Recently, if you want to ask which is the hottest costume TV series? I think it is undoubtedly "Qing Ping Le" starring Wang Kai and Jiang Shuying in the background of the Renzong period of the Northern Song Dynasty. And if you have been chasing this drama, you must be no stranger to such a picture, that is, in the play, whether it is a eunuch, or a hundred officials, but also the people, calling Emperor Renzong is not called "Tianzi" or "Emperor", but a strange title, which is "official family".
At this point, many people will ask, shouldn't a courtier call the emperor "Emperor", "Son of Heaven", or "Holy Father"? How can it be called "official"? Is this a oolong caused by the screenwriter's ignorance of history? The answer, of course, is no. In the Song Dynasty, "official family" was indeed used to refer to the Song Emperor.
In China's more than 2,000 years of feudal history, the earliest title used by people to call the emperor is "Tianzi", "Shangshu Hongfan" said: "Tianzi is the parent of the people, thinking that the king of the world", the son of heaven is the parent of the people of the world, is the leader of the big family under the world.
Later, with the change of the times, there will be some new titles to call the emperor in the past. In the Western Han Dynasty, the courtiers called the emperor "county official", and Sima ZhenSuoyin of the Shiji Dynasty: "The county official is called Tianziye." Therefore, the state is called a county official, and the xiaguan Wang Qi Nei county is also the capital of the country. The king is the official of the world, so the county official is also", the son of heaven is the head of a hundred counties, so he is called "county official".
In the Eastern Han Dynasty, the courtiers called the emperor "Tianjia", "Dictatorship": "Heavenly Family, the name of a hundred officials and petty officials." Tianzi has no outside, to the world as home, so called the heavenly family", tianzi has no home, this world is his home, so called "heavenly home"; in the Tang Dynasty, the courtiers called the emperor "home", "ZiHui Collection": "Cover the supreme world as the home, the four seas as the home, do not dare to rebuke, so the house home", the emperor takes the world as the home, the four seas as the home, so it is called "home family".
In the Song Dynasty, when the courtiers called the emperor, they used the title of "official family", such as the "Ding Jin Gong Tan": "Empress Zhaoxian, because of her hesitation, summoned Wang Pu of Han to the bedside and asked: "After ten thousand years of the official family, who should pay the throne?" The "official family" here refers to Zhao Kuangyin, the grandfather of the Song Dynasty.
The past and present lives of the title "official family"
First of all, the title of "official family" was not first coined in the Song Dynasty, but as early as the Han Dynasty. However, at this time, the "official family" did not refer to the emperor, but to the imperial court or the official government. "Pre-Han Dynasty": "The favor of the official family is better than that of three generations, and the violence of the powerful is cooler than the death of Qin", and the "official family" here refers to the imperial court. The "Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the Biography of Zhang Jie" says: "However, in prison, there is no place to raise relatives, and the official family cannot be old-age for a long time", and the "official family" here refers to the official government.
The "official family" was really used to refer to the emperor from the Wei and Jin Dynasties, and its earliest appearance was in the Book of Jin and Shi Jilong: "The official family is difficult to call, I want to do something that is risky, Qing obeys me? The "official family" here refers to the Later Zhao Wu Emperor Shi Hu, which is the earliest record that can be seen in the history books so far that the "official family" refers to the emperor. As for why Later Zhao wanted to refer to the emperor as "official", according to the historian Hu Sansheng in the late Song and early Yuan dynasties, it was because "the Western Han Dynasty called Tianzi a county official, and the Eastern Han Dynasty said that Tianzi was a state, so it was also called." Or: the five emperors of the official world, the three royal worlds, so it is also called".
In a simple and concise manner, Hu Sansheng believes that during the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the reason why "official family" was used to refer to the emperor was the same as Qin Shi Huang taking the word "emperor" of "three emperors and five emperors" as the exclusive title of the supreme ruler.
Why did the First Emperor create the "Emperor"? Is it not because he thinks that he is "the Three Emperors of Virtue and the Five Emperors of Gonggai", and his merits are far better than those of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors? The "official family" is referred to as the emperor, and its intention is the same, that is, they believe that their merits are greater than those of the emperors of the two Han Dynasties, or the three emperors and five emperors in ancient times, so they are called "official families".
Of course, before the Song Dynasty, the emperor's name of "official family" was actually not popular, and most of the time, the courtiers still called the emperor "Tianzi" instead of "official family". At this time, the "official family" was used not only to refer to the emperor, but also to refer to the imperial court, the official palace, the official, and even the in-laws. It was not until the Song Dynasty that "official family" began to be popular to refer to the emperor.
At this time, the Song Emperor was called the "official family", to what extent was this popular?
First, The Song Emperor called the Former Emperor or himself an official. For example, the "Smell of the Recent Record" says: "Taizu is on the throne, Fang Zhen is more than yan, and the so-called ten brothers are also." On the previous day, the towns of Zhufang were summoned, and bows and arrows were given, and the people rode on a horse, and went out of the Guzimen Forest with the upper private. Get off the horse and drink wine, and the upper language Fang Zhen said: There is no one here, and the elders must be officials, and they can kill me and do it." Here Taizu Zhao Kuangyin corresponds to the "emperor" with the "official family", and it is obvious that in Taizu's heart, he has already regarded himself as an "official family".
Second, concubines, princes, princesses, etc. all called The Song Emperor an official. According to the "Continuation of Zizhi Tongjian Long Edition": During the Song Taizu period, Princess Yongqing was discovered by Taizu because she was dressed too gorgeously, and Taizu taught her carefully, and after Princess Yongqing listened, she was very regretful, and then "said the same thing with the empress: The official family has been the son of heaven for a long time, can't you use gold to shoulder the public opinion, multiply it in and out." The "official family" mentioned by the empress and Princess Yongle here refers to Taizu.
Third, the courtiers of the Song Dynasty all called the Song Emperor an official. The "History of Song" says: "Li Zhen, Fenren also." At the beginning of Jing Kangchu, the Jin people forced the Beijing Division, and when the earthquake was a small colonel, he led three hundred people to battle, killing more than seven hundred horses, and he was already executed. Jin Ren said: 'The Emperor of the Southern Dynasty is here?' Zhen Yue: "My official is not what Er should ask." 'The golden man is angry, and the pillars of the court are cut, and the flesh and skin are hanging down, and there is a residual breath in the belly, and the curse is incessant." Think about it, even a junior officer called Emperor Song an "official", let alone someone else?
Fourth, the state letter delivered by foreign envoys called the Song Emperor an official. Emperor Renzong of Song wrote on the table: "Emperor Jinshang: The land of the [prefecture] capital of the world is not as good as the land of the great dynasty, there is no land like the land of the official family of the great dynasty, the official state capital has never been lost, the emperor has come to sit in the great dynasty to manage the world state capital, the emperor has done all the official affairs in accordance with the king's law, and every year he often pardons sinners, and the emperor is like Shakyamuni Buddha, and the county capitals of various provinces are sent to the official houses of the great dynasty every year." Think about it, even the foreign letters of state refer to the Song Emperor as "official family", which is enough to prove that "official family" has become a popular title in the Song Dynasty, and it is still an officially recognized title.
Fifth, the common people called the Song Emperor an official. The "Records of Zeng Gong's Testament" once recorded such an incident: "There was a six-year-old child in Cheng Qi's family, who called himself an official because of drinking and joking, and was sued by his nursing mother. His mother also had a word of recompense. Shang, because he was young and not deep enough, ordered the Kaifeng government to push the rule", that is, a six-year-old child called himself an "official family" when playing games, and then was denounced by the nursing mother, at this time Emperor Song thought that he was still young, and did not pursue him. Just think, even a small child knows that "official family" means emperor, and it is conceivable that "official family" refers to the popularity of the emperor in the Song Dynasty.
From the above five things, we can see that in the Song Dynasty, the "official family" was no longer used to refer to the imperial court, official palaces, etc., but began to be used specifically to refer to the Song Emperor. At this time, from the princes and ministers to the people of Li, they all knew what "official" meant and what it was used to refer to.
That Song Dynasty, why did it popular to use the term "official family" to refer to the Song Emperor?
At this point, many people do not understand that the "official family" was represented by the emperor as early as the Wei and Jin Dynasties, and before the Song Dynasty, it had gone through the Sui and Tang Dynasties, but why did it not become widely popular until the Song Dynasty, which was used to refer to the emperor specifically?
In fact, the reason why the Song Dynasty will popularly use "official family" to refer to the emperor has a lot to do with the general environment of the Song Dynasty.
Before the Song Dynasty, in order to declare their legitimacy and legitimacy for the rule of the world, monarchs often used concepts such as "divine right of kings" and "supremacy of imperial power" to make their subjects obey and believe in their rule. In order to make this concept deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, many of the kings before the Song Dynasty only allowed their courtiers to call themselves "Tianzi", and the reason for using the title of "Tianzi" was obvious, that is, to establish the supremacy of imperial power in the minds of the subjects, after all, the meaning of "Tianzi" was "the son of heaven as the parent of the people, thinking that the king of the world", that is, "the divine right of the king".
However, by the end of the Tang Dynasty, the five dynasties of the tang dynasty, the various feudal town regimes were springing up like mushrooms, and the leaders of these clan towns established themselves as kings in order to satisfy their political ambitions, and during this period, the emperors changed frequently, just like a marquee. According to the statistics of relevant scholars, from 907 to 960, in this short period of 53 years, in the Central Plains alone, five dynasties were replaced, with a total of eight surnames and thirteen kings.
At this time, as An Chongrong said: "Heavenly Son, the horse is strong and strong, and it is better to have a kind of ya", as long as you have a soldier, at this time, no matter what identity you are from, even if you are a carpenter or a salt seller, you are qualified to be an emperor. Didn't you see that Wu Yue's founding emperor Qian Wei was not born as a smuggler of salt? Wasn't Ma Yin, the founding emperor of Southern Chu, a carpenter? As a result, as the founding emperors of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period became lower and lower, this dealt a heavy blow to the concept of the Son of Heaven that the monarchs before the Tang Dynasty propagated.
Since the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, people no longer believe that the emperor is predestined and the emperor is noble, if the emperor is noble and is predestined, why are there carpenters, salt sellers, and other lowly people who sit on the throne of the emperor? "China is full of people, who is the son of heaven?" In the eyes of the people at this time, where is there any "true dragon heavenly son" and where there is "true destiny" to speak of. Thus, as this view gradually spread among the masses, the imperial power, which was once supreme and regarded as the "divine right of kings", gradually became secularized at this time.
As Wang Ruilai said: "The reality of the turmoil in the five dynasties at the end of the Tang Dynasty has formed such a concept of imperial power, and here, there is almost no shadow of the 'divine right of kings' to be seen." The Song Dynasty was only the sixth regime after five generations. Its establishment, like the other regimes of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, was established by usurpation. Therefore, the history and reality of the five generations of power politics not far from the Song Dynasty have left a deep impression on the monarchs and scholars of the Song Dynasty, and have also influenced and changed people's concept of imperial power to a certain extent." From the moment of the founding of the Song Dynasty, the concept of imperial power was no longer as high as that of the previous generation, and the emperor gradually stepped down from the altar and became an ordinary person who was no different from the common people.
Therefore, it is precisely for this reason that when the imperial power gradually moves towards secularization and the emperor goes to the altar, the title of "official family", which is far inferior to "tianzi", also becomes popular.
In the Song Dynasty, the definition of "official family" was definitely not "three emperors official world, five emperors family world, and three five virtues, so it is called the official family", which is just a kind of pat on the emperor's interpretation of the emperor by the courtiers. In fact, for ordinary people at that time, "official family" and "doctor", "peasant family", "restaurant", etc. were generally the same, they were all a profession, but the emperor's profession was much more noble than other professions.