The Changing Process Of The Image Of The Queen Mother Of The West In The Stone Relief Of The Han Dynasty

The queen mother of the west rather ancient deity in ancient Chinese mythology.In the early literature such as the Classic of Mountains and Seas,the Biography of the King Named Zhou,Zhuangzi and Liezi,the image of the queen mother of the west appeared and began to change.In the han dynasty,the worship of the queen mother of the west gradually reached a new level,which was reflected in the fact that the queen mother of the west also entered the literary writing and historical records.In this kind of writing and description,the image of the queen mother of the west gradually evolved,and eventually changed from the evil god of half-man and half-beast in the book of the Classic of Mountains and Seas to the beautiful and noble auspicious goddess known to the later generations.From these written records,it can be seen that the transformation of the image of the queen mother of the west went through a very complicated and long process,and it was not until the end of the han dynasty that it became a great deity with immortality as the core.The transformation of the image of the queen mother of the west not only exists in the written records handed down from time to time,but also in the stone unearthed from the han tomb.In the han dynasty portrait stone,the image of the queen mother of the west by several to sit down,from wear sheng to hairpin,the face and dress more and more close to the han dynasty aristocratic women,gradually faded the the Classic of Mountains and Seas in the original characteristics of wear sheng,to the road of secularization.At the same time,the queen mother of the west acquired a pair of wings,which embodied the idea of changing from a human being to an immortal.The wings are further confirmation of the faerie of the queen mother of the west.At the same time,kunlun mountains,toads,birds,rabbits and other things gradually close to the myth of the queen mother,and continue to enhance their immortality attributes,and eventually become a fixed member of the myth of the queen mother,to supplement the paradise of the dead.In addition to the change of the image of the queen mother and the things around her,the connubial deity is also a problem worthy of attention.Before the han dynasty,the queenmother of the west had no fixed mate.Until the han dynasty,under the influence of Yin and Yang,the han people created the mirror image of the queen mother of the west,the eastern maharajah,and made it the fixed conjoined god of the queen mother of the west.From the point of view of the stone relief,after a variety of short attempts,the schema of the co-emergence of the eastern maharajah and the queen mother of the west gradually spread and was widely accepted,and this conjugal relationship has continued to this day.According to the detailed research,the queen mother of the west and the eastern maharajah in shandong and northern jiangsu provinces often sat on the seats,while the queen mother of the west and the eastern maharajah in shanxi and shaanxi provinces were mostly on the pillars of the tomb gates.It is not difficult to find that there are two main couple gods in the han stone relief,that is,Fuxi and Nuwa,the eastern maharajah and the queen mother of the west.In the stone paintings,Fuxi and Nuwa,who had long been identified as a couple,often appeared in pairs,holding a compass and a moment or a sun and a moon.Generally speaking,Fuxi holds up the sun,and nuwa holds up the moon,but there are some contrary situations.The reason is that the environment in which the stone is a tomb,with the nature of Yin,contrary to the Yang of the living world.By examining the images of the two main couple gods,we can find that the status of the princes of the eastern maharajah and the queen of the queen mother of the westt gradually rises,while that of Fuxi and Nuwa gradually declines.On the one hand,people wanted to live forever,so the queen mother of the west was more important.On the other hand,Fuxi and Nuwa became tiny fertility gods.As ancient gods,Fuxi and Nuwa had less affinity than the queen mother of the west.The prevalence and evolution of the deathless myth of the western queen mother of the west in the stone is the reflection of the han people's spiritual world,which reflects the han people's adherence to the theory of Yin and Yang and their desire for immortality.At the same time,the han people kept reshaping the queen mother of the west in order to get close to the god and beguile the god.In addition,the image of the queen mother of the west changes because of other ethnic culture.From the changes of the representation of theimmortal image of the queen mother of the west,we can see that the image art is gradually maturing.