In 1975, the sleeping tiger Qin Jian unearthed in Xiaogan, Hubei Province, is a transcription of the laws and legal documents of the Qin Dynasty made by the owner of the tomb "Xi" according to the needs of his work during his lifetime, also known as "Yunmeng Qin Jian". Hubei Provincial Museum
Was Qin Shi Huang really tyrannical?
In the winter of 1975, a group of ancient tombs were discovered when the Sleeping Tiger Land in Yunmeng County was newly dug a drainage canal, and when archaeologists cleaned up to Tomb No. 11, they were shocked by the scene in front of them-
There are almost no gold and silver jewelry, and the pillow, the right side of the face, the right shoulder, and the right side of the entire body of the tomb owner are covered with bunches of bamboo slips.
The words on these bamboo slips have not even been seen by Sima Qian, who wrote the "Historical Records", and behind the words is a dynastic prohibition that has disappeared in the depths of history.
The floor plan of the No. 11 tomb in Sleeping Tiger Land, from which it can be seen that the burials around the corpse are all bamboo slips Hubei Provincial Museum
A "civil servant" who copied the law all his life
The owner of the Sleeping Tiger Land Ancient Tomb in Yunmeng County is named "Xi", and these 1,155 bamboo slips and 80 fragments are legal notes transcribed during his lifetime, which almost completely record the legal provisions of the Qin Dynasty.
Xi's life is extremely ordinary, he has never been to Xianyang, the capital of the country, and has been on the battlefield three times, but he has not made any military achievements, nor has he encountered any major cases.
According to the records of the bamboo slips, the highest position in Xi's life was "Ling Shi", responsible for managing local prison lawsuits and hearing judicial cases, and he was just an ordinary "civil servant" in the local area throughout his life.
But he is a person with a clear and conscious consciousness, and he tries to leave traces of his existence in every possible way. He wrote a chronology for himself, compiled it with national events, and was buried with him after his death.
Based on the skull of "Xi", the archaeological research team used technologies such as reconstructing a high-precision three-dimensional model of the skull and computer-aided Manchester restoration method to finally restore the head of "Xi". Hubei Provincial Museum
When Xi was 41 years old, King Yingzheng of Qin swept the six countries and dominated the world.
There is no mention of joy in the bamboo slip, but there is such a sentence written on it: "In the twenty-eighth year of Qin Shi Huang, now Anlu". "Today" refers to Qin Shi Huang, and "crossing Anlu" means that Qin Shi Huang paraded through Anlu County, where he was located. This year is 45 years old.
A year later, Hi died.
Xi loves his profession, and archaeologists unearthed copper sharpeners and brushes in tomb No. 11 of Sleeping Tiger Land, indicating that Xi spent a lot of energy on writing before his death.
These huge and trivial laws of the Qin Dynasty were recorded one by one, and he wrote down his work records of the day on bamboo slips as thick as chopsticks, which was written for decades and more than 40,000 words.
The misunderstood Qin Shi Huang
Before the excavation of Yunmeng Qin Jian, due to the lack of historical materials, the first impression of Qin Shi Huang usually stayed on tyranny.
Sima Qian's "Historical Records" recorded, "The king of Qin had a greedy heart and practiced the wisdom of self-exertion...... The law of torture is forbidden, first deceit and then benevolence, and tyranny is the beginning of the world. ”
He believed that the king of Qin, with his greed and despicability, left benevolence, virtue and faithfulness behind, and took cruelty and cruelty as the premise of governing the world.
Qin Lu has been described as "as prosperous as autumn and dense as congealed fat". Sima Qian recorded that Jing Ke assassinated the King of Qin, Jing Ke chased the King of Qin with a dagger in his hand and ran around the pillar in the court, and the warriors in the palace could only shout loudly, but did not dare to go to the palace.
Because of the strict rules of Qin, you are not allowed to go to the palace without the order of the king of Qin. The strictness of the Qin system can also be seen. However, according to the experts who participated in the excavation of Yunmeng Qin Jian, the Confucian scholars in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, represented by Jia Yi's "On the Passage of Qin", completely denied the previous dynasty, and there were both ideological and emotional factors here.
It is these critical things that obscure the historical facts themselves.
Replica of the Sleeping Tiger Land Qin Jian.| Hubei Audit Museum
The excavation of the Qin law makes people feel that the Qin system is not a harsh government as later generations say, but "the Qin Dynasty has laws to follow, law enforcement is very strict, and the Qin law has absolute authority over the officials and the people."
The real Qin law
After the translation of archaeologists, Yunmeng Qin Jian mainly recorded the laws of the Qin Dynasty, including "Tian Law", "Eighteen Kinds of Qin Law", "Effect Law", "Qin Law Miscellaneous Copy", "Legal Miscellaneous Questions", "Sealed Diagnosis Style" and so on.
For example, on the issue of food.
There are some contents on the bamboo slips: soldiers are not allowed to take the army's rations, and violators will be on the border for two years; Soldiers who bought and sold military rations without permission were also punished. The law also stipulates that officers are treated differently from soldiers in terms of diet.
When the Qin army conquered the state of Chu, it used the largest number of troops in history. In order to supply the daily consumption of 600,000 people and horses, there are endless vehicles transporting grain and grass in the rear. It can be inferred that without an unprecedentedly developed agriculture, a war of this magnitude could not be guaranteed.
Fortunately, the more than 1,000 bamboo slips copied by Xi provide clues to our understanding of the agriculture of the Qin State, where military rations were uniformly supplied by the state.
Qin Law also has provisions on environmental protection.
"Tian Law" clearly recorded, "In spring and February, do not dare to cut down timber wood, mountains and forests and water, do not dare to turn night grass into ashes, take raw lychees, deer eggs, and indulge them in July." ”
This means that "in the spring, it is strictly forbidden to cut down mountains and forests and build dikes to block the river." It is forbidden to burn grass as fertilizer, pick newly sprouted plants, beat young animals, take eggs, and harm young birds until summer. ”
"National Treasure" shows the Yunmeng Sleeping Tiger Land Qin Jian CCTV
These laws are all transcribed by a small grassroots "civil servant".
When Xi died in 217 B.C., he asked his family to deposit all the legal documents he had copied during his lifetime in his coffin, especially the bundle of bamboo slips that recorded the events of his life.
Princes and generals are certainly singing and crying, but at the bottom of history are thousands of ordinary people. Fortunately, there is joy, so there is a world of joy.