Martyrdom is a barbaric burial ritual with the living as a funerary object, which first appeared in the period of slavery society. People at that time believed that after the death of the human body, the soul would sublimate into another world. Therefore, according to the ritual system of "death is like life, and death is like survival", after the death of the slave owner, some of the slaves in his family will be forced to be martyred as human beings and buried with the slave owner.
Because the way of burying living people is too cruel, with the progress of social civilization, human martyrdom has become less and less, and it was extremely rare by the Tang Dynasty. However, this extremely barbaric burial system was revived in the Ming Dynasty, which was only more than 600 years away from the modern era, from the Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang to the Ming Xuanzong Zhu Zhanji (with the exception of the disappearance of Emperor Jianwen), four generations of Ming emperors forced a large number of concubines and palace women to be martyred for them after their deaths, even the mingren emperor Zhu Gaozi, who was kind and kind to the people and loved the people like a son, was no exception.
The ming dynasty historical materials all try to avoid the topic of human martyrdom, but at that time, the Relationship between the Ming Dynasty and the Joseon Dynasty was very close, and the DPRK often sent emissaries to the Ming Dynasty to "learn the scriptures" and record all kinds of what they saw and heard, so the Korean "Records of the Lee Dynasty" did not shy away from writing down the process of martyrdom after the death of the Ming Emperor (Ming Chengzu Zhu Di): "The collapse of the emperor, the palace people martyred more than thirty people. On the day of death, all were paid in court, and the pay was withdrawn, and all were led to the ascension of the church, and the cry shook the temple. The church placed a large and small bed, so that it was erected, and the lanyard was looped on it, and the head was included in it, and the bed was removed, and all the pheasants died. ”
So what were the criteria for the Ming emperor to select people to be martyred? In fact, the standard is very simple: the empress is exempt, the concubines with children and the daughters of the noble relatives can also be exempted, and other concubines and the palace women who take care of the emperor before they are born are martyrs. However, there are exceptions to this criterion, such as after the death of Emperor Akihito Zhu Gaozi, the first to be martyred was the Gongsu noble concubine Guo Shi. Guo Guifei gave birth to three sons for Zhu Gaozi, or the granddaughter of Guo Ying, the founding hero of the Ming Dynasty, and it is reasonable to say that how to be martyred should not be her turn, so posterity speculated that Guo Guifei had a discordant relationship with Empress Zhang before her death, and after Zhu Gaozi's death, Empress Zhang forced Guo Guifei to be buried as the lord of the harem.
In Chinese history, martyrdom has often taken on a strong political color. For example, after the death of Liao Taizu Yelü Abaoji, Empress Shu Luping was afraid that the chancellor would be difficult to subdue, so she used the excuse of martyrdom for the former emperor to execute more than 300 Khitan nobles at once, thus stabilizing the political situation. After the death of the Qing Emperor Nurhaci, the successor Emperor Taiji, fearing that Empress Xiaoliewu (the mother of Azig, Dolgun, and Dodo) was too powerful, forced Abahai to be buried under the guise of the emperor's will. However, most of the concubines and palace ladies martyred by the Ming emperors were powerless and powerless women, and what was their purpose in doing so?
In fact, to put it bluntly, the Ming Emperor's request for concubines and palace women to bury themselves is not so complicated, they just think that they are going to another world, so they have to take the group of women around them to go with them, in order to continue to serve themselves in another world, which is purely out of the evil of human nature, and is basically the same as the idea of those slave owners in primitive society who demanded slave burial. Therefore, no matter what contributions the Zhu family has made to these generations of emperors, this stain on their bodies can never be erased.
What is more interesting is that the first four emperors of the Zhu family have basically left a relatively positive image in history, but they have all behaved very barbarically and inhumanly in the matter of human martyrdom.
The fifth emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Mingyingzong Zhu Qizhen, in his lifetime, favored villains (Wang Zhen), fought defeats (the change of Tumu Fort), served as a prisoner (captured by the Wala people), and killed loyal subjects (executed by Qian). It was such a controversial emperor who, on his deathbed, made a moral decree that was highly valued by later generations: the abolition of concubines and burials. Since then, the martyrdom system of all evil people has finally completely withdrawn from the historical stage of the Ming Dynasty.
Reference: History of Chinese Martyrdom