The basis for judging the zodiac

The China Zodiac, also known as the Zodiac, is a folk method for calculating the age in China, that is, twelve earth symbols, namely Zi, Ugly, Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu and Hai, are given corresponding animal names respectively, which make up rats, cows, tigers, rabbits, dragons, snakes and horses. The zodiac plays an important role in our daily life. When giving gifts, people prefer to choose gifts painted with zodiac animal patterns; Painters and calligraphers often write "Year of the Ox" and "Year of the Tiger" in their inscriptions. When choosing a husband and daughter-in-law, some superstitious people always want to see if there are such unlucky fates as "making trouble" and "Long Hudou". The zodiac is closely related to people's lives. How did the zodiac come from? Some people think that it is the result of the fusion of ancient Huaxia chronology and minority chronology. According to historical records, from the legendary Yao and Shun era, China began to use a "chronology of branches and leaves" consisting of ten heavenly stems and symbols, such as A, B, C and D, and twelve earthly branches and symbols, such as Zi Chou Yin Mao. For a long historical period, the Chinese people in the Central Plains did not use animals to allocate land. However, the ethnic minorities in the west and north of China have lived a nomadic life for a long time, and animals are their most common and basic living resources, so many things are represented or referred to by animals. In the process of dealing with all kinds of animals, these nomads have created a method of dating by animals. For example, The History of Song Dynasty. Biography of Tubo: When Song Renzong sent Liu Huan to Tubo, Silo gave a banquet to entertain the emissary and talked about the past. "Twelve dates belong to the Year of Rabbit and the Year of Horse", which is based on the animal calendar. Therefore, Zhao Yi in the Qing Dynasty said in the thirty-fourth volume of Yu Cong Kao: "At the beginning of the custom of covering the north, there were twelve dates without children, ugliness, yin and hair, but there were them. Zodiac, which was produced by the cooperation between the earthly branches of the Central Plains and ethnic animals, was formed in the Han Dynasty. How is it formed? In the same book, Zhao Yi said that during the Han Dynasty, Xiongnu Khan was attached to the Han Dynasty and lived with the residents of the Central Plains. The ethnic minorities used the method of animal chronology to combine with the twelve branches of the Han nationality to produce the twelve zodiac signs. According to the second theory, the zodiac is not a product of the integration of Chinese and ethnic calendars, but a "specialty" formed by China itself in the long-term development process. In ancient China, there was a concept of the so-called twelve celestial phenomena, that is, the sky near the ecliptic (the orbit of the sun as imagined by the ancients) was divided into twelve equal parts, with twelve branches, such as Zi Ugly Yin Mao, from east to west, and the date and year. Due to the influence of ancient totem worship, people are always used to associating various natural phenomena with animal models or other magical things. So in astronomy, there are the names of giant snakes, peacocks, foxes, lions, Tmall, tokage, Pegasus and other constellations. Under this kind of psychological control, people will completely use the names of some animals to match the abstract zodiac signs such as Zi Chou, thus forming the zodiac signs such as Zi Mouse, Ugly Cow and Yin. In Lun Heng written by Wang Chong in the Eastern Han Dynasty, it is said: "The bird and mouse in Zi Nian are the animals and rabbits of Mao", that is to say, the animals in Zi Nian are mice and the animals of Mao are rabbits. Slowly, people think that they were born in a certain year, like something, a mouse in the next year, an ugly cow, so they call it the "Twelve Zodiacs". The earlier record of this is Zhou Shu. The word "protection" goes: "Your brother was born, the eldest is a mouse, the second is a rabbit, and you are a snake. "It is quite accidental which year a person was born and which zodiac sign he belongs to, but superstitious people often use it to calculate the horoscope and predict the future. This is ridiculous. Li Ruzhen, a novelist in the Qing Dynasty, said in The Mirror Flower Edge: "A man is not old, so why not be a sheep?" How did you become a tiger when you were born in a cloudy year? ..... mice are good at stealing, but snakes are the most vicious. Are all rats and snakes thieves? Are they vicious? As one of the four spirits, the dragon is naturally more expensive than this. Were you born old? "This statement makes sense. According to the above two theories, the zodiac originated in China. However, some people think that China's zodiac signs were imported from India, not China. A comparison was made in the Japanese literary spring and autumn annals, and it was considered that the Indian zodiac sign was the same as that of China, except that the lion was changed into a tiger in China. The book explains that there is a noun pronounced "slack" in Hindi, which means lion and tiger, so there is actually no difference between lion and tiger in the zodiac. In fact, some people in our country have put forward this view for a long time, and also pointed out a difference that was not pointed out in Literary Spring and Autumn Annals: the chicken in the China zodiac is the golden winged bird in the Indian zodiac. According to the relevant records in ancient Indian books, the researchers believe that the animal images of the zodiac were originally beasts controlled by 12 Indian gods: Zhao will drive away rats, skin will drive away cows, and Gompiro will drive away cows. Fan Luo will drive dragons, Andro will drive snakes, Amirault will drive horses, Sandro will drive sheep, Indaro will drive monkeys, Boylo will drive golden-winged birds, Mohoro will drive dogs, and Zhendaro will drive pigs. Because the geographical environment and natural resources in India are different from those in China, the golden-winged bird becomes a chicken when it arrives in China. But even so, we can still vaguely see the image of the golden winged bird from the chicken. There are 1 1 species of Zodiac animals in India that are exactly the same as those in China, so they think that the Zodiac animals in China are from India. There are also many legends about the origin of the Chinese zodiac in China. Some said that Emperor Xuanyuan wanted to choose 12 animals as court guards. Animals signed up one after another, and the cat asked the mouse to sign up for him, but the mouse forgot, so there was no cat in the zodiac. It is also said that there are 13 elephants, mice and cows with high martial arts in an animal competition. The mouse got into the trunk, which made the elephant run away in a panic, so there was the zodiac led by the mouse. With so many things, the origin of the zodiac remains to be explored.