In the 1960s, farmers in Xipu, Pi County, Sichuan Province, were leveling and improving the soil when they suddenly found a tomb. At that time, the awareness of cultural relics protection was very weak, and the tomb was not well protected, but the left stone door of the tomb door was spared. Now it also preserves the Sichuan Museum and is exhibited in the exhibition hall of the Han Dynasty Pottery and Stone Museum. Ordinary stone tomb doors naturally do not receive such attention, because it does have extraordinary records, reproducing a corner of the customs and customs of the Eastern Han Dynasty.
The 157-centimeter-tall tomb door itself is not surprising, but apart from the image of an old man inscribed on it, the rest is densely packed with text. The image of the old man should have been carved later as part of the burial chamber. Those texts, however, record the historical materials of the Eastern Han Dynasty. According to experts, it should have actually been a stone stele, and it was used twice to become a tomb door.
There are words on the stone tablets, which ordinary people may only feel novel, but in the eyes of cultural relics workers, it is an incalculable treasure. Our understanding of history stems from written records, the most important and extensive of which is the history books. However, the records on paper are too large to be changed by human interference, and it is best to carve them in stone.
This is the writing carved on the stone, it is called the Eastern Han Dynasty Stone Stele, is a national first-class cultural relic. The full text on this stele is unverifiable because of wear and tear, but it records various policies and is quite important.
We know that the Han Dynasty was founded in the ruins of the peasant wars at the end of the Qin Dynasty and was initially quite poor. After the "rule of Wenjing", the national strength of the Han Dynasty increased greatly, and the accumulated wealth was also increasing. However, in this process, land annexation is serious, and the combination of power and strength has also buried huge hidden dangers and bane. However, the rulers of the time were not aware of this at all, and they adopted a policy of protecting the interests of large landowners, as evidenced by this stone tablet.
On the stone tablets, several kinds of taxes are recorded, including "mouth endowment", "more endowment", "horse mouth money" and so on. The mouth is the poll tax, the more important is the male service, and the horse mouth money is the tax that should be paid to raise livestock. The records in the history books are not so rich, and we only know that the early Han Dynasty implemented a field tax of thirty taxes and one tax, and we do not understand the rest. It is precisely because of the excessive amount of harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes that the peasants who have no land and few fields cannot afford it, and can only send people to the fence, which has also caused the gap between the rich and the poor to continue to increase.
Not only that, but this Eastern Han Dynasty stone stele also details the property situation of more than 20 local families. The richest landlords, a family occupies more than 2,000 acres of land, and the average prince is no more than that. The most general family occupies 8 acres of land. In ancient times, when productivity was extremely low, this was the ability to maintain a level of subsistence.
The stone tablets even recorded the price of goods at that time, and the price of an acre of land itself was not high, and according to the degree of fertility, it only ranged from 500 to 2,000 yuan. A cow is worth a lot, about 15,000 dollars. What is even more cruel is that the slave is the private property of the master, and can be sold at a clear price of only 40,000 yuan, which is less than the price of three cows.
Cattle were extremely important in ancient times, especially for farming societies like China, and its price was understandably high. However, the price of slaves is unimaginably low. The same people, such a standard pricing, can also see how low their status is. Therefore, the landlord's house raised slaves. Of the 20 households recorded in the inscription, 5 have slaves and one has 7 slaves.
What exactly this inscription is, there is still debate, some say that it is the official verification of the field and carved "book", and some say that it is the proof of the landlord's separation. Whatever it was, it was indeed a wealth worth protecting, and the meaning of words was far more important than those of gold and silver jewelry.