Five-color glutinous rice is a traditional food loved by ethnic minorities such as Zhuang and Miao. Every year, on the "March 3rd" Song Festival, Tomb-Sweeping Day, April 8th and other festivals, every household should cook five-color glutinous rice for eating in order to drive away the song fair or to worship ancestors and gods. Select high-quality glutinous rice, wash it clean, then dye it with colored juice extracted from red and blue grass, yellow rice flower, maple leaf and purple vine, and then steam it in a steamer to make it into four colors: red, blue, yellow and purple, which are colorful and fragrant, and are beneficial to human health. Du Fu once wrote a beautiful sentence for it, "There is no refined rice, which makes my color good".
It can be said that five-color glutinous rice is not only a delicacy of Zhuang and Miao nationalities, but also a ritual, a symbol and a custom. It has become an indispensable part of Zhuang, Miao and other minority cultures. So, where did the five-color glutinous rice first come from?
It is said that five-color glutinous rice is a custom of Zhuang township. On the eighth day of the fourth lunar month, adults are busy cooking glutinous rice. According to the old man, Zhuangxiang rakes fields and lands by buffaloes. From April to September in the lunar calendar, it is the hardest time for buffaloes. In order to thank the buffalo for their contribution, people cook five-color glutinous rice on the eighth day of April and wrap it with buttonwood leaves for cattle. This has been handed down from generation to generation and has become a custom. Later, on the third day of March, "Song Festival", "Tomb-Sweeping Day" or festive days, the Zhuang family all liked to cook colorful glutinous rice. But this statement seems too far-fetched, because five-color glutinous rice is neither the favorite food of cattle nor the best food to thank them. Besides, it is used to thank cows, and cows are not ancestors of Zhuang nationality. Why should we use five-color glutinous rice to worship ancestors?
The other is the legend of Shennong Gong, which is widely spread in Hainan Miao area. The main idea of the story is:
Long before Pan Huang was born, the Miao people had an ancestor named Shennong Gong. He was an orphan. At that time, there was no grain, so people could only eat leaves and roots. In order to find grain and benefit mankind, Shennong Gong went through all kinds of hardships and tasted all kinds of wild fruits, and finally found dozens of wild grains on the third day of the third lunar month. He planted these seeds on the ground. When the grain sprouted, he loosened the soil and pulled up the grass, and the seedlings blossomed and headed. He guarded day and night to drive away birds and animals, and finally harvested the ears of grain in Huang Cancan. He didn't eat a grain, gave all the grain to the Miao people and taught them to farm. Later, Li people and Han people also learned to farm. After the death of Shennong Gong, in order to commemorate the merits of Shennong Gong, the Miao people cooked a meal of rice for the sacrifice of Shennong's ancestor Gong whenever transplanting rice and harvesting grain. The third day of the third lunar month is an auspicious day for Shennong to find grain seeds. On this day, Miao men, women and children celebrated March 3, catching fish and killing chickens to buy meat and wine, making red, yellow, black, green and white glutinous rice, putting on holiday costumes, wearing gold and silver, singing and dancing to commemorate Shennong.
However, I think this legend may have been circulated late, because the earliest record of Pangu was Youyang Miscellany in the Tang Dynasty, and the story above also showed gold and silver jewelry and ethnic differentiation (Han and Li). Therefore, the five-color glutinous rice provided by this legend first appeared in the Tang Dynasty. But the five-color glutinous rice appeared much longer than we thought.
There are indications that the appearance of five-color glutinous rice is closely related to the dragon mother culture. Many experts on ethnic groups and cultural relics believe that "the birthplace of dragon mother culture originally originated from the area around Daming Mountain". In Wuming, Shanglin and other places around Daming Mountain, the dragon mother culture in Shimen Village, Tanghong Township, Shanglin County is the most striking. As early as 1972, stone tools such as stone hairpin, stone axe, pestle, etc. and bronze wares such as copper knife and shovel were found in Shinan Sea. This shows that human beings appeared in Shimen as early as the Neolithic Age. In addition, a bronze drum unearthed from Tanghong is bigger than the one buried in the tomb of Wei Jue, a big leader of Zhuang nationality. Pei Yuan, a Jin native, said in Guangzhou Ji: "Li Liao (the name of the ancient Zhuang people) casts copper as a drum, and the drum is only tall and expensive." From the existing bronze drum technology in Shanglin County Cultural Relics Institute, it is rare that these bronze drums appeared in the Eastern Han Dynasty, which shows that the economic and cultural development of Shimen was very advanced as early as the Eastern Han Dynasty and even before the Qin Dynasty, which laid a far-reaching historical foundation for the dragon mother culture.
In addition, experts found that the stone steps of the Shimen "Baxian", where the Dragon Mother Tomb is located, from the foot of the mountain to the cave "Ganxian", where the Dragon Mother Tomb is located, are all neatly built, but there are no traces of iron chisels. The distance from the foot of the mountain to the cave is about 300 meters. This kind of project is not small in ancient times, but why are there no traces of iron carving? This shows that this stone road was built before the appearance of iron, and it should be in Neolithic ancient times before the appearance of bronze ware. In addition, from1October 3 1 day to1October 3, 2005, an expert group headed by Xie Shouqiu, the general consultant of "Zhuang Online", discovered another dragon mother village in Shimen Village, Tanghong Township, Shanglin County. Therefore, considering various factors, experts believe that the dragon mother culture in Shimen is the most original!
It took so much trouble to explain that the five-color glutinous rice originated from the following legend, a legend that has probably been handed down from the Neolithic age in the mouth and hearts of Shanglin people for generations:
There is an unfathomable deep pool in front of Shimen village, which is called Shinai Sea by local people. Legend has it that there was a poor widow, childless and lonely. One morning, she went to Shinai Sea to fetch water. When she was fetching water, a small snake swam into her bucket. She hurried to pour the water back into the pool before drawing water. Unexpectedly, the little snake swam into her bucket again and again, so she had to pick it home and keep it in the water tank.
When she is lonely and depressed, the little snake is very understanding and always walks around her feet, making out like her son. Once, she was cutting pork dishes, and the little snake was playing beside her, while helping her sweep back the scattered pork dishes with her tail. The widow accidentally cut off the little snake's tail. From then on, she asked Xiaoxi to do special digging ("special" means unmarried man, "digging" means no tail) as a son to love him.
As the days passed, "Tedig" grew up and became as thick as a pillar. He first went to the pond in front of the village and then lived in the heather sea. He saw that his "mother" was living too hard, so he came back from the heather sea to support his "mother".
Later, when the widow died, Tedig flew to the north. An hour later, he scraped back a red coffin and took care of his "mother". Suddenly, there was a strong wind, and it was dark and thunderous. Tedig sent the coffin to a cave on a high mountain behind Shimen Village with the wind and hung it on the cliff above the cave. Because the day when the widow was buried was the third day of the third lunar month, there was a gust of wind blowing back at Shimen every year on the third day of March. According to legend, the "special excavation" came back to visit his mother's grave. Later, people called the mountain where "Hold Dig" and "Mother" were buried "Baxian" and the cave "Dare Immortal". People also spontaneously built a stone step road from the foot of the mountain to the cave, and set up an altar of "Te Dui" and his "mother" in the cave. Every first and fifteenth day, they came to worship, begging for rain and blessing, and they gave everything they wanted. Because Tedigger loved to eat glutinous rice cooked by his mother when he was alive, in order to commemorate Tedigger, the locals all made "five-color rice" according to the pattern on Tedigger.
Of course, this legend may be touched up and varied in different degrees, but after on-the-spot investigation by experts, the former site of the Dragon Mother Culture in Shimen, which originated from Shentan, Baxian, Ganxian and the former residence of the Dragon Mother, is consistent with the location of the altar in different versions of the legend, which has branded the real imprint on the Dragon Mother Culture in Shimen and laid a solid geographical foundation for the Dragon Mother Culture in this area. Moreover, in different versions of dragon mother cultural legends, only the dragon mother in Shimen died on the second day of March, was buried on the third day of March, and "Tedig" came back to visit the grave every year on the third day of March. This explains the relationship between ancestor worship with five-color glutinous rice and "March 3".
In a word, the historical, humanistic and geographical basis of Shimen not only originated from the ancient and rich dragon mother culture, but also accompanied by the delicious five-color glutinous rice.