When it comes to the literal prison, the first thing that comes to mind is that it must be the Manchu period.
The literary prison ran through the entire Qing Dynasty, especially in the more than 150 years from Shunzhi to Qianlong, because there were more than 200 major cases and countless murders in the literary prison. Among the major literary prison cases in the Qing Dynasty, the more famous ones are:
"Qingfeng is illiterate, what is the matter with the book" case, the author, Hanlin Xu Jun was beheaded all over the house.
In the case of "Although the breeze is fine and difficult to, the bright moon and people do not shine according to people", the author Lu Liuliang has been dead for 50 years, and his body is still dissected and killed, and his descendants and students are either beheaded or exiled.
In the Ming history case, 12 people were executed by Ling Chi in Huzhou, and more than 70 people were beheaded, and the Zhejiang celebrities involved were raided, and more than 1,000 people were implicated.
The main purpose of the Qing Dynasty rulers' great literary prison was to exercise ideological control and prevent and suppress the rebellion of intellectuals and Han Chinese.
When it comes to thought control, the history books specifically point to the Qing Dynasty's literary prison, and for the Ming Dynasty, the book only says that the Eight Strands of Scholars suppressed the minds of readers. In fact, there was a period in the Ming Dynasty when there was also a literary prison, which was more serious than the Qing Dynasty, which was the period of Zhu Yuanzhang, Taizu of the Ming Dynasty.
Zhu Yuanzhang's literary prison is not only fierce, but also particularly nonsensical.
It is true that many of the parties involved in the Qing Dynasty's literary prison were dissatisfied with the imperial court and deliberately used words to ridicule and cause trouble. And the literary prison during the Zhu Yuanzhang period often seemed nonsensical, and even the emperor's fart could be shot to kill the head.
At that time, there was a very famous monk named Lai Fu, who wrote a poem at a banquet held by Zhu Yuanzhang in order to appease the emperor. There are two lines in the poem: "The golden plate Su comes to the special domain, and the jade bowl is out of the top." The original meaning of these two lines of poetry is this: This banquet is very grand, with many treasures and many good wines and delicacies. However, Zhu Yuanzhang was furious after reading it, and pointed to the word "Shu" in the poem and said: "Shu, it is the word Zhu Zhu in separate words, you are scolding me Zhu Yuanzhang for being vicious?
Look at how nonsensical Zhu Yuanzhang's literary prison is? Often there is no sign at all, and monstrous disasters fall from the sky.
Zhu Yuanzhang came from a humble background, worked as a beggar, and became a monk, and among all the founding emperors, he was the one with the lowest starting point. In order to show that his background is not bad, he once wanted to recognize the master of science Zhu Xi as his ancestor, and later he was afraid that scholars would expose it, which would make people laugh, so he simply called himself "Huaiyou Buyi" and admitted that he had a "slightly cold background".
However, the more calm and light the surface is, the more inferior Zhu Yuanzhang is in his heart. Especially for the two experiences in his early years, he has always been nostalgic: one is to be a monk, and the other is to participate in the peasant rebel army and "be a thief". Therefore, for the words "monk" and "thief", Zhu Yuanzhang simply hated it.
After someone was killed for using the words "monk" and "thief", the officials began to tremble, deliberately avoiding these two words, and did not dare to write things scribbling. But this is not over, the emperor has given you an official job, you always have to put on a thank you table, right?
It's just that Zhu Yuanzhang is very busy, so he has time to read these things one by one, so he asked someone to read them to him. This time it's troublesome, and all the people who wrote the words "monk" and "thief" with the same sound are finished.
An official in charge of education wrote the words "lead by example", which means that the teacher should be a role model for the students. Zhu Yuanzhang heard that he was "a thief and a thief", and without saying a word, he beheaded the official. Similar to the unfortunate officials, who wrote the words "rules of holy virtue" and "rules of construction", were beheaded.
Some officials wrote in the congratulatory table "Take the law like Wei", and the allusion to Xiang Wei comes from "Zhou Li, Qiu Guan, Da Si Kou", which means to promote the law. Zhu Yuanzhang heard "taking the law" as "going to send it," and as soon as he thought about it, didn't this make a mockery of me as a monk?
A professor of government science wrote a congratulatory note with the sentence "In broad daylight, born a saint, he will lead the world". Originally, the meaning of this sentence was: God is virtuous, and a saint like Emperor Zhu was born, which can be used as an example for the world. But the author never expected that this sycophant sentence could be piercing. Zhu Yuanzhang understood it this way: the word "light" involves the monk's bald head, "sheng" is the same as "monk", and "then" is "thief", which means that a monk was sent down from heaven to be a thief in the world. The officer was immediately arrested and killed.
This incident also scared all the officials stupidly, so they stubbornly begged Zhu Yuanzhang to send a holy decree: Your Majesty, how to write this congratulatory form, you stipulate a format, and we will fill it in according to it, so as not to say the wrong thing again. In the end, Zhu Yuanzhang really adopted this suggestion, otherwise, I don't know how many people lost their heads in confusion.
Not only that, when Zhu Yuanzhang was in power, even the clerical errors, and even the colloquial language of the formed words, as long as he violated his taboo, he would be killed. Once, when he was on a micro-service trip, he heard someone talking about him behind his back, saying that he was an "old man". In a fit of rage, he raided all the people who lived in that area.
Fortunately, the Ming Dynasty's literary prison only lasted for two generations of kings, and after Zhu Yuanzhang died, his son Zhu Di also engaged in literary prison. Later, the literary prison of the Ming Dynasty gradually stopped. Since Xianzong, officials have been taboo in writing, that is, they are pulled out to play boards, or dismissed officials, and it is rare for them to be killed because of words.