The Ming Tombs, as the name suggests, are the mausoleums of the thirteen emperors of the Ming Dynasty. After the Ming Dynasty moved its capital to Beijing, until Zhu Youjian cut himself off from coal mountains, except for Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang and the Southern Ming Emperor, the rest of the Ming emperors were buried here.
Visit the capital beijing, the Ming Tombs are a must-see historical attraction.
It is located in the foothills of Tianshou Mountain in Changping District, Beijing, with a total area of more than 120 square kilometers and about 50 kilometers away from Tiananmen Square. The Ming Tombs are located in a small basin surrounded by mountains on the east, west and north sides, surrounded by mountains in the mausoleum area, the central part is a plain, and there is a small river meandering in front of the mausoleum.
From the beginning of the Changling Tomb in May of the seventh year of Yongle (1409) to the burial of the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Chongzhen, in the past 230 years, thirteen emperor tombs, seven concubine tombs, and a eunuch tomb have been built. Thirteen emperors, twenty-three empresses, two princes, more than thirty concubines, and two eunuchs were buried.
As of 2011, the open attractions are Changling, Dingling, Zhaoling and Shenlu.
Tourists who have visited this attraction know that among the thirteen mausoleums, only the stone stele in front of the tomb of Ming Chengzu Zhu Di has content, and the remaining twelve stone stele are "wordless stele", so why is this?
The ancients have always adhered to the concept of acting as if they were living, especially for the imperial family. In feudal society, all figures with some status and status had to build elaborate cemeteries after their deaths, and asked people of high moral standing to create an epitaph that had flowed for hundreds of years. From the epitaph of a historical figure alone, we can read about his experiences and deeds during his lifetime.
As the supreme being of ancient society, the emperor also attached great importance to his posthumous affairs. Every emperor would spend a lot of money to build a mausoleum. However, why didn't the emperors since Zhu Di leave behind an epitaph with great achievements? Is it difficult because they feel that compared with Taizu and Chengzu, their merits in power are too insignificant to open a monument and set up a legend? Or is it swollen to the point where you think your merits have surpassed those of your predecessors and can't be expressed in words?
Obviously, this is by no means the right answer.
So far, there are two reasons for the relatively high acceptance of historians:
I. Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang's testament.
The "Imperial Tomb Illustrations" quotes a sentence that Zhu Yuanzhang said before his death: "The imperial tomb inscriptions are all whitewashed texts of the ministers, and they cannot educate future generations." ”
Putting aside negative labels such as cruelty and murderousness, Zhu Yuanzhang was actually a rather pragmatic emperor. In addition, Zhu Yuanzhang was also the ruler with the deepest resistance to the bureaucracy in history. Perhaps because Lao Zhu was born in the grassroots class and was oppressed by the bureaucratic class in his early years, he stood in the perspective of the people and targeted the scholars everywhere since he ascended to the throne.
As an emperor, Lao Zhu regarded the epitaph as "the whitewash of the ministers", which was equivalent to beating all the Hanlin scholars to death, as long as he dared to write the imperial tomb inscription, it was a slanderous villain. The ministers who worked under the emperor were all self-aware, and since Old Master Zhu had left this sentence, who dared to take the initiative to admit that he was a villain who would only whitewash taiping? Therefore, Taizu's epitaph was written by Chengzu Zhu Di, and Chengzu's epitaph was written by Emperor Renzong Zhu Gaozi.
At least in these two generations, the emperor's epitaph was written by his successors.
Even so, why didn't the emperors after Zhu Gaozi write epitaphs?
According to the literature, none of the six emperors after Zhu Gaozi died (for unknown reasons). Jiajing was an emperor who liked to be flashy, and he made up monuments for six ancestors. In the fifteenth year of Jiajing, Yan Song asked the emperor to personally write an inscription for the ancestors, but at that time, Jiajing was full of sounds and colors, dogs, horses, and alchemy, and even had no energy to take care of the state affairs, where did the "idle worker" write the inscription for the old ancestor?
Therefore, until the Jiajing Emperor died in the palace, he did not write an epitaph to the ancestors. Emperors after Jiajing preserved this as a tradition. Therefore, after the death of each emperor, only a monument was erected in front of the mausoleum, but no transmission was made.
Second, the Ming Emperor followed wu Zetian's example.
Standing in front of the torrent of history, Wu Zetian is definitely a wise man. There is not a single word on the "Wordless Stele", which neither expresses Wu Cao's deeds during her lifetime, nor records the mistakes she made, all commented on by posterity.
Since the middle of the Ming Dynasty, most of the emperors of the Ming Dynasty have abandoned government affairs, or immersed themselves in wine, or are obsessed with Taoism, and their lives have almost no "merits" to speak of, even if they ask the old scholars in the Hanlin Academy to whitewash it, they cannot say anything praise. In this way, these emperors simply did not leave epitaphs.
After all, no matter how many great achievements they carved on the stone tablets, the little bad things they did before they died would be turned over, and every emperor knew this, so there was no need to write inscriptions to beautify themselves. As a result, these Ming emperors all followed the example of Wu Zetian, who erected a wordless monument, and let posterity comment on their own merits in front of them.
Of course, the above reasons are only the result of speculation by later generations, and there is no support for support.
Regardless of the truth of the wordlessness of the twelve stone tablets, the comments of later generations on these Ming emperors have never been interrupted. For thousands of years, people have always relished the old emperors, and their every move before they died will become the focus of discussion for future generations. Just like Zhu Yuanzhang said, no amount of whitewashing is in vain, and it is the real good emperor who can withstand the comments of posterity.
Compared with the tyrants in history, although the emperors of the Ming Dynasty are not much stronger, they are very self-aware. Faint or enlightened, posterity is not concerned with the words written on the monument, and the merits of the emperor's life are not self-imposed public opinions.
Resources:
【Ming Tombs" and "History of Ming"】