I don't know if you've ever wondered about such a thing. In ancient times, state leaders in the pre-Qin era would be called kings, kings of Shang, and kings of Zhou by later generations; Known as, Gong, what Qi Huangong, Jin Wengong, etc.; in the Qin and Han Dynasties, they will be called emperors, such as Han Wendi, Han Wudi and so on.
After hundreds of years, in the Tang and Song Dynasties, national leaders were not called emperors, but Taizu, Taizong. Later, in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, national leaders used the era name as the title of the emperor, such as Jianwen Yongle, Kangxi Yongzheng Qianlong and so on.
During these thousands of years, countries have not changed in essence, but historians have indeed changed their names a lot. Why is this, and what kind of change process is there in the middle?
The title of the national leader
More than ten years ago, a ": The Fission of the Qin Empire " was born, and the audience from all over the country began to appreciate the 2,000 years ago. I am very interested in the history of Qin and Han Dynasties. In this TV series, I once introduced the origin of the word king.
The word "王" is divided into three horizontal and one vertical. The three horizontal lines represent heaven, earth and people, and the vertical line represents the existence of Unicom, heaven, earth and people, so it is called king. At that time, the King of Zhou was also called the Son of Heaven, which means the Son of Heaven, and ruled the world from generation to generation, so he became the only person between heaven and earth who could reach the heaven and earth.
Then, with the continuous advancement of time, the strength of the countries continued to evolve, Zhou Dynasty The various vassal states under his command have become disobedient at this time, so they are each other's kings, that is, they recognize each other. identity,For example, Wei Guo once engaged the king of Pengcheng.
As a result, the king's gold content began to be greatly weakened, and a group of fake kings began to appear in the world, but the emperor was still only Zhou Tianzi .
Later, Qin Shihuang unified the six countries, books were on the same track as writing cars, unified weights and measures, unified culture and literature, and China entered the era of unified . At this point, Qin Shihuang was satisfied, so he turned his attention to Put it on your own name.
As the various vassal states have successively been called kings for thousands of years, the name of the king has long since lost its meaning. At this time, the six kingdoms have become the various counties of Qin State . If the previous names are still used, then the value of Qin Shihuang will be lowered to a certain extent, so the title of emperor came into being.
Thus, the name of Qin Shi Huang began to appear at this time, and he was also the only emperor in history with the title of emperor. Since then, the title of emperor has become the supreme title in later generations, until the end of the Qing Dynasty.
But since later generations still use the title of emperor, why are there several other titles?
The emperor's temple number
The temple number means that after the emperor died, he received the name of the sacrifice in the Taimiao, such as the Taizu Taizong and the like.
Generally speaking, the founding emperor of a certain dynasty or the emperors of previous generations are generally called Taizu, such as Han Gaozu , Tang Taizu, Ming Taizu , Ming Chengzu_ span2span ,Generally, people who have made outstanding contributions to the country will enter the Taimiao Temple to get the temple name.
So there must be some emperors who had no outstanding achievements in their lifetimes in the society at that time, so for them, they would naturally become black households in history.
temple name is actually said to have appeared as early as Shang Dynasty , and it was not abolished until the end of Qing Dynasty. At the earliest time, the gold content was very high, but after the Tang Dynasty, the temple name gradually began to become When it becomes worthless, almost every emperor has a corresponding temple name, the specificity has been greatly reduced, and the universality has been greatly improved.
Secondly, since the Han Dynasty, due to the arrival of the troubled times, various emperors have emerged one after another. If temple names were used to refer to various emperors during this period, many people would definitely be missed.
Generally speaking, the founder of the state is called Taizu, the one who promotes it is called Taizong, the one who has no merits and no faults is called Sejong, the powerless is called Suzong, and there is such a large contrast between before and after, and the ability Emperors, such as Ming Shenzong.
Every emperor has his own precise title, which is naturally very convenient in terms of history, so most emperors after the Tang Dynasty mainly used temple names.
Posthumous title
The origin of this title is actually a title assessed by later generations based on the actions of the deceased. Due to human factors, the various titles of the emperor are Compliments and derogations. The posthumous title of
appeared a little later than the temple title, it only appeared in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and it was once abolished when Qin Dynasty .
On the one hand, because Qin Shi Huang felt that his achievements were too great,If people have ordinary people or historical civil servants to comment on their merits and demerits, it will appear that they are very cheap.
On the other hand, due to the new destruction of the Six Kingdoms, the contradictions between the old subjects and the old people of various countries have accumulated for hundreds of years, and they have become very deep.
So Qin Shihuang needed several tours to deter the old forces in various countries and let them not act rashly. Qin Shihuang also knew that if he let the people comment on his own, the old people of the other six countries would naturally not give good words. Because of the influence of hurting his future generations, he simply closed his posthumous title for one hundred years.
However, the posthumous title was restored again during the Han Dynasty, and at the same time there was a fixed word.
Love for the people is called Wen; use force to pacify all kinds of troubles; use force for slaughterers; use Yang for breaking rituals and breaking away from the masses, this is not a good word, such as Sui Yangdi .
Therefore, starting from the Han Dynasty, most historians used posthumous titles to address each emperor. But there is an exception to this. During the Three Kingdoms Southern and Northern Dynasties , there were many countries, so a group of Wendi Wudi appeared, and the repetition of the title became very high.
When the Tang Dynasty arrived, the emperor of the Tang Dynasty directly added any good words regardless of how long the posthumous title was, so the name became longer and longer.
Year name
The use of the year name to refer to the emperor mostly happened in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Before the Ming and Qing dynasties, the emperor would directly change the year according to his own mood or what happened in that year. Number, an emperor may use eight or nine era titles in his lifetime.
After the Ming and Qing dynasties, the emperor's era name was fixed, so under the highly overlapping temple names, using the era name to address the emperor became a new choice for historians.Therefore, in the title Tang Taizong , why can't use the year number and posthumous title, the reason is very sufficient.
quietly revealed that Tang Taizong's posthumous title was Wenwu Dasheng Daguangxiao Emperor.
.
