What are the four great love stories in ancient China?

The four folk love stories in China refer to the four most popular love stories in China, one of which is the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, which has been adapted many times today.

Cowherd and Weaver Girl is a famous folk love story in ancient China. It's about an orphan cowherd who lives on her aunt. Abused by his brother and sister-in-law, he was forced to leave home and rely on an old cow to plow the fields to support himself. One day, the weaver girl and fairies came to the world to play and bathe in the river. The old cow suddenly spoke, persuaded the cowherd to meet each other, and told him that if the fairies didn't go back before dawn, they would have to stay on earth. So the cowherd stayed by the river to see the seven fairies. He found that the youngest fairy was very beautiful, suddenly fell in love with it, remembered the old cow, and quietly took away the little fairy's clothes. The fairies took a bath and prepared to return to heaven. After a while, they fell in love, and the little fairy married the cowherd and never wanted to go back to heaven. After marriage, they farm and weave, have a son and a daughter, and live a very happy life. Unexpectedly, the Emperor of Heaven discovered this matter and ordered the Queen Mother to escort the Weaver Girl back to heaven for trial. The old cow couldn't bear to see their wife and children separated, so she touched the horn on her head and turned it into a boat for the cowherd to chase with her children. On the verge of catching up with Weaver Girl, the Queen Mother suddenly tore off the golden hairpin on her head and drew a rolling galaxy in the sky. Cowherd can't cross the river, so he can only look at the river and cry with Weaver Girl. Their faithful love touched magpies, and countless magpies flew in and built a colorful bridge on the Tianhe River with their bodies, so that the cowherd and the Weaver Girl could meet on the Tianhe River. The Emperor of Heaven had no choice but to allow the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl to meet at the Magpie Bridge once a year on July 7th, and the magpies would be around. Cowherd and Weaver Girl will meet on July 7th every year. (The above is taken from Baidu Encyclopedia)

However, in modern society, this love story that has been passed down to this day has begun to attract more and more criticism. In the story, the cowherd stole clothes to stay in the world, which obviously does not meet the moral standards of the current society. The fairy's understanding and deep love for the cowherd is also unreasonable and surprising. Needless to say, it is not a normal love story by modern moral standards and by ancient moral standards. However, this story has been circulated in the homes of China people for thousands of years and is widely known. Why?

The story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Maid originated from the ancient people's observation of the starry sky in China. Cowherd and Weaver Girl originally meant two stars in the sky. There are records about the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl in The Book of Songs of the Zhou Dynasty, which have always been regarded as the germination and embryo of the legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. : "There is Han, and there is light in prison. Three of the three, Vega, seven times a day. Even if the weaver girl is busy, she can't knit a stripe well. Give him a cow instead of a box. " At this time, the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl are just simple constellation names, and there is no relationship between them. At this time, the future "Qiqiao Sister's Day", that is, today's Qixi Valentine's Day, has not yet appeared.

In the Han Dynasty, these two stars were transformed into specific numbers. Ban Gu said in "Two Capitals Fu": "Facing Kunming Pool, cows are led on the left and girls are woven on the right, just like boundless clouds." It means that there are two stone statues of Petunia and Weaver Girl by the pool in Kunming, Han Palace.

The worship of numbers has existed in China since ancient times. In ancient times, people listed the first month, February 2nd, March 3rd, May 5th, June 6th, July 7th and September 9th as auspicious days. In ancient China, "Double Ninth Festival" was considered as a day of "harmony between heaven and earth" and "communication between heaven and man". In the Han Dynasty, according to Ge Hong's Miscellanies of Xijing in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, "women in the Han Dynasty often put seven-hole needles upstairs on July 7, and everyone did it." It can be seen that July 7 is the day when folk customs "beg for cleverness". The working people all regard "Weaver Girl" as a skilled worker and think that she can weave a hundred horses in ten days, so they ask her for advice on her skills. Tanabata was originally a festival dominated by women, and in the custom of this day, "begging for cleverness" is the longest and widest. The ancients attached great importance to the annual begging custom. On Qixi night, girls and women should take out seasonal fruits prepared in advance to worship the bright moon. They will also hold various begging ceremonies, sincerely praying that the Weaver Girl God will give them dexterous hands and pray that they can get a happy marriage match. Men are just having fun, and the engagement between men and women is just a by-product of the "Daughter's Day" incident.

At the same time, it is probably because the stars in the sky are the brightest in July every year, and the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl are very close, so the story that the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl met on this day slowly spread. After that, the earliest article that wrote Cowherd and Weaver Girl as husband and wife was Selected Works of Luo Shenfu. The article said: "The cow is the husband, the weaver girl is the woman, and the weaver girl is the star of the cow. It will be a while after July 7." At this point, we are familiar with the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl who met at the Magpie Bridge on July 7th. It can be seen that people have gradually associated love stories with two stars who are far apart.

At this time, the reason why Petunia and Weaver Girl can only meet on this day has not been explained clearly. In the famous Nineteen Ancient Poems, the theme of this story is used to express Sifu's depression, "Far away, Altair, Jiao Jiao River, a woman from China. Skillful hands, make a loom. There is no chapter all day, and tears are pouring down. The river is shallow and very different. " It is written about the feeling that the Weaver Girl misses Penny all day long and longs to meet each other, but between them, it happened that "they have nothing to say." From then on, it was woven into a love tragedy in which loving couples were isolated.

Then I went to Liang Wudi in the Southern Dynasties, and the first complete version of the legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl was written in Yin Yun's novel: there was a weaver girl in the east of Tianhe, a son of the Emperor of Heaven. Every year, the loom works and weaves a brocade skirt, which looks too messy. The emperor pitied him for being alone and promised to marry a cowherd in Hexi. After marriage, he gave up knitting. The Emperor of Heaven was furious and ordered him to return to Hedong, but once a year.

In the Song Dynasty, Taiping Yulan quoted the Sun Wei Shu as saying: I tasted the Tao Shu Yun, brought a cow to marry a weaver girl, and took 20,000 yuan from the Emperor of Heaven as a gift. After a long time, I was driven to the camp. The Ming Dynasty's Generalized Moon Order also quoted a fragment from Yin Yun's novel. It can be seen that until the legendary story of the Ming Dynasty, the identity of the cowherd was still a star in the sky. In this first version, the reason why the two meet once a year is that they are punished for signing the Heaven Emperor for money, or because they can't continue to knit diligently after marriage. The controversial act of stealing clothes did not appear in the first version of the article. Cowherd and Weaver Girl are obviously relatively equal's in the above stories, which do not reflect the story tendency of the goddess descending to earth in today's popular version, and naturally do not involve the plot of stealing clothes.

The well-known version mentioned at the beginning of the story is the story that the Weaver Girl accidentally came to the world to take a bath and play, was taken away by the Cowherd, and never returned to the sky. In fact, there is no clear record in history, so how did this story come about?

If we want to know the story behind it in detail, we must introduce two other folk fairy tales, Yong Dong Biography and Zhang Tian Myth.

Dong Yongchuan was originally a story about filial piety. The Biography of Filial Piety, which was first seen by Liu Xiang in the Western Han Dynasty, is a part of the story of Twenty-four Filial Pieties. This is about the death of farmer Yong Dong's father. He had no money to bury his father, so he sold himself to others to raise money to bury his father. Later, in Ganoderma lucidum written by Cao Zhi, the part of "God helps others" was added. The plot is that Yong Dong borrowed 10,000 yuan to bury his father. After three years of mourning, he was unable to repay the 10,000 yuan, so he went to the creditor's house to sell himself to pay his debts. I met a woman on the road and said that she thought he was not poor and would marry him. After arriving at the creditor's house, the woman she met on the road spent ten days knitting one hundred pieces of cloth and paid off Yong Dong's debt. Then he told Yong Dong that he was a fairy in the sky. Seeing that he was so filial to his parents, he decided to come down and help him. Now that the debt has been paid off, she is leaving. Then he flew away in the air and returned to the sky.

There are many versions of Yong Dong's biography. In addition to the above versions, there are other versions in which the fairy was sent back by the Emperor of Heaven and bid farewell to Yong Dong with tears. From this, we can see the similarities between this story and the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl that is now circulating. It can be seen that the modern story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl obviously confuses the fairy who weaves the Weaver Girl for ten days and hundreds of horses with the legendary role of the Weaver Girl. What we can see now is obviously the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl.

As for the story of stealing fairy clothes and forcing fairies to stay on earth, we should study another story called Zhang Tian Myth. The original text of this story is rather long, so I won't write it here because of the limitation of space. The synopsis of the story is probably that a man named Tian Kunlun took a bath with the feather clothes of the goddess who came to earth. The goddess lost her clothes and had to marry Tian Kunlun and have a baby. Later, the goddess asked her mother-in-law for her feather clothes, so she put on her clothes and flew to the sky to escape. In this story, Tiannv doesn't love Tian Kunlun at all. After marrying him, she has been thinking about how to escape, and finally she managed to escape.

Obviously, we can see some shadows of the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl from this fairy tale. Not surprisingly, this part of the story in "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl" is probably the product of the combination of modern Tian and Zhang myths.

Thus, the story about the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl has been sorted out by us. Today's story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl is actually a modern mixed version, which is a mixture of three original stories: the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, the biography of Yong Dong and the myth of Zhang Tian. The turmoil of history and the mixture of cultural contents gave birth to such a deformed work with conflicting values, which was mixed and artificial. But when we take it apart, everything is so reasonable. This is the charm of cultural inheritance.

However, today's article is not over yet.

Obviously, the most controversial part of the modern version of the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl lies in the part where the Cowherd steals clothes and forces the Weaver Girl to be his wife. Although we can know from the myth of Zhang Tian that the story actually ends with a fairy stealing feathers and returning to the sky, we still have doubts.

Where did such a curious, contradictory and rather "dark and incomplete" story come from?

In fact, the story of Stealing Clothes was originally a "swan virgin" story, which was widely circulated in Asia and Europe. It was based on the story that a man stole a fairy's feather and married a fairy. They are called swan virgins because in many myths, fairies are transformed from birds after shedding their feathers. Men steal their feathers, imprison their freedom, and can't turn back into birds, which is better understood.

There are more than 65,438+0,200 different versions of swan virgins in the world. In the north, virgin birds are mostly big white birds, such as swan cranes, and in the southern tropical regions, they are mostly peacocks. Many ethnic minorities, including Manchu, Mongolian, Kazak, North Korea, Naxi and Dai, regard this myth as one of their national origins.

Mr. Zhao mentioned in his book Fairy Tales ABC that from 65438 to 0929:

Fairy tales of swan virgins are taboo. Usually, the hero sees several birds (swan, goose, duck, pigeon, etc. ) fly to the lake, shed her feathers and become a very beautiful naked woman. He took a feather and forced her to marry him; Years later, she found a down jacket and flew away, never coming back. The legend of Cowherd and Weaver Girl in China also belongs to this department.

Mr. Liu Shouhua, a folklore scholar, believes that various versions of such legends reflect the changes of the marriage system in ancient society. For example, there were several birds, but only one was taken away. This reflects the change from polygamy to monogamy (China was also monogamous in ancient times, and the excess was owned by concubines, which was generally not considered as polygamy).

Finally, let's make a summary. Today's story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl makes people feel strange in logic and three views, because this story has been integrated with other stories in the process of modern inheritance, and the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl is itself a very beautiful traditional Chinese love story.