Chu Guo was a descendant of Ji Lian. The previous lineage of the surname Ji Lian was: 颛顼 - Title - Volume Zhang - Chongli Wu Hui (Zhu Rong) Lu Zhen. This belongs to the legendary or prehistoric era, overlapping the ancestral lineage of northern China (especially Dongyi). The sixth son of Lu Zhong is a "brother nation", and only Ji Lian, surnamed Qi, is truly the ancestor of the Chu state:
Ji Lian - Attached Depression - Cave Bear
This "cave bear" is the first ancestor to be named after the "bear" (which is probably implied by the cave bear). This shows that they have considerable "mobility" as primitive tribes, from "nomadic" to "nomadic", from non-settled to semi-settled, and they must have stayed in northern China, and even to the Jianghan River Valley, they may also turn back to the north. The southern and northern regions of the Central Plains have places called "Chuqiu", which is one of the residences or bases where they live on the move.
<h1>First, most of the kings of the Chu kingdom added a bear character before their names</h1>
When the descendants of Ji Lian passed to King Wen of Zhou, they were a series of bear kings, and to understand the relationship between these bear kings, we still made the following arrangement of their successive relationships, and from these arranged bear kings we can understand how close the relationship between the Chu people and the bears is.
Cave Bear - Bear Bear - Xiong Li (Eldest Son of Bear) - Xiong Crazy - Xiong Xuan (Firstborn Son of Xiong Crazy) - Xiong Ai - Xiong Qi - Xiong Sheng - Xiong Yang - Xiong Qu - Xiong Wukang - Xiong Zhihong - Xiong Yan - Xiong Yan - Xiong Frost - Xiong Yi - Xiong Yi (Ruo Ao) - Xiong Kan (Xiao Ao) One by one - Xiong Tong (King of Chu Wu) - Xiong Yun (King wen of Chu) - (Zhuang Ao) - Xiong Yi (King of Chu Cheng)...
The Zuo Zhuan records a historical story about king Chu Cheng's desire to eat bears (that is, bear feet) before his death. The reason is that King Cheng believed that according to the traditional practice of the Chu state, Lao Wang could obtain, maintain and perpetuate "spirituality" by eating the flesh and blood of totem animals. However, this request of King Chu Cheng was not granted, and this King of Chu Cheng was Xiong Yun. Most of the kings of the Chu state added a bear character to their names. They always claimed the throne after ascending to the throne, and then changed their names.
For example, King Chuping's original name was Abandoned Disease, and after ascending the throne, he changed his name to Xiongju. This is King Chuping. And their general practice is to add a "bear" in front of the original name, as if it were an honorific title. For example, Xiong Yan's eldest son was named Bo Shuang, and after ascending the throne, he changed his name to Xiong Shuang, and Xiong Shuang's younger brother's name was called "徇", and after ascending the throne, he changed his name to Xiong Yan. Later, Ruo Ao changed his name to Xiong Yi after he ascended the throne, and changed his name to Xiong Yi after he ascended the throne.
<h1>Second, the bear is the totem of the Chu nation</h1>
The kings of the Chu kingdom had to add a king character before their names after ascending to the throne, because in their view, the bear was an auspicious thing, and the addition of the bear before the name became an honorific title. Obviously, the bear is the totem of the Chu nation. We can't find any other explanation than this.
The King of Chu liked to add a bear character to his name, which was actually from the Yellow Emperor and his descendants Xia and Zhou. The Xia and Zhou people also used bears as totems. According to legend, the carp turned into a yellow bear, and Yu, the son of the fish, also turned into a yellow bear. King Wen of Zhou slept at night and dreamed of a bear flying from the sky, and then he got Jiang Taigong. All this shows that the bear is the most prestigious totem image of the Yellow Emperor's tribe.
The State of Chu was a descendant of the Yellow Emperor's tribe, and was also a relative of the Xia and Zhou people, so it also used the bear as a totem. Almost every king of the Chu kingdom had to add a bear character to the front of his name, and this was the case for twenty-two kings, including Ji Lian's descendant, the cave bear, including the bear.
It was only after King Chumu that it was not named after the bear character. The reason for speculation may be that at this time, the Chinese people accepted the smoke of the Central Plains culture and no longer regarded the bear as a symbol of bravery. However, seven generations passed down from King Chu Mu to King ChuPing, who was renamed Xiongju, indicating that he inherited the ambition of the previous king Yongwu. Of the fourteen Chu kings after King Chuping, five more were named bears. The Chu kingdom had forty-six kings from the cave bear to the Chu Kao Lie king Xiong Yuan, and there were twenty-nine of them named after the bear, which lasted for about a thousand years. Since then, many of the descendants of the Chu people have taken the bear as their surname.
Of all the names of the king of Chu who bear names, the most interesting is the ancient "burrow bear"—obviously, this name refers to the king coming out of the bear's den, or the bear ancestor at the cave. The Classic of Mountains and Seas preserves many Chu myths, Chu legends, and Chu customs. One of them goes like this:
Bear Mountain, there are caves. Bear's Den, constantly in and out of the gods. Summer is open and winter is closed; it is a cave, and the winter is a soldier.
The bear's den here refers to the place where the giant bear stings or hibernates, and the gods in the bear's den are likely to allude to the ancestral cave bear of the Chu state. After the bear's den is opened in winter, it will use swords and guns to fight, which means that the mammoth hibernation is interfered with and the bear is threatened, which just symbolizes the character characteristics of the ancestors of the Chu kingdom who are brave and fierce, and the strong dove is good at war. 鬻熊, 鬻 read as breeding, just like the ancient Xiongnu meat porridge can be written as lavendering. "Bear breeding" and "bear breeding" mean the same thing, that is, bears are bred.
<h1>Other peoples who use bears as totems</h1>
In fact, the bear is not only the totem of the Chu nation, many ethnic groups use the bear as a totem. The Chu people use the bear as a totem, which is obviously related to the bear totem of other ethnic groups.
In the forested areas inhabited by the Evenks, bears pose a great threat to the lives of the Evenks, with their forelimbs able to grasp things and deliver them to their mouths, and their hind limbs able to walk upright. In the eyes of the Evenk, bears are different from ordinary animals, and whenever the bear stands upright and looks forward, it raises its forelimbs and puts them on its forehead as an eye mask to avoid light. These magical places make evenks worship bears and regard bears as the ancestors of humans.
Adjacent to the Evenk are the Orenchun. The Orunchun people also use bears as totems, and they also have a beautiful legend: one day, a hunter went out hunting, and on the way, he was caught by a mother bear and went to the cave, and the mother bear lived with the hunter, and later gave birth to a cub. The hunter saw an opportunity and fled without the bear noticing. When the mother bear saw it, she hurried to catch up, but could not catch up, and the mother bear angrily tore the cub in half and threw half of it into the hunter. The hunter looked back and saw something coming, and he hurried to pick it up. The half cub that the hunter caught later evolved into the Orenchun, and the mother bear left herself is still a bear. The first king of the Chu state named after a bear was called "Cave Bear", which seems to have something in common with the story of the Orunchun people.
Many of the legends of the world's heroes, the castaways, are also related to bears. The most famous is the story about the "bear child". It is about abandoned babies being rescued and fed by mother bears, and some are talking about bears giving birth to bear babies after mating with people. Like Prince Paris in Greek mythology, the heroine Atalanta grew up eating bear's milk.
There is a hero in Chinese Uyghur legend named Ari Kurban. Ari Kurban was born after a white bear lived with a beautiful girl, Marieke, so he looked very good-eyed, much like his mother Marieq, except that he had some yellow bear hair. Later, although he smashed his bear father with stones, he was able to descend the dragon and ambush the tiger, kill monsters and demons, and still be a bear totem hero.
There is a custom in Siberia called "horse hair". It is the clans that raise bears together to maintain consistency and unity within the clan, and they elect a woman to be the "mother bear" to manage the work of raising bears full-time. When the bear grows up and breaks out of the fence, people will kill the bear, at this time, the "mother bear" is crying and crying, and she is devastated. People from all over the clan gathered outside the fence, pouring wine into bears, and women sang and danced wildly. The bear then travels to "visit" the families of the clan tribes, and then cuts the throat of the bear until the bear's blood is running out and he dies. Finally, a grand "bear feast" was held. The storyline of this kind of bear killing and feasting also has similarities with the Chu people.
The Yi epic "Mege" talks about the Gezi Tianshen sect "Wumleva turning into a big old bear / blocking the water and flooding the golden mountain / looking for a good species / leaving a breed of people." It consciously destroyed people's fields and was caught by the youngest child, who carried the little sister on his back and saw it, saying: "Look at its head like a grandfather / See its body like a grandmother / Don't fight / Don't kill." They rescued the bear, and the great god who incarnated as a bear taught them how to make gourd dan to escape the flood, and the god Gezi made the brother and sister the ancestors of the new human species.
"Meg" also wrote: "The blood of the old bear flows into a river / The corpse pool in the river / The head goes down the water / Flows into the Oriental Sea / Plug the water hole / The water rises." "The scene description here seems very terrifying, a bit like a great god killing beasts, using the body of the beast to create heaven and earth and all things. This kind of legend gives people a strong sense of tragedy in their beauty. If we think carefully about the reason for the birth of this legend, it should be said that the people at that time had a sense of awe for powerful beasts and the guilt of killing beasts in vain.
In addition, the heroes who cast the sun and the moon in the "Ancient Song of the Miao People" are called Gong, and there are Bao Gong, Xiong Gong, and Dang Gong. The poem reads: "Twelve days were made / Twelve nights were made / Twelve pairs of the sun and the moon / caused at once." And it is the male sky that can provoke the sun and the moon. The poem reads: "The male sky is a good man / The shoulders are thick and wide / The trees are uprooted / The mountains can be moved." They all have a "Xiong" character in their names, "Xiong", "Bear" is pronounced the same, can be connected, so the "Xiong" here is related to the name and surname of the Chu royal family.
<h1>Fourth, how the Chu state is strong</h1>
In short, the bear is the totem of the Chu people, and the Chu people regard the bear as a symbol of their nation. From here, we can also see the reason for the Chu people's heroic and good fighting. The State of Chu thus became stronger, and in the Warring States Policy chu ce, Su Qin united with the state of Chu for the sake of the state of Zhao and persuaded the king of Chu Wei to say:
"The Kingdom of Chu is a great power under the heavens; the Great King, you are the wise king of the world. The land of the Chu State has Qianzhong and Wu County in the west, Xiazhou and Haiyang in the east, Dongting and Cangwu in the south, fenjing in the north, and the place of Gaoyang is five thousand miles in circumference, and there are millions of soldiers, more than a thousand vehicles, and more than ten thousand war horses. Grain can be eaten for ten years. These are all capitals for hegemony! ”
Such a vast territory, prominent forces, and sufficient strength are all the results of the accumulation of wealth in all directions formed by the scope of the Chu people's operation. This is also the general trend of the Chu kingdom's territory as stated in the "Xunzi Discussion Of Soldiers", "Ruying thinks it is dangerous, Jiang Han thinks it is a pool, it is limited to Deng Lin, and the fate is Fangcheng". The pattern of the Chu state is open, not closed, with the Yangtze River, you can go north or east, relying on Wushan, you can communicate with Bashu and Yanqian; on the verge of Heyang, of course, you can contact advanced things; looking at the sea from afar; you must be able to cultivate the ambition to conquer the four directions.
At its peak, the Chu state had a population of about five million, accounting for a quarter of the population of the Warring States, and its territory covered an area of more than one million square miles. During the Three Hundred Years of the Spring and Autumn Period, the State of Chu destroyed about forty or fifty states and became the most powerful of the nations. The countries it annexed included the feudal states of Zhou, the state of Xu left over from the Yin Dynasty, and some small states of Lu Rong, Qunshu, Huaiyi, and Dongyi, and most of the Qunman and Baipu were forced to move south.
Most of today's provinces and regions in East China, Central South, and Southwest china were controlled and contained by the State of Chu, which became a vast center of the integration of various ethnic groups in southern China, a typical example of ethnic connection and integration at that time.
The process of the strength of the Chu state began when Xiongqu, the king of Chu, won the hearts and minds of the people in jiang and Han, and the chu state dared to learn from advanced countries and nations, and also dared to melt and merge with backward tribes. They are not ashamed to be barbarians, nor are they discouraged in the face of powerful and advanced countries. In this way, they are very profitable in heaven, place, and people, so they become strong.
As far as the "Heavenly Time" is concerned, the Chu State not only has its own development sequence and long-term accumulation, but also has the nourishment of the long history of the four ethnic groups, especially the Central Plains culture, and fortunately encountered the spring and autumn Warring States cultural exchanges and competition in the heyday of competition.
As far as "geographical advantages" are concerned, the hinterland or "cultural core" of the Chu State is exactly between Jianghan and Han, with agricultural and commercial spokes, developed transportation, the east side collects the interests of jiangsu quasi-fishery and salt industry, the west can accept the funding of the sichuan Tianfu Country, the south side leads to the aura of Peng Liyuan Xiangshan River, and the north bears the blessings of the Yellow River civilization in the Central Plains. In this way, the Chu state was provided with the conditions for "the prosperity of humanities" and "nature" and "society". The large number of talents in the Chu State and the prosperity of the Keqing are comparable to those of the Qin State. The flow of talents, the impact of ideological trends, and the exchange of cultures became the customs of the time, and the Chu state bore the brunt of this.
In short, the Chu state became strong because it was in a favorable position in terms of time, place, and people, and this Chu nation with the bear as a totem stepped onto the stage of history with a proud attitude and staged a majestic historical drama.