When you watch a costume drama, you must be very familiar with the plot of "asking for a chop", after all, for the ancient way of executing the death penalty, many people must be more curious. Although at the moment when the executioner dropped the knife, the picture suddenly went black, because it was afraid of being too bloody to scare the audience, and if it was really filmed, it was indeed a bit expensive for the actors.
Although the most exciting scene can not be seen, but the foreplay is generally done very well, one of the details is generally not less, the executioner will spray a sip of spirits before the execution, what is this for?
First of all, we must know that punishment has always been a very serious thing, punishment is accompanied by the disintegration of the clan system and the emergence of class society, has a history of more than 4,000 years, "Shu Lu Punishment" records: "Punishment is light and heavy, but Qi Feiqi, there is a morality and a point." ”
Among the various punishments, the most serious punishment is the death penalty. At the same time, in ancient times, the methods of executing the death penalty were divided into many kinds, and in the period of slave society, there were methods of execution of the death penalty such as shoveling, abandoning the market, and cannon branding, and in the period of feudal society, there were ways of executing the death penalty such as car splitting, cooking, straining, burial alive, cane killing, and beheading.
Among them, the most cruel should be the Zhulian, that is, the Nine Tribes, which are generally used for major crimes such as collaborating with the enemy and rebellion, and the most common is beheading.
Beheading and other methods of execution are different, generally speaking, such as car cracking, cooking, Zhulian, etc., these prisoners generally commit very serious crimes, so the punishment is also immediately executed, and the beheading will be carried out immediately if it is ordered by the emperor himself, but most of them will not, but will wait until the "autumn to ask for beheading".
Why wait until the autumn to ask for a chop? Han Confucian Dong Zhongshu said in "Spring and Autumn Dew": "The king is worthy of heaven, which is called his way." There are four times in heaven, four governments in the king, and four governments in four hours. Heaven and man have the same thing. Celebration is spring, reward is summer, punishment is autumn, punishment is winter. ”
The ancients believed that the emperor's should adapt to the changes of the four seasons. Spring and summer should be rewarded, and punishment can be carried out in autumn and winter, so the penal system of "asking for beheading after autumn" was born.
The ancients attached great importance to the matter of life and death, especially the world after death. In order for these "undead" to rest in peace, it is not only necessary to choose the best time, but also to let the prisoners have a full meal before they are executed, which is what we often call "guillotine meals", so as not to prevent the prisoners from becoming a hungry ghost after death.
This rule is still in use to this day, and after the Ming Dynasty, a piece of half-cooked pork belly will be added to the bowl of the last meal of the death row prisoner, saying that the prisoner went to the underworld after death, and he wanted to take this piece of pork belly to the Nai Ho Bridge and give it to a vicious dog on the side of the bridge, otherwise the evil dog would be stopped from giving birth.
Let's look at the executioner again, in ancient times the executioner is a very special profession, the Confucian master Dong Zhongshu proposed that "celebration is spring, reward is summer, punishment is autumn, punishment is winter." After the theory, the profession of executioner only uses three months of classes a year, that is, three months in the autumn.
However, few people are willing to be executioners, because the ancients were very superstitious about ghosts and gods, and they thought that if they had blood on their hands, they would always be contaminated with cause and effect. Because if you want to be an executioner, you must first be bold, and then you must perform a series of tedious processes when executing the death penalty, and spraying spirits on the knife is one of them, and its main role is to ward off evil spirits.
What evil is it to ward off? As mentioned above, the ancients believed in the afterlife, and they believed that by slaughtering gods, the lost souls would come to them to ask for their lives, or there would be unjust souls to haunt themselves. As executioners, they have hundreds of lives to be contaminated in their lives.
And spraying a sip of wine on the knife is to make the knife sharper, prevent blood from sticking to the knife, and let the unjust soul attached to the knife come to ask for his life. Therefore, we see that the ancient executioners were all dressed in red, and to a certain extent, they also played a role in warding off evil spirits, and the executioners believed that ghosts were afraid of red.
Of course, in addition to superstitious ghosts and gods, there are some more realistic reasons, and executioners generally spray wine on the blade. In fact, in order to make the knife sharper, at the same time, it is also to make the excessively thick blood not penetrate into the surface of the metal, so that the knife can remain sharp for a long time, so that the knife can be raised and dropped at the time of execution, so that the prisoner can be less painful.
In fact, before the executioner is officially executed, he will receive a certain degree of training, and the new executioner will generally let them cut the winter melon first, and then cut the stake. It is necessary to cut a knife exactly in half to be considered an entry, and the horizontal cut vertical can be cut to the position just marked to be able to get out of the master, which means that the executioner has been able to master his own knife skillfully.
Therefore, the origin of the action of spraying wine on the knife can be described as multifaceted, and there are many articles in it. There are both feudal superstitions in it and practical significance. But now these have become the past, and in the Republic of China period, the profession of "executioner" has completely become history.