Chapter 13 The second wedding ritual

Although there were various forms of marriage in ancient China, the dominant one was matchmaker marriage, that is, the form of marriage that was formally married through a clear matchmaker.Since the Zhou Dynasty, there has been a whole set of cumbersome etiquette ceremonies for matchmaking marriage. "Rituals · Shihun Li" stipulates that a matchmaker must go through six procedures, which are the six wedding ceremonies implemented in the Zhou Dynasty.The specific content and requirements of the Six Rites are as follows. That is to say, the man's family invites a matchmaker to the woman's family to talk about marriage, and after getting the woman's consent, they send envoys to present geese as gifts, and formally propose marriage to the woman's family.Why use geese as gifts?It is said that because geese are migratory birds, they move south and north at regular intervals.In ancient times, it was believed that men belonged to yang and women belonged to yin, and geese from south to north were in harmony with yin and yang, and geese were a symbol of harmony between yin and yang.It is also said that male and female pairs of geese are fixed, and when one dies, the other will no longer choose a mate, and the ceremony of geese symbolizes the loyalty of love.In short, taking geese as a gift has a deeper meaning, which has been used throughout the ages.However, the geese carried by the envoy from the man's side were not actually sent to the woman's family when receiving the ceremony, but handed over to the woman's father when the envoy arrived at the woman's home, and the father returned the goose to the envoy when he left.In fact, the wild goose is only used as a prop in the process of nachow ceremony by means of its symbolic meaning, and it is not a specific gift from the man to the woman.

It is the envoy sent by the man to ask the woman's birth mother's name to distinguish whether the woman is a concubine or a concubine after accepting the ceremony, and ask the woman's name, ranking, birth year, month, day, hour, etc., so that she can divination marriage when she returns. good or bad.Asking the name is also a gift with geese, and the woman's family will host a banquet to entertain the envoy, and then the father of the woman will send the envoy out. After the man learned the woman's name, he would do divination in the ancestral temple to predict whether the marriage would be auspicious or not.After getting the good omen, he sent an envoy to bring the geese to the woman's house to announce the good news, called Naji.After performing the Najib ceremony, the marriage contract is officially confirmed.Of course, if the man's family gets a bad omen in the ancestral temple, indicating that the marriage will not be successful, then there is no need to perform the ceremony of Najib.

Also known as Nacheng, that is, to send a bride price to the woman.After Najib, the two parties announced their formal engagement, and the man would give the bride's family a bundle of silk and Li (li calendar) leather as dowry gifts.The bundle of silk with Xuanxuan means five pieces of red, black and light red silk (a bunch of silk is five pieces, so "shubo" can refer to the quantity), of which there are three pieces of black and two pieces of silk.In ancient times, it was believed that yang was odd and yin was even, which symbolized that yin and yang were complete and in harmony with heaven and earth.Lipi is a pair of buckskin, which means that the couple is in pairs.In the Zhou Dynasty, Xuanxuan and Lipi were used as dowry gifts, mainly because of their symbolic meaning. Later, dowry gifts were gradually replaced by money and property, so Nazheng is also called "Naicai".

That is to say, after divination and calculation, the man's family chooses an auspicious date for marriage, and then sends envoys to ask the woman's consent with geese as gifts.In fact, according to the usual practice, the date of marriage is determined by the man, and the "asking date" is just a modest resignation, so later generations also directly call it "the deadline". This is the most important ceremony in a wedding.When it's time for the wedding, the groom will drive to the bride's house in a black-painted car to marry the bride.There are people holding candles in front, followed by two slave cars and a car for the bride.After arriving at the bride's house, the dressed bride stands in the room, and the bride's father welcomes the bridegroom out of the door and takes the groom into the house.At this time, the bridegroom still gives the goose to the other party, salutes and goes out, accompanied by the bride.Then the groom drives the car himself, invites the bride to get on the car, and then a special driver replaces the groom to drive the car on the road.The bridegroom got into his own car, drove fast, and waited outside his house first.When the bride arrives, the bridegroom will take her into the house, hold a feast and eat together, and perform the prescribed etiquette of co-prison and marriage (jin tight).

Co-prison means that when the wedding is held, the newlyweds eat the meat of the sacrificial animal (that is, the prison) together, which symbolizes that the husband and wife will have the same dignity from then on.The specific ceremony is to set up a banquet in the southwest corner of the new house, put the lungs and livers of cattle and sheep in the middle, and put vegetable sauce, meat sauce, millet, pork, etc. on both sides.The bride and groom sit opposite each other, offering sacrifices to millet and lungs, and then dipping the spines of the lungs in vegetable and meat sauce to eat together.After eating like this three times in total, the wedding ceremony will be performed again.卺 is a ladle, a pao [pao robe] melon is cut into two ladles, and the bride and groom each take one and use it for drinking.Pao melon tastes bitter, so it must be bitter wine to hold wine.Therefore, performing the wedding ceremony not only symbolizes the unity of the couple, but also means that the newlyweds share joys and sorrows.After the bride and groom are imprisoned and married together, the rest of the food is evacuated to another room for a banquet. The relatives of the bride eat the food left by the groom, and the relatives of the man eat up the food left by the bride. Finish.

After the banquet in the new house is over, the groom and the bride take off their dresses, and the groom takes off the tassel on the bride's head with his own hands.The tassel is a kind of silk rope, a keepsake for determining the marriage relationship between a man and a woman. After a woman is engaged, she uses it to tie her hair, and the groom unties it when she gets married.Then the candles in the room are removed, and the wedding is completed. In the morning of the next day, the bride will have an audience with her aunt (that is, her parents-in-law).At this time, the bride should bathe neatly, wear plain clothes, hold a jujube (fan fan) filled with dates, chestnuts, and duan xiu (duan xiu) in both hands, pay homage to her, and present the dates and chestnuts to her uncle. Dedicated to my aunt.Then, the bride brought out beef, pork and other food, dedicated to the aunt for dinner.At this point, the bride has become an official member of the man's family.

The above-mentioned six rites were mainly practiced in the aristocratic scholar-bureaucrat class in the Zhou Dynasty, and the common people often simplified and modified them.However, these six ceremonies have become the basis of marriage etiquette for later generations, and its basic formula and main rituals have been used in ancient society.