The Red Rabbit Horse is one of the most famous war horses in ancient times, but where did the name of the Red Rabbit Horse come from? It was obviously a horse, but it turned out to be called "Rabbit". The ancients named the war horse: What kind of emphasis is there? In fact, one or two things can be analyzed from the names of horses in the Three Kingdoms. The names are generally derived from two aspects, one is the color, and the other is the speed. "Red" is the color, and "Rabbit" shows the characteristics of being as sensitive and flexible as a rabbit. There is no record of the origin of the name Red Rabbit Horse in "Three Kingdoms", so if you want to know the truth, you may have to do some in-depth research.
A Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel depicts countless heroes, fierce generals and counselors. Who is the first general in the Three Kingdoms? It must be Lu Bu who can only challenge three heroes with a square halberd. , as the saying goes, a good horse has a good saddle, a famous general has a BMW, and Lu Bu's mount is the famous red rabbit horse. This horse can travel thousands of miles in a day, cross water and climb mountains as easily as it can tread on flat ground. Lu Bu rode it and gained a great reputation - "Lü Bu among men, red rabbit among horses." Then Chitu Ma followed Guan Yu to kill Yan Liang and Wen Chou. He passed five passes and killed six generals. It can be said that it is a household name and deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. If you ask the Chinese audience which horse was the number one horse in ancient times, most people will probably answer: Red Rabbit!
Although it is famous, the name Red Rabbit is very strange. My little nephew asked me Why is Red Rabbit named Red Rabbit? I hesitated for a long time and couldn't tell the reason. Is it a red rabbit? It doesn't seem to be convincing...
Let's just Let’s analyze why this horse is called Red Rabbit.
Look at the name of Cao Cao’s famous horse "Jueying", which is much simpler and more appropriate. Just from the name alone, you can tell that it must be a horse. It can’t even catch up with its shadow when it runs! Jueying is The famous horse that actually appeared, "Book of Wei" records that Zhang Xiu was chasing Cao Cao. Thanks to Jueying, he was able to escape with Cao Cao. Cheeks and feet, and the middle right arm)
How did the red rabbit get its name?
Here we will introduce the ancient pair. How to name a horse.
The first type: named after coat color.
We know that horses were revered animals in ancient times. The vocabulary related to horses in ancient times was much richer than what we use now, so many words with horse next to them were created, and they also Relevant to the color of the horse's coat. Therefore, "Qi" (a green and black horse), "Cong" (a horse with green and white coats, for example, Hu Yanzhuo rides a green horse in Water Margin), "Hualiu" (which refers to a jujube Words such as "red horse") and "铓" (referring to blue and white horses). If it is a good black horse without any mottled color, it is called a black horse. Xiang Yu once wrote a song: The times are not good and the black horse will not fade away, but if the black horse does not fade away, nothing can be done! If the black horse has all four hooves, If the horse is white, it is called a black horse stepping on the snow. If there is only a touch of white in front of the horse's hooves, it is called a black horse kicking the snow. In Water Margin, Hu Yanzhuo was stolen by Peach Blossom Mountain, and it was such a black-collared horse that walked on the snow). In addition, there is Huang Feidian (a famous horse ridden by Cao Cao in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, with yellow hooves, hence its name).
The second type: named after speed.
The Jueying horse that I just introduced to you is named after its speed. The yellow flying lightning claw also emphasizes that the speed is like flying lightning. Another example is the eight horses that King Mu of Zhou rode to conquer the world. The "Biography of Emperor Mu" states: "The king controls the horses of the eight dragons: one is a dead horse, with a foot that does not touch the earth; two horses with feathers, can fly over birds. ; Three are running for the night, traveling thousands of miles at night; four are super shadows, walking day by day; five are super bright, their coats are shining; six are super bright, one shape has ten shadows; seven are flying in the mist, riding on the clouds; eight are holding their wings, The body has fleshy wings. "Look, this name is both appropriate and domineering. You can tell it is a rare horse! (There is another saying that King Zhou Mu's eight horses are named: Chiji, Pirates, and Pirates). Baiyi, Yuolun, Shanzi, Quhuang, Hualiu, Luer.
In fact, it is also named according to the color)
Let’s analyze it according to the name of Red Rabbit: Red represents red, and Rabbit represents rabbit? Together they are a red horse that can run as fast as a rabbit?
Some people may explain it this way, because rabbits have the meaning of speed in ancient times. There is an old saying in China that goes "as quiet as a virgin, and as active as a stripped rabbit." The stripped rabbit is agile, clever, and quick. It is used to describe a thousand-mile horse. Just right! And in addition to folk proverbs, ancient books also seem to confirm this statement. "Lu Shi Chun Qiu·Li Su" wrote that "flying rabbits, Yao, are also ancient horses."
You see In addition to red rabbits, ancient horses also had flying rabbits (flying rabbits?). Gao You added an annotation to this paragraph: "Flying rabbits and Yao are all names of horses. They travel thousands of miles a day and gallop as fast as a rabbit, because they think Name." The origin of the name of this BMW is that it runs like a white rabbit, so it is called a flying rabbit.
Does this mean that it is okay to run as fast as a rabbit?
In fact, this is not necessarily the case.
First of all, let’s talk about Gao You’s interpretation. Gao You was a great scholar in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, but interpreting the flying rabbit as a flying rabbit is probably his own opinion (after all, he just added a The annotation may not be Lu Buwei’s original intention, not to mention that not all what the ancients wrote is correct!) If you really think that the red rabbit runs as fast as a rabbit, it may be meaningless.
So how did the red rabbit get its name? Let’s take a look at the "Three Kingdoms": "Bu has a good horse called Red Tu." "Bu often drives a good horse, named Red Tu, which can Pei Songzhi also added an annotation to this: "The Biography of Cao Man" said that people at that time said that there was Lu Bu among the people, and there was a red tug among the horses. It can be seen that the original name of Red Rabbit Horse is Red Tu, which may have been misspelled or misrepresented, so the word "Tu" became the word "Rabbit" for rabbit.
So what does this dodder mean? Tiger!
The dodder is explained in "Ji Yun" like this: "Tongduqie, Yintu. Chu people call the tiger the dodder." "Yun Hui" also said: "Fei Cu, the name of the divine horse." The use of Cu as a name for tigers seems to have been quite popular in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods and even in the Qin and Han Dynasties (not only used by the people of Chu), and you see. , this flying rabbit was originally supposed to be flying dodder, which means flying tiger (it has nothing to do with flying rabbits at all). Brother Gao Yu probably made a mistake that he took for granted!
Dodder was used in ancient times The frequency is relatively frequent. During the Spring and Autumn Period, there was a minister in the Chu State named "Fighting Grain Yu Tu". It is said that this brother was born on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. This is a very unlucky day for harming his father and his mother, so his mother threw him directly into Yunmengze. When the tiger saw the baby, he didn't even eat it and even ate it for him. Milk, in Chu State, "milk" is called "grain", so the whole name can be interpreted as a child raised by a tiger. Coincidentally, there is a place in Shandong named "Tuqiu", which actually means tiger fur. There was a "Xuantu County" in Liaodong during the Han Dynasty. Xuanzhe, black, was a black tiger. The Northeast region was originally the birthplace of tigers. Maybe it was because the ancients discovered the rare black tiger here that they named this county Xuantu.
Good guy, look at that little difference of just one word, the cute and cute little white rabbit has turned into a ferocious and cruel tiger!
But that’s right, the red It feels weird to interpret a mighty, thousand-mile war horse like a dodder as running as fast as a rabbit, but it would be different if it were interpreted as a mighty and brave horse like a tiger!
However, a silk book "Xiangma Jing" was unearthed from the Han Tomb No. 3 in Mawangdui, Changsha, which defined the appearance of a thousand-mile horse: "If you want to get the head and shoulders of a rabbit, you want to get the grass of a fox." "With its ears, if you want to get the eyes and neck of a bird, if you want to get the fins and spine of a fish," "To get the rabbit and the fox, and the bird and the fish, you get these four things, nothing else."
Some people here interpret the rabbit as a dodder, and say that the head of a thousand-mile horse should be like a tiger's head. This statement seems too far-fetched. Let's look at the horse's head, and then look at the tiger's head. Forgive me for my short-sightedness, but I have never seen a horse whose head looks like a tiger's...
So what does this passage mean? In fact, good horses and rabbits It still matters.
Let me introduce you to the second explanation of Red Rabbit: Red Rabbit refers to a horse whose head is shaped like a rabbit. The ancients divided horse heads into straight heads, rabbit heads, concave heads, wedge heads, and half heads. There are several types of rabbit heads. The so-called rabbit heads and half-rabbit heads mean that the part above the nose of the horse slightly protrudes outward, which is very similar to the head of a rabbit. Most of the rabbit-headed horses are large horses. They are strong and tall, and they run like lightning. Therefore, the ancients evaluated the rabbit head as an important external criterion for evaluating good horses. "Xiangma Sutra" records: "If a horse's head wants to be tall and tall, as if it were shaved, and if it wants to be square and heavy, it should have less meat, like peeling off a rabbit's head. If the longevity bone wants to be big, it should be like a guinea stone wrapped in cotton wool, and the heir bone should be cheap. It is wide and wants to be long, the forehead wants to be square and flat, the eight legs are big and bright, the easy bones want to be straight, the Yuanzhong wants to be deep, the cheeks want to be open, and the martingale wants to be square."
So you can say " It doesn't matter if you say "red rabbit" or "red tug", but these two names have nothing to do with "running as fast as a rabbit"!