In the fairy team of "Journey to the West", Twenty-Eight Lake has a very high attendance rate. For example, the yellow robe monster is the Kuimu wolf, the Pleiadian chicken surrenders the scorpion spirit, and the Four Jupiters defeat the three rhino spirits.
Many people are not familiar with Twenty-Eight Lakes. In fact, their history is quite old and they are unique creations of ancient Chinese astronomy.
The ancients of our country looked up at the starry sky in the area near the ecliptic, and divided the stars near the ecliptic into 28 groups, with seven constellations in the southeast, northwest and four directions, representing the positions of the sun, moon and stars in the sky, called "twenty-eight constellations". This serves as a reference for observing astronomical phenomena.
Later, Taoism arose, this concept was introduced into Taoism, and it became the 28th place god. Each of them has a skill. In the heavenly court, they are roughly the positions of middle-level officials. For example, they may be equivalent to the school-level officers in the army, and they are the backbone of the heavenly generals.
As for when the concept of twenty-eight places came into being, there have always been divergent opinions, and it is difficult to have a definite answer. However, a cultural relic was unearthed in 1978, so that we can at least fix this time to the beginning of the Warring States Period.
In 1978, a wooden suitcase was unearthed in Tomb No. 1 of Leigudun, Suizhou, Hubei. The size of this box is 71 in length, 47 in width, and 40.5 cm in height. The body and lid are cut from a single piece of wood.
The inside of the suitcase is painted with red lacquer, the surface of the ware is painted with black lacquer, and the cover is solemnly written in Zhushu seal script, and the name of Twenty-Eight Inn is written in red lacquer in a clockwise direction.
The two ends of the cover are painted with the images of the blue dragon and the white tiger. The word "Zhiqu" is engraved on the head of the dragon, and the word "Houqu" is engraved on the tail of the dragon. It can be seen that "Zhu" is the name of this artifact in the State of Chu.
This suitcase is of great significance in the history of Chinese astronomy.
In ancient China, the numerous stars in the sky were divided into twenty-eight groups, named as nights. The name and order of the twenty-eight lodges are exactly the same as this suitcase, and the dragon representing the east is also exactly the same as the tiger in the west.
There are also 4 words "Jiayin Sanri" inscribed near the twenty-eight stars in Zhongkangsu,Based on this information, some scholars believe that this picture reflects the evening of the third day of the Lunar New Year in 433 BC. This day is called "Chu Ji" on the moon phase, which means an auspicious day.
Thus, this paint box with astrological diagrams constitutes a complete model of the universe with the cover as the sky dome, the four sides as the sky, and the bottom of the box as the earth.
This suitcase is now in the Hubei Provincial Museum. It is the earliest astronomical material found in my country to date with all the names of the twenty-eight lodges and matching them with the Beidou and the Sixiang, indicating that our country has formed the twenty-eight ligaments system at least in the early Warring States period.
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