Why should the toilet be called a toilet, not a sheep bucket, a cow bucket

As we all know, the ancients wanted to avoid it, mainly to avoid the names of emperors and elders. For example, when Emperor Guangwu of the Han Dynasty Liu Xiu, Xiucai could not be called Xiucai, and was renamed Maocai. Qianlong ordered the whole country not to use the word "Fu" in couplets written during the Spring Festival, because his great-grandfather Emperor Shunzhi was called Fulin.

Du Fu's father's name is Du Xian, so Du Fu has written so many poems without using the word "leisure". Su Shi's grandfather's name is Su Xu, so the "preface" before the three fathers and sons of the Su family wrote the article was changed to "citation" or "narrative". This is a unique phenomenon in Chinese culture, showing respect for the Venerable and the Elders.

Li Shimin also encountered this problem, the name of a urinal turned out to be the same as that of his great-grandfather. There was no choice but to change the name of Huzi, so Li Shimin ordered to change "Huzi" to "Mazi". Because the tiger and the horse belong to the big beast, there are only two big beasts in the zodiac, although the cow is not small, but it is not as good as the meaning of the tiger and the horse, so it was changed to a horse, and some were changed to "beasts".

In this way, the urinal changed from a tiger to a horse, and later the size of the horse increased and developed into the shape of a bucket. In the Song Dynasty, the great writer Ouyang Xiu actually wrote an article detailing Mazi, and his famous novel collection "Returning to the Fields" introduced the toilet in detail, but the name he used was "Wooden Mazi", that is, a toilet made of wood. The toilet bowl used by the ancient folk is a round wooden barrel with a lid on it, and several layers of tung oil or vermilion lacquer are applied to the barrel, which is more durable.

It can be said that the toilet invented by the ancient Chinese, except that it cannot be automatically pumped, is very similar to today.

This is where the name toilet comes from, which is why it is not called a sheep bucket, a cow bucket, or a pig bucket, but a toilet. Let's not underestimate this name, the word "horse" was given by Li Shimin, Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, and the shape of the "barrel" was given by Liu Bang, the ancestor of the Han Dynasty. The founding emperors of the two most powerful dynasties of our country personally participated in the naming, and it was completely free, what else could have such a blessing?

The history of the toilet can be traced back to the Han Dynasty, when the toilet was called Huzi, which was dedicated to the emperor, and legend has it that it was made of jade. It was held by eunuchs who served the emperor at any time. Later, in the Tang Dynasty, because there was a person named Li Hu in the emperor's family, in order to avoid secrecy, he changed the name of Huzi to Beast or Mazi.

After that, in the circulation, it evolved into the name of the toilet.

According to the Xijing Miscellaneous Records, the Han Dynasty court made "tiger seeds" out of jade, which were held by the emperor's attendants in case the emperor was at his convenience. This kind of "tiger" is a special appliance called a toilet and a potty by later generations, and it is also the predecessor of the toilet. It is said that this "tiger child" was also invented by Gaozu Liu Bang who used the crown of Confucianism as a drowning weapon.

There is another theory about the invention of the "tiger son", which is also related to the emperor. Legend has it that in the Western Han Dynasty, the "flying general" Li Guang shot the dead crouching tiger, and let people cast a copper drowning device in the shape of a tiger, and put the urine in it, expressing his contempt for the tiger, which is the origin of the name of "Huzi". The emperor of the Tang Dynasty changed this disrespectful term to "beast" or "horse" because of the name "Li Hu" among his ancestors, and then commonly known as "toilet" and "urinal".

The first detailed written record of the toilet was the "wooden horse" in Ouyang Xiu's "Guitianlu II" in the Northern Song Dynasty, which is explained as "wooden toilet" in the "Ciyuan". The toilet bowl used by the ancient Chinese folk was a round wooden barrel with a lid, which was coated with tung oil or fine waterproof vermilion lacquer.