In history, the Ming Dynasty has always been a strong dynasty, especially in the early ming dynasty, in the era led by Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di, the Ming Dynasty was unprecedented, internal stability, external expansion, was the most powerful dynasty in the world at that time, but the Ming Dynasty was not a perfect era.
As a rough person, Zhu Yuanzhang can be described as a generation of legends, from beggars to the emperor's counterattack road, novels do not dare to write like this, but limited by the level of cultural knowledge, Zhu Yuanzhang also has some practices that have been criticized by the world, the most typical of which is Yuan Zhiming.
The unexpected truth
Although the Yuan Dynasty has always been known as a barbaric era in history, there are still many people who regard the Yuan Dynasty as orthodox, including Zhu Yuanzhang, who although he hates the Mongols, still maintains respect for some of the systems of the Yuan Dynasty to administer the country.
Perhaps from the level of state management, there were not too many mistakes in following some of the state systems of the Yuan Dynasty, and it would not cause the common people to be uncomfortable, but Zhu Yuanzhang preserved some disgusting systems, the most typical and most terrible of which was the burial system.
The burial system has existed since ancient times, from the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, martyrdom is an unwritten tradition, when the nobles of the imperial palace reached the level of obsession with martyrdom, and an ordinary nobleman dared to let as many as a hundred people be buried.
In the Yuan Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty, although the number of martyrs was greatly reduced, the burial system was still in place, but the list of martyrs was changed from the original slave to the emperor's concubine, which also involved a historical truth that many people did not know.
In the more realistic Ming Dynasty TV series "Daming Style", there was a TV series that did not explain the doubts and was complained about by many people, that is, after Zhu Di's death, the TV series did not explain the whereabouts of Princess Park and An Guifei, as if the two people disappeared out of thin air.
But in the subsequent scrutiny, netizens found a terrible fact, the reason why the two concubines did not appear in the subsequent episodes, because they have died, but the martyrdom system can not be explicitly stated in the TV series, so they can only choose to pass by without explanation.
In the TV series, there are two small boxes next to Zhu Di's coffin, during the funeral, all the tributes are exposed in the form of a plate, there is only one possibility for the box to appear, that is, the coffin, it is certain that the two concubines were martyred by Zhu Di, because this is the normal system, so no one at the scene expressed doubts about the extra two coffins, and everyone knows who the people in these two coffins are.
The system of martyrdom
Whether the martyrdom of these two concubines is the plot of the TV series or the truth of history, according to the records, it can be explored that during the genghis Khan period, more than 40 harem personnel were buried when Genghis Khan died.
The Yuan Dynasty, founded by the Mongols, has also been practicing the martyrdom system for many years, and when Zhu Yuanzhang, who insisted on the Yuan rules and ming, died, the burial system was naturally preserved, and there were as many as 30 harem personnel buried at that time.
As a system, most emperors did not dare to change it hastily, according to historical records, Zhu Gaozi, who was later known as the Ren'ai Emperor, also unreservedly insisted on the martyrdom system, and at the time of Zhu Di's death, the concubines who were martyred were not only these two.
At that time, almost the entire harem was martyred, even if there were two Korean concubines in the harem, they did not escape the martyrdom system, they were forced to hang themselves at the funeral site, and after death, they were directly loaded into the prepared coffin, placed next to Zhu Di, waiting to be buried with Zhu Di.
The burial system of the Ming Dynasty, as a state system, lasted for a long time, until after the change of Tumu fort, Ming Yingzong ordered the abolition of the martyrdom system, since then, there has been no more martyrdom system, perhaps only if you really experience life and death, can you understand the preciousness of life, will not stand on the commanding heights, like looking at the life of a commoner.
It is both a system and a means
The emergence of the burial system has gone through multiple stages and has different meanings in different stages.
The burial system first appeared in the tribal period, when the martyrdom was not simply a funeral, there was also the meaning of sacrifice behind it, the ancients at that time were very worshipful of the gods, many things needed to be completed with human blood, in the Shang Dynasty, every prayer, fortune telling needed to kill and bury a large number of living people.
In the later dynastic period, the meaning of the burial system changed again, and the people at that time believed in the two realms of yin and yang, and when a royal nobleman died, it was necessary to use a large number of people to be buried, on the one hand, to please the ghosts and gods of the underworld, and on the other hand, to protect the dead from harm in the underworld.
To this day, similar claims are still prevalent in many rural areas, except that they are now buried using paper men rather than living people.
Later, martyrdom has added too much political color, in peacetime, many of the concubines who did not produce were buried, because the emperor's concubines were very beautiful, and they did not make outrageous moves for the new emperor, so those concubines who did not give birth would be buried with the emperor.
In many costume film and television dramas, some concubines desperately want to give birth to a prince, and sometimes even risk killing their heads to give birth to children through the blood of others, one is to fight for power, the other is not to be martyred, the so-called mother is expensive, which is recorded in many historical texts.
In extraordinary times, some concubines who already have princes will also be martyred, the most typical of which is Nurhaci's concubine Abahai, who is nurhaci's fourth concubine, who is far from Nurhaci in age, and is similar to nurhaci's second son Daishan's age, so there is a matter of daishan and Abhay having a private affair.
Emperor Taiji took advantage of this opportunity to drive Abbahai out of the scope of the successor, but because Abhay's son still had the competitive strength, Emperor Taiji pulled Abbahai into the list of martyrs under the guise of the Holy Will, so as to ensure his unique inheritance, and at that time, Houjin had not completely abolished martyrdom, and naturally no one doubted the authenticity of the Holy Will.
From a modern point of view, the martyrdom system is dehumanizing, according to the rules, the martyr can not be killed directly, so it loses the meaning of martyrdom, so the martyr must choose to kill themselves, for example, when Zhu Di died, all the concubines who were martyred were hanged, and they must have been very desperate at that time.
If the number of martyrs is large, these people will be locked up in the tomb, waiting for the oxygen in the tomb to run out of oxygen and die alive, the disappearance of the burial system is the greatest tolerance of the imperial family to treat the commoners, in the later Qing Dynasty, martyrdom has disappeared, even if the emperor dies, the emperor's original concubines can continue to survive.