I've read a lot of storybooks about myths and legends, but I don't remember much of them now. But there are many stories that my grandmother told me that I still don't forget. Today, I will tell you the story of the underworld told by my grandmother.

When people die, they will go to the underworld, this is what I believed in when I was a child, and this is also what my grandmother believed in all her life.

The concept of the underworld originated from "burning paper". In my village, paper burning is done several times a year, year after year, in almost every household.

On the afternoon of Chinese New Year's Eve, that is, on Chinese New Year's Eve, every family goes to the cemetery where the deceased ancestors are buried to burn paper, which is called "going to the grave to invite the ancestors". The "ancestors" are the dead ancestors and relatives who are buried in the ground and their souls are in the underworld.

On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, after the end of the year, the "ancestors" had to be sent back to the cemetery with lanterns. After it is delivered, it is natural to burn incense and paper.

On the Qingming Festival, there is no special tomb sweeping ceremony in the village. Simply burning paper is a kind of nostalgia for the "ancestors".

On the eighth day of the fourth lunar month, the Buddha's birthday, there is a grand temple fair in the town, also called "paper burning meeting". Many people will go to Famen Temple to burn paper for the "ancestors", which is to help the "ancestors" resolve their injustices, and also to pray for the happiness of the living. At this time, there are relatively few people who burn paper compared to the festival festival.

Every year on the first day of the tenth lunar month, it seems to be the day of the "ghost New Year", and paper is burned. At this time, the weather has become colder, and when burning paper, it is no longer "printing money", but just sandwiching some cotton in the yellow paper, which can be regarded as adding cotton clothes to the "ancestors". The warmth and coldness of the world are reflected in the underworld.

In addition, a large amount of paper will be burned during the funeral, in addition to the simple yellow paper, but also burn all kinds of paper paste gold mountains, silver mountains, pavilions; burn a tube paper with a diameter of one meter and a length of four or five meters; Burn papier-mâché clothes, etc.

In addition, every time there is a major event in the family, it is also necessary to burn paper, such as a son getting married, a daughter getting married, a grandson full moon, building a new house, moving to a new house, etc., all of them must go to the grave to burn paper for the "ancestors" to inform the ancestors of the major events in the family.

"Ancestors" refers to both the deceased and the "ancestors". Therefore, people in my hometown scold, there are such words: "Don't be ashamed of your ancestors", to be ruthless, it is "to be ashamed of your bad ancestors", and no matter how ruthless it is, it will be too uncivilized, so I won't say it.

Young people are busy with burning paper, and they will forget it. The big thing in the lives of the old people is to remind the young people. Grandmothers often reminded their fathers that it was time to burn paper for their ancestors. Every time my father and I went to burn paper, my grandmother would say to me, "You have to call your grandfather, your great-grandfather, your great-grandmother, so that they will come and collect it, and they will come back with you."

Because of this, I was convinced at that time that the underworld was also like the yang world. The "ancestors" of the underworld also live the same life as us, and the eerie and terrifying ghosts have nothing to do with me, even if the ghosts in the underworld are scary, they must be other people's "ancestors", and my "ancestors" will only protect us.

My grandmother was small-footed, and every time before burning paper, the old man would tremble from the old house to our house and ask my father to "send a message". "Send a message" is to write something "Ten Directions Victory Buddha, Eight Directions of Beings, Shi Clan's ancestors and ancestors, please come to receive a feast,...... Bless my family with peace and security......" and so on. Perhaps, in a sense, this is a kind of side worship of words.

Men go to the "grave" to burn paper, and women can only burn paper in front of their own homes. Because after getting married, the women all left their mother's house and came to their husband's house, and they were far away from the ancestral grave, which symbolizes the inheritance of blood. To burn paper at the door, draw a circle, and then draw a cross inside the circle. In this way, "circled" and "marked" can be claimed by their deceased relatives, and will not be mistakenly taken away by "wandering ghosts".

When my grandmother was alive, she would also burn paper at the door during the New Year's Day. I also asked the elderly:

"Mother, who are you burning paper for?"

The grandmother replied:

"Burn it to my father and my mother."

I would curiously ask:

"Mother, do you also have a father and a mother?"

Because I was naïve at that time, I couldn't have imagined that such an old grandmother would have parents.

Grandmothers would say:

"Who doesn't have a father and a mother?"

When the first aunt, the sister of the first grandmother, died, the first grandmother would say:

"Cook some for your aunt too, our family has eaten so much food from your aunt's family, and I haven't paid it back in my life."

It is said that in the eighteenth year of the Republic of China, many people starved to death. "Dogs beating flails" is what I heard old people say when I was a child. There were so many dead that they didn't have to be buried, so they were thrown in the wilderness. When dogs don't eat, they eat dead people. When the dog bites a tendon on the dead man's chest and tries to break it, the dead man's hands will move, just as a living man wields a flail to work. People call this phenomenon "dog flail". To add that the flail is a kind of farming tool, I wrote it phonetically, I don't know if it's right. When I was a child, when I heard people scolding, some of them were ruthless, and they would scold, "Why don't you let the dog beat you to the flail".

The situation at that time can be imagined. It is said that it was when she fled in her old age that her first aunt married a mountain man. There are many people and land in the mountains, so the food is relatively abundant, and later it has been used to help our family.

This is the annotation of what my grandmother said to my aunt when she burned paper.

The stories of the underworld told by the grandmother, one of which is a little impressive, is "Mu Liansheng Saves Mother". Later, when I read a book, I heard that there was a "Mulian Change" in the Tang Dynasty, but I only read the outline, but I did not read the original text, so there was no trace of memory of the deeds of Mulian mentioned in the book.

A large part of the plot of "Mu Liansheng Saves Mother" told by the grandmother takes place in the underworld. Mu Liansheng in the story is a filial son and a Taoist figure in Buddhism. The opposite of Mu Liansheng's actions was his mother, an old lady who said it was more serious and could be described as "heinous". When she was not yet alive, she was summoned to the underworld by the king of Hades in advance because of her many evils.

The theory of Buddhism is that evil is rewarded with evil, and good is rewarded with good. This is just a simple summary, in fact, there should be something behind: it was not reported when you were born, and it was reported again when you died; If you don't report it in this life, you will report it in the next life.

Mu Liansheng's mother, after being summoned to hell by the king of Hades, was naturally tortured. Because Mu Liansheng had magic power, he knew that his mother was suffering in the underworld, so he embarked on the road of going to the underworld to save his mother. What Mu Liansheng saw on the road to the underworld was the tragic situation of those ghosts who did evil in the yang world and suffered in the underworld.

I remember talking about the suffering of the ghosts at that time, and there was a saying that "sitting on a river of blood and eating blood clots is smelly and sour". It is said that there is a river in the underworld called the "River of Blood", and as the name suggests, the "River of Blood" naturally flows with blood. This blood is related to women. It was all women who were tortured in the river of blood.

The "river of blood" was full of women's menstrual blood. Those tortured female ghosts are all people who were born in the yang world, and during their monthly periods, they threw things stained with menstrual blood everywhere. Grandmother said that this is persuasion, and it is to hope that women will love themselves when they are born. Self-love starts with small things, from carefully handling things that are stained with menstrual blood. Now that I think about it, it's not unreasonable to say that this is a primitive and simple concept of environmental protection.

This can be regarded as a kind of education for women through Buddhist stories.

Or, perhaps, a fear of blood.

In the story of "Mu Liansheng Saves Mother", the plot about the underworld is about to remember this.

Another story about the underworld is the so-called Buddhist scripture "Huang's Woman vs. King Kong". The grandmother said that her grandfather taught her to read this sutra. When my grandmother was young, she could recite the full text of this sutra word for word. It has to do with my grandmother's wonderful memory.

"Huang's Girl" is a disciple of Buddhism, who worships the Buddha during her lifetime, and her piety is enough to set an example for Buddhism. Because of this, her death was informed in advance, and she only went on the road after arranging the funeral.

The grandmother said that the Huang girl was welcomed away by "virgin boys and girls". Why the emphasis on "virgin boys and virgins"? It is because all those who go on the way of hell are answered. According to the propaganda of Buddhist scriptures, the person who does good deeds and accumulates virtue in the yang world is a "boy and girl" who accompanies you on the first path of the underworld; People who do a lot of evil in the world are the "bull head and horse face" who will take you to start a long and arduous journey.

When you enter the underworld, you naturally have to walk through the well-known "Nai He Bridge", and then drink the so-called "Ecstasy Soup", which will make you forget this life. The Huang family was an exception, she didn't drink the "ecstasy soup". Therefore, this laid the groundwork for her later reincarnation as a human being and her return to her hometown to recognize her relatives.

When you enter the Yin Division, you have to pass the "scale" mountain. This is the quantitative standard for judging good and bad people in the underworld. Good people, bad people, don't need to look at your behavior, as long as you pass the scale, you will see at a glance. There are less than four or two good people, and bad people are not light. In fact, this is also a kind of torture, the soul of a good person is light, and he is not guilty of any crime, and the soul of a bad person is heavy, and he will be pierced into the "skin and flesh" of the ghost by the big scale, and the soul will fall below, and the pain can be imagined.

When I arrived at the underworld, I had to pass the "broken money mountain". The people of the Yang world are disrespectful when they burn paper, they just want to burn it happily, and find a stick to stir up the burning paper money. In this way, the money burned to the "dead" is made into a broken money. Therefore, there is a mountain in the underworld, called the "Mountain of Broken Money", which is dedicated to accumulating those "unusable" broken money.

That's all the story and legend can remember.

There is also the plot related to the underworld during the funeral.

When a person dies, he first rests on his bed. The hometown is generally a kang, and after a person dies, a bed must be built for morgue. Put it for three days, and then "go into the burial". Burial is to put the "dead man" in the coffin, but the coffin lid will not be closed immediately. After the burial, it is left for another two or three days, and then the coffin lid is covered and sealed with raw lacquer. One day after the coffin is sealed, it will be buried again. Generally, it is a seven-day burial, called "one seven". Of course, in the past, there was no dog day, there was no refrigeration equipment, and it was necessary to deal with it urgently, and it was carried into the cemetery about three days, and the coffin was sealed into the burial chamber, but it was not necessary to bury it with loess, and only on the day of the "17" funeral was covered with loess and the grave pile was made. Now that there is an ice museum, it is still according to the procedure, and it is enough to put "one seven" at home before entering the ground.

According to my grandmother and parents, in the past, because of the instructions of Mr. Feng Shui, if someone was not suitable for immediate burial after "the next life", the coffin must be buried at a suitable time after being parked at home for a year or within three years. Therefore, after a person dies, he will "go to the box (I don't know if this word is ready)" to get up. The so-called "box" means that after a person dies, he is buried and sealed, and then he finds a dry and idle room at home, raises an earthen platform on the ground, puts the coffin on it, and then uses adobe (in the early days, when there were no bricks, the raw material used to build walls) to simply wrap the coffin, and then use mud to smooth out the gaps in the adobe. When the right day for burial arrives, the adobe is dismantled and the coffin is sent to the cemetery for burial.

Anyone who has watched costume dramas knows that Chinese once put things in their sleeves. When I was a child, I had a sense of mystery about death, and wherever people died, I would run to see them.

My grandmother once told me that when the deceased was buried, there had to be something hidden in the sleeve of the deceased. What is hidden? I haven't seen it in person. According to my grandmother, there was a fan in her sleeve and a bag of flour ....... I asked, what are you doing with this.

The grandmother said that ghosts have to go through many passes in the underworld before they can meet Hades. Hades will interrogate the ghosts and deal with them according to their confessions and attitudes. Either they are tortured in the underworld, or they are reincarnated after they have been tortured. Reincarnation can be from a man to a woman, or a woman to a man, or a human to an animal, or an animal to a human, or never to be reborn...... It's complicated.

It is said that there is a pass called "Yansi Cave" in the pass of the prefecture, and ghosts will be blinded when they pass by. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare a fan, and after entering the "Yansi Cave", a fan may reduce the pungent and choking of the smoke, and make the journey smoother.

There is also a "vicious dog mountain" in the underworld. There was a big hungry dog there, and to pass, something had to be thrown at him to avoid the danger of being bitten.

There are many more stories about the underworld, so if you remember, I'll write these first.

When I was a child, I always felt that yin and yang were separated by a piece of paper, so respecting heaven and fearing God became a part of life. When people live, they should have respect and fear.

Some people often say that this is something of feudal superstition that poisons the mind and spirit. But I often think that the political, evil, wrong things that are imposed on us may be even more terrible than that.

Because of these, I had many dreams when I was a child, and most of them were dreams of flying immortals outside the sky, so my life was more colorful.

My grandmother is gone, and I am still left with these, which others probably think are dross; In me, it's more or less a fortune!