Analysis of the relationship between ghosts and gods in The Underworld of China
A few days ago, it was the traditional Chinese July and a half. We usually hear three names for this day: Zhongyuan Festival, Obon Festival, and Ancestor Worship Festival. In fact, these three terms correspond to two religions and one folklore: Taoism (Zhongyuan Festival, July 15), Buddhism (Olan Festival, July 15), and Ancestral Ceremony (World Folklore, July 10). Four). The reason why the ancestor worship festival is one day away from the other two is that in the traditional Chinese saying, “seven” is a changing number, the number of resurrection, and the number of seven is expressed in stages in time in the folks. When calculating time, “seven seven” is often used as the final and resurrection game. So the traditional ancestor worship festival is July 14th instead of July 15th. Later Buddhism was introduced into the Central Plains, and Taoism merged with its related systems to develop the Zhongyuan Festival on July 15.
The custom of worshipping ancestors in July and a half have existed in ancient times. Later on the rise of Taoism, among the Taoist gods, there were heaven officials, land officials, and water officials, collectively known as the “three official emperors”. They were the representatives of the emperor in the world. It was on the “Three Yuan Day” for the emperor of heaven to check the human merits and crimes to determine rewards and punishments: “Heaven official is the fifteenth day of the first lunar month for blessing, and the land official is for the fifteenth day of July to forgive sins. Water official relieved bad luck on October 15th. The local officials are in charge of the Underworld, and the focus of the inspection is naturally the ghosts. The middle yuan, the upper yuan, and the lower yuan are collectively referred to as the “three yuan”. It is said that on the day of Zhongyuan, the underground palace opened the gates of hell, and it was also the day when the gates of hell were opened. All ghosts would leave the Underworld and accept examinations. Ghosts with a master would go home, and those without a master would wander the world, wandering around looking for things. Eat, so the Zhongyuan Festival is also called the Ghost Festival. It is a common practice to worship ghosts and light lotus lanterns as the way back home for the dead. The Taoist temple held a grand puja to pray for the auspicious dojo, and the Taoist prayed for the soul of the dead soul.
Now that the ghost door is open, we will continue to explore the relationship between the various parties in the underground palace. We often talk about the king of Hades, black and white impermanence, bull-headed horse-faced face, Chenghuangye, etc. What are the relationships between them? Because the relationship between many ghosts and gods is involved, we try to construct a graph to describe the relationship between them. Nowadays, many big data analyses, graph databases, or graph algorithms are developed based on graph relationships, so this time we will use the time of the metaverse to sort out the graph relationships of an underground world. With the improvement of our graph relationship network, now we can see if you can find something interesting through some graph algorithms. Let’s get started without saying much.
Let’s talk about the Yama. The Yama King we often talk about is actually just one of the many Yama Kings. The term “Yan Wang” was introduced from Buddhism. When it was first introduced to the Central Plains, there was only one person. Later, after combining the Chinese culture, it was divided into ten by function. Therefore, the Yama actually refers to the ten halls of the Yama, from one hall to ten. There are a total of ten Yamas. The Yamas we often say is actually the Yamas of the Fifth Hall. The Yamas from the first to the tenth halls are: King Qin Guang, King Chujiang, Emperor Song, King Haoguan, King Yama, King Biancheng, King Taishan, King City, King Equality and King Runner.
The Yama of the Ten Temples is not the boss of the underground world, they are just in charge of the underground world’s trial system, which is a bit similar to the current Supreme Court. So they still have a boss above them, but there are different opinions in different religious systems. We will not expand upward this time. Let’s expand downward.
There are many official duties in the underground world, so the Yama of the Ten Temples also needs many assistants. First of all, in terms of clerical work, a judging system was set up. Among the judges, those who are directly responsible to the king of the ten temples are the four major judges we often call: Wei Zheng from the Department of Rewarding, Zhong Kui from the Department of Punishment, and Lu Zhidao from the Department of Inspection, and Cui Jue from the Department of Law of the Underworld, under them there are five million judges to assist in the work.
After the paperwork is arranged, the field department should be set up for the front-line work. This part of the work is mainly handled by the top ten Marshals of the Underworld. They are ghost king, day travel god, night travel god, black and white impermanence, Marshal Bull Head, Marshal Horse face, Marshal leopard tail, Marshal Beaks, Marshal gills, Marshal wasps. We are already familiar with black and white impermanence and Bull Head and Horse face. In fact, impermanence, Bull Head and Horse face are not just referring to a specific ghost, but are similar to a kind of position. White impermanence Xie Bian, black impermanence Fan Wujiao are the leaders of impermanence, directly responsible to the king of the ten temples, and there is much impermanence under them to carry out the work of various places. Similarly, the Bull Head and Horse face in the Ten Marshals of the Underworld also refer to the Marshal Bull Head and Marshal Horse face, and there are many front-line working Bull Heads and Horse faces under them.
Except for the black and white impermanence and the Bull Head and Horse Face, the other Marshals of the Underworld also have basically the same work, but the working hours and the work target are different, they all bring their souls back to the Underworld for trial.
After talking about the judge and Marshals of the Underworld next to the Yama of the Ten Temples, let’s look further. After all, China has a vast territory and the Ten Palace Yama can’t manage it, so we set up city gods everywhere. The city gods in the city gods are generally served by local loyal martyrs who died in martyrdom, or upright and clever historical figures, such as Beijing city god Yang Jiaoshan, old city god Huo Guang, city god Qin Yubo, new city god Chen Huacheng in Shanghai city, Hangzhou City God Zhouxin, Tainan Xiaonanmen City God Zhu Yigui and so on. The daily work of the city gods in various places is carried out by local impermanence, Bull Head horse noodles, and various ghosts. And impermanence, Bull Head and Horse Face belong to the black and white impermanence, the Marshal Bull Head and Marshal Horse Face in Marshals of the Underworld respectively.
After introducing the work of Bull Head and Horse face, let’s take a look at their births. Except for the Marshal Bull Head and Marshal Horse face, the other Bull Heads and Horse faces actually come from the hell way in the six realms of rebirth. When it comes to the way of hell, let’s look at the six ways of the six realms of rebirth. Except for the great commander Bull Head and the commander Horse face, the other Bull Head Horse faces actually come from the hell way in the six realms of rebirth. When it comes to the way of hell, let’s look at the six ways of the six realms of rebirth. After going through the trials of the previous halls, the soul will be reborn in different ways in the tenth hall. The ways here are the six ways we often talk about, which are divided into the Three Good Ways (the Way of Heaven, the Way of Asura, the Way of Humanity) and The Way of Three Evils. (beasts, hungry ghosts, and hell).
The Bull Head Horse face mentioned above is reincarnated in the road of hell, the leopard tail, beak, gill, and wasp in the Marshal of the Underworld reincarnated in the Animal Way, and the devil king reincarnated in the Hungry Ghost Way. The Yasha and Rakshasa we usually hear are also reincarnated in the Hungry Ghost Way, and Rakshasa, one of the twelve days, is the lord of all Rakshas, and the Princess Iron Fan that we know is also a Raksha girl.
We can now connect the previously mentioned parts into a big picture.
The story ends here. This big graph already contains many relationships, but there are still many areas that can be expanded. After we expand to a certain extent, we will try to put it in GraphScope graph analysis tools and run around to see if we can find some interesting things. That’s it, see you next time.