Introduction: A few days ago, the knowledge archaeology program "Hidden Details" caused controversy due to the reappraisal of Wang Daji. According to the program, starting from historical materials and cultural relics, Emperor Xin of The Tang Dynasty was not only not faint and cruel, but also a rare wise and strong monarch, and all his measures were in line with the level of development of the productive forces at that time. Is this really the case? How has the historical image of king Lu been stigmatized? The following is dissected:
【Article/Observer Network Columnist Li Jingheng】
After years of long-term rendering of novels, film and television works such as "List of Fengshen Gods", the image of the King of Shang has long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and has become an image of a tyrannical king who pampers himself and drinks all day. Of course, the image of the King of Lu has a process of being stigmatized, which the ancients were also very clear about.
The Analects of Zi Zhang records a passage from Zi Gong's words: "It is better to be bad than to be good." It is the gentleman who is evil and inferior, and the evil of the world is returned", the Confucius sage Zigong in the late Spring and Autumn Period is very clear, the king of Lu is not as evil as the legend, but his reputation is really not very good, resulting in all the notoriety in the world in the end falling on his head.
In fact, the superposition process of notoriety on the head of the King of Lu began in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and many of the crimes were related to the cultural differences between the Shang and Zhou Dynasties.
A few days ago, the knowledge archaeology program "Hidden Details" caused controversy due to the reappraisal of Wang Daji
For example, one of the crimes of the King of Lu was to engage in "Mu Ji Si Chen" and "only women's words are used", that is, the King of Lu reused women, and also attached importance to women's political opinions. However, the oracle bone buci and the Western Zhou Jinwen material show that the female nobles of the Shang and Zhou dynasties were widely involved in political and military activities. The most famous example is the Shang Dynasty's woman, who had her own territory and army, and could mobilize three thousand people from the territory in a single war.
In addition to women, there are many other female nobles called "women", many of whom also have territories. Hu Houxuan once counted that there were more than sixty such female nobles who were called "women" during the Wuding period alone. During the Western Zhou Dynasty, a famous female noblewoman was Wang Jiang, and bronze inscriptions such as "Zuo Shu Ling Ling Gui" and "Zuo Shu Jing Ji" all record that she was in charge of the production of weapons in the Zhou Dynasty, and also owned a huge land and subordinate groups, and her status was extremely high.
During the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, it was normal for female nobles such as women and wang jiang to participate in political and military activities, and it was normal for the king to cooperate with such female nobles to listen to their opinions, which was very normal at that time, but only later was it falsely rumored that "only women's words are used", and the images of women and wang jiangs were also changed to harem concubines.
Lady Good Owl (Data Map)
Another sin of the King of Sui was the "wine pond meat forest", in fact, drinking and eating meat was an important part of the rituals of the Yin Shang sacrifice, Zhang Guangzhi believed that the nobles and witches of the Shang Dynasty had hallucinations by drinking and intoxicating, in order to achieve the effect of communicating with ancestors and gods. In the "Records of History", it is recorded that Shang Yi was the drink of the long night, and similar records are also found in the Warring States Chu Jian "Rong Chengshi" "纣 is a wine pool, generous in wine, Pu Ye thinks that it is obscene, and does not listen to the government of his state", and even reaches the point of "using wine as water". Shangyi's so-called "wine as a pool, county meat as a forest", but also through the popular "Fengshen Yanyi" novel, film and television series has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
However, the "wine pond meat forest" in the culture of the time probably only had a serious religious and ceremonial meaning. Taking the "meat forest" as an example, Professor Chao Fulin once pointed out that there are many words "playing" in the oracle bone bu, such as "刿奏", that is, the sacrificial meat that splits the sacrificial animal body and hangs it on the tree to offer it to the gods, which is the historical prototype of "hanging meat for the forest".
The tree is full of sacrificial meat, which must be accompanied by fine wine offerings, and there are records of music and wine juxtaposed in the oracle bones, such as the 23256th piece of the Oracle Bone Collection, "Sacrifice its wine, play, and play in the father", that is, sacrifice a large amount of wine and meat hanging on the tree to sacrifice the god of the father. Similar sacrifice objects include natural gods such as Yue, River, Mountain, Situ, Zu Yi, and Yu Ren, and ancestral gods. Therefore, the "wine pond meat forest" of the King of Sui, which is also a routine sacrifice ritual of the Shang King, was finally exaggerated and deformed into a sinful image.
The "wine pond meat forest" imagination in the film and television drama
Another example is the "Punishment of Cannon Burning", Chu Jian's "Rong Chengshi", which records the "cannon branding" of Shang, the situation is: "(The King of Gong) as the platform of ninety percent, the charcoal under it, the pot wood on it, thinking of the people, those who can do it, those who can do it, those who can not do it, those who fall inside and die, those who do not obey the order, and thus shackle it." So it was three thousand as a golden shackle." According to Chu Jian's records, the prototype of "cannon branding" is actually an adventure game for the public to participate in, with charcoal in the bronze below and logs set up on the high places, so that participants can walk over, and those who can walk past will pass, and those who cannot pass will fall to their deaths. If you refuse to participate in this "adventure", you are put on a shackle and locked up.
Professor Zhao Ping'an pointed out in the article "The Examination of the "Punishment of Cannon Branding" contained in it" that this activity of Shang Yi is actually closer to the game than to special torture. Whether the historical Shang Yi really had this game or not, it can be ignored. However, comparing the content of Chu Jian with the records of the "Punishment of Cannon Branding" in literature such as Xunzi Yibing, Han Feizi Yulao, and even the Han Dynasty's "History of Yin Benji" in the late Warring States period, we can glimpse the tendency of the king of Lu to be constantly exaggerated, such as this adventure game gradually being interpreted as a process of torture.
For example, the king of Lu claimed that "I was born without a destiny in heaven", which has always been regarded by people as a negative image of arrogance and arrogance and no political rationality. According to the "Shang Shu Xi Bo Li", at that time, King Wen of Zhou had already defeated the state of Li, the power of the Zhou people was further developed, and the situation of the Shang Dynasty was deteriorating day by day, but the King of Shang declared at that time that he was "born without a destiny in heaven", which was simply crazy with self-confidence.
In fact, to understand this psychology of the King of Sui, we cannot analyze the problem from the political ethics of the Zhou Dynasty established since the Zhou Dynasty and the political ethics of "God changing the Yuanzi", because the political ethics of the Shang Dynasty were different. There is an analysis in the book "Dragon and Phoenix Culture in Early China", which points out that the bloodline of the Shang royal family and God is integrated, and the Shang King is the descendant of God, who is eternally blessed by the god of the family, so this self-confidence is not the personal ignorance and arrogance of the King of Shang, but the misunderstanding caused by the cultural differences between the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. Our reading experience emerges from the Western Zhou Dynasty, where there is no blood relationship between the Son of Heaven and God, and it is necessary to tremble and tremble to maintain the support of Heaven forever.
The personal qualities of king Huan were also very good, and the Chronicle of History said that he was "discerning and quick to discern diseases, and he was very sensitive to smell." Superior material, hand beast. Knowing enough to be far away, words enough to decorate wrong", is simply a literary and martial all-rounder, and it is easy to speak. Then the question arises, since King Huan is an excellent person, and he did not engage in things like wine pond meat forest, daji himself to do politics, etc., then how did he finally become a villain image? The real reason is that he undermined the long-lost "constitution" of the Shang Dynasty.
The unwritten "constitution" of the Shang Dynasty, that is, the balance between the rights and obligations between the Shang King, the Shang Dynasty noble lords, and the commoners, this set of game rules is called "the code of chengtang", "the government of Pan Geng", "the punishment (type)" and so on in the ancient books, the basic spirit is that the king must protect the noble lords who are loyal to him, and at the cost, the noble lords must also be loyal to the king, and provide a certain amount of labor and military service. Correspondingly, noble lords also had to protect the commoners in their territories, and the commoners provided labor and military service to the lords.
"Hidden Details" believes that the King of Shu broke the hereditary system of noble ministers and vassals of Shiqing Shilu, enabled capable non-aristocratic commoners, and built a professional bureaucratic system. This has also sparked a lot of discussion
For example, if you are a noble lord of the Shang Dynasty, according to the unwritten legal practice for hundreds of years, you need to provide the Shang King with ten cows, a hundred sheep, and a hundred archers to serve for half a year every year. But fighting on the front line requires more resources and warriors, and in addition to cattle and sheep, the Shang King also wants to ask for fifty more pigs and five thousand catties of grain, or to extend the service period of archers from half a year to a year.
At this time, you can invoke the centuries-old practice of "the code of soup" to refuse, because you have fulfilled your obligations, and as long as you do, the Shang King will have to guarantee the security of your tribe and the ancient rights. But if the king breaks the unwritten rules of the game and keeps squeezing more labor and military service from the noble lords, this balance will be upset.
Judging from the oracle bones, the noble lords served the Shang king for labor and military service, which was still a relatively hard and risky obligation, so in the "non-king Bu Ci" of the noble lords, there were many nobles who asked about the service.
For example, the "Oracle Bone Collection" 22478 this noon group of words asked "Out, Ling Yue?" It was the noble lord Bu who asked, "If the Shang King sent me to lead his men to serve, would it take up to a month?"
Another noon group (Oracle Collection, 22069) asks "Is ziqi okay?" Something? It is the divination that asks, will our patriarch "Son" be sent out to serve?
"Oracle Collection" 21656 piece group Bu Ci also divination asked the lord's subordinate named "Received" if he could go home recently.
Judging from the divination content of these noble lords, serving the royal family is actually more arduous, so the nobles will repeatedly divinate to the gods to ask about the service time, whether their members should go home and so on. This kind of hard work can easily remind us of the song in the "Book of Poetry": "A gentleman is in service, and he does not know his period."
The Oracle Collection
The ancient unwritten constitution of the Shang Dynasty restricted the royal power, so that the royal power could not absorb too much labor and military service from the lords and nobles, and played a role in protecting and relieving the people's strength in society. Obviously, for the king of Lu, these constraints are all shackles that need to be broken, and only by breaking free can he use troops against the Yifang in the east, establish great achievements through war, and strengthen the king's power.
To break free from the shackles of an unwritten constitution, he needs to crack down on the old ministers and heavy ministers who represent this set of values, and reuse the foundationless minor ministers, that is, the famous inner dynasty in history. In the "Shangshu Weizi", "Shijing Daya Dang", "Zhou Benji" and other chapters, it is repeatedly pointed out that the King of Qi", "He has a long and old person", "Yin does not use the old", "the parents and brothers of the king are not used", these "old people" are the hereditary noble lords, clan elders, and important ministers of the Shang Dynasty, and their values are to defend the "old", that is, the ancient unwritten rules.
The king attacked and bypassed these "conservatives" and promoted "petty ministers" who only obeyed the king's orders. According to the "Zuo Chuan", "Zhou Benji" and other documents, most of these minor ministers are "four-way fleeing", "yizhaoyi people", "four-way multi-sinner", which shows that the king of Lu likes to use sinners, fugitives, and foreigners who are separated from the community, are not bound by any rules, and only rely on royal power.
Using people with criminal records to do dirty work, the cool officials of the Western Han Dynasty are well versed in this way, such as Wang Wenshu, who especially likes to use people who have committed crimes to do things. As for the foreigners, because they have no roots, they can only be loyal to the royal power, such as the monarchs of the Ottoman Empire, who preferred to reuse the foreign slave Janissaries from Europe rather than their own nobles. These people are collectively referred to as "xiao ministers", and the quality of these small ministers is not high, and a newly discovered piece of cattle pitch bone from the time of the king of Lu records that it was given to a "small minister" by the king of Lu.
Playing bull trespass, this game was more popular all over the world in ancient times, and it can also be used to gamble, similar to the modern sieve to gamble money. The inscription says that this is the king of the gambling equipment given to the small minister next to him, this young minister must also be a gambler who accompanies the king of the sword, very grateful, on this gambling tool engraved an inscription, the word is also inlaid with turquoise.
The king bypassed the "old people" and used sinners and yi people who had sores on their heads and feet to squeeze out resources, and indeed got a lot. The Yi zhou Shu Shang Oath records that the noble lords of the Shang Dynasty "have their embellishments", which is to describe them as if they were being cut by a stubble and a stubble, just cut, a little new shoot emerges, and then immediately cut away, and the resources within the various tribes are constantly squeezed by the king of The Shang Dynasty and thrown into the distant war.
The king of Lu defeated Dongyi, strengthened the king's power, and the xiongcai was roughly a bit, but he eventually lost the hearts of the people, and the so-called "consulting female yin merchants, such as clams, like boiling soups, small and big and nearly mournful", from nobles to commoners, have lost their loyalty to the king of Lu. When the zhou people's masters appeared on the makino front, the noble lords of the Shang Dynasty hid to the side to watch the jokes, "Shang Shu people, salty in the suburbs" (Yi Zhou Shu Ke Yin), the so-called "people" are noble lords, they are coldly watching the destruction of the king of The Tang in the suburbs, and they are no longer willing to pay for this "emperor" who destroyed the ancient "tang tang classic".
This article is the exclusive manuscript of the observer network, the content of the article is purely the author's personal views, does not represent the platform views, unauthorized, may not be reproduced, otherwise will be investigated for legal responsibility. Pay attention to the observer network WeChat guanchacn, read interesting articles every day.