What exactly is in Meng Po's soup: the legendary "Waters of Forgetfulness"

In Chinese legends of the underworld, after a person dies, they must cross a bridge called the Naihe Bridge. At the head of the bridge stands an old woman named Meng Po, who is cooking a pot of soup. Everyone crossing the bridge must drink a bowl.

After drinking this bowl of soup, you forget everything from your previous life—the people you loved, the people you hated, the things you did, the suffering you endured. Only then can you be reincarnated.

There are different accounts of who Meng Po is. One version says she was a woman from the Han Dynasty named Meng, who lived to be eighty or ninety years old. She ate a vegetarian diet all her life, encouraged people to do good, and spoke of the karmic causes and effects of past and present lives. After her death, the King of Hell sent her to manage this soup. Another version says she is Meng Jiangnü; after crying down the Great Wall and dying, she still could not find her husband in the underworld, so she stayed by the bridge. Others say there are actually three of them: one at the head of the bridge, one at the Gazing-Home Terrace, and another guarding the place of the Wheel of Reincarnation.

As for what goes into the soup, there are many theories. Some say it is tears from the human world; others say it is the five flavors—sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, and salty—mixed together. Drink it down, and everything of the human world is forgotten.

Folklore also says that some people refuse to drink it, secretly pouring the soup away or holding it in their mouths to spit out after crossing the bridge. Those who are reincarnated after doing this carry the memories of their past lives. Some become geniuses; others are regarded as madmen.

So, when children talk nonsense and say what they were like in a previous life, adults will half-jokingly say: "This child didn't drink the soup."

The pot of soup by the bridge, legend says, has never stopped boiling.

#Folklore #网络转载