Dou E'e grievance is a very famous opera created by Guan Hanqing in the Yuan Dynasty, which mainly tells the story of the widow Dou E, who was framed by the evil people, and was eventually beaten into a confession, and finally died unjustly.
Before Dou E died, she discovered the poisonous oath and said that if she was wronged, she would let her blood splash white practice, flying snow in June, three years of drought, and after Dou E's death, these poisonous vows were fulfilled one by one.
This story is very familiar to many people, but the problem is that many people do not understand, why Dou E issued such three poisonous vows before she died, and what does this have to do with her own grievances?
This is to say that a very important concept in ancient times, the theory of heaven and man induction, this theory was put forward by Dong Zhongshu, and since this theory was put forward, it has always become the idea of dynastic rule and the most simple concept in the hearts of ordinary people.
What is the sense of heaven and man, the ancient people believe that our day, he is not a natural phenomenon, but there is a personality of the gods watching what happens in the human world, if something bad happens in the human world, the heavens will send disasters, if there are good things in the world, the heavens will send disasters.
Dong Zhongshu invented this theory mainly to restrain the emperor, because the emperor claimed to be the Son of Heaven, that is, the son of Heaven, who had obtained the Mandate of Heaven and ruled the world on behalf of Heaven, so whether his work was good or not could only be judged by God.
This theory seems a bit absurd, corresponding natural phenomena to the virtues of the emperor, but in actual operation, it is very useful, because the emperor, as a system in China that has been running for more than two thousand years, the imperial power is theoretically unconstrained, and only the heavens can restrain the emperor.
Therefore, the heavenly people sensed the behavior of the emperor to restrain the emperor to the greatest extent, as long as there was a disaster, everyone thought that this was a warning from heaven, and it must be that the emperor did something wrong.
And this theory developed to the later stage, it formed if there is a grievance, the sky has a vision, Dou E's story follows such a line of thought, Dou E said these three things are very strange, everyone after seeing this vision, will think that Dou E was wronged, after the minister or emperor, also know that there was a grievance in the local area.
And Guan Hanqing made up this story, originally there was also a prototype, she is from the story of the East Sea Filial Piety in the "Biography of the Daughters", the plot is basically the same as the Dou E'e wrong we see, and in the end, the evil people are punished, and the grievances are justified.
Ancient people generally have this simple moral concept, as the saying goes, people are doing, the sky is watching, saying that this is the truth, many things you think are done seamlessly, but in fact, there is a pair of eyes in heaven staring at you.
Everything you do, can not escape the eyes of God, evil will eventually be punished, according to our current point of view, why Dou'e has a grievance, will make the drought for three years, is this not other people also suffered?
In fact, this matter is also very well understood in ancient times, just like the truth of Fengxian County in the Journey to the West, this belongs to the mistakes made by local officials, and the mistakes made by local officials need to be borne by everyone, because local officials are parent officials, and he is full of responsibility to all the people, in turn, his mistakes also need to be borne by the people of Tianti.
This truth may not be acceptable to us modern people, but in ancient times it was like this, if there was a great drought in ancient times, local officials had to take the people to ask for rain, which reflected the principle that power and obligation are two sides of the same coin.