In ancient times, it was illegal to kill ploughing cattle, so why did so many people still eat beef?

When we see the word "ploughing cattle", we naturally think of "reclamation" and "old cattle spirit".

Ploughing cattle, ploughing cattle. In ancient times, agricultural tools were underdeveloped, and farmers relied on cattle to cultivate their land. Without cattle, it is difficult for farmers to survive. At that time, there was a proverb: ploughing cattle is a treasure, and every family can't do without it.

The Song Dynasty poet Li Gang has the poem "Sick Cow": "Ploughing thousands of acres and thousands of boxes, who will recover from exhaustion?" But all living beings are satisfied, and they do not hesitate to lie sick and lie in the sun. ”

Ming Dynasty: Gao Qi's poem "Cattle Words": "The horns of the cow are bent and the ring, and my ox's tail is bald."

Piccolo and whip together, Nanlong Donggang went to chase each other. The sun is slanting and the grass is far away, and the cattle are hungry, and I only know that the cattle are hungry; The ox sang and the ox sat down, and returned to lie down to the cow at night. I don't have to worry about cattle herding for many years, but I am afraid of losing and renting and selling my cattle.

The modern writer Lu Xun also has a poem: "Heng Mei coldly pointed at a thousand people, bowed his head and was willing to be a son of a cow." ”

My father used to say that during the busy farming season, cows eat better food than people. Because the oxen do not eat well and do not have the strength to plow the land, the crops will naturally not grow well; If the crops don't grow well, there won't be a good harvest. At that time, cows and people slept in the same room, and cows were not only people's friends, but also family members.

When I was a child, I heard from adults that my childhood companion's grandmother had hanged herself. Why? At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, when there was a drought and the crops were not harvested, their family had nothing to eat, so they stole and killed their own cattle.

The government knew about this, and his grandmother committed suicide because she was afraid of going to prison. When I was young, I never understood why I had to go to jail if I killed a cow.

In ancient times, it was indeed illegal to kill ploughing cattle.

So, why do people still kill cows and eat beef? There are several scenarios.

First, the cattle are old, they can't plough the land, they are fed and fed in waste, and they are raised in vain, so they have to be killed.

Second, in the event of natural and man-made disasters and natural disasters, there is no harvest of crops, there is really no food, and people cannot starve to death; In this way, the only way to kill the cattle and survive is to live.

Fourth, the gangsters in the government and the wicked people in the rivers and lakes are lawless and reckless, killing cattle to satisfy their hunger.

Nowadays, agriculture is mechanized, and cattle are rarely used to plough the land. Farmers raise cattle mainly for food. Beef became a delicacy on the table.

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This is because in ancient times, there were still many ** institutions to buy and sell beef, so there was still a lot of beef circulating in the market, so that people could eat beef.

Because in ancient times, although it was illegal to kill cattle, it was not illegal to eat beef, and some cattle died accidentally or died naturally, and the meat could still be eaten, so many people ate beef.

Because it's all an illusion, few people in ancient times could afford to eat beef, but there will be this kind of thing in TV series and **.

It is precisely because beef was the most high-end and precious ingredient in ancient times that ordinary people were not qualified to eat it at all, so eating beef has become a very rare thing, and the more difficult it is to eat, the more they want to eat it. In ancient times, the small-scale peasant economy was the mainstay, and cattle were the most valuable productive force and production resource in addition to people. Therefore, every family regards cattle as more important than life, and sometimes cows are better than human food.

In this case, the rulers of successive dynasties naturally promulgated various laws prohibiting the people from killing cattle at will, and beef became a food that people could not hope for, and the common people could not afford or eat beef at all.

If you really want to eat, you can only eat the old and weak or sick cattle, such cattle have completely lost their labor force and have no use value, so people can go to the government to report, and wait for the government to send someone to check to make sure that the cow died of natural old age rather than artificial killing, and people can cook it and eat meat. However, meat can be eaten, and items such as cowhide and tendon still have to be handed over to the government to make weapons and so on.

As for the ruling class, it will be relatively easier to eat beef, and there will generally be special people to serve it, for example, the person who kills the cow in the idiom "Ku Ding Xie Niu" is officially designated to kill cattle for the ruling class.

Therefore, beef was a relatively aristocratic food in ancient times, and ordinary people could not afford to eat it and were not qualified to eat it, and some poets or heroes who were dissatisfied with the rulers, including some robbers, took the risk to eat beef, so as to show their dissatisfaction and rebellion against the authoritative rulers. For example, the heroes of Liangshan in "Water Margin" come to a few plates of beef at every turn, also to show their spirit of resistance.

I don't think what they like to eat is beef, it's bison, after all, domestic cattle can't be slaughtered.

It was illegal to kill cattle, because at that time cattle were the main labor force in cultivated land, and it was precisely because they could not eat it at ordinary times, but they happened to be able to eat it once, so people in ancient times liked to eat beef very much.

Because beef is the best with wine, ancient people liked to drink the most, and at that time there was very little beef, not often eaten, so they all liked to eat beef.

Maybe the more you don't want to eat, the more you want to eat, after all, food with wine, what a perfect match, people take food as the sky, and eating is the biggest.

Because it is illegal to slaughter a cow, you can only eat meat if you want to eat beef unless the cow dies naturally or accidentally, which is relatively rare, so they like to eat it.

Ordinary people can't slaughter it, but the government has a special person to take care of this piece, so everyone has beef to eat!

It may be that beef is very delicious, although it is not allowed to kill cattle in ancient times, they are very fond of eating beef, so doing some illegal things is no exception.

This depends on what the system was like at that time, some of them allowed cattle to be slaughtered and sheep slaughtered, and these things were legal.

Although it is illegal to slaughter beef, some cattle are eaten if they die naturally, and they are rare.

In fact, people in ancient times ate beef, but not everyone could eat beef, at least the lower class people couldn't afford it. There are two kinds of cattle, cattle and buffaloes, the north is mostly dry land, and cattle are used when cultivating the land, while the south has more paddy fields, and when cultivating the land, there are buffaloes. Ox farming technology was popularized on a large scale in the ancient Western Han Dynasty in China, and continued to be promoted in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and with the popularization of iron tools, the iron plough ox farming technology has been improved, and people's productivity has been increasingly enhanced.

Many of the portrait bricks of the Han Dynasty are engraved with images of oxen ploughing.

The lower classes of people are also more dependent on farming cattle, and having farming cattle at home means that production efficiency is improved, which means that more wasteland can be cultivated to feed a large family. If there is only one ploughing cow in the family, can you bear to eat it? ThereforeOnly the upper classes could use beef or sacrifice with cattle.

Famous during the Wei and Jin dynasties".Eight hundred miles"One thing, it's about beef. Uncle Wang Kai raised a cow called "Eight Hundred Miles", which can travel thousands of miles a day, he cherishes this cow very much, and often rubs its hooves and horns. Wang Ji made it easier for him to compare archery, and after winning the competition, he immediately ordered someone to roast the heart of the cow and eat it, and then walked away.

This is the famous incident of the upper class fighting for wealth in the Wei and Jin dynasties to show their financial strength.

The ancients took cattle, sheep and pigs as three animals. When the sacrifice is complete, the three animals are called Taigao; Only sheep and pigs are used, and cattle are not called to be imprisoned. "The Great Dai Li Ji Fifty-Eight Zengzi Tianyuan" The sacrifice of the princes, the cattle, the prison; The sacrifice of the doctor, the sheep, is called the young prison; The sacrifice of the soldiers, the special pigs, is said to be fed.

Cattle are the most precious, only the ruling class can afford to eat, and the more common meat is mutton, so the words "mei" (delicious) and shame (馐) are derived from sheep, and the word (gēng) is derived from lamb from beauty. The ancients also ate dog meat, and there were those who took slaughtering dogs as a profession, and in the Han Dynasty, Fan 哙 (kuài) was "to slaughter dogs as a thing".

In ancient China, it was explicitly stated that beef could not be eaten. Relevant laws have been promulgated since the Western Zhou Dynasty, and in the Tang Dynasty, it was stipulated that killing and eating cattle was punishable.

Because cattle were used to cultivate land in ancient times, the imperial court stipulated that cattle could not be slaughtered, but there were exceptions, if it was an old cow or a cow that died accidentally, it could be slaughtered.

Can't eat. The people basically live by farming, unlike our now, where horses are used for cultivated land in rural areas, and horses have other uses in ancient times, so cattle are used for arable land.

In ancient times, most of the people lived by a man and a woman weaving, and the cultivated land needed oxen to cultivate, so it was generally not allowed to eat beef. Of course, there are exceptions, and beef was eaten in the Han Dynasty.

In ancient times, most dynasties forbade the slaughter of cultivated cattle without permission, but it was allowed to slaughter cultivated cattle that could not be cultivated in old age or died due to accidents, so it is said that ancient people ate beef, but not much.

In ancient times, most of the imperial court forbade the eating of beef, and cattle were used to cultivate the land, not as food, but if they died accidentally or were old, they could be slaughtered.

In ancient times, there were relevant laws that did not allow the slaughter of cattle, let alone the eating of beef, which was not allowed, and few people would steal and eat beef.

No, most dynasties pursued a policy of valuing agriculture and suppressing commerce, so eating beef or killing cattle was punishable by criminal punishment, and even the lives of serious people were in danger.

They didn't know how to eat beef, because agriculture was developed at that time, and cattle were used to plough the land, so they would not be willing to eat beef.

In ancient times, people were not allowed to eat beef, there were clear regulations, and even eating beef would be sentenced, which was related to the ancient small-scale peasant economy, the small-scale peasant economy relied on cattle and horses, if you ate it, then how should the economy develop? So ancient people were not allowed to eat beef.