Zu Geng – The twenty-fourth monarch of the Shang Dynasty

Zu Geng, surname, name Yue, the twenty-fourth monarch of the Shang Dynasty, he was the second son of wuding, a famous king of the Shang Dynasty, who died of illness and was buried in Yin. Zu Geng had an eldest brother, Zu Ji, who was framed by his stepmother and expelled from the capital by his father Wu Ding, and later died of injustice. The third brother, Zu Jia, was born to his stepmother, and in order to express his reluctance to compete with his brother for the throne, he secretly ran away from the palace, And Wu Ding died of illness, and Zu Geng was able to succeed to the throne. After Zu Geng's death, the third brother Zu Jia succeeded to the throne.

Wu Ding wanted to pass the throne to his eldest son, Zuji. Zu Ji is a filial piety, with a filial name, known as "filial piety". He had to get up five times a night to see if his parents were sleeping well, so he was deeply favored by Wu Ding. However, due to the early death of his mother, his stepmother did not like him and said many bad things about him in front of Wu Ding, and as a result, he was exiled to other places. However, after Zu Ji endured this blow, he soon died of grief.

In fact, Wu Ding exiled Zu Ji, first, to avoid the contradiction between Zu Ji and his stepmother; second, because he was also let go by his father Xiao Yi from childhood, so he thought that it was not a good thing to send Zu Ji to a foreign country to observe the people's feelings. It was a pity that Zuji did not understand his father's painstaking heart.

In addition, Wu Ding's love for the ancestors is also reflected in the sacrifice, when the Shang royal family sacrifices the ancestors, the ceremony is very solemn, and the living people act as the "corpses" of the ancestors to accept the worship of hundreds of officials, which is the so-called "corpse sacrifice". "Corpse sacrifice" has existed since the Xia Dynasty, and "corpse" is generally performed by the eldest son or eldest grandson. The idiom "corpse vegetarian meal" evolved from "corpse sacrifice", because "corpse" can eat only fasting and not work in addition to receiving worship on the altar. Zu Ji had served as a "corpse" to be worshiped by hundreds of officials, and his qualification was actually equivalent to the status of a prince.

Zu Geng's younger brother Zu Jia was more virtuous than Zu Geng, and when Wu Ding was dying, he wanted to establish Zu Jia as his heir, but Zu Jia thought that he was Zu Geng's younger brother and did not deserve the position of elder brother, so he fled to the people. The Book of Shang records: "In Zujia, the unrighteous king was a villain. This means that when Zu Jia arrived, he thought that it was an unrighteous act to replace his brother as king, so he fled to the people and became a small people. Since the crown prince Zuji died early, after Wu Ding's death, the throne was inherited by Zu Geng.

Simu Pengding