Talk:Five Grains

Suggested redirects

Suggested redirects to this should be (which were the ways I was looking for it): 5 Sacred Grains, Five Sacred Grains, Five sacred grains, 5 sacred grains
~ender 2006-11-18 14:04:PM MST

Left out some of the most obvious ones. Moved. — LlywelynII 01:24, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

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Moved to English commonname

Per WP:useenglish and WP:commonname, moved from 5 Cereals to 5 Grains. Leaving aside the obvious implications in American English, '"Five Grains"+China -wikipedia' produces ~10× more google results and ~4× more Google Books results than the alternative. — LlywelynII 01:24, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

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Some issues with this article

After reading quite a few sources on this topic (but not all) I think there are some issues with the article, which I hope can be addressed at least in part.

The overarching issue is the lack of sources. If there were more (and better) sources it would be much easier to verify. In terms of specific points:

1. "The Five Grains traditionally date back to the Shennong Ben Cao Jing"

I haven't found a source that shows that most people associate the origin of wugu with shennong. The closest is this line from Handbook of Chinese Mythology:

>The most famed inventions of agriculture are attributed to Shennong. He is said to have first taught people to sow the five grains (different names are given in different explanations; they sometimes refer to rice, two kinds of millet, wheat, and beans) [...] Another story recorded in Xinyu states that in ancient times [...] Shennong felt that it was very hard for humans to live on reptiles and beasts. [...] he then taught people to take the five grains as their food.

This is referring to the following line in Xinyu:

>民人食肉饮血，衣皮毛；至于神农，以为行虫走兽，难以养民，乃求可食之物，尝百草之实，察酸苦之味，教人食五谷。(source)

There is also a folktale that mentions shennong as the originator of wugu in the book 炎黄汇典: 民间传说卷 which was first recorded in 1964 but even then it is a local folktale. All the academic sources I found discussing wugu attribute it to The Analects which predates Xinyu. It doesn't seem accurate to say that "The Five Grains traditionally date back to the Shennong Ben Cao Jing." without attributing this to a specific source. Also, 神農本草經 itself just says

>大麦　一名　麦。五谷之大盛，无毒，治消渴，除热，益气。食蜜为使。麦种：一名小麦。无毒。治利而不中　（《太平御览》）。

and does not give any origin story, so if anything, we should mention Xinyu instead of Shennong Ben Cao Jing. He is also called "五穀神" but that doesn't say anything about an origin story.

2. "Daoxuan's Ritual of Measuring and Handling Light and Heavy Property instead lists five categories"

The article seems to give Daoxuan as having an alternate list of "five grains," but the linked source says that "These of the five grains originally appear in Chinese translations of Buddhist scriptures" so it isn't clear that this list is meant to be another list of what "five grains" means, but just a coincidence. No other source I found about wugu mentions Daoxuan. I'm not sure if it makes sense to have this as an opposing view of what 五谷 means.

3. "Holiness" section

This section has no sources and seems dubious to me. Sure, the five grains were important, but why and how would they be holy? Notably the points mentioned in this section don't show that they are holy, just that they are important. Additionally the Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese wikipedias all do not mention holiness in their article.

4. "Legendary accounts" section

Only Shennong's account seems relevant here. The others do not mention wugu at all and it seems are just taken from Handbook of Chinese Mythology because they are in the same section "Inventing Agriculture". It would also be much more concise to just quote Xinyu rather than this entire folk tale.

5. "Modern ritual and culinary usage" section

This section seems unrelated to 五谷

6. "See also" section

This section has too many entries and many are not related.

For reference, here is the current version before I start making more edits: [1] J2UDY7r00CRjH (talk) 23:23, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Update:

1. Bretschneider mentions Shennong, so people have associated him with wugu for at least 100 years. Combined with the other sources and the edits I made I will say this is solved.

4. Added more sources on Houji and shennong and condensed "Legendary accounts" section into three sentences in the history section. Solved.

5. Removed, solved.

6. Removed all but two see alsos, Solved

If you disagree with any changes please feel free to comment here so we can discuss. J2UDY7r00CRjH (talk) 05:42, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Re. point 2.

The author of the cited paper talking about Daoxuan's five grains, Chen Huaiyu, has a later version in chinese where he expands on this subject (link). It is more clear in that version that the "five grains" mentioned by Daoxuan are not meant to be the same as what he calls the "traditional Chinese" meaning of "five grains." Some quotes:

中國傳統的五穀、五菓、五蔬或五菜的説法來自《黃帝内經》。《黃帝内經》之《素問》部第二二篇名爲《藏氣法時論篇》

[...]

則五穀包括粳米、小豆、麥、大豆、黃黍，[...] 這五穀是與五味結合在一起的，與道宣的房、散、角、芒、輿五穀完全不同。但是，我們可以注意到道宣所提示的佛教中的五穀以及包括殼菓、膚菓、核菓、角菓、輿菓五菓傳統，到隋代又和陰陽五行理論融合在一起，見蕭吉（?-614）的《五行大義》卷三

[...]

這裡面的五穀内容和道宣所說的五穀有重疊，如芒穀、散穀、房穀；也有不同，如莢穀、萃穀。[...] 從以上的提示也可以看出，佛教和中國傳統的結合，體現在更多的層次上

[...]

總體來看，道宣的動植物分類反映了其分類方式和天竺傳統動植物分類的差異，也反映了他的分類與中國傳統中動植物分類的差異。同時，中印文化差異之外，他的分類也反映了動植物知識的地域差異。具體而言，首先，道宣有關動植物的知識來自於佛教和中國傳統兩種資源，他不僅繼承了佛教戒律中關於處理動植物分類的一些傳統，也充分考慮到了他當時身處的歷史環境加入了中國的因素。

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More on huangdi:

Interestingly, he cites Huangdi Neijing for a term called "five grains, five fruits and five vegetables." Here, the five grains mentioned are rice, adzuki beans, wheat, soybeans, and proso millet. The adzuki bean was also mentioned in the heianzhuan. I removed the full list of mentioned in the heianzhuan cited in the Handbook of Chinese Mythology because no other sources were citing it and it isn't what most people mean by "five grains." I also couldn't find the original source of the heianzhuan being cited there so it is difficult to verify. Additionally, Yang himself lists "rice, two kinds of millet, wheat, and beans" as cited above and never mentions adzuki beans outside of quoting heianzhuan. It may be worthwhile to include adzuki beans somewhere in the article since two sources mention it. J2UDY7r00CRjH (talk) 18:25, 15 October 2024 (UTC)