According to the etiquette of the ancients, the mother should be filial piety for three years when she dies, and the taboo during the funeral period is very strict, and there must be no entertainment, not even going out, let alone getting married. So, why did Li Jiancheng not follow the rules and marry a wife the next year?
According to historical records, in the ninth year of the great cause of the Sui Dynasty (613), Yang Guang went on an expedition to Goguryeo, and Li Yuan was ordered to be stationed in the town of Huaiyuan (Liaozhong) to supervise the transportation of grain and grass, and his wife Dou went out with her husband. On the way back, Dou unfortunately contracted an illness and died in Zhuozhou at the age of 45.
Li Jiancheng's marriage is a mystery, and the history books do not explain it, but people have seen an amazing record from the unearthed epitaph, and the time of his marriage to his wife Zheng Guanyin turned out to be the tenth year of the Great Cause (614).
There are three reasons why this account is amazing:
First, Li Jiancheng's half-brother Li Shimin married a year earlier than him.
The ancients paid attention to "the order of the young and the old", and it stands to reason that Li Shimin could not take the lead before Li Jiancheng got married. So, why did Li Jiancheng's marriage come later than Li Shimin?
Coincidentally, Li Shimin's mother died when he got married, the second year Li Jiancheng got married, the third year (615) Li Yuan went to Hedong, the fourth year (616) Li Yuan prepared for the uprising, the fifth year (617) Jinyang raised troops, and the sixth year (618) Li Yuan ascended the throne.
Second, when Li Jiancheng married Zheng Guanyin, he was already a 26-year-old leftover man.
The ancients paid attention to "starting a family first and then starting a business", so they all married early, and many women were married before they were developed. For example, Empress Changsun was only 12 years old when she married Li Shimin, and Li Shimin was only 14 years old.
Zheng Guanyin was 16 years old when he married Li Jiancheng, which is already considered a "late marriage", and Li Jiancheng, as the son of the Duke of Tang, should have a normal marriage age between 15 and 20 years old, why did he stay up until he was 26 years old to get married?
Third, the year Li Jiancheng got married coincided with the period of filial piety for his mother.
Not to mention the ancients, even today, anyone who holds a wedding during the mourning period will be spit on. The Li family is a "person with an ID card", and "Tang Guogong" is a nobleman of Guanlong in the Three Dynasties, so he ignores etiquette and law, how can he mix in the "noble group" in the future? Zheng Guanyin was born in the Zheng family of Xingyang and is also an aristocratic class, why did the Zheng family agree to the Li family's inhumane wedding?
For the first two questions, later generations have a lot of conjectures, and I think there is only one explanation that makes sense, that is, Zheng Guanyin is not Li Jiancheng's original wife, but "filling the house".
In other words, Li Jiancheng's original partner should have died, or he was deprived of his status as a wife for other reasons, so he had his second marriage to Zheng Guanyin. As for who was the first wife? Did you leave any heirs? Everything is already a mystery.
We focus on answering the third question, which is the question stem: Why did Li Jiancheng get married during the mourning period?
According to the ancient mourning system, the Dou family is Li Yuan's wife, and Li Jiancheng must serve the "beheading", even if he is not Dou's biological son.
What do you mean by "chopping"?
After the death of a loved one, the immediate and collateral relatives of the nine clans of the clan must wear mourning clothes for him (her) to mourn. According to the distance of the blood relationship, the level of mourning clothes is different, and the principle of "those who are close to them are heavy, and those who are negligent are light, and they are decreasing in turn" to form five levels, that is, the so-called "five clothes", which are cuī, zī, dagong, xiaogong, and hemp.
"Chopping the hair" is the highest level of the five clothes, the coarsest linen sewing in mourning, the place that needs to be cut can not be cut with scissors, but with a knife, the workmanship is very rough, simple, to show that the mourner is in the deepest mood.
The people who are eligible for beheading are: sons as parents, unmarried daughters as parents, grandchildren as grandparents or great-great-grandparents, wives as husbands, and so on.
The further down the rank, the finer the materials and workmanship of the mourning clothes, and the more distant the relationship between the mourners and the deceased, which will not be described in detail.
Li Jiancheng was born to the Dou family, and according to the regulations, he should take the beheading (even if he is not his own). So, how many years does it take to mourn?
According to the provisions of the etiquette law, he was cut off for three years.
However, this rule has been seriously challenged since the Spring and Autumn Period, and Confucius's Gongjing student Zai Yu once told his teacher: "Is three years of mourning too long?" ”
Confucius asked him to explain the reason, and Zai Yu said that a person's life is so short, and there are so many relatives, it will take more than ten years to serve the mourning period for a lifetime, do you still want to do things?
Confucius was very angry and said that each of us "is not free from pregnancy for three years", and the three years of mourning are just to repay the kindness of our parents for holding us for three years.
But to be honest, Zai Yu's words are not rough, and it is appropriate to repay the grace of parenting, but does the way have to be so rigid? The deceased is gone, and the living still have to live, and this contradiction can be expressed in other ways.
The people are okay, you let the emperor ignore the government for three years, and the country must not be messed up?
So the etiquette began to loosen, and all kinds of flexible rules began to prevail. For example, "day to month", that is, one day is used to represent one month, and the three-year mourning period is actually only 36 days.
However, this treatment can only be enjoyed by the emperor, Li Jiancheng was only a courtier of Emperor Yang of Sui at that time, not the crown prince, let alone the emperor. So, what should ordinary people do? There is a way.
The most common practice is "2+1", that is, from the death of the deceased to the second anniversary is a full two-year mourning period, plus one month is counted as one year. Therefore, there is a rule that "25 months of mourning is counted as three years".
How did the "27 months" rule come about? Very simply, there are leap months in the lunar calendar, and in extreme cases, there are leap months in two years, so adding two more months will definitely be able to achieve "2+1".
However, Dou died between April and June of the ninth year of Daye, less than 27 months after the end of the tenth year of Daye, and it is obvious that this flexible policy cannot explain Li Jiancheng's "illegal behavior".
In fact, the mourning system is very complex, and it is by no means understandable in a few words, it has to cover all kinds of special situations, and the content is quite complex. For example, have you ever heard of a father mourning for his son? And it's still a slashing suit!
There are such situations, but ordinary sons do not have that treatment, only the eldest son, that is, his heir, has died, and as a father, he can serve three years for this son.
For example, the father died before the mother, and the son served three years of beheading, but if the father was still alive when the mother died, the situation was different. In this case, the son had to be beheaded, but the mourning period was only one year.
Do you think this rule seems a bit discriminatory against women? No way, it's a patriarchal society, according to traditional etiquette, people should have a closer relationship with their father than with their mother.
Li Jiancheng belonged to this situation, when his father Li Yuan was still alive, he only needed to mourn for one year. Therefore, it is not surprising that his wedding with Zheng Guanyin has been in the great cause for ten years.
In fact, in ancient times, the case of opposing the etiquette law with great fanfare was not only slaughtered to one person, it is rumored that Su Xun had done something horrific, he forced his two sons Su Shi and Su Zhe during his wife's funeral, the reason is that "unfilial piety is the greatest", and you have a son early is the greatest filial piety to your mother.
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