What era does the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl take place

The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl are the famous Han folk love stories in ancient China, and they are also one of the four major folk legends in China (the other three are "Liangshan Bo Di Na Bang and Zhu Yingtai", "Meng Jiangnu Crying on the Great Wall" and "The Legend of the White Snake"), derived from the star names of the Niu Xing and the Vega Star. Legend has it that the ancient Emperor of Heaven's granddaughter, Weaver Girl, was good at weaving cloth and weaving colorful glow to the sky every day. She hated this boring life, so she secretly went down to the mortal world, married the cowherd of Hexi privately, and lived a life of male farmers and female weavers.

This angered the Emperor of Heaven, who took the Weaver Girl back to the Heavenly Palace, ordered them to separate, and allowed them to meet only once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month on the Queqiao Bridge. Their steadfast love touched the magpies, and countless magpies flew over and used their bodies to build a magpie bridge across the Tianhe River, so that the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl could meet on the Tianhe.

The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl is a very beautiful love story that has been passed down through the ages, and it is one of the four major folk love legends in China. As an idiom, it can be interpreted as: the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl are mythical figures, derived from the star names of Altair and Vega.

The story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl has been recorded in the Book of Poetry during the Qin and Han dynasties, and carved stone statues have also been found in the Han Dynasty

This is probably a legend from more than 2,000 years ago

Looking up at the starry sky, compassion for the world, farewell to sorrow and hatred, this is the tenth song of "Nineteen Ancient Poems" "Morning Glory":

Morning Glory, the Han Girl of the Bright River.

Slender hands, zaza lanes.

All day long, sobbing like rain.

The river is clear and shallow, how much is it different?

Yingying is in the water, and the pulse is silent.

The poem adopts the third-person shape, looking up at Altair and Vega on both sides of the Milky Way, and then concentrating on describing the Weaver Nu Bu Sansui Star, shaping her into a beautiful and mournful woman, clearly writing the stars and stars in the sky, and alluding to the parting feelings in the world.

The evolution of the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl can be roughly divided into four periods. The Shang and Zhou dynasties were in the embryonic period, and the ancients saw that the Tianhe (Hehan, i.e., the Milky Way) each had two bright stars, one was named "Morning Glory" like a cow's horn, and the other was named "Weaver Girl" because of a shuttle like a weaving cloth; Three thousand years ago, there was a clear record in the "Book of Poems, Xiaoya, Dadong" that the names of "Weaver Girl" and "Morning Glory" appeared, but this was only written as two stars, and there was no special relationship between them. The Han Dynasty was a turning period, and began to pull them from the sky to the earth, materialized, anthropomorphized, and warmed up into lovesick lovers, "Morning Glory" is an example, and Bangu's "Western Capital Fu" also said:

Facing the pool of Kunming, the left morning glory and the right weaver girl, like the endless cloud and Han. "The Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties were stereotyped periods, they were officially stereotyped as husband and wife, and the Qixi Festival appeared. After the Tang and Song dynasties, it was a legendary period, adding oil and vinegar to render the vines.

In these four periods, the Han Dynasty was the most critical, and "Morning Glory" is undoubtedly an important cultural witness to the legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl.

It first appeared in the period of the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

In the Eastern Han Dynasty, among the "Nineteen Ancient Poems" created by Anonymous, there is a poem "Morning Glory", from which it can be seen that Morning Glory and Weaver Girl are already a pair of lovers who admire each other, but they have not yet been identified as husband and wife in the poem. In the written records, the earliest person to call the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl husband and wife should be the "Anthology" compiled by Xiao Tong of the Liang Dynasty during the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

But in the imagination of the ancients, the heavenly couple and the earthly couple are basically the same, so there is no tragedy in the story. As for why the morning glory and the weaver girl had to "have a meeting on the seventh day of the seventh month". The original text is not explained.

According to later generations, it may be that on the one hand, the stars are the brightest in the sky at night in July every year, and the two stars of morning glory and weaver girl are closer to each other.

On the other hand, the seventh day of July was the day of the folk custom of "begging" at that time, and the working people regarded the Weaver Girl as a labor expert, so they could weave hundreds of horses within ten days, and begged for her.

As a result, people blended the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl with folk customs. The story continues to enrich and evolve over time.

The story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl was formed in the Eastern Han Dynasty. It first appeared in "The Book of Songs, Xiaoya, Dadong" and replied Liangqing: "There is a Han in the sky, and there is light in the prison."

The weaver girl, seven Xiang all day long, although the seven clear Lu Xiang, do not become a newspaper key date. He is a cow, not a box". In the poem, the Cowherd is called Morning Glory, but at that time, the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl only referred to the stars in the sky and had no description of love.