What does it mean to be blind in lunar knowledge?

Blind year refers to the year when spring has not started, commonly known as "Widowhood Year". Without beginning of spring in 2005, it became unlucky to get married, so we were all anxious to get married in the spring of the previous year. So what is the specific introduction of the blind year in the little knowledge of the lunar calendar? Let's have a look!

The solar calendar, perhaps the earliest calendar used by our ancestors, is based on the laws of the sun. The ancients thought that the sun revolved around the earth, and one revolution was a year-today we know that it is the cycle of the earth revolving around the sun, but the ancients knew the opposite. According to scholars' research, there was a solar calendar in the Warring States Period, with ten months a year in the name of heavenly stems, thirty-six days in January and three hundred and sixty days in the name of earthly branches. Plus five to six days of "wasted time", a year is 365 days or 366 days.

In that case, the arrangement of solar terms first includes "summer solstice" and "winter solstice", followed by "vernal equinox" and "autumn equinox". The return year of the season is divided into spring and autumn, then into four seasons, spring, summer, autumn and winter, and even twenty-four solar terms. There are traces of this calendar in the ancient document Guanzi, which is related to the torch festival of Yi people and southwest ethnic minorities.

There is still a saying in Lingnan folk that "Chinese New Year is celebrated from the winter solstice to the sun", which is the remnant of folk memory of this calendar. The ancients did regard the winter solstice as New Year's Day. In this tropical year of the solar calendar, there will be no "double spring" and "blind year".

The lunar calendar is based on the changes of the moon's profit and loss. The period of a lunar month is twenty-nine or thirty days, and the length of a year is only an integer multiple of the month, which has nothing to do with the tropic year. The month has nothing to do with the four seasons. Greek calendar and hijri calendar belong to this kind of calendar. It is impossible to have a "double spring" or a "blind year" in a year.

The yin-yang calendar is formulated in combination with the sun-moon cycle. A year is divided into 24 solar terms according to the movement of the sun and several months according to the movement of the moon. Twelve miscarriages and big months add up to only 354 or 355 days.

Compared with the two, the difference is about eleven days. In order to coordinate the two, the ancients adopted the method of "fixed leap", and one year in several years was thirteen months. It was reported by scholars in the last century that the Yao nationality in the south still retains the name "March". The current "Seven Leaps in Nineteen Years" system originated quite early. The history of our country, from the Spring and Autumn Annals, has a dry calendar, which is enough to prove.

However, setting a leap month does not necessarily lead to the appearance of "beginning of spring" twice a year or the absence of "beginning of spring". Here again involves the problem of "correction", that is, taking that month as the first month. Judging from historical records, this "correction" is more complicated:

In Xia Dynasty, silver moon was the first month, which was called Yin Jian.

The Shang dynasty built ugliness in December as the first month;

In the Zhou Dynasty, November was the first month of Jianzi.

In the Qin Dynasty, October was the first month of Jianhai.

The establishment of the Han dynasty, the early Qin dynasty, thought that water virtue, but also built Hai; Later, when he came to Emperor Wu, it was changed to the summer calendar by Xia Hong's calculation, with silver moon as the first month.

Different "revisions" have different starting points for the New Year. For example, for Yin Jian, the starting point of silver moon is New Year's Day. This method has been continuously improved for two thousand years since Hanwu, but it has remained basically unchanged.

In all kinds of "corrections", 10 month,1month or even1February can't appear the "double spring" or "blind year" mentioned above, and this will happen. It can be seen that there is no spring in the "blind year", spring is not always there, and there is no calendar. It is the result of artificial arrangement, which has nothing to do with the sky and traffic.

But folks do have the custom of "avoiding marriage in blind years". Where did this custom come from?

When the origin of this custom has not been verified, as for the reasons of taboo, it is related to agriculture and fertility:

In ancient times, agriculture was the foundation, and beginning of spring was the beginning of farming and an important festival. The emperor and local officials held a ceremony of "persuading farmers", and the folk also left the custom of "dancing spring cattle". How the weather on this day is related to the good luck of the year. Henan folk songs say that "beginning of spring is clear and warm, and farmers are bulging; If the wind is dark, the grain will not make people uneasy. " He also said, "Yang is everything and Yin is everything." There are taboos in many places in beginning of spring, which shows the importance. Imagine that such an important day of the year is gone. Isn't that disturbing?

The ancients more directly associated "beginning of spring" with fertility. Spring is the season of breeding. If you don't stand, you won't prosper. However, this taboo is more likely to originate from Lingnan: Qu Dajun's Guangdong New Language records: "Guangzhou means egg spring, fish spring, shrimp spring, goose spring, chicken spring and duck spring." The "egg" in Lingnan is called "spring".

In ancient times, northerners called it "chicken" and Lingnan called it "chicken spring". "Egg", "Spring" and "Zi" are synonyms here, and "Egg" has always been a symbol of reproduction. "No spring" means "no children", which is the biggest taboo of marriage. In the traditional agricultural society, the population often determines the survival of the clan, so population proliferation has the highest value.

Traditional weddings are full of reproductive symbols, such as peanuts (metaphor for boys and girls), red dates (early childhood), lotus seeds (lotus seeds), ginger (metaphor for girls), taro (multiple children), olive seeds (purple orchids) and jiaozi (jiaozi), which all show people's hope for prosperity. Marriage is the most taboo without children, and the "blind year" without "spring" is naturally considered unlucky. On the other hand, it is logical to say "get married well in double spring". However, this is really a collateral meeting.

"Blind Year" is unlucky, is double spring auspicious? In Shandong and Hebei, there is a saying that "Er Quan makes beans as expensive as gold in one year", and in Hubei, Henan and Lingnan, there is a saying that "Er Quan makes a winter and ten cowsheds make nine empty". "Double spring" is not only good for reproduction, but also bad for growing beans and raising cattle. The reason here doesn't make sense either.

As for the "blind year", the people also have a way to deal with it: there is an old custom in Wengyuan, northern Guangdong. When a "blind year" woman gets married, she will bring a bag of boiled eggs to the crowd when she gets off the sedan chair. Everyone cheered: "The bride gives birth to spring!" So, everything is fine and everyone is happy!

From this point of view, "blind year" is just a common result of people coordinating calendars. It is not natural or inevitable, and there are ways to deal with it. The core of the custom of "avoiding marriage in blind years" is people's pursuit of fertility. In fact, it is more "oral color" and meaningless. There are still many taboos in the prosperity of science as it is today. It's really unnecessary!