Study On The Formation Of Liu Hai Playing With The Three-Legged Toad Belief

The belief of "Liu Hai Playing with the three-legged toad" was in essence the variant hidden in the myth of "There was a toad in the moon".Before Tang Dynasty,the toad was regarded as auspicious animal,and there were records of Chang ’E changed into a toad.The element of toad was essential in Han portraits and accounted for the largest proportion in the picture.The prevailing Buddhism in the Southern and Northern Dynasties regarded the toad as an evil animal,and the Tang people liked Chang ’E and devised a plot of toad falling from the moon.The myth of "There is a toad in the moon" was so influential that when the toad falling from the moon,the people still believed it can bring blessings.In the Song Dynasty,there was no fairy tale of Liu Haichan playing with toad.Quan Zhen School,which prevailed between Jin and Yuan dynasties,promoted Liu Haichan as one of the five ancestors in the North.The northern Quan Zhen School and the Southern Jindan School both incorporated their own traditions into the lineage of "Zhongli Quan,Lü Dongbin and Liu Haichan" and realized the convergence of the northern and southern sects in the middle of the Yuan Dynasty.In the Jin Dynasty,Quan Zhen Lie Zu Fu written by Song Defang,after detailed annotation by Qin Zhi’an,the biography of Liu Haichan became completely.Including the story of "broke up and threw away gold coins","put the coin on a table and piled the eggs on it" and "resigned Yan as prime Minister".Liu Haichan served as a kind of rivet to connect Wang Chongyang and Zhang Boduan,the founders of the two Schools.There was still no fairy tale of toad in Liu Haichan’s biography.In the late Song and early Yuan dynasties,Yan Hui’s "Toad Immortal" was painted with "Immortal with unkempt hair + a three-legged toad ",which was often called "Liu Hai Playing with a toad" in Ming and Qing Dynasties.In the Ming Dynasty,the pictures so-called "Liu Hai Playing with a toad " actually contains mixed images of Bai Yuchan,but in the early Ming Dynasty,the relationship between Bai Yuchan and three-legged toad was not highlighted,and the popularity of Bai Yuchan in yuan and Ming dynasties was lower than that of Liu Haichan.It was known that the earliest book reference to the word "Liu Hai playing with a toad" appeared in the middle of the Ming Dynasty.In the local Chronicles of the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties,there appeared several stories about "Liu Hai playing with a toad" to explain the origin of the name "Liu Haichan",but this was not need to explain.I think that this was because in the portrait of "Immortal with unkempt hair + a three-legged toad",the Immortal were identified as Liu Haichan usually.But there were corresponding problems how to match human and animal in the image.Whether it was due to the dismantling of Liu Haichan,or the phonetic omission,"Liu Hai Playing with a toad " was simple and popular,spread widely.The Qing Dynasty textual research was prosperous but prone to bias,Qing people may be combined with the folk stories at that time to solve this problem,the best way is directly named "Liu Hai Playing with a toad ".