A giant bug with an arch like a bridge and a head at both ends, with horns and a wide mouth-this is the image of "rainbow" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Compared with the characters carved on the same tortoise shell, "rainbow" is more like a stick figure of a mollusk than a square character.
What is a rainbow? Rainbow is a kind of light phenomenon in the atmosphere, that is, water droplets in the sky are arc-shaped ribbons formed by sunlight irradiation and reflection. From the outer ring to the inner ring, they appear in seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, indigo and purple, which appear in the opposite direction to the sun.
Textbooks give such an answer.
But where did the ancestors know this scientific truth? They only saw the colorful bridge in the sky after the rain, so they used their infinite imagination to think that the "rainbow" was a two-headed snake or dragon with a huge mouth, and came out to drink water after the rain. This is the logic of artificial "rainbow" in Shang Dynasty. They carved a line on the Oracle bones: "The rainbow comes from the north and drinks in the river."
The Shang Dynasty perished and the Western Zhou Dynasty was established. The Western Zhou Dynasty perished and entered the Spring and Autumn Period.
The word "rainbow" began to change obviously. A two-headed snake with a long tail replaced the giant worm with two heads, and "Shen" stands for lightning, creating a knowing word with a left and right structure. There is rain after lightning, and a "rainbow" appears after the rain. The new glyph emphasizes the relationship between "rainbow" and rain. This is the official script of the Qin Dynasty, also called Da Zhuan.
Later, Shi Guwen, the state of Qin, was ingenious. He wrote a two-headed snake as a "worm", used "merit" to express its greatness, and created the word "rainbow", which laid the later pattern in one fell swoop. It should be noted that most of the vassal States in the Warring States period had their own writing system, but whoever had the biggest fist counted. The Qin dynasty was established, and then ...
Xu Shen in the Eastern Han Dynasty commented in Shuo Wen Jie Zi (the first dictionary in China): "Rainbow? Also pronounced as d ? d ng. It looks like a bug. " ? Sword is another name for rainbow. In Xu Shen's time, Oracle Bone Inscriptions was still buried in Yin Ruins, and no one knew about it. He can only infer the reason why the word "rainbow" appeared from the characters in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, so he takes it for granted that it looks like a bug.
However, folklore still retains the national imagination of our ancestors when they created Chinese characters. "Shan Hai Jing Overseas East longitude" records: "There are two rainbows in the north. One is in the north of the country of scholars. " The "rainbow" in the article should be a rainbow, so "each has its own two". There are two kinds of rainbows: the main rainbow and the auxiliary rainbow. If they appear at the same time, the main rainbow is located inside and the auxiliary rainbow is located outside. The auxiliary rainbow is called "neon".
Shan Hai Jing is recognized as a wonderful book. The author of this book is unknown, and it is generally written by Chu or Bashu people from the middle and late Warring States to the early Han Dynasty. Because of this, the book largely retains the original features and many precious ancient materials and information, and its description of "rainbow" is highly consistent with the Oracle characters.
At the end of the Han Dynasty, the book "Interpreting the Name and the Heaven" said "Rainbow": "It sees the sun in the west, the sun in the east and drinks the water vapor in the east every day." A concept that defines the relative orientation of "rainbow" and "sun", and a "common sense" that continues our ancestors' "rainbow drinks in the river".
The latter until the northern Song Zhenzong years, and others wrote to prove it. According to the Hakka dialect, "On the day Wei arrived in Shu, or in case of heavy rain, he had dinner with the guests at Xiting. In Russia, rainbows fall from the sky, go straight into pavilions, hang their heads at banquets and suck their food. Its rainbow head is like a donkey. If it is sunny and rosy, it will be feared and hated by the public ... Ten days later, I will worship China's book list. "
Imagine a wedding, suddenly there was a storm, and then a donkey's head jumped into the top of the party and took all the food and drinks away ... The picture was so beautiful that the host was scared. Fortunately, although the rainbow has a donkey's head inexplicably and its performance is quite low, it is a divine attribute after all. Therefore, its appearance shows that it is a good omen, so the owner has been promoted.
It is often absurd for literati to record local customs and strange stories.
1896 Li Hongzhang went to Russia to attend the coronation ceremony of Nicholas II. Gorky described Li Hongzhang's performance in Altai Exhibition Hall as follows: "Li Hongzhang stopped in front of various gem display tables, and his moustache trembled. The translator immediately asked to open the glass cabinet. When the heavy glass cover was lifted, the old man China unhurriedly reached out his hand from his sleeve. The hand seemed to be moving and slipped to his elbow, so the slender finger with long nails on the old metal gray arm reached into the glass cabinet and picked up a huge jade from a white marble board-this is the most peculiar exhibit in this exhibition hall. Li Hongzhang held the jade under his eyes, looked back and forth, nodded slightly, and hid his hand with the jade in his sleeve. "
Did Gorky see it with his own eyes? No. According to him, "General Fabricius told me personally that Li Hongzhang took the big jade from General Rehkin's apartment in Petersburg."
This scene is familiar, isn't it-I heard it at a dinner party. ...
Get down to business. Decades after these magical jokes were written in Mao Ting Hakka, Shen Kuo, a scientist in the Northern Song Dynasty, exposed the magical obscenity about donkey's head.
On the way to Qidan, Shen Kuo saw the strange sight of "Rainbow can enter the stream to drink water" in linxi county, Chifeng City. Later, he wrote in Meng Xi Talk: "It was another new rain. When I saw the rainbow in the stream in front of my account, my other colleagues and I held it to watch, and both ends of the rainbow hung in the stream." Through close observation, he verified the view of contemporary scientist Sun Yanxian: "Rainbow is the shadow of the sun in the rain, with sunshine and rain."
The ancients thought that "men say rainbows, women say neon", and rainbows appear at the same time, which is "yin and yang intercourse", similar to the proper relationship between men and women. "Study in Qionglin" simply said: "Rainbow name? It is the obscenity of heaven and earth. "
There is a poem in The Book of Songs. Yi is a poem satirizing a woman's elopement: "? In the east, I don't dare to point. Women are wired, away from their parents and brothers. Face west and worship the rain. Women have cable, but their parents are distant brothers. If you are alone, you will be pregnant with marriage. I don't believe it, I don't know my life! "
The main idea of the poem is that a rainbow appears, and a girl leaves her parents and brothers and elopes with her lover. This behavior is shameful. Who knows what will happen to her in the future-it must be terrible.
The titles of some chapters in the Book of Songs have obvious reference significance in later generations, such as courtship in Guanju, yearning in Jia bamboo slips, exultation in poetry, greed in poetry, seeking virtue in poetry, and so on. Sword has also become synonymous with elopement.
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