Origin: From Gan Bao's Searching for God in the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
Explanation of words:
(1) Shennong: Also known as Yandi, the legendary Archaean emperor. It is said that he teaches people to farm, so he is called "Shennong". ?
(2) Whip: red whip.
(3) Pingdu: This refers to whether herbs contain toxicity. Flat is non-toxic. ?
(4) stink: smell, taste. Here refers to the five flavors of acid, salty, sweet, bitter and spicy.
Extended data:
Appreciation of works:
The highest achievement of mystery novels should be reflected in the search for gods. It is different from geography and natural history works, mainly compiling ghost stories, including some anecdotes.
Its author is a famous historian Gan Bao and a native of Xincai (now Henan) in the early years of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Born in a famous family, he is diligent in learning and reads widely. I wrote 20 volumes of Golden Rooster, praising history. According to Biography of the Book of Jin, it was because he felt the magical experience of his father's handmaiden and brother coming back from the dead that he wrote down the search for God.
It brings together the changes of supernatural characters in ancient and modern immortals. On the one hand, "Kao Xian aims to record books" and on the other hand, "gathering the legacy of that time and fleeing", which has been widely studied and has been formed for decades. Thirty volumes of the original book, especially in the Tang and Song Dynasties, were probably lost in the Song and Yuan Dynasties.
Sue Ji Shen is not only rich in content, but also elegant and refined in language, which is a model of "going straight". His artistic achievements are second to none among the genies in the Jin Dynasty, and have a great influence on later generations. It has not only become a model for later generations of mystery novels, but also a source of materials for later generations of legends, stories, operas and popular novels.
As for those who use stories as allusions, they are even more overwhelming. There are many sequels and copies of Sou Shen Ji, the most famous of which is Tao Qian's Sou Shen Postscript, with a total of ten volumes. It is uncertain whether this book was really written by the famous poet Tao Yuanming.
There are many fairy tales in the book, among which there are many excellent stories, such as the story of conch girl in Volume V and the story of "A Xiang pushing a mine car", all of which are very beautiful and widely quoted. But we have to admit that in art, it is still in the primary stage of novel development, and it is generally a rough outline of the story.