A Study Of Changing Customs With Laws Of Qin

During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods,there were many vassal states.Under the influence of the natural environment and cultural traditions,customs of each region presented different characteristics.Good customs make society become good and bad customs make society become bad.Changing customs was not only an important part of the governance thinking of scholars in the pre-Qin period,but also an important goal of the reform of many states.The state of Qin was located in the remote northwest,absorbing many customs and cultures of Rongdi in the process of development.Therefore,the state of Qin was regarded as Yidi by the vassals of the Central Plains.After Duke Xiao of Qin succeeded to the throne,he felt that the national strength was weak and the vassals despised the state of Qin,so he appointed Shang Yang to carry out reform.Shang Yang made laws according to the customs of the Qin state,changing many customs especially the customs of Rongdi.Reform of Shang Yang created a new atmosphere that all people were engaged in cultivation and war,and achieved the effect of enriching the country and strengthening the army.After that,the state of Qin would the strategy of using laws to change customs bring to newly occupied areas.Yu Shu provides a window that understanding the state of Qin dealt with the customs of newly occupied areas.Yu Shu reveals that although the state of Qin had ruled Nanjun for more than fifty years,it had never been able to solve the problem of customs in this new land.For this,Teng,the county chief of Nanjun revised laws and promulgated it in the county,and vigorously rectified bureaucratic system in order to eliminate the bad customs in the county.However,the results did not seem to be satisfactory.Six years after Yu Shu was published,the state of Qin completed the process of unifying the China.However,the "govern different customs" preached by Qin Shi Huang did not achieve uniform customs.Instead,it strengthened the resistance emotion from six vassal states and hastened the demise of the empire.From the reform of Shang Yang to the demise of the empire,from the homeland to the newly occupied areas,the state of Qin continued to promote the process of using laws to change customs,and the difficulty of implementation continued to increase.The subsequent defeats of the state of Qin showed that it was not advisable that ignore cultural inertia and the will of the people to change customs by administrative means alone.