"Jing Kang shame, still not snow; When will the courtiers hate? This is the phrase from "Manjiang Hong" written by the anti-gold hero Yue Fei. The shame of Jingkang has always been a pain in the hearts of the military and people of the Southern Song Dynasty.
Not only is the "courtier's hatred" as Yue Fei said, but also the Son of Heaven and the people, always remembering the national shame and dare not forget - the shame of Jingkang is the deep suffering of the vast number of soldiers and people in the Song Dynasty, and it is also the deepest scar in the hearts of countless women in the Song Dynasty.
Photo: Yue Fei
In the eyes of ordinary people, war is only about men, who need to go to the battlefield to kill the enemy, face the enemy and casualties. Women can stay away from the battlefield, hide in the rear and be protected, just to bear the pain of lovesickness. But in fact, in a feudal society dominated by male power, women in war were never so relaxed.
They often become victims of war or the spoils of the enemy, and they often bear more and heavier suffering than ordinary men, and the sheep-led sacrifice of the golden people after the shame of Jingkang is a tragic example.
1. Traceability: The Central Plains Prisoner Sacrifice and the Pre-Qin "Sheep Pulling" Ceremony
The captive sacrifice ceremony is actually a unique ritual cultural phenomenon in Chinese history, and the sheep-pulling ceremony that people are discussing now is a kind of prisoner sacrifice ceremony.
In the Southern Song Dynasty's "Jingkang Change", Song Huizong and Song Qinzong led sheep shirtless to complete the ceremony to show submission, a historical fact that is recorded in detail in the history of barnyard officials and fields, and has also been confirmed many times in the poetry of the Jin people.
Photo: Jingkang's change
The sheep-pulling ceremony, a type of prisoner sacrifice in the Jin Kingdom, is an insulting ritual that requires the torturer to be stripped of sheepskin, tied to a rope or chain around his neck, and led to walk as a sign of obedience.
However, the cultural face of this ritual and its origins are still inconclusive. Scholars have found from the culture and its rituals that the sheep and the sacrifice of prisoners or the products of the prisoner sacrifice in the Central Plains for the golden people.
China is known as the country of etiquette, and a complete set of etiquette systems with auspicious and fierce, military, soldier and jia as the core is famous all over the world. In this set of etiquette systems, military salutes and auspicious ceremonies are particularly important, and there is a saying in "Zuo Chuan Chenggong Thirteen Years": "The great affairs of the country are in worship and fighting." This is also honest.
Photo: Five Rites
War inevitably produced prisoners of war, and coupled with the frequent wars of the pre-Qin dynasty, the victorious country needed to carry out the activities of sacrificing prisoners of war according to the ritual law. Through the comparison and analysis of historical materials, scholars have made a comprehensive and systematic study of the content, origin, nature and evolution of the pre-Qin prisoner sacrifice. A number of conclusions were drawn:
Zhai Shengli's "Western Zhou Jinwen and the Sacrifice of Prisoners" and Jing Hongyan's "Examination of the Sacrifice of Prisoners in the Pre-Qin Dynasty" believe that the pre-Qin sacrifice of prisoners has entered a relatively mature stage;
Gao Erwang's "A Brief Discussion on Military Salutes in Brick and Stone Portraits of the Han Dynasty" argues:
In the Han Dynasty, the sacrifice of prisoners was still an element of military salutes, and the merit depended on the sacrifice of prisoners—the first rank of the prisoner or the direct sacrifice of the live prisoner to the commander;
Bi Xianglai's article "Tang Dynasty Prisoner Sacrifice" discusses the content and form of prisoner sacrifice in the Tang and Song Dynasties and the evolution of its location; There is also Yu Baihua's article "Noon Gate Sacrifice of Prisoners", which records the overview of the Ming and Qing Dynasty sacrifices.
Photo: "Peacekeeping of the Western Regions Prisoner Sacrifice" (partial)
Based on the above authoritative research conclusions, we can see that the sheep sacrifice ceremony is based on the culture of Jin Guo's own country, and draws on the Shang Zhou custom of using prisoners as cattle.
After the change of Jingkang, it was fixed as a captive sacrifice to show the meaning of surrender, which reflects the reference and innovation of the Central Plains civilization in the early Jin Kingdom;
As far as civilization is concerned, etiquette is one of the characteristics that distinguishes Chinese civilization from other civilizations. The culture of the Central Plains rite is eclectic and profound, and through the study of the Jinguo sacrifice ceremony, you can peek into the rich cultural information behind it.
2. Integration: Jinguo Sacrifice and its sheep culture
The sacrifice of prisoners is found in two places in the official history of the Jin state, one is to capture the Liao Emperor Tianzuo in Jingshi, and the other is to escort the second emperor Hui Qin to the Jin capital. Although there is not much description of the sheep-pulling ceremony in the main history. However, there are still detailed records of the sacrifice of sheep in the Jin Kingdom, such as the "History of Jingkang Barnyard".
Photo: "History of Jing Kang"
The "History of Jingkang Barnyard" records the process before and after the Jin people invaded the city of Bianjing during the change of Bianjing, as well as the situation of the Song clan after being forced to move north and the north, and its records are more detailed and reliable. Since the authors are all people who have personally experienced, including the Song people and the Jin people, the records of the same event may be slightly different, but the whole book still represents a certain historical truth.
From the historical records, we can understand that the process of the sheep-pulling ceremony after Jingkang is as follows:
Emperor Huizong of Song and Emperor Qinzong of Song and their empresses and concubines wore sheep fur directly, and the rest of the people were exposed and wore sheep fur, using leather strips and other binding hands, and were dragged by Jin soldiers to the Taizu Temple of Jin State to worship.
It is a common ritual to sacrifice prisoners to the ancestral temple:
From the Shang Zhou sacrifice of prisoners to Zongmiao to the Ming and Qing dynasties at the noonday gate, the forms of captive sacrifice included ear cutting, head sacrifice, public execution or lenient release, although the successive dynasties had some innovations and inheritances, but there was never a prisoner sacrifice similar to that of the Jin state.
Photo: Qing Dynasty Noonday Gate Prisoner
To be sure, the prisoner sacrifice is a reference from the culture of the Central Plains by the Jin Kingdom, but why the prisoner sacrifice ceremony developed into a sheep sacrifice ceremony is still related to the cultural background of the Jin country itself.
The ancient Chinese "sheep" culture has a long history, the mainland's sacrificial culture and animal culture is its own system, sheep as a kind of domestic animals, known as one of the "six animals", is a part of the mainland animal culture system.
In the traditional folk customs of ethnic minorities, the existence of sheep culture is also indispensable, and even the independent development of many ethnic minorities' own sheep culture has surpassed the sheep culture of the Han people as one of the six animal systems, and Jin Guo is a good example.
For the golden man, the sheep are a symbol of wealth. The Jin people are nomads, and cattle and sheep are regarded as the most valuable property of this people. This can be reflected in clothing - the golden man distinguishes between rich and poor by clothing, and wearing sheepskin clothes is a symbol of wealth
Photo: Sanyang Kaitai
In addition, Jin Guoduo asked defeated countries and officials to pay tribute with cattle and sheep, and launched wars to invade other countries to gain sheep, and the ancients offered victories to the temple, including prisoners and booty.
Combined with the custom of the golden people to like sheep, dressing captives as sheep is treating prisoners as trophies. In this sense, in the eyes of the Jin people, the prisoners of war of the Northern Song Dynasty had lost their human dignity and could be trampled on arbitrarily as objects.
It is recorded in the "History of Jingkang Barnyard" that the Jin people often bought and sold Northern Song women at will, and the gold blacksmith could even buy the princess of the Song Dynasty as a concubine at a low price of ten gold, not only Empress Huizong was humiliated and committed suicide, but when Emperor Huizong died, he was also put in a fire pit to refine lamp oil, which was extremely tragic.
Photo: Jingkang's shameful woman was humiliated
On the other hand, under the private ownership system of ancient society, cattle and sheep inevitably have a private color, and the slaves who are privately appropriated are essentially no different from cattle and sheep. While the sheep ceremony requires the captives to be led like sheep, it also means that the tortured people are slaughtered like sheep.
Photo: Stills of the Morning Ceremony
In addition, in traditional Chinese culture, sheep are important sacrificial sacrifices. For example, the "taijiang" during the ancient emperor's sacrifice was that all three kinds of animals, cattle, sheep and pigs, had to be gathered. The Golden Man sacrifice is also similar to the Central Plains sacrifice ceremony.
"Golden History" Yun: "There is no sect temple in the early Jin Dynasty." "In the early years of the Jin Dynasty, the leaders were busy with wars, and there was no free time and a stable external environment to carry out the ancestor worship ritual, so the Jin Dynasty did not begin to develop the Han system until the Xizong period and gradually established a perfect ancestor worship system - among which the best developed sheep and sheep sacrifice ceremony is one of the traditional ritual systems in the Central Plains.
When Jin Taizong was in power, he performed a sacrificial ceremony at the temple of Jin Taizu to declare the legitimacy of his succession, which is actually similar to the "admonition" in the Zhou ceremony.
At first, it was indicated that the monarch began to deal with political affairs in this month, usually by offering it to the temple to show reverence for his ancestors, and later generations gradually evolved into praying for blessings.
From the perspective of sacrifice, the Jinguo sheep sacrifice ceremony is in line with the culture of prisoner sacrifice in the Shang Dynasty. During the Yin Shang period, the Qiang ethnic minority living in the northwest were enemies of the Shang, and the two sides often attacked continuously.
The Shang Dynasty felt the difficulty of Fa Qiang after the victory of Fa Qiang, so the Shang King "Zongmen Rebelled against Qiang", which was a kind of welcoming ceremony in which Qiang prisoners of war were sacrificed as livestock, which was very similar to the Jin people's sheep and prisoner sacrifice.
Photo: Prisoner Offering
This conclusion is not only historical speculation, there is a historical basis for saying that the Jin Kingdom inherited the Shang and Zhou traditions. The Jin Kingdom is dominated by the Jurchens, and the word "Jurchen" is actually a different transliteration of "Sushen" in ancient times. That is, it proves that the ancient Sushen people who lived in the north are the original ancestors of the Jurchens, so it is not surprising that the Jin people inherited the Shang and Zhou traditions.
Whether it is a big sacrifice or a small sacrifice, it is necessary to sacrifice sheep, and the Jin State sheep sacrifice ceremony may be to inherit Shang Zhou's idea of taking prisoners as sacrifices, creatively (surrender ceremony and sheep pulling ceremony complement each other) to make Song captives wear sheep as sheep and sacrifice them to the ancestral temple.
3. Development: Jing Kang's shame and the sacrifice of sheep
In the foreign wars of the Jin Kingdom, there were many prisoner sacrifice ceremonies, or the upper body was exposed, or the plain clothes (underwear) were worn in the ancestral temple, or they were beheaded, or their hands and brothers were broken in the city, but why was the sheep pulling ceremony only performed when the two emperors Huizong of Song and Emperor Qinzong of Song were captured.
After comprehensive analysis, scholars believe that the "fuse" is a written record in the "Song Lord's Descending Table": "Ministers Huanyan: Turning your back on grace and asking for help, you are far from sweating and laboring; Please beg for your life, dare to bother with the gift of leading the sheep"
Figure: Song main descending table
The "Song Lord's Descending Table" is a section in the "Dajin Hanging Record", and the "Dajin Hanging Record" is the most original material of Song-Jin exchanges, and the sheep-pulling ritual involved in it corresponds to the "Moaning Language", which is enough to prove its historical truth.
The surrender was written in December of the fourth year of the Tianhui, and in the sixth year of the Tianhui, Emperor Huizong of Song and Emperor Qinzong were captured by the Jin people in the temple. Historians believe that the Jin Kingdom established the etiquette system from the time of Emperor Xizong, and since then it has followed the Central Plains etiquette system and continuously improved it.
The supreme ruler also modeled on the Central Plains to form the idea of governing the country by culture, such as respecting Confucius, studying scriptures, and implementing the system of the Central Plains. Before Emperor Xizong determined the tradition of learning Han culture, most of the Jin people inherited the old customs of the Jurchens and did not deeply study the civilization of the Central Plains.
In fact, the "History of Jin" also has a record of Emperor Taizong's study of Han culture: when the Jin people invaded Bianjing, the Song Dynasty had been stable for a long time, and the culture was prosperous - "When the Song Dynasty was peaceful for a long time, the ceremonies and music were prepared." ”
Jin Ren then studied the Central Plains culture extensively, familiar with both poetry books and cultural classics, and did not pull down in the ruts, legal objects, ceremonial guards and other aspects. It also imitates the ritual system and ceremony of the Central Plains - "the ceremony of the Zongshe pilgrimage is also held." ”
Photo: "Exploration of the Ancient Rites of the Pre-Qin Dynasty"
It can be seen that the "golden people into the bian" is the key node to promote this change. After entering Bianjing, the Jin people did not just covet gold and silver treasures, but carefully collected the atlas of classics that condensed advanced culture, so there was an urgent need to learn Han rites during the Taizong period.
Although the Jurchen civilization in this period was still in the initial period of civilization, it was able to quickly absorb the advanced culture of the Central Plains civilization and transform and invent it in combination with its own traditions, thus forming a unique prisoner sacrifice in history, which is also the embodiment of the ability of the golden people.
The historical records that "within the four seas, all the courtiers, if they are treated separately, how can they become one" also reflects the targeted strength of the Jin Kingdom in a specific period. The nomads conquered the farming civilization, but the Jin people in turn learned the Central Plains civilization, which is the embodiment of the nomads' worship of the Central Plains civilization.
Photo: Central Plains Culture - Military Salute
Although the Jin people were busy fighting wars at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, under the guidance of the leader's idea of learning from the Han people, they still adhered to the concept of in-depth study of Han culture, and while learning cultural etiquette, they applied it to practice, adapted measures to local conditions, and learned and applied it lively.
The Jin people may have come into contact with the surrender ceremony related to the sheep in the process of conquest, or they did not have time to carefully consider it, and because they read the "Song Lord's Surrender Table", they skillfully combined the gift of leading the sheep with the sacrifice of the prisoner.
The Song Emperor Zhao Zhi originally wanted to show his loyalty to surrender with the gift of leading sheep, but he did not expect that the thirsty Jin Ren dug deeper meaning from the surrender book.
Photo: Song Qinzong Zhao Structure
Although this idea is only an inference, it can be supported by the history of the exchange between the ancestors of the Jurchen people of the Jin Kingdom and the Central Plains, the cultural background of the Jin State in the Song Dynasty, and the cultural policy of learning the Han people.
That is, in the same historical context of defeat and surrender, the "sheep pulling ceremony" in the Spring and Autumn period is in the same vein as the "sheep pulling ceremony" that the Jin State forced Emperor Hui Qin to perform.
This kind of sacrifice ritual that was too brutal and inhumane, the Qin and Han dynasties gradually withdrew from the historical stage in the Central Plains, but this kind of sheep pulling ceremony, which was abandoned because it was too humiliating and barbaric, was used on prisoners of war in the Northern Song Dynasty because it conformed to the nomadic customs of the Jin people and the consistent sheep culture.
Photo: Jingkang's shameful woman was humiliated
The city of Bianjing was broken, the golden people broke in, and the rout and mistakes on the front line of the war made the people behind bear the consequences. Most of the Northern Song people, including the emperor, were captured and escorted to the Jin state. On the way, a large number of women were humiliated, and nearly half of the women died on the way to Jinguo.
According to historical records, Empress Zhu of the Northern Song Dynasty committed suicide twice in humiliation because of the sheep sacrifice rite trampling dignity and destroying humanity.
Photo: Empress Zhu of Song Qinzong
The sheep and sheep sacrifice ceremony of the Jin Kingdom also reflects that the Jin people before Emperor Xizong have begun to learn and absorb the Central Plains civilization, although it is relatively fragmented and fragmented, but it has also created many unique cultural phenomena in history.
The previous people's view that Jin Ren learned Han from the beginning of Emperor Xizong is inaccurate, and the sheep and sheep sacrifice is a strong evidence of Sinicization during the Jin Taizong period.
Later rulers of the Jin State, especially the successive rulers after Jin Zong's complete appearance, implemented many measures to dilute the "Huayi distinction", that is, sinicization and feudalization, which are still essentially borrowing and learning from the culture of the Central Plains.
The result of the study was that the Jin dynasty occupied an active position in foreign exchanges, thereby stabilizing the internal affairs of the Jin state, consolidating the status of the ruling class, and also exerting a far-reaching influence on other ethnic minorities in the surrounding area.
epilogue
First of all, it is the result of absorbing and borrowing from the Central Plains civilization under the premise of combining the Jin country's own culture and the history of the Jurchens, no matter what role its etiquette plays in history, it is a proof of ethnic minorities learning Han culture.
Secondly, the formation of the sheep and prisoner ceremony does have a certain degree of chance, or in other words, when the Jin people attacked Bianjing, they saw other ritual forms of record, and the direction of learning would definitely change. But in any case, this is a study of the Central Plains culture, from which you can still see the integration of the Central Plains surrender ceremony and the Jin Guoyang culture.
This characteristic captive sacrifice can be used as a benign supplement to the ancient sacrifice system, and can be used as a channel to peek into the evolution of the captive sacrifice ceremony of successive dynasties.
Photo: "Pingding Western Regions Prisoner Sacrifice"
The reference of Jinguo's sheep sacrifice ceremony to the Central Plains culture reflects the high level of development of the Central Plains prisoner sacrifice ceremony, and also reflects the prosperity of Chinese national culture.
The development of this kind of captive sacrifice after being borrowed by ethnic minorities has a trend from barbarism to civilization, from single to diverse, which not only fits the characteristics of the times, but also highlights the coexistence of inheritance and innovation.
Peace and development are the main themes of our time, and we should view this sacrifice on both sides. On the one hand, the primitive barbarism of the feudal era only to show off military merits should not be promoted; But on the other hand, as part of the military salute, we should dig deep into the inner meaning of etiquette, and provide materials and rich content for us to build a traditional cultural system today.
Bibliography:
History of Song
"Golden History"
"Daikin Hanging Record"