Which ethnic groups in China have tiger totem worship?

This answer is included in the excellent answer "The Year of the Tiger doesn't scare you"

"You can't be scared in the Year of the Tiger, but the Spring Festival will be fun." Go and have a look.

The word "totem" comes from American Indian dialect, which originally meant animals or plants regarded as the ancestors of this tribe.

As long as it is an ancient clan and tribe, it has experienced the totem worship stage in the early stage of history. Almost all ethnic groups at home and abroad are no exception.

The origin of tiger worship began in the Han Dynasty. According to Ying Shao's "Customs Tongyi" in the Eastern Han Dynasty, it was popular in the Han Dynasty to draw a pair of tigers on the door on New Year's Eve.

Ying Shao, a native of Nantun (Xiangcheng County), Henan Province, still has traces of this custom in this area. For example, a few days before the Chinese New Year, if I heard that there was a disaster that year, every household cut a pair of tigers with yellow watch paper and stuck them on both sides of the door god, and wrote: "Big tiger, big tiger, hold the door, when the plague arrives, turn around and leave."

According to the traditional custom of our country, the disaster is eliminated on New Year's Eve. It can be seen that the folk worship of tigers is generally believed to originate from the disaster of getting rid of the old year.

However, as the saying goes, "anticlimactic, talk about the tiger." The tiger is the king of all animals, and even eats people. People turned to tigers instead of disaster relief. How did this folk culture come from?

In fact, as early as six or seven thousand years ago, the Central Plains had a dragon and tiger shape. In the primitive tomb of Xishuipo, Puyang, Henan Province, the owner of the tomb may be Zhuan Xu, the grandson of the Yellow Emperor, with the image of a dragon and a tiger carefully laid out with mussels. On the owner's right is a dragon, and on the owner's left is a tiger. It can be seen that as early as 5000 years ago, the custom of worshipping dragons and tigers was popular.

In primitive society, worship custom is also called totem worship, which is generally considered as a symbol of tribal blood relationship. For example, the worship of dragons, legend has it that there are Qinglong family and Bailong family.

Compared with the worship of dragons, the worship of tigers is slightly different in nature and can still be called a "totem" in a broad sense, but this totem worship should be classified as defensive.

The dragon-shaped tomb mentioned earlier in Puyang primitive society shows that the deceased was a dragon before his death, and the tiger-shaped tomb was used to eliminate disasters, which gradually developed into a belief.

In fact, this custom is common in later generations. For example, the metal tiger shape unearthed from the Han tomb in Dabaotai, Beijing, from the traditional origin analysis, also shows that in ancient times, the folk worship of tigers was used to eliminate disasters.

Besides the Han nationality, what other nationalities in China worship the tiger totem?

As one of the tiger totem tribal alliances, there were Qiang Rong or Shi Qiang in ancient times. According to the Biography of Western Qiang in the Later Han Dynasty, "Western Qiang originated from Sanmiao". According to legend, "Sanmiao" had a fierce battle with Yao and Shun. After the defeat, some of them were forced to move to Sanwei (Dunhuang area, Gansu Province), which is the distant ancestor of Xiqiang. The ancient Qiang people were mainly distributed in Gansu, Qinghai and Sichuan, and often appeared in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. During the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, Qiang people moved into Hexi Corridor again. Up to now, Neolithic painted pottery bottles have also been unearthed in the Weihe River basin in southern Gansu Province. The heads of tiger-patterned tiger ears are painted on the bottles, and the covers are made into heads, that is, tiger-patterned tiger ears. It can be seen that this is one of the birthplaces of ancient Qiang Rong.

The ancestors of the ancient Xiongnu also worshipped the tiger totem. Many ancient cultural sites and relics, as well as totem worship relics of ancient Huns and tigers. For example, in the bronze plaques of the ancient Xiongnu period, the tiger shape was one of the commonly used decorative patterns of animals. Now, traces of tiger-shaped bronze plaques have been found in many cultural relics unearthed from Xiongnu tombs.

In ancient times, Ba people worshipped the white tiger and regarded it as a totem. According to "Biography of Nan Man Southwest Yi", "Cha Jun dies, and the soul is a white tiger. Babbitt drinks human blood with tigers, so he is jealous of others. "

Cubans are a tribal alliance centered on geography. There are many different tribes or nationalities in Pakistan or Pakistan. After the Qin dynasty destroyed Ba in 3 16, from the Western Han Dynasty to the Song Dynasty, the descendants of Ba people called themselves "tigers" or "tigers". Many history books also refer to the descendants of Ba people as "white tigers", "white tigers luring their wings", "half of them" and "blue-headed tigers".

Some scholars have systematically studied the myths and legends of many ethnic minorities living in the south of China, and found that in ancient times, today's Yi, Bai, Tibetan, Hani and Tujia people all use tigers as totems.

Now, the tiger is still the primitive totem worship of the Yi people. In Yi language, the tiger is called Luo, and most Yi people call themselves Luo Luopu and Luo, which means male tiger, female tiger and tiger family. Therefore, there is still a saying that "when people die, the tiger dies, and when the tiger dies, the flowers die."

In the village of Shuangbai County, Wei Chu, we can also see that an ancestor worship ceremony called "Tiger Festival" is held here every year, that is, the head of a tiger is painted on the ladle symbolizing ancestors for sacrificial activities, mainly to pray for disaster relief and realize family happiness. There are also "tiger ancestors" on the eighth day of the first month, and there are also "tiger ancestors" on the fifteenth day of the first month.

The Tibetan ancestors in the Tang Dynasty had the custom of respecting tigers. According to the Biography of Tubo in the Old Tang Dynasty, among the Tubo of the Qiang people, soldiers wore "tiger and leopard skins" to enhance their military strength.

Naxi nationality, formerly known as "Momo", according to the records of mountains and rivers in Yanyuan County, Guangxu County, Sichuan Province in the Qing Dynasty, there were local people named Lala (Lala) and Tiger Master.

In the folklore "the origin of the Lahu nationality", the story of the Mosuo ancestor Shenhu is told. After creating the universe, the god Meg saw that everything on the earth was ready except human beings, so he sent the tiger god who guarded Tianmen to the earth. Before leaving, Gemei said to Tiger God; "If you create human beings with land, you and your descendants will live forever." Then he used his middle finger to write the word "Wang" on the tiger god's forehead and told him to go to the place where he stepped on the stockade. When the tiger god came to "step on the dry wood in the village", the huge steps actually shattered the mountain peak, and a beautiful girl came out of the mountain peak. The girl introduced herself as "Ganmu", a mountain god who lived here for 7777 years. They fell in love at first sight and got married. After that, the son was called "Laro" and the daughter was called "Mula"; Brothers and sisters get married again, have children, and then intermarry with each other, and a tiger family gradually forms. Later, the La clan produced many big tribes and moved to the foothills basin. To this day, members of the Lahu nationality still retain the custom of hanging pictures of tigers on the lintels of houses to ward off evil spirits; At the wedding, the elders will give the bride a tiger skin with the bride's amulet painted on it.

Some branches of the Bai nationality also take tigers as secondary totems. According to legend, when there was a flood in ancient times, brother and sister escaped from a big gourd, and then they got married and gave birth to seven daughters, among whom the young girl married a tiger and gave birth to a child, the ancestor of the Bai nationality. Today, the Bai people in Xiangyun County, Yunnan Province still consider themselves descendants of tigers and call themselves "hardworking slaves", that is, "tiger tiger".

The white emperor of Tujia belief is the white tiger god transformed after the death of Lin Jun, the distant ancestor of Cubans. Tujia people's worship of the White Tiger God is actually the worship of the Cuban ancestor Yu Jun, which also reflects the historical origin between the unearthed family and the Cubans.