Sima Qian's "Records of History" clearly records the Xiongnu marriage system, that is, the system of succession marriage, the content of which is: the father dies, the son marries the unrelated stepmother as a wife, the brother dies, and the remaining brothers marry the wife (sister-in-law or sister-in-law) they left behind, which is incomprehensible to the Han.
In fact, not only the Xiongnu have such a succession marriage system, almost all the nomadic peoples in Chinese history have this system, such as Xianbei, Rouran, Turkic, Mongolian, etc., all have such customs, this system can be called the characteristics of nomadic peoples, so the question is, why do nomadic peoples appear in this inheritance marriage system?
Hun cavalry
The nomadic peoples represented by the Huns mainly have three very distinctive customs:
First, they move with water and grass, and there is no fixed residence.
This is a typical feature of nomadic people, nomads do not cultivate the land, their main way of life is grazing and hunting, grazing and hunting need to constantly change places, it is impossible to stay in a place for a long time, otherwise the livestock have nothing to eat, the prey in a place is finished, there will be no prey, and there will be no prey, and a nomadic living custom has been maintained continuously.
Under the influence of this way of life, the Xiongnu were in an absolutely patriarchal society, hunting needed men, foreign wars needed men, and men were also needed to resist natural and man-made disasters, and the main task of women within the tribe was to procreate the population, and in addition to doing some things within their power, such as feeding livestock, the status of women was extremely low.
Nomadic people live by water and grass
Second, there must be constant foreign wars.
Xiongnu and other nomadic peoples because of the nomadic life customs, so the ability to resist natural disasters in the natural world is very weak, as long as it is a heavy snow or severe cold season, it will lead to a large number of people and livestock frozen to death, once this natural disaster occurs, the Huns will not be able to live, they must organize foreign wars, through the way of plunder, seize the living materials and wealth and population of others.
For example, the Xiongnu war against the Han Dynasty, although there were peace and kinship between Han and Hungary, but there were still frequent wars, the Xiongnu repeatedly invaded the borders of the Han Dynasty, mainly to rob things, seize wealth, rob the population, in order to supplement their own losses in natural disasters, if not launch foreign wars, the Xiongnu in the face of natural disasters, it is difficult to survive.
Han-Hungarian and pro
In addition to foreign wars, the Xiongnu also have constant internal wars, the entire society of the Xiongnu is a primitive tribal alliance structure, relying on blood and status to form many different tribes, when the Xiongnu have tribal strongmen appear, its interior is unified, once not, its tribal masters are fragmented, war will occur with each other.
For example, during the han Xuan emperor period, the Xiongnu were divided into five singles in contention for the throne, and there were constant wars between them, and later the Xiongnu were divided into the southern Xiongnu and the northern Xiongnu, the northern Xiongnu were defeated by the Han Dynasty and fled to Central Asia, and the southern Xiongnu defected to the Han Dynasty, which was not a monolith, and civil unrest occurred at any time.
Not only the Xiongnu, but also the later Xianbei, Turkic, and Mongols, xianbei had five tribes with different surnames, which often fought wars with each other, the Turks were divided into western Turks and eastern Turks, and there were also frequent wars, and the founder of the Mongol Empire, Temujin, did not unify Mongolia before it was internally divided.
There are many wars on the steppe
The nomadic peoples represented by the Xiongnu not only have internal wars, but also external wars, and constant wars make it impossible for the nomadic population to grow rapidly.
Third, the population is not large.
If you look at it from the map, the land area occupied by the nomadic people has always exceeded that of the Han people, but in terms of population, the nomadic population of successive dynasties is much smaller than the Han population, or even less than one-tenth, and the nomadic way of life cannot carry more people.
The population of the Xiongnu in history is only two or three million people, while the Han Dynasty in the same period had at least 20 or 30 million people, while the population of the Western Han Dynasty was more than 60 million people in the heyday of the Western Han Dynasty, and the xiongnu population was only a fraction of the Han Dynasty in the same period.
The population on the prairie is not large
Even if it is later Turks and Mongolia, the heyday will not exceed 3 million people, and it is also far less than the Sui and Tang Dynasties and the Southern Song Dynasty in the same period, the Tang Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty had a population of more than 80 million at the highest, and the population of the nomadic people was too small.
The three characteristics of the nomadic peoples represented by the Huns all led to a problem, that is, the population problem, the population growth rate of the nomadic peoples was very low, especially the number of male populations.
Therefore, the biggest development problem of the nomads is how to increase the population, and the inheritance marriage system is a method that the nomadic people have come up with to solve the population problem in the long-term life practice, and have formed a system.
The "History" records that the Huns admired the strong, looked down on the weak, good food was distributed to the strong, the old and infirm people ate the rest of the food, contrary to the traditional virtues of the Han Dynasty, the xiongnu had such a custom, which was determined by their way of life, in the continuous nomadic, foreign wars, and resistance to natural and man-made disasters, only the strong could have more strength to protect the entire tribe and survive.
The Huns valued the strong and looked down on the weak
Looking at the Xiongnu's succession marriage system, when the father dies, the son will marry the stepmother who is not related by blood, if not? That is, widows and orphans, the smallest unit of the Xiongnu is the account, equivalent to a family of the Han people, and the later Turkic tent and yurt is a similar concept, an account is a small family living together.
If a man dies in a small family, how do orphans and widows live? In the constant nomadic herding, without men, widows and widows may not even be able to drive away their own livestock, let alone prepare their own things for nomadism, and in internal and external wars, orphans and widows cannot survive.
But it is not possible to drive orphans and widows away from their own people, so the population will be even smaller, so the best way is to have a man come out and marry the widow, and the orphan becomes the man's son, so that the man becomes the master of a family, and the same man who marries the widow can continue to give birth to the population, which is a benefit gained in one fell swoop, and it is also the biggest role of the Xiongnu inheritance marriage system.
The main role of the succession system is to increase the population
Brothers die, the remaining brothers marry sisters-in-law or sister-in-law as wives, the same is the same reason, some families are father and son family, some families are brothers, whether it is father and son or brothers, in order to achieve the role of protecting orphans and widows and continuing to give birth to the population, so the inheritance marriage system came into being.
This is a product of history and a characteristic of nomadic peoples, which the Han people cannot understand, but the nomadic peoples are the correct experience developed by the history of their own nation. Without the adoptive marriage system, the nomads might have had less character.
In addition, the Huns also used women as a tool for procreation, if the father died, there was no son, or the brother died, there was no brother, their left wives would have other men to marry, in order not to waste any chance of giving birth to the population, which is a primitive social custom left by the nomadic people, is a specific historical product, and has a certain rationality.