As descendants of Yan Huang, we often proudly say that China's history has lasted for five thousand years, far-reaching and lasting, and has never been broken during the period, and this powerful historical accumulation, looking at the whole world, is very few, like a long river from the continuous flow, even if we try our best to survive all kinds of difficult and difficult environments, it still maintains its running endlessly.
As the saying goes, the great waves and sandss first see gold, this long river of history after thousands of years of flow and inheritance, for us to present many classic things, such as visible history books, the Four Books and Five Classics and the peak of each dynasty in the later feudal society, are the essence of the times at that time, today's golden rules, of course, we do not know limited to the history books.
For ancient times, paper was originally a relatively rare thing, and everything could not be recorded and circulated in one go, so aside from the rules and regulations in books, we often saw more things, such as some folk rumors and customs that have been passed down to this day, which have been achieved through countless practices of the working people at the bottom.
These conventional sayings and practices have run through the entire ancient China, and some have even been passed down through a long period of evolution and perfection to this day, and some customs we can't even say why, but still unconditionally abide by them.
For example, why do people burn their clothes after death? This is not superstition, but scientifically based!
The Death and Sacrifice of the Ancients
We all know that in ancient times, people had a very significant feature of feudal superstition, because the social development situation at that time was not very good, so for some unexplained phenomena in nature, the ancients would reduce it to the category of strange forces and chaotic gods, that is, it was natural to think that it was a ghost god apparition.
This kind of thinking directly affects people's understanding of death, the nutritional status and social conditions of ancient people are relatively poor, so the average age is about forty years old, so in the face of some people who look very young and suddenly die, people do not think that this is death, but to live in another world, the most typical is Qin Shi Huang.
Qin Shi Huang was after the failure of the search for the elixir of immortality, thinking that he would not die, but would go to another world and continue to start his own Wang Tu hegemony, so he would order his subordinates to build the Terracotta Warriors of Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum for himself, obviously Qin Shi Huang was unwilling to go to that world and start from scratch, and the later Qin II also thought so.
Out of the same thoughts as Qin Shi Huang, he believed that his father could not go to another world without serving, so he ordered a large number of concubines to be buried and went to another world with Qin Shi Huang. With the development of the times and the change of dynasties, people's understanding of death gradually became clear, and they began to recognize death, no longer wantonly accompanying funerals and wasting the lives of others.
But the dead are big, although some vices have been changed, but later people believe that although the body is dead, but the soul is still alive, so it is necessary to comfort the soul of the dead through a series of sacrifice activities, in ancient times, the dead were quite respectful, so the related sacrifice activities are also very solemn and strict, and some regulations have continued to this day.
Ancient sacrifices, what time, what place, what sacrifice to bring, when to go, how many people to go, all have strict requirements, although there are not so many rules now, but there are some tacit rules, or should know. For example, if the eldest son wants to break the tile basin, and the clothes worn by the deceased before he died, he must burn them.
Why
In fact, regarding the clothing of the dead, the ancient view is different from the present, and it can even be said to be completely opposite, in the cognition of the ancients, the earliest mentioned above, it is believed that people only go to another world, does not represent death.
In that world, clothes always had to be worn well, so at that time, when they died, the princes and generals all took clothes directly into the cemetery burial chamber, while ordinary civilians were buried directly in clothes, and on the whole, they all hoped that people would still have clothes to wear in another world. Later, the method of incineration was adopted due to a change in concept.
People later understood death as the survival of the soul, so they believed that in order to accurately convey the sacrifice to the soul, only by burning could they communicate with it, so the clothes worn before death would be burned to make a sacrifice.
This way of sacrifice has been maintained until now, but now we pay attention to a life that does not bring, death does not bring, basically naked, into a wisp of green smoke with the wind, as for the later sacrifice activities, it is completely out of respect and admiration for the deceased, still using the way of burning, but the burning is some paper.
The second reason for this is the improvement and progress of life, in fact, in ancient times, even the clothes worn before death, in fact, there was a certain force in it, because many times in ancient times, including in the period when New China was just founded, most people were quite poor, basically a bunch of clothes to wear until death.
For the poor people at that time, even the most basic life could not be guaranteed, so it was impossible to put a lot of tribute like a large family, burning paper people, paper cars, paper money, and even burial monuments may be a luxury, in the poor era, most people are basically a mound after death, and even the grave can not be found after a few years.
So, in this case. Sacrifices should not be thought of, maybe even the clothes burned at the end are worn, just to preserve the last dignity of the dead, and now, in the modern era when life is still good, there will still be cases of burning the clothes and even other things of the dead, which is the third reason, to prevent seeing things and thinking about people.
Generally, death involves burial of people close to themselves, in order to avoid sadness in the future, for the things they usually use, either burn together, or completely sealed, so as not to see it later will always evoke this sad past.
Relevant scientific basis
This last reason is the most scientific basis, and has a certain persuasiveness, that is, disinfection and sterilization function, we know that in addition to some natural deaths, most of the human death is involved in some infectious things such as diseases, and in that period when the treatment measures are not very advanced, incineration may be the best way to disinfect.
This is also the reason for burning the last clothes before death, most people fall ill and die, their clothes more or less retain some bacteria and viruses, in order to avoid infection, so burning is the best choice, which is also in the moment of poverty, rather than burn the clothes of the deceased rather than give them to others to continue to wear.
summary
Therefore, although there is no specific record of some exquisiteness, there must be a reason why it can be preserved to this day.