Chapter 362 Audience Ceremony
The most important affairs of a country are sacrifices and war!
The princes' audience with the emperor was one of the most important events in the country, as it represented a stable ruling order. The princes, who had been staying in Chang'an for a long time and had communicated with each other, walked into the palace together.
The Han Dynasty today is no longer the fledgling dynasty of the past. All rules and regulations are basically complete, and the most important rituals and music are naturally the same.
The ministers stepped onto the stage and walked to their seats to the sound of different music. The emperor had a complicated process for receiving the princes, which lasted for a long time before it came to the stage of paying tribute.
The purposes of paying tribute to the emperor varied. Many officials still hoped to rise to high positions by paying tribute to divine objects, but most of them followed the rules. After all, wanting to find a divine object like the He Shi Bi was basically a dream.
Among all the tributes, the most noticeable ones were those from Lingnan, not the King Zhao of Lingnan, but the descendants of criminals who were exiled to Lingnan.
Starting from Liu Bang, the imperial court formulated a special exile policy. Whenever an official, a powerful official, or a prince was found guilty of a crime, the number of people exiled to Lingnan ranged from thousands to tens of thousands.
Over the past few decades, if Lingnan had not continued to consume these people, the population of Guanzhong would probably have expanded rapidly. This is one of the shortcomings of the mausoleum town system, that is, the large-scale influx of Shandong population, and these people needed to be resettled when they came to Guanzhong. The court could not let the people who guarded the tombs of their ancestors go hungry. The power of local powerful people in Shandong was weakened, but the annexation of Guanzhong was strengthened, and a large number of wealthy people gathered together, which had other negative effects.
In real history, the abolition of the mausoleum system was not just due to the emperor's stupidity.
In fact, there were indeed problems with the mausoleum town system at that time. If it had continued, Guanzhong and Shandong would have exploded. This was the main reason.
The biggest problem was that no new method was found to curb the mergers and acquisitions of powerful entities, which led to subsequent serious consequences.
The essence of the mausoleum town system is to harvest unstable elements in a way that does not completely break off relations.
The purpose of exile was to send people to open up the wild land and to add water to Lingnan Kingdom in a reasonable way, but in the process of implementation, it achieved the same purpose, which was a win-win situation, meaning that the court won twice.
After watching the criminal crawling in from outside the arena on his knees, everyone in the arena started talking and even making bets.
"I wonder how many people will be pardoned for their past crimes by His Majesty during this audience, and will be able to return to the Central Plains, their homeland, or even Chang'an."
"According to previous practice, the number of people will still not be too large. I will bet on three people."
"Our Majesty is kind and benevolent. The number of people released in the past few years has gradually increased. I will guess five."
The criminals who had crawled in on their knees already felt their palms burning and their knees began to hurt. Although they could not hear the discussions around them clearly, they still felt quite ashamed. This was the way to treat slaves!
But everyone endured it, because this was an opportunity that was hard-won and the hope of the entire family returning to the Central Plains. No matter how much humiliation there was, could it be more terrible than dying miserably in the wilderness?
"I, the sinner, pay my respects to His Majesty the Emperor. May His Majesty be safe and sound! May His Majesty be blessed!"
"What tribute do you have? Present it quickly!"
The tribute from Lingnan was nothing more than pearls, jade, corals, or beauties. There were no particularly valuable treasures. In fact, whether to pardon them was entirely up to the emperor himself. As long as the emperor said that they were sincere, it was enough.
Liu Heng looked at the tribute presented to him. Although it was not extremely precious, being able to obtain such a thing in such a difficult survival environment was already a manifestation of great sincerity.
In the past, he would have certainly encouraged them a few more times and offered some favors to the subjects who were atonement in Lingnan. However, today, Liu Heng was already impatient to offer sacrifices to the gods with paper. He said a few words to send them away and asked directly, "Where is the envoy from Zhaogong?"
At this moment, all the ministers put away their smiles and looked solemn. Then they saw Prince Ban of Zhaogong Kingdom walking into the hall. Four beautiful palace maids were walking in cautiously, holding a white object, which seemed to have some words on it.
"I, Ban, am here to see the Emperor, and I have brought this as a gift."
Luo Ban bowed and said, "This is a piece of paper with a poem on it, named 'Da Han', wishing Da Han a long and prosperous future!"
Paper?
There was some commotion in the hall. The papers held by the palace servants were very different from what they remembered.
Liu Heng walked down from the top. He had seen the paper before, but looking at the writing on it, he couldn't help but exclaimed: "This is truly a work of art beyond compare!
A Jing's fu written here is really ten or a hundred times better than the bamboo slips. All the ministers should come and take a look."
So a group of people rushed forward, looking at the unsmudged handwriting and the light paper, and they all gasped. No one could restrain their shocked expressions. They stretched their necks without any regard for etiquette and asked the most concerned question: "Sir, how much does this paper cost?"
Another reason why bamboo slips became popular is that their cost is much lower than that of silk. Since this piece of paper looks of such good quality, its price should not be cheap.
Luo Ban chuckled and said, “Paper of this quality is naturally a little more expensive, but it is still far less expensive than silk.
However, there are some papers of slightly lower quality in the family, which also do not smudge when writing, but the surface is not as smooth. The cost of that kind of paper is lower than that of bamboo slips."
Luo Ban didn't say how high the cost was, only that it was lower than bamboo slips, which shocked everyone.
This is obviously intended to replace bamboo slips and become a new tool for carrying texts!
The most important thing is that the text that can be recorded on this small piece of paper far exceeds that of bamboo slips. With this thing, wouldn’t it be much easier to spread books in the future?
This thing can be used to take advantage of hundreds of schools of thought and quickly take over the classics of hundreds of schools of thought for yourself.
This was the first thought of most people. Moreover, with paper, less materials were needed to interpret classics, making it easier to transform from a meritorious family into a classics family.
This is a little-known fact: when paper was first invented and the imperial examination system first appeared, it actually made the powerful and wealthy families stronger, because these most advanced things are always used by the upper class first.
What really made the lower classes start to rise was the advancement of productivity, and the imperial examination system was able to completely dominate the mainstream because poor families could also support scholars.
However, by the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the imperial examination system had become a game for prominent families.
After all, except for a very small number of geniuses, the prominent families can study hard every day, while the poor families have to support themselves first and then compete. Studying for two hours and four hours a day will definitely result in completely different final results.
Looking at everyone's shocked expressions, Liu Heng laughed and said, "This is a divine object bestowed upon me by God. This is a divine object bestowed upon me by God to praise the splendor of the Han Dynasty. Where is the painter?"
The court painter hurriedly stepped out of the queue, bowed and said, "I am here."
Liu Heng smiled and said, "From now on, you don't have to paint on silk or walls. Go to Master Ban to get some paper and record today's situation in full. We will name it "The Heaven-Given Paper Picture". This will be the first painting in the world made of paper."
The painter gladly accepted the order. He had already imagined that after the invention of cheap paper, the painter could paint whatever he wanted and could paint at any time without having to conceive it in his mind first and then restore it from memory.
When all the ministers were amazed, Liu Heng said in a loud voice: "The appearance of Luo paper is a good omen sent down by heaven. I should inform heaven that this time I will use this paper full of literary works as a sacrifice."
The next step of paying tribute was for the emperor to lead his ministers to offer sacrifices to the heaven. Now there was just one more sacrifice, so the ministers naturally obeyed his orders.
Liu Heng stood on the high platform, looking at the dark crowd, thinking back to the events that had happened since he took power, and seeing the birth of a magical object like paper in his era, he felt more and more that he might really be a man appointed by heaven.
Liu Heng personally presided over the sacrifice, placed the offerings one by one on the platform, and then held up the piece of paper covered with prose, which was a very gorgeous article specifically praising the Han Dynasty.
When the palace servant finished reading the article, Liu Heng raised the torch and slowly lit the paper.
Streams of green smoke instantly went straight into the sky, as if they had really reached the sky, as if God had really received the message.
Everyone was looking at this scene!
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
