What constellation is it?

The bamboo slips 1975 unearthed from tomb1in Shuihudi, Yunmeng County, Hubei Province, further proved that the zodiac had existed before and after the Spring and Autumn Period. There is a chapter on "Thief" in the bamboo slips unearthed in Japan, which talks about the appearance characteristics of thieves, and records: "Son, mouse, thief wants his mouth, ... ugly, cow, thief with big nose and long neck, ... yin, tiger, thief, if he wants his beard, his face is black." Hair, rabbits, thieves are big. Chen, [original leak] The thief is a man, green and red ... Third, the worm is also black. At noon, the deer is also a thief with a long neck and a small cut. ..... No, horse, thieves have ears. ",ring also, thief round face ..."

Chinese zodiac

Chinese zodiac

The zodiac recorded in Japanese books is roughly the same as the popular saying now. According to textual research, the tomb of Shuihudi 1 1 was in the 30th year of Qin Shihuang (2 17 BC), so the appearance of the zodiac can be traced back to at least the Spring and Autumn Period before Qin Dynasty. Scholars believe that this is the earliest and most systematic record of the zodiac found in China so far.

For a long time, many people regard Lun Heng as the earliest document that records the zodiac. Lun Heng is the representative work of Wang Chong (AD 27-97), a materialist thinker in the Eastern Han Dynasty. "On the Balance of Things" contains: "Yin, wood, birds and tigers. Soil, its birds and dogs are also. ..... At noon, the horse also arrived. Son, mouse also. Unitary, chicken also. Hair, rabbits, too. ..... hey, tapir. No, so are sheep. Ugly, cattle also. ..... Third, snakes are also. Shen, Qitian also. " There are only eleven zodiac signs in the above quotation, but the dragon is missing. The book "Poisonous Words" also said: "Chen Weilong, Si is a snake, and Chen and Si are in the southeast. In this way, the zodiac is complete, and the subordinate relationship between the twelve earthly branches and the zodiac is so complete, and it is the same as today. This is indeed the earliest and most complete record of the zodiac in ancient literature.

By the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the zodiac had been widely used, and it was clearly recorded in the Southern Dynasties' Five Elements Records of South Shu Qi that the zodiac was divided according to the year of birth. Another example is Biography of Zhou Shu III, which records a letter written to him by Yuwen Hu's mother. The letter said: "Your brother was born in Wuchuan Town. The first one is a mouse, the second one is a rabbit, and you are a snake." This can prove.

Shen Jiong, a poet in the Southern Dynasties, once wrote a poem about the zodiac, which said:

"In the case of mice and dust, cattle and sheep fall at dusk.

Tigers sit in empty valleys for food, and rabbits open windows to the moon.

The dragon ridge is far green, and the snake willow lingers near.

Ma Lanfang is far away and breeds sheep in spring.

The monkey chestnut shames the fragrant fruit, and the chicken anvil leads to a clear cup.

Dogs are proud of owning, but pigs are carefree. "

This poem of the zodiac is obviously written in the order of animals assigned by the twelve branches, which shows that people at that time were already very familiar with the zodiac.

However, in ancient times, the nomadic minorities in northwest China used animals to record the years. It is recorded in the Book of the Tang Dynasty: "Tuoba Sinian takes twelve things as the standard. If the year is cloudy, it is called the year of the tiger. " In addition, it is also recorded in the history of Song Dynasty. In the Tubo Biography when the Tubo leader narrated, the so-called "old things belong to Japan, the Year of the Rabbit, and the Year of the Horse." Later, in the communication between the people in the Central Plains and the ethnic minorities, the two chronologies came into contact with each other, forming the 12 Zodiac. As Zhao Yi pointed out in the Qing Dynasty's "Examination of Jade Cong", "At the beginning of the custom of covering the north, there was no such thing as the twelfth birthday of an ugly son, but when rats, cows, tigers and rabbits were aged, they were soaked in China and their ears were not wasted." This explanation about the origin of 12 zodiac has been recognized by many people. Another way of saying this is that the Altai people first used the zodiac, which was introduced into Qi in the era. [2]

Talking about the origin of the zodiac, there is no need to associate it with heavenly stems and earthly branches. The oldest existing branch table in China unearthed from the Yin Ruins in Anyang in modern times shows that the date of branches in the Yin and Shang Dynasties has been mastered. Later, with the passage of time, the functions of the branches gradually diversified. As a label as a time unit, on the one hand, it is extended and used in chronology; On the one hand, it reduces the time (twelve hours a day).

For a long time, scholars have found that the ancient Chinese characters of the zodiac contain the information of the zodiac. They compared the ancient Chinese characters of the Chinese zodiac with those of the Chinese zodiac, and found that the ancient Chinese characters of the Chinese zodiac were related to twelve kinds of animals. Careful observation shows that there are some similarities and some differences. In Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the word "four" was described as a pictographic character of a snake, and there were also "hai" and "tapir". People nearby have also verified that there are similarities between the characters of the earthly branches in Oracle Bone Inscriptions and the inscriptions on bronze inscriptions and the characters of the zodiac, which makes people wonder whether the zodiac is the pictographic characters of the animals of the zodiac. Because the ugly shade and ugly hair of the twelve earthly branches are easy to remember, people use twelve kinds of animals instead, and animals instead of ordinal symbols to match the earthly branches, which has become the symbol system of the year. Although the above conjecture has certain credibility, if you think about it carefully, you can still judge that the zodiac can't be pictographs of the zodiac, because as mentioned earlier, the zodiac was skillfully used in the Yin and Shang Dynasties, while the zodiac was only produced in the Spring and Autumn Period and came from different sources. If the earthly branches are related to the zodiac when creating characters, wouldn't the zodiac be produced at the same time as the earthly branches?

To sum up, the zodiac appeared later than the twelve earthly branches, but it is closely related to the twelve earthly branches. The zodiac is an appendage of the twelve earthly branches. Choosing twelve animals as symbols instead of the twelve earthly branches stems from the animal worship psychology of the ancients.