Eunuchs are an extremely special group in the feudal dynasty. At first, eunuchs did not refer to eunuchs serving in the palace, but to senior officials among ancient eunuchs. So in the early days when eunuchs appeared, not all were castrated men. Until the Eastern Han Dynasty, eunuchs were eunuchs, and eunuchs became the exclusive vocabulary of eunuchs.
After having a certain understanding of eunuchs and eunuchs, Mr. Hua will start from three directions and tell which dynasty eunuchs began to appear.
First, starting from the pre-Qin period, the origin and reasons of eunuchs were first recorded in the Shang Dynasty. The word "convex knife" appeared in Oracle Bone Inscriptions at that time, and its metaphor was castration with a knife, which was similar to the word "castration" now. Moreover, according to historical records, it appeared as early as the Wuding period of Shang Dynasty, but it is not known whether castrated men were used in the palace.
In the Western Zhou Dynasty, according to Zhou Li's records, we have proved that eunuchs began to serve the palace.
"The palace guards the interior, which is absolutely humane."
In addition, in the Preface to Yuan Gui's Interior Office, it is also recorded that "Pingdong moved to the east, the princes tried to rule, from hegemony to hegemony; There are temples in Jin, Song, Qi, Chu, Lu and Wei. The names of Sigong, Xiang Bo, Prince's Civil History, Daxie and Neishu can be found in the records.
Therefore, eunuchs have been closely linked with imperial power at this time and have various titles. At the same time, through the volume 12 1 of the ancient and modern books, it can be seen that "there were dozens of officials, four small officials and five temple people, each with four people, which was not as good as the later generations", which was enough to show that there were not many eunuchs at that time.
Second, from the Qin and Han Dynasties to the Qin Dynasty, eunuchs had a unified title, eunuch. However, eunuchs in this period usually came from some humble people, mostly sinners or folk children who were sentenced to imprisonment. In the case of sufficient sources, the number of eunuchs in Qin and Han Dynasties suddenly entered a period of rapid growth, which also promoted the systematization and regularization of the whole eunuch system.
With the refinement of the eunuch system and system, eunuchs, as a special force, began to have a greater or lesser impact on the situation of the dynasty. By the Eastern Han Dynasty, completely castrated men had been used as eunuchs. In a sense, we can also say that the real appearance of eunuchs began in Qin and Han Dynasties.
Third, eunuchs, or eunuchs from overseas, are not unique products of ancient China, but widely appear in many countries in the world. Such as ancient Egypt, West Asia and other countries, have driven castrated men out of their palaces. The earliest eunuch record comes from the Sumerian city "lagache" in the 2nd/kloc-0th century BC.
Therefore, we can also say that during the period of 2 1 century BC, overseas feudal dynasties were already using eunuchs, while China was in the Xia Dynasty.
To sum up, as early as the same period in the ancient Xia Dynasty, we called them eunuchs, which is the earliest record in history. Eunuchs appeared in the palace in the pre-Qin period of Shang and Zhou Dynasties, but not all eunuchs at this time were made up of eunuchs. During the Qin and Han Dynasties, especially in the Eastern Han Dynasty, eunuchs were all made up of eunuchs. At the beginning of this period, eunuchs were closely connected with harem, rooted in the soil of feudal dynasty and lasted for thousands of years.