Five Grains
group of five farmed crops, important in ancient China, whose cultivation was regarded as a sacred boon from a mythological or supernatural source
The Five Grains or Cereals (traditional Chinese: 五穀; simplified Chinese: 五谷; pinyin: Wǔ Gǔ) are a set of five farmed crops that were important in ancient China. In modern Chinese wǔgǔ refers to rice, wheat, foxtail millet, proso millet and soybeans. It is also used as term for all grain crops in general.
History
The earliest usage of the term "five grains" is found in the Analects and does not list which grains it refers to. The first lists of the five grains appear in the Han dynasty. The Classic of Rites lists soybeans (菽), wheat (麥), proso millet (黍), foxtail millet (稷) and hemp (麻). Zheng Xuan in his commentary on The Rites of Zhou has rice (稻) instead of hemp. Millet, beans, and wheat were widely recognized as part of the five grains and the debate was mainly about the inclusion of hemp or rice. Rice was not commonly cultivated in northern China while hemp was more commonly used as fiber for clothing, although its seeds could be used for oil. In modern Chinese, Wugu includes rice instead of hemp.
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This entry incorporates text from “Five Grains” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.