readx;?? Although Jing You is a member of the Chu Guoqu, Jing, and Zhao families, his identity is not noble, if it weren't for his cousin Jing Jing, a petty official of the Chu State to take care of him, I'm afraid Jing You's childhood life is no better than that of an ordinary person, or a slave child. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

If it is about the slavery system, the state of Chu can be said to be the most tyrannical existence among the seven heroes of the Warring States. And after being defeated by the Qin army many times, and even losing almost half of the country, the deterioration of this situation is becoming more and more obvious.

And the emergence of a phenomenon shows how harsh the state of Chu was in treating slaves.

That is, people were martyred in the state of Chu, even before the state of Chu was finally destroyed by the state of Qin, it was quite popular.

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Human martyrdom is a bad custom of burying living people in ancient funerals, and later generations believe that it is the product of class confrontation, and it is also a cruel and barbaric religious act.

Mozi once said that after the death of the Son of Heaven, there were hundreds of martyrs, and dozens of martyrs, and dozens of martyrs at the level of generals and doctors.

It appeared at the end of primitive societies and prevailed in the era of slavery. Human martyrdom refers to the burial of a deceased clan leader, head of family, slave owner, or feudal lord by a living person. Most of the martyrs were close relatives, close ministers, close attendants, and prisoners of the deceased. In the era of the emergence of classes, human martyrdom became a widely popular ancient funeral ritual. The main reason for this phenomenon was that due to the increase in productivity, the development of commodity exchange and the emergence of private ownership at that time, this series of changes caused a class division within the clan. Therefore, the emergence of such religious activities is closely related to the emergence of private ownership.

Archaeologists excavated a large tomb of the Yin Dynasty in the northwest of Houjiazhuang, Anyang, Henan Province, and found that there were martyrs at the bottom of the tomb, and there was a guard of honor who were killed and martyred on the top of the tomb. Experts analyze the operation process as follows: first bury the martyrs alive under the tomb and then fill in the soil and ram it, leave the tomb road after the tomb owner is buried, and then use this tomb to tie the rest of the 10 and 20 martyrs into the tomb, and then cut off the heads one by one...... There are also "killing", in which the head of the martyr is cut off outside the pit before being buried.

There is no detailed information on the time of human martyrdom, but after the emergence of the concept of the state, human martyrdom not only did not stop, but intensified. It is generally believed that Xia is the beginning of Chinese national culture, and the martyrdom of people in Erlitou culture proves that there were people martyred in the Xia Dynasty. However, the most prosperous era of human martyrdom was the Shang and Zhou dynasties.

According to later archaeological excavations, there were martyrs in the tombs of nobles in the Shang Dynasty. In the Yinxu Gongling Mausoleum area of Anyang Military Attache Village, more than 5,000 people have been martyred and killed in more than a dozen large tombs that have been excavated. In 1976, in a medium-sized tomb excavated in the northwest suburbs of Anyang City, Henan Province, the tomb was densely arranged around the human sacrifice pit, a total of more than 1,400 people, most of the martyrs were underage children, some were beheaded or sawed hands, feet, etc., many martyrs also carried torture instruments. Archaeological excavations have found more than 80 tombs of martyrs in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and most of the tomb owners are nobles and princes, with a total of more than 200 martyrs. From the analysis of relics, most of the martyrs are the tomb owner's chamberlain, favorite concubines, maidservants, guards, miscellaneous servants, etc.

The decline of the human martyrdom system was after the Han Dynasty. The decline is manifested in two aspects: one is the decrease in the number of people who are martyred at one time, the second is the decrease in the coercive force of the funeral, and the third is the decrease in the probability of the occurrence of the funeral. Of course, the martyrdom of the Han Dynasty still existed. When Liu Pengzu of the Han Dynasty was about to die, he "ordered to be able to die for the slave and maid". During the Three Kingdoms, Chen Wu, a famous general of Eastern Wu, died in the Battle of Hefei, and Sun Quan "ordered his beloved concubine to be buried." ”。 Wei Guo's uncle Sun Jian was 28 years old when he died, and his spouse was also very young. It can be seen that the funeral has taken on the cloak of "voluntary".

By the time of the Tang Dynasty, human martyrdom rarely occurred, but it still existed. At the end of the Sui Dynasty, Du Fuwei rebelled and fought with the Sui soldiers, "all the wealth obtained was rewarded to the soldiers, and those who died in the war were buried with their wives and concubines...... "Du was named King of Wu after surrendering to the Tang Dynasty.

From this, two points can be determined: one is that there was still a burial law at the end of the Sui Dynasty, and the other is that Du Fuwei gave an order for burial. Ashina Sheer was the son of Luo Khan of the Turkic Division, and later led the army and was recruited as a concubine. The capture of the king of Qiuci in the conquest of Qiuzi was deeply appreciated by Tang Taizong. He asked Taizong to be buried after his death, "Gaozong sent an envoy to Yu Xianzhi, not allowed." It can be seen that the martyrdom of the early Tang Dynasty is still there, otherwise there would be no request for burial after death, and it is only out of Taizong's benevolence that this martyrdom tragedy was avoided. In fact, after the death of Tang Wuzong, Wang Cairen was martyred. The Song Dynasty inherited the tradition of the Tang Dynasty, and only a few people were martyred, and Song Gaozong Zhao Gou died and two talented people were martyred.

The resurrection of human martyrdom in the Liaojin period has been popular for nearly 700 years.

The Yuan Dynasty vigorously encouraged folk funeral behavior, and there are many records, such as: "Shunde Ma Ben's wife Hu Yunnu, Zhending people's wife Zhou, and Jining people's wife Wei Yihong were martyred by their husbands, and they were martyred." ": "Daning and Zhongxian He Qian's wife Bai Du Sai'er, her husband died and was buried, and she was killed. ”

Zhu Yuanzhang opened the evil example of martyrdom in the Ming Dynasty. "At the beginning, Taizu collapsed, and most of the palace people were from the dead. Jianwen and Yongle were successively compensated. If Zhang Feng, Li Heng, Zhao Fu, Zhang Bi, and Wang Bin all came from the Jinyi Institute to try hundreds of households, and the scattered riders with knives entered thousands of households, and brought the hereditary family, they were called 'Taizu Chaotian Female Households'.

Successive ancestors, Ren and Xuan were also martyred. Emperor Jing used the king to use his system, and the palace was the same at that time. There were 46 funeral concubines who were buried after Zhu Yuanzhang's death. Ming Xuanzong Zhu Zhanji died and also had a concubine martyrdom, and the women who had no name and only the surname were: He, Zhao, Wu, Jiao, Cao, Xu, Yuan, Zhu, and Li. Gai Xuanzong was also buried in the palace concubine".

It was only when Ming Yingzong was dying that things took a turn for the better. Shi Zaiyingzong was seriously ill, "the mouth occupies the will, the title of the concubine, do not use the funeral to bury, all four things, pay the pavilion to polish the color". Since then, the royal family of the Ming Dynasty has eliminated the system of human martyrdom. There were also martyrs in the Ming Dynasty, and their history was much longer than the compulsory burial of the royal family: Qi Jiao was the prime minister of the Xian Wang, the thief Li Qing rebelled, and the Xian Gong was martyred, "Qi Jiao led 23 relatives to be martyred". Xu Xueyan was a recruit general, and the recruits rebelled, "Xueyan fought, broke his left arm, scolded unyieldingly, broke up for the thief, and more than 20 people in his family were martyred." In the Ming Dynasty, the Manchu Jianzhou Mansion governed the customs of martyrdom by passing people, and the Manchurians were good for burial, both up and down, and the martyrdom of the husband and wife was the law.

After the Qing Dynasty entered the Central Plains, it extended the burial to the whole country in the form of a law. "In February, the funeral rites are fixed, and the wives and husbands listen to it, and they still give it a watch. Qing history records that there were martyrs in the years of Nurhachi, Shunzhi and Kangxi. In the 12th year of Kangxi, "Yi Mao, the eight banners were forbidden to be buried as slaves". At this point, the widespread system of "eight banners being buried as slaves" was banned. However, the Qing rulers "abolished the funeral system and vigorously commended the 'voluntary' martyrdom of their wives and concubines." The government of various places praised the wives and concubines for their martyrs, called them "martyrs" and "festival women", and repaired books and set up archways. Therefore, in the end of the Qing Dynasty, in fact, human martyrdom has not been completely eradicated."

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According to the summary of later archaeology, the main ways of killing people in burial are as follows:

Haning: Before the execution, the person in charge will arrange a meal for the martyr, and those with high status will be sent to the room alone, and those with low status will generally gather together for a group meal. This "Last Supper", commonly known as the "life-urging meal", is quite rich, but due to the fear of imminent death, no one has the heart to eat it, most of the time it is tears, and the crying at the scene is shocking, as is the case with the martyr of Zhu Di, the secretary of history.

Poisoning: How were Zhu Yuanzhang's funeral palace concubines executed, one said that the eunuchs hanged them, and the other said that they were poisoned, and the selected palace concubines were forcibly poured mercury. Mercury is highly toxic and dies immediately after eating.

It is said that the bodies of the martyrs who were poisoned by mercury did not decompose for a long time and remained alive many years later. The phenomenon of corpses not decomposing is recorded in the history of tomb robbery in China. For example, when Guangchuan Wang Liu went to steal the "Mourning King Tomb", he found that there were more than 100 corpses in the tomb, which were stacked on top of each other, but strangely none of them were decomposed. It can be assumed that some of the women were martyrs, and their bodies did not decompose for hundreds of years, which is quite similar to the theory that they were poisoned by mercury.

Another method of poisoning is to poison the last meal they eat, causing them to be poisoned after eating. The most common method is to use poisoned wine and give it to death. The 7 martyrs in the "Luopowan Han Tomb" are speculated to have been executed in this way.

It is to tie the hands and feet of the martyr, put them in a certain position, and bury them alive.

In order to make the mourners lose the ability to resist, they are sometimes used to "euthanize" them with something like anesthetics. In the archaeological excavation of the ancient tomb of Yijin Huoluoqi in Yikezhao League, Inner Mongolia, it was found that some of the buried women had traces of their limbs being tied by ropes, which should have been forcibly buried at that time. Some burial women bend their limbs sideways, facing the man, which is a posture that is posed after death, which is a kind of shape, and it is impossible for a natural death person to have that kind of "prescribed action".

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Martyrdom was prevalent in the Chu State, and it is said that the clues can be glimpsed from the process of class differentiation and the process of strengthening the country in the Chu State.

Later generations believed that when Xiong Tong, the king of Chuwu, was officially called king, there was a royal power and ruling organ that was separated from the general public, the names of masters and slaves had been determined, and the conditions for human martyrdom were quite ripe. It can be seen that in the early Spring and Autumn Period, there should have been martyrdom in the Chu State, but unfortunately there is a lack of records in the literature, and no empirical evidence has been found in archaeological data.

Archaeological excavations have fully shown that in the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, people were mainly martyred in the tombs of high-ranking nobles, reached their peak in the late Spring and Autumn Period, began to decline in the early Warring States period, and further declined in the middle of the Warring States Period.

According to the martyrdom status, the martyrdom of the Chu people is mainly divided into three categories, the burial of wives and concubines, the burial of cronies and pets, and the burial of slaves.

Some people believe that compared with Qin, the Chu people were martyred for a shorter period of time, mainly concentrated in Henan, which was greatly influenced by the culture of the Central Plains, and Hubei, where the political center was located. Judging from the way of dealing with the martyrs, the martyrs of Chu are not as cruel as those of Qin, and the position of martyrs is not as complicated.

However, the fact is that most of the martyr tombs found by later archaeological discoveries are concentrated in the late Spring and Autumn period to the middle of the Warring States period. Among them, nearly 20 were found in the Qin State, and more than 200 people were martyred. The largest scale of martyrs is none other than the No. 1 tomb of Qin Gong in Fengxiang, Shaanxi, 72 people were buried in boxes, 94 people were martyred in boxes, and the burial tools were curled up very much, and there were 20 more cruel human animals accompanied by them. The owner of the tomb is roughly the Jinggong of the Qin State in the late Spring and Autumn Period.

And Qin was one of the Seven Heroes of the Warring States who gave up or even banned martyrdom relatively early:

In 408 B.C., the Qin State first carried out the "first lease of He", which marked the initial establishment of advanced feudal production relations in the Qin State. In 385 BC, Qin Xiangong, who had returned from Wei, seized power and carried out a series of social changes, the first of which was the abolition of the system of human burial. "Dedication to the first year, stop from death".

Martyrdom was expressly forbidden, and from then on, Qin officially abolished the funeral system in the form of law. Immediately after 361 B.C., Qin Xiaogong ascended the throne, "so Buhui, revitalize the lonely widow, recruit warriors, and reward merit", and said, "The widow misses the meaning of the ancestors, and often aches in the heart." The guests and ministers have those who can make strange plans to strengthen Qin, and I will respect the officials and share the land with them."

The martyrs of Chu were mainly wives and concubines, cronies and pets and domestic slaves, and their identities were relatively simple. Female martyrs accounted for a large proportion of the martyrs in the Chu State. On the whole, there are fewer cases of martyrdom in Chu than in Qin. It is worth noting that not all the tombs of nobles of the same rank in the same period in the Chu State existed in human martyrdom, and the reasons for this were many. In addition, there is such a group of people who voluntarily die for a certain spiritual belief, which is fundamentally different from human martyrdom and should be regarded as "martyrdom".

What really shows the deterioration of the martyrdom custom of the Chu people is that in the middle and late Warring States period, the number of cases of human martyrdom among the lower nobles increased, and the specifications of human martyrdom were moved downward.

And not only that, there is a saying in some wild histories, that is, the more than 70 nobles who were ordered by the king of Chu Su to shoot the body of the king of Chu mourning in order to kill Wu Qi were buried as the existence of the martyrdom of the king of Chu mourning.

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Jing You had seen a lot of martyrdom when he was a child, and at the beginning, he didn't think there was anything special about this situation, but as he got older, he clearly knew one thing, that is, the situation of the martyrdom system in Chu State deteriorated, reflecting the weakening of Chu State's national strength.

In addition to the successive military defeats, the manpower available to the Chu State became more and more scarce, which also made the Chu State have to increase the efforts to squeeze the surplus value of slaves.

And Jing You knows that many slaves are not too bad before they become slaves, and they can even be said to be relatively strong. But even a strong man, as soon as they become a slave, may die in less than two or three years because of too much hard work or some other cause.

And Jing You knows a situation, that is, the reason for the successive military defeats of the Chu State, and a very important point, that is, the more heavy the defeat, the more the military power that the Chu royal family can control will be weaker. On the other hand, the private armed forces of the local aristocracy became more powerful in disguise.