"Sister Ren, since being chosen as the Green God in Tudong is an honor, there should be records, right?" Song Siyuan said, looking at the river rippled by the night wind.
"Indeed, if you were selected as the Green God in previous years, you would be recorded in the county annals. Why do you ask?" Ren Peacock was extremely curious.
"I'm wondering if after the Luohua Cave Girl is selected, she will be recorded in the county annals. After all, Qingshen, like the Luohua Cave Girl, is a woman who is only selected once a year."
Song Siyuan's words made Ren Kongque's eyes light up, but she had been away from her hometown for more than ten years, so she really didn't know if there was such a thing. So a few people simply went down to the living room, called out Ren Wude and his wife, and explained to them their story. Intention, want to see what they think.
The old couple was silent for a moment and nodded to everyone: "You guessed right. It is an ancient custom to choose the Luohua Cave Girl. Once selected, it will be recorded in the county annals to show that the Luohua Cave Girl is the wife of the cave god. At the same time, she also The appearance, age, and temperament of these women will be described.”
"Did the ancient custom of selecting Luohua Cave girls begin thousands of years ago?" Song Siyuan expressed her inner doubts.
Jin Qinghua shook his head and retorted: "How is that possible? We have lived here for decades and have seen many elders talk about ancient times. I heard them say that there were indeed divine wives in the past, but there is no record of the Luohua Cave Girl."
"God's Wife? Isn't this the Luohua Cave Girl?"
"No, the Luohua Cave Girl is also a type of divine wife, but besides the Luohua Cave Girl, there are other divine wives." 33
Seeing that they didn't understand, Jin Qinghua introduced the allusion of the God's Wife. Although it couldn't help them, it could at least let them know the past and present life of the legend of the Luohua Cave Girl.
The allusion of the God's Wife comes from the myth of the Chu witches. Thousands of years ago, the eight-hundred-mile Yunmeng Lake was a vast country. The shamans of the Chu land also advocated animism. For such a large lake, guardian gods will naturally be born. Dongting The ancient god in the lake is Xiangjun.
It is said that it was he who guarded Dongting Lake, which made the eight-hundred-mile Yunmeng Lake have good weather and abundant products, and supported tens of thousands of people who depended on the lake. Therefore, as early as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Xiangjun had been erected as a temple by the people. Later, Qu Yuan imitated the eight great gods of Qi and Lu to create the Nine Witches of Chu. One of the gods was Xiangjun, who represented the Dongting Lake that nurtured thousands of living things in Xiang.
In the Chu witch myth created by Qu Yuan, the spouse of Lord Xiang is Mrs. Xiang, who is the first generation of divine wife.
It is said that there is Dongting Mountain in Dongting Lake, and there is also Dongting Kingdom near Dongting Mountain. Mrs. Xiang was originally the emperor's daughter of Dongting Kingdom. Later, when she was boating on Dongting Lake, she accidentally met an aristocratic man standing on the water. This man had sword-shaped eyebrows and starry eyes. Extraordinarily handsome, the emperor's daughter fell in love with him at first sight, and from then on she stopped loving anyone.
The Lord of Dongting searched for witches all over the world to treat his daughter. These witches were overjoyed after the treatment. They told the Lord of Dongting that what the emperor saw that day was Xiangjun, the water god of Dongting Lake. The god saw the beauty of the emperor and hoped that he would If they can get married, they will live in Dongting forever from now on. She will be regarded as a divine wife and will no longer suffer from the reincarnation of birth, old age, illness, death, and reincarnation.
The leader of the Dongting Kingdom did not believe the shaman's words at first. It was not until the emperor's daughter dreamed of Xiangjun many times that he was sure that the emperor's daughter had indeed been chosen by the gods to be the divine wife. After that, the emperor's daughter became thinner and rosy. He did not dare to go against God's will, so he had to let Wu Xian handle the wedding and send the emperor's daughter to the depths of Dongting Lake to marry the King of Xiang.
This is the first generation of Mrs. Dongting Huxiang!
As mentioned earlier, all things in Chu are animistic, and the gods live with people. The king of Xiang needs a divine wife, don’t other gods need a divine wife?
However, people can only wait for God's instructions, but cannot actively contact God. They cannot ask the gods of Chu whether they need a god's wife. But with the example of the first generation of Mrs. Xiang, they already know that there are three characteristics of being chosen by gods. !
First, if you are chosen by God, you will have a series of visions, such as seeing gods appearing, or seeing noble men, or handsome men having private meetings in dreams.
Secondly, if you are chosen by God, you will become indifferent and not like eating.
Thirdly, after being chosen by God, his face becomes rosy, his consciousness is blurred, he becomes more and more gentle and beautiful.
With these three characteristics, they must have been chosen as wives by God. Even if they have not received God's instructions, they can probably be judged as God's wives.
In the Chu region, there is no distinction between witches and ghosts. Ghosts are both gods and ghosts. In order to let the ubiquitous gods protect the tribe and country, they often sacrificed flowers, fruits and treasures to the gods. From then on, their sacrifices included flowers and fruits. In addition to treasures, chickens, ducks, cattle and sheep, there is also a divine wife.
From then on, in the Chu land, as long as sacrifices were made to the gods, a god's wife would often be selected to dedicate to the god. As for how to choose a god's wife, just follow the diagram according to the state of Mrs. Xiang. As long as you see the above three points in the unmarried young lady, it must be that you are being raped. God chose.
After divination, the witches will confirm who the god is, and then sacrifice the god's wife to the god in different ways. For example, the god's wife of the river god is to send Shao Ai into the river; the god's wife of the tree god is to send Shao Ai into the river. Send her to an uninhabited wild mountain forest; if she is the god's wife of the fire god, wait until the god's wife is completely dead and then burn her on the altar; the god's wife of the mountain god will be sent to a huge cave in the mountains.
The wife of this mountain god is actually the predecessor of Luohua Cave Girl!
It can be said that in the Chu region, as long as an innocent young Ai showed the characteristics of a god's wife, he would be passed down from one person to another and chosen by the witches to be sacrificed to the gods.
Later, Qin Shihuang destroyed Chu and abolished all wild sacrifices. Only then did he stop the custom of sacrificing the wife of the god in Chu.
However, the custom was only banned but did not disappear. It was still spread in the old land of ancient Chu. Coupled with the ancient people's fear of choosing a god's wife, this also caused many people to dare not show their true emotions, even if they were pretending. She pretends to be enthusiastic, generous, and fierce in order to clear herself of the suspicion of being a god wife.
For thousands of years since then, the divine wives have completely stayed away from the common people. However, the fierce and fierce personality of southwestern women has been inherited in the ancient witchcraft land and has become a folk custom or regional characteristic.
"Then, that is to say, the divine wife has disappeared for thousands of years, so why are there still Luohua Cave girls? In other words, how did the Luohua Cave girls become popular? The custom that has obviously disappeared, but also How was it resurrected?”
Jin Qinghua sighed when Song Siyuan asked about this: "It started again at the end of the previous dynasty!"
"The last years of the previous dynasty?"
Ren Wude nodded: "Yes, the elders said that in the past, cave girls were just words, and the Luohua Cave Girl never really appeared. Later, in the chaos of the world at the end of the previous dynasty, the Luo Cave Girl appeared. The more evil the news spreads, the more evil winds are blowing."
"About, when?"
The concept of the last years of the previous dynasty is too general. Song Siyuan still needs to confirm the year to see the background of the times. Maybe she can start from the background of the times.
"We don't know much about this. We only know that in my old life, I always scolded the Taiping Army, and from that time there was the Luohua Cave Girl." Jin Qinghua murmured in a low voice.
"Is this related to the Taiping Army?" Song Siyuan became curious and already felt that she was involved in some unexpected clue.
Jin Qinghua motioned them to sit down and continued to explain the twists and turns in a low voice: "Yes, why not? Hunan is irrigated by Dongting Lake. It is a land of plenty. Since the Taiping Army occupied this place, all young and middle-aged men have been arrested and used as slaves." The bulk of the soldiers left only weak women to take care of the elderly and children, and plow the fields. If these people could come back, it would not be a problem. Unfortunately, after the fall of Tianjing, the former government directly ordered the generals to massacre the Taiping Army. As long as they were adult men, No one can escape death."
"Even if there are young people who are lucky enough to escape beheading and return to Hunan, they will not be able to avoid being searched by the government. Even the government will arrest civilian men and behead them to make up for the loss. The evil deeds of the government are obvious, causing the people to increasingly fight against the government. Some Taiping troops still exist. When the powerful see that they cannot be recruited, they flee directly into the mountains and become bandits. There are really good people who are so difficult for the government to become cunning and tough, getting closer and closer to bandits."
"It can be said that all the good men in Xiangdi want to live a good life, but they are constantly troubled by the government. In order to protect themselves and not harm their families, they can only become bandits or bandits. Therefore, from the Taiping rebellion to the end of the previous dynasty for nearly a hundred years, the folk customs in Hunan were so bad that the ancient roads no longer existed. There were only bandits but no people in the villages for hundreds of miles, and the folk customs were no longer simple."
Jin Qinghua felt very sorry to mention this. It is estimated that they themselves have been persecuted by the government.
The old lady paused and said in a cautious tone: "Since then, the legend of the Luohua Cave Girl has become popular. If someone's baby girl has the characteristics of a god's wife, then she can only give good girls to the cave god. As a wife, if you don’t do this, you will be offending the cave god.”
What will be the consequences of offending the wild god?
It can range from illness to severe disasters and death!
The men in these common people's families were either killed as Taiping rebels, or they became bandits and did not reply to letters for several years. If they were neither of the two, they must have not grown up. In this case, no one can protect them. If If they don't want to be blamed by the cave god, they can only sacrifice their women to the cave god.
When people are unable to protect themselves and their families with their own strength, they place their hope on gods.
The people of Hunan offered sacrifices to the Luohua Cave Girl, which was actually a helpless act after the collapse of the world!
After listening to Jin Qinghua's description, Song Siyuan probably knew what was going on. Ren Kongque had introduced the situation on the border of western Hunan before. As long as he combined the previous descriptions, he knew that what she said was true. So, the girl from Luohua Cave The sacrifice was more of a man-made disaster than God's will.
"Nanny Jin, where have the records of the Luohua Cave Girl been kept in the past twenty years? If there is a county annals, they must be kept in a certain county!"
She thought about it and found that the information was too scattered and could not be gathered into a chain of clues. If she wanted to know more detailed information, she would need accurate records such as county annals as evidence.
Some people died, but not completely...
