History can't bear to look at the complete collection

Chapter 90 Cruel Punishment 1
Car splitting is not five horses torn corpses

Car cracking, a kind of horrific torture, everyone is terrified to hear it, and turns pale upon hearing it.Shang Yang, a statesman in the middle of the Warring States period, because of reforms, violated the status and interests of the old aristocrats, arousing their resentment.

The ancients always believed that "the body is the skin of the parents", and it is not allowed to be mutilated or cut up. Once many people are convicted, they often beg "reward a whole corpse", and the murderer promises "reward him a whole corpse", It is a great favor.But this "dividing the body by five horses" not only makes people "headed in a different place", but also has four limbs on one side. It is no wonder that some criminals will shudder when they think of this punishment name, because this torture not only makes the deceased extremely painful physically at the last moment, but also mentally prepared. suffer.Under normal circumstances, it is dedicated to rebellious people such as treason and usurper.

It is generally believed that chariot splitting is the five-horse dismemberment, that is, the head and limbs of a person are tied to five chariots, put on horses, and pulled in different directions, so that the human body is forcibly torn into five pieces, so it is called car crack.

However, there are records about car splitting in the "Criminal Law Annals" and related historical books in the past dynasties, but there is no "five horses to divide the body" punishment. Is the car splitting "five horses to divide the body"?We can find answers from ancient books.

In Shuowen Jiezi by Xu Shen of the Han Dynasty, there are sayings such as "rolling, car cracking people", "cutting method, car cracking", etc., comparing car cracking, chopping, and rolling with the same meaning, that is, cutting people with sharp weapons limbs.In the pre-Qin period, when criminals or enemies were publicly executed, no matter whether they killed them with knives or swords or shot them with bows and arrows, they would dismember their bodies and hang them high for public display.It can be seen that car splitting refers to dismembering the corpse of an enemy or criminal with a knife and axe, not tearing people alive.

Moreover, in the process from execution to public display, the order of the ancients was first the owl's head and then the corpse, as in "Historical Records?"Qin Shihuang Benji" said: "All the (Miao) poisons, etc., 20 people are all headed, and the car is split to give a favor." It can be seen that the corpse when the car was split was already headless, and it could not be decomposed by five horses.

We may have such a question, since "che crack" means cutting off a person's body with a sharp weapon, why is the word "che" used?
According to expert analysis, the word "che" in Che Li does not refer to the car, but some ancient characters have been corrupted in the shape change and become the word "che".Whether it is a cutting tool used for labor or killing the enemy, it is not a car. Therefore, the structure of the character "Zhan" in philology cannot be explained. It is probably because the font at that time was changed from ancient, It is caused by corruption in the process of changing Xiaozhuan and Li style.In short, the word "carriage" that is split does not mean a horse-drawn carriage, and the so-called "split car" has nothing to do with "dividing the corpse by five horses".

So, where did "five horses divide corpses" come from?
It turns out that since Emperor Jing of the Han Dynasty reformed the criminal law, the truth about some death sentences before Emperor Jing gradually faded away and was eventually lost.Some ancient books have been tampered with by later generations. For example, in "Nanyanlu", there is a sentence "Che Cracking Song is outside the East Gate", which has been changed to "Wu Che Cracking" in "Taiping Yulan", and in the photocopy of Zhonghua Book Company. After saying "crack it with five carts", readers will inevitably have various misunderstandings as they look at the past with the present.In addition, the depiction of this punishment in folk literature and classical novels played a direct role in dissemination. For example, "Eastern Zhou Dynasty Chronicles" said that Shang Yang was "divided into five oxen", which is the close source of the saying "five horses divided into corpses".In modern times, the "five horse theory" has been widely spread, so that Hong Xiuquan promulgated the punishment of "five horses to divide the corpse" as the official punishment of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. This is unique in the history of Chinese legal system.

Whether it is "Cracked Car" or "Five Horses Divided Corpse", they all directly point to the bloody massacre scene, reflecting the cruelty of the ruling class at that time.

(End of this chapter)