The symbolic meaning of cattle
The first symbolic meaning of cattle: hard-working and hard-working
The cow is a symbol of hard work in Chinese culture. In ancient times, oxen were used to pull plows for land preparation. Later, people realized that oxen were powerful, and began to have various applications, ranging from farming, transportation and even military use.
The cow has always been a symbol of the diligence of the working people. What the cow eats is grass, but what it squeezes out is milk. It works hard without complaint, and never asks for more rewards from its master when harvesting. Mr. Yu Qiuyu once said that the key factor why "Chinese civilization does not go on expeditions" is because we have long been a self-sufficient farming civilization, and one of the iconic labor forces of farming civilization is cattle!
The number of cattle Two symbolic meanings: strength and stubbornness
Oxen are powerful, and hard-working people are called "old scalpers". "The ox is tall and the horse is big" is often used to describe tall and strong men. Cao Yin of the Qing Dynasty There is a poem that describes the cow's immense power: "The Danhuang sweeps eighty-one, and who among ten thousand people can match the power of this cow" describes the cow's incomparable strength; its stubborn temper is called "cow temper".
The third symbolic meaning of cattle: wealth
Cows are often a symbol of wealth in Western culture. According to the records in the Bible Exodus, not long after the Israelites fled from Egypt, they followed the customs they had heard in Egypt and used gold to make a golden calf and worship it as the image of Jehovah God. The golden calf therefore became a symbol of money and wealth. . The activity of cattle also symbolizes production and value-added, so the continued rise in stock prices is called a "bull market."
The culture of cattle
The Tang Dynasty poet Yuan Zhen's poem "Birth of Spring": "Outside the gate of Whip Niu County, they fight for soil to cover spring silkworms." First "whip" and then "fight", It is an integral part of the ancient custom of sending off the cold winter and welcoming the new year.
Bian Chun Niu, also known as Bian Tu Niu, originated earlier. "Zhou Li·Yue Ling" records: "The unearthed cow was brought out to send cold air." It has been preserved since then, but it was changed to spring. It was most prosperous in the Tang and Song dynasties, especially after Song Renzong promulgated the "Tu Niu Jing", the custom of whipping the ox was spread. It has become an important part of folk culture.
Kangxi's "Jinan Prefecture Chronicles·Sui Sui" records: "On the day before the beginning of spring, the government leads the people, equipped with spring oxen and awn gods, to welcome the spring in the eastern suburbs. Make a five-sin plate, commonly known as a spring plate, and drink Spring wine, hairpins of spring flowers. Local people and merchants dress up as fishermen, woodcutter and plowmen in various dramas, and the children in the street wear colorful clothes and ghost masks and dance around, which is also a legacy of the ancient Nuo people in the countryside. Each has a colorful battle stick and beats three cattle, which are called whipping the spring cows, to show the intention of encouraging farmers. It is not limited to sending cold air and promoting spring plowing, but also has certain witchcraft significance. Folks in Shandong want to smash the cow's head into pieces, and everyone competes for the spring cow's soil. This is called spring rush, and it is auspicious to grab the cow's head. The characteristic of the Spring Cow Festival in Zhejiang is that when the Spring Cow Festival is held, people kowtow to the Spring Cow in turn. After doing so, the people rush up to crush the Spring Cow, and then take the stolen Spring Cow mud home and spread it in the cattle pen. It can be seen from this that whipping the spring cattle is also a kind of breeding witchcraft, that is, after the spring cattle soil has been used to welcome the spring, spreading it in the cattle pen can promote the reproduction of cattle.
my country’s ethnic minorities also have the custom of showing condolences to farm cattle, which is called the "King of Oxen Offerings". The Buyi people in Luodian, Anlong and other places in Guizhou celebrate the New Year of the Ox on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month. On this day, let the cows rest for a day and eat glutinous rice. The Gelao Nationality's Ox King Festival is also called the "Ox God Festival", "Ox King Bodhisattva Festival" and "Ox King Festival". It is held every year on the first day of the tenth lunar month. On that day, people no longer let the cows work. Instead, they make two glutinous rice cakes with good quality glutinous rice and hang them on the two horns of the cow. Then they take the cow to the water to look at its shadow and celebrate the cow's birthday in this way. Among the Dong people in the Rongjiang and Dongjiang areas of Guizhou, the "Cow Washing Festival" is held on the sixth day of June every summer. By then, the spring plowing has ended. People take the cattle to the river to bathe, and insert a few chicken and duck feathers next to the cattle pens. Pray that the cattle are safe and healthy.
Funeral is a relatively solemn event in the life rituals of the Buyi people. The ceremony is the turning ceremony, and an important part of the turning ceremony is the cutting of cattle. Dong Zhenzao, a recent scholar, has this record in "Qianzhong Miaocheng": "When a person dies, he chooses one or several cows. Relatives and friends bring chickens to sacrifice, that is, they go around the cow and lay a memorial ceremony for it. After the memorial ceremony, the cattle are slaughtered and eaten. "The Naxi people in central Yunnan and Lijiang Mountains have a custom of eating cattle during funerals. After the old man dies, his bones are cremated and the owner lights a fire in the courtyard. Visitors gather around, perform funeral dances, and the lead dancer sings an elegy. After the singing and dancing, everyone knelt down and worshiped the ashes in turn. Then a cow was brought in, the cow's ears were lifted up, and a bowl of milk was poured into it. If the cow jumps with its hooves, it is a good sign; if it does not jump and is fed another bowl, it is considered that the undead does not want the cow, so another cow must be fed again, and then the four hooves of the cow are tied, and both parents are asked to be strong. Men slaughter cows. Usually, the heart of the beef is taken first, then the skin is peeled and the meat is divided. The heart and beef are presented in front of the ashes bag, which is called a "living sacrifice". After the meat is cooked, it is sacrificed again, which is called a "cooked sacrifice". After the sacrifice, the bones are buried in the soil.
In the communication customs of the Han nationality, there is a saying of "wedding cattle and wealth relatives", which is popular in Hunan. In the local area, a cow shared by several households is called a cow wealth relationship and is regarded as a relative. Once the ownership of the cow is changed to someone else, the "relative" relationship ends.
The "Ox King Hui" popular in Liuba County, Shaanxi and other places is a term used to celebrate the birthdays of the elderly. Because oxen plow the fields and plow the fields, they contribute to people and are ranked at the forefront of the zodiac. The oxen are used to wish the elderly people birthdays in the name of oxen to show respect.
The Miao people have a marriage custom of grabbing ox tails, which is popular in northwest Guizhou. After a man and a woman get engaged, the woman will feed an ox. On the wedding day, she will bring the ox to the scene and use two ropes to tie the ox's legs. The bride will then chop off the ox tail with one stroke, and the groom will immediately go up to snatch the ox tail. If he can grab the ox tail before the bride's parents arrive, he can get married immediately, otherwise the marriage will fail.
Origin of cattle species
Common origins
According to the unearthed cattle skull fossils and ancient murals and other data, it can be proved that ordinary cattle originated from aurochs ( Bos primie-nius), domestication began during the Neolithic Age. Remains of the aurochs have been found in Western Asia, North Africa and continental Europe.
Most scholars believe that common cattle were first domesticated in Central Asia and later expanded to Europe, China and Asia. Asia is the habitat of the original species of bison, and many of them are still living in the wild. In Europe and North America, except for a few remaining in zoos and sanctuaries, bison have become extinct. Fossil materials of the aurochs, the ancestor of Chinese cattle, have also been found in many places in the north and south. For example, the aurochs skull displayed in the Datong Museum has been identified as being 70,000 years old. The bone core, which is about 1 meter long and preserved in the Anhui Provincial Museum, was excavated from the late Pleistocene strata in the Huaibei area. In addition, the fossils of aurochs and the remains of wild cattle thousands of years ago have also been unearthed in Yushu County in the northeast.
Domesticated ordinary cattle have undergone changes in appearance, biological characteristics and production performance. Great changes. Bison are tall (body height 1.8 to 2.1 meters), wild in nature, with single-colored fur, mostly black or white, small breasts, low milk production, and are only enough for calves to eat. After domestication, the cattle are smaller than bison (body height is less than 1.7 meters), have a docile temperament, various coat colors, enlarged breasts, and greatly improve milk production and other economic performance.
Ming Dynasty Chen Jiru's "Records of the Family Temple of Yuan Gong (Yuan Keli) of the Great Sima Festival": "The crown belongs to the farmer, the sword buys the cattle. Looking through the history, digging the fields, Suiyang is like a golden pot from generation to generation."
Other origins
Regarding the origin of other cattle species, Keller (1909) once believed that the Indian Zebu was domesticated from the Javanese bison, but according to modern research on skull type and horn type , and the analysis of the hybridization between zebu and ordinary cattle can produce offspring and breed new varieties, proving that zebu also originated from the original cattle, and its domestication time in South Asia was roughly the same as that of ordinary cattle or slightly later.
The "cow" recorded in ancient Chinese books is the modern zebu. The Chinese buffalo's coat color, skull, horn shape and other characteristics are very similar to the Indian wild buffalo. Therefore, previous scholars believed that the Chinese buffalo originated from the wild flat horns in India. Buffalo─Bubalus arne. However, the study of the fossils of no fewer than seven buffalo species excavated from the strata of different periods of the Pleistocene in North China, Northeast China, Inner Mongolia, and Sichuan can prove that at least 1 or 2 of them later evolved and became modern domestic buffalo.
The Chinese buffalo originated in the south. This may be due to the invasion of glaciers in northern Asia during the late Pleistocene, which turned the vast area north of the Yellow River Basin, which originally had a tropical climate, into high temperatures, forcing ancient water buffalo and other animals to migrate south. The Chinese yak is domesticated from wild yaks. To this day, wild yaks are still found in the alpine regions of Haibei and Hainan in Qinghai Province and among the high mountains of 4,000 to 5,000 meters above sea level on the Northern Tibetan Plateau, as well as in Mongolia and northeastern Siberia in Russia.