In recent years, there has been a wave of popular historiography in the history circle of Taiwan Province Province, and websites such as story, Taiwan Province Province Bar, and History Store, which are run by historians or graduate students, have been established one after another. Although China's ancient themes are rare, Qin Shihuang, an ancient celebrity in China, found a stage in the publishing industry. Since 20 10, historians such as Lu and Lu have written trilogy with Qin Shihuang as the main clue, which has attracted the attention of historians and the public. This year, the Taiwan Province Provincial Commercial Press reprinted Zhang Fentian's Biography of Qin Shihuang, which undoubtedly provided an important text for everyone to discuss Qin Shihuang again, and it is worth recommending.
Although there is only one volume, there are nearly 700 pages, and the content is not complete. The author describes Qin Shihuang's life with chapters such as family history, submission, pro-government, unity, claiming to be emperor, extravagance and ending. The first chapter starts with Qin Shihuang's family background, summarizes the history of Qin's rise and explains the historical background of Qin Shihuang's actions. Although Lu wrote the Biography of Qin Shihuang first and then the Biography of Qin Shihuang in the opposite order, his problem consciousness is completely consistent. The fourth chapter, "Unification", describes Qin Shihuang's sweeping of Liuhe and summarizes the respective historical backgrounds of the six eastern countries. Therefore, Qin Shihuang is not only a personal biography, but also a history of Qin during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. You shouldn't, can't and won't only see Qin Shihuang when reading this book.
Our vision is really not limited to Qin Shihuang. The author tries to explore the relationship between the important historical background of the Qin Dynasty, such as legalism, bureaucracy and law, hierarchical society and land tax, and Qin Shihuang, which is divided into ideological, institutional, social, economic, legal, engineering and life chapters.
Cruel and heartless is the first impression of Qin Shihuang, and the author has no objection. However, the author divides Qin Shihuang's tyrannical and immoral behavior into social tyrannical behavior, contemporary tyrannical behavior, institutional tyrannical behavior and personal tyrannical behavior, and points out that the political system at that time was monarchy and the social structure was aristocratic society. The relationship between people is very different from today's democratic system and subaltern society. If we ignore the political system and social structure at that time, we will criticize Qin Shihuang's tyrannical and immoral behavior. The combination of subjective moral evaluation and objective historical analysis here has greatly deepened our understanding of Qin Shihuang's tyranny and cruelty, and also let us know how different it will be to judge whether the characters have historical depth.
The harshness of the Qin law is also the usual impression of ordinary people, but before the Qin law was unearthed, this impression was actually based on the historical memory and writing of the Qin dynasty by the Han people. It is not based on first-hand historical data and cannot accurately explain the relationship between Qin people and law. According to the legal bamboo slips unearthed from the Qin Tomb in Sleeping Tiger Land, Yunmeng, Hubei Province, it is pointed out that there are some provisions in the Qin law that are in line with the spirit of modern legislation, such as distinguishing intentional or negligent crimes, being lenient in surrender, falsely accusing and framing, and not being criminally responsible for minors. However, many seemingly cruel crimes and punishments of modern people actually existed in the laws of Han, Wei, Jin and Tang Dynasties, and Qin law should not be solely responsible. The real feature of the relationship between Qin people and law is that officials are teachers and punishment is the basis. The imperial edict law promulgated by the emperor is the guiding principle of people's life.
The above two examples reflect the author's different views on the politics of the Qin Dynasty. In fact, the author, Mr. Zhang Fentian, is a professor in the history department of Nankai University, who has studied China's traditional political thought. The Rise of the Empire also has a lot of space to analyze important concepts in China's traditional political thought, such as "destiny" and "emperor", which is quite helpful for readers to understand Qin Shihuang. Qin Shihuang leveled Zhou and Warring States, boasting that he had surpassed Huang Sanhe and Five Emperors, so he created the title of "Emperor" to show his unparalleled self. Emperor, a familiar concept, was extremely novel and special in Qin Dynasty. Qin Shihuang's creation faced a change and did all kinds of unprecedented things, and his production mentality was known from now on. The merits and demerits of what he has done are worth learning by future generations. Qin Shihuang is an eternal topic, which is still the case in 2 1 century.
The Biography of Qin Shihuang is the crystallization of the history of the 20th century, and history must be based on evidence. The author not only carefully analyzed the contents of the biographies of Qin Shihuang and other handed down documents, but also made full use of the cultural relics unearthed in the 20th century, such as the Qin bamboo slips of Sleeping Tiger Land, Fang Sheng of Shang Yang, Hu Fu of Yangling, Epang Palace archaeological sites and so on. The Biography of Qin Shihuang is an excellent step for readers to understand Qin Shihuang at the beginning of 2 1 century.
2 1 what is the annual meeting of the biography of Qin Shihuang at the end of the century? I can't predict the archaeological discoveries in Chinese mainland in the next 80 years, but I can point out that the excavation of Liye ancient city in Longshan, Hunan Province in 2002 will surely occupy a prominent position in the next historical record of Qin Shihuang. With what? 36,000 Qin bamboo slips were found in the ancient city of Liye.
20 1 2165438+1October1I started from Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, changed trains four or five times, and bumped on the Panshan highway for twelve hours before I arrived at Liye Town, Longshan County, Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Hunan Province, and the former site of Ganling County, Qindongting County. Only two buses leave Liye town every day. If you take the afternoon bus, you can't leave the mountainous area of Xiangxi that day, so you can only spend the night in Jishou or Fenghuang Ancient City. In terms of transportation, Liye undoubtedly belongs to a paradise, or a foreign land. This is the corner of the border of the Qin empire in the ancient city of Liye. Therefore, these 36,000 Qin bamboo slips are not the top secret files collected in the treasury of Xianyang, the capital, and there is no record of another version of Qin Shihuang's death in the Biography of Qin Shihuang in Han bamboo slips of Peking University. However, because the ancient city of Liye is only a county town covering an area of about 40,000 square meters, which is less than one tenth of Tiananmen Square, Ganling County is only an obscure corner of the Daqin Empire, and Liye bamboo slips are the best test paper for the imperial edicts of the First Qin Dynasty and the various systems of the Qin Empire.
In Reno. 8-46 1 Qin changed its name to the party, which shows how important the word "Shu" in the biography of Qin Shihuang is in translating into specific policies. In the past, we only knew that the six countries were the goal of Qin Shihuang's reunification. Now we know that variant characters, dialects and even inconsistent appellations are the goals of Qin Shihuang's reunification. Who wants Qin Shihuang to care whether the first half of the word "emperor" is "white" or "self"? Who wants Qin Shihuang to forbid the Chu people to continue to call the livestock raised in the toilet at home "pigs"? From then on, they must change the habit of calling Qin people "Bi"? Qin Shihuang should not only unify the writing, but also unify the language. The 36,000-li bamboo slips in Qin Long truly reflect the high consistency of official documents' language. The policy of writing and speaking by Qin Shihuang has been truly implemented in the vast land of China, even in Ganling, a small county town in the southern wasteland.
According to the Qin Bamboo Slips of Yuelu Academy, Qin Shihuang visited the Imperial Temple in Pulitai, one of the 36 counties, which seems to be the predecessor of the county temple in Han Dynasty, reflecting that the Puli Temple outside Chang 'an, the capital of Liu Bang, has its own origin and is not whimsical. Liye Bamboo Slips 8-1388-1748-5228-523 recorded the activities of officials in Ganling County, and this "temple" is probably the Taishang Temple in the bamboo slips of Yuelu Mountain, which proves that the Qin law is true. Even small counties in the barren hills in the south should set up Taishang Temple for regular sacrifices. Qin changed its name to the Party, established a career, and recorded that the emperor's sacrifice inherited the Emperor of Heaven, which meant that the emperor was equal to the Emperor of Heaven, Qin Shihuang was completely deified, and so was Taidi. According to the evidence of Yuelu Qin Bamboo Slips and Liye Qin Bamboo Slips, it can be inferred that the sacrificial ceremony used in Taishang Temple in Ganling is the one used in the original Tiandi Temple. We can even speculate that Qin Shihuang not only established the Emperor Temple in Ganling County, but also established his own First Emperor Temple. When Qin Shihuang was alive, temples of the First Emperor were set up in various counties, and local officials were required to offer sacrifices to the First Emperor himself with the emperor's sacrificial ceremony. There is no reason-Qin Shihuang was a god in the Qin Dynasty, and the Qin Empire was a country ruled by theocracy. The emperor's divine right is like the horizon, which seems to be the true meaning of the ancestral temple in Puli County, Qin Dynasty. If the latest opinions put forward according to the above-mentioned latest materials can be established, we can re-understand Qin Shihuang's mentality and purpose of creating the title of "Emperor" from this angle, and the Biography of Qin Shihuang at the end of 2 1 will become a biography of mortals.
If Qin Shihuang's religious thought is so extreme and his self-confidence is so inflated, it is not difficult to understand his almost tyrannical control over the mortal world. As repeatedly emphasized above, the traffic in the ancient city of Liye is extremely inconvenient, and Ganling is only a small county in the south of Chu's old land. However, in such a wild mountain where birds don't lay eggs, Qin Shihuang would rather send a large number of foreign garrison soldiers, a large number of foreign officials to rule, and a large number of foreign immigrants to live and drive all the local aborigines out of Ganling County to ensure the stability of the rule, rather than adopting a low-cost but effective confinement policy. If the mountainous areas of western Hunan were occupied by Wu Lingren after the Eastern Han Dynasty, then the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties were all local toast sites. Before the 20th century, the central dynasty had almost no effective rule over the mountainous areas of western Hunan, and the strong rule over Dongting County in Qin Dynasty was even more amazing. Since the southern mountainous areas are like this, how can the Qin Dynasty not strictly control the vast plains of the six eastern countries? Qin Shihuang's control and suppression of the broad masses of the people may have been unimaginable to scholars in the past.
Although Hino ancient city is small, it brings us the possibility of knowing something. A better biography of Qin Shihuang than Zhao Zheng's book must fully refer to the research results of Liye Qin bamboo slips. Qin Shihuang is an eternal topic, which makes us look forward to the 2 1 century.