Chapter 120 Section 2 The Empty Shell of the Ancestral System

Zhu Yuanzhang is very confident in the "ancestral system" he left to future generations.He believes that after decades of non-stop thinking by his super brain, these "ancestral systems" have reached the level of perfection, and there is no room for improvement.He was worried about the intellectual level of his descendants, so he repeatedly emphasized that he could not change a single word of the rules he left behind.He told the descendants to "accept my orders, don't be smart, mess with my established law, and never change a single word" (Volume 82 of "Records").He demanded that "in the future, the heir to the emperor will not be allowed to establish a prime minister. If the ministers dare to request the establishment, the civil and military officials will immediately impeach and punish them severely" (Volume 5 of Yu Jideng's "Allusion Jiwen").

So, how is this "ancestral system" implemented by his descendants? Almost every emperor in the Ming Dynasty had to repeatedly emphasize his sincerity to abide by the precepts of his ancestors.For example, Xuanzong of the Ming Dynasty said: "I only follow the ancestors to establish the law. Those who have doubts about the matter and ask for it will be ordered to examine the old classics. The emperor's great-grandfather established the country, and the emperor's ancestors passed on the test. The legal system is detailed. The situation has involved world affairs. , practice human feelings, plan far-reaching, and children and grandchildren will follow it, and I am afraid that it will not come. There are often many lessons to learn from the wisdom of the world, chaotic old chapters, and taming to failure."

However, when the subjects of the Ming Dynasty mentioned the ancestral precepts, they were even more fascinated.Pan Kongbi’s statement during the Apocalypse is very representative: Taizu... Created legislation, the most refined and comprehensive, clear rules, Yijue descendants... the true tortoise mirror for all generations.Inherited from the sages, for two hundred and forty-seven years, Yanru in Hainei... has confirmed the virtues of my emperor's ancestor, and the testimonials have been lingering and consolidated... My emperor's ancestor's great law of governing the world should be verified, simple and essential!

Under such a strong political tradition of adhering to the precepts of the ancestors, on the surface, the yellow book system has been operating, and the rules are still strict.When the yellow book library was first built, there were only a small number of warehouses on Jiuzhou Island in the lake.As the yellow book is produced every ten years, about 60,000 copies are sent to the household department each time, and the old and the new coexist, and about 30 more books are built every ten years.Therefore, the library and yellow books in Houhu gradually increased, covering Jiuzhou, Xinzhou, Zhongzhou and other islands.

In the twenty-fourth year of Hongwu (AD 1391), there were more than 50,000 yellow books in 34 warehouses.In the 30th year of Wanli, it increased to 667.By the eve of the fall of the Ming Dynasty, Houhu had collected and stored more than 1.79 million yellow volumes.Just as Ji Zongdao, the administrator of Houhu and head of the Nanjing household department, described in a poem: "The books of Kyushu are returned to Tianfu, and they will be treasured for thousands of years." Such a huge scale was rare in the world at that time. From the fourteenth year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty (AD 1381) to the capture of Nanjing by the Qing soldiers, the work of the Yellow Book Store has never stopped for more than 260 years.Regardless of the number of archives it keeps and the frequency of file utilization, or its various strict working systems, the Houhu Yellow Records Library was one of the greatest archives in the world at that time.

But in fact, in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the yellow book system was actually only an empty shell. "Ancestral precepts" are far from perfect as Zhu Yuanzhang said.Some extremely powerful political machines made by Zhu Yuanzhang, which were "started with local methods", can only be activated by a political strongman like him, and his descendants do not have such spiritual power to manipulate them at all.Therefore, although people still want to keep the shell of the ancestral system and dare not touch it a little bit, the change of the situation makes this shell meaningless.

The "ancestral system" has evolved into a terrible political zombie.The yellow book system is like this.In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the yellow book system had evolved into a ridiculous political joke. First of all, although the number of yellow books in the warehouse has increased rapidly, the quality has declined greatly, and they are even superficial. Zhu Yuanzhang's clear and strict yellow book manufacturing quality standards were implemented during the Hongwu and Yongle years.The yellow books of these two dynasties were later called "copper plate books", which means that they are solid and thick, like copper plates.However, after the mid-Ming Dynasty, yellow books were made in various places, and the original regulations were no longer followed.In the third year of Jiajing, Peng Rushi said in Nanjing's official department:

The styles and sizes of the yellow books in each library are different, and the middle total loss is also special.Generally speaking, those with the widest genre will suffer more losses, while those with narrower genres will have more integrity.Gai Wei is too large, so it is difficult to read, it is inconvenient to dry, and it is not immune to damage when it is stored and transported. (Volume 10 of "Houhu Zhi") Zhu Yuanzhang stipulated that thick white cotton paper must be used to make books. However, after the mid-Ming Dynasty, many places specially made books with fragile and low-quality paper for embezzlement funds.In order to destroy criminal evidence, many low-level officials deliberately used powdered paper that was easily eaten by moths to make books, and violated the regulations when binding them by using a lot of flour paste.In this way, after the yellow book is sent to Houhu, it will be eaten away by moths soon.

This strategy worked very well. After the mid-Ming Dynasty, the yellow books in the Houhu Yellow Book Library often became "worn out".In the third year of Hongzhi (1490 A.D.), there were more than 792,900 volumes in the library of yellow books, but the shells did not exist, and 647,300 volumes were eaten or rotted to varying degrees. As many as 81% or more. (Volume 9 of "Houhu Zhi", "To make up the worm-eaten yellow book for the investigation of the book") Not only the use of paper seriously violated the regulations, but also the content became more and more perfunctory.Zhu Yuanzhang originally asked for it to be in block letters, but later it was generally "scribbled and uneven in style".

What this situation reflects is not only the corruption and perversion of the law by the subordinate staff at the grassroots level, but also the corruption of the bureaucratic system as a whole.Otherwise, why couldn't the officials in charge of the review at all levels discover such obvious inconsistencies?Why did the Houhu collection officials accept it?