Ancient emperors admired glory and wealth, and in order to enjoy eternal honor in the next life, they were extravagant to the point of outrageousness. They buried a large number of gold, silver and jewelry, and even more inhumanely, buried countless people alive to accompany them. How long would these burial companions survive in the dark, damp tombs? How did they spend their last days in despair? To this day, this question still pulls our minds back to that dark and cruel era, and it is chilling.
1. The emperor's obsession with advocating glory and wealth
It is said that when Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty was in Xianyang, he set out to build his own mausoleum with great interest. He swept away Fang Xuan, mobilized tens of thousands of craftsmen and people, and transported abundant treasures from Lop Nur in the far reaches of the Western Regions, covering everything and everything. The entire project lasted ten years, and the cost was unprecedentedly huge, almost exhausting the country's financial and material resources.
The mausoleum was finally completed, and the scale was magnificent, and the grandeur was terrifying. The eye is a staircase paved with tens of thousands of pieces of white marble, twisting and turning to the top of the tomb, and the two sides are built with gold and copper. At the end of the stairs stood a golden cast sacred cow, looking up and hissing, the momentum was terrifying. The tomb is a large hall room, with the golden body of Emperor Wu enshrined in the center, and the surrounding area is lined with countless treasures and foreign objects carried back from the Western Regions - priceless treasures scattered with stars, enough to crush the strongmen who roam the four seas on the banks of the Naxi River.
Accompanying Emperor Wu to rest here were his wives and favorite attendants. They took the poisoned wine, sang together with their masters, and were poured with mercury to preserve the remains for the eternal service at the feet of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. Among them, there are many beauties of the year, didn't they also present a peerless dance to Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty in the Spring Garden, and the face of the country and the city? Now only well-preserved bodies remain, forever solidifying their alluring faces.
2. The funeral system stems from superstition and blind obedience
The ancients regarded death as life, wishful thinking that they could continue to enjoy the glory and wealth of the world in the underworld. The so-called nine grades and hundreds of officials, all because the class status after death can be properly arranged and taken care of, so they build a large number of buildings, build mausoleums, and transplant the former wealth and luxury to the underground state of the dead.
The mausoleum should not only offer all kinds of gold, silver and jewelry, but also all the belongings of the living life should also be buried together, so that after death, there will be no desire as before death. However, this is not enough, the dead have to suppress the living to bury them, in order to demonstrate the authority and honor of the living. Countless concubines and maids, eunuchs, servants, slaves, and even children who were powerless could not escape this catastrophe and were buried alive in this eternal night underground palace.
Such a brutal burial system originated from the ignorance and blind worship of the ancients about the afterlife. They are convinced that there is an afterlife after death, and that everything in the afterlife will be laid out according to the layout of the yang world. Therefore, if an emperor does not even have a slave, is it too shabby? Therefore, there is the practice of burying the living. The burial of the living undoubtedly reflects the contempt and enslavement of the common people by the ruling class in that dark age.
In their eyes, those concubines, maids, slaves and servants are just a private property in their own name, and like treasures, they should be buried with their masters. They blindly believed that they would have the same power and glory after death as they did in life, and never thought about the cruelty and inhumanity of such practices. The martyrs are nothing more than sacrifices, sacrifices for them to enjoy after death.
Perhaps the saddest of all are the innocent women who were buried. They have been treated as playthings since birth, and they are just satisfied with the temporary desire of the male owner before they die, and they have to be martyred for it after death to show the dignity of the male owner. Their power to control life and death has never been in their own hands, and they are born to be poor creatures who serve as foils and pastimes for men.
3. The method of martyrdom is cruel and excessive
The burial of the living can be described as the greatest annihilation and distortion of human nature. In order to ensure that the deceased can still enjoy the services of the living in the underworld, people have resorted to all kinds of cruelty to the martyrs.
One of the most common methods is to inflict heavy injuries with various torture instruments, wait for the deceased to die, and then inject mercury to preserve the body. The so-called mercury was regarded as an immortal thing in the eyes of the ancients, which can make the physical body last forever. Therefore, they often use it instead of the fountain of immortality in the underworld, injecting mercury into the body and mouth of the martyr, in an attempt to achieve the effect of immortality.
As for how to inject mercury, the means are even more outrageous. Some will peel off the skin and flesh of the mourners, and then apply mercury to the skin; Some will forcibly choke the mouth and nose of the mourner while he still has a breath, and then pour mercury into the mouth and nose until the mouth and nose are rolling out. What is even more brutal is simply to disembowelment and pour mercury into the internal organs while the martyr is still alive.
Either way, it's disgusting and hateful. Skinned flesh raw, suffocated alive, or died of abdominal torture, anyone suffers from pain and inability to survive. However, this is far from the whole brutality of the funeral system, and there is a means that may be even more brutal for the martyrs.
This is the process of burying the mourners alive in the tomb and waiting to die of suffocation. Unlike other means, this process is slow and long, and it allows the mourners to rejoice in the fear and despair of the underworld. For some prominent palace maids, their fate is even more miserable.
One spring day, the palace of Afang was full of flowers. The young and promising palace maids were beaten and tortured by the torture room just because they accidentally spilled a drop of wine. When one of them had only one breath left, he ordered him to be buried alive under the house. That year, the palace maid who was young and greedy for sunshine started a long and painful road of waiting for death.
Fourth, the desperate and helpless experience of the living in the tomb
The living buried in the tomb are destined to spend their last days in despair and fear. The interior of the tomb was lonely, dark and cold, the air was thin, and there was no food or water. These originally vibrant lives can now only survive in the shadow of death.
When the entrance to the tomb is completely sealed, the light inside is completely blocked. The living can only rely on the faint visibility of the candles in the tomb, but this also dooms them to a dead darkness when the candles are extinguished. In this eternal night-like environment, the breathless darkness will become their permanent companion, slowly eating away at what remains of life.
Even more terrifying is the gradual thinning of the air in the tomb. Over time, oxygen is depleted and carbon dioxide accumulates. Wheezing became more and more difficult, and the lungs seemed to be tortured in some way, and as soon as they were dying, the continuous coughing sound sounded empty in the tomb.
And in this case, they have to endure the torture of thirst. There is no water source in the tomb, only a small amount of water is obtained from the body's own metabolism. However, when the dehydration of the body becomes more and more severe, the mouth is dry, and the heat is drenched, they will have to drink their own urine to quench their thirst for a while.
In addition to this, cold and loneliness are also unbearable burdens. The tomb was cold and damp, and the cold invaded with nowhere to hide. They can only snuggle up to each other for warmth, but it is difficult to get much warmth from each other. Physically and mentally exhausted, they can only call and comfort each other in loneliness, but they are powerless to watch their companions die one by one.
In this environment, all the living who were buried without exception would fall into a mental panic. Surrounded only by darkness and the breath of death, they are buried alive here, waiting for the same fate to befall them. Despair and helplessness will eat like a poisonous snake at their last remaining life, making them the walking dead before death comes.
Fifth, the progress of civilization has gradually stopped cruel and bad habits
However, no darkness can last forever. With the change of times, the germination of new ideas and the progress of civilization, people have finally begun to reflect on and abandon this cruel habit.
The first to see the light was the influence of the Buddha's thoughts. Buddhism advocates compassion, regards all living beings as equal, and emphasizes salvation and compassion. Lao Tzu put forward the concept of "those who are reborn and hurt the living, mourn", believing that killing is a crime. Baptized by these ideas, people began to question the inhumanity of the burial of the living.
At the same time, social change and the rise of a new class have paved the way for the eradication of old habits. The change of feudal dynasty and the implementation of the new imperial examination system enabled the common people to change their fate through study. The rise of the scholarly class was enlightened and insightful, and their voices helped to abolish the bad rules.
In the end, the rise of the concept of the rule of law and the soundness of the law drew an end to the eradication of the funeral system. Some wise monarchs began to issue edicts prohibiting the burial of living people and explicitly punishing violators. For example, Tang Gaozong issued an edict: "In the future, no living people are allowed to be buried together, and the offender will be severely punished." Similar bans were introduced in other dynasties.
Once the legal red line is drawn, it will be strictly enforced. With the passage of time, the old custom of funeral was destroyed under the impact of new ideas, and finally completely disappeared in the whole society. Even among the people, there are still traces of the old habits lingering, but they are no longer the crazy scene of the past.
It can be said that the reason why the dregs of the burial of the living was able to come to an end was due to the mutual promotion of many factors--- ideological enlightenment, class change, rule of law construction, etc., which finally swept it into the garbage heap of history. However, the root cause of this long-ingrained habit that has persisted for thousands of years is still worth pondering.