac appear at the same time as the earthly branches?
To sum up, the author believes that the zodiac came into being later than the twelve earthly branches, but with the twelve earthly branches. The earthly branches have an inseparable relationship. The zodiac is an attachment to the twelve earthly branches. The choice of twelve animals as symbols to replace the twelve earthly branches stems from the animal worship psychology of the ancients.