Chapter Ninety-Eight: The Royal Funeral

At that time, the yamen in charge of feng shui and the election of the day was not called Qin Tianjian, but called Taichang Temple, and its chief official was called Taichangqing, which was the head of Jiuqing, and the subordinate officials mainly had Taishi, Taile, Taizhu, Dazai, Taibu, Taiyi Liulingcheng, Doctor Sacrificial Wine and Temples and Cemeteries, etc., the institutions were complex and the establishment was huge.

Liu Hou was speechless for such a miscellaneous organization, and even more speechless for a yamen who was in charge of feng shui and divination was the first of Jiuqing. The ancients regarded sacrifice as a more important national event than war, which was difficult for Liu Hou to understand.

He would love to remove some of the superstition features from the department, but apparently it wasn't a good time yet. Now if you want to choose a good day for Liu Bei to be buried, you have to use these magic sticks.

So, under the toss of Liu Hou's nose and eyes, the trembling Tai Changqing finally picked a suitable day for burial.

October 27, it is advisable to: dress, sacrifice, bath, burial, removal of clothes, fasting, moving, and burial; Don't: open the market, get married, make a bed, enter the house, and make a stove 1.

Therefore, this day was set as the day of Liu Bei's burial, as a son of man, Liu Hou should have personally supported the funeral to show that he was a good son of filial piety. However, Zhuge Liang, Bu Qi, Guo Youzhi and other important ministers have studied and judged the situation at home and abroad, and believe that the current situation is still unstable, and the emperor should not show his head lightly, so as not to be taken advantage of by the enemy country.

In fact, it is indeed like that, now Wei and Wu have a large number of fine works lurking in Chengdu, and they do have a plan to take advantage of the opportunity to assassinate Liu Hou, and the caution of the ministers is not unreasonable. Liu Hou also knew this situation, otherwise he wouldn't have spent so much money to build that bulletproof carriage.

Now this bulletproof car just came in handy, and Liu Hou planned to sit in that bulletproof carriage to go to the funeral, so that even if he encountered an assassination, he could rest easy.

Due to the undecided world and tight finances, the funeral was simple (look, Liu Hou found another grandiose excuse, in fact, he was just troublesome), but no matter how simplified, after all, it was also an emperor's funeral, and a certain scale and pomp were still required.

On the day of the spirit, the royal family and the government poured out of the nest to go to the funeral, and the first to walk was 64 banner-bearers, holding high the flag umbrella of the people; Then there was the Emperor's Honor Guard, numbering 1,628 people, carrying various weapons, flags, and all kinds of paper or satin zuò "burning";

The bearer of the coffin, wearing filial piety clothes, has 128 people in each shift, and takes turns to carry it in three shifts. Behind the coffin were heavily armed warriors of the Hong Army;

Then there are the emperor's relatives and officials at all levels, they are not allowed to ride horses, sedan chairs or cars, all have to wear their hair on foot, in order to show respect for the emperor, only Liu Hou, the emperor, is an exception, he is wearing inner armor, covered with filial piety clothes and hiding in the bulletproof car and does not dare to show his face, there are a large number of loaded guns and live guards in front and back of the car, looking at this posture does not want to go out of the funeral, but like going out.

Finally, there are a large number of monks, Taoist priests, nuns, Taoist aunts and other monks, who wear Dharma robes and hold law enforcement instruments in their hands, and constantly play and chant sutras. The whole team is mighty and majestic. The whole funeral procession stretched for ten miles, and the front of the procession had arrived at the cemetery in the south of Chengdu, and the tail had not yet left the palace.

Although Liu Hou does not have much money on hand now, there are still a lot of people, in addition to officials at all levels, relatives of the emperor, there are many soldiers in the Hong army, and they are used to support pomp, coolies, and chores without spending any money.

Therefore, a qiē from Jane refers to those ceremonial guards, decorations, funeral goods, etc., which cost money, for these pomp and circumstance that can be made without spending much money, of course he will not go to the province, so he was stunned to toss a ten-mile-long funeral procession to come out, such a big pomp is worthy of his cheap father.

The coffin used to hold Liu Bei is made of the best golden silk nanmu that is paid tribute to the hometown of the vulture bone, the coffin carving is exquisite, the shape is simple, it can be called a work of art, the coffin is also brushed with forty-nine lacquers after it is done, and the insect-proof, moth-proof, moisture-proof measures are very well done.

When he first saw this tightly fitting coffin, Liu Hou somehow thought of Mawangdui's female corpse, and thought to himself, I don't know if Liu Bei's coffin will be dug up after two thousand years, and then found that his body is still well preserved and has not yet decomposed.

However, the premise is that his tomb is not stolen. This is a big problem, he once asked Zhuge Liang if there is any way to avoid the tomb robbery, Zhuge Liang said, the tomb robbers want to rob the tomb, nothing more than to get the gold and silver treasures in the tomb, if there is nothing worth stealing, naturally no one will rob the tomb.

That being said, everyone understands this truth, but why do those emperors and those with status like to put some gold, silver and jade objects into the tomb to accompany the burial?

The ancients believed that people could be reborn after death, or live in another world, so some basic necessities and gold and silver wealth were necessary, and they were all purchased according to the needs of the living. This is done so that the deceased can have everything in the next life and continue to enjoy the glory and wealth of this life.

In addition, the ancients believed that burial with jade could keep the body from decay and make resurrection possible, so in the Han Dynasty, burial jade was extremely common, and had gradually evolved into a complete form of burial jade including jade clothes, jade grips, jade nine orifices, jade Han and so on.

After the death of the kings and nobles of the Han Dynasty, they not only mouthed # containing treasure beads, but also piled jade on their heads, and also wrapped their heads and feet in funeral clothes made of jade pieces and gold wires, which is what people call golden jade clothes, and it is also called "golden jade sheng" in historical books.

This kind of extravagant practice is undoubtedly extremely stupid in Liu Hou's eyes, because it is tantamount to saying to those tomb robbers: "Come and dig my grave, there are so many good things here." "With so much property to bury the ancestors, this is for fear that others will not come to steal the tombs of their ancestors, this is really cheating, and it is to continue to pit after death, or to pit in death.

You must know that there are countless tomb robbers since ancient times, even Cao Cao did this business in his early years, it is said that he was still a school captain at that time, and the term "touching gold school captain" is derived from him, it is conceivable that China's tomb robbing culture is really long.

However, as the children and grandchildren of others, sometimes they have to do this, and the Chinese are a group of people with good faces, and there is a saying that death is a true portrayal of this phenomenon.

As a descendant, if there are too few things to bury your ancestors, it is very likely that you will poke your backbone and scold your unfilial son. Especially as an emperor, every move is concerned by the people of the world, and every word and deed will be recorded by the living room and recorded in the annals of history, which is even more important to talk about rules, pomp, and face.

Therefore, Liu Hou felt a lot of pressure on Zhuge Liang's words similar to "no trading, no killing". If he really didn't put valuable things in Liu Bei's tomb, would he point his nose at the whole world and scold him for being unfilial? Will he become the most scathing emperor in history?

After thinking about it for many days, Liu Hou, who was under a lot of pressure, finally thought of a way, he had read a lot of online novels and miscellaneous books before, and one of the ways was that there were some things that the emperor obviously wanted to do, but it was inconvenient for him to do it himself, so he explicitly or implicitly indicated that his courtiers would promote this matter.

In this way, if the matter succeeds, the emperor will achieve his goal, and if the matter fails, it will also be the fault of the courtier who initiated the matter, and it will have no effect on the emperor at all. Therefore, the emperor can always sit firmly on the Diaoyu Tai, and the courtiers can only be the pawns of the horses who charge under the banner of the emperor, or the pawns who can be sacrificed at any time.

In fact, such incidents abound in history, such as Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin was added by his subordinates in yellow robes after launching the Chen Qiao Mutiny. The history books say that he was passive and completely unaware of it before, is this possible? Even the yellow robe was made in advance, and he pretended to be innocent?

Recently, Liu Bei was called the king of Hanzhong and the emperor, and he was first asked by Zhuge Liang, Xu Jing and other ministers to take the throne repeatedly, didn't he make any hints before?

Well, no matter what happened to others, Liu Hou was very happy that he had thought of such a clever plan anyway. He weighed the candidates, and finally selected the new Dahonglu Liu Yan to do this.

Originally, he wanted Guo Yuzhi to do it, but then he thought that there were already a lot of affairs pressing on him during this time, so it was better to find someone who was free, so he thought of Liu Yan.

In addition to being idle, because Liu Yan is a celebrity and has a reputation, he can mobilize a group of officials to wave the flag and shout to cheer for him, and such a change may involve some issues of etiquette and religion.

So, after Liu Yan got Liu Hou's instructions, he wrote a gorgeously worded recital to play the Son of Heaven, requesting that the funeral rules be reformed and a new funeral atmosphere be proposed.

This article of thousands of words has a lot of content, including: exposing the black history of Cao Cao who once served as a "golden school captain", and from this incident, the fact that tomb robberies in the Celestial Empire became commonplace. And to avoid the tombs of our ancestors from being stolen and excavated, it is the unshirkable responsibility of our descendants. He also pointed out that the best way to prevent the graves of the ancestors from being dug up is not to bury valuables in the tombs.

The article also points out that the funeral rules and customs have been changing, and in ancient times, there were rules for the burial of the living, but later it gradually changed to the use of Yong for burial.

Yong is made of wood and clay to make the appearance of a human being, and bury the dead in the ground to replace the living with the burial. The famous Terracotta Warriors and Horses from the Tomb of Qin Shi Huang are the best examples.

However, the cost of Ningbo is still relatively expensive, not affordable for ordinary people, so it later developed to paper products, paper people, paper money, paper all kinds of daily necessities because of their cheap cost, popular among the people, even in modern times are still widely used by the people.

Liu Yan is a textual argument similar to historical research that funeral customs are actually constantly changing and progressing, and there are no immutable rules.

Moreover, it can be seen that this change is a kind of progress, a change that is beneficial to social progress, so we should not be afraid of change, and we should not reject this change because it is not in line with the ancestral system. As long as it is a change that is conducive to social progress, we should adopt it.

Note 1: This is to copy today's yellow calendar, today, February 14, 2015, Valentine's Day, is a suitable day to do white things and not suitable to do red things, everyone should pay attention to Oh, do not marry today.

Haha, just kidding, there are so many taboos there for people in the new era, I wish you all a happy Valentine's Day.