Chapter 17 5. Our fields

What is "built"? Jian means "building a country".It includes three contents: conferring land, conferring people, and conferring titles. The canonization ceremony is grand.The altar is made of blue, white, red, black and yellow soil, which symbolizes east, west, north, south, and middle.Wherever the feudal lords enfeoffed, they took the soil from that side, mixed it with the loess representing the center, and wrapped it in white grass and handed it to the lords.This is called "granting land", which means that the princes have the right to use that piece of land.

The people given to the princes included three parts: the officials of the clan, the survivors of the Yin and Shang Dynasties, and the aborigines on the land.Of course, this mainly refers to Lu, Wei, Jin, Yan and the like.Other states do not necessarily have Yin Shang adherents, but there must be aborigines, and the leadership team must be his own.This is called "granting the people", which means that the princes have the right to rule over those people.This is also a great invention of Zhou people.Because the land and the people were given together like this, there is no record in the inscriptions of the Yin and Shang Dynasties.It can be seen that only Zhou's feudalism is "true feudalism".

The third thing is to designate the monarch, including naming the country (such as Song, Qi, Lu, and Wei), issuing instructions (such as "Kang Gao"), and bestowing conferred symbols (such as crowns, ritual vessels, and ceremonial guards).This is called "conferring titles", which means that the princes are relatively independent, have legal power, and have the hereditary right of succession from father to son or brother to brother. These three programs are significant. In fact, the conferring of land, people, and titles is necessary for feuding a state and establishing a country. This shows the Zhou people's understanding of the "national concept".Although the state at this time is only a "country" in the initial stage, it cannot even be called a "country".But since then, land, people and leaders have become the "three elements of the country" of our nation.For example, in the hymn "Singing the Motherland" of New China, the first stanza sings the land, the second stanza sings the people, and the third stanza sings the leader.This is the far-reaching influence of the weekly system.

The practical significance is also obvious.Granting land and people means that King Zhou is the sole property owner and legal person of the land and people in the world; conferring titles means that he is the supreme ruler of all states.The so-called "under the whole world, is it the land of the king; on the shore of the land, is it the king's ministers", which is vividly expressed. Sovereignty and property rights belonged to the king of Zhou, and the feudal lords only had financial and governance rights. But no one seemed to think that much about it at the time.After the procedure is over, all the feudal princes are crowned with crowns and belts, full of jewels and jewels, and have a new look.They led their subordinates, clansmen, congregants, and concubines to go to the feudal area happily, establish the territory, build a community, seal off their children, collect taxes, and divide the land.

Of course, the most important thing is to build ancestral temples and shrines.The Jongmyo worships the ancestors and the ancestors, while the Sajik worships the gods of land and valleys.The reason why this altar is important is that where there is soil and grain, there are people.Therefore, "sheji" has become synonymous with state power.From this, a building system was also born, that is, the center of the capital is the palace, the left side of the palace is the ancestral temple, and the right side is the altar of the country, called "Zuozu Youshe". The allocated land and people must also be integrated.The specific plan is to organize the people and divide the land into blocks.First divide a large piece of land into nine equal pieces, with the middle piece being "public land" and the surrounding eight pieces being "private land".The private fields are "contracted to households" by farmers who are reorganized according to blood ties, but farmers from eight households must first cultivate the public fields in the middle before they can cultivate private fields.The income from the public land is used for public affairs, which is called the "well field system".

◎The well field system has always been controversial.Some people think it is true, some people think it is pure imagination, and some scholars have made various explanations. Please refer to Yang Kuan's "History of the Western Zhou Dynasty" and Xu Zhuoyun's "History of the Western Zhou Dynasty". Is this our field? Just don't dig into the horns.Neatly planned in a well-shaped shape, with "border closures" around and "fields" in the middle, each field is exactly 100 mu. Of course, not all places can do it.However, it is possible to "equalize land rights and benefit both public and private".It is even more possible for doctors and princes to profit from public land.

In a symbolic sense, the well field system is even a kind of "feudalism".Or conversely regard feudalism as a well field.The king of Zhou in the world and the princes in the feudal country are the public land in the middle. However, why do we say that this kind of system "in itself has the function of maintaining stability"? Because feudalism is an order.