Speaking of Yin Shang's "King's Woman", many people first think of Su Daji, the King of Shang, in fact, before the King of Shang (Di Xin), Wu Ding had 64 wives to be an enviable existence: not only a large number, but also a dry one. The women's good and the women's well are the most important gemini stars among them. But why is it that only the women are so dazzling, and the women's wells are nameless?
01 The King's Woman
Historically, if a dynasty's women can do more than men, and even influence the government, cultural people will use "Muji Sichen" to describe, of which the most extreme embodiment may be the Tang Dynasty empress Wu Zetian.
But if you pull the timeline to the original historical node, who do you think of?
According to the "Shang Shu Pastoral Oath", when King Wu of Zhou was conquering Yin Shang, he once swore an oath to the princes in the land of Muye, which mentioned the sins of the King of Shang, one of which is very interesting: Wang Yue: "The ancients said that 'the chicken has no morning. The morning of the rooster, but the rope of the family. 'Now the king of shang is subject to it, but the woman's words are used..."
From this point of view, the original "hen" is the favorite concubine of the King of Shang, Su Daji, there is no doubt! After studying the oracle bones, some scholars found that "the phenomenon of The JiJi Sichen not only appeared in the Shang Dynasty, but also in the Wuding Period, and even throughout the entire Yin Shang Society period." ”
Therefore, let's not talk about the King of Shang, but about the King of Shang, Wu Ding, and his 64 wives ("women").
The oracle bones in the form of "woman + so-and-so" appeared in the form of more than 930 editions, after removing the heavy film, and the content also involved political, economic, military, religious and other fields, which had to be amazing:
Could it be that the status of women in the shang dynasty could be so high?
Is Wu Ding willing to share power and be a handshaker?
Whether the status is high or not, you will know what his wives are doing, if it is a trivial matter, it is not surprising. The strange thing is that they were involved in the "great affairs of the country" in the true sense.
"The great affairs of the country, in the sacrifice and rong" is a sentence in the "Thirteen Years of Zuo Chuan Chenggong", which summarizes two important aspects of state rule during the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. And in the Wuding period, wars and sacrifices, women did not walk away!
First of all, the war, the previous article discussed the Yin Shang female war goddess woman who is well known. For specific content, see: Archaeology: Yin Shang only women are good women are goddesses of war? The Iron-Blooded Warrior will disobey the Chief, the Lord of the Holy Buffalo
In fact, there is not only one woman who can fight in the oracle, and the woman well has also done the work of conquering other countries. Long Yi was an important fang state that often invaded the Shang Dynasty, and Nüjing had been ordered by the king to go to conquest.
"Kotatsubu, Huinu Jing Fa Long □" (Collection, 6585 Zheng) "The Woman's Well Dragon Fang (Continued) 4.26.2)
In addition, the study found that among the 204 women seen in the oracle bones and jinwen, only two people were able to participate in the war, "Women's Good" and "Women's Well". Therefore, the military privileges of the Shang King were not available to all wives, and Wu Ding valued them most, but only these two sisters.
Speaking of sacrifices, there are obviously more people who can participate, not only women's good and women's wells, but also women's (female fruits) and women's clans. Even so, there are differences between women in sacrificial activities, such as the sacrifice of burning firewood, the sacrifice of the first concubine, the sacrifice of the sacred spring, etc., it is estimated that the average woman participates in the rectification of the oracle bone in preparation for divination, of course, this is also a sacrifice activity.
The woman who participated in the festival was called "The Sacrifice of The Lady of the House", and the object of the sacrifice was one of the mothers of Wu Ding. See? It turned out that she, like the woman, could sacrifice her mother-in-law as a daughter-in-law.
Why, then, would Wu Ding, as the king of Shang, feel confident and bold to share political, military, and even sacrificial rights with his own women?
It should be known that the leading soldiers of the women's good and the well are not emergency acts that occur under the critical situation or the seriousness of the battle, but a regular behavior; as for sacrifices, they are an important means of communicating with the ancestral gods and gods, blessings and avoiding disasters. Such a degree of "Muji Si Chen" during the Yin Shang period is indeed rare.
For this phenomenon of aristocratic women's participation in the political power, some scholars have explained it as "the remnants of matriarchal society", but Yin Shang has been thousands of years away from matriarchal society, and it is indeed simplistic to attribute it to matrilineal remains. From the perspective of Bu Ci, the gender differences in the field of political war sacrifices can actually be said to be an extension of the gender differences within the family to some extent.
A passage by Mr. Zhao Dongyu gave people great inspiration: "As individual families occupy control in social life, the power held by some male military and political leaders will continue to expand, and at the same time, a stable and effective mechanism has not yet been formed in society to represent the huge power he has, so he naturally distributes the power in his hands to his wife, and then there are women as husbands' assistants and even many men with the roles of military commanders, landowners and so on." ”
In addition, in the early form of state in the Yin Shang era, which was "home-state isomorphism", the Shang king was not only the ruler of the state, but also the patriarch of the family, so his management of the two was often intertwined.
Mr. Hu Houxuan has a wonderful exposition in his "Examination of the Feudal System of the Yin Dynasty": "The sacrifice of fate, or the conquest of fate, the exchange between the government and the opposition, the driving force in the past, is no different from the envoys and subjects of cronies." "
So you see, the woman of the Shang King is not only the woman of the king, but more like a full range of intimate partners who cooperate seamlessly: wearing a strong and sharp, for the king's precursor; calling the sky and the earth, communicating with gods and ghosts.
Of course, it is a woman, and naturally it is indispensable to a woman's job: to have children. With this alone, the unknown women's well may have been several streets away from the woman. One of the reasons is that we have to mention Simu Pengding.
02 Who is bigger and who is smaller
Although King Wuding of the Shang Dynasty had 64 wives (according to Mr. Hu Houxuan), in fact, there were only three "legal spouses", also known as "three matches":
They are yucin, yupentyl and yupta
What is a legal spouse? In fact, to put it bluntly, it is the direct ancestors who can enter the shrine, which also means that the descendants of the three are all uncompromising Shang kings (Zu Ji, Zu Geng, and Zu Jia), and they are the noble queens.
Don't you think their names are a little weird? Indeed, because this is not their living title. The meaning of 妣 is understood by everyone, but as for Xin, E, and 癸, the queen's temple name, that is, the name of Tiangan Day, is determined according to the date of her death.
And their private names are the women we are familiar with ( 妣辛) and the women's well ( 妣戊 ), as for who the other concubine is, it is still undecided. Since there are three positive queens (three women and one play), the question is, is there a difference in size and status between them?
Personally, I think that apart from the concubine, as far as the woman is concerned and the woman is concerned, there is indeed a difference in the status of the two. Why?
Let's start with the most familiar bronze (post)mother pentadydine. It is undeniable that this bronze vessel specially made for the women's well, so far, whether excavated or handed down, is the largest and heaviest bronze ceremonial vessel ever seen in the Shang Dynasty.
The Simu Xin Fangding cast for women's good is significantly smaller than the Simu Peng Fangding. If the capacity and weight of bronzes were determined by the etiquette followed by the society at that time, would the owner of Simu Pengfangding be higher than the master of Simu Xin Fangding?
Bronze is only part of the hierarchy of the tomb owner, in fact, the most direct is the important information presented by the tomb itself. Tomb No. 5 of Xiaotun, whether from the perspective of location, shape, or burial utensils, seems to be far inferior to the tomb of Nüjing buried in Northwest Gang.
A stream of water divides the ruins of Yin Ruins into north and south banks, with the northwest hill on the north bank being the Shang Dynasty King's Tomb Area, and the south bank being the Zongmiao Palace Area. The woman was buried in The Northwest Gang, the highest-ranking burial area in the Shang Dynasty, where all four tombs are located, and she is the only queen with only one tomb.
As for The Woman, the Xiaotun Tomb Area where she is located, located in the west of the Zongmiao Palace Area, has seven medium-sized tombs, and from the data of the three tombs that have been excavated, its volume is about three times smaller than that of the Northwest Gang Tomb, and the Tomb of the Woman's Good does not even have a tomb path.
The two, who were also Queen Wuding, were buried in different burial areas on both sides of the Huanshui River, one of which accompanied the shang kings of the past with the tombs, and the other was accompanied by other wives and had no tombs. The gap is self-evident.
As for the comparison of funerary goods, I will not repeat it here. Therefore, how did the women's well, which seems to be the big wife (big woman's well), be robbed of countless limelight by the little wife?
Personal speculation may be related to the nature of the content of the statement.
At that time, war and sacrifice were the most important parts of the Yin people. Although women also do these things, they are far inferior to women's good in scale and frequency.
Therefore, the truth about The Shang King Wuding may not be that the two are deeply in love, but "fly with both wings"? Tang Libai's poem "Double Swallow Departure": "Double swallows are double swallows, and double flight is enviable." With the help of these two wise men, the joy of the ancients will not deceive me.