Bi, which means assistance, is a homonym of avoidance; Plague means disease, and it is also a warm homonym. In the Ming dynasty, the eunuch who was in the imperial horse prison was the fourth grade, equivalent to the magistrate. Avoiding horse plague originated from an ancient folklore, which mixed the urine of female monkeys into horse feed to prevent horses from getting sick. God let the Monkey King hold the post of Bi, which seemed to acknowledge his ability and appointed him. Its essence is God's great mockery of the Monkey King. Because the Monkey King was not a female monkey, but a male monkey, there was a riot in the Heavenly Palace. When monsters from all walks of life told him to finish on the way to protect the Tang Priest in the Monkey King, the Monkey King was furious. That's the reason.
Wu Cheng'en, a famous novelist in the Ming Dynasty [about 15 10 (Geng Wunian)-158 1] In The Journey to the West's fourth classical novel, the Jade Emperor courted the Monkey King and ordered officials to make him a royal horse.
What exactly does the official name "Bi Marvin" mean? There are no records in Modern Chinese Dictionary, Ci Yuan and Ci Hai. However, according to the novelist Wu Cheng'en, Wu Qu Xing Jun (the star who is in charge of officials) thinks that Bi is the supervisor of the Imperial Horse Warden, and there are many officials in charge of thousands of horses, such as Jian Fu, Dian Shu and Lux. The author's original intention is that the Jade Emperor is teasing the Monkey King. According to The Journey to the West's annotator Huang Suqiu's note: "Bi, according to folklore, monkeys can avoid horse plague. The official name here is that the author adopted this legend and changed two homophones, Bi and Wen. "
According to the author's textual research, the above legend was first seen in the biography of Jin Shu and Guo Pu written by Emperor Taizong. Guo Pu (276-324), an exegetist in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, was born in Wenxi, Hedong (now Wenxi, Shanxi). Since childhood, he has been intelligent and knowledgeable, and is good at ancient Chinese and strange characters, especially the art of yin and yang divination. One day, Guo Pu went out to visit the general Zhao Gu, who happened to love riding and died suddenly. He was very sad and in a bad mood, so he closed the door to see the guests off. Guo Pu asked the doorman to take him to the stable to see the horse that died suddenly, so he told the doorman, "Tell him that Guo Pu can save the dead horse." . Hearing this, Zhao Gu was overjoyed and rushed out to meet him and asked Shanhaijing summarized if there was any good way to save the horse. Guo Pu put forward a good plan, saying, "You can send twenty or thirty health workers, with bamboo poles in their hands, to walk 30 miles east and beat them with bamboo poles where there are mountains and trees. When you see something coming out, grab it and bring it back, and the horse will live. " So he did as he said, and sure enough, he caught something that looked like an ape, so he quickly took it back to Zhao's home. As soon as the ape entered the stable, he jumped over the beam and walked over the dead horse's head. "Shh, suck its nose" (similar to "artificial respiration"). After a while, the horse can stand up and "bark excitedly and eat as usual". There is also this anecdote in the third volume of the famous writer and historian of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Gan Bao's Search for the Gods. Zhu Yi, a famous writer in the Song Dynasty, quoted the above story in his textual research on the idiom "Death of a horse doctor". "Those who are helpless and want to save the world are called' dead horse doctors'." Zhu Yi pointed out in Miscellaneous Notes: "The Ma people raise more animals and monkeys, and there is no horse disease."
According to the book written by Qi Yaomin, a famous agronomist of the Northern Wei Dynasty and the prefect of Levin in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, "Macaques are often kept in stables, so that horses are not afraid of evil and get rid of all diseases." Li Shizhen, a famous doctor in Ming Dynasty, also wrote in Compendium of Materia Medica: "The plague of female monkeys in stables." All show the habit of folk monkeys avoiding horse plague in stables. Modern medical experts believe that the urine odor excreted by female monkeys has preventive and inhibitory effects on horse plague.
It seems that Wu Cheng'en, a novelist, skillfully used humorous style to change the homonym of the word "Ma Wen" into the official position of "Bi Ma Wen" according to the prototype that macaques can control Ma Wen in ancient books, which is obviously quite scientific.