How did the zodiac come from? Why are there dragons, but there are no ducks, geese and cats?

As an ancient folk cultural phenomenon, scholars have different opinions about the origin of the zodiac. Some people think that the zodiac and earthly branches are homologous and can be traced back to prehistoric legend times. In Historical Records, the Yellow Emperor's statements of "building Jiazi for life" and "making every effort to cure Jiazi" are the embodiment of this statement, and scholars believe that Jiazi here refers to the zodiac. Zhao Yi, a scholar in Qing Dynasty, believed that the zodiac originated from nomadic people in northern China. He said in "An Examination of Jade Congkao": "At first, there was no such thing as ugliness on the 12th, but in the next year, it spread to China." (See Zhao Yi's Textual Research on Jade Cong in Qing Dynasty). Some scholars even hold the view that the zodiac was introduced to China from Babylon, and Guo Moruo is the representative of this view. He said in "Study on Oracle Characters and Branch Interpretation", "Twelve elephants are found in Babylon, Egypt and India, but they are not very old, and none of them came from the Western Dynasty 100 years ago. The original intention is that this was made in the Western countries during the Han Dynasty, imitating the Babylonian zodiac and then spreading to the surrounding areas. " It is believed that the Chinese Zodiac was formulated by Middle Eastern residents imitating the Babylonian Zodiac, and was introduced to China when Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty communicated with the western regions. The above viewpoints are different, so I dare not judge right or wrong subjectively. However, it is proved by a large number of documents that the Chinese zodiac really originated in China, and it is the crystallization of animal worship, totem worship and early astronomy of China ancestors.

The Book of Songs is the earliest record of the zodiac in the existing literature. There are eight words in The Book of Songs Xiaoya Jiri: "Jiri Wugeng means poor horse", which means it is a good day to ride a prancing horse and go hunting. This is an example of a horse in the afternoon. It can be seen that the corresponding relationship between earthly branches and twelve kinds of animals has been established and spread around the Spring and Autumn Period. 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, [the original leaked] the thief is a man, green and red ... already, insects are also, thieves grow 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 ..."

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.

Today's popular zodiac is exactly the same as that recorded by Wang Chong in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Wang Chong's On the History of Wu Heng contains:

"Yin, wood, its bird, tiger. Soil, its birds and dogs are also. ..... At noon, the horse also arrived. Son, mouse, unitary, chicken. Hair, rabbits, too. ..... hey, tapir. No, so are sheep. Ugly, cattle also. ..... already, the snake also. Shen, Qitian also. "

In the above text, there are eleven kinds of animals in the zodiac, but the dragon is gone. The book Poison says:

"Chen is a dragon, a snake. Chen and Ji are in the southeast. "

In this way, the zodiac is complete, exactly the same as the popular zodiac. 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. 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.

It is clear from the above documents that the origin of Zodiac culture is in China. According to the foreign zodiac, the zodiac was introduced to China from the Middle East in the Han Dynasty, which is similar to the introduction of Buddhism. From the above documents, we prove that there were records about the zodiac in China as early as the Spring and Autumn Period (The Book of Heaven and the Book of Songs), which shows that the appearance of the zodiac and the collocation of the zodiac and the earthly branches have been produced as early as the Han Dynasty, so it is certain that the zodiac originated from an ancient culture in China. So what is the origin of the zodiac? Why did the ancients choose these twelve animals? Scholars have been paying attention to this problem and making various explanations.

Some scholars believe that the zodiac originated from animal worship in primitive times, and Mr. Zhang Binglun of China University of Science and Technology holds this view. He believes that under the condition of low productivity and extremely limited ability to understand nature in primitive society, he has a sense of dependence on animals closely related to his life (such as horses, sheep, cows, chickens, dogs, etc.). ), the fear of animals that endanger his own safety (such as tigers and snakes), and the reverence for some animal organ functions that exceed human beings (such as dogs' sense of smell, etc.). ), which leads to the worship of animals. The zodiac is an animal calendar that people use to record the years and months under the influence of the primitive belief of animal worship.

The animal worship of primitive people is also manifested in primitive dances such as Nuo dance, which was produced around the Zhou Dynasty, and the protagonist in Nuo instrument is Fang and twelve beasts. Twelve kinds of animals are selected in Exorcism Dance, which is a manifestation of primitive people's reverence for animals. The twelve animals (or twelve gods) selected at the ceremony are to look after the twelve months of the year, to drive away plagues and ghosts from all directions and look after twelve directions for the safety of the moon. Of course, the care of the twelve directions involves twelve branches, so it is linked with the zodiac, and the zodiac has been well used in the exorcism ceremony. It can be seen that the twelve animals and the zodiac are in the same strain, and their common source is primitive animal worship.

Mr. Liu Yaohan, a ethnologist, believes that the dates of the zodiac and the "Zodiac" are related to the "October Calendar" method of the Yi people. Yi people living in Daliangshan area of Sichuan have a calendar with twelve kinds of animals as the date of the year. They use twelve kinds of animals as the date of the year. Today is the Year of the Rat and tomorrow is the Year of the Ox. By analogy, three rounds is a month, 36 days, a month is 36 days, and a year is ten months. This is the later "October calendar" method. Mr. Liu Yaohan believes that the October calendar, which marks the dates according to the Chinese zodiac, came into being in the Xia and Yu Dynasties (see Liu Yaohan's Collection of Social and Historical Investigation of Yi People), which is related to the primitive totem worship. The zodiac was influenced by the October calendar, and the Yi zodiac calendar later developed into the zodiac.

When we talk about the origin of the zodiac, we must 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). According to historical records and textual research, the zodiac appeared after the establishment of the "branch chronology" Twelve kinds of animals correspond to the twelve earthly branches one by one, and animals are the signs of earthly branches. People born in the same year all have their own animals, so twelve kinds of animals are used to date the year and calculate each person's zodiac. It can be seen that the zodiac and the twelve earthly branches are inseparable. 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 "Ji" was described as a pictographic character of a snake, as well as "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 numbers to match the earthly branches, which becomes 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 author thinks that 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.