Lan Eucalyptus's colleague went on a business trip and gave her a set of Huishan clay figurines.

Huishan clay people are well-known and one of the three major specialties of Wuxi's traditional arts and crafts. In the Ming Dynasty writer Zhang Dai's "Dream Memories of Tao'an" and Wang Siren's "Wenfan Sketches", it was recorded that people at that time traveled to Huishan and wanted to buy toys such as clay figurines, indicating that in the Ming Dynasty, Huishan clay figurines were already very popular; It must have been created much earlier than this.

However, how the Huishan Niren originated and formed is not clearly recorded in the relevant literature and classics. In this article, I would like to explore this point.

Speaking of Huishan mud people, the image of "Da Ah Fu" will appear in our minds. Indeed, among the Huishan clay figures, the earliest and most common should be the image of a child, which was called "mud child" in previous literature. Regarding the "mud children" in the Huishan mud figures, the author has seen two pieces of information.

The first is one of Qin Qi's "One Hundred Songs of Huishan Bamboo Branches", a poem:

The mud boy wins in Suzhou, and the eyebrows are all from a good stroke. Lang loves the beauty and can try the horse, and Nong pities the childish son and rides the bull alone.

For a long period of time, the reputation of the "mud boys" in the Mudu area of Suzhou was far greater than that of Huishan in Wuxi. In the Southern Song Dynasty Meng Yuanlao's "Tokyo Menghualu" and Jin Yingzhi's "Drunkard's Conversation", both said that the mud boy at that time was "only Suzhou is extremely ingenious, and it is the first in the world"; The Song Dynasty poet Xu Di has a poem "Mud Child": "Shepherd a piece of mud, pretending to be extravagant."

The hated body is small, and the gold beads can't carry it. Double-cover red gauze kitchen, delicate vase flower bottom. The young woman tasted sour for the first time, and she was happy when she played. Diving begging for the spirit of the gods, giving birth to a child is as wishful. How do you know that the poor family is thinner than a ghost. Abandon the bridge and alleys, who cares about life and death! People are not as cheap as mud, and three sighs are just that. ”

Mr. Qian Zhongshu selected this poem in his book "Selected Notes on Song Poems", and noted that the word "Mu Du" in the poem is "the river where the cow drinks water", and some scholars pointed out that this note is wrong.

Until the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, Yang Lun still said in his "Song of Furong Lake" that "it is better to pinch like Suzhou". Qin Qi, the author of "One Hundred Bamboo Branches of Huishan", was a native of Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty, and the poem quoted above said that "the mud boy wins Suzhou", indicating that the works of Huishan clay people, including the mud child, in this period, have been on par with Suzhou, or even slightly better.

The second is the book "Qing Barnyard Banknotes" compiled by Xu Ke at the end of the Qing Dynasty, in which the "craft" has a "clay man" article, and there is a record of Huishan mud children entering the palace:

Gaozong toured south and drove to Wuxi Huiquan Mountain. There is Wang Chunlin at the foot of the mountain, and there are also clay people who sell shop. The work is exquisite, and the skill is wonderful. So far, he has ordered several plates of mud children, decorated with brocade gold leaves and the like. When he entered the palace, he was greatly rewarded and gave a lot of gold and silk.

The above two items are not the earliest records of the Huishan Ni people in ancient literature and classics, but they may be related to the original origin of the Huishan Ni people.

Speaking of this "mud child", Jin Yingzhi of the Southern Song Dynasty wrote about the customs of the Beijing Shi's Qixi Festival at that time in the fourth volume of his "Drunkard Conversations":

Jingshi is a day more mud children, upright and delicate, the Beijing language is called Mahara, the size is very different, the price is not cheap. or decorated with men's and women's clothes, and some of them are extravagant.

There are similar records in many notebook writings of the Song and Song dynasties. For example, the Southern Song Dynasty Meng Yuanlao's "Tokyo Menghualu" volume 8 "Qixi" notes:

On the seventh day of July, the tiles outside the East Song Gate of Panlou Street, the tiles outside the West Liang Gate of Zhou, the outside of the North Gate, the outer street of the South Zhuque Gate and the Mahang Street, all sell grinding and drinking, which are small plastic ear puppets. All of them are carved wood and color fences, or red gauze and blue cages, or decorated with gold beads and emerald jade, and there are a pair of straight thousands...... On the evening of the sixth and seventh days of the first month, your family has many colorful buildings in the court, called "Qiqiao Building", laying out grinding and drinking music, flower melon, wine burning, pen inkstone, needlework, or children's poems, the girl is Qiao, burning incense and worshipping, called "Qiqiao" ("grinding and drinking" this Buddhist scripture "Mahara", now popular and book).

At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, Chen Yuanliang's "Guangji of the Year" volume 26 "grinding and drinking" article quoted the record in "Tokyo Menghualu", and said:

Today's trip is the most prosperous in Zhongwazi, Houshi Street, and Zhong'an Bridge. However, Suzhou is extremely ingenious and the first in the world. Whoever enters the inner court shall do so with gold and silver. Word cloud: "The best time in the sky, the lights and the moon are shining." The Mohu child, fighting ingenuity.

Wear a short-brimmed beaded hat and wear a small strand of gold. Frowning and smiling, he did everything he could to hold his hands. It took a lot of work to turn the sunny bottom, which attracted people's love and became obsessed. If you lose money quickly, you have to pounce, and you don't have to ask if it's too late. Come back and wake up violently, like my living child. ”

The Southern Song Dynasty "Old Man of West Lake" wrote "The Old Man of West Lake":

The royal street sells Mohoro, wearing many dry red vests, green gauze skirts, and also has backs and hats. The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, selling the market.

Based on the above records, it can be known that in the Song Dynasty, people in the capital mostly had to go to the market to buy clay sculpture boys - mud children. These mud children are of different sizes, coarse and coarse, and naturally have different prices. More particular, will be decorated with men's and women's clothes, "with carved wood color railings, or with red gauze and blue cages, or decorated with gold beads and emerald jade".

These mud children have vivid images and attract people's affection, "smiling and smiling, and doing everything possible to hold their hands appropriately", which attracts people to be fascinated and compete to buy. This "mud child" was the "festival" of the "Qixi Festival" at that time; In the case of "begging", it is necessary to "lay out the grinding and drinking music (i.e., 'mud children'), flowers and melons, wine burning, pen inkstones, needles and threads, or children's poems, and the girls are skillful, and burn incense and worship".

It is worth noting that the mud boy had a special name in the Song Dynasty, called "Mo Drink Le", and in various documents at that time, it was also written as Mo Drink Luo, Mo Heluo, Mo Heluo, Mo Hele, Mo Hu Luo, Mo Hou Luo, etc. The above quote from "Tokyo Menghualu" has specifically explained this: "The Buddhist scripture 'Mahara' of 'grinding and drinking' is now popularly written. "It is clearly stated that it has some connection with Buddhism.

However, as the "grinding and drinking music" of the clay sculpture boy in the Song Dynasty, what is the relationship between it and Buddhism, there are many discussions and different views in the academic circles. If some people believe that Maharaja is the name of the Buddhist god, also known as Maharaja, Sanskrit Mahoraga, is one of the eight divisions of the heavenly dragon, and the Song and Yuan dynasties were derived from the Buddhist Maharaja.

Maharaja was originally a human figure with the head of a snake, but because it was not suitable for Middle-earth, it gradually changed, losing its inherent terrifying image, and forming a wonderful and lovely image of a child (Fu Yunzi, "An Investigation of the "Grinding and Drinking" in the Song and Yuan Dynasties).

Some people believe that Mahula may be the false name of the Buddha's son Rahula, who is said in the Buddhist scriptures to be the son of the Buddha Shakyamuni in the secular era, born six years after the Buddha became a monk, and later practiced the first among the ten disciples of the Buddha (Yang Lin, "The Origin of Rebirth and Mahura").

Some people believe that Maha is the great black heaven in Buddhism, and Maha is the transliteration of Mahagora (Liu Daoguang, Outline of the History of Chinese Art Thought). Some people believe that the Qixi Festival in the Song Dynasty comes from the incarnation of the child propagated by the Pure Land Buddhism, which means to pray for an heir, that is, "the auspiciousness of a woman to have a child", which is the product of the Pure Land belief and the mentality of the Chinese people (Shanghai Folk Literature and Art Association and Shanghai Folklore Society, ed., "Chinese Folk Culture - Folk Belief in Folk Gods").

Although there are different opinions, one thing is certain, that is, the "grinding and drinking music" of the clay sculpture boy in the Song Dynasty is derived from Buddhism. So, are the Wuxi Huishan mud people, including the "mud child", the "grinding and drinking" that originated in the Song Dynasty?

It should be said that in this regard, there is a lack of clear records of ancient canonical documents. However, in the dialect of Wuxi that we still use today, there is a certain trace. Mr. Qian Zhongshu, who is a native of Wuxi, has a very noteworthy discussion in his "Pipe Cone Weaving":

In recent times, my hometown Huishan mud people have a good reputation, my hometown language called the clay puppet as "grinding the head", and the self-saying "倷伲", so the old slang in the south of the Yangtze River, calling Wuxi people "mud grinding", also like Suzhou people name "empty head", often acquaintances name "soup can", Yixing people name "night pot".

The name of "grinding" is meaningless, it should be the provincial text of "grinding, drinking, and music", and it is used as a children's toy, so it is said in the same language, just like Lu Tong's "Sending Men to Hug Grandchildren": "Tian Dinglang is small, don't come to me for a long time."

You can't eat the preserved food, and the brother and brother don't twist and search", or Huang Zunxian's "Jihai Miscellaneous Poems": "'Hehe' leads to sleep and 'Shi Shi' drowning, and I hear the voice of my mother calling a woman at night." "Adult language children, every sound repeats words......

The author has been living in Wuxi since I was born. Based on my understanding of the Wuxi dialect, I think that Mr. Qian Zhongshu's words still seem to have a few things that need to be explained or expressed inaccurately: first, Qian Yun "called the clay puppet 'grinding head' in my hometown", and later, adults often nicknamed the real children in reality as "grinding and grinding heads", or "grinding goods (drinking)".

Second, the people of Qianyun Wuxi "said '倷伲' from their own way", which seems to mean that "倷伲" is derived from the word "nai (pronounced) mud" to refer to soil; In fact, the people of Wuxi call "we" "倷伲", which has its own phonetic basis in the entire Wu dialect system, and should have no meaningful relationship with "nai ni" referring to "soil".

Third, Qian Yun "called Wuxi people to 'mud grinding'", in fact, "mud (mud) grinding" first refers to mud people, because of their fame, they are borrowed from the local "things" to refer to the local "people".

However, Mr. Qian Zhongshu said that "the name 'grinding' has no meaning, and it should be the provincial text of 'grinding, drinking, and music', and it should be used as a children's toy, so it is a very important assertion."

If this is true, then we can think that the Wuxi dialect calls the mud people "mud (nai mud) grinding", because the Huishan mud people originated from the "grinding and drinking" of the Song Dynasty.

The author mentioned above that Wuxi people nickname children as "grinding heads" and "grinding goods (drinking)", which also has a reason. In addition to the record that people in the capital want to buy "grinding and drinking" on Qixi Festival, there is also such a record: children need to buy new lotus leaves to hold on to it, and cover the effect of grinding and drinking.

The Southern Song Dynasty Zhou Mi's book "Old Things of Wulin" also recorded: children are dressed in lotus leaves and half arms, holding lotus leaves, and imitating Mahara......

Children hold lotus leaves in hand to learn clay sculpture children in the Qixi Festival "grinding and drinking", so adults will naturally call "living children" also jokingly called "grinding and drinking". Therefore, Wuxi people's nicknames for real children in reality are "grinding heads" and "grinding goods (drinking)", which should be an important circumstantial evidence that Huishan mud people originate from "grinding and drinking".

Located on the banks of China's Grand Canal, Wuxi Huishan Niren is said to have a history of 400 years. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the essayist Zhang Dai recorded the situation of clay figures being sold in the shop in the volume of "Tao'an Dream Memories".

During Qianlong's southern tour of the Qing Dynasty, Wang Chunlin, a famous artist in Huishan, made several plates of clay children and offered them, which was praised by Emperor Qianlong (see "Qing Barnyard Banknotes"). It can be seen that before the middle of the Qing Dynasty, Huishan Niren had a very high level of skill and was famous for a while.

It is said that during the heyday of Huishan mud figures, there were more than 40 large and small workshops. There are more than 30 famous artists such as Wang Chunlin, Zhou Asheng, Ding Ajin, Chen Xingfang, Wang Xikang, etc. After the autumn every year, there are six or seven hundred cargo ships and thousands of people from northern Jiangsu to Huishan to purchase clay figurines, and some high-grade clay figurines are shipped to distant places as gifts with merchants from all over the country who come to Wuxi to operate silk and rice noodles.

As a result, Huishan Niren is exported to the vast rural towns and villages of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong and other provinces, and a considerable part of them flow into Shanghai, Hangzhou, Hankou and other big cities.

The unique Huishan black mud determines the selection of production process and technical conditions to a certain extent, affects the variety and quality of the clay people, and affects the formation of style, which is also one of the basic material conditions for the longevity of the Huishan mud people.

In the early days, Huishan residents made clay figurines as a family sideline, and used this clay to make some small flowers, small ruyi, small birthday stars, small Buddha statues, stacked arhats, mud afu, chickens, dogs, geese and other small birds and beasts.

In addition to the production method of Huishan clay people with a single piece of molding, the rest of the body, limbs are pinched out, after rubbing, kneading, picking, pinching, printing, patting, cutting, wrapping, pressing, pasting, inlay, scratching, boarding, inserting silk, pushing, rubbing, paste, carved out of clothing, wearing, hairstyle, headdress, etc., through coloring, opening, waxing, whiskers, decoration and other processes to create a variety of images.

There are many legends about the origin of Huishan Niren, although it is full of fantastic imagination and fiction that cannot withstand scrutiny, but it also adds a lot of color to the cultural connotation of Huishan Niren. In China, almost every profession has the custom of honoring the patriarch, believing that the idol to be worshiped is the founder of their profession, and he can bless the production and operation of future generations of artists.

There is also this custom in the Huishan clay figurine industry, so the legend of the origin of the clay figurines cannot but be related to their ancestors.

According to the descendants of the famous Hu Dafang and Hu Erfang clay figurines in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, there were only more than a dozen clay figurine shops with the names of Chen Jusheng and Hu Wansheng in the late Qing Dynasty. The patriarch enshrined in the public office is Sun Bin in the Warring States Period.

According to legend: During the Warring States Period, Guiguzi accepted two apprentices, and they were both famous military strategists during the Warring States Period, one was called Pang Juan, and the other was Sun Bin. Pang Juan was jealous of Sun Bin and cut off Sun Bin's knees with a trick, making him unable to walk.

Sun Bin fled to Wu and lived in the Huishan area, where he pinched a lot of clay figures and mud horses to study the new method of setting up the five thunder arrays of Pang Juan. Later, when he went to Qi as a general, he used the tactics studied in Huishan to break the five thunder arrays and kill Pang Juan when he fought against Wei.

But his skill in kneading clay figures in Huishan has been passed down, and since then, the residents of Huishan have also pinched clay figures. Sun Bin has also become the ancestor of Huishan's clay kneader.

Another popular legend is that Liu Bowen (1311-1375), a great statesman of the Ming Dynasty, pioneered the clay figure of Huishan. At that time, Zhu Yuanzhang founded the country and established the Ming Dynasty. One day, he sent his military advisor Liu Bowen out to investigate.

When I arrived in Huishan, I found that there was the spirit of a king, and Huishan was Longshan, and I was afraid that if another emperor was born, it would not be conducive to the rule of the Ming Dynasty.

As a suppression, destroy feng shui, in order to break the dragon vein, teach the common people to dig soil at the foot of Huishan to get mud, fight clay people to sell for money, some will make the mountain soil into military generals, some pinch as the emperor, break the Huishan feng shui, so that Wuxi only out of the mud emperor mud general, and then not out of the powerful figures.

Of course, he didn't expect that this time he would leave the world with exquisite Huishan clay figures, and create a group of folk artists who are good at creating Huishan clay sculptures. Take a look at the latest chapters of "Dream Claw Book House in the Great Era" and read it for free for the first time.