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The Myth and Folklore of the Rat Zodiac

The Myth and Folklore of the Rat Zodiac

The rat belongs to the first place in the zodiac, and it belongs to the twelve earthly branches, “Zi”, so the “Zi Shi” in the twelve o’clock in the day – ten in the evening to one in the morning, also known as the “Rat Shi”.

From 11:00 pm to 1:00 pm the next day (i.e. “Zi Hou”). At this time, the rat has the strongest courage and the most frequent activities. Therefore, the child is paired with the rat.

It is said that a long time ago, the zodiac was under the control of the four heavenly kings. What was the surname of the king of the deacon in that year, what was the person born in that year. Later, after the Four Heavenly Kings returned to the Heavenly Palace to guard the Nantianmen, the Jade Emperor decided to select twelve animals to represent the zodiac of the human world and conferred them as gods.

In order to reflect the principle of fairness, the Jade Emperor ordered that all animals from the human world can go to the Heavenly Palace on a set day. They should be selected, and the order in which the animals arrive at the Tiangong is used as the order of ranking, and only the top 12 who arrive first are selected.

At that time, the mouse and the cat were a pair of good friends, and they agreed to go to the Tiangong together to fight for the zodiac sign, and agreed that the mouse would come and call the cat to set off together. However, the clever little mouse thought that many animals in the world are more beautiful than themselves, and they are also useful to human beings, such as cat chanting scriptures, rabbit worshiping the moon, dogs guarding houses, dragons and snakes controlling water, monkeys in mountains, cattle and horses ploughing fields, pigs and sheep offering sacrifices For human consumption, one should think of a way to win the zodiac.

So, in the early morning of the day when it was stipulated to go to the Tiangong, the little mouse quietly got up, and did not call the cat. He secretly jumped on the old cow’s horn and hid himself. The toughest and most diligent cow took him to the Tiangong. Lao Niu was indeed the first to arrive at the gate of Tiangong.

It was dawn, the Four Heavenly Kings had just opened the gate of the palace, and the ox had not had time to lift its hooves. Although the Jade Emperor was reluctant to seal this little mouse as the zodiac sign. However, there was no joke in the king’s mouth, and the rules he had set could not be changed, so the Jade Emperor had no choice but to announce the rat as the head of the zodiac.

The cat waited at home for a long time, but could not see the shadow of the rat, so he had to rush to the Tiangong by himself. Since the time was delayed by waiting for the mouse, when the cat arrived in the Tiangong, the quota for the twelve zodiac signs was full, and there was no more room for the cat.

From then on, the cat hated the mouse so much that it rushed to bite it as soon as it saw it, to vent its anger, and the mouse also felt that it was a bit of a cat friend, and ran away when it saw the cat. To this day, cats and mice are still rivals, and people also think that the head of the zodiac of the mouse is not very fair, and they have lost their goodwill towards the mouse, and other animals have also alienated it.

As a result, he left people and other livestock and established his own home and lived an independent life. To this day, their descendants still live underground. This has avoided the entanglement and fight with other animals, so the family of rats has always been prosperous and prosperous. In any case, after all, the rat got the first seat of the Chinese zodiac by virtue of his alertness and intelligence.

The twenty-fifth day of the first month of the lunar calendar is the “Cangcang Festival”, where grain merchants and rice vendors offer sacrifices to the “Cangshen” mouse. In the Qing Dynasty, Pan Rongsheng’s “Jisheng at the Age of Emperor Jing” stated: “When this new festival is over, the warehouse is empty, and it should be restored and real.”

On the night of the filling festival, no lights were allowed, and that night was when a mouse married a daughter. However, on the day of the marriage of the mouse, there is no uniformity in all places. On that day, people stir-fry soybeans with brown sugar and withdraw to the corner of the house. In the Shaanxi area, salt and rice grains are sprinkled in the corner of the house, which is called “mouse cents”. Sunan took off her shoes as a sedan chair, and the peel as a gift box.

The marriage of a mouse to a daughter is also an important theme for New Year pictures and paper-cuts. In the picture, the lantern and drum band on the sedan chair is like a grand wedding ceremony in the world. It is the rat who carries the sedan chair to play music. Only the appearance of the bride and groom varies from place to place. There is even a god of reproduction in the shape of a rat. Lu Xun recalled in “Dog, Cat and Mouse”, “The night of the 14th day of the first lunar month was the night when I refused to go to bed easily and waited for their guards of honor to come out from under the bed.”

Qinghai’s “steamed blind mice”, on the 14th day of the first lunar month, use noodles to make twelve mice, without pinching their eyes, steaming them in a steamer, and placing them on the table during the Lantern Festival, lighting lamps and burning incense, begging the mice not to hurt the crops.