The four-sided Maitreya couch was the first choice bedding for the ancients
The lyrics of "Little Taohong" by Cheng Gai, a poet of the Southern Song Dynasty:
? A small bed with precious bamboo mat, waiting for the sun. Sitting idle for a long time?
The bed is the earliest bedding after the mat. The word "bed" has appeared in oracle bone inscriptions as "爿". The early bed was used for both sitting and sleeping. Xu Shen's "Shuowen Jiezi" of the Eastern Han Dynasty said: "In ancient times, when I was leisurely sitting on the bed, I would hide on the bed without hanging my feet. ?
Beds are generally made of wood, so beds were written as "beds" in the past. However, for the purpose of dispelling summer heat, some beds are also made of jade, ivory, crystal, etc. Among them, the "stone bed" was considered by the ancients to be one of the best summer cooling beddings. Emperor Wu of the Southern Dynasty Song Dynasty Liu Yu had a "pyrexia" and needed cooling items when sitting or lying down. Someone offered a stone bed and slept on it, which was considered very popular. good. ?Liu Yu was born in poverty and was a commoner emperor. Liu Yu thought that using a stone bed was too corrupt, so he broke the stone bed. Although there is a tradition of using jade to make beds, it is said that the last monarch of the Shang Dynasty in the Three Dynasties was King Zhou. The bed used by Daji was a jade bed, which was called "Zhou Zuo Jade Bed" in "Shiben".
Much more advanced than the stone bed is the ivory bed. According to the record of Mengchang Jun’s trip to Chu in "Warring States Policy Qi Ce III", when Mengchang Jun visited Chu State on patrol, Chu State gave him an ivory bed. Because the bed is worth a thousand gold, it is too valuable. At that time, a man named Dengtu was sent to deliver the bed. He was afraid that if something went wrong, he would not be able to pay for it even if he sold his wife and the children would not be able to pay for it, so he did not dare to go. It can be seen that ivory beds were rare beds in the pre-Qin period and were extremely valuable.
The above-mentioned bed is not a single-function cooling bed. In ancient times, the cooling bed dedicated to summer was generally called a "small bed", which is a simple single bed, also called a "couch" to distinguish it. It is a "double bed" with regular bedding and a double bed. When used as bedding, couches and beds have slightly different functions: beds are mostly for home use, while couches are mostly for guests; beds are mostly used for lying down, while couches are mostly used for sitting and taking a nap.
What did the ancient summer bed look like? There were two structures: box type and frame type, usually with wooden boards as the surface. In the Song Dynasty's unknown painting "Spring Summer in Sophora shading" collected by the Palace Museum in Beijing, there is a summer bed that is a couch with a frame structure. This couch is more elegant and has a single landscape screen at the back.
Similar daybeds were very popular in the Song Dynasty. For example, Ma Hezhi's "Lotus Pavilion Refreshing Picture" of the Southern Song Dynasty also has this structure. This kind of couch is a flat couch without common surrounds, so the ancients also called it "four-sided bed".
Modify the four-sided bed slightly, with a backboard at the back, a handrail on one side, and a pillow on one end, and it becomes a more elegant couch. The ancients called it a "beauty couch" or a "concubine couch". furniture.
There is another kind of "Maitreya couch", which is often used as a cooling bed in summer. The Maitreya couch is also called "Arhat bed". The four-sided bed should be the arhat bed that has been simplified and complicated, and it can be a couch or a complicated four-sided bed after removing the fence.
The cheaper summer beds are mostly made of rattan and bamboo, among which bamboo beds and bamboo couches are most commonly used in the south. A poem by Lu Rongyang from the Song Dynasty describes the situation of lying on a bamboo bed and resting in summer: "I am always interested in reading documents, but I know that recuperating is not as good as leisure." On the bamboo bed and tile pillows in the empty hall, I lie down and look at the mountains in the south of the Yangtze River after the rain. ?
In ancient times, there was another kind of "hu bed" which was also a common sleeping tool for the ancients in summer. Cheng Gai, a poet of the Southern Song Dynasty, once said in "Little Peach Blossom": "The precious bamboo mat is a little Hu bed, where you can sit leisurely for a long time." ?The so-called precious bamboo mat refers to a precious bamboo mat; and the so-called ?hu bed? is actually not a bed, but more like a recliner commonly used by the elderly in modern summers when they rest.