Why is Tomb-Sweeping Day an important festival for sacrifice?

According to "Questions at the Age of 1", "Everything is clean and bright when it grows. So it is called Qingming. "

On Qingming Day, the weather is warming up, which is a good time for spring ploughing and planting, and also an excellent opportunity to cherish spring and honor the dead.

The rulers of the Tang Dynasty allowed the people to continue the custom of sweeping graves and offering sacrifices to ancestors on the Cold Food Festival until Qingming Day, so as to strengthen the tradition of filial piety, and from then on, Qingming began to take on the nature of a festival.

In the twenty-second year of Jiaqing in Qing Dynasty (AD 1817), Changsha County Records recorded:

On Qingming Day, wine and food were set up to recommend the first tomb, paper money was marked on it, and grass was removed from the tomb and soil was added, which was called grave sweeping.

In the twenty-third year of Jiaqing, Qing Dynasty (AD 1818), the Records of Shanhua County recorded:

On Qingming, bamboo branches were cut and wrapped with natural paper, which was called "spring strips", and they were inserted into the tomb for worship.

Tomb sweeping in Qingming Festival is a festival custom related to funeral customs. According to records, in ancient times, "the tomb was not a grave", that is to say, only the grave pit was dug, and no grave mound was built, so the sacrifice was not recorded. Later, tombs and graves, the custom of offering sacrifices to sweep, had a support.

in the Qin and Han dynasties, tomb sacrifice has become an indispensable ritual activity. According to the biography of Yan Yannian in Han Dynasty, even if Yan was thousands of miles away from Beijing, he would "return to the grave site in the East China Sea" in Qingming.

Since then, the exhibition of tombs at the Cold Food Festival has rightly become the official ritual of worshipping and sweeping. Royal aristocrats are also among the ranks of cold food sacrifice tombs.

If you want to show the tomb, you should mention paper money. Paper money is a kind of "mingbi" used by the ancients to worship ghosts and gods, funeral and grave sweeping for the dead to enjoy, so it is also called mingbi. Generally, white paper is cut into the shape of copper coins, or scattered in wild cemeteries or incinerated to the dead, which is called paper scattering or paper burning by the people.

There is a record about paper money in Historical Records: "Some people steal money from Xiaowen Garden."

it can be seen that the custom of paper money existed as early as the Han dynasty. After the Wei and Jin Dynasties, when the Southern Dynasties were in the Qi Dynasty, people generally changed to use paper to hold money as a sacrifice to the spirit. This custom has been passed down. Things in the world, passing by, change day by day, only the custom of cold food exhibition tomb, such as dew spring grass, year after year.

In the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the main activity of the Cold Food Festival has gradually evolved into ancestor worship and grave-sweeping, and the ban on eating cold food to commemorate Jiezhi's promotion has taken second place.

The custom of cold food exhibition of tombs is rooted in the ancestral vein and flesh and blood, and later it has evolved into the first memorial day in the world, where the four seas share the same sacrifice, the nine plains burn silks, the living show filial piety and ghosts and gods enjoy food.

From ancient times to the present, paying homage to the grave is an important activity from the imperial court to the people in our country. It mainly includes two contents: one is to hang paper to burn money, and the other is to repair the grave.

Before the Tang Dynasty, there was a custom of burning paper money to offer sacrifices to the dead in our country. However, because fire was forbidden during cold food, it was impossible to burn paper money for tomb sacrifices, so people inserted and hung paper money in cemeteries or trees next to cemeteries, and some pressed them with small stones, indicating that the younger generation had brought expenses to their ancestors.

This raises a question. According to the ancients, if things used by ancestors were not burned, they could not go to other spaces, except food.

In our country, there is a custom of burning incense or paper money, regardless of religion or folk. If this paper money is not burned, the ancestors of the underworld will not be easy to use.

Tomb-Sweeping Day is one of the three major ghost festivals in China, and the other two ghost festivals are on the 15th of July and the first day of October in the lunar calendar. "Ghost Festival" is a festival to mourn the dead, which is opposite to the festival to worship the gods and the earth gods.

The participants in the Qingming Festival are all the people, from the king's ministers to the ordinary people, to pay homage to the dead souls of their ancestors on this festival.

since the Tang dynasty, the imperial court has given officials a holiday to visit their graves in their hometown. The number of people who attend grave sweeping is not limited to men and women, and they often go out with their families. Such grave-sweeping activities before and after the Qingming Festival often become the personal participation of all the society. Within a few days, people in the countryside kept coming and going, and the scale was extremely prosperous.

Tomb-Sweeping Day's sacrificial activities are the first to go to the tomb for sweeping. But in addition to going to the grave, there are a series of other memorial activities on this day in history.

First of all, there is the royal memorial service, and this activity is not consistent in the past dynasties. For example, in 639, Emperor Taizong paid homage to the Mausoleum, stipulating that the Mausoleum should be visited by the Emperor, with seats and a den 5 meters away. It was also stipulated that sacrifices should be set up from the emperor's ancestors to the cold food day of Taizu Mausoleum.

in addition to the royal mausoleum, the more solemn ceremony for the Qingming Festival of Cold Food is the sacrifice to Konglin. According to the records of Shandong Tongzhi and Qufu County Records, Qufu Konglin is the tomb of Confucius, which is refined from heaven and pure wisdom.

it has been stipulated in the past dynasties that the period of worship here is twice a year, that is, the cold food festival in spring and the lunar October in winter. Duke Yansheng, a descendant of Confucius, was the chief sacrificial ceremony.

In addition to the Confucius Forest, there is the Qishenglin Temple more than 1 kilometers east of Qufu, which is the burial place of Confucius' father. Here, it is stipulated that Tomb-Sweeping Day is used twice a year in spring, and the third day of October in the lunar calendar is used in winter, and Duke Yansheng is also the chief priest.

It can be seen that Tomb-Sweeping Day has been an important festival for Chinese people since ancient times.

As a ghost festival, Qingming Festival is mainly to offer sacrifices to ancestors and deceased relatives, and to express the filial piety of the worshippers and their feelings for the dead. Tomb-Sweeping Day belongs to Ghost Festival, but it is not usually named as Ghost Festival, because it mainly sacrifices good ghosts, family ghosts, or the dead souls of close relatives, and focuses on expressing filial piety and affection. On the other hand, on the fifteenth day of July and the first day or two of October in the lunar calendar, even evil spirits and wild ghosts are sacrificed together, focusing on appeasing ghosts and not letting them do anything.