What were the main elements of the legal system of the Xia Dynasty?

The law of the Xia Dynasty was called "Yu Penalty" in ancient documents. Due to the lack of original historical materials, it is difficult for us to understand the specific legal system of the Xia Dynasty in detail, and we can only analyze it from the records in some ancient books. According to Zuo Zhuan - Zhaogong Sixth Year, "Xia had a chaotic government and made the Yu Penalty." The Book of Han - Criminal Law Zhi recorded: "Yu inherited Yao and Shun, and since the decline of virtue, he made the punishment of meat." (The "moral woe" and "chaotic government" referred to here can be understood as the struggle of slaves against the slave-owning aristocracy, and the struggle of groups adhering to the old clan traditions against the class order.) Yu's punishment does not necessarily refer to the criminal law enacted at the time of Yu, nor does it refer to a written code of law, but rather to the laws and penalties of the Xia dynasty in general, using Yu as a name not to remember and honor Yu, the outstanding ancestor and founding ruler of the Xia tribe. As for the canonical texts that say "three thousand Xia penalties" and "five Xia Hou's positive penalties, three thousand" and so on, some of them are the appendages of later generations, but they also show the scale of Xia penalties from one side. About the specific content of the "Yu punishment", we can not be identified, we can only through the fragmentary records, to analyze the legal situation at that time.

Most of the laws of the Xia Dynasty were customary laws passed down from generation to generation. The customs of the primitive society were carefully selected by the ruling class and either eliminated or transformed into customary laws reflecting the will of the ruling class. Only with the support of the slave state was it possible to give certain customs of the clan society the nature of law. In the context of Xia law as a whole, the commands of the Xia king were also an important form of law.

(2) the main crime

Zuo Zhuan - Zhaogong fourteen years" quoted in the "Xia Shu" said "faint, ink, thieves, kill, Gaotao's punishment also". Where "evil and looting beauty for the faint", "corruption to defeat the official for the ink", "murder is not taboo for the thief", which is to say that the Xia Dynasty already had the crime of robbery, corruption and murder, according to Xia Gaotao's criminal law. s criminal law, all the above three are punishable by death.

The crime of "unfiliality" was also an important crime in the Xia Dynasty. Since the Xia Dynasty was an early slave state, clan blood relations were still very binding, so the crime of unfiliality was severely punished. Especially because the promotion of filial piety was an effective means of governing the people, it was not ignored by later rulers.

The Xia Dynasty's "Political Code" contains a provision that "those who are ahead of their time will be killed without amnesty, and those who are not caught up in their time will be killed without amnesty", which requires officials to strictly follow orders or systems when carrying out their duties, and this is the earliest record in Chinese history of officials committing crimes in the course of their duties.

In addition to this, there were also the charges of "not using orders" and "not honoring orders", i.e., not obeying the king's orders.

(3) Principles of Punishment

The Xia Dynasty, with the accumulation of ruling experience, formed some preliminary principles of punishment. "Instead of killing the unkoo, it is better to lose the unjing" is a principle of criminal policy that has been recited by later generations. Koo is a crime, and Jing is the common law, which means that it is better to try a case not according to the common law than to kill an innocent person by mistake. This principle of criminal law, which was used within the ruling class, was praised by later generations for its prudent use of punishment without being confined to the text.