24-day introduction

"Tian" in Sanskrit Deva-loka is transliterated as "Tipo". The "heaven" in Buddhism mainly refers to the extraordinary victory that all beings feel because of their respective careers. Such as heaven in the six realms and ten realms. The sky at this time is called "Heaven and Man" or "Heaven", not the sky in the cosmic sense. Buddhism believes that heaven is the best, best and happiest place for all beings. Only those who practice ten good deeds can be reincarnated into heaven. However, although "Tian" is in the highest and most superior position among all beings and can enjoy all kinds of things, it does not jump out of the cycle, and once the predecessor enjoys everything, it will fall into the cycle again. In addition, when "heaven" is mentioned in Buddhist scriptures, it not only refers to all beings as a positive newspaper, but also refers to the environment in which they live according to the newspaper. Buddhism also divides the secular world into three kinds: lust world, lust world and lust-free world. Among them, the erotic world has six days, including four realms, altruism and eternity. There are eighteen days in the color world (17 days, or 23 days), mainly Brahma, clear sky, dreamless day and free day. As the theme of Buddhist statues, the heavens are mainly said in the sense of sentient beings mentioned above. It's just that most of these "heaven and man" have extraordinary skills. Buddhism calls some gods in ancient Indian mythology and other religions "heaven" and absorbs them as the protectors of Buddhism. The team of the day is expanding.

The wise master of Tiantai in Sui Dynasty made the Golden Light Law based on the Golden Light Classic, Merits and Gifts. Based on this, later generations called it "fasting ceremony to worship heaven" for short, that is, the ceremony to worship heaven in a temple. According to Golden Light, Ming Jing, Ghosts and Ghosts, etc. I chose twenty gods, that is, these twenty days. In the Ming Dynasty, four gods were added to become "Twenty-four Days", namely, twenty-one Kinnara, twenty-two Wei Zi, twenty-three Dongyue and twenty-four Raytheon. The latter three are Taoist gods, which shows the trend of mutual borrowing and integration of Buddhism and Taoism after the Ming Dynasty. The former is one of the Eight Dragons, which we will introduce.

Among them, twenty days often appear as a group in statues and murals, and sometimes appear in land and water paintings hanging during the land and water law meeting. However, there are also many temples dedicated to the twenty-four celestial phenomena, such as Tongyuan Temple in Kunming, Shanhua Temple in Datong, Shanxi and Jingu Temple in Wutai Mountain. In Buddhist art, the image of "heaven" often appears alone or in other combined forms. In the art of Buddhist grottoes in China, images of the sky appeared very early. For example, in the mural of the Buddhist story of "Walking through the city at midnight" painted on the left wall of the main room of Cave 100 of Qizil Grottoes in Xinjiang, the images of Indra and the Four Heavenly Kings appeared. On both sides of the gate of the eighth cave of Yungang Grottoes, the head of Moan riding a cow and the pigeon riding a golden-winged bird are carved. Next, we will introduce the twenty-four celestial phenomena except Kinnara and the four heavenly kings.