What are the human-god sacrifices in ancient China?

In the eyes of the ancients, heaven is the creator and father of all things in the world. It controls the life and death of everything, even the replacement of dynasties in the world. People are afraid of it, so they naturally worship it and sacrifice it. For thousands of years, emperors and generals, as well as the poor, have believed in, respected and worshipped heaven. They sacrificed to God in various ways and prayed for his protection. Sacrifice to heaven has existed since the king of Zhou Dynasty, who was called the "son of heaven", so it is necessary to make a grand sacrifice to heaven. Sacrificing to heaven is a suburban sacrifice. The merits of heaven are supreme, and the worship of heaven is also the most grand. Only by highlighting the word "respect" in offering sacrifices to heaven can the son of heaven be qualified to offer sacrifices to heaven. By offering sacrifices to heaven, the king's authority will also be strengthened. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the worship of heaven and kingship formed a trend of "the integration of politics and religion". During the Qin and Han dynasties, the rituals of offering sacrifices to heaven were more formal, mainly including Zen and suburban worship. By the Tang and Song Dynasties, the worship of heaven had completely become a necessary ceremony in political ethics, and even foreign kings would adopt the old customs formulated by the Han Dynasty.

Sacrificing to heaven is the first gift of the country and the privilege of the royal family. Therefore, offering sacrifices to heaven has become a necessary political ceremony. Whether it is the founding fathers, those who inherited ZTE, or those who lost their country in danger, emperors of past dynasties dare not forget to sacrifice to heaven.

Step 2 worship the land

The shrine is a kind of social sacrifice. Sacrificing the land highlights the word "pro", and people can sacrifice the land. La Worship is a festival held at the end of each year to sacrifice everything. La Worship's objects include gods related to agriculture, even gods urging agriculture, voles preying on crops, cats and tigers of wild boar, and gods of dams and ditches. Besides the land god, the more important land god people worship is the country, which is the symbol of the land. Society is connected with millet with a long grain of rice, which is called the country, representing the whole agriculture, and agriculture is related to the rise and fall of dynasties, so the country has become synonymous with state power. It has also been handed down as an important sacrificial object of the dynasty. Later, due to the introduction of Buddhism and the rise of Taoism, the official social sacrifice only left an external form, while the folk country evolved into a city god and a land god.

There are many gods on the earth, and there are many people to sacrifice. Some gods do not occupy a particularly important position in people's minds, but they are closely related to people's daily life and production, so people will also make some sacrifices. Mountains, valleys and hills not only offer sacrifices to land gods and countries, but also provide people with the materials they need for survival, which are all contributions to mankind. People also offer sacrifices to earth gods such as mountain gods (Shan Gui), water gods, stone gods and fire gods.

3. ancestor worship

During the Yin and Shang Dynasties, people worshipped many ghosts and gods, but the worship of ancestors was particularly prominent. The ancestor worship activities of the Yin people are very cruel, and it is not uncommon to behead, bury alive, or even chop them into paste, burn them and dismember them. Ancestor worship activities were customized in the Zhou Dynasty, which also set a good example for later generations and lasted for thousands of years. In the early days, in addition to reburial and human sacrifice, food, wine, jade and silk were also offered regularly, and later it developed into burning paper money for ancestors to consume. Sacrifice also gave the wandering souls of ancestors a home. As far as ancestors are concerned, because they influence and even dominate everything in the world, if children have important activities or disasters, they should pray for the blessing of their ancestors. At the same time, the reverence for the deceased elders also makes people regularly offer food and clothing to their ancestors. So it was passed down from generation to generation and became a habit.

In the Spring and Autumn Period, the connotation of ancestor worship changed, and the reverence and blessing for ancestors turned into the ethical concept of "paying tribute to yearning". During the Qin and Han dynasties, ancestor worship and social sacrifice became the sustenance of ordinary people's lives and hearts in civilian society. Social sacrifice has played a role in condensing social functions. In every family, ancestor worship has become an indispensable behavior throughout the year. After the Wei and Jin Dynasties, Buddhist thought was integrated into the traditional culture of China, and also into the idea of ancestor worship, forming the face of the times after the integration of Confucianism and Buddhism. Since then, it has gone through Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties. After thousands of years of evolution and changes, ancestor worship in ancient China has merged into a tradition, which has been passed down from generation to generation. Although there are occasional additions and deletions, its mainstream trend has just taken shape. In most areas of modern China, ancestor worship became the most important of all kinds of sacrifices. For thousands of years, sacrifices to other gods have been indifferent or extinct, or merged into Buddhism and Taoism, but sacrifices to ancestors have lasted for thousands of years.

4. Sacrifice to the sages

In addition to offering sacrifices to ancestors, there are also ceremonies to offer sacrifices to sages, such as offering sacrifices to Huangdi, Yandi, Confucius and Guan Gong. In addition, there were industry gods in all walks of life in ancient times, and there were sacrifices of industry gods. For example, learning fortune-telling first worships Guiguzi, and carpenters, cement workers, masons, painters and many other industries worship Lu Ban. There are also family gods handed down by people, such as door gods, kitchen gods and well gods.