The quality of agricultural production not only affects the prosperity and depression of the social economy, but also directly affects the rise and fall of the country. Therefore, the wiser rulers can learn from history and pay attention to agricultural production.
Attaching importance to agriculture is not only for social and economic development, but also a necessary prerequisite for maintaining state power, and this recognition of the importance of agriculture reflects the historical characteristics of ancient Chinese agricultural society. The idea of heavy peasants on the mainland can be traced back to the first slave dynasty, the Xia, whose rulers attached great importance to agriculture, and the history said that "Yu Ji bowed to the crops and had the world".
In order to meet the needs of agricultural production, the Xia people also developed a lunar calendar for producers to refer to. In the Shang Dynasty, the Shang king not only often prayed for a good year, but also personally inspected the agricultural situation and sent personnel to supervise and direct agricultural production. During the Western Zhou Dynasty, the peak of slavery, the rulers of the Zhou Dynasty attached great importance to agriculture. The great wisdom of the ancestors is admirable.
During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, the Shang Martingale Law emphasized the fundamentals and suppressed the end, believing that agricultural development was not only a source of wealth, but also a source of military strength. For this reason, Shang Martingale regarded "bringing the people's hearts to the peasants" as the key to governing the country, and after Qin Shi Huang unified the whole country, he still "went to the peasants and eliminated the end".
Because the Qin Dynasty's policy of urgent peasants and forced peasants led to peasant uprisings, and finally led to the demise of the Qin Dynasty, the rulers of the Han Dynasty learned the lessons of the Qin Dynasty, and in order to restore and develop the economy and consolidate the Western Han regime, they adopted the policy of recuperating and recuperating from the Huanglao.
At the beginning of the founding of the Western Han Dynasty, the emperor attached great importance to the recovery and development of agriculture, encouraged farmers to cultivate, and attached great importance to the basic status of agriculture.
During the Wei and Jin dynasties, rulers attached great importance to agricultural production, and Sima Yan, the emperor of Wu of the Western Jin Dynasty, issued a series of edicts aimed at promoting the recovery and development of the agricultural economy. The county magistrate played an important role in advising agricultural work, and the emperor stipulated that certain rewards should be given to officials who were diligent in advising agricultural work. And in order to maintain the normal progress of agricultural production and avoid accidental damage to farmers in the year of famine, Emperor Wudi of Jin attached great importance to the implementation of the reserve policy of agricultural products.
As the supreme ruler of the country, Sima Yan could correctly borrow the management methods of his predecessors when considering the overall agricultural problem, and showed his ability to govern and develop the economy, and two years after the issuance of this edict, Emperor Wu established Changpingcang, which played a beneficial role in reducing the loss of peasants in the drought year and the waste of agricultural products in the harvest year. Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei was the most effective emperor in formulating and implementing policies that emphasized agriculture during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and at the beginning of his succession, he issued a series of edicts requiring his subordinates to persuade farmers to set up fields in peace. Emperor Xiaowen also issued relevant edicts at different times on how to deal with lazy farmers, water conservancy construction, and the field system.
During the Five Dynasties of the Sui and Tang dynasties, Emperor Wen of the Sui Dynasty, as the founding monarch, made a difference in developing the agricultural economy. On the one hand, he attached importance to the settlement of land, on the other hand, he strengthened the distribution and management of land, and encouraged people to engage in agricultural production. As a result, the agricultural economy was restored and developed relatively quickly, and by the ninth year of the emperor's reign (589), the number of households controlled by the government had increased from four to five million in the early Sui Dynasty to about seven million. In the agricultural policy of the Sui Dynasty, the most important was the tuntian system.
In order to ensure the normal progress of agricultural production, Emperor Taizong also made efforts to ensure the number of agricultural labor, repeatedly issuing edicts on resettlement of displaced people, reclamation of wasteland, implementation of policies of heavy agriculture and anti-business, and rectification of the rule of law, stabilization of society, and improvement of the agricultural production environment.
The development of agriculture is the result of the ruler's implementation of corresponding policies, and it is also the standard for measuring whether the ruler is in power, as long as the ruler carries out agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery production according to the time and place while protecting the ecological environment, he can achieve the purpose of enriching the country and benefiting the people.
Since ancient times, the mainland has had the idea of ecological protection that cherishes life and respects the growth law of organisms in the natural environment. However, the formation of this idea of rational development and active protection of biological resources has undergone a long process of development.
Protect forest and grass vegetation and biological resources through strict decrees. According to the growth law of all natural things, the "time ban" of mountains and forests is not only conducive to the rest and recuperation of animals and plants, promoting the virtuous cycle of the natural environment, but also ensuring the sustainable development of natural resources and constantly meeting the needs of human survival.
There is an inseparable relationship between the natural environment and the creatures living in it and the mutual supply of various organisms, which is a concrete reflection of the ancient simple ecological protection thought.
The Qin and Han dynasties were a period of gradual improvement of China's feudal monarchical autocracy, when rulers were above everything, and after Qin Shi Huang unified the six kingdoms, he immediately changed his name to "emperor", his order was called "system", and his order was called "edict". The emperor's order became the legal source of the unified feudal state in the entire feudal society period, and had the highest legal effect.
The decline in the quality of the ecological environment attracted people's attention at that time, and put forward their own views and propositions on this, and implemented a series of measures to protect the ecological environment. Qin Shi Huang once ordered all parts of the country to "green pines with trees" on both sides of the road, which is the earliest recorded emperor's edict on planting trees. Due to the importance of the rulers, afforestation was already on a considerable scale in the Qin Dynasty. Although its direct purpose is not to protect the ecological environment, it is objectively of very positive significance for the improvement of the ecological environment in the north.
Dong Zhongshu, a Shuoru of the Western Han Dynasty, advocated the "unity of heaven and man", emphasizing the harmony and unity of human society and the natural world, which played a good role in promoting the protection of the environment and animal resources by the rulers at that time. The legal norms on environmental protection that we see today during the Two Han Dynasty were mainly emperors' edicts. The rulers, while inheriting the ideas of their predecessors to protect the natural environment, combined it with agricultural production. In the context of great unification, the Confucian theory of the unity of heaven and man, the theory of heaven and man induction, and the proposition of benevolence all influenced the ecological protection content of the Han Dynasty imperial edict.
During the Sui and Tang dynasties, the protection of animals and plants was not lacking in historical records, and there were also concerns about ecological protection in the emperor's edicts. In the summer and May of the first year of the Holy Calendar (698), Wu Zetian issued another edict banning massacres. The above shows that the rulers of the Tang Dynasty practiced slaughter at certain times, such as Buddha, the month of fasting or certain festivals. And the prohibition of slaughter is generally associated with fasting, and it is forbidden to slaughter domestic six animals, but it also includes wild birds and animals.
"Quan Tang Wen" contains "The Judgment of Killing Yan on the Broken Tu Yue": "A is fed with envy, and the son dies." The neighbor sued: Cut off the slaughter moon and kill the swallow. This shows that the prohibition of slaughtering swallows in the moon will be sued by neighbors, and due to the promulgation and implementation of such edicts and decrees, the Tang Dynasty once stopped the sacrifice and destruction of rare birds and plants, which is undoubtedly of great significance for the protection of rare animals and plants.
Changes in the natural environment can be caused by a variety of factors, but these factors can be generally summarized into two categories, namely natural factors and human factors, and the impact of changes in the natural environment on agricultural production is very large. Among them, climate, precipitation and vegetation are the three main factors affecting the natural environment.
Regarding the climate of the Two Song Dynasty, it was significantly cooler than that of the Han and Tang Dynasties, and the cold climate of the Two Song Dynasty, frequent natural disasters and frequent ecological and environmental problems had a direct impact on farming and animal husbandry production. The cold of the air and the frequent occurrence of natural disasters have accelerated the migration of ethnic minorities to agricultural civilization to a certain extent, and brought about a very serious impact of war on all aspects of social production.
Changes in temperature will have an impact on precipitation, and from the Tang to the Song Dynasty experienced changes from wet to arid, which is consistent with the trend of decreasing temperatures. Precipitation directly affected the surface water reserves of the Song Dynasty, and compared with the Tang Dynasty, due to climate change and agricultural development, the water body in the Song Dynasty was greatly reduced, and the lake continued to disappear. This directly affects the two major factors on which agricultural production depends, namely irrigation water and land quality.
Vegetation is an important part of the ecological environment, which is affected by both natural and human factors. The influence of natural factors on vegetation can include precipitation and the length of vegetation wilt period caused by climate differences between north and south. The impact of human factors on the environment is more direct, such as the development of farmland is the process of replacing natural vegetation with artificial vegetation, and unreasonable reclamation will lead to soil erosion. In the Two Song Dynasty, the development of the ceramic industry and smelting and casting industry required a large amount of fuel supply, which mainly relied on cutting down forest resources.
Because the ancient society was an agricultural society dominated by an agrarian economy, the deterioration of the ecological environment along the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, China's two major water systems, was inseparable from the Song Dynasty rulers who had to pay more attention to the environment and agricultural production, which was inseparable from the objective natural conditions and relatively developed scientific and technological level at that time.
During the Two Song Dynasty, due to factors such as excessive population expansion, inappropriate production and development methods, and frequent wars, unpredictable consequences were caused to the ecological environment, resulting in a significant deterioration of the mainland ecological environment during the Two Song Dynasty. According to Mr. Yuan Qinglin's analysis of the historical environment in his History of Environmental Protection in China, he attributed the Tang, Song and Yuan dynasties to the second period of environmental degradation after the Qin and Han dynasties.
First of all, the objective conditions of population expansion and relative concentration have put unprecedented pressure on the ecological environment. Although the ecological pressure of population growth began to appear in the pre-Qin period, the real deterioration began in the Northern Song Dynasty, where cultural traditions led to early marriage and childbearing, and families pursued many children and grandchildren, which reached a peak in the Song Dynasty.
During the Northern Song Dynasty, the population of the mainland increased sharply, and the pressure on the ecological environment was evident. Before the Northern Song Dynasty, the population was mainly concentrated in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and the Guanzhong Plain, with uneven spatial distribution, and excessive population concentration would lead to environmental problems in these areas; Moreover, the level of productivity was not high at that time, and in order to maintain the subsistence of agricultural productivity without a significant increase in agricultural productivity, it was only by increasing arable land.
After the Northern Song Dynasty, the sustained and stable growth of the population will have a serious impact on the ecological environment. And because the Song Dynasty did not suppress the land policy of annexation, a large number of peasants lost their land and could only reclaim the land. This situation undoubtedly poses a huge threat to the ecological environment. The reclamation of the Yellow River Basin during the Tang and Song dynasties intensified, and although the achievements were obvious, the blindness caused serious harm to the environment.
Secondly, improper reclamation and felling methods also caused a great degree of damage to the ecological environment, such as the palace buildings and farmland reclamation of the Two Song Dynasty, which caused great damage to the forests in convenient transportation areas, seriously threatening the ecological environment at that time. As a result, people gradually began to protect forest resources, and mountain closure has also become an important measure for forest protection and afforestation.
Lake-based farmland is also a way of inappropriate use of nature, as natural lakes shrink due to lake reclamation, water levels drop, and waterways silt, resulting in continuous flooding during floods. This not only had an important impact on socio-political and economic development, but also had a huge impact on the rulers' statecraft, forcing them to issue a series of edicts, intentionally or unintentionally, to solve the ecological crisis they faced and solve a series of major problems related to the foundation of the dynasty, such as agricultural recovery, production, and development.
In agriculture, faced with the harsh reality of long-term war damage, mass exile of the people, and large areas of abandoned land, the rulers of the Northern Song Dynasty adopted a series of policies and measures conducive to agricultural production, and the agricultural economy, which was increasingly deteriorating due to war, was quickly restored. The agriculture-based social economy has been greatly improved by the promotion of farming technology and production tools. Generally speaking, edicts and edicts have equal effect, and the recipient has to follow them.
As a form of direct embodiment of the ruler's thought, the edict is a kind of edict document commonly used by the emperor, and the Song Dynasty emperor's policy of heavy agriculture and the important idea of advocating nongsang are concentrated in the edict of the Song Dynasty. The Government has strict rules on the procedure for drafting, promulgating and enforcing edicts.
Shinzō divided the edicts into categories, eliminated repetitive content, promulgated various roads, and carried out woodblock printing, and stored them in the pavilion. The following will slightly analyze the edicts of heavy peasants issued by the emperors of the Northern Song Dynasty, classify them according to the content of the edicts, and expound the agricultural ideas of the Northern Song emperors from the perspective of persuading farmers to heavy farmers, establishing agricultural management institutions, improving the governance of officials, guiding agricultural production, building water conservancy, and preparing for famine and disaster prevention.
The rulers of the Northern Song Dynasty all had policy ideas that attached importance to agriculture, and the idea of attaching importance to agriculture was particularly prominent during the reign of Emperor Taizong of Song and his successor Emperor Taizong of Song. In order to promote the development of agriculture, from the perspective of the ruler's emphasis on agriculture and persuasion, it mainly focuses on the following aspects:
First of all, the king cultivated and watched the crops from the fields. The emperor personally cultivated the fields, on the one hand, to pray for smooth wind and rain, and more importantly, to create a heavy peasant atmosphere.
Second, establish an agricultural teacher system to guide agricultural production. The edict on the establishment of the agricultural teacher system during the reign of Emperor Taizong of Song was more specific, reflecting his deep understanding of agriculture, and the policies and regulations were also in line with reality and had strong feasibility.
The agricultural teachers here have the dual functions of teaching agricultural affairs and supervising farmers, and the establishment of this system undoubtedly plays a positive role in the promotion and improvement of agricultural production technology. The system of agricultural teachers has specific regulations on the duties and powers of agricultural teachers, and if they do not listen to the teachings, they also have the right to report them to the state and county for punishment. For those who hold this position, they enjoy the right to tax exemption and exemption from military service, and are rewarded for meritorious service.
The early Song rulers' emphasis on agriculture mainly stemmed from the fact that the world was undecided, the war was constant, and the problem of food supply became a top priority, and due to the impact of war, peasants were mostly recruited by the army, and the number of farmers directly engaged in agricultural production declined, resulting in a decline in grain production, which was the objective reason that prompted the Song Dynasty government to attach importance to agricultural production, and the inheritance and successive traditions of heavy agriculture was its subjective reason. The combination of the two constituted the unique heavy peasant thinking of the Song Dynasty, and also imprinted the imprint of the times.
Emperor Taizong of Song attached great importance to the improvement of agricultural tools. Grassroots officials had the closest relationship with the common people, they managed the people on behalf of the emperor, and they were the implementers of the emperor's edict of heavy peasants and peasants. Under the guidance of the policy of heavy agriculture, government officials in the Song Dynasty devoted many local officials to local agricultural production, and they promoted advanced agricultural science and technology in combination with local conditions, and promoted the development of agriculture in the areas under their jurisdiction.
It is forbidden for people to learn forbidden arts and forbid to cast Buddha statues from iron. Before the Song Dynasty, folk witchcraft activities, although sometimes resisted by the government and people of insight in society, were all dwarfed by these resistances compared to the Song Dynasty. It also resolutely cracked down on its activities in the people, actively changed the situation of widespread folk witchcraft, and attached importance to agricultural production to maintain the stability and long-term peace and stability of the dynasty.
Although the specific measures taken by the rulers of the Northern Song Dynasty towards Buddhism were different, their attitudes towards Buddhism were basically the same. Emperor Taizu of Song basically supported the development of Buddhism, but once its development swelled or was used by anti-government forces, it was restricted and banned. On the one hand, the continued development of Buddhism led to the emergence of a large number of monks and nuns, reducing the agricultural labor force and hindering the development of agriculture.