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Text: Nan cat
Edit| Nan cat
Now 13 and 14-year-old children are almost all little babies held in the palm of their hands.
However, in ancient times, when a girl reached the age of 13, it meant that she should get married!
You must have seen the character introduction when chasing the drama, and the heroine in the play was only 14 or 15 years old when she got married.
This is not groundless, according to relevant records, Tang Xuanzong once ordered: fifteen men and thirteen women, they can be married.
Although such an edict is explosive from a modern point of view,
But it is true that men in ancient times also liked to marry women around the age of 13.
What is hidden in this?
Changes in the age of marriage of women in ancient times
Nowadays, young people today are beginning to marry later and have children later.
But in ancient times, the time and age of marriage could not be based on one's own will at all, and could only be arranged by one's parents or the state system.
From the pre-Qin period, the marriage age at that time was quite reasonable.
According to historical records, the pre-Qin regulations were that men were thirty years old and women were twenty years old.
Despite this, the age of marriage at that time was still about 5 years earlier than the legal rule.
It is equivalent to that women still marry around the age of 15, and as for men, the rules are not so strict.
In the Qin Dynasty, the rules on marriage became a bit outrageous.
To put it simply, if you are not tall enough, you should not think about getting married.
Such a provision is outrageous, and it is clear that it will not be respected for a long time.
With the change of generations, it was thought that the rules of marriage would become more commonplace.
But what I didn't expect was that it became more and more unreasonable.
During the Han Dynasty, a woman could marry at the age of 15, and if she did not marry at the age of 30, the tax would increase by five times.
This is also a disguised telling the woman at that time that if you can't get married at the age of 30, you just wait for punishment.
The regulations issued by the Tang Dynasty are slightly the same as those issued by the Song Dynasty, and they should be married at the age of 14 anyway.
It is not difficult to see from the marriage regulations that have gone through several dynasties,
The age at which a woman marries has hardly changed, and the punishment is almost always directed at women in ancient times.
In ancient times, if you couldn't get married, it would be a shame on your family.
In ancient times, men liked to marry 13 or 14-year-old women, mostly because of the law.
But why did the ancient law only target the age of a woman's marriage?
In fact, it is inseparable from the following three reasons, and it can only be said that the monarch is really a "helpless move"!
Three real reasons
- It's all the fault of the war
In ancient times, there was no unification at that time, so there were wars everywhere, and wars would be waged at every turn.
Born in that turbulent era, the people couldn't even help their own lives.
Maybe one second he was still chatting with his family, and the next second he was abused and killed.
For example, during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, there was a war at both ends in three days.
Since there is war, there will inevitably be casualties.
And if a country does not have people, it will not have a strong army, which means that it will decline.
Therefore, as a king, he must ensure that the population only increases.
In order to realize such an idea, it is necessary to enforce some laws.
For example, lowering the age of marriage for women and forcibly allowing them to marry and have children early.
Men as the productive party can have three wives and four concubines to increase the birth rate of newborns.
In this way, although many soldiers were lost due to the war, there was also a steady stream of new recruits who joined and had no impact on the overall situation.
Women have little strength and also need men to support their families, so they will naturally choose early childbearing and multiple births.
It not only satisfied the king's regulations, but also ensured the life of the family, which seemed to be a good thing at the time.
In addition to the need for new soldiers to join the war, the following reasons are also important factors that led to excessive early marriage of women in ancient times.
-- Inadequate medical care
According to statistics, the average age of the mainland is now as high as about 75 years old, while the average age of ancient people is pitiful.
In the Xia Dynasty, he was 18 years old, which is equivalent to just an adult, and he should be buried in the grave.
In the Qin and Han dynasties, the average age rose by 2 years to 20 years old.
The average age of subsequent dynasties also gradually increased, but the longest average life expectancy before the Republic of China was only about 30.
It is no wonder that ancient people got married early, after all, it is unknown whether they can live long after the age of 30.
However, one of the reasons for such a low average age is the war mentioned above, and the other is the lack of medical care.
Although there were many famous doctors in ancient times, it was still difficult to solve some incurable diseases.
Unlike now, we have the combination of traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine, Chinese medicine conditioning, and Western medicine to treat acute diseases.
In ancient times, Chinese herbal medicine was used to treat diseases, and it was okay to face some chronic diseases.
In the face of some sudden diseases, it is a little helpless after all.
You know, another important point is that only high-ranking officials and nobles can afford to get sick.
As ordinary people, seeing a doctor is also a luxury.
The reason why there was once a "selling himself to save his father" was because the price of medical treatment was very high, and ordinary people couldn't afford it.
Therefore, in ancient times, diseases were dragged, and after a long time, they became incurable, and they could only meet the coming of death.
If there is a plague, it will be terrible.
Due to the imperfection of medical treatment, it is difficult to control the plague, and its infectious power is very strong.
If one person in a village is infected with the plague, the whole village will soon be affected.
In the end, the end can only be that the corpses are all over the field, and no one collects the corpses!
The death of a large number of people was also the most fearful thing for ancient kings, so the easiest way to start was to increase the population.
In the age when the average age was only 20-30 years old, even if the king did not say it, they would have their own childbearing age earlier.
Therefore, both men and women generally believe that there is nothing wrong with getting married around the age of 14.
After all, if you follow the average age, when their children are about 13 years old, they will die.
Moreover, in ancient times, it was very important to pay attention to the inheritance of bloodline, and the succession was a major event in life, and it was filial piety to complete it as soon as possible.
——Decline in the status of women
In fact, in that dynasty, women were not willing to be "reproductive tools".
As we all know, women in ancient times were not allowed to study, let alone engage in business or politics.
But in the ladies of the official eunuchs, they have the strength to hire a private tutor.
The content of this private lesson is completely different from what men want to learn, and it is all about teaching women to cultivate their self-cultivation and serve the virtues of good husbands.
And ordinary women can only learn some manual work such as laundry, cooking, and sewing clothes, also in order to better serve their husbands.
The most important thing is that in ancient times, women's chastity was very important, and even going out to show their faces was a luxury.
So that the woman has no ability to support herself.
Influenced by feudal ideology, it is natural that he can't live without his husband's family.
And parents at home will also subconsciously feel that raising a daughter is a "burden",
If you marry early, you can also get some dowry to subsidize the family.
Over time, the life of an ancient woman has also become a kind of "tragedy".
At the age of 13, they have to be mothers and take care of their husbands before they are fully developed, and they have no choice but to rely on their children and husbands in their lives!
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