As the totem in the hearts of us Chinese, the dragon has existed for thousands of years. There are historical records that the dragon has always existed as our spiritual pillar in our hearts. It can be said that the dragon is now combined with us. So, what exactly is a dragon? What are the details about the dragon?

Next, let’s talk about this dragon and the relevant information about the dragon!

The definition of a dragon is: a legendary mysterious animal, characterized by a creature with scales, beards, and can make clouds and rain. It later became a totem symbol of the Chinese nation.

Dragon: The supernatural sacred object in ancient Chinese legends is also the head of all animals. Dragon is a mysterious animal with nine animals combined into nine different images. It is an alien that combines the strengths of various animals. It is still controversial which nine animals are.

Legend has it that it can be visible and hidden, thin and huge, short and long. It can climb the sky in the spring equinox, penetrate the abyss in the autumn equinox, and call the wind and rain. These are the images of dragons that have developed in the late stages, which are more complex than the original dragons.

In the feudal era, the dragon was a symbol of the emperor, and was also used to refer to supreme power and emperors: dragon seeds, dragon faces, dragon courts, dragon robes, dragon palaces, etc.

The dragon ranks fifth among the traditional Chinese zodiac signs. It is called the "Four Divine Beasts" together with the White Tiger, Vermilion Bird and Black Tortoise. The dragon in Western mythology is also translated as a dragon, but the two are not the same.

From the beginning of this century to the present, there have been more than a hundred papers on the origin and essence of dragons published, with various views and no consensus.

Qinglong is one of the four symbols in traditional Chinese culture. According to the theory of the Five Elements, it is a spiritual beast representing the east. Qinglong is both a name and a race. The direction of the Qinglong is east. Left represents spring; the direction of the White Tiger is west. Right represents autumn; the direction of the Vermillion Bird is south and upper, represent summer; the direction of the Xuanwu is north and lower, represent winter.

Among the twenty-eight constellations in China, Qinglong is the general term for the seven eastern stars (horn, kang, di, room, heart, tail, and ji).

The dragon and the phoenix are not paired, but the phoenix and the phoenix are paired.

"Dragon vs. Phoenix" is a misunderstanding of traditional culture. In fact, phoenix has always played the role of a male auspicious beast in traditional culture.

During the feudal rule for thousands of years, the dragon has been a representative of the Chinese nation in a broad sense and a symbol of China.

The Chinese dragons are unique to Oriental mysticism, and through complex and changeable artistic models, they contain the concept of dragons unique to Chinese people and Chinese culture. The image of Chinese dragons contains the cosmic view of the unity of man and nature that the Chinese people value; the appeal of the benevolent view of the mutual subject of the love of others; the development concept of the yin and yang intercourse; and the multicultural view of inclusiveness.

The dragon ranks fifth among the traditional Chinese zodiac signs, and the corresponding earthly branch is Chen.

The dragon, the phoenix, the unicorn and the turtle are called "Four Auspicious Beasts".

The blue dragon, the white tiger, the vermilion bird, and the black trunk are the four symbols of Chinese astronomy.

In a narrow sense, the dragon is a symbol of the emperor during the Chinese imperial period. Only the emperor can use the five-clawed dragon as a mark or embroidery on the yellow robe. Other ministers and royal families can only use the four-clawed dragon, also known as the python.

Ordinary people, that is, the civilian class, cannot own any dragon or objects or images related to dragons. Otherwise, they will be rebellious and usurpable, and they can be directly executed.

"Dragon" is generally mistranslated as "dragon" in English. In Western culture, the "dragon" in Western culture is similar to the traditional Chinese dragon, and its background and symbolic significance are very different. It is not essentially the same species, so the dragon should be translated as loong (and the pronunciation of long in English is wolf).

The "dragon" in the West generally has an evil meaning, which is completely different from the auspicious beasts in the East. Letting Westerners who do not understand Chinese culture see that the Chinese worship of dragons will give Westerners a negative impression that Chinese people like to admire evil things.

In order to avoid this confusion, some scholars proposed that the English translation of "long" is changed to "long" with a pronunciation similar to that of Chinese. The characters "闭" or "闭" are combined with the new characters to replace the current dragon. However, it has not been widely recognized.

The Chinese dragon is the primary totem of the Chinese nation, and the totem is the guardian god of a certain nation. The Chinese call themselves the successor of the dragon.

The dragon totem has a history of about 8,000 years. Except for the core Muslim culture that remains unchanged through the ages, every ethnic group of the Chinese nation loves dragons, and the dragon totem can be regarded as a cultural symbol of the unity of the Chinese nation.

The Dragon Horse Spirit is the spirit of striving for development and serving the public.

There are one biological fossils and specimens of Chinese dragons. The fossil is the beautiful wayao dragon in the "New China Dragon" with two horns and is similar to the legendary dragon. The specimens are young dragon specimens of Ming Dynasty preserved by Ruilong Temple in Japan.

It is worth noting that fossils and specimens have no divine properties, but are just rare ordinary creatures. They are mythological because they are rare, just like cattle, which is also divine objects in Hinduism.

It is worth understanding that Chinese dragons are sometimes called real dragons. They are distinguished from dinosaurs and European dragons, etc. The correct English translation of dragons is "loong".

There are many kinds of origin theory of dragons, and the most representative ones are the following.

This is the most common view represented by "Ciyuan" and "Cihai": the former says "the dragon is a magical animal in ancient legends that is good at changing and can promote all things, and is the leader of scale insects"; the latter says "the dragon is a magical animal in ancient legends that has scales and mustaches that can promote clouds and rain."

Similar statements include: "Dragons are animals with many divine natures and very mysterious", "a animal fantasy of ancient Chinese people," "Dragons are a divine animal that appears in Chinese culture with long body, large mouths, most horns and feet, and unpredictable changes in the world," "Mysterious animals" are based on "animal magic".

The former comes from the latter. The "Ciyuan" and "Cihai" did not explain clearly which animals become "dragons" through "magicity", and scholars' discussions are diverse.

This theory is represented by Wen Yiduo's view in "Fuxi Kao". Wen believes that dragon "is a totem dragon culture, and a virtual creature that only exists in totems but not in the biological world, because it is a complex composed of many different totems"; it is the result of the merger of snake totems and assimilation of many weak units."

He-Xing-Ling also believes that "Long is originally a kind of totem. But it is different from other totems.

It may have been a totem of a tribe, but later evolved into a super tribe, a god of the Vietnamese nation. It has become the longest-lasting totem god that the Chinese nation has worshipped."

Long-He-Xin once believed that "the truth and entity of the dragon are clouds", "the dragon is the life pattern of the cloud god"; "The initial dragon shape was just an abstract rolled cloud pattern. Later, it gradually became concrete, biological, and expanded to be close to the images of amphibians and reptiles in the real biological world."

Zhu Dashun pointed out, "The opportunity or starting point for the fantasy dragon, a creature god, may not be caused by the ancients seeing animals similar to dragons, but by seeing lightning in the sky. Because if lightning is used as a basis to fantasize it as an animal, it is easy to be imagined as a slender animal with four feet."

Zhao-Tian-Li believes that the "tria" of the Thunder and Lightning Dragon, and the dragon is the image of Thunder and Lightning.

Hu Chang-jian said, "The prototype of the dragon comes from the natural landscape of spring - the hook-curved shape of thunder and lightning, the moving winter insects, the vegetation and sprouting plants and trees, the rainbow after rain that begins to appear in March, etc... Among them, the rainbow is the most direct prototype of the dragon, because the rainbow has a beautiful and specific visual image."

Yin Rongfang's view is a bit unique. He believes that "the dragon in Chinese legend is originally the incarnation of the tree god. The Chinese worship of dragons is a tortuous reflection of the worship of tree gods. The dragon is the tree god and the plant god.

The prototype of the dragon is evergreen pine, cypress (mainly pine) and other trees.”

"The pine, dragon is not only surprisingly similar in its external image, but also its other attributes are also surprisingly similar to pine."

Ye-Yu-Sen, Xu-Zhi-Bai and American scholar Hai-S, etc. advocated that the concept of dragons should be the memory of ancient ancestors of the huge reptile dinosaurs, or that their ancestors worshiped dragons because of their fear of dinosaurs. Wang Dayou said, "The dragon. The most primitive ancestral type recognized by the ancients may still be dinosaurs.

The ancients regarded reptiles with four legs, thin neck, long tail, snake-like, cow, and tiger-headed dragons as dragons. This may be a certain dinosaur image that the ancients saw and depicted at that time... Perhaps the dragons seen by the ancients were really dinosaurs. Later, they gradually disappeared from seeing them, so they regarded their similar sea crocodile, bay crocodile or Yangtze crocodile as the same type and worshiped them."

Gentiles have introduced that the dragon-shaped rock paintings unearthed in China for 10,000 years, the ancient dragon-shaped pile-up for 8,000 years, the dragon-shaped painted pottery unearthed in Baoji City for 7-8,000 years, and the Ba-Bi-Lun history is 5,000 years, and it should be the descendants of Chinese dragons!

The history of Chinese dragons is earlier than that of Huangdi. You who have copied and deciphered foreign ancestors should at least get some evidence to come out! It’s so funny!

The dragon's appearance is very obvious, with its horns resemble deer, its head resembles a camel, its mouth resembles a donkey, its eyes resembles a turtle, its ears resemble cattle, its scales resemble fish, its beard resembles a shrimp, its belly resembles a snake, and its feet resemble eagles.

The prototype of the dragon sprouted in the late Neolithic period. The image of the dragon is described in ancient books, and the ancients have various explanations for it.

Some say that a snake can fly without feet (see "Xunzi? Encouragement of Learning"); the scales are called Jiaolong, the horned one is called Qiu [qiuqi] dragon, and the hornless one is called Chi [chi] dragon. (All see "Guangya" in the Warring States Period? Qu Yuan's "Li Sao" quoted by Hong Bu" in the Warring States Period) The winged one is called Yinglong (Note from Wang of Qu Yuan's "Tianwen" in the Warring States Period).

We can see these different kinds of dragons on the bronzes of the Shang, Zhou and Warring States Period in China.

Some say that the dragon looks like a dog looks like a cow, and "Lunheng" says: "The image of a dragon is the head of a horse, the snake's tail." Some say that the shape of the dragon is the horns of a deer, the ears of a cow, the head of a camel, the eyes of a rabbit, the neck of a snake, the abdomen of a fish scale, the soles of a tiger, the claws of an eagle. There are crocodiles, the lizards, the horses, etc.

"Lunheng" says: "The image of a dragon is the head of a horse, the snake's tail."

In the Han Dynasty, dragons with horse heads, scales, or dragons with two wings are common in the portrait stones. The dragons had various meanings in the Han Dynasty. For example, the inscription of the bronze mirror of the Han Dynasty: the left dragon and the right tiger wards off evil, playing a role in warding off evil; "White Tiger Tong" says: When the virtue reaches the birds and beasts, the white tiger will come. Here it shows the ruler's favor to the people.

"Compendium of Materia Medica" says that "the dragon has nine similarities", which is an alien that combines the strengths of various animals. The small ones are called dragons, and the big ones are called dragons. Legend has it that it can be visible and hidden, thin and huge, short and long. It can climb to the sky in the spring equinox, and hide in the abyss in the autumn equinox. It calls the wind and rain, and it can do everything.

These are already in the late stage of developing the image of dragons. They are becoming more and more complex than the original dragons, and there are more and more totems integrated into them, which shows that it is constantly enriching and developing.

"Er Yayi" says: The dragon is the length of scale insects. Wang Fu said that its shape is nine similar: the head is like a cow, the horns are like a deer, the eyes are like shrimp, the ears are like a snake, the belly is like a snake, the scales are like a fish, the claws are like phoenixes, and the palms are like tigers. That's right. There are eighty-one scales on its back, which have nine nine yang numbers.

Its sound is like a copper plate. There is a beard next to the mouth, a pearl under the chin, and a scale under the throat. There is a Boshan on the head, also known as a ruler wood. A dragon cannot ascend to heaven without a ruler wood. It can turn into clouds, which can turn into water and fire.

Another saying is: "The mouth is like a horse, the eyes are like a crab, the whiskers are like a sheep, the horns are like a deer, the ears are like a cow, the mane is like a lion, the scales are like a carp, the body is like a snake, the claws are like an eagle..."; another saying is: "The head is like a camel, the eyes are like a ghost, the ears are like a cow, the horns are like a deer, the neck is like a snake, the belly is like a mirage, the scales are like a carp, the claws are like an eagle, and the palms are like a tiger."

There are many types of dragons and are classified according to nature. Dragons can be divided into celestial dragons, divine dragons, fairy dragons, demon dragons, and Buddha dragons.

According to the claw classification, it can be divided into three-clawed dragons, four-clawed dragons, and five-clawed dragons.

Before the Yuan Dynasty, the dragons basically had three claws. Sometimes the first two feet had three claws and the last two feet had four claws. Examples can be found in the porcelain patterns of the Tang, Song and Yuan dynasties. Four claw dragons were popular in the Ming Dynasty, while in the Qing Dynasty, there were five claw dragons.

The Zhou Dynasty "Five-clawed Emperor, Four-clawed Princes, Three-clawed Doctor"

The folk saying "five claws are dragons, and four claws are pythons" was formed in the Qing Dynasty. It was mainly used as the difference between the patterns on the clothes of emperors and subordinates. The emperor wore "dragon robes". Other royal families and subordinates wore "python robes", but this is just a difference in name. In terms of the form of dragons, both dragons and pythons are four-legged snakes, and there is no difference in shape.

Chinese dragons did not have five claws from the beginning, but developed from three claws, four claws to five claws. The evolution of dragon shapes in Chinese history can be roughly divided into four periods:

1. Kuilong period

The dragon has been from Yangshao culture, Daxi culture, Qujialing culture, Dawenkou culture, Longshan culture period, and the Shang and Zhou dynasties, and continued to the Qin and Han dynasties, represented by the Shang and Zhou Kuilong.

The prototype of Kuilong is a crocodile or giant lizard, with one bird's feet and four claws. Shang Kuilong, one bird's feet, two or four claws. In the middle and late Shang Dynasty, Kuilong, Kuilong, Kuilong, Kuilong, Kuilong, Kuilong, Kuilong, Kuilong, Kuilong, Kuilong, Kuilong, Kuifenghuizhi, which means they are both ancestors. The Western Zhou Dynasty continued to use it and combined Kuilong, Kuilong, Kuilong, Kuilong, Kuilong, into a new form. At this time, a bird's feet were mostly crescent-shaped two claws.

2. Yinglong period

The concept of Yinglong was very early, first seen in the Shang and Zhou dynasties. However, as an artistic installment, Yinglong may have started in the Qin Dynasty, flourished in the Han Dynasty, and continued to the Sui and Tang Dynasties. Most of the foot was three toes.

Three, Huanglong period

It began in the Tang, Song, Liao, Jin and Yuan dynasties and laid the image foundation, and flourished in the Ming and Qing dynasties.

In the Song, Liao, Jin, and Yuan dynasties, the Ming and Qing dynasties, the four and five tyings.

Since the Yuan Dynasty, only the royal family can use the five-claw dragon shape, while the folk can only use the three-claw or four-claw dragon pattern.

Fourth, return period

In the modern and contemporary period after the Qing Dynasty, because the dragon was separated from the feudal rulers, it could be drawn or shaped into three, four, and five toes according to people's preferences. Of course, five-clawed dragons had a special status in history, so people generally prefer the five-clawed shape.

Japan frequently had exchanges with China during the Tang Dynasty. At that time, China's dragons had three claws, so Japan could only introduce three claws from China.

After the four-claw dragon appeared in China, it had begun to close its territory and cut off contact with Japan. The Kanzi Kingdom was called Goryeo in ancient times, and it was a vassal state of China until the end of the Qing Dynasty. When the Chinese rulers began to use the five-claw dragon pattern, it was naturally impossible to make the vassal state on an equal footing with themselves, so the dragon of the Kanzi Kingdom could only have four-clawed states.

In the final analysis, the Japanese-Korean dragons reflect the development and evolution of Chinese dragons.

According to their functions, dragons can also be divided into celestial dragons, divine dragons, earth dragons, and fulongs.

Volume 438 of "Yuanjianleihan" quotes "Inner Code": "There are four kinds of dragons: a dragon in one day, who guards the sky palace and keeps orders; two divine dragons, who raise clouds and rain to benefit the world; three earths, who break the river and open the river; four hidden dragons, who guard the wheel king, who hide great blessings."

The Wheel King is also known as the "Wheel King", the "Wheel King" and so on.

Ancient Seal - a legend of the Divine Myth, this king received the Wheel Treasure from heaven, and turned the Wheel Treasure and subdued all directions.

Buddhism uses this theory, saying that there are gold, silver, copper, and iron four-wheel kings, and four-wheel kings all have a variety of treasures.

In addition to appealing for the three types of dragon classifications, dragons also have other categories, which are classified according to the varieties of dragons, the specific ones include:

1). hui: It is an early dragon, imagined by reptiles - snakes as models, and is often in the water. "Hua becomes a dragon for five hundred years. The dragon turns into a dragon for thousands of years." It is the childhood of the dragon, and it appeared on bronze decorations in the end of the Western Zhou Dynasty. But not many.

2).Quo: A small dragon without horns is generally called a Qiulong, which is a growing dragon.

Therefore, the notes in ancient documents: "No horns are called Qiu, and no horns are called dragon." The other one says that young dragons are called Qiu only after they have horns. Although there are differences in the two statements. Du Mu, a poet of the Tang Dynasty, had the sentence "Qiu is coiled thousands of feet into the play of sheep intestines" in his poem "The Inscription on Qingyun".

3). Panchi: It is a snake-like magical creature in the genus Dragon, and it is an early dragon without horns. There is a record of "The Non-horned Chilong" in the collection of "Guangya".

There are two statements about Panchi. One refers to the yellow hornless dragon, and the other refers to the female dragon. In the "Book of Han? Biography of Sima Xiangru", there is annotation of "Red Dragon, female dragon". Therefore, the unearthed Warring States jade pendant has a combination of dragons and dragons as decoration, which means that males and females are mating.

From the Spring and Autumn Period to the Qin and Han Dynasties, bronze ware, jade carvings, bronze mirrors or buildings were often decorated with the shape of coiled dragons. The forms include single dragons, double dragons, three dragons, five dragons, and even a group of dragons. They were either held in a plaque, or pierced rings, or scrolls. In addition, there were various changes such as Bo Gu Chi and ring body dragons.

4). Jiao: Generally refers to a scaled dragon that can generate floods. According to legend, a dragon can prosper clouds and fog when it gets water, and rush into space. It is often used in ancient texts to describe talented people’s opportunities to display.

There are different opinions in classical literature about the origin and shape of the dragon. Some say "a dragon without horns is called a dragon". Some say "a scale is called a dragon."

Volume 3 of "The Mo Ke Was the Rhino" is more specific: the dragon looks like a snake, its head is like a tiger, and the elders are several feet long, and most of them live under the rock caves of the stream and pond. The sound is like a cow. In "New Words of the World" by Liu Yiqing of the Southern Song Dynasty, there is a story about Zhou Chu entering the water for three days and three nights and killing the dragon and returning.

People often say "Jiaolong". In fact, "Jiao" and "Dragon" are a legendary deified creature called at different ages: "Jiao" is an hour, and when it grows, it becomes a "Dragon".

Although they all have powerful power, one is good and the other is evil, and there are essential differences. There are two prototypes of dragons: one is a crocodile. The English name is alligator. There are only a few remaining species in the world, such as the Yangtze crocodile in China;
To be continued...