Tujia Folk Beliefs and Culture — Goddess Worship (Part 2)
II. Production Goddesses. In the Tujia people's hunting, farming, weaving, and other productive activities, goddess worship existed, indicating that Tujia material civilization originated in matrilineal clan society. 1. Meishan Shen. Meishan Shen is the most worshipped female hunting deity of the Tujia, also called Meishan or Meichang. When Tujia people go up the mountain to hunt, they must first "set up Meishan," that is, install a...
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II. Goddesses of Production
In the various production activities of the Tujia people—hunting, farming, weaving, and so on—there existed worship of goddesses, showing that the material civilization of the Tujia people originated in matrilineal clan society.
1. Meishan Shen. Meishan Shen is the female hunting goddess most worshipped by the Tujia people, also called Meishan or Meichang. When Tujia people go up the mountain to chase game (hunt), they must first "set up Meishan," that is, establish a "Meishan altar." The Meishan altar must be set up in a place seldom visited by people, mostly deep in the mountains beneath ancient trees or sheer cliffs. A few stones are piled into a small stone niche, inside which a broken bowl is placed as an incense burner, with three wild flowers stuck in it, along with incense, and several paper spirit money are tied up to sacrifice to Meishan Shen, praying for the safety of people and livestock during the hunt. The worship of Meishan Shen is usually presided over by a Tu teacher. The Tu teacher wears a straw rain cape upside down, burns incense, and recites the Meishan text, which is divided into three parts: "Sweeping the Mountain," "Setting the Hall," and "Urging the Mountain." The Meishan altar has no divine image; in some places a small wooden figure is placed there, with an upside-down One-Legged King beside it, said to be Meishan's soldiers and officers. The upside-down One-Legged King and the Tu teacher's upside-down straw cape express the utmost reverence for Meishan Shen.
Legend says Meishan was a female hunter in the ancient era of the Tujia people. She held a steel fork in her hand, had killed bears, wild boars, and tigers, and was highly skilled in martial arts and incomparably brave. That year there was a great drought, and the grain harvest was completely lost. The villagers were unbearably hungry, so Meishan divided the game she caught each day equally among the villagers to stave off their hunger. After her father died, Meishan still hunted every day as before. When the game nearby was all hunted out, she went farther away to hunt. The wild animals in the mountains both hated and feared Meishan. One day, a wild boar, a tiger, and a jackal were discussing together how to eat Meishan. As soon as Meishan entered the mountain, they surrounded her. Meishan, unhurried, climbed up a tree. The wild boar ran over and tried to root the tree down. Meishan shot three arrows in succession and killed the wild boar. The tiger ran over and tried to leap up the tree. Meishan threw her steel fork and pierced the tiger dead. The jackal, seeing that Meishan had no weapon left, waited under the tree to bite her to death when she came down. Meishan thought to herself that staying in the tree forever was no solution, so she broke off a thick branch as a weapon, jumped down from the tree, and fought the jackal. After a heart-stopping struggle, Meishan finally beat the jackal to death, but her clothes all over her body had been torn to shreds. Naked, she had no choice but to hide. When the villagers came looking for her, she did not dare come out. The villagers found the dead wild boar, tiger, and jackal, and the clothes torn into pieces, but saw no Meishan, so they shouted all over the mountains and fields. Meishan heard them but did not dare answer, for fear the villagers would see her naked body. Unable to find Meishan, the villagers assumed she had been eaten by the wild beasts. With sorrowful hearts they carried the beasts Meishan had killed down the mountain. After dark, Meishan came out from the woods and prepared to go home. But by then she was utterly exhausted, hungry and thirsty, and could not move a step. She casually pulled up a handful of wild grass and put it in her mouth to chew, hoping to stave off hunger before going on. Unexpectedly, she had eaten a poisonous grass, her belly cramped with pain, and she could move no more. The next day, when the villagers went into the mountain again to look for her, she was already dead. The women took off their own clothes and dressed Meishan, then buried her on the mountain. Later, the Jade Emperor conferred on her the title of Meishan Shen, specially in charge of hunting and chasing game. Another version says that Meishan fought a fierce tiger that harmed people and livestock, rolling over rocky ledges, climbing steep slopes, and struggling with the tiger for days and nights. In the end, the tiger was killed, and Meishan, having lost too much blood, died beside the tiger. Later people worshipped her as the "Hunting Goddess."
Meishan Shen is a goddess, so when sacrificing to her one must not be bare-chested or speak vulgar words, but must be utterly reverent. The reason the Meishan altar is placed in a remote spot is that before her death Meishan's clothes were torn to shreds by wild beasts and she was naked, and must not be seen by people. In some places, when worshipping Meishan Shen, one must even close one's eyes.
2. Huoshe Shen. Huoshe Shen is the goddess in charge of slash-and-burn cultivation, a product of the slash-and-burn farming activities in Tujia history.
Legend says Huoshe Shen was best at growing millet. The millet she grew had thick stalks and large ears, and the slash-and-burn fields she cleared stretched slope after slope, so that in three days and nights one could not walk to their edge. Once, she went to burn a swidden. Because the wind was very strong, it blew the fireballs flying wildly through dense forests and deep grass, setting mountain after mountain ablaze. She was surrounded by the burning mountains, could not get out, and was burned to death in the swidden field. Later, people enshrined her in a cave on the slope, worshipping her as "Huoshe Shen," asking her to protect the crops so they would grow well and not be ravaged by wild beasts. Because she was burned to death in the mountains, she cannot be sacrificed to on the family shrine at festivals. The sacrifice is made on the night of New Year's Eve, said to be the time when every household is at home for the reunion and staying up for the new year and will not come out, so that the Huoshe goddess, who has remained naked since being burned, can come down the mountain without being seen. During the sacrifice, all the family members leave the house and hide in a quiet place, the main door is left half open, and a winnowing basket is placed in the corner by the door, with wine and meat offerings set inside, along with several millet cakes, on top of which are placed chopsticks made of cogongrass stalks. It is commonly believed that after enjoying the sacrifice, Huoshe Shen will immediately return to the mountains and continue to protect the crops for a bountiful harvest.
Huoqin Shen is in fact the earliest female ancestor of the Tujia people, who first invented the primitive slash-and-burn farming of the ancient Tujia.
3. The Five Grains God. The Five Grains God is clearly an agricultural goddess that emerged under the influence of Han Chinese civilization. After the advanced farming methods of the Han Chinese spread into Tujia areas, the worship of the Grain God also spread into Tujia areas. The Han Chinese Grain God should be a male god, but in Tujia areas it evolved into a goddess, because most of the Tujia creation deities are goddesses, and the Tujia people still retain a strong atmosphere of matriarchal clan society culture.
The Five Grains God is also called the Five Grains Niangniang, a goddess specifically in charge of the harvest of the five grains. Legend has it that long ago, the Tujia people only knew how to hunt and gather ferns, and did not know how to plant the five grains. Later a young woman came, bringing seeds of the five grains, and taught the Tujia people to plant them. There are several other versions of how the seeds of the five grains spread into Tujia areas: one says a dog brought them from the Heavenly Kingdom, and because the Heavenly Kingdom was separated by 49 rivers, only a small tuft on the dog's tail remained of the seeds it carried; one says the seeds of the five grains were given to the Tujia people by the Ox-Hair King; another says the Rooster Immortal, who managed the warehouse for the Jade Emperor, stole them and gave them to people, and so on. These legends show that the Tujia cultivation of the five grains was indeed introduced by the Han Chinese. It seems that this Five Grains Niangniang is a product of Han culture after being Tujia-ized. The legend also says that on a Dragon Boat Festival, the Five Grains Niangniang was seized by a tailless dragon that leaped out of a river, and only then did people realize that the young woman who taught them to plant the five grains was the Five Grains Fairy. It turned out that 500 years earlier, the Five Grains Fairy had offended the tailless dragon. The tailless dragon was Ao Heng, son of Ao Guang, the Dragon King of the East Sea. Back then, the Jade Emperor ordered Ao Heng to make rain, originally commanding him to "make it rain three hundred times in succession," but he heard it as "make it rain three hundred times a year." As a result, because the rain that fell each year was extremely little, the seedlings withered and there was no harvest at all. When the Five Grains Fairy learned of this, she reported the tailless dragon Ao Heng before the Jade Emperor. The Jade Emperor was furious and wanted to behead him and display his head to the public. Only after all the immortals pleaded for mercy was the sentence changed from beheading to tail-cutting, and he was pressed beneath Mount Wuling, allowed to return home only once every three years to visit his mother. Ao Heng thus became the tailless dragon and also lost his freedom, and therefore hated the Five Grains Fairy deeply. That year, the tailless dragon took advantage of the Dragon Boat Festival, his once-in-three-years chance to visit his mother, to abduct the Five Grains Fairy. In order to commemorate the Five Grains Fairy and also to ask her to continue blessing the harvest of the five grains, the Tujia people made a statue of the Five Grains Niangniang in her likeness and enshrined it in a Five Grains Temple built specially for her, offering sacrifices year after year. Especially when the new five grains ripened, every household would fill a bowl with each of the newly harvested five grains, place them outside the main gate, and offer a distant sacrifice to heaven. At autumn harvest, people would also hang ears of grain or corn tassels on the family shrine as a sacrifice. The Tujia people in the Hefeng County area of Enshi Autonomous Prefecture also have the custom of not lighting a fire to cook raw rice on the fifth day of the first lunar month. It is said that this day is the birthday of the Five Grains Fairy; on the day before, every household must prepare food and dishes, and on the fifth day, only cooked food may be eaten, and no fire may be lit to cook raw food. This means that the Five Grains God is the essence of the five grains, and cooking raw food on this day is a kind of harm to the Five Grains God. It is popularly believed that if one lights a fire to cook raw rice on this day, one will offend the Five Grains Fairy, and the five grains will not grow.
Among the Tujia, there is also a saying that the Five Grains God is male. Legend has it that long ago, when people had just begun to eat small grain, the small grain would grow and then be picked, and after being picked it would grow again, and it could never be picked clean. A young wife wanted to return to her parents' home, and her mother-in-law told her to finish picking the small grain before going back. But how could that small grain, which grew again after being picked, ever be finished? After picking for five or six days in a row, it still could not be finished. The young wife wanted so badly to return to her parents' home that she was going mad, so she took a dog, put on straw sandals, and quietly hid beside the grain field at night to find out what was going on. After the fifth watch, she suddenly heard a whistling sound of "water, water, water," and a white-bearded old man appeared in the grain field. She saw him holding a three-chi-long wooden stick, pointing here and there on the stalks of small grain that had been picked, and in no time long, large ears of grain grew out. Although the white-bearded old man was old, his hands and feet were extraordinarily nimble, and he pointed so fast that in the blink of an eye he had covered a whole slope, and the bare stalks all over the slope were instantly hung with heavy ears of grain. When the young wife saw this, she let the dog out to bite the white-bearded old man and also cursed him loudly. As a result, she drove the white-bearded old man away. From then on, small grain could be harvested only once a year. In years of famine, people had no choice but to fill their stomachs with ferns and kudzu. Therefore, to this day, when the Tujia pick small grain, they still do not allow dogs to be brought along, do not allow loud talking, and do not allow whistling. People still want the Five Grains God to come back, and still want small grain that can never be picked clean.
This legend reflects the process by which the Tujia female Five Grains God underwent a transformation from a male Five Grains God into a female Five Grains God, and at the same time shows that, just as the five grains were introduced from outside, the Five Grains God is also a deity introduced from outside; only after being introduced did it undergo variation and become "Tujia-ized" into a goddess.
4. The Xilankapu Goddess. Xilankapu is a kind of native brocade quilt cover woven by Tujia girls, and is also one of the most important dowries when a girl marries. The Xilankapu God is a weaving goddess.
The worship of the Xilankapu Goddess reflects the Tujia people's admiration for superb weaving skills, and also reflects their treasuring of their ethnic handicraft Xilankapu.
From different social and historical stages of the Tujia, there emerged Xilankapu Goddesses with completely different fates: one a comic goddess, and one a tragic goddess.
The comic goddess emerged in the early society of the Tujia. In that historical period, the Tujia had not yet been influenced by Han Chinese feudal ethics and moral culture, and young men and women interacted and married relatively freely. The Xilankapu Goddess produced under this historical background was hardworking, beautiful, and of outstanding brocade-weaving skill, and ultimately won beautiful love. This goddess was called Sanggena. Legend says that the hardworking and beautiful Sanggena was clever and deft; the birds she embroidered could fly, and the flowers she embroidered gave off fragrance. Sanggena was determined to embroider the beautiful ginkgo flower, but the ginkgo tree blooms only at midnight. Undaunted by hardship, she came at midnight to the ginkgo tree at the top of the mountain. The ginkgo flower that was blooming was especially beautiful and especially fragrant. Just as she was about to begin embroidering, the poisonous snake guarding the ginkgo flower pounced at the girl. Suddenly, a sharp arrow flew in and pierced the snake's neck, and the girl was saved. Sanggena began to embroider again, when suddenly a tiger came roaring and pouncing, and with a "swoosh," another sharp arrow split open the tiger's skull. Sanggena finally finished embroidering the ginkgo flower, exactly like the one blooming on the tree. The next morning, when Sanggena opened the door, she saw standing in the courtyard a handsome young man holding tiger skin and snake skin. He was Balinong, the bravest young man in the whole village, and it turned out that he had saved Sanggena. Balinong gave the animal skins to Sanggena, and Sanggena gave the finished Xilankapu to Balinong, and the two pledged themselves to each other for life. It is said that from then on the Tujia had the custom of exchanging animal skins for Xilankapu to pledge love.
The worship of the Xilankapu Goddess is in fact worship of Xilankapu art and of women's labor skills and wisdom. The social connotation of this worship changed along with changes in Tujia social life. The era in which the above-mentioned Sanggena Xilankapu Goddess emerged was an era of beauties and heroes, and also an era in which feelings between men and women could unfold freely, so a goddess like Sanggena, as beautiful as the ginkgo flower, could not only weave lifelike ginkgo flowers and create miracles in the world, but also win beautiful love.
After entering the feudal era, because feudal thought shackled people's minds and restricted the behavior of young men and women, especially women, a woman's going out at night to weave Xilankapu was regarded as a breach of propriety, and was even falsely accused by others as improper conduct. At this time, the Xilankapu Goddess became a tragic goddess. Legend says that a bird called the ginkgo sparrow was originally transformed from the soul of a beautiful woman. That woman had originally lived in Ginkgo Village. She was beautiful and also had a superb skill in cross-stitch embroidery. The Xilankapu she wove was praised by everyone who saw it. The girl was determined to embroider the most beautiful flower in the world. She heard people say that the ginkgo flower was the most beautiful, but that this flower "blooms at the hour of Yin and withers at the hour of Mao," that is, it blooms only in the deep of night. The girl resolved to embroider the ginkgo flower, so she came late at night to the ginkgo tree in the mountains. She waited a long time, but did not wait for the ginkgo flower to bloom, and because of excessive fatigue she fell asleep. When she woke, the flower had already bloomed and passed. This matter was learned by her vicious sister-in-law, who then spread word everywhere that the girl had gone out late at night and behaved improperly, and also said many things before her father-in-law that ruined the girl's reputation. One night, the girl again went out late at night. Because her father had believed his daughter-in-law's words, he had long been on guard, and hid behind the door with a wooden club. The girl finally waited for the ginkgo tree to bloom, and happily picked several flowers and brought them home, preparing to weave Xilankapu after their likeness. But just as she pushed open the door, her father struck at her head with the club, hitting her right on the forehead. Blood flowed freely, and the girl fell dead. Suddenly, the blood on the ground turned into a beautiful ginkgo sparrow, which flew several circles around the house, crying as it flew: "The ginkgo behind the back door blooms, the sister-in-law's gossip and petty talk, died beneath the tea-oil tree club." Its voice was extremely mournful. After daybreak, the girl's father went to look at the girl and saw that she was holding several withered ginkgo flowers in her hands, and only then did he understand the truth, and was immediately filled with immense regret and hatred. From then on, when people heard the mournful cry of the ginkgo sparrow, they said that the Ginkgo Girl had come to tell of her injustice.
The worship of the Xilankapu Goddess expresses the Tujia people's treasuring of the unique craft created by their own ethnic group, and also reflects the ups and downs of Tujia women's fate.