Hello, everyone, I will meet you again in the Chinese Studies Fun Talk column!
is wandering in the deep sea with a magical and beautiful creature.
She has long fishtails, white skin, and pure and beautiful eyes. When there was a storm on the sea, she would sing the starter song and guide the ship to a safe place.
After the rain, the sailors wanted to thank her, but they could not find her again, as if she had never appeared before.
Does this kind of creature really exist in the world? Let's explore together.
1. What does a mermaid look like?
The earliest record of the existence of a mermaid in history is "Shan Hai Jing". There are three kinds of mermaid images mentioned in the
Shan Hai Jing.
The first type is red.
"Shan Hai Jing· Bei Shan Jing" records the characteristics of mermaid: "The water of the decision flows out of Yan, and the east flows into the river. Among them, there are many mermaid, four-legged, and their voice is like a baby. They eat without idiots."
They often go in and out of large rivers, they belong to inland fish, and they make a loud sound, a bit like a child.
I heard that eating it has special effects, such as making smarter.
The second type is Diren (mutual people)
"Shanhaijing·Hainei Nanjing" "Diren State is in Jianmuxi, with human face but fish body without feet."
And the Jianmu mentioned here is one kind It is a bridge between heaven and earth. Di people live in a place that can connect to heaven and earth, adding mystery to the mermaid.
The third type is Lingyu.
"Shan Hai Jing · Hai Nei Bei Jing" contains: "Ling Yu people face, hands, feet, fish body, in the sea." Hao Yixing noted: "Chatong envoy Gao Li, see a woman in the sea sand, there is a red hyena behind the elbow, the horn said The mermaid is also the lingfish." This lingfish,
, is found near the seas of Japan. Its upper limbs are similar to humans, with red body hair on its elbows.
The three kinds of mermaid mentioned in "Shan Hai Jing" are very different and contradict each other. Let us sort out:
The first kind of red horns live in the inland river, and they only sound like fish;
The second kind lives in mystery The Diren Country.
The third kind of mermaid lives overseas;
Then, which kind of mermaid we later call?
2. The mermaid is not beautiful.
The red fish mentioned in "Shan Hai Jing" is actually a kind of giant salamander.
They are flat and long, with short limbs, 4 fingers on the forelimbs, 5 toes on the hind limbs, webbed between the toes, and a short, flat tail. The
giant salamander is an amphibian that uses its gills to breathe in water and its lungs and skin to breathe outside of the water. Giant salamander forages at night and feeds on fish and crustaceans. Is
familiar?
It is the baby fish we often see on TV. It belongs to the national second-class protected animal, not a real mermaid.
What about the second one? We just said that Di Ren Nation is also called Hu Ren Nation, and Emperor Yan has a bloodline that also belongs to Hu Ren Nation.
"The Yan Emperor's grandson is called Lingxun (jiá), who gives birth to hundreds of people, and can go up and down to the sky."
Lingxun came from a kingdom that can communicate between heaven and earth, and appeared mainly as a wizard in ancient times.
may be precisely because of the ability to communicate life and death, the clan (mutual people) reappeared on the stone portraits in ancient tombs.
But with the beginning of the feudal era, the status of witchcraft was repeatedly squeezed by the imperial power, and the figure of each other gradually disappeared in history.
The third type of mermaid lives in the deep ocean and has a long life span. It has been discovered many times.
Our neighboring country, Japan, has a tradition of recording quirks. The image of a mermaid is mentioned in a book called "Ancient and Modern Strange Talks and Sentences" : "Human head and fish body, full of eyebrows and eyes,The skin is white and red, and the red fins join hands."
is obviously a ling fish recorded in the "Shan Hai Jing".
Moreover, the Japanese have also seen the true appearance of the ling fish, which is recorded in the Collection of Ancient and Modern Works. The head of an ape has fine teeth like a fish".
...Unlike we thought, this ling fish is not beautiful, but looks like a monkey.
and in this book "Anthology of Ancient and Modern" The Japanese also recorded the detailed process of eating mermaid, and believed that after eating mermaid, one can live to be 800 years old.
The legend of an eight hundred bhikuni in Wakasa country in ancient Japan: a little girl once ate mermaid meat and lived to live. He died at the age of 800.
Until now, the shrine in Aoi, Obama City still enshrines the statues of the eight hundred bhikuni gods that have survived since the Tokugawa shogunate.
the remains of the eight hundred bhikuni caves
Nan Huairin who came to China from Belgium in the 17th century An engraved "Kun Yutu" stated that a species of Xileng fish was mentioned.
"Dadongyang seafood fish is called Xileng. The upper body is like a male and female, and the lower body is like a fish tail. The bones are used for medicinal purposes, and the female fish is more effective in stopping bleeding. , Treat all internal injuries and bruises. "
, we can see that most of the mermaid we later talk about came from this lingfish.
3. The mermaid turns into a mackerel
. The earliest "Shanhaijing" is a picture. When reading, "left picture right book" is convenient for comparison. After the Jin Dynasty, due to some unknown reason, the "Mountain and Sea Map" was lost.
"Mountain and Sea Map" was lost and no one mentioned its appearance.
I have seen the original picture of "Mountain and Sea". When commenting on the "Shan Hai Jing", Guo Pu said: "When you touch the face of the nirvana, the painting style is lincai, that is, the scorpion. "
is also Guo Pu, the first to think that the shark man is a mermaid.
It is worth noting that Guo Pu is classified this way because the shark man also has fish scales (artificial painting), rather than thinking that the shark man also has a fish tail.
Since then, the second volume of "Natural History", "Foreign Countries" recorded: "There are mackerel people living in the South China Sea, living like fish in the water, and weaving achievements are not wasted, and their eyes can weep beads. "
Yuren can weave cloth, tears can be turned into pearls. Affected by this view, later myths and legends gradually transformed Yuren into kind-hearted beauties.
"Tai Ping Yu Lan" volume 8.3: "Yu Ren Come out of the water, live in the house, and sell silk every day. Will go, ask for a weapon from the master, weeping into beads full of beads, to meet the master. "
" Shu Yi Ji" says: "The Jiao Ren is Quanxian Ye, also known as Quan Ke. The dragon yarn comes out from the South China Sea, and Quan first subtly weaves, a dragon yarn, the price is more than 100 gold. I thought I would not get into the water. In the South China Sea, there is the Dragon Silk Palace, where the spring is the first to weave the silk, the silk is white as frost. "
In the Tang Dynasty, there were more imaginations about the shark people. Both Du Fu and Li Qi wrote poems about the shark people.
Du Fu's "Kecong": "The guest came from Nanxun, and I left me with a spring guest pearl. There are hidden words in the beads, and you cannot make a book if you want to distinguish them.缄之箧笥笥 for a long time, as a public mustache. Enlightenment turned into blood, sad today conquered nothing. "
Li Qi "Song of the Sharks": "The Sharks submerged and weaves underwater dwellings, and they swim with fish on their sides." "
is precisely this misunderstanding based on the shark man being a mermaid, which created the Chinese imagination of the mysterious and beautiful mermaid.
4. Where did the real mermaid go?
Since the saying that the shark man is a mermaid is a misinformation, So does the real mermaid still exist?
Because the mermaid lives in the deep sea, we turn our eyes to the world.
There has always been a legend about the mermaid (Mermaid) in European Greek mythology.
"Homer's Epic Odyssey" There is a description of siren siren :
In the vast ocean, there is a sea monster with a human head and a fish body. She confuses passing ships with her charming singing and guides sailors to the way of no return.
In "Andersen's Fairy Tales", there is also a kind-hearted mermaid. The little mermaid exchanges his voice for his legs for the prince he likes. But the prince turns to marry a princess from a neighboring country. The little mermaid finally turns into a sea foam.
With the development of modern marine technology, mankind hasThere are more and more solutions.
In 1962, the scientific exploration vessel where Dr. Vinograd of the Lenin Academy of Sciences of the former Soviet Union was working, captured a child with a fish-tailed face, scaly skin, human-like head and fish-like tail.
In 1980, a local fisherman claimed to have found a mermaid with two long legs on the Red Sea coast.
In 1990, on the shore of the Black Sea outside Sochi (Russia), someone spotted a dark-skinned mermaid with a long tail.
In 1991, on the coast of Yugoslavia on the Balkan Peninsula, scientists excavated here a 12,000-year-old mermaid fossil. The fossil is well preserved, and the sharp teeth of the mermaid can be clearly seen.
In 1991, two American fishermen caught 11 sharks in the Caribbean Sea. In one of the killer whales, a creature that was half human and half fish was found.
has records, fossils, and human evidence, which shows that the mermaid is real. But just like the description in the "Shan Hai Jing", the mermaid is neither as beautiful and kind as we imagined, nor has any superpowers.
5. Summary The existence of the mermaid
can be explained in terms of human origin.
The oldest ancestor of mankind is apes. Due to floods or major natural disasters, human ancestors had to go to the ocean in order to survive.
Later, due to the rise of the industrial revolution and technological revolution, the marine ecology deteriorated, and the mermaid fled to the inaccessible deep sea or was already extinct, leaving only countless legends.
The mermaid is inextricably linked with our human ancestors, but due to the destruction of the environment by humans, it gradually disappears. This has to be said to be regrettable.
and above is the content of this issue, I am Rusi Abode, your cultural manual, , we will see you in the next issue.
Do you believe that there are mermaids in the world? Welcome to discuss with Tiaoyou in the comment area!
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