Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1061 The Intention
Zhou Zhi couldn't help laughing. To be able to ask such a question, Wu Guiye's cultivation of Chinese culture has already surpassed the average person by several blocks.

However this is not enough.

So he said: "Guoxue is like this. A piece of "Guo Feng" may have a deep cultural background and social background. What Wu Laoda put forward is indeed related to Confucius's ideological starting point of collecting the "Book of Songs" and the logic of academic theory This issue can definitely be discussed.”

"Let's first talk about the issue of the "Muslim Oath". By the end of the Shang Dynasty, human sacrifice was already a backward system that violated human morality. But King Wu of Zhou proposed that King Zhou's failure to sacrifice was a major sin. Does that mean that Zhou The king is an opponent of the human sacrifice system, but King Wu is a supporter of the human sacrifice system?"

"I think there is no need to rush to a conclusion. Let's first read the original text of "The Oath of Shepherd"."

"The original text of "The Oath of Shepherd" is: Now the king of Shang accepts it, but only the woman's words are used. Faint and abandoned, the king's parents and younger brothers do not die, but the numerous sins in the four directions are escaped. This is worship. The chief is a messenger and a messenger, and he acts as a minister and a minister, so that he can be cruel to the people and treacherous to the merchants."

"It can be seen that King Wu proposed that the first sin of King Zhou was 'only women's words are used, and they are faint and wantonly worship.'" Zhou Zhi turned around and wrote this sentence down, and then began to explain: "Wei, is the only one." Meaning, "Hun" means contempt, Jue Tongjue, "Si" is the name of a kind of sacrifice, referring to offering sacrifices to ancestors."

"So the meaning of this sentence is: Yin Shou only listened to the opinions of women and did not listen to other people's opinions. He despised and abandoned the sacrifices to his ancestors, so it was the biggest sin."

"But does the sacrifice mentioned by King Wu refer to the human sacrifice system? The article does not clearly point out, and based on the content of the ritual and music system of the Zhou Dynasty, I can say with certainty that it is absolutely not."

"If we study the "Li" of Zhou, we can find that the oracle bone documents of the Shang Dynasty constantly mention such oracles as "If you kill a hundred Qiang people tomorrow, will you get the blessing of your ancestors?" In the "Li of Zhou", there is no such thing as Any content of human sacrifice, but requires the use of three animals or even chicken, fish, shredded grain, etc. as sacrifices.”

Huang Ruishan immediately put it forward: "But actual archaeological findings show that there were many cases of human sacrifice in the Zhou Dynasty. Didn't slaves appear in the Tomb of Qin Gong and the Tomb of King Qi?"

"Yes, human sacrifices continued to occur from time to time until the Qing Dynasty." Zhou Zhi said: "But we must note that the oracle bone documents and "Zhou Rites" are official sacrificial documents, which means that they are national systems. Content."

"The progressive significance of "Zhou Li" is that it provides a normative document of the code of conduct for all people. It may not be able to restrain human sacrifices from happening again, but it declares the illegality of the human sacrifice system, making it From the 'moral behavior' stipulated by the state and recognized by the people, it has become an unethical behavior that is denied by the state and disapproved by the people."

"Even if there are rulers who perform human sacrifices, the people of the world can point out that such behavior is 'wrong' based on the Rites of Zhou. This is what Confucius believed - 'Wind of the World'."

"Therefore, King Wu accused King Zhou of not sacrificing ancestors. He accused him of going from one extreme to another. There is even a possibility that he used 'ideological progress' as an excuse to do evil, and did not know how to adopt flexible and feasible methods to let the people of the country If you don’t know what to do, the world will eventually be in chaos.”

"Even if the Duke of Zhou was an important figure in destroying the Shang Dynasty and establishing the Zhou Dynasty system, it is impossible for a strict system such as the "Zhou Rites" to be formulated in the third year after he destroyed the Shang Dynasty."

"With such a mature social system, we can reasonably believe that it has been tried and implemented in its territory for a long period of time, perhaps even starting from the period of King Wen."

"So Zhou's defeat of Shang was actually a victory for advanced social civilization. Its improvement in etiquette was precisely the reason why Zhou was able to win the support of many vassal states and Fang states."

"Then how should we explain Confucius's saying 'The one who created the figurines has no successors'?" Wu Guiye still wanted an explanation.

Zhou Zhi smiled and said: "Then we still have to study it from the original text. This sentence actually comes from "Mencius: Chapter [-] of King Hui of Liang, Section [-]". "There is fat in the cooks, fat horses in the stables, and hunger among the people. Look, there are hungry weevils in the wild, and they lead the beasts to eat people. The animals eat each other, and people hate them. As parents of the people, the government cannot help but lead the beasts to eat people. The evil lies in the fact that they are parents of the people! Zhongni said: ' The person who first made the figurines had no descendants, because they were used to resemble humans, so how could they cause the people to starve to death?"

"Regarding this passage, the general explanation is that if the ruler allows the horses in the stable to live better than the common people, then he is not qualified to be a parent of the people. Confucius said: 'The first person to make pottery figurines must not There will be descendants!' Since you have made human substitutes for use, why do you let the people under your rule starve to death?"

"Many people believe that Confucius's words are proof of his stubborn adherence to the system of human sacrifice, and they directly translate this sentence into 'the one who makes pottery figurines instead of human sacrifices will surely be extinct, right?'"

"But haven't you discovered that if this sentence is understood and translated in this way, then there will be grammatical and logical problems in this passage in "Mencius"?"

"Extracting this sentence from Confucius, we can see that Mencius believes that 'using people like people' is a kind of progress, but this kind of progress has become a reality in the face of the reality of 'making the people starve to death'. Kind of hypocritical, right?”

Everyone nodded in agreement.

"Since it is considered that 'resembling people and using them' is a kind of progress, then if Confucius' 'the originator has no descendants' is a vicious curse on 'resembling people and using it', why did Mencius change this sentence How about using those words as arguments to support your own views?"

Eh?As a college student in the Chinese Department, inspired by Zhou Zhi, everyone easily realized this problem.

Zhou Zhi said: "To explain this problem, we have to continue to read the book, and then we can find a very important support in the "Book of Rites Tan Gong". That article also recorded a sentence of Confucius, 'It is said to be a cud spirit. Those who are kind are kind, but those who are figurines are unkind."

"What is a cowling? It is a straw man with a slightly human shape, and the original meaning of 'terracotta warriors' is not the terracotta warriors and horses we are familiar with now, but a kind of wooden man with complex mechanisms."

"Zheng Xuan's note: 'Figurines, even puppets, have faces and hair, and some resemble strangers.' Huang Kanshu: "The machinery is active, so it is called figurines." It starts spontaneously and is no different from a living person, but it has no spiritual knowledge. "Pi Cang" says: "The figurines are wooden figures. They were placed in funeral rites and can jump, hence the name."

"Confucius believed that 'terracotta' are too human-like, and the rulers buried them with them in place of human beings, just out of the words of 'doing what is necessary, but it is impossible'. ’, but it is better to use the ruler of the cud spirit."

"This quote from Zhongni in "Mencius: King Hui of Liang" should be understood in conjunction with "Book of Rites: Tan Gong". It shows that Confucius not only opposed human sacrifice, but even opposed the sacrifice of terracotta warriors."

"And it became natural for Mencius to use it as strong evidence against the 'remnants'."

"Therefore, the translation of this passage in "Mencius: King Hui of Liang" should be: Confucius said, 'The one who created the terracotta warriors has no descendants.' He believed that 'using them like people' is a kind of cruelty, which may make 'the terracotta warriors' 'If they are counterattacked and wiped out, how much more so when the rulers 'make the people starve to death'?"

"Only this understanding and translation is consistent with the Confucian thoughts passed down by Duke Zhou, Confucius, and Mencius, consistent with the evidence of "Book of Rites Tan Gong", and consistent with Mencius' thinking logic when he quoted this sentence."

(End of this chapter)