２月も半ばを過ぎて春が近づいてきたからなのだろうか、「西王母」*1がTLに登場。
ごきげんよう
— マダムとみこ (@tomiko_takarano) 2022年2月17日
桃の節供には「邪気を払い、百鬼を制す」桃の花
桃という文字の「兆」は、芽生える、芽ぐむという意味。「懐妊の兆し」というように、「兆」は女性にあるもの
三千年に一度実をつける、不老不死の仙桃は、三千年の桃、三千代の桃という。管理する仙人、西王母の誕生日は旧暦の3月3日 pic.twitter.com/cqEnaULpfL
こちらは 西王母の髪飾り「勝」を巡って、Kate Lingley （龍梅若）さん；
OK, Sinology hivemind, I'm in search of the sheng 勝. Han (and maybe later) images of the Queen Mother of the West show her with a distinctive hair ornament which early texts call the sheng. Here she is on an Eastern Han brick from Sichuan. 1/5 pic.twitter.com/n2h9dzl180
— Dr. Kate Lingley 龍梅若 (@kate_lingley) 2022年2月18日
The sheng is the horizontal bar with a thing like a wrapped hard candy🍬 at each end. I always understood it to be a weaving tool, perhaps part of the ratchet mechanism of a loom. The problem is that I'm damned if I can find the source where I learned this. 2/5
— Dr. Kate Lingley 龍梅若 (@kate_lingley) 2022年2月18日
Does anybody know where the origin of this interpretation is? Classical Chinese dictionaries (古漢語大辭典 etc.) define sheng 勝 as a headdress, with textual references as far back as the Shanhaijing 山海經, which describes the Queen Mother of the West: 3/5
— Dr. Kate Lingley 龍梅若 (@kate_lingley) 2022年2月18日
西王母其狀如人，豹尾虎齒而善嘯，蓬髮戴勝... "The Queen Mother of the West is humanlike in form, with a leopard's tail and tiger's teeth and making a whistling cry (?). On her tangled hair she wears a sheng..." OK, fine, but how do we get from there to weaving? 4/5
— Dr. Kate Lingley 龍梅若 (@kate_lingley) 2022年2月18日
I'm translating some poetry that's heavy with textile references (the snarky poetry battle between Wang Su's wives, from the Luoyang qielan ji 洛陽伽藍記) and I need to know how the sheng is a weaving tool, and if possible what part of the loom it actually is. Anyone recall? 5/5
— Dr. Kate Lingley 龍梅若 (@kate_lingley) 2022年2月18日
Huh, this image just popped into my memory - a spinning and weaving scene from a 2nd century tomb in Jiangsu. You can see the sheng as a horizontal bar at the very top of the loom, with those little 🍬 doohickeys on the ends. pic.twitter.com/57mqVVAYxK
— Dr. Kate Lingley 龍梅若 (@kate_lingley) 2022年2月18日
"其實勝的造型起源非常早，《淮南子·汜論訓》段玉裁注「勝者，榺之假借字。」 又《說文》釋曰「榺，機持經者」。可知勝即榺，即經軸，是古代織機上的一個構件，用於把經線卷緊或者放鬆。" https://t.co/3GY6og6hQA
— Yilin Wang (she/they) (@yilinwriter) 2022年2月18日
安直かも知れないが、石田英一郎『桃太郎の母』*2をマークしておく。
