A Study On Rumors And Proverbs And Fair Criticism In The Han Dynasty ——From The Perspective Of "Public Opinion"

The evolution of public opinion is closely related to social development.The rulers of the pre-Qin period were aware of the importance of public opinion,and wise monarchs were often willing to listen to "public opinion".In the Qin Dynasty,the Great Unification Dynasty adopted the legalist idea of suppressing public opinion,and the freedom of the people to express their opinions was extremely compressed.In the Han Dynasty,in view of Qin’s lessons,it re-emphasized the significance of public opinion and listened to "people’s words".At the same time,the government still adopted strict control measures for various public opinions.However,public opinion will not disappear completely because of repression,it will only change its form and spread it in a more hidden way.Rumors and fair criticism are the two most representative forms of public opinion in the Han Dynasty.From villages to counties to the capital,there are all kinds of rumors and proverbs,with a wide range of content.On the one hand,the imperial court attached great importance to the role of rumors and proverbs in reflecting public opinion,and established special institutions to collect folk songs.The emperor also often dispatched special envoys to collect rumors and proverbs,and "carrying rumors" became the official system of the Eastern Han Dynasty.But on the other hand,paying attention to public opinion does not mean listening to public opinion.The purpose of collecting rumors and proverbs in the imperial court is to consolidate the rule.Except for occasional rumors,most of the rumors and proverbs involving politics were suppressed by force.At the end of the Han Dynasty,the country was in a state of turmoil and crisis,and the scholar-bureaucrat group judged characters with clear opinions in the countryside,"rewarding and teaching good guidance",hoping to select real talents to change the style of scholars,criticize the government and oppose eunuchs with the clear opinions of the party,and pin their hopes on the This saved the situation,but in the end it ended with such a tragic ending as "Party Confinement".Rumors and fair criticism were different from content and form,but after hundreds of years of mutual influence,they actually share the same core of public opinion under the Confucian value standard..