The prosperity of eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty is unique in the history of our country. In the early Ming Dynasty, the male lords regarded eunuchs as tool people, did not let them read, and "only let them sweep and pass on orders to themselves." However, as the quality of the successive emperors declined, they were either ambitious and talented, or coveted pleasure, and although the imperial power was still strong, the authority was stolen by the eunuchs. The eunuchs of the Twenty-Four Gates were tens of thousands, and in addition to controlling the internal affairs of the court, they also implicitly infiltrated their influence into the court. The grand eunuchs Wang Zhen and Xun Gui during the orthodox period were usually called "Father Weng". When Liu Jin was in Zhengde, ordinary officials would kneel down and salute when they visited him. For eunuchs, wealth and honor are there, but as a son of man, there are no descendants, and it is difficult to fulfill filial piety. As a man, the eunuch cannot meet normal physiological needs, and without the love of the opposite sex, can he still start a family and pursue his own happiness?
I. When did the marriage of eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty begin?
At the beginning of the dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang treated eunuchs very harshly, and did not allow eunuchs to marry wives, and those who dared to offend were punished by skinning. Soon, however, this decree was effectively repealed during the Yongle period. At the time of Yongle, there was a eunuch named Liu Tong, who had been waiting for Zhu Di's dispatches since he was a child, and was later entrusted with his heart, to investigate the foreign situation, and also led the military intelligence department to follow Zhu Di to conquer the four sides, and made great achievements. Zhu Di, grateful for Liu Tong's exploits, made an exception and married him, matching a woman surnamed Wang with him to help him take care of family affairs and filial piety to his mother. At this point, Ming Taizu's eunuchs' ban on marriage survived in name only, which also made some high-level eunuchs think about it.
High-ranking eunuchs in the middle and late Ming Dynasty were often sent to local areas to undertake the tasks of supervising the army and guarding the town. They then relied on the majesty and power of the heavenly family to search for commoner women in the jurisdiction to marry them. In the first year of Tianshun, Huo Shangshang, who was then the right attendant of the Ministry of Works, accused the eunuch Wei Liqiang of marrying a minnu as a concubine. When the emperor learned of this, he was furious and sent Wei Li down to the Jinyi Wei Zhao prison. Chen Feng, the mining supervisor of the Wanli Dynasty, robbed the good family, which eventually caused a rebellion among the people. Other eunuchs would marry prostitutes they knew, or even use the brothel as their own outhouse. Interestingly, these eunuchs who married prostitutes were despised by their peers and were at the bottom of the chain of contempt.
For the most numerous low-ranking eunuchs, finding the right palace maid to eat was the best choice. The word "food" first appeared in the Book of Han, meaning an ambiguous relationship formed by the palace people in private. In the Ming Dynasty court, there was no kitchen for eunuchs to provide food, and daily meals had to be brought in from outside. But the palace maids had their own rooms and an adequate supply of food. In order to eat well, the low-level eunuchs tried to make friends with the palace women, buy some daily necessities for them to go out of the palace or pass on letters to their families. Over time, out of the dual needs of feelings and physiology, the palace maid and the eunuch looked at each other and lived together. The act of quenching hunger and thirst by eating was very common in the late Ming Palace. Eunuchs who have been in the palace for too long without a spouse will be ridiculed by others as unattractive "outcasts". Some of the two sides have a sense of ceremony, will hold a small wedding, the two and a normal couple spend the previous month, swear an oath to each other.
Second, the wife has, where to find the child?
China's traditional ethics and morality emphasize "no filial piety has three, no queen is greater", and inheriting the family bloodline to ensure that the ancestors have incense sacrifices is very important for ancient men. After the eunuchs had a certain position of power, they naturally wanted to establish a family and have heirs, but after their death, the rich and noble had inheritance, incense and sacrifice. Since he could not give birth to himself, he had to rely on adoption. The ming dynasty law did not have explicit regulations on the adoption of children by eunuchs, so all eunuchs who could be counted had adopted sons. The eunuch Wang Jin during the Xuande period had an adopted son Wang Chun, Wu Zhong had an adopted son Wu Qin during the Orthodox period, the eunuch Cao Jixiang during the Tianshun period had an adopted son Cao Qin, and the eunuch Zhang Qin during the Jiajing period had an adopted son Li Xian.
Within the eunuch group, there was also the custom of large eunuchs receiving small eunuchs, which was sometimes called "pulling down the name", which meant that whenever a clean man entered the palace, the eunuch would select a clever and handsome person to form a father-son relationship. After confirming the relationship, the father will be responsible for the management of his education, and when the adopted son reaches adulthood, he will assume the father's maintenance and funeral obligations. After the eunuch grew up, he also had to adopt children, and over time there would even be a family of eunuchs who were in the same hall as three generations.
Soon this act of pulling the eunuch's name changed with the rise of the eunuch's power, and some ministers began to take the initiative to turn to the eunuchs in the palace to recognize him as a righteous father in order to seek political protection. The ming dynasty had the largest number of righteous sons than Wei Zhongxian, who had received hundreds of righteous sons in his lifetime. His Chinese ministers Cui Chengxiu, Wu Chunfu, Tian Ji, Ni Wenhuan, and Li Kuilong were responsible for planning, known as the "Five Tigers"; xu Xianchun, Tian Ergeng, Yang Huan, Sun Yunhe, and Cui Yingyuan were in the martial arts system, known as "Five Biao". Other righteous sons who held important positions in the DPRK were also given the titles of "Ten Children", "Ten Dogs", and "Forty Grandchildren".
Is it a good thing or a bad thing for a eunuch to start a family?
It was common for eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty to form families, and even acquiesced to the emperor. But the first driving force in the behavior of eunuchs with families was no longer loyalty to the emperor but small families formed by themselves. In the thirty-second year of the Wanli Calendar, a priceless pearl robe in the palace disappeared. The enraged Wanli Emperor ordered the eunuch Chen Zhi (陈矩), the eunuch of Si Li, to investigate the matter. Chen Zhi tortured all the eunuchs in the robe room of the Shangyi Supervisor, and finally found out that it was a palace maid who had secretly stolen the robe and gave it to herself. This kind of husband and wife joined forces, the palace women stole the goods in the palace, and the eunuch was responsible for selling the stolen goods, and the model of internal and external cooperation was quite common at that time. If the theft is detected by the person in charge, the warehouse will be burned down with a fire, and then "mistakes will be sniffed", and the final punishment will only be a small responsibility.
The reason why eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty were rampant was also related to the expansion of eunuchs' power through the use of eunuchs. In the inner Wei Zhongxian Jian was in the imperial heart, and outside his gan'er Yizi held great power with the help of Wei. These people gradually co-opted the local tycoons and gentry, and together they formed a castration system from the palace to the central government to the localities. On weekdays, they collude with each other to seek benefits, and when there is an accident, they huddle together to warm up and evade punishment. As Han Xuan, a member of the Cabinet University, said: "Loyalty is only one ear, and the foreign court ministers are attached, so this is the end." ”
At the same time, the formation of families by eunuchs also adversely affected the social atmosphere at that time. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, social land annexation was serious, local officials exploited and treated the people harshly, and it was a luxury for men in ordinary families to eat enough, and it was even more impossible to participate in the imperial examination to gain fame and change the status quo. Entering the palace as eunuchs gave these people a new way out. Although the body is castrated, after entering the palace, you can still marry, stepchildren, do a good job, and even ascend to heaven one step at a time, comparable to the officials of the DPRK. So a large number of poor men began to look for a master to castrate privately, hoping to enter the palace to gain wealth. However, the Ming Dynasty's collection of eunuchs and the recruitment of civil servants today is a truth, and the quota is basically fixed every year. As a result, a large number of nameless whites began to appear in society. Nameless white, also known as private white, refers to men who are privately castrated but not elected to the palace. These people were lucky enough to go to the palace to serve as servants, but most of them could only be reduced to beggars and displaced people, and even in groups of three or five in the capital, they "strangled equestrian ropes" and engaged in robbery business to eat together.
Wen Shijun said
It is not uncommon in history for eunuchs to marry wives and adopt sons, and zhao gao of the Qin Dynasty killed Hu Hai to unite with his adopted son-in-law Xianyang Ling Yan Le. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, eunuchs all competed for heirs and heirs. Tang dynasty eunuchs could even continue the string after their wives died. The reason why it was common for eunuchs to form families in the Ming Dynasty was that on the one hand, the improvement of power made this wish more basic, and on the other hand, the increasingly deep requirements for filial piety in science made eunuchs also hope to have a marriage and family life like ordinary people. Eunuchs entered the palace after completing their purification from a young age, and worked hard for slaves for half their lives, and it was normal to want to have an emotional sustenance. However, in order to satisfy their own selfish desires, some eunuchs robbed the women of the people and occupied the good people, so they had to wonder whether it was because of the lack of a certain part that led to psychological distortion.
bibliography
Gao Yan, "A Brief Analysis of the Marriage Forms of Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty", Journal of Chongqing University of Science and Technology, No. 2, 2015.
Zheng Aihua: "Research on the Marriage and Family Phenomenon of Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty", Heilongjiang University, 2019 Master's Thesis.
(Author: Haoran Wenshi Tianbai Yujing)
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