Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

The original title: "what? The earliest Spring Festival couplets were not written on paper? "

It's another year for New Year's Eve. I guess all readers must be busy posting Spring Festival couplets this morning. When posting Spring Festival couplets, have you ever wondered which one is the upper couplet and which is the lower couplet, and how to paste it? Have you ever wondered what the first Spring Festival couplet in the world looked like and how it walked through the long river of history and into the homes of ordinary people?

Let's travel through the vast historical time and space, go back to a thousand years ago, and see what the Spring Festival couplets looked like at first.

The birth of Spring Festival couplets on New year's Eve in 964 AD, the Emperor Meng Chang of the Shu Kingdom in Chengdu led civil and military officials and harem beauties to celebrate another New year.

This is the 30th Spring Festival since he ascended the throne. Looking at the pavilions and pavilions that have accompanied him for 30 years, he is lost in thought.

He is worthy of the common people, light corvee, eradicate treachery; rectify the administration of officials, combat corruption and promote honesty; persuade farmers to teach mulberry, and develop the economy. "Erbao Erlu, the people paste the fat of the people. The people are easy to abuse, but heaven is difficult to deceive." It is the motto he wrote in every official Yamen. Post-Shu flourished under his rule, and the people lived and worked in peace and contentment. In the five dynasties and ten kingdoms, which were in chaos and full of bones, they seemed to be a paradise.

Er Fengerlu, people ointment people fat. The lower people are easy to abuse, and it is difficult for God to deceive him to be worthy of himself. He loves poetry and poetry more; he loves pleasure and beauty more. The Eleven Classics is his greatest inheritance of Confucianism, the Collection of Huajian is his most sincere love for poetry, and the Hanlin Academy of painting is his most noble understanding of art. "Ice muscle and jade bones are clear and sweat-free, and the water hall wind is dark and fragrant." It is a famous article he wrote to Mrs. Huarui. He planted hibiscus in the national capital and gave Chengdu the laudatory name of "Chengdu". As the so-called flirtatious son of Heaven, people live a lifetime, only according to their own heart.

Chengdu Chengdu, however, he was ashamed of the state and the former king. He doesn't ask about the military, but his military equipment is flabby. Unambitious, cowardly and incompetent. In the changing dynasties of the five dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, he had many excellent opportunities to set Guanzhong in the north, and then to compete for hegemony in the Central Plains, but he was indecisive and missed in vain. He was born in troubled times, but only asked for the secession of a corner of Shu.

A month ago, the spies came to report that Zhao Kuangyin, the master of the Song Dynasty, sent Wang Quanbin, Cui Yanjin and others to the south to destroy Shu. After hearing this, Meng Chang didn't say a word and didn't know what to do.

But at present, the Spring Festival is still over. He looked at the peach charm hanging outside the palace, the red wood was dim and nothing new, and suddenly he wrote "New year's Nayuqing, Jiajie Changchun" on the mahogany. "New year Nayuqing" refers to enjoying the legacy of our ancestors in the New year, and "Jiajie Changchun" means that spring is always in the world. Seeing all the praise, the civil and military officials followed suit and wrote neat and exquisite sentences with beautiful meaning on their own peach charms. This is the first Spring Festival couplet in Chinese history.

However, the beauty of the words cannot paralyze the cruelty of reality after all. Before the first month passed, the clanking iron hoofs of Song Bing came from the distant horizon.

On February 16, when the army of the Song Dynasty was under the city, Meng Chang surrendered to Lu Yuqing, the emissary of the Song Dynasty. At this time, only 66 days after Song Taizu sent troops, Houshu, which had the best economic development in the South of the five dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, perished at the fastest speed, enjoying the country for 31 years. And this day is Zhao Kuangyin's birthday, which is designated as the "Spring Festival" of the Song Dynasty. "New year celebration, Jiajie Changchun" has been realized in a very wonderful way.

After the end of Shu, Meng Chang was escorted to the city of Bianliang in Tokyo. Tens of thousands of people in Shu stood on both sides of the road, burst into tears and burst into tears. Looking at the people who love themselves, recalling their own life, or relief, or regret, or helplessness, or remorse, thousands of thoughts are like a well-known song "continuous cutting, management is still chaotic, is sorrow, do not have a taste in the heart." Imprisoned in a small building in Bianliang City, Meng Chang deeply missed the life of emperors and the people in Shu, and his fate was similar to that of several other "homesick" last monarchs in the same period, and he soon finished his life in Bianliang.

In the portrait of Meng Chang, he might have been a flirtatious genius in the ruling world, but fate arranged him to be a king in troubled times. Thousands of years later, few people remember the obscure name Meng Chang, and few remember Houshu, a country with a very weak sense of existence, but every year New Year's Eve people bid farewell to the old and welcome the new to the sound of firecrackers and put on a new Spring Festival couplet to express the simple wishes of home and everything. Perhaps this is the trace of his haste in the world.

In fact, the rise and fall of history should be a multi-source process of gradual emergence and development, in which the story of Meng Chang is one of the most influential. If we want to really understand the evolution of Spring Festival couplets, we need to start earlier.

Next, we review the past life and present life of the couplet from the "Taofu" which is used to write the couplet and the "couplet" written on the Taofu.

As early as the Spring and Autumn and warring States period, there was a saying that mahogany could ward off evil spirits. It is recorded in Zhuangzi that "the peach branch is planted in the household, even under the ash. The boy is not afraid, but the ghosts are afraid of it." It vividly describes the exorcism of mahogany branches. Later, people used to hang peach boards on both sides of the gate, and their size and shape were also fastidious. According to the Book of Rites in the later Han Dynasty, "Taofu is six inches long and three inches wide."

Mahogany painting with the passage of time, people gradually feel that hanging two peach boards at the door is too monotonous, and begin to make some marks on the peach charm, or draw some gods to ward off evil spirits. Zong Jing, a famous scholar in the Southern and Northern dynasties, wrote in the Jing and Chu Age, "the year Day, painting two gods close to the door, Zuoshen tea, right Yu Bai, commonly known as the door god." It can be seen that the images of people at that time were painted on the peach charm.

After the establishment of the Tang Dynasty, Emperor Taizong painted the images of Qin Shubao and Wei Chi Gong as door gods, which gradually affected the people. To this day, there is still the custom of posting portraits of these two door gods.

The birth of the door gods Qin Shubao and Wei Chi Gong Lianwen was almost in this historical period, Taofu and Lianwen gradually began to combine. For example, in the Sutra Cave in Dunhuang, the couplet "Sanyang Shibu, Sixue Chukai", which was written in the spring day of Kaiyuan (AD 723), was unearthed. Some scholars believe that this is the earliest Spring Festival couplet, and even some earlier records.

In fact, the inscription on Taofu should be a process of multi-source and gradual development. Meng Chang's story is more widely spread and is one of the most influential. After the establishment of the Song Dynasty, it became a popular national custom to write conjunctions on Taofu. The poem "New Year's Eve" by Wang Mai, a poet of the Southern Song Dynasty, said, "the son of Heaven did not know the work and Fu, but the neighbor or Qian wrote the Taofu." It vividly depicts the scene of people writing Spring Festival couplets.

When writing Spring Festival couplets in the Song Dynasty, as Wang Anshi wrote in the first Day, "thousands of families ushered in the rising sun in the first month, and they always replaced the old peach charm with a new door god." Couplets are also written on mahogany, but mahogany is expensive for ordinary people after all.

Paper Spring Festival couplets since Cai Lun improved papermaking in the Eastern Han Dynasty, papermaking has developed several times in the Tang and Song dynasties. The Tiangong Kaiwu written by Song Yingxing in the Ming Dynasty has a very detailed summary and discussion on the papermaking methods of different types of paper. During the Ming Dynasty, Spring Festival couplets began to be written on paper. This kind of paper is called "Zhengdan Paper". Pan Zongding's Chronicles of the Age of Jinling records "New Year's Day, thousands of households are more easy to make Spring Festival couplets, dyed with cinnabar paper, the best is called ten thousand years of red, and it was made since the beginning of the Ming Dynasty." This kind of paper is dyed in red and red, and its characteristic is that it is not easy to fade. The cinnabar used is ground, opened with glue, baked with charcoal fire and covered with grass ash when baking to prevent the paper from being damaged by fire. Some Zhengdan paper will also be sprinkled with fine fragments of silver foil or copper-tin foil to make it more distinctive with gold stars on the paper.

The spread of Zhengdan Paper sprinkled with silver foil spread that Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, played an important role in the promotion of Spring Festival couplets. Chen Yunzhan recorded the establishment of Spring Festival couplets since the beginning of the Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, the imperial capital Jinling, New Year's Eve, Gongqing family, the door must add a pair of Spring Festival couplets. " By way of administrative order, Zhu Yuanzhang asked every household to post Spring Festival couplets, and he would also take to the streets to enjoy it personally. In addition, he often personally wrote Spring Festival couplets to the minister, for example, he once gave Xu Da "the first person in ancient and modern times to break the prisoner of Pingman."

Zhu Yuanzhang, who loved couplets, in the Qing Dynasty, posted Spring Festival couplets became a "reserved program" for people to bid farewell to the New year and welcome the New year, and its content and form were further developed.

About the couplet, what are the basic requirements of the Spring Festival couplet? How to post it? All this should start from the ancestors' pursuit of symmetrical beauty.

Since the birth of the language, the beauty of symmetry has been the pursuit of the literati. The famous sentence "Qingqingzi" in the Book of songs in the pre-Qin period is leisurely in my heart. " It embodies the shadow of this symmetrical beauty. Han Fu, which was popular in the Han Dynasty, pursued the splendor, momentum and rhythm of words, but lacked the neatness of sentences.

In my mind, the parallel Fu rising at the end of the Han Dynasty in the Wei and Jin dynasties has both the characteristics of the antithesis of parallel prose and the rhythm of Han Fu. For example, in Cao Zhi's Fu of God Luo, "Pian is like a frightened Hong, and euphemism is like a wandering dragon."it seems that Xi is like a light cloud covering the moon, and swaying like a breeze returning to snow." Yu Xin's Fu of mourning the South of the Yangtze River: Chu songs are not for amusement, and Lu wine is not used to forget worries. "

After entering the Tang Dynasty, under the influence of law and poetry, the writing and rhythm of parallel Fu are more neat, and the Preface to Tengwang Pavilion, which is known as "the first parallel text through the ages", has "falling clouds flying together with solitude and sorrow, and the autumn waters are the same as each other." The famous sentence of the ages.

Luoxia flew with solitude, and the rhythm poems were shaped in the early Tang Dynasty. Compared with Han Fu and parallel prose, there are strict regulations in terms of words, rhyme, tonal, antithesis and so on. For example, in du Fu's "Journey to the Night and Book Huai", "the stars on the vast horizon of the field are like falling to the ground, and the bright moon surges in the water to see the river running." Fully embodies this characteristic, every word has the same part of speech, relative meaning, tonal coordination, fully reflects the beauty of the Chinese language. Law poetry spread widely with the prosperity of literature and art in the Tang Dynasty.

The stars on the vast horizon of the field fall to the ground, and the bright moon surges in the water to see the river rushing. The two direct sources of the couplets that began in the late Tang and five dynasties are parallel prose and rhythm poetry, which have absorbed the characteristics of ancient poetry, prose, ci and qu in the process of development.

The basic format of the joint text the four basic requirements of the joint text are:

The number of words is equal and the sentences are the same. The number of upper and lower words must be no more or less, and the position of the broken sentence must be the same.

The tones are in harmony and the tones are harmonious. (flat refers to Hanyu Pinyin one and two tones, tonal refers to three and four tones) pay attention to "tonal rise and fall", that is, the word at the end of the upper couplet is flat sound, and the word at the end of the lower couplet is flat tone. Generally, we use this method to distinguish the upper and lower couplets of couplets. (note: we occasionally see ancient name couplets that violate the tonal rule, mostly because the ancient pronunciation has changed from today's pronunciation.)

The part of speech is relative and the position is the same. In the same position, pay attention to the same part of speech of every word.

The content is relevant and connects up and down. The meanings of upper and lower couplets must be linked to each other, but cannot be repeated.

When the couplet is posted, it is traditionally written and posted vertically, with the upper couplet on the right and the lower couplet on the left. However, in ancient times, horizontal batches were written from right to left, while most of the Spring Festival couplets on the market today are written from left to right. When posting Spring Festival couplets, we need to pay attention to the direction of horizontal batches. For horizontal batches from left to right, the upper couplets can be pasted to the left and the lower couplets to the right, which is more in line with the reading habits of modern people.

For horizontal batches from left to right, the use of upper couplets posted on the left and lower couplets on the right can be expanded later, with the passage of time, the couplets are no longer bound to the Spring Festival couplets, and are no longer limited to expressing their wishes for the New year when bidding farewell to the New year and welcoming the New year, but gradually become an independent literary form and a way for literati to compete for literary skills.

Many popular couplets express ideals, satirize the past and the present, mourn, or commemorate great men. For example, "the sound of wind and rain, the sound of reading, family affairs, state affairs, world affairs, care about everything."

Pu Songling's "where there is a will, there is a way, burns the boat, and two hundred Qin passes belong to Chu in the end; a painstaking man, a man who lives up to heaven, suffers from hardship, and three thousand Yue A can swallow Wu."

There is also the elegiac couplet written by international friend Snow to Mr. Lu Xun. "the translation of the elegiac couplet has not yet been successful. When I heard that the meteorite star, who led the cry in China? my husband has died in the past, remembering the old rain, and the literary world has been at a loss ever since."

As well-known phrases, these couplets are glittering treasures in Chinese culture. Until the Chinese language examination in the period of the Republic of China, it was still a basic assessment of the language ability of the upper and lower couplets.

Where there is a will, there is a way. So, what is the couplet posted by your family this year? You might as well share it in the comments area.

References:

[1] Zhang Tangying, "Shu Ying"

[2] Fan Ye in the Book of Etiquette in the later Han Dynasty

[3] Pan Zongding in the Chronicles of Jinling

[4] Chen Shanggu in miscellaneous notes of hairpin Yunlou

[5] Zong Ji in Jing Chu's Old Story

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ID:cas-iop), author: Quantum Bard

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