Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi interprets "washing" as "sprinkling feet" and "bathing" as "sprinkling hands". From this point of view, the meaning of ancient bathing is not exactly the same as that of modern bathing. Only by combining Xu Shen's explanation of "bathing" with "bathing" can we take a bath in a complete sense, because "bathing is also" and "bathing is also".
Bathing paper horse
The Book of Rites once stipulated that bathing is:
Please take a bath with soup on the fifth day and take a bath on the third day. In the meantime, the surface is dirty, please; Your feet are dirty, please wash the soup.
The procedure for ordinary people to take a bath is: "Take a bath with two towels, up and down." . When you get out of the pole and walk on the mat, you lick your body with soup, pu mat and clothes, but drink it repeatedly. "When people die, they should cut off their fingernails and feet, and then they can moan after taking a shower. As for "Confucius bathed in sunshine", it is well known. During the Spring and Autumn Period, people were serious about taking a bath. If you want to take a comfortable and thorough bath, of course, it is ideal in the hot pool.
Bath appeared more clearly, about the reign of Qin Shihuang. In the Tang Dynasty, Du Mu's "Epang Palace Fu" contains two sentences: "Two rivers melt and flow into the palace wall" and "When Liu Wei is tired, the fat water will be abandoned". It can be inferred that Epang Palace has a waterway, and the water from Wei and Fan Erchuan outside can be discharged into the palace. After the imperial secretary bathed, the powder water flowed out through the waterway, which made the "nourishing and diverting" tired. It can be imagined that Epang Palace has baths, and the quantity is quite large, and the quality is not low. It shows that the waterway of Afanggong has been carefully planned and designed, and the designer has considered the terrain, slope and flow direction, so that the waterway can not only absorb river water, but also discharge dirty water through circulation. There is even a facility to filter Wei and Fan's water in Epang Palace, which keeps it awake all night and gurgles.
As the representative of the upper class of society, aristocrats need a neat appearance to match their great prestige. Shi Shuo Xin Yu in the Southern Dynasties advocated that you must put on new clothes after bathing. It can be seen that the nobles took bathing as a hygienic content and established a set of procedures. However, it is impossible for nobles to make bathing a "patent" for a few people. That is to say, bathing is one of the necessary conditions for monks to serve Buddhism.
In the Tang Dynasty, the Book of Changes wrote the daily rituals of the monks he saw in India as "Biography of the South China Sea Returning to the Inner Law", which recorded that "there are more than ten pools in Nalanduo Temple, and every morning, the temple sounds healthy and pushes the monks to bathe". Buddhism in China comes from India, and monks in China strictly observe the habit of bathing. The three volumes of Bath Sutra and Monk's Law mentioned in the Book of Southern Qi all have words to persuade people to build more bathrooms. Dunhuang murals depict the scenes of monks bathing, which are all evidence of bathing habits. Gao Cheng's "Jiyuan Affairs" once explained the "Buddha Washing Day" on the eighth day of April: "I washed my heart with water, and now I invite a monk to bathe to get rid of my body." Showing respect to Buddha by bathing. Temples in China have long had bathrooms, such as Baoguang Temple Garden in Yang Xuanzhi's Galand. The bathroom at that time was excavated at the site of Famen Temple in Fufeng, Shaanxi.
From then on, whether in classics or novels, we can often see monks who pay attention to bathing. They think bathing is a solemn ceremony. Just like the elders in the five precepts of Zen master's private red lotus, they only have one request before they end their lives: "burn a bucket of soup with me to take a bath!" " Then I changed into a new suit and sat down. During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, bathing had spread all over the people. Zhuang's "Chicken Ribs" said: "Millions of people in Tokyo, none of them burn firewood, all use coal." It seems common for citizens to enjoy hot baths. Fan Chengda's "Plum Tree" also said: In order to compete for the first time, the flower sellers in Lin 'an put the first folded plum branches in the bathroom and fumigated them with hot and humid steam in the bathroom to make the dormant flower buds open ahead of time. This is obviously the influence of bathing on people's beautification of life.
The Travels of Marco Polo tells us that there were "cold baths" on some streets in Hangzhou in the Yuan Dynasty. "The waiters and waitresses are at your service. From small to large, male and female customers in these baths are used to taking cold baths all year round, which is considered to be very good for their health. " Kyle Poirot also wrote down the good habit that "everyone is used to taking a bath once a day, especially before eating".
The interpretation of the proverb "Park Tong Shi" shows a "map of public baths" in most cities in the Yuan Dynasty in detail. At that time, besides bathing, public baths could scratch their backs, comb their hair, shave their heads and pedicure, but the prices were different. Taking a bath costs five yuan for soup, two yuan for scratching your back, five yuan for combing your hair, two yuan for shaving your hair and five yuan for pedicure. There is a cupboard for clothes, hats and boots in the bathroom.