The reason for pre-Qin people to give up their wives
When mentioning the divorce system in ancient China, I am afraid that many people first think of the famous "seven outs", which is feudalism. Seven reasons why men legally divorced their wives. "Seven Outs" was first seen in the Book of Rites of Da Dai compiled by Dai De, a scholar of etiquette in the Western Han Dynasty. (Note: Dai Sheng's nephew, Dai Sheng, deleted "The Book of Rites of Da Dai" and compiled it into "The Book of Rites of Little Dai". The Confucian classic "Book of Rites"), the original text is "Women have seven deeds: go with their parents, go without children, go with adultery, go with jealousy, go with sickness, talk more, go with theft", and combine these seven behaviors Corresponding to the evil consequences that have risen to the moral level in turn, they are "reverse morality, peerless, chaotic race, chaotic family, cannot be with each other, divorce, and antagonism".
▌ Great Dairy Book of Rites
From today’s perspective, these seven reasons for divorcing the wife contained in the Scriptures of Rites are tyrannical, but they were not fabricated out of thin air by Confucian scholars in the Han Dynasty. It is really a summary of the contradictions in people's marriage life since the pre-Qin Dynasty. Judging from the existing historical data, the pre-Qin era can be regarded as one of the highest divorce rates in Chinese history. Whether it is the "Zuo Zhuan" which records the deeds of the nobles and the "Book of Songs" which reflects the lives of the lower classes, there is no shortage of records of divorce. And the reasons are often unthinkable. Men can "get out their wives" almost casually with an excuse.
For example, at the end of "Zuo Zhuan · Three Years of Gong Xi", it vividly describes the story of Qi Huangong divorced his wife in anger: "Qi Hou and Cai Ji went on a boat in a boat, swinging together. The public feared to change color; banned. So, no. Public anger, return to it." Qi Huan and his wife Cai Ji were boating in the palace. Cai Ji is a naughty woman. She made the boat sway back and forth, trying to scare Qi Huan Gong. Although Huan Gong was the overlord of the generation, he was sensitive and timid in life, and his face changed in an instant. In this way, because of a joke, Cai Ji, who was born with noble birth, was abandoned.
▌ Drawing by Cai Ji and Qi Huangong Feng Chenqing
With a king as a tiger, Cai Ji’s tragedy has some reasons. But in the pre-Qin noble class, there were women who were dismissed because they were too capable. "Historical Records·Xunli Biography" contains: "Dr. Lu is also a person who quits in public ceremonies... He is addicted to eating rumor and beauty, pulling out his garden sunflower and discarding it. Seeing that his family is good at weaving, but the wife is rushed out of his house, he loses his machine "This means that Lu's Xiangguo Gongyixiu, who advocated the world for the public all his life, believed that the delicious vegetables grown in his home garden and the beautiful cloths woven by his wife were infringements on the living resources of the people, so he pulled it out well. Dishes, divorced his virtuous wife, and burned the loom on fire, saying that "the one who eats money must not compete with the people for profit." Later generations quoted the allusion of "pulling sunflowers to weaving" as official talks, but ignored the misfortune and innocence of the heroine in the story.
Also divorced by a piece of cloth is the famous Warring States general Wu Qi. The drama he and his wife performed in front of the loom is comparable to that of Lu Zhishen playing tricks on Zhen Guanxi. "Han Feizi · Wai Chu Shuo You" records as follows:
(Wu Qi) makes his wives organize, and the width is narrower than the degree. Wu Zi made a change. His wife said: "Connaught." If it succeeds, it will be restored, but if it is not moderate, Wu Zi is furious. His wife replied: "I can't change the scriptures before my beginning." Wu Zi said.
Wu Qi, the commander of the three armies, had no general demeanor in front of his wife. The weaving of a piece of cloth still did not meet his requirements. His wife replied and was sent back to her family. The most amazing thing is that Wu's wife's maiden family considered this divorce to be justified, and explained plausibly: "Wu Zi, the one who is the law...If you want to make merit, you must first practice your wife and concubine and then do it. "It seems that in the Warring States Period, the wife of a Fajia believer was a "high-risk occupation."
▌ Wu Qi is like
The wife of Confucianism may be even worse. Xunzi once broke the news that Mencius "would be a wife if he was defeated". Tang dynasty Yang Jie commented that "Mencius can be better than self-cultivation because of his bad morals." This means that Mencius thinks that his wife is of poor conduct and lives together. It is not conducive to a gentleman's self-improvement, so he filed for divorce. So how did Mrs. Meng break the morals? The answer is inelegant sitting. Both Liu Xiang's "Biography of Women" and Han Ying's "Han Poetry" in the Han Dynasty were included. Mencius went home and saw his wife squatting on the bed, feeling very unsightly, so he decided to stop.Lose his wife. There is another theory that Mencius thinks that because his wife is not dressed properly at home, it will ruin the body. Guo Moruo's early novel "Mengfuzi Gives His Wife" is derived from this idea.
It is difficult for people today to understand Mencius's reason for divorcing his wife when he went online, but at the time, Zeng Zi must have sympathized with this. It is recorded in "Confucius Family Talk · Seventy-two Disciples" that Zeng Zi divorced her because his wife had not cooked the rice. Also.'Refer to:'The quinoa, the little ears. I want to be familiar without my life, the situation is serious?'" Others persuaded him not to abandon his wife because of this. After all, poor cooking skills are not in the category of "seven outs." But Zeng Zi has his own reasons: he can't even do small things like cooking, let alone big things? It sounds a little bit reasonable, but it's really unhuman.
Intellectuals are like this, and ordinary people have a weaker view of marriage contracts. The three hundred chapters of "The Book of Songs" are full of complaints about abandoned wives. For example, in the famous "Wei Feng·Mang", the heroine married a poor husband. "I was a woman at the age of three. "The dynasty", working hard and keeping the family all day long, never committed any mistakes, but was still ruthlessly abandoned: "The women are not happy, the scholars do their best." Even more miserable is the woman in "Bei Feng·Gu Feng", who is giving birth and raising children. The queen was inexplicably disgusted by her husband, "both birth and childbearing, more than poisoning", "no I can stab, instead of me as a fetish", was finally driven out of the house, watching the beautiful newcomer replace herself. Although it is a literary expression, it also directly reflects the social problems at the time: the husband is not ashamed to like the new and dislike the old, and the status of the wretched wife is not guaranteed.
From seven to three without going
In a word, in the pre-Qin period, from nobles and scholars to poor civilians, men The phenomenon of arbitrary wives is widespread. According to "Warring States Policy·Zhao Ce", after the Queen Mother Zhao married her daughter to the Kingdom of Yan, she always prayed "no rebellion" during the sacrifice. The mother of a country worried all day about her daughter being deported and repatriated. The prevalence of divorce. As the "Book of Rites" puts it: "The way of a couple, if there is righteousness, then go together, and if there is no righteousness, then go." This is very cool, combined with the above examples, it is a little bit scary to think about it. The model marriage of "Hands of the Son, Grow Old Together" is so enviable.
Due to the long history and rare historical data, it is impossible to find out the regulations on divorce conditions in the law at that time. But at least in the Spring and Autumn Period, people have already consciously restricted this kind of casual wives. For example, in "Guan Zi·Xiao Kuang Pian", Guan Zhong suggested that Qi Huangong purge the atmosphere of the vassal state, and list "the scholars should not exclusively abandon their wives" as an index, which is as important as "not exclusively killing ministers". After Guan Zhongxiangqi, he put the "Limited Leaving Order" to the face, "Students give out their wives three times, and get out of the country." If a man abandons three wives, then he will be deprived of being a subject of Qi. Right, this kind of regulation is actually a relatively loose law, and it also reflects from the side that in a society under the background of ritual collapse and music, the marriage relationship is really fragile-it is illegal to have to leave three times.
▌ Guan Zhongxiang
After Qin unified the world, he made it clear that divorce requires official approval. For example, "Sleeping Tiger Land Qin Bamboo Slips" contains: "Abandoning a wife is not a book, and earning second class. It is also inappropriate to abandon his wife? A second class." This means that if a man gives up his wife, he must report to the government and divorce privately. Money, the abandoned woman will also be punished equally, which is really dumbfounding.
In the early Han Dynasty, the saying "Qi Chu" was officially found in the literature. Compared with previous generations, there are restrictions on the number of times and procedures, and the "seven outs" classify the reasons for men to divorce their wives. This is both a regulation and a restriction. Although there are many excuses that are difficult for modern people to accept, such as "talking more" and "jealousy", combined with the history of women's frequent abandonment since the pre-Qin period, the "seven outs" are really positive. Meaning, it means that, at least in terms of etiquette, the husband cannot abandon his wife at will because of things other than these seven faults.
In the official legal documents of the Han Dynasty, although there is no formal expression of "seven outs", it is a kind of moral code that promotes the transformation of people's concept of marriage. In other words, the rules of etiquette are broader than those governed by laws. In addition, the "Book of Rites" further uses "three do not go" to restrict the "seven outs". "Three not going" refers to the three conditions for not divorcing a wife: there is nothing to marry and nothing to return (Those who have no maidens to return) will not go, and those who have been in mourning for three years (who had been filial piety for in-laws for three years) will not go.
The first situation is the pity, loneliness, and weakness in the traditional moral values, and the latter two situations affirm the contribution of women in marriage and family. If one of these three conditions is met, even if a woman is unfortunately stepped on the "seven thunder pit", the husband still cannot divorce her.
"Seven Outs" and "Three Do Not Go" were formally introduced into the law in the Tang Dynasty, and the applicable conditions of "Seven Outs" were stipulated in more detail, which in fact further restricted men from divorcing their wives. For example, the article "Childless", "Tang Law·House Marriage" contains: "If a wife is more than fifty years old and has no children, she can grow long. That is, she has no children under forty-nine but has no children." In other words, The law of the Tang Dynasty determined that when a woman had no children at the age of fifty, she would meet the "childless" item in the "seven outs" to prevent young men from abandoning a fertile wife on the grounds of childlessness. In fact, according to the ancient system of marriage in their teens, the couple had reached half a hundred years of age and had been with each other for more than 30 years. At this time, the possibility of divorce on the grounds of "childlessness" is very slim.
Judging from today’s legal knowledge, "seven outs" belong to "fault divorce". On the one hand, it punishes those who are at fault in the marriage life, and on the other hand provides protection for those who are not at fault. The "Law of the Tang Dynasty" stipulates: "Whoever comes out of the wife without seven appearances and righteousness will only take one and a half years. Although there are three who do not go out after committing seven accidents, the stick is one hundred, and it is good." The man who divorces his wife is sentenced to one and a half years’ imprisonment. If his wife meets the "three no-go" conditions, he will be beaten with another 100 bans and ordered to return his wife. Although this compulsory "restriction of separation" may not make the couple live a happy and harmonious life, but in a society where men are superior to women, the protection of women's basic marriage rights is still of positive significance.
Source: Beijing Evening News·Five Colored Soil|Author Li Chuqiao
Editor: Yuan Xinyu
Process Editor: 郭丹
