huyanyun
When I was looking through ancient notes recently, I suddenly discovered an interesting thing, that the scorpions written by the ancients are often "bigger than the other". Although it is known that scorpions are ranked among the " five poisons ", and that they are daunting in terms of toxicity and appearance, it is inevitable that viewers will use false rumors and exaggerate them, but this kind of "competition" is really rare. So the author compares the "giant scorpions" in the ancient notes that I can collect to him to "size" to see which one is the largest scorpion.
1. The last place: "As big as a goose" giant scorpion drinks blood and kills
According to the ancient notes I have read so far, the "smallest" giant scorpion is from "英文 ":
"Zibuyu"
Ruicheng A villager bought a bowl of noodles on the roadside in summer. Because the weather was too hot, he sat bare-chested on a stone and ate it. "Before eating, he suddenly screamed and died." The people next to him came to look around and found a small hole in the back of the deceased. Everyone quickly reported to the official, suspecting that the noodle seller had poisoned the noodle. The county magistrate rushed to the scene, and no matter what he thought, he felt that the poisoning from eating noodles could not pierce his back. There was a sound of snoring." He asked his men to dig up the stone. "Three feet down, there is a scorpion in the stone cave, as big as a goose. Fang raises his head to drink blood, and the tail bend is golden." The villagers rushed to hit it with ploughs and hoes. The wound on the deceased's back was found to be exactly the size and shape of a scorpion's tail.
The giant scorpion here, "as big as a goose", should be between 60 and 80 cm in length.
The penultimate "giant scorpion" is from " Liaozhai Zhiyi ".
Peng Hong, a general in the Ming Dynasty, entered Shu and entered a deep mountain. He saw a large Buddhist temple, but it was completely deserted. He asked the local people that the temple had been without monks for a hundred years."There are demons in the temple, and those who enter will die." Peng Hong guessed that this was the lair of thieves, and rushed in with his troops. There was no difference in the front hall and the middle hall, but when he arrived at the Buddhist pavilion, although there was nothing, everyone who went in was screaming headaches. After Peng Hong heard about it, he personally picked up the sword and went in, and he also had a splitting headache. In the middle of confusion, "there is a big scorpion like a pipa, stupidly descending from the board", which scared everyone and ran away screaming. Peng Hongsui set fire to the temple.
The giant scorpion here is "as big as a pipa" - the length of an adult pipa is about one meter.
The third-to-last "giant scorpion" comes from the "Scorpion Demon Temple" in Xi'an. The earliest record of this giant scorpion is the note " Compiled by Gengsi" written by the Ming Dynasty scholar Lu Can, which was later published in There are also reprints and expansions in notes such as "Jianhu Collection" and "Continued Er Tan".
"Gengsi Edition"
"There is a scorpion temple in Xi'an, and a scorpion is built in the building." According to legend, there was a woman in the beginning of the country. He was an ordinary person, extremely intelligent, and "well-known in literature and history". After a governor was widowed, he married her. One day, when the chief envoy was working, he suddenly remembered that there was an official document left at home and asked his subordinates to fetch it. The subordinate came to the door of the house and repeatedly called "Mrs.", but no one answered. He thought that there was no one in the room, so he pushed the door and went in, but when he saw "the old scorpion is as big as a wheel, lying on the couch", he was so frightened that he lost his mind and rushed over to tell him. Commissioner. The chief envoy "doesn't believe it, it's a demon." The subordinates felt very aggrieved, so they told the chief envoy that when the lord comes down another day, we will quietly go back and watch together, and we will know that what I said is wrong. The administrative envoy allowed it, "I saw the old scorpion lying on the couch, and then turned into a woman again." The governor was stunned when the woman walked out of the room and said to him, "I am a scorpion demon, and I have offended the underworld. Master Lai Guanyin rescued him and saved him from death. He was fortunate to be served by a woman's corpse as a human being. I hope the public will build a temple to repay the virtue of the great man." Then he disappeared and never appeared again. The chief envoy knew that she had no intention of harming herself, so she built a scorpion temple to pray for her.
The giant scorpion here is "as big as a wheel". The ordinary wheel of the Ming and Qing dynasties is about one meter in diameter, which should be slightly longer than the pipa.
2. The third positive number: the two-meter-long giant scorpion was killed by pepper
The fourth-to-last "giant scorpion" came from the " Hearing Records " by the layman.The author said that he saw this incident with his own eyes:
"Hearing the Record"
"In the afternoon of the Qianlong period, I will come to Huai with the lord of the family", when the ship was approaching Jinling, it suddenly encountered a strong wind and was unable to travel , then moored at Zhoushan Col. Suddenly, an object floated down from the upper reaches, "several feet long, shaped like a pipa", and no one knew what it was. At this time, the wind was going well. The boatmen unfastened the ropes and continued to move forward. After walking for dozens of miles, they suddenly saw a lot of people gathered on the east bank. Everyone felt it was novel. "I saw a scorpion shell left on the beach, with a head like a wheel and a tail like a fish hook. The body was lost and it stinks." It was only when everyone realized that the object floating from the upstream that they had just seen was the body of a scorpion. At this time, some people said that there was a temple of King Yu not far from here. You can visit it, so you can go ashore and walk to the temple. corruption". Everyone is surprised how this Yuwang Temple is so withered? The locals told them that there was a giant scorpion hidden in the temple pillar. It has been haunting for several years, often causing harm to nearby creatures, so that no one dared to go near Yuwang Temple. !
The body of this scorpion is "several feet long and shaped like a pipa", about one meter, but with the head and tail of the scorpion, it is estimated to be longer, so it ranks fourth from the bottom.
The fifth-to-last "giant scorpion" is from "Notes of Yongxu":
"Notes of Yongxu"
Xianfeng In the summer of Yimao, the capital was stormy, and many people saw a child in red clothes Leaving the sky and heading south, "thunder and lightning followed, and the momentum was amazing." After flying like this for a day, it flew all the way to the city tower. The red-clothed child held a pa in his hand and waved it endlessly. The thunder above his head roared, circling left and right, as if he was about to smash him, but he couldn't let go. There happened to be a hunter at the bottom of the city, and he fired a shot at it. The child heard the sound and looked down. "Suddenly hearing a thunderclap, you have fallen to the death of the city." Everyone gathered to take a look, "It's a four-foot-long giant scorpion."
Four feet is roughly equivalent to 1.3 meters today, which is larger than the scorpion in the Temple of King Yu.
and then the positive third place, from " ".
"The Firefly Window"
There is a stone bridge in Ji County. It is rumored that there are poisons hidden under the bridge, so people on the journey warn each other not to rest nearby. On this day, a man who sold raw peppers came with two donkeys carrying raw peppers. It was midsummer at this time. Although it was night, the heat was still unbearable. Tired of walking, the hawker unloaded the bamboo cage with the raw peppers on the back of the donkey and placed it on the bridge to let the two donkeys take a breath. Wearing his clothes, he rested on the bridge railing. Because of extreme tiredness, he soon fell asleep. "There seems to be wind noise in the dream, and rustling again." He woke up suddenly, suspecting that someone was stealing raw peppers, and got up to check, "There is a giant hanging on the side of the fence, shaped like a lute, gray-blue, it is also a scorpion. ". The peddler was so frightened that he ran away and ran far away, but when he saw the scorpion was motionless, he dared to come closer and take a look, "Then it's already killed by Jiao Ma!" "The only thing is the pepper, its anger is very strong, and the scorpion giant is like this, and it will be killed." The hawker used a donkey to carry the dead giant scorpion home, "both head and tail are brushed on the ground."
No matter how small the donkey used for transportation, the height of its back should be more than one meter. Since this giant scorpion can "flick the ground with its head and tail", it can be seen that its length should be more than two meters.
3. Yuzhou The Scorpion King: Killing the "Bad Rules" Scorpion Herbal Merchant
Next is the "giant scorpion", which is the second most positive, from the Qing Dynasty scholar Yu Fenghan Notes on "Gao Xin Yanzhai Mixed Works":
"Gao Xin Yanzhai Mixed Works"
In the 18th year of Daoguang, it rained heavily in Tianjin, and the water was several feet deep on the flat ground. , fell to death in the wild fields", people at that time said that the heavy rain was caused by the fight between scorpions and dragons. Although this statement is absurd, but a scorpion is the size of a mule, and its body length must have exceeded two meters.
The exciting time has come, and the "champion winner" of this giant scorpion selection is about to be revealed for you, from the Qing Dynasty notebook "Autumn Lantern Cong Talk".
Sichuan Songpan , a hunter was walking in the mountains,"I saw a boy in green clothes, sitting on the side of a stone with his back, and a deer passing in front of him, shuddered and died." Orion suspected that it was a monster, and "hit it with a gun". Suddenly, a strong wind blew up, and the boy in Tsing Yi disappeared in front of his eyes. The hunter followed the trail for a long time, and found that "in front of the death hole of a giant scorpion, there is something strange about two feet long".
"Zhang two" is equivalent to four meters today, so this Songpan giant scorpion can be called the "king of giant scorpions" in ancient Chinese notes.
However, in the ancient notes, the real "Scorpion King" is actually something else. According to " Qing barnyard banknotes ", Yuzhou, Henan is rich in scorpions, "which can be used as a medicine to dispel madness", so pharmaceutical merchants in Hubei have come to purchase. But the scorpion has a strange rule, you can only come once, or you will be killed. On the mountain that is rich in scorpions, "there is a king who grows his group", and this scorpion king is "big and the most poisonous". At the end of the Tongzhi reign, after the Taiping Rebellion was suppressed, "the number of people from Hubei and Shang to Yu and scorpions will increase, and they will become rich." There was a drug dealer who was very greedy and wanted to challenge the rule of "you can only pick it once". As a result, when he came to pick scorpions for the second time, in the night "suddenly the wind came, and the sand and stones flew", and countless scorpions rushed to the hotel, destroying the walls. and enter. People shouted "The Scorpion King is coming" and ran for their lives one after another. The drug dealer was so frightened that he couldn't take a step, so he had to cover his body with a jar in the yard. "The scorpion king circled the jar three times, and then came out, and the wind and sand stopped suddenly." When people came over to look in trembling, the jar had disintegrated, and the medicine dealer had died.
Unfortunately, there is no description about the size of "Scorpion King", so I don't know if it can compete with Songpan Zhiscorpion in terms of body size.
"Autumn Lamp Cong Talks"
However, many of the ancient notes quoted above are at first glance known to be fabricated by the author, and should not be taken as true. At least on the "data level", it is true and credible:
Somewhere outside the city gate, there was a geotechnical worker who dug up a scorpion that was "nearly a foot long". The worker was shocked and immediately suppressed it with a shovel, calling for his companions Come and help. Unexpectedly, the shouting stopped suddenly, this person was already dead, everyone gathered around and saw that he was covered in black and blue, guessing that when he pressed the scorpion with the shovel, "the scorpion stabbed the shovel in a hurry, and the poison came up from the shovel. also".However, the wooden pole of the shovel cannot "guide the poison", so the real situation is probably that the person was accidentally stabbed by a scorpion tail and died of poisoning! However, the record of the size of the giant scorpion in this note is more realistic-the length is nearly a foot, that is, about 33 centimeters, and the largest scorpion specimen collected in the world is currently 35 centimeters in length.
Why there are so many unbelievable giant scorpion legends in ancient notebooks, probably stems from a strange psychology of human beings. In this way, it is "deified" or "demonized", and it is spread with falsehood, and the more it is spread, the more evil it is. A note from the late Qing Dynasty, "Little Records of Dumen Knowledge," recorded that there was an old toon tree in the Zongbu Hutong charcoal factory, whose trunk was broken by lightning after a storm. Make a variegated color", this time the capital was a sensation, and many people came to watch. The police department dispatched officers to investigate and found that "there is a scorpion, but a big scorpion is not seen" - what caused the audience to gather and disturb the day was just a rumor. It is no wonder that Jiang Zhiqi, the author of "Small Records of Dumen Knowledge", sighed: "Those who know that the real strange things in the world do not get one or two out of ten, and people who make them strange are in eight or nine out of ten. This kind of thing is also true!"
In this information explosion In the era, as long as you remember that "the real weirdos don't get one or two out of ten, and the people who make them weird are out of ten", you can probably not rush to comment at the first moment of a lot of hot news, but "wait and see." "Well.
Responsible editor: Gu Ming
proofreading: Ding Xiao
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