Perhaps many people do not know that the group of eunuchs is a product of ancient political development.
First of all, we make it clear that "eunuch" and "eunuch" cannot be directly equated. Eunuchs/eunuchs existed in the pre-Qin period, and the title "eunuch" was much later.
Cao Wei set up a palace superintendent, and later assumed some of the duties of "Shaofu" (what Shaofu is for, as will be mentioned below). In the Sui and Tang dynasties, it was successively changed to the Dianzhong Bureau and the Dianzhong Province, and during the reign of Emperor Gaozong of Tang, it was changed to the ZhongyuFu, and their duties in this department were to "hold the Heavenly Son to serve the Emperor", that is, to serve the emperor, and the main task was liushang (equal to "palm") - Shang Food, Shang Medicine, Shang Yi, Shang She, Shang She, Shang Ren. After being reformed by Li Zhi, the leaders of this department were the great supervisor and the young supervisor, who were eunuchs; and "big" was also called "tai", and the word eunuch was born.
During the Ming Dynasty, eunuchs were as powerful as ever, but only those internal prisoners with particularly high status and unusual status were eligible to be called eunuchs; in the Qing Dynasty, all eunuchs were honored as eunuchs, which is the concept we understand.
so. How did eunuchs come about? Eunuch, in the pre-Qin Dynasty, mainly referred to eunuchs and eunuchs, which means people who are literate and can become officials, so the names eunuchs and eunuchs originally did not have a pejorative color and were not discriminated against.
The emergence of eunuchs is associated with corruption. Corruption, also known as palace punishment and yin punishment, refers to the destruction of the reproductive organs of men and women, causing them to lose their reproductive ability. Because in people's minds, the value of reproductive organs is only one level lower than that of the head, so corruption is a punishment second only to the death penalty, which can completely destroy a person's complete personality and become a dependent product of the powerful.
Since the Shang Zhou Dynasty, corruption has become an option to punish prisoners and criminals. Moreover, most of the people punished have certain cultural qualities/skills, and many even come from the small and medium-sized aristocratic classes, and it is precisely because of this that the ruler chooses to punish them in a way that does not harm thinking and labor ability, and then continues to exert their surplus value - that is, to stay with the magnates and emperors, to serve eunuchs and eunuchs.
It is not difficult to understand why Zhao Gao was able to serve as the teacher of Crown Prince Hu Hai and also to serve as Lang Zhongling; and why Sima Qian could also write a book order after he was punished.
The qualitative change in the status of eunuchs was a matter of the Western Han Dynasty, which originated from the political reforms of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty.
In the Han Dynasty, the main officials below the emperor in the early Western Han Dynasty were the Three Dukes (丞相, 御史大夫, 太尉) and Jiuqing (太常, Guangluxun, Wei Wei, Taifu, Tingwei, Dahongxu, Zongzheng, Dasi Nong, and Shaofu). These positions originated from the pre-Qin Dynasty, with obvious aristocratic political overtones, that is, these three dukes and nine secretaries, more are the emperor's own private subjects, service personnel, to put it bluntly, the imperial court is the emperor's family after expansion.
For example, "Zai Xiang", Zai originally referred to the official who was in charge of the major affairs of the temple sacrifice for the nobles in the pre-Qin period, and was mainly responsible for arranging household chores such as meals and going out on weekdays, that is, the housekeeper in the family. At the national level, the prime minister is equivalent to the emperor's personal assistant, so the prime minister in the early Han Dynasty is basically a meritorious person.
After Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty ascended the throne, he carried out systematic and comprehensive political reforms, and the difference between the Chinese and foreign dynasties appeared, that is, the royal family and the government began to be relatively independent. It can be understood that in order to standardize and scientificize the development of the dynasty, the way of direct management of state affairs by the royal family is not advanced, and it is necessary to hand over to a professional professional team to handle it on its behalf.
And these "professional managers" are led by a group of scholars and doctors who have been deposed from hundreds of families and cultivated after the exclusive respect of Confucianism, which is the main body of the "foreign dynasty", and the leader is the minister;
But this is only a pretense, and it is the emperor Lao Er himself who has the right to decide. In order to find someone to assist him, he decided to choose some of the most reliable people, allow them to enter and leave the palace, and accompany him at any time, which is the origin of "China and North Korea".
These Chinese and DPRK personnel can be said to be confidants. At first, it was generally a foreign relative who served as the head of the Inner Dynasty, and his identity was often "Great Sima Da"; the main thing was the Inner Dynasty Shangshu. What is Shang Shu? From the Shaofu of the Nine Qings, he was mainly responsible for distributing documents in the palace; the lord = Shang, so it was called Shangshu. At that time, there were six Shang: Shangyi, Shangguan, Shangshi, Shangyu, Shangxi, and Shangshu (book), which shows that the tasks of the Imperial Palace in the Tang Dynasty at the beginning of this article are very similar. Later, Huo Guang, the number one confidant of Emperor Wu of Han, served as the "Grand Sima Lingshang Shushi".
The formation of the inner dynasty was a major weakening of the power of the prime minister, avoiding the recurrence of the situation in which the prime minister restricted the imperial power as in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty. But there is also a problem: the most direct representative of the imperial power, the power of the inner dynasty is greater, and once the emperor does not have the control and control ability of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the problem will follow.
Later emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty began to reuse Zhongshu, and was accustomed to appointing eunuchs to this position, such as Sima Qian, who served as Zhongshu Ling after his execution.
In the period of the Han Yuan Emperor, the eunuchs Honggong and Shi Xian successively arbitrarily decided the imperial program as Zhongshu. In this way, the phenomenon of foreign relatives and eunuchs serving as spokesmen for the emperor's will was eventually formed. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, all the members of the inner court used eunuchs and scholars to completely withdraw, and the notorious eunuch clique in Chinese history gradually took shape.
Moreover, the emperors of the Eastern Han Dynasty were many years old, in order to deal with the foreign cliques and civilian forces left by the previous emperors, they first considered turning to the eunuchs who accompanied them to grow up and accompany them day and night, so the first era of eunuch dictatorship in history came, and with the outbreak of the disaster of the party, the upper layer of the Eastern Han Dynasty was torn more and more seriously, and finally won an unprecedented dark chaotic world.