Why was it called "toe-crossing" in ancient Vietnam?

"Crossing toes" was originally a word describing the national custom of "Nan Man" in China ancient books, and later it was used to refer to the area south of the Central Plains where Nan Man lived. Until the Han Dynasty, in the south of Xiang County, that is, the Red River Delta in northern Vietnam today, the "Jiaotoe" county was established.

So what exactly does "cross your toes" mean?

The most popular understanding is toe intersection. In the Tang Dynasty, Du You wrote in the entry "Four Frontier Defense under Nanman Gorge" in Tongdian: "People are in the extreme south, carving their toes. ..... crossing toes means that the big toes of the feet are open and intersect at once. " This means that the southernmost Lingnan barbarians have extremely huge feet and wide toes. When their feet are joined together, the two big toes will meet.

But this is just a misunderstanding caused by Du You's poor exegetical skills. Actually, the ancients in China didn't think the toes of ancient Vietnamese were so strange.

Du You's Inscription of Toes is not original, and The Book of Rites Wang Zhi is edited: "China Yi Rong, a citizen of five parties, has the same sex. ..... The south is pretty, and some people don't eat with fire. " The original intention of this passage is to say that the emperor's administration is not to change customs, but to adapt to customs. The custom of the southern barbarians is to "carve the topic and cross the toes", and some people don't eat cooked food. "Ming" means tattooing your forehead, tattooing it on your forehead. As for "tiptoe", the understanding of annotation scholars in past dynasties is the same: when lying on your side, your thighs bend backwards and your feet are behind your back.

Zheng Xuan wrote in the Book of Rites in the Eastern Han Dynasty: "Cross your toes and your feet are opposite." Zheng Xuan's Note by Confucius in the Tang Dynasty further explained: "Toes are enough. When the word is lying, the head is outward and the feet are inward, so the cloud spans its toes. " This is just an ancient description of Nan Man's lying posture in China: when lying on his side, his face is outward, and his feet and calves are bent backward and hooked together.

The ancients lay on their side, bending their knees, but rarely crossing their feet. In the Tang Dynasty, Sun Simiao wrote: "Kneeling at your side is better than fighting." That is, Taoism and Chinese medicine believe that sleeping on one knee helps to accumulate human strength.

The above-mentioned Taoist recumbent posture has a strong gymnastics component, while the ordinary recumbent posture of China people is more like a reclining Buddha with a slightly bent body and feet juxtaposed up and down. Therefore, the ancient ancestors of Vietnam slept with their feet bent behind them and their feet crossed, which left a deep impression on the Central Plains people.

Du You made such a misunderstanding, in fact, he ignored the semantic change of the word "toe". "Toe" originally meant "stop". "Erya Shi Yan" means "toe (stop) is enough". Xu Shen explained it more clearly in Shuo Wen Jie Zi: "Stop, start from the foundation. Just like a tree with an address, it is enough to stop. Everything that stops will stop. " In other words, the original meaning of "stop" is feet, not toes.

However, Du You's misunderstanding was confirmed by French missionaries in modern times. After Vietnam became a French colony, missionaries went deep into the interior of Vietnam and found that the incidence of clubfoot with clubfoot in Tokyo (Hanoi) was very high, and recorded it with images. This can be described as a real "toe-crossing".