What is sacrifice? Our ancestors, actually. Nowadays, people in China have the habit of visiting graves in Tomb-Sweeping Day and Spring Festival, which is actually a memory and yearning for their ancestors.
This is a cultural inheritance, recognition and continuation of the ancestry.
Sacrificial activities are often held by people in power in society. The emperors in feudal society presided over large-scale sacrificial activities, and countless martyrs who liberated all mankind in modern times also paid homage.
Sacrifice is not a cognitive prayer for gods and buddhas, but an affirmation and recognition of the efforts made by ancestors.
There are two kinds of buildings in China, one is a temple and the other is a temple. They are very different. Temple is a form of expression to show respect to ancestors who have made great contributions. This temple is dedicated to gods and buddhas in fairy tales.
Sacrifice and burning incense were not integrated in ancient times. Sacrifice before burning incense.
Burning incense is the biggest habit in our folk life. It has three characteristics. The number 1 is universal. Both China people and foreigners burn incense, from south to north and from east to west. Almost all have a long history of burning incense. The second is historic. According to the Book of Songs and Historical Records, burning incense originated in the Western Zhou Dynasty. The third is universality, whether it is to worship ancestors, pray to God and worship Buddha, or to facilitate travel, read scriptures, burn at Qingming Spring Festival, burn at weddings and funerals, sleep and bathe, as long as the heart is not smooth, you can burn at any time.
Burning incense is not only a matter for China people, but also a matter for foreigners with a long history.
The history of burning incense in China can be divided into three stages.
1 At the stage, some plants, such as wormwood and Artemisia, were burned, mainly for sacrifice.
The second stage is bounded by the three countries. Mainly the introduction of foreign spices. During this period, the more people pursued immortality, the more spices from the western regions were introduced into China, which led to the outbreak of imported spices. Even so, the use of spices in these 300 years was mainly in the upper class of the nobility, because it was expensive and rarely flowed into the people.
The third stage, with the Sui and Tang Dynasties as the boundary, entered the popularization period. China's spices are mainly raw materials from Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan, replacing the spices from the western regions, and the price is lower. In addition, during this period, Buddhism and Taoism flourished, and the more believers there were, the atmosphere rose sharply, increasing the use of spices. In the Song Dynasty, thousands of families burned incense every day.