Chapter 1062 Original Intention
Zhou Zhi couldn't help but smile. Being able to ask such a question showed that Wu Guiye's Chinese culture was already several steps ahead of ordinary people.
However this is not enough.
So he said: "This is what Chinese studies are like. A piece of "Guo Feng" may have a deep cultural and social background behind it. What Mr. Wu put forward is indeed related to Confucius' thoughts on collecting the "Book of Songs" The starting point and the logical issues of academic theory can 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 King Zhou was an opponent of the system of human sacrifice, but King Wu was a supporter of the system of human sacrifice?”
"I think there is no need to rush to a conclusion. Let's first take a look at the original text of "The Oath of Shepherd." There is no answer to the sacrifice; the king, his parents and his younger brother have been abandoned in a faint manner, but they have committed many sins in the four directions and fled. It is a letter and an envoy, and it is for the officials and officials to be cruel to the people and to rape the merchants. "
"It can be seen that the first sin of King Wu was that he only told women what was right. Use it, faint and abandon it." Zhou Zhi turned around and wrote down this sentence, and then began to explain. : "Wei means only, faint means contempt, Jue Tongjue, and Si is a name for sacrifice, which refers to worshiping ancestors."
"So the meaning of this sentence is: Yin Shou only He who listens to the woman's opinions but not other people's opinions, despises and abandons the sacrifices to ancestors, Therefore, it is the biggest sin.”
“But does King Wu’s sacrifice refer to the human sacrifice system? Say, 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 and shredded grains as sacrifices. ”
Huang Ruishanli. Ke pointed out: "But actual archaeological discoveries show that there were many cases of human sacrifice in the Zhou Dynasty. Didn't slaves appear in the Tomb of Duke Qin and the Tomb of King Qi?"
"Yes, human beings Martyrdom continued to occur from time to time until the Qing Dynasty." Zhou Zhi said: "But we should note that the oracle bone documents and "Zhou Rites" are both official. The documentation of rituals, in other words, is the content of the national system. "
"The progressive significance of "Zhou Rites" is that it provides a normative document for everyone's code of conduct. It may not be able to do so. It prohibits human sacrifice from happening again, but it declares the illegality of the human sacrifice system and makes it a legal system regulated by the state and recognized by the people of the country. "Moral behavior" has become a behavior that is denied by the state and not recognized by the people, and is an immoral behavior."
"Even if there are rulers who perform human sacrifices, the people of the world can follow the "Rites of Zhou". , pointing out that such behavior is 'wrong', this is what Confucius believed - 'Feng Tianxia'."
"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 At a loss what to do, in the end the world Chaos. "
"Even if Duke Zhou was an important figure in destroying Shang and establishing a system like the Zhou Dynasty, it would never be possible for him to destroy a system as strict as "Zhou Rites" in the third year after Shang. ”
“It was so successful. We can reasonably believe that it has been tried and implemented in its territory for a long period of time, perhaps even since the period of King Wen."
"So Zhou Ke. Business, in fact, belongs to advanced social civilization. Victory, its improvement in the etiquette system, is precisely the reason why Zhou State can win the support of many vassal states and Fang states. "
"How to explain Confucius's saying, "He who started the figurines has no successors." What?" 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 1 of King Hui of Liang, Section 4". "There is fat in the cooks, fat horses in the stables, and hunger among the people. Color, there are hungry insects in the wild, they will lead the beasts to eat people. Animals eat each other, and people are evil. The evil of cannibalism lies in the fact that he is the parent of the people! Zhongni said: "The person who first made the figurines has no descendants." It is because they resemble people and use them. How can they make the people starve to death? "
“Regarding this passage, the general explanation is that the ruler makes the horses in the stable live better than the common people, then he Confucius said: "The first person to make pottery figurines must have no descendants!" Since he made human substitutes for use, why would he let the people under his rule starve? What about death?”
“Many people believe that Confucius’s words are a clear sign of his stubborn insistence on the system of human sacrifice. Proof, directly translate this sentence into 'Those who make pottery figurines to die on behalf of others will definitely be extinct?'"
"But haven't you discovered that if this sentence is understood and translated in this way, then Does this passage in "Mencius" contain grammatical logic problems? ”
"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'. A kind of hypocrisy, right?”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
"Since we think 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 them', Why did Mencius use this sentence as an argument to support his point of view? "
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 supporting statement in "Book of Rites·Tan Gong". That article also recorded a sentence of Confucius , 'It is said that those who eat cud are kind, and those who make figurines are unkind'."
"What is a chuling? 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 :'The figurines are puppets with faces and features that resemble real people.' Huang Kanshu:' The mechanical movement is so active that it is called figurines. "Kong Yingda's "Justice" says: "The wood is made of human beings, but it starts automatically, just like a living person, but it has no spiritual knowledge." "Pi Cang" says: "The figurines are wooden figures for burial. It is called "figurines" because they can jump through barriers. It is too human-like, and the rulers use it to replace human beings in burials, just because "it is necessary to do it, but it is impossible", which is also a sign of unkindness. It is far inferior to using figurines when they have the ability to use them. The spiritual ruler is good."
"This is from "Mencius King Hui of Liang". Ju Zhongni's words should be understood in conjunction with "Book of Rites·Tan Gong", which shows that Confucius not only opposed human sacrifice, but also opposed the sacrifice of terracotta warriors."
"And Mencius regarded it as an objection to the 'remnants of the people'. It becomes a matter of course to use strong evidence.”
"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' ’ was defeated and eliminated, not to mention the ruler who caused the people to starve to death? ”
< br>“Only this understanding and translation is consistent with the Confucian thoughts passed down by Zhou Gong, 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)