It also refers to the fire, water and earth in Jin Mu, which are white, cyan, black, red and yellow, and are mixed by positive colors. Generally speaking, it refers to five colors: purple (red-cyan), red (light red), light green (light cyan), purple and yellow (brownish yellow). What color was purple in those days? There is a cloud in the spring and autumn period "Interpretation of the Text": "Fire is afraid of water, and red goes into black, so the color of the north is purple." There is another saying that cyan and red are mixed into purple, which is roughly similar to the purple we are talking about today.
In ancient times, positive color was the most important and intermediate color was the least important. Purple has always been considered as a "lazy color". The lowest valley of purple's life is when it was born as recorded in ancient books. Our sage Confucius mentioned purple for the first time in The Analects of Confucius: "Evil purple seizes Zhu, evil chaos is elegant, and evil characters cover the nation."
"The cause of this sentence is probably that Qi Huangong, one of the five tyrants in the Spring and Autumn Period, especially likes to wear purple clothes. Qi Huangong likes purple, and the whole State of Qi takes wearing purple as the fashion. At that time, the color hierarchy had been somewhat defeated. Mr. Kong Lao most admired Zhou Li, and the Zhou Dynasty was still popular, and the ceremony could not be abolished. He abandoned red to seek the forbearance of heaven and earth, and his ethics was unforgivable.
Therefore, Confucius especially hated purple and thought it was not in harmony with etiquette. The "evil purple tide" brought by Mr. Kong lasted for some time. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Liu Xi wrote Ming Shi: "Purple, defective, not positive color. The flaws of the five colors are also confusing. " Anyway, at that time, purple was a big flaw that had no status and made people confused.
The juice of grass roots can be used to dye purple clothes. "Erya Cao Shi" records: "Cherish, Lithospermum." Guo Pujia's comment is: "A Zi's roots can be dyed purple." In most parts of East Asia, this plant is used to dye clothes purple, but the color fades easily after dyeing, and it takes a lot of effort to dye them stably, so it is expensive to dye a purple dress.
"Everything is done by Han Feizi. The Foreign Reserve says Left" records: "Qi Huangong is good at purple, and all countries are purple. At that time, the five elements cannot be purple. " In other words, at that time, five white clothes were not worth the cost of a purple dress, and the degree of gold could be imagined. Purple clothes in the west are more expensive. The purple clothes that westerners wear are dyed with a kind of shell. Beizi is not the name of the shell, but the submandibular gland of the shell, which is an active secretion of the respiratory system in the middle of the muscle and viscera. This substance is insoluble in water, but once it is dyed on cloth, it will change from yellow to green, then to blue, and finally to purple pigment with excellent color fastness under the action of sunlight.