中华法律文化之起源考

Research on the Origin of Chinese Legal Culture

中华法律文化源远流长,按照传世文献的记叙,早在黄帝时期就已经有了法律生活。《诗经》《周易》《左传》《国语》《史记》《汉书》等典籍记载的中国上古时期的法律叙事,能否从最近100年丰硕的考古出土遗存和文献中获得支持呢?就此从文化、法律文化和中华法律文化的内涵入手,全方位探寻当时人们的政治与法律生活,从社会不平等的出现、早期复杂社会的兴起、统一国家的形成等方面勾画中华法律文化起源的萌发概貌,从城市、文字及原始宗教等层面还原中华法律文化起源的孕育场景,并考证构成中华法律文化起源的三大因子即国家事务、民事和刑事等规范的诞生和成长轨迹。中华法律文化的起源具有原创性、多元性、渐进性、连续性、经典性等鲜明特征。中华传世文献中关于国家与法律的起源之记载基本上是可靠的,中华民族有着巨大的创造力,中华法律文化是人类法律文化中的重要一极。

The Chinese legal culture has a long history.According to surviving historical records,law emerged as early as the time of the Yellow Emperor.Can the narration about law as recorded in Chinese classics including the Book of Songs,Book of Changes,Commentary of Zuo,Discourses of the States,Records of the Grand Historian,and Book of Han be supported by the archaeological discoveries and unearthed documents made in the past 100 years?This paper starts with the connotation of culture,legal culture,and traditional Chinese legal culture to make a comprehensive exploration of the political and legal life of the people in ancient times.It discusses the source of Chinese legal culture from the emergence of social inequality,complex society,and unified state,restores the scenes of cities,writing,and religion where the legal culture was founded,and investigates the traces and history of state affairs and the civil and criminal norms that consist of the traditional Chinese legal culture.This paper concludes that the source of the traditional Chinese legal culture has originality,diversity,continuum,evolution,and classical traits and that the historical records on the sources of state and law are reliable,which also demonstrates that the Chinese nation has a great potential of creation and is an important part of human legal culture.