"Father dies and marries mother, brother dies and marries sister-in-law". Why do Huns have such a custom?

The ancient history of China has always been recorded by Huns. Historically, the Central Plains region has a unique feudal ethical culture, and there are also nomadic cultures on grasslands outside the Central Plains region. The nomadic people on the grassland were cruel and vulgar in people's eyes at that time. People in the Central Plains were very disgusted with these grassland Man Zi, thinking that they had no culture and ethics.

There has always been a tradition in the northern grassland that when the father dies, the son can marry her wife; If my brother dies, my brother can marry her wife. This was very unacceptable to the Central Plains culture at that time, and it was very despised in the Central Plains culture. And basically no one will do these unnatural things. In the eyes of Huns, it is a common thing and has been handed down as a tradition.

But in fact, in our central plains, there is such a thing, and it can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. At that time, people transferred their houses and inherited their inheritance, which was actually this kind of behavior, but it was just a nice saying. But with the passage of time, this kind of behavior was gradually abandoned in the Central Plains. After all, there is a great conflict between things that violate ethics and ethical culture. This is actually the benefit of cultural accumulation.

In fact, nomadic people in the north have no fixed place to live, and there is no fixed cultural inheritance, let alone any cultural precipitation and accumulation. Nomads are barbarians in people's eyes, and their way of dealing with things is naturally barbaric enough. They naturally don't care about ethics.

At that time, nomadic people, because they had no fixed place to live, actually had nothing except some cattle, sheep and other animals and the yurts where they lived. Their property forms are very simple and easy to be occupied by others. And if their wives marry other people, it is difficult to guarantee that their children will inherit the property they deserve. Moreover, in Xiongnu culture, both husband and wife have certain property ownership, and these widows can also take their share of the property if they marry outside. Therefore, it is very common for a son to marry his father's wife, which is also to gather the family property into one person's hand and facilitate the management of the family.

But there was another situation at that time, when the younger brother married his brother's wife. This is actually not difficult to understand. Among the Huns at that time, the relationship between younger brother and older brother was very good, and the family lived together all the time, unlike the Central Plains, and they would not be separated when they grew up to a certain age. Get along day and night, in fact, there will be some feelings between each other. Widows who don't marry can actually ensure the cohesion of the family and ensure that the inheritance of the family continues to be in the hands of their own families. You don't have to worry about the division of property and the election of heirs brought about by remarriage.