Ba-zha

The eight offerings

The rite took its name from eight offerings. The Book of Rites sets them out in a chapter called Jiao Te Sheng, the single victim at the border sacrifice. Half of them honoured people and powers of farming: Shennong, the first agriculturalist; Houji, the director of husbandry; farmers themselves; and the boundaries between fields. Half honoured the land and its creatures: cats and tigers, dykes and embankments, canals and channels, and insects. That chapter also gives a short prayer: that the earth return to its place, water flow in its channels, insects not swarm, and weeds stay in the marshes.

Origins and history

The Zha sacrifice goes back to the Pre-Qin period. In early practice it was one of two year-end rites: Zha honoured farming gods, natural spirits and beings tied to agriculture, while La belonged to ancestors and the Five Sacrifices. Over time the two were confused with each other and merged into the La Festival. Some texts gave the Zha sacrifice a founding ruler, and Yao is among the earliest figures linked to it. An eighth-century work, the Sanhuang Benji, appended to the Records of the Grand Historian, credited Shennong: he taught farming, it says, and so began the Zha. The rite carried on through the Han and Tang dynasties.

The later deity

Later Chinese folk belief turned Ba Zha into a god who guarded crops from locusts and other pests. Some accounts tie this god to the insect offering among the eight, though writers differ on how the rite and the god relate. He is pictured bare above the waist, with a nose like a beak. Below the waist his body is shaped like a bell, and some stories say he was born from one. Large bird claws stand beneath. A Mongolian story gives him the name Ba Zha Yeh and sets him in a remote valley where wolves, scorpions and locusts lived, none of them troubling him.

Temples and customs

As the rite spread into local religion, shrines to Ba Zha appeared in parts of China. People called some of them Ba Zha Temples or Insect Ba Zha Temples, and came there to ask that insects spare their crops. A gazetteer of Shengjing, issued by imperial order, notes that local people knew one such temple as the Insect King Temple. Another, for Fengshan County, records a shrine built by the magistrate Song Yongqing after a locust plague in the forty-fifth year of the Kangxi reign. Hangzhou keeps the memory in a street name, Chongbazha Lane. In Tianjin, communities performed the Xiaochehui at late-Qing Insect Ba Zha temple festivals.

How Ba-zha is kept

In ancient times the rite belonged to the year's end. In the twelfth lunar month people brought the eight offerings, gave thanks for what the fields had produced, and asked for help against anything that could ruin a crop. The Book of Rites records a larger ceremony, the Great Zha. Later the practice changed. Officials and villagers went to Ba Zha temples and prayed when locusts threatened, and worship often overlapped with that of General Liu Meng, another god invoked against the same pest.

When and where

The ceremony belonged to the close of the farming year, in the twelfth lunar month, inside the wider Zha sacrifice. Ancient texts place its beginnings in the Pre-Qin period, and it continued in Han and Tang times. Temple worship of Ba Zha against locusts came later and was not fixed to one date: people went to the shrines when pests threatened the fields.

The rite was kept in China, in farming country. Later shrines and temples to Ba Zha stood in several regions, among them Shengjing, where one temple was known locally as the Insect King Temple, and Fengshan County, where a magistrate built a shrine after a locust plague. Hangzhou remembers a former temple site in the name of Chongbazha Lane, and Tianjin had temple festivals with folk performances.

What Ba-zha means

For those who kept the rite, the harvest was not only human work. It depended on rain in the right channels, on insects staying away, on weeds keeping to the marshes, and on the powers of farming being thanked. The eight offerings named all of that at once. When the name later belonged to a god, the meaning narrowed to protection: a guardian who stood between a village and a swarm of locusts.

Questions people ask about Ba-zha

See also

OvooA stone cairn on a peak or pass, circled by travellers and honoured in sky worshipGhost FestivalA full-moon night in the seventh lunar month for feeding ghosts and guiding souls homeDajiaoAn annual Taoist ritual and festival seeking peace and safety for the communityQimen DunjiaA classical Chinese divination system that maps time, space, and strategy

Good reading and sources

• Ba-zha on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-09.