In the year of Water Margin, many heroes got tattoos for killing people. After tattooing, they will be assigned to other places, such as Song Jiang, Song Wu, Lin Chong, Yang Zhi and Lu Junyi. Therefore, many instruments of torture are also mentioned in the original work, and the most common one is the cangue.

In movies and TV programs, prisoners basically wear only one kind of flail, which is the square flail of neck and hands. In fact, the ancient cangue is not like this, and there is more than one. There are many kinds of flails in Water Margin, such as long flail, walking flail, square flail, disk flail and protective flail.

What are these flails like? Under what conditions are they used? Was there such a flail in Song Dynasty? Now, let's talk about these flails separately.

Cangue history

Before talking about cangue, let's briefly talk about the history of cangue.

In fact, at first, cangue was not a tool used to torture people, usually referring to shelves or tool cangue.

For example, in the Book of Rites, "Men and women sit in different positions, so does the flail". The flail here is a hanger. In Shi Ming, there is a legend that "cangue, leaf beetle, put a stick on the handle and take the ear out of its valley", and there is another legend that "cangue" ears of wheat or rice are used as agricultural tools. Of course, flails can also be used as weapons.

At the latest in the Jin Dynasty, "cangue" had been used as a kind of torture device.

Yang Guo and Zhang Long, mentioned in the Book of Jin, occupied many conference semifinals in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. In order to expel them, they asked these people to "grow two beards and wear a pair of cangue". Schiller is only in his twenties and is one of the prisoners. This story is also mentioned in Shu Wei and other historical materials, and it is called "two tigers and one cangue".

It can be seen from here that in the Jin Dynasty, "cangue" was already a kind of torture device.

The first one is a long cangue.

Dragon cangue is mentioned many times in the original work. 120 edition of Biography of Sixteen Countries in the Spring and Autumn Period has 13 times. Lin Chong, Song Wu, Song Jiang, Liu Tang and others all wore long cangue. Lin Chong was framed by Gao Qiu and mistakenly entered the White Tiger Hall. Later, he was put in prison wearing a long cangue.

The satrap returned to his class, taught Lin to put on a cangue and beheaded 20 spines. He asked a writer to stab him in the face and measure the distance between the two places, which should be consistent with the prison city in Cangzhou.

Long cangue is a special kind of cangue, so it is very long, so it is called "long cangue". It is said that the flail at that time was "ten feet long, three feet long and one foot below the throat". There were three rulers in the Northern Wei Dynasty, the smallest of which was 27.9 cm. If you convert it, you can see that the flail at that time was as high as 3.6 meters, and two people were tall and very long. Because of this, Xiao Liangzi of the Northern Qi Dynasty said that he was "holding a long cangue" in the year of Water Margin.

In the Tang Dynasty, the flail was shortened. Du You said Wei's flail size.

Flail is longer than 5 feet but less than 6 feet, cheek is longer than 2 feet 5 inches but less than 6 inches, total width is greater than 4 inches but less than 6 inches, and diameter is greater than 3 inches but less than 4 inches.

After conversion, it can be seen that the flail at this time is about the same length as the human body. It should be noted that the long cangue is not rectangular, square or round, but made of two pieces of wood with different lengths. Long wood chips are "more than 5 feet and less than 6 feet" and short wood chips are "more than 2 feet, less than 5 inches and less than 6 inches", which is only half of long wood chips.

This kind of long cangue is also found in Tang and Song paintings. For example, this long cangue appeared in the long hand-painted scrolls of Dunhuang Zhu in the Tang Dynasty. In addition, this long cangue was also found in the murals of Kaihua Temple in Gaoping in the Song Dynasty.

On the long flail, the protruding part of the long wood chip is called "flail tip", which is also mentioned many times in Tongdian.

Bai Xiuying sued the winged tiger Lei Heng. As a result, he was punished by the county magistrate and wore a long cangue. Lei Heng's mother came to see her and had a quarrel with Bai Xiuying. Bai Xiuying flew into a rage and went up to denounce and beat his mother. Lei Heng saw it, so he hit Xiuying with a cangue tip. As a result, "a cangue tip caught him red-handed" and Bai Xiuying was killed.

In addition, Jebel came out of Dengzhou prison, and Jebel came to him, "hit by Jebel's flail head"; Cai Huaqing "held the cangue tip" when he executed Lu Junyi; When Shi Jin escaped from prison in Dongping House, the "single cangue tip" knocked down the bar.

Because the flail tip is long, it can be used as a weapon. In fact, the flail tip is mainly used to pull the prisoner or tie the hair on it. Some flail tips have small holes, which can be used to hang prisoners and facilitate torture.

Since the Ming dynasty, the number of long cangue has gradually decreased, and some long cangue ends are flush. In "Three Talents", the long cangue is also called "longboard".

The second type: square cangue

Movies and TV plays are basically square flails. This kind of flail is called "square flail" and has no flail tip.

In the early Ming Dynasty, long cangue and square cangue coexisted. For example, in the twenty-sixth year of Hongwu, the Ten Kings Sutra of Buddhism, "punishments use 520 long cangue, and 260 square cangue a year; The court will use 120 long cangue, 260 square feet per year.

By the end of the Ming Dynasty, there were more and more square cangues, and by the Qing Dynasty, they were all square cangues. During the years of Water Margin, only the thirty-sixth song has such a sentence: "Square cangue, chain, arrow on the string, let alone in prison", which means "square cangue".

How big was the square cangue in Ming Dynasty? The "Three Talents Conference" also mentioned the weight of different flails.

Cangue system, five feet five inches long and one foot five inches wide, made of dry wood, weighs 25 kilograms for death, 20 kilograms for exile and 15 kilograms for caning. The length of the old building doesn't matter, because Song Taizong started to build it, and now we must follow it.

The "cangue" here refers to the square cangue. As can be seen from the picture, a long flail or a square flail is just wrapped around the neck, unlike in movies and TV series, where hands are all wrapped around. The instruments of torture that bind hands are actually "hands".

The third type: line cangue

In ancient times, when prisoners were sent to prison, they all wore cangue of different shapes. Generally speaking, the cangue worn in prison is very heavy.

For example, when Bai Sheng was arrested, he was wearing a "20-catty death chain". Wang Po wore a "heavy cangue" when he went to prison. Song Jiang wrote an anti-poem, wearing a "25 kg flail of death row"; Was framed by Mao Taigong wearing a 25kg death row cangue. Chai Jin was founded by Gao Lian and Yin Tianxi. He is still a 25-kilogram condemned prisoner. Lu Junyi has the worst luck. Wearing a "100 Jin death-row cangue" when he went to prison.

However, the place of delivery is usually far away. You can't walk far with a heavy yoke weighing dozens of kilograms. Therefore, the cangue worn on the road is usually very light, so it is very convenient to walk, also called "walking cangue". Cangue is mentioned many times in Ming Dian.

Song Wu gave two officials twelve taels of silver, and then put them in cangue, still covered with hijab.

In addition, Song Jiang, Jeikiy, Wang Qing and others also wear cangue to walk on the distribution road.

The length of the cangue has been fixed. How can I lose weight? The method is to reduce the thickness of flail wood. But if the thickness is too thin, the flail may be unstable, so people will nail it with iron sheets to help fix it.

Based on this, hanging cangue is also called "iron leaf protection cangue". In the year of Water Margin, Lin Chong, Song Wu and others were sent with this flail, weighing only 7.5 kilograms. For example, when Lin Chong was assigned to Cangzhou, his class wore a "seven-and-a-half-catty iron leaf flail".

The fourth is flail.

There is a special kind of walking flail called "pan-headed flail", which is also called "pan-headed flail" in Jie Zhen Street Newspaper.

Pan Sangui appeared in the Tang Dynasty. At first, there was no weight. In the Song Dynasty, Injong had stipulated the weight of 10 kg. At the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, because the flail was too heavy, Song Huizong also issued a special decree stipulating that "flail weighing 10 kg should be supervised". Plate cangue is made for the convenience of prisoners' life, so it is round and has no edges and corners. It is similar to a disk, hence the name "disk cangue". This kind of round cangue was found in the Water Margin of the Tang Dynasty and the Water Margin of Xiu Xiang in the late Ming Dynasty.

Flail weight is also very light. In order to stabilize it, iron leaves will be nailed to it. So this kind of flail is also called "rolled iron leaf flail".

When Song Wu assassinated Pennsylvania State University, he was wearing "a 7.5-pound piece of iron and a flail". Lu Junyi also wore an iron leaf roll, but the magistrate Cai Jiuzhi probably wore a "20kg iron leaf roll" because of Lu Junyi's martial arts.

"Song Yao Hi-Tech Ji" said that at that time, there was only a "flogging system, not an order", so "there is a public department in the world", which is mainly used for "the county sends prisoners to the state and the state sends prisoners to other places" and so on. It can be found that prisoners also wear flail when distributing.

Write it at the end

Also mentioned "flail", that is, wearing flail for the public to see. The flail will also write down the name and charges of the prisoner. This is a moral punishment and can be used as a warning to everyone. When Li Kui JY was tried in court, he asked the defendant to "whip himself in front of the government".

In a word, it can be found that whether it is a long cangue, a square cangue or a line cangue, it just covers the prisoner's neck, not his hands. Because prisoners need to solve problems such as eating, drinking and breaking up on the road, it will be very inconvenient if they are tied up.

In addition, a cover will be affixed to the cangue, and the prisoner's name, charges and location will be written. In the year of Water Margin, the magistrate Cai Jiuzhi met Song Jiang for the first time and asked him, "Why didn't the cangue cover the state?" Two officials said they were soaked in the rain. In fact, the ancients have long considered this situation. When escorting prisoners, you will bring many sets along the way and change one every few days.

There are several kinds of cangue in Ming and Qing dynasties, such as two people, three people or even five people, and prisoners are allowed to stand all the time. Because it is not mentioned in the Ten Kings of Buddha, I won't go into details here.