Cowherd and Weaver Girl is one of the four great folk love legends in China (the other three are "The Legend of the White Snake", "Meng Jiangnv Crying at the Great Wall", "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai"), derived from the star names of Altair and Vega, and related to the The festival related to the legend is the Qixi Festival.

In 2008, the legend of Cowherd and Weaver Girl was approved by the State Council to be included in the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.

In the ancient star system of our country, Niu Xing Guan is composed of 6 stars, located on the east bank of the Milky Way, like two inverted triangles, one up and one down, very characteristic, but the upper triangle is bigger and brighter.The small triangle below is exactly on the ecliptic. These stars form a cow with two horns on its head but only three legs, so the ancients called it "the cow".There are 9 small stars to the south of this "cow", which form the "Tiantian", which is the place where it cultivates. Looking south, near the southern horizon, there are 9 stars of "Jiukan", which is a storage place for water. Lowlands, used to irrigate farmland.To the east of Niusu is the 3-star "Luoyan", which is a water conservancy facility similar to a reservoir. The three "Vega" stars are located in the northern part of Niu, and the "Vega 3" star is the fifth brightest star in the whole sky, second only to the "Bighorn" star, so it is often directly called "Vega".Therefore, "Ox Pleiades" and "Vega" are collectively called Cowherd and Weaver Girl. [2]

Altair Vega

As early as ancient times, people observed celestial phenomena and corresponded sky star regions with geographical regions.The ancients who pursued order not only planned the sky in an orderly manner, but also made a one-to-one correspondence between the stars and the ground areas. This correspondence is called "divided stars" in terms of astronomy, and "divided fields" in terms of the ground.To put it simply, the ancients corresponded each constellation in the sky with the physical geographical area on the ground. [3]

Documentation

The astronomical and starry sky area of ​​the Cowherd and Weaver Girl corresponds to the geographical divisions on the ground. The existing written records can be found in the documents of the Han Dynasty, "Hanshu Geographical Records": "The division of the Cowherd (Niulang) and Wunu (Weaver Girl) in Guangdong (Yue) is also Today Cangwu, Yulin, Hepu, Jiaozhi, Jiuzhen, Nanhai, and Rinan are all part of Guangdong." "Hanshu Geographical Records" records that the Cowherd and Vega districts correspond to the Lingnan regions. [4]

A total of 4

Cowherd and Weaver

Regarding the legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, there is a passage in Ren Fang's "Shu Yi Ji" in the Southern and Northern Dynasties: "In the east of the great river, there is a beautiful woman, the son of the Emperor of Heaven, a female worker with a loom, who works hard every year to weave the clothes of cloud and mist silk. There is no joy, no time to tidy up his appearance, the Emperor of Heaven took pity on him to be alone, and married Hexi Niuniu as his wife. Since then, he has abandoned the work of weaving and weaving, and he is greedy for joy. The emperor is angry and blames Hedong, and we meet once a year."

"Niulang", the name of "Weaver Girl", the earliest surviving text records appeared in "The Book of Songs Xiaoya Dadong": "There is Han in Weitian, and there is light in the prison. The weaver girl, Qixiang all day long, although Qixiang , not a newspaper. Take the cowherd and the cowherd together, not the box.” In the poem, the cowherd is called the cowherd, but at that time the cowherd and the weaver girl only referred to the stars in the sky and there was no description of love.In the Western Han Dynasty, the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl were described as two gods and men. In Ban Gu's Western Capital Fu, it was described that "next to the Kunming Pool, the cowherd on the left and the Weaver Girl on the right, like the endlessness of Yunhan." Weaver Statue.There are further descriptions in the later "Nineteen Ancient Poems", one of which describes "Altair Far Away"

Far away Altair, Hannv of Jiaojiao River;

Slim and simple hands, Zhazhan get machine.

There is no rule all day long, and the tears are like rain;

He Han is clear and shallow, how many times will it go?

There was no language in Yingying.

The legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl can be found in the "Book of Songs Xiaoya Dadong": the records of "the weaver girl on the other side" and "the cowherd and the cowherd on the other side". "Nineteen Ancient Poems A Far Away Altair" has called Cowherd and Weaver Girl husband and wife.Ying Shao's "Customs" Yiwen: "The Weaver Girl should cross the river on the Qixi Festival, and use the magpie as a bridge. It is said that the heads of the magpies will be dead for no reason on the seventh day, because Liang also crosses the Weaver Girl."

Regarding Zhinu, there are several references to her in ancient books. "Hou Han Shu Astronomical Records": "Weaver Girl, the true daughter of the Son of Heaven." "Historical Records": "Three Stars, at the east end of the Tianji, also the Tiannv." Below, it is called Vega." Vega is the brightest star in the Lyra constellation.Altair is the brightest star in the constellation Aquila.It and the two smaller stars on both sides are sometimes collectively called "Bandarm Stars".According to the myth, the two stars next to it are the cowherd and the child he gave birth to.Swans are floating in the Milky Way, a girl is weaving by the river, and a shepherd and two children are herding cattle on the other side.What a beautiful picture this is. . [

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