In ancient times, there was a young gentleman named Mu Lian who believed in Buddhism and was filial to his parents.
However, his mother had a fiery temper and liked to do evil deeds.
Once, Mu Lian’s mother wanted to trick the monks, so she had people make 360 meat-filled steamed buns and pretended they were vegetarian buns to give as alms to the monastery.
After Mu Lian learned about it, he quickly informed the abbot of the monastery. The abbot prepared the same vegetarian buns and let the monks replace the meat-filled buns with the vegetarian ones from their sleeves before the meal.
Mu Lian’s mother saw the monks eating the “meat-filled buns” and couldn’t stop laughing.
But in fact, the monks ate the vegetarian buns, and the real meat-filled buns were buried behind the monastery.
After the Yu Di learned of this incident, he was very angry and threw Mu Lian’s mother into the eighteen levels of hell, turning her into a vicious dog.
In order to save his mother, Mu Lian practiced day and night and became the Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, using his tin staff to open the gates of hell. But after his mother and the evil spirits escaped from hell, they caused chaos on earth.
The Yu Di then let Mu Lian descend to earth and reincarnate as Huang Chao. The legend says that “Huang Chao killed eight million people” to subdue these evil spirits.
The vicious dog that Mu Lian’s mother had turned into hated the Yu Di very much and chased him up to heaven to settle the score.
Unable to catch the Yu Di, she began to chase the sun and the moon, intending to swallow them and plunge the world into darkness.
This vicious dog was very afraid of the sound of gongs, drums, and fireworks. Whenever people played gongs and drums or set off fireworks, it would be scared and spit out the swallowed sun and moon.
This happened again and again, forming solar eclipses and lunar eclipses in the sky, which are known among the people as “the Tian Gou eating the sun” and “the Tian Gou eating the moon.”
Even until now, in some places during solar eclipses and lunar eclipses, people still play gongs and drums and set off fireworks to drive away this legendary Tian Gou.