A. I. Nemirovsky

Myths and legends of the Ancient East

To the continent of myths

About the most ancient legends and traditions in the world became known relatively recently. For thousands of years, clay tablets, papyri, bamboo tablets, plates with inscriptions lay under sandy hills, in the ruins of cities, and no one knew what treasures of the human mind and imagination were hidden in them. The little that was known about the myths of the Ancient East before the excavations of these hills and the reading of unknown writings was conveyed by the sacred books of the ancient Jews the Bible, the ancient Iranians "Avesta", the ancient Indians "Vedas", "Mahabharata" and "Ramayana". However, with these monuments, except for the Bible, Europeans got acquainted only in the XVIII-XIX centuries.

Now we are standing before the Eastern myths in some confusion. What is the "light from the East"? A real avalanche, a raging, relentless stream, for almost every decade brings new material, new information that I would like to call the discovery of the century.

In this situation, each book, especially the popular one, is seen as Noah's ark, which has to be filled with the brightest and most significant. And the author faces the problem of choice, and choice is always subjective. The reader will have to rely on the author's erudition and artistic taste. Critics should keep in mind that we had at our disposal not the Titanic, but the ark. However, we tried not to offend a single ancient Eastern culture, not a single mythology of a vast region from mediterranean sea before Pacific Ocean V chronological framework ancient civilization. And if some of them are represented by more pairs of “clean” and “impure”, then there were good reasons for this, which will be explained in due time.

The creator of the biblical ark had to build partitions so that the animals would not devour each other on a long journey. We were not in danger. But the placement of a huge mass of passengers-characters still presented certain difficulties. Some of them, more famous, beat their chests and demanded better compartments. To withstand the pressure, I had to use their own principle of birthright. The most ancient and venerable gods and heroes were skipped ahead. At the same time, antiquity was determined not by word - everyone assured that he was the most ancient - but by seniority, certified by a historical document. Therefore, Moses and Aaron had to skip forward Osiris with Isis, Gilgamesh with Enkidu, Telepinus and Ullikume, Balu and Daniel.

And there is another difficulty, it seems, the most important. Those who came out of the ark find themselves not on the deserted Ararat, but in a world deafened by a cacophony of sounds alien to society and nature, the product of which they were. Should we try to bring the ancients closer to us, scrape and clean them, dress them up in modern robes in order to make them more understandable, “ours”? Or, on the contrary, to preserve, as far as possible, the ancient image and the ancient figurative speech, to let them speak out, in order to then explain and interpret all this? We have chosen last way, although for this it was necessary to take on board a whole staff of invisible translators and commentators, allocating for them a special, lower compartment of the ark.

Without these people, to be frank, this book would not exist, and if we, as a rule, do not give names and do not note merits, it is not out of human ingratitude, but out of a natural desire to spare the memory of our readers who are not prepared for such information. In compensation for this concession, we earnestly ask you not to consider everything that follows before and after the exposition of myths as unnecessary ballast, but to use it, at least selectively, so that our voyage is not only exciting, but also useful.

Sailing on Noah's Ark, as you know, ended with a landing on the famous Mount Ararat. You can see everything from the mountain. And at the end of our journey, we will have to look around in order to comprehend all the collected facts, the images imprinted in our memory, compare them with each other and outline the prospects for further travel across the continents of myths. After all, the myths of Greece and Rome are still ahead.

This is the program of our journey through the world of Eastern myths, to which I have the honor to invite you.

gods and heroes ancient egypt

Consider the Egyptian poet.
He helped us to believe in eternity.
The songs he threw into the wind
Saved the sun and sand.
And the roads opened to the past,
The dark ages have gone
The pagan gods came to life
In the reflection of a foreign language.

The ancient Greeks spoke of a stone statue of the Egyptian hero Memnon, which began to sing as soon as the sun's rays touched it. Such singing stones turned out to be stone statues and slabs covered with inscriptions. When they were able to read them, they sang hymns to the gods who created the heavenly bodies and the earth, told about the fate of those who died in underworld. The Sun turned out to be the human Mind, sung by A. S. Pushkin just in those years when Francois Champollion made his great discovery:

Long live the muses
Long live the mind!
Long live the sun
Let the darkness hide!

Sands have added their voices to the songs of the stone, which have preserved papyri with inscriptions. So the picture was revealed to mankind fantasy world, in some ways similar to the one that was known to him from the Bible and from the works of Greek poets, but in many ways different from it.

Unfortunately, songs of stones and sand often break off in mid-sentence. What we know are fragments of the richest religious and mythological literature of Ancient Egypt. Considerable difficulties in recreating the whole picture are caused by the inconsistency of the Egyptian stories about the gods, due to the circumstances of the centuries-old history of the Egyptian people. For millennia, the Egyptians lived in separate, small bound friend with other areas - nomah. In each nome, their gods were revered. Sometimes they were the embodiment of the same forces of nature with different names. So, the god of the earth in some nomes was Aker, in others - Geb, the mother goddess in one nome was called Mut, in another - Isis. Ideas about a god with the same name in different nomes were also contradictory. If in the myths of the nome of Heliopolis the god Set is the worst opponent of the solar gods, then in the myths of the nome of Heracleopolis he is the “enchanting Set” - the assistant of the sun god Ra, saving the solar barge and its “team” from mortal danger. With this extraordinary fluidity of ideas about the gods, the possibility of changing their genealogy and identifying some gods with others was also associated.

A. I. Nemirovsky

Myths and legends of the Ancient East

To the continent of myths

About the most ancient legends and traditions in the world became known relatively recently. For thousands of years, clay tablets, papyri, bamboo tablets, plates with inscriptions lay under sandy hills, in the ruins of cities, and no one knew what treasures of the human mind and imagination were hidden in them. The little that was known about the myths of the Ancient East before the excavations of these hills and the reading of unknown writings was conveyed by the sacred books of the ancient Jews the Bible, the ancient Iranians "Avesta", the ancient Indians "Vedas", "Mahabharata" and "Ramayana". However, with these monuments, except for the Bible, Europeans got acquainted only in the XVIII-XIX centuries.

Now we are standing before the Eastern myths in some confusion. What is the "light from the East"? A real avalanche, a raging, unrelenting stream, because almost every decade brings new material, new information, which I would like to call the discovery of the century.

In this situation, each book, especially the popular one, is seen as Noah's ark, which has to be filled with the brightest and most significant. And the author faces the problem of choice, and choice is always subjective. The reader will have to rely on the author's erudition and artistic taste. Critics should keep in mind that we had at our disposal not the Titanic, but the ark. However, we tried not to offend any ancient Eastern culture, not a single mythology of the vast region from the Mediterranean to the Pacific Ocean in the chronological framework of the ancient civilization. And if some of them are represented by more pairs of “clean” and “impure”, then there were good reasons for this, which will be explained in due time.

The creator of the biblical ark had to build partitions so that the animals would not devour each other on a long journey. We were not in danger. But the placement of a huge mass of passengers-characters still presented certain difficulties. Some of them, more famous, beat their chests and demanded better compartments. To withstand the pressure, I had to use their own principle of birthright. The most ancient and venerable gods and heroes were skipped ahead. At the same time, antiquity was determined not by word - everyone assured that he was the most ancient - but by seniority, certified by a historical document. Therefore, Moses and Aaron had to skip forward Osiris with Isis, Gilgamesh with Enkidu, Telepinus and Ullikume, Balu and Daniel.

And there is another difficulty, it seems, the most important. Those who came out of the ark find themselves not on the deserted Ararat, but in a world deafened by a cacophony of sounds alien to society and nature, the product of which they were. Should we try to bring the ancients closer to us, scrape and clean them, dress them up in modern robes in order to make them more understandable, “ours”? Or, on the contrary, to preserve, as far as possible, the ancient image and the ancient figurative speech, to let them speak out, in order to then explain and interpret all this? We chose the latter path, although for this we had to take on board a whole staff of invisible translators and commentators, allocating for them a special, lower compartment of the ark.

Without these people, to be frank, this book would not exist, and if we, as a rule, do not give names and do not note merits, it is not out of human ingratitude, but out of a natural desire to spare the memory of our readers who are not prepared for such information. In compensation for this concession, we earnestly ask you not to consider everything that follows before and after the exposition of myths as unnecessary ballast, but to use it, at least selectively, so that our voyage is not only exciting, but also useful.

Sailing on Noah's Ark, as you know, ended with a landing on the famous Mount Ararat. You can see everything from the mountain. And at the end of our journey, we will have to look around in order to comprehend all the collected facts, the images imprinted in our memory, compare them with each other and outline the prospects for further travel across the continents of myths. After all, the myths of Greece and Rome are still ahead.

This is the program of our journey through the world of Eastern myths, to which I have the honor to invite you.

Gods and Heroes of Ancient Egypt

Consider the Egyptian poet.
He helped us to believe in eternity.
The songs he threw into the wind
Saved the sun and sand.
And the roads opened to the past,
The dark ages have gone
The pagan gods came to life
In the reflection of a foreign language.

The ancient Greeks spoke of a stone statue of the Egyptian hero Memnon, which began to sing as soon as the sun's rays touched it. Such singing stones turned out to be stone statues and slabs covered with inscriptions. When they managed to read them, they sang hymns to the gods who created the heavenly bodies and the earth, told about the fate of the dead in the underworld. The Sun turned out to be the human Mind, sung by A. S. Pushkin just in those years when Francois Champollion made his great discovery:

Long live the muses
Long live the mind!
Long live the sun
Let the darkness hide!

Sands have added their voices to the songs of the stone, which have preserved papyri with inscriptions. Thus, a picture of a fantastic world was revealed to mankind, somewhat similar to that which was known to him from the Bible and from the works of Greek poets, but in many respects different from it.

Unfortunately, songs of stones and sand often break off in mid-sentence. What we know are fragments of the richest religious and mythological literature of Ancient Egypt. Considerable difficulties in recreating the whole picture are caused by the inconsistency of the Egyptian stories about the gods, due to the circumstances of the centuries-old history of the Egyptian people. For millennia, the Egyptians lived in separate, little connected with each other areas - nomes. In each nome, their gods were revered. Sometimes they were incarnations of the same forces of nature with different names. So, the god of the earth in some nomes was Aker, in others - Geb, the mother goddess in one nome was called Mut, in another - Isis. Ideas about a god with the same name in different nomes were also contradictory. If in the myths of the nome of Heliopolis the god Set is the worst opponent of the solar gods, then in the myths of the nome of Heracleopolis he is the “enchanting Set” - the assistant of the sun god Ra, saving the solar barge and its “team” from mortal danger. With this extraordinary fluidity of ideas about the gods, the possibility of changing their genealogy and identifying some gods with others was also associated.

Egyptian gods and goddesses often appeared in the form of animals, birds, reptiles, and this was very surprising for Greek travelers, who were used to thinking of their gods in human form (anthropomorphism). The Greek historian Plutarch, explaining the veneration of the hippopotamus and the crocodile by the Egyptians, wrote that they were afraid of these most terrible of wild animals. But in Egypt they also worshiped other animals that did not cause horror, for example, a hare, a gazelle, a frog. Therefore, the Greeks came up with another explanation for the appearance of the Egyptian gods that surprised them: frightened by something, the gods put on animal masks in fear and remained in them.

Modern researchers have proved that the veneration of animals among all peoples is more ancient than the veneration of gods in human form. Thus, it became clear that Egyptian mythology preserved features of the deepest antiquity. However, this does not at all indicate its primitiveness. The religious and mythological system of Egypt is distinguished by such sophisticated thoroughness that none of the developed religions of antiquity knows.

Egypt was a country of ancient agricultural culture, and the gods patronizing agriculture became the heroes of Egyptian myths: the “breadwinner Nile”, the solar deities Ra, Amon, Aton, hostile to the gods of the deserts surrounding the Nile valley, from where destructive, withering winds blew and tribes greedy for Egyptian riches.

Like other peoples of the Near East, the Egyptians revered the young dying and resurrecting god of vegetation, calling him Osiris, the Love of Osiris and his wife Isis is the theme of one of the main cycles of Egyptian myths, reflecting the natural cycle (birth, withering, death, rebirth). With the resurrection of Osiris, the possibility of returning the dead to life was associated, provided that the body was preserved as the receptacle of the soul. Hence the unparalleled desire to preserve human remains from decay through mummification and the construction of tombs of eternal stone, which has no parallel in development and expenditure of funds. The cult of eternity left its mark on all aspects of Egyptian ideology and culture, including mythology.

The mythology of the peoples of the East, who lived more than nine thousand years ago in the most ancient centers of civilizations - the countries of Mesopotamia, Ancient Iran, India, China and Japan, is a remarkable monument of universal culture.

Demon maidens Yakshini, 2nd century AD

From time immemorial, our ancestors were worried about their place in the world, in the endless chain of transformations of being, and mythology turned out to be the main way for them to understand the world around them. Since ancient times, people have thought about a double riddle: how did the universe and man arise? Why does he exist under the vault of heaven? Is he the master of the earth or the plaything of the deity? The oldest cosmogonic myths created in the East tried to answer this question. So, Chinese legend about the great Pangu tells about the world egg, from which heaven and earth were formed.

Hindus, on the other hand, believed that Vishnu, the guardian of the universe, had a lotus flower growing from his navel, and the supreme deity Brahma, sitting in it, began the act of creating the universe. The oldest legends about gods, spirits and heroes take our contemporary to those distant times when people's lives completely depended on terrible phenomena nature: sandstorm, river floods, volcanic eruptions, droughts. The constant exhausting struggle of man for existence is colorfully reflected in the myths about the battles of gods and heroes with terrible monsters, which personified incomprehensible and evil elemental forces.

The winners of such mortal duels came out, for example, the head of the Babylonian pantheon, who fought with the embodiment of the primeval ocean Tiamat; the Japanese lord of the "plain of the sea" Susanoo, who defeated the many-headed dragon Yamata no Orochi; the Indian thunder god Indra, the destroyer of the serpentine demon Vritra. For the Egyptians, whose country was a narrow green valley of the Nile, squeezed by deserts, a withering heat posed a serious threat, so their main god was the merciless Ra, the god of the sun, incinerating enemies.

In this regard, it is interesting to note that in ancient China, dragons, contrary to what the West thinks about them, were considered very pretty creatures. According to folk beliefs, dragons were the lords of the rain. Without this life-giving moisture, the harvest of rice and other crops, on which human life depended, was impossible. IN old times there were even special rites for invoking a monster, including such a rite as appearing on a rock beautiful woman as bait. Because life ancient man subjected for centuries to a repetitive agricultural cycle, the pantheons of many religions of the East included dying and resurrecting gods. Such is the West Semitic Baal (Phoenician - Moloch), the god of thunder, storm and fertility, as well as the Sumerian-Akkadian Tammuz-Dumuzi, who spent part of the year with his wife, the goddess of love Inanna, and part - in the kingdom of the dead, and the Egyptian Osiris, who became a judge in the underworld.

The theme of the continuation of life after death has long disturbed the mind of a person who believes in the existence of the other world, to some extent reflecting it. earthly life. Common Eastern religions and teachings - Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, etc. - differently interpreting these issues, according to myths, agreed that the righteous must gain an immortal soul and go to heaven or achieve spiritual perfection, and sinners, having passed a series of trials in the realm of the dead, they must suffer in fiery, icy or hellish hells inhabited by terrible creatures. Another striking feature of Eastern mythology can be considered the legend of the flood.

myths different peoples inhabiting the Ancient East, dedicated to this terrible disaster, are remarkably similar. The gods, irritated by the vanity and sinfulness of people, decide to do away with them at once. They send a flood onto the earth, bringing death to all living things. True, the gods warn in advance the only righteous among people - the Sumerian-Akkadian Ziusudra and Ut-Napishpti, the Indian Many or the biblical Noah - about the impending disaster. And he, having built an ark, taking on it a pair of all animals, as well as the seeds of all plants, saves himself and saves the world from certain death. Thus, we see that the myths characteristic of various cultures and religions of the East reflect critical issues being, the same for all mankind, and in our days, mythology is also a philosophical allegory, widely used in fiction and art. This table lists the most significant characters in the mythologies and religions of the peoples of the ancient East.


The culture of the first civilized states inherited much from their prehistoric ancestors. The thinking of the ancient peoples who created the first civilizations is still predominantly mythological. The world still appears to them as a "single lump", where everything is inextricably linked with everything. But order and subordination are introduced into this tangle of being, just as in a semi-spontaneous primitive society civilization introduces a higher state organization. Countless primitive totems, spirits, demons are replaced by a limited number of gods - these are mostly personifications heavenly bodies and forces of nature. Primitive magicians and sorcerers give way to priests, ancient cults- religions. Now the world is ruled not by a person (with the help of spirits), but by the gods, among whom, as well as among the earthly “government”, there are main ones, there are secondary ones, and there are even “serving” ones. But the gods govern the universe not arbitrarily, but on the basis of certain laws that cannot be neglected.

The ancient peoples of the East are trying to comprehend these laws, to find an organizing principle in the world and thereby to realize the world not as a primitive "chaos", but as a civilized "cosmos". Color plays a prominent and honorable role in this cosmos.

The most developed and consistent teachings about color among all the countries of the Ancient East were created in China and India. Here the science of color is already philosophical in nature, although it does not break with its mythological basis.

China

The picture of the world and its being, created by the ancient Chinese, is still quite in the mythological spirit and multicolored.

A remarkable monument of ancient wisdom is the "I Ching" - "The Book of Changes". It consists of 64 hexagrams - combinations of six lines (dashes) located one above the other, and there are two types of such lines: solid and interrupted.

Each hexagram encodes a certain cosmic or life situation, which characterizes any stage or stage of the world process, for example, creativity, immersion, sunrise, radiance, defeat of light, concentration, decline, end, etc.

In general, the sequence of all 64 hexagrams (supplemented with short texts). This book reproduces the grandiose and complex drama of the existence of the universe, in which the main characters are heaven, earth and man; the main forces are light and darkness, activity and passivity, masculine and feminine; the main elements are water, wind, fire, thunder. There are also such characters as a mountain, a tree, a horse, a cow, a chariot, as well as people (prince, warriors, people). All the main characters, forces and elements are painted in the main colors, which should be understood not only as abstractions or symbols, but also as living images in the flesh. So, colors are assigned to the main signs of hexagrams: a solid line is a sign of the sky, it is blue, light; an interrupted line is a sign of the earth, it is yellow, shadowy. , because they represent an exhaustive variety of color compositions in blue-yellow or black-and-white scales. They record all possible situations of struggle, play, interaction between blue and yellow or light and dark. Each hexagram turns out to be a kind of picture. Yu. K. Shutsky, researcher of the I Ching, writes: “You can feel the Book of Changes as an epic of the interaction of light and darkness. Then it acquires both brilliance and expressiveness.

Indeed, in addition to simple "canonical" colors-symbols, in the "I Ching" one can also find such complex and subtle colors like xuan and xun. Xuan is the color of the sky, but not the midday blue, but the predawn sky in the northeast; it is black, through which red barely breaks through. This complex color symbolizes the birth of light in the bowels of darkness; it “visualizes” the meaning of the Kan trigram, which is part of the I Ching hexagram series. The color of xun is the color of the earth, but not just yellow, but red-yellow; it gives an idea of ​​a land bathed in the abundant rays of the southern sun, since red is the color of fire and the south ,

In ancient China, all the elements, seasons, cardinal points, planets and substances were assigned their own colors. There were five primary colors. This system can be written in the form of a table:

Two points should be clarified here. The first is the interchangeability of the concepts of blue and green. In ancient monuments there is no clear distinction between these color designations. Perhaps the reason lies in the fact that green was considered as a product of blue, as a color in which blue is the main component, and the other component - yellow - is taken in a small amount. To this day, there is no complete unanimity regarding the hieroglyph "qing" whether it is blue or green. But one thing is certain: the ancient Chinese distinguished these colors and used both colors. Another note about color symbolism refers to white color as a symbol of autumn. This becomes clear when you consider that autumn in China is the time for harvesting rice, that is, white grain. In addition, autumn is associated with the west, and the west is the country of death, sadness. The mourning color in China and Japan is white.

The symbolism of color was the most important principle in fine and applied arts, in architecture and poetry. It was also based on the color "direction" of religious rites. Here is how, for example, the rites of the meeting of the seasons are described in the book of Hou Hanshu:

“On the day of Lichun (Establishment of Spring), when the water of the night clepsydra has not yet been depleted for five half hours, all the officials of the capital put on a qing (green) color dress.

On the day of Fox (Establishment of Summer), they put on a red dress ...

On the day of Jishia (at the end of Summer), yellow clothes ...

On the day of Liqiu (Establishment of Autumn) ... everyone ... puts on White dress and go out to the western suburbs to meet the breath of Autumn...

On the day of Lidun (Establishment of Winter), officials put on black and go out to the northern suburbs to meet the breath of Winter.

The most important of the patterns of being established in the I Ching. lies in the fact that the success or "happiness" of any action is possible only if; if this action is not contrary to general trend development natural forces V this moment. Activity human must organically "poured" into the life and interaction of the elements, only then it will be fruitful. Therefore, as the legends say, even the organs of the bureaucratic apparatus of the Chinese state were called names associated with colorful natural phenomena which should have ensured their success.

In the 2nd century commentary the book of the ancient Chinese historian Sima Qian says: “When Xandi assumed power, clouds foreboding good appeared. Therefore, he identified the cases by the clouds: he called the Spring department green-cloudy, the Summer department - red-cloudy, the Autumn department - white-cloudy, the Winter department - black-cloudy and the Middle - yellow-cloudy ".

Apparently, even in the II millennium BC. e. In China, the color of clothes was regulated to distinguish between classes. This is stated in the old collection of songs "Shi jing" ("Book of Songs"). The "best" color - red - was intended for the princes, and those that are more modest - black and yellow - for the common people:

In the eighth month we are weaving in the villages. Paint black and yellow - for us. Bright red is more pleasing to the eye. Let's dye the best fabrics red, So that our prince is more elegantly dressed!

In the same book of songs, the mythical prince Millet - the god of cereals - gives people grain of three colors: black, red, white. The combination of these colors symbolizes the "abundance of goods" and contributes to the continuation of abundance in the future.

During the reign of the last Han Dynasty of antiquity, Chinese culture reached almost its maximum height. The language of shapes and colors becomes indescribably rich, and besides, it is enriched with the "language" of aromas and sounds. Smells and sounds (musical or natural) are included in the palette of the Chinese artist along with paints and materials, and the wind and all kinds of air movements are included in the composition of space. “These things are ephemeral,” you say. But in this thoroughly artificial and sophisticated palace world, everything is ephemeral, including people, especially women. They look like butterflies in their light fluttering dresses with winged sleeves, and their life path resembles the flight of a butterfly, and just as easily and suddenly they die, smitten with too strong a feeling. The environment in which the Han aristocrats lived can be imagined from two works of ancient Chinese literature: Sima Xiangru's poem "Where the Gates Are Long" and Ling Xuan's "Private Biography of Zhao the Flying Swallow."

The lonely disgraced wife of the emperor in the poem by Sima Xiangru wanders around the palace, longingly reflecting on her grief (she was abandoned by her husband for excessive jealousy). At dusk, the palace buildings seem huge to her, overwhelming with their height and gloom. “Here is the main hall ... like a block ... It rests on the sky - yes, on the very sky ... The other buildings, in a huge dark mass, together with it rose and rise to the sky ... "But when she enters the halls, the beauty of the interiors makes her to forget her grief. The soul is unable to break away from the contemplation of all this beauty: ..I will push the door in the inlays, I will touch the gilded plaques - I will seize, their sound will buzz, buzz, like some kind of bell ringing. The crossbars of my door are all made of sculpted magnolia - yes, all are carved, the cornice is trimmed with openwork apricot ... The tops of the columns, their capitals are all trimmed with rare trees: they fasten the roof supports in uneven rows ... And in the daytime all five colors blind, one in front of the other - blind; glitter and fiery sparkle - a solid bright radiance! And the stones were so tightly crossed, no - these are roof tiles ... their pattern resembles the play of some gems. Everywhere there are curtains stretched out in a continuous, bizarre net, yes; hanging down with intertwined knots of thick fringe ... "

The color of the imperial palaces is infinitely diverse. Here we meet not only “blinding” colors, but also soft, refined and elegant: gray, woody, terracotta shades; and this discreet general background is diversified by small bright inclusions: a bright moon, a white crane, blue, green and red birds. Nature itself builds its scales according to the same principle, and is tuned in unison with nature human soul, therefore, these subtle complex scales are not just copies of natural ones, but reflections of the subjective world of a person.

We "peeped" into the palace of the empress, and now let's "look" at the "pavilion of the junior concubine" of another emperor. The decoration of the palace is similar to the setting of a precious pearl or a luxurious vase for an orchid: “the inside of the room was gilded and decorated with round plates of white jade with a quadrangular hole in the middle - the walls wonderfully shimmered in a thousand ways.”

In some bizarre way, all this life combines extreme artificiality and the most naive naturalness. And this is probably the first main feature coloring of late Chinese antiquity - coloring, understood in both the broad and narrow sense of the word. The list of 26 objects that the concubine Hede gives to her sister-empress gives a very good idea of ​​this. It could be titled: "The very best of the world of things." Let us cite here at least its beginning: “A mat quilted with gold sequins. A bowl of fragrant aloe wood in the form of a lotus ovary. A large five-color knot is the embodiment of complete unity. A piece of golden brocade with a pattern of lovebirds. Crystal screen. A pearl to the head of the empress, shining in the night. Blanket for sacrificial offerings made of wool wild cat saturated with aromas. Dark red tribute dress made of transparent xiao silk. A box of azure jasper for rubbing "".

Having read and felt this list, one can also name the second main feature of the color of this culture: “cosmic scope”, a boundlessly wide world of things, materials. Indeed: there are metals and wood, naturalistic copies of flowers and abstract symbolic figures, crystal and pearls next to the hair of a wild cat and with "tiger stripes", transparent silk and rhinoceros bone.

But such is the law of dialectics (by the way, remember that China is the birthplace of the first dialectical teachings): simultaneously with any phenomenon, its negation is also generated. Already in ancient times, the idea of ​​condemning luxury, wealth, and decorativeness arose.

In the "I Ching" (22nd hex.) distrust of external tinsel and colorful decorations is clearly expressed. They are designed to hide the shortcomings of a person, that is, to present him in a false form. Ornaments can be used, as it has become customary, but they must not be allowed to absorb a person as a whole. The variegation of jewelry is contrasted with white decoration, symbolizing purity and purity. The sages of the "golden age" of Chinese philosophy taught that addiction to jewelry and, in general, any "decoration and decoration" pose a social danger. In their books, they persistently condemn the desire for flamboyance and external brilliance and, on the contrary, praise modesty and moderation in everyday life.

"The five colors dull the eyesight," says the Tao Te Ching. “Precious things make a person commit crimes. Therefore, a wise man strives to make life full, and not to have beautiful things.

The wealth and external splendor of the ruling class are obtained at the cost of the impoverishment of the people. The best minds Ancient China They understood that this was a disaster for the state.

In the books of ancient Chinese philosophers and poets countless times the luxurious appearance of those in power is condemned and the modest, and sometimes poor to the point of poverty, life is glorified. appearance « worthy husband". According to Confucius, a noble husband "is moderate in food, does not strive for convenience in housing." The great teacher Kongzi despises those who care too much about their appearance and way of life. “The teacher said: “He who seeks to know the right way, but is ashamed of bad clothes and food, not worthy to have a conversation with him.

But this denial of outward representativeness was not only a form of protest against social inequality and "robbery" of the authorities. It arose on a deeper philosophical foundation. Trying to understand the laws of life, its beginnings and causes, the ancient sages came to the conclusion that they are incomprehensible to the weak human mind. The universal omnipresent principle that controls the life of the Universe - Tao - is inaccessible to sensory cognition, inexpressible in words and has no visible appearance. It is called "a form without form, an image without a being... hazy and obscure."

The doctrine of Tao entered the life and culture of China, as salt "goes into the composition sea ​​water: there is no such sphere of life that this teaching would not have influenced in one way or another. Painting and all other genres were greatly influenced by this philosophy. visual arts. What the adherents of the Tao and teachings close to it have introduced into art, to a certain extent, opposes the tendencies of ancient art described above. So, in place of colorfulness and full color comes monochromy and achromatic ink painting in general - after all, "five colors dull the eyesight." Instead of clarity and refinement, obscurity, nebulousness, and formlessness begin to be valued, because Tao itself is obscure and formless, and because "great perfection is similar to imperfection." Instead of the brilliance of gold and the radiance of pearls, the muted colors and twilight of shadows are valued, because it is in the shadow of a person that his soul or innermost essence is enclosed. The artist, on the other hand, should not overly trust the external phenomenon of things, but should embody their hidden essence. And finally, penetration outer covering phenomena leads to the loss of distinction between beautiful and ugly. That is why the "perfect husband", skinny and shaggy, dressed in a linen shirt "in patches and knots", seems to the Taoist more beautiful than a deceitful and greedy courtier, dressed in brocade. That is why the gnarled black trunk of an old plum tree becomes a favorite motif for artists. Is it less beautiful than, for example, a peacock or a lotus flower?