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Source: China Discipline Inspection and Supervision News Author: Romuhe
The six characters of "GongshengMing, Lianshengwei" in the "Official Proverbs" are generally believed to have been added by the famous ming dynasty courtiers and rich people.
There is a record of Sun Ke in the Qing Jiaqing Ben "Fufeng County Chronicle" Volume 9 "Famous Eunuchs", which fully quotes the inscription of his "Self-Police Monument".
Xi'an Forest of Steles Snow Scene. The original stele of "Cao Quan Stele" and "Guan Zhen Stele" are all collected in the Forest of Steles in Xi'an. (This picture is selected from the official website of the Forest of Stone Steles Museum in Xi'an)
The land of the Three Qins, famous monuments gathered. In the "Qin Feng Song Lian - Shaanxi Honest Government Cultural Relics Exhibition" currently on display by the Shaanxi History Museum, the inscriptions of the past dynasties are dazzling. We chose three inscriptions from them to appreciate the story of incorruptibility behind them.
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Official Motto: For the way of officials, it is only public and honest
If you want to count the famous incorruptible government inscriptions in history, this side of the "Official Motto" must not be forgotten, and it has been mentioned many times to this day. The main body of this stele is the following proverb: "Officials are not afraid of my strictness but fear my honesty, the people do not obey my ability but obey my father, the public does not dare to be slow, the honest officials do not dare to deceive, the public is wise, and the honest is powerful." "For the way of the official is without him, just and incorruptible."
The famous Chinese literary criticism work "Wenxin Carved Dragon" defines the genre of "Zhen" in this way: "Zhen, so attack and prevent disease, Yu Needle Stone also." "The role of proverbs is to warn the world, so it must give people a tingling sensation, just like acupuncture, without a sting, it is difficult to receive the effect of the whole body. The official proverbs, which are centered on the way of the official, have a long history in China, dating back to the Western Zhou Dynasty, and by the Ming and Qing dynasties, they have become a grand view. These thirty-six-word proverbs, short and concise and profound, are popular to this day.
This proverb makes it difficult to clearly identify who its author is. In the process of text shaping, the contributions of Cao Duan and Nian Fu of the Ming Dynasty were more obvious.
Cao Duan was a theorist of the early Ming Dynasty who held the position of "Xuezheng" in Huozhou, Shanxi. The Ming Dynasty set up professors in the government and xuezheng in the prefectures, "in charge of teaching the students to belong", and the official rank was not high. Cao Duan did his best for Xuezheng's job, so that the people of Huozhou could not forget him for a long time. Shi Zai, Cao Duan taught Huo Zhou, "all the students obeyed his teachings, the people of the county were transformed, and the shame was disputed." Later, Cao Duanding worried about returning to his hometown of Shichi Shouxiao, huozhou students still came to ask for advice. At the end of the period of filial piety, Cao Duan supplemented Puzhou Xuezheng, and after the expiration of his term, the people of Puzhou and Huozhou scrambled to ask Cao Duan to come to Honshu, and because Huozhou's request reached the imperial court one step ahead of Puzhou, the imperial court was invited from Huozhou.
In the twenty-second year of Yongle (1424), Cao Duan's student Gao Sheng in Huozhou taught him the Tongzhi of Xi'an Province, and he specially went to Puzhou to visit his teacher and ask him for advice on the way of being an official. Cao Duan replied, "Its fairness is incorruptible!" The ancients were cloudy, the officials were not afraid of my strictness but feared my honesty, the people did not obey my ability and obeyed my father, the public did not dare to slow down, and the honest people did not dare to deceive. "This account is derived from the CaoDuan Chronology." The three words "Ancient People's Cloud" remind us that this official proverb is not cao Duan's creation, but it is difficult to trace which ancient person is clouded. Cao Duan quoted this official proverb of the ancients, compared with the thirty-six-character official proverb, except for the last six words, there is only a one-word difference.
The six words that put the finishing touches on "GongShengMing, Lian Shengwei" were added by Nian Fu. Who is this young man? Nian Fu and Yu Qian, who "are not afraid of shattering his bones and bones, and must remain innocent in the human world", became officials in the same dynasty. The rich man has a strong personality, so he offends the powerful, and Yu Qian often defends it. In the first year of Jingtai (1450), Nianfu was promoted to the position of left deputy capital of the Metropolitan Imperial Household. The Metropolitan Inspection Bureau was the supervisory body of the Ming Dynasty, with the imperial history of the left and right capitals, the imperial history of the left and right vice capitals, and the imperial history of the left and right capitals, and the position of the imperial history of the capital was not trivial, "the office was specialized in correcting and impeaching hundred divisions, clarifying the wrongs, and supervising all the ways." Nian Fu was instructed to go to Datong to sort out military affairs, but he did not want to be falsely accused by Xiao Xiao, saying that he was "exclusively in charge of the government", and one of his manifestations was that on the day Nian Fu arrived, he and Guo Deng, the chief military officer of Datong and Dingxiang Boguo Deng, sat down and held the official documents" and Ding Xiangbo was a count, and Nian Fu did not take Guo Deng in his eyes at all. Today we can still read Yu Qian's argument for the young rich, yu Qian said that since "Du Yushi is an official of the wind and discipline, and has no unity with Hou Bo, and is the governor of Qin, when he is on the left side of the general soldier, how can he not sit side by side?" Although the young and rich people encountered many obstacles in Datong, their meritorious deeds in promoting the advantages and eliminating the disadvantages and punishing corrupt officials were not small, which also laid the foundation for his reputation in history.
In the second year of Tianshun (1458), Nianfu patrolled Shandong, and the people of Shandong were already familiar with the prestige of Nianfu, so Haoyi relented. Nian Fu also did one more thing during his tenure in Shandong, and in a corner of the Ya Bureau, Nian Fu erected a stone stele with the above thirty-six-character proverb inscribed on the stone stele. In the years that followed, the stone stele erected by Nian Fu was buried, discovered and copied from Shandong to Shaanxi.
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Self-police monument: Shuowang swears an oath to the people
Officials were constantly vigilant. The intention of the official proverb is self-vigilance, the ancients not only read the official proverbs, write the official proverbs, but also engrave the official proverbs on stone tablets, more cautiously, but also hold a serious ceremony to recite the official proverbs, in such an occasion, the official proverbs are oaths.
The Fufeng County Museum in Baoji City has a Ming Dynasty "Shuowang Self-Vigilance Oath Stele", which can be seen in this exhibition. The oath was concise and clear, and catchy: "Zhang Guan put the official, originally thought it was for the people." The law of keeping officials, honesty and public diligence. Recite the four virtues and be born without being burdened. Greed for money harms others, and disasters will catch them. Here we need to briefly explain what the "four virtues" are. The Tang Dynasty's canonical system was praised by posterity, and the criteria for evaluating officials in the Tang Dynasty were "four virtues and twenty-seven most", and "twenty-seven most" officials with different functions had their own requirements, such as "ceremonial ceremonies, moving and combining classics, and being the most important for ceremonial officials", and "four virtues" were requirements for all officials, that is, "morality and righteousness, prudence and clarity, fairness can be called, and diligence is slack". The "four virtues" of the Tang Dynasty had a profound impact on later generations, and can be said to be the basic knowledge of officials in ancient times.
Who erected this oath monument, and why did you erect it? A passage after the oath tells more details about the obelisk. Originally, this square monument was erected by Sun Ke of Fufengzhi County in the thirty-seventh year of Ming Jiajing (1558) lunar calendar, and the engraver was Zhao Congzhou, a county citizen. We know very little about this Fufeng Zhi County, we have found out the "Fufeng County Chronicle" repaired during the Jiaqing period, and there is less than a hundred words of introduction to Sun Ke in the "Famous Eunuch Zhi", he wrote the word Rude, a native of Pu'an, Guizhou, who once made an oath monument, and the stele is stored in the County God Temple, in addition, from some other scattered materials, we know that Sun Ke once repaired the Fufeng City Pool, and repaired the county chronicle in the year of the erection of the monument, but unfortunately it is now dead.
Four hundred years later, we only have this oath tablet to touch Sun Ke's heart. He said that he was the asset of the Chinese people, and that erecting this monument "does not dare to be a lawyer as well", but he understands that a person must be vigilant in order to achieve something, and he erected the monument in the hope that his heart can be afraid and not indulge, "the night is not in the daytime." "Night qi" is a concept proposed by Confucianism, reflecting a kind of time consciousness of the ancients, during the day we are busy with livelihood, it is difficult to leave utilitarianism in everything we think, and at night we break away from the various mundane affairs of the day and return to our original hearts. Night Qi was first proposed by Mencius, who advocated that people's hearts are inherently good, saying that if a person does not exist in night qi, he loses his heart of benevolence and righteousness, "then his violation of animals and animals is not far away." Sun Ke said that "the night air is not confined to the day", hoping that the clear qi that arises at night can last until the day, so that the clear air can run through the whole day and handle government affairs with a clean attitude.
Sun Ke swore an oath for two days, that is, the first and fifteenth days of the first month of each month. Many ceremonial events are scheduled for these two days. The school worships Confucius and other sages on the two days of Synowang, and the township covenant meeting is also on the two days of Shuowang. Fufeng land belongs to Guanzhong, which is the birthplace of ancient Chinese township covenants. As early as the Northern Song Dynasty, the Lantian Lü clan promoted the township covenant with the purpose of "persuading each other in virtue and industry, regulating faults, intersecting etiquette and customs, and sympathizing with each other in tribulations", which had a far-reaching impact on future generations.
For the officials have official proverbs, there are township covenants for governing the townships, there are family rules for the family, and Chinese pay attention to abiding by certain rules in everything, only in this way can they have a clean wind and stay for a long time.
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Cao Quan monument: the virtue of filial piety is unforgettable for a long time
The Cao Quan Stele is a famous monument in the history of Chinese calligraphy. This stone stele was erected in the second year of the Eastern Han Dynasty (185), buried underground for a thousand years, and was revived in the Ming Dynasty's Wanli Period (1573-1620). Once unearthed, this stele caused a sensation in the calligraphy community.
If you have ever stood in front of the Cao Quan Monument, you know that the word "sensational" is not an exaggeration. The Qing Dynasty epigrapher Wan Jing said: "The Cao Quan Stele is beautiful and flying, not bound, not rushed, and the xun shen pin is also." "No restraint, no rush" embodies a kind of neutral beauty that is just right. "Cao Quan Stele" is a classic of Han Li, the glyph is flat, the most interesting thing is that when the writer writes long horizontally, the pen is like a silkworm head, and the pen is like a goose's tail, elegant and flexible. As our eyes sweep back and forth over Cao Quanbei, the words seem to be transformed into dancers dressed in Deep Han Dynasty clothes, dancing to the music in a courtyard paved with black stones. From this, it is not difficult to understand why calligraphy is also a visual art.
The artists who created the exquisite visual landscape of Cao Quanbei, we don't know their names at all. In fact, when we are only obsessed with the calligraphy of cao quanbei, we even forget to ask who Cao Quan is and why we want to erect a monument for him.
Following the inscription, we know that Cao Quan, the character Jingquan, a native of Xiaogu County, Dunhuang County, Eastern Han Dynasty, was a beloved official. Cao Quan was born in a family of filial piety, which was a subject for the selection of talents in the Han Dynasty, "filial piety, that is, the parents who do good deeds; the honest, that is, the clean and incorruptible people.". Cao Quan's great-grandfather, great-grandfather, and grandfather were all elected as filial piety, and if Cao Quan's father had not died young, he should have been elected as filial piety. Cao Quan was studious since childhood, serving his uncle, grandmother, and stepmother, and there was a beautiful legend of "heavy relatives to celebrate Cao Jingquan" in the countryside.
In the second year of Jianning (169), Cao Quan was elected as a filial piety, and the official worshiped "Sima of the Western Regions", which was an official position set up by the Eastern Han Court to manage the Western Regions, just at this time Shule rebelled, Cao Quan led the army to quell the rebellion, and threatened the Western Regions, the inscription specifically mentioned that when Cao Quan wanted the class to return to the dynasty, "the kingdoms were left behind, and two million", which was a considerable amount of gifts, how did Cao Quan deal with it? "Bookkeepers" will register all the gift money in the official's booklet, and do not take a single article into the private pocket.
After returning from the Western Regions, Cao Quan experienced a period of loss in his life, "Seven Years of Hidden Hermitage Lane", and was again elected as Filial Piety in the sixth year of Guanghe (183). The following year, the Yellow Turban Army revolted, and there were also county people in Gaoyang County (present-day Heyang, Weinan) in Guanzhong, "burning the city temple, harassing the people, and people are uneasy", Cao Quan was ordered to come to Gaoyang to serve as a county order. After quelling the chaos, Cao Quan worked very meticulously and tried his best to restore the daily life of the people. He first paid attention to the most vulnerable groups in the county, "consoling for the elderly, raising widows and widows", buying rice with his own money and giving it to the elderly, weak, blind and deaf who lacked food at home. Cao Quan's eldest daughter, named Tao Wan, also participated in the work of An Min after the chaos, and she boiled an ointment to distribute to those injured in the war. Those who had left their hometowns because of the war, after hearing about Cao Quan's favorable government, went home one after another, "those who opposed (returned) were like clouds", the labor force increased, the fields would not be abandoned, and the good years of wind and rain were smooth, "the years were fruitful". Cao Quan's last consideration was the construction of a larger scale project, he presided over the repair of the city that had been damaged by the flood, and expanded the official building, all of which did not bring trouble to the people.
Cao Quan's series of favors in Gaoyang touched the officials Wang Chang and Wang Bi, with whom they worked, and they "published Shi Jigong together" in the second year of Zhongping (185).
After many viewers have seen the stele, they turn to other famous monuments, so they ignore the stele yin of "Cao Quan Stele". The stele adds a plot of the story of this stele: this stele was built by Wang Chang, Wang Bi and dozens of other people, and the place of origin, name, and amount of donation of the donors were listed one by one, and the donations were more than 1200 yuan, and the less 200 yuan, no matter how much the amount, everyone was voluntary. From this, it can be seen that Cao Quan's prestige is high.
What we see is a stone stele, and behind it is the people's reputation for clean officials and honest officials. in Romukh