How did Yue Fei get his tattoo? Should the tattoo of the four words "Serve the Country with Loyalty" be from top to bottom or from left to right? Or from right to left?

To be precise, the words on Yue Fei's back are "Serve the country with loyalty", but in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it gradually became known as "serve the country with loyalty".

Regarding these two statements, I found their explanations and let them take a look:

Who stabbed someone who was loyal to the country? < /p>

Yue Fei's back is tattooed with the words "Serve the country with devotion" (many people have always mistakenly thought it means "serve the country with loyalty"). This is true in history. It is most likely due to the mother-in-law's willingness to encourage her son to go to the battlefield, but it is not Stabbed by my mother-in-law's hand.

Historical books do not clearly state who assassinated him

"History of Song Dynasty: Biography of Yue Fei" records that when Yue Fei was first imprisoned, Qin Hui and others secretly discussed letting He Zhu interrogate him. Yue Fei spoke righteously and vigorously, and vigorously demonstrated his military achievements in resisting the Jin Dynasty. What crime is there in being patriotic? And in front of He Zhu, "he split his clothes and showed them on the back, with the four characters 'Serve the country with all his loyalty', which penetrated deep into his skin." The awe-inspiring righteousness made He Zhu ashamed and speechless.

You Biao, a professor at the History Department of Beijing Normal University, said that the four words "Serve the Country with Loyalty" tattooed on Yue Fei's back are indeed true in history. However, there is no exact record in the history books as to why these words were tattooed, at what time, and by whom. Volume 1 of the Chronicle of King Yue'e of the Song Dynasty written by Qian Ruwen of the Qing Dynasty says: "Jingkang first met Emperor Gaozong of the Song Dynasty, and his mother died on her back saying "Serve the country with all her loyalty". This means that the four characters on Yue Fei's back are the result of "mother thorn". According to textual research, Qian's family who wrote this chronicle was based on the "Genealogy of the Yue Family of Tang Men". This chronicle was written relatively late, and the sources of materials are complicated and insufficient to rely on.

The mother-in-law may not be very literate

Professor You Biao also believes that the tattooing of the mother-in-law is an allusion spread among the people, but it still has some historical basis. During the war between Song and Jin Dynasties, Yue Fei served as a soldier in what is now Pingding, Shanxi. Yue Fei was a very loyal and filial young man. He was very worried about his elderly mother at home. In order to settle his mother, Yue Fei returned to his hometown in Henan from the battlefield. Tangyin County.

Yue Fei's mother, Yao, was a peasant woman and was unlikely to be literate, so it was impossible to tattoo the four words "Serve the country with all your loyalty" on Yue Fei's back. But it is most likely that his mother asked someone to stab Yue Fei on the back in order to encourage him to go to the battlefield with confidence.

Argument 2: Stabbed in the barracks when enlisting in the army

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Rebuttal: If it was stabbed by the army, it should probably be on the face

There is another saying about the tattoo on Yue Fei's back. Yue Fei has long cherished the ambition to serve the country and joined the army three times to fight against the Jin Dynasty and kill the enemy. He first enlisted in the army at the age of 19 in the fourth year of Xuanhe (1122). The tattoo on his back was done around this time, because the system of "tattooing for soldiers" was still implemented in the late Northern Song Dynasty. Therefore, Yue Fei had the four words "Serve the country with all his loyalty" tattooed on his back to express his aspiration.

Professor You Biao put forward a different view on this. He believed that by analyzing the military system of the Song Dynasty, it can be inferred that the words on Yue Fei's back were not tattooed because he was a soldier.

Soldiers in the Song Dynasty were employed

The Song Dynasty was the only era in Chinese history where the regular national army relied entirely on recruitment. The conscription system was implemented in the Han, Tang, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. The so-called conscription is a kind of military service. Anyone who is a citizen of the country must be forced to perform military service.

The military recruitment system in the Song Dynasty was that the state recruited soldiers from the common people, and the state paid to hire them. Therefore, the army of the Song Dynasty was all mercenaries raised by the state at the expense of the state. The source of personnel was relatively complex. Vagrants, hungry people, and people who had violated the law could all be recruited into the army, which made management more difficult.

Song soldiers must be tattooed when joining the army

Starting from Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin, in order to strengthen the management and control of the army, "tattooing for soldiers" has become a system of standardized operation. Soldiers who are recruited into the army must be tattooed as a mark. Zhao Kuangyin believed that the soldiers and the people should be separated and controlled separately, which would be conducive to the stability of the country and the emperor's rule. Niu Bian of the Southern Song Dynasty also said in "Old News of Quwei": "Yizu (that is, Taizu of the Song Dynasty) brought down the world and gathered rogues from all over the world to tattoo people as soldiers." According to sporadic records in ancient books, "pine smoke ink" is usually used. Insert a needle (similar to a tubular needle) with characters on the body, pierce the skin, and apply medicinal wine.

The tattoo area does not comply with military regulations

In the Song Dynasty, there were two types of armies that needed to be tattooed. One was the Forbidden Army, which was the country’s combat force; the other was the Xiang Army, which is equivalent to the current engineering corps. The country's large-scale highway projects, such as bridge repairs and road repairs, are all completed by the Xiang army. Both the Forbidden Army and the Xiang Army have their own fixed numbers. In order to facilitate identification and management, the contents tattooed by the soldiers are basically the numbers of their respective units and nothing else. This prevents soldiers from moving and escaping as they please.

There are also prison soldiers, such as Lin Chong in Water Margin. After he committed a crime, he was sent to Cangzhou to serve as a soldier. This kind of soldier has a corvee nature and will also be tattooed with names such as the number of the prison city. Marks such as command.

So Professor You Biao said that judging from the content of the tattoo on Yue Fei's back - "Serve the country with loyalty", it cannot be that it was tattooed when he was recruited as a soldier. Moreover, the location of the tattoo did not comply with the regulations of the Song Dynasty. In the Song Dynasty, tattoos on soldiers were called tattoos. They were first tattooed on the face to artificially separate soldiers from ordinary social classes. This was a form of discrimination against soldiers.

The Song Dynasty was a society that valued culture over military affairs, and the social status of military generals was very low. Civil servants, especially those born as Jinshi, have high social status, and military attachés are subject to serious social discrimination. Because it was a civilized era at that time, even officers were discriminated against, let alone ordinary soldiers. Of course, there are also some enlightened scholar-bureaucrats who believe that this kind of discrimination against soldiers is not very good and hope that some necessary adjustments can be made. Later, many tattoos were tattooed on the arms, palms, backs of hands or the tiger's mouth.

The purpose of tattooing soldiers is to prevent soldiers from escaping or breaking the law, and to facilitate management and control, so they choose to tattoo relatively obvious parts such as the face and the back of the hands. If it were tattooed on the back like Yue Fei's, it would be too hidden and would have no marking effect at all. Therefore, this also shows that the words "Serve the country with devotion" on Yue Fei's back do not comply with the recruitment system of "tattooing as a soldier".

As for the order, I support the view from top to bottom, but no one knows what the specific order is, and there is no historical record.