Chapter 19 Section 3 Pious Sacrifice

So many gods have been created, and many rules of worship have been formulated at the same time, and the highest form of worship is sacrifice.Only when the sacrificial activities are solemnly held can the majesty of the gods be fully reflected, and the distance between man and gods is also minimized.Some important sacrificial activities gradually evolved into various religious festivals held regularly, and this tradition even evolved from prehistory to civilization. The purpose of offering sacrifices is very clear. Through this act of pleasing the gods, it is hoped that they can influence the natural forces and make them benefit themselves. In fact, they are bribing the gods.As it is said in "The Book of Songs·Xiaoya·Chu Ci": "God is addicted to food and drink, Bu Erbaifu", "God is addicted to food and drink, so that you can live longer", if you offer food and drink to the gods, the gods will make you eat and drink. The concept of longevity and happiness should also come from prehistoric times.

In prehistoric China, special altars and temples have been built as places for worshiping gods. This is confirmed by several important archaeological discoveries of the Hongshan Culture.A group of stone buildings were discovered at the Hongshan Cultural Site in Dongshanzui, Kazuo County, Liaoning Province, which were believed to be primitive religious relics after research.There are pebble round platforms and megalithic rectangular altars in the building.Pottery statues of women were found around the stone round platform, indicating that it was an altar dedicated to the goddess; the square stone altar is also an altar, and there are jade dragons and non-practical painted pottery nearby.This is an important religious place for offering sacrifices to the Earth Mother and the God of Agriculture, and its owner is the entire tribe or tribal alliance.On certain days, people come here in groups and travel long distances to fulfill their wishes through a grand ceremony.

Not long after the Dongshanzui altar complex was discovered, a larger-scale altar and temple ruins were discovered in Niuheliang at the junction of Lingyuan and Jianping counties not far away.The Niuheliang site is quite large, and it is a site group with a rigorous layout. It is centered on the Goddess Temple at the top of the mountain ridge, and the surrounding hills are surrounded by stone mounds.The Goddess Temple is a multi-chambered hall arranged in a north-south direction, with a large stone platform on the north side and three large tombs and altars on the south side.The Goddess Temple has a complex structure, including a main room, left and right rooms, front and back rooms, etc., and a group of goddesses are enshrined.The proportion of the god statue is like that of a real person. According to the unearthed fragments of the statue, it is speculated that there was a statue of a goddess three times larger than a real person at that time.From this point of view, it may be a polytheistic place of worship that mainly worships female ancestors.

The stone mound near the temple is a large stone tomb, in which many exquisite jade objects were buried.There are some small tombs lined up around the tomb. There is also a round stone altar between the tombs. There are stone-paved countertops and burnt earth surfaces in front of the tomb. There are pig bones and deer bones unearthed nearby. These are places for ancestor worship ceremonies.From this point of view, ancestor worship has already formed a system in Hongshan culture, and ancestor worship has entered a fairly mature stage of development.The tomb sacrifices seen at the ruins are dedicated to the near ancestors (real ancestors), while the altars and temples are dedicated to the distant ancestors, the ancestor gods of the tribe or tribal alliance.

Fanshan Mountain and Yaoshan Mountain in Yuhang, Zhejiang Province also discovered the remains of a large-scale altar, and its owner was a resident of Liangzhu Culture.In both places, altars were built on the artificially piled earth hills, and large tombs were built.For example, the Yaoshan altar is square, covering an area of ​​about 400 square meters, with a red earth square platform in the middle of the north-south direction, and a large tomb is built on the platform.The large tomb has a wooden coffin and a wooden outer shell, and piles of jade wares were buried in the tomb. Most of these jade wares are not production tools or daily necessities.

The emergence of ritual vessels is also the inevitable result of frequent sacrificial activities.Jade carving ritual vessels are popular in Hongshan and Liangzhu, among which Cong, Bi and Yue (yueyue) in Liangzhu are special sacrificial vessels. This tradition was inherited in the Bronze Age. The gift of the gods.The burial objects in the tombs of residents of the Longshan Culture in the Central Plains also included ritual vessels, including ax and musical drums, which have the meaning of a scepter.The Dawenkou and Longshan cultures in Shandong also had cong, battle-axes, and drums, and many of these ritual vessels were unearthed from some tombs, indicating that the deceased must have been specialized priests during their lifetime.

The sacrificial ceremony also includes the important content of killing animals, which means killing both animals and people.The animal bones that appeared near the above-mentioned altar are evidence of the killing of animals.The sacrifice of killing people is called "human sacrifice", that is, the sacrifice of human beings is offered to the gods.Prehistoric residents believed that the greatest respect for the Earth Mother was to sacrifice human animals and irrigate the land with human blood in order to have a good harvest of crops. This practice has been popular among many contemporary primitive peoples.Many burials of abnormal deaths have been found in some sites of the Yangshao Culture. The dead were buried in irregular pits without conventional burials, and some were buried with livestock.In the Longshan period, this kind of sacrifice became more common. Many headless dead and many people were found buried in groups.

In the Longshan cultural site in Henan, many remains of foundation sacrifices were found, which is also a typical phenomenon of human sacrifice.On the living surface or under the wall foundation of some larger houses, it is often found that children or adults are buried. These are human animals executed in the process of building houses, and they are all sacrifices for foundation laying.For example, at the Baiying site in Tangyin, two house sites were found to be buried with child animals; among the 15 house sites in Hougang, Anyang, 27 young children were buried; under a house site in Yongcheng Wangyoufang, three human skeletons were buried. In a foundation laying pit under the rammed earth building in Wangchenggang, Dengfeng, seven human skeletons were seen, including children and adults.Killing people to lay the foundation is for the stability and durability of the house, and it is also for exorcising evil spirits and ghosts, and praying for the protection of the gods.

For the sacrifice of gods, prehistoric people were very devout, and they could offer all the good things they created, even their lives.This is all driven by common beliefs. They firmly believe in the beliefs they have established, and let future generations firmly believe in them and pass them on from generation to generation.