Daxing'anling, with the main melody of the stacked peaks and the vast forest sea, is the historical back garden of the grassland peoples, and the last batch of Tuoba Xianbei people who went out of the mountains inherited the achievements of their predecessors, established the first ethnic minority regime to rule the Yellow River Valley, and also found a historical outlet for the confused Southern and Northern Dynasties.
The southward migration of the Tuoba people was slow, and learning how to obtain food accompanied the entire southward migration process. On the eastern shore of the beautiful Hulun Lake, not far from the Xing'an Mountains, they temporarily stopped. But when they learned all their nomadic skills, they did not hesitate to leave this rich land and pounce on the grassland, to the Yellow River, to the Central Plains...
The Daxing'an Mountains, with the peaks of the mountains and the vast forest sea as the main melody, seem to be a natural barrier designed by the heavens, isolating this place from the outside world in nature, so that it is rarely disturbed and affected by external forces. Even after the founding of New China in 1949, the Orunchun and Evenk people who lived here still maintained an ancient and traditional way of life. The majestic Xing'an Mountains are the natural kingdom of the nomadic peoples, and their reproduction is also promoting and integrating external forces, constantly providing fresh vitality for the Hulunbuir Grassland. From this point of view, Xing'anLing is the birthplace of grassland nomads and the historical back garden of grassland nomads. This is also the place where tuoba xianbei ancestors have multiplied for generations.
In the wave of migration of the Xianbei people, Tuoba Xianbei was the last batch of Xianbei people to leave the Daxing'an Mountains, but their achievements were unmatched by other Xianbei tribes—they ushered in the first Southern and Northern Dynasties in Chinese history, and they established the Northern Wei Dynasty, which was the first ethnic minority regime in Chinese history to rule the Yellow River Valley.
Legend has it that when Emperor Xian of the Northern Wei Dynasty was serving as the leader, a god man said to him: "The land you live in now is relatively desolate and remote, and it is impossible to build a city here, so you should migrate again." So, under the leadership of their neighbors, the Tuoba people once again embarked on the road of migration.
Like other ancient peoples of Northeast Asia, the Xianbei were shamanistic, and the "god-man" mentioned in this account probably refers to the great shaman of Tuoba. Whether this decision was made out of the foresight of the Great Shaman or the instructions of his neighbors as the outstanding leader of the Tuoba people to the Great Shaman, we do not know, but the Tuoba people obviously believe that migration is God's revelation to them and must be obeyed, and they have left the Hulunbuir grassland where they have lived for more than two hundred years without hesitation.
Another point in this legend is worth noting, that is, Tuoba Xianbei has begun to consider the issue of establishing a city. Relocating and establishing cities is obviously the unique thinking of the farming people, and from the legend we can see that the Tuoba people already have a yearning for agricultural economy and settled life, which is the most important driving force for them to leave the grassland and go south later.
It should be mentioned that at this time, Tuoba Xianbei may have entered the period of tribal alliances. Tuoba Xianbei is no longer a simple tribe, but the name of a tribal collective. From the current records, Tuoba Xianbei controlled at least seven tribes, called the Bone Clan, the Pu Clan, the BaBa Clan, the Daxi Clan, the Yi Lou Clan, the Qiu Dun Clan, and the Qianhai Clan, which were ruled by the seven brothers of the supreme leader of Tuoba Xianbei, and these seven tribes, together with the original Tuoba Clan, the so-called Tuoba Clan, constituted the "Eight Kingdoms" under the Tuoba Clan. Later, the neighbors separated the descendants of his uncle from the Tuoba clan and established them separately as the Yi Clan, forming the Che Kun clan from the various clans that were far away from them, and together with the above-mentioned "Eight Kingdoms" constituted the "Ten Surnames" of the Tuoba Xianbei people. In the process of migration, the tribal group controlled by tuoba was gradually expanding, and the "ten surnames" formed the core of this growing tribal group, and after the establishment of the Northern Wei Dynasty, the "ten surnames" were also known as the ten surnames of the imperial family.
We are not sure whether the ten surnames are all from Tuoba Xianbei, and we cannot even determine whether the ten surnames are all "pure" Xianbei people. Judging from the migration experience of the Tuoba tribe, it is more likely that the ten surnames, which are the core of the Tuoba Xianbei, already include the blood of the non-Xianbei people, and are already the product of the integration of the Xianbei people with the Xiongnu and other steppe peoples. In the subsequent migration, the ethnic composition absorbed by the Tuoba tribe is more complex, and we can almost regard the Tuoba Xianbei as a mixture of multiple steppe peoples and Xianbei peoples.
When Tuoba Xianbei accepted the revelation of the gods and prepared to begin the migration, it is said that the top leader of the Tuoba tribe, Lin, was old, and in order to better lead the Tuoba tribe to complete the migration, the neighbor passed the throne to Jiefen. From this, we can see that for this migration, Tuoba Bu made very full preparations. Unfortunately, the history books do not specifically record the process of this migration. According to the "Book of Wei", we only know that this migration was a "southward migration", and many difficulties were experienced on the way, "the valley is high and deep, and the nine difficulties and eight obstacles are obstructed." It is speculated from this that the migration of the Tuoba Department was likely to be from the south near Hulun Lake to the southwest along the foothills of the Daxing'anling Mountains. Their migration route is probably not always southward, and there may be many twists and turns along the way, so that they will climb high mountains, cross deep valleys, and may be hindered by swamps in the forest or grassland edge. Most scholars believe that after the Tuoba tribe went south from the Hulunbuir Grassland, it once crossed the Xilin Gol Grassland and made a short stop in the area of Nanyangjiayingzi (about 35 kilometers north of the present-day Town of Lindong, BalinZuoqi, Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia).
Due to the difficulties encountered during the migration, the Tuoba Xianbei people repeatedly hoped to stop the migration, but Jiefen did not agree. Legend has it that when the Tuoba Xianbei people faced difficulties in migration, there was once a divine beast descending into the world, this beast resembled a horse but not a horse, sounded like an ox but not a cow, under the leadership of the divine beast, the Tuoba Xianbei people took a year to get out of the predicament.
Some people think that this divine beast is "Xianbei", and the Xianbei people get their name from it. However, as for whether the sacred beast that guided the migration of the Tuoba people was "humble", there are many opinions in the academic circles.
Judging from the literature, the use of the term "Xianbei" is very extensive. Not only using "Xianbei" as a clan name, but also using "Xianbei" to name the beast, name the mountain, name the water, and even a kind of clothing belt loved by the Xianbei people is also called "Xianbei GuoLuo Belt". Most scholars acknowledge that the word "Xianbei" was originally the name of a beast, but there are great differences about what its original meaning is and what it specifically refers to.
Some scholars believe that Xianbei is the transliteration of "Rhinobi", and the Xianbei people use the rhinoceros as a totem; or that "Xianbei" is the Donghu language, which means "rhinoceros", and the Donghu people regard the rhinoceros as a Rui beast, so the word "Xianbei" in the Donghu language can also be translated as Rui beast. Some scholars believe that "Xianbei" may refer to the god beast that is widely circulated among the Donghu people, the unicorn.
Some scholars believe that the word "Xianbei" is the meaning of the Eastern Hu word "Rui" and "god", according to the records in the history books on the sacred beasts that guided the migration of the Tuoba tribe, such as horses and horses, cattle and non-cattle, and combined with the deer-patterned bronze plaques of the Xianbei people that have been discovered so far, it is believed that the word "Xianbei" originally referred to reindeer; and believe that in the concept of the Xianbei people, the deer is often used as a symbol of auspicious rui or gods, and the Xianbei people are most likely to worship it as "Rui Beast" or "Divine Beast", so the prototype of the legendary divine beast should be a reindeer.
Reindeer, also known as horned deer, has a body length of 100 to 125 cm and a shoulder height of 100 to 120 cm, and has the title of "Boat of the Forest". Morphologically, reindeer "have horns like deer instead of deer, bodies like horses instead of horses, heads like donkeys instead of donkeys, hooves like cows instead of cows", which is quite similar to the "sacred beasts" described. More importantly, in terms of function and use, reindeer can carry hundreds of pounds, are good at crossing forests and swamps, and it is very likely that the Tuoba Xianbei people will eventually get rid of the dilemma encountered in migration with the help of reindeer. Until the founding of New China, the peoples living in the Daxing'an Mountains raised a large number of reindeer in order to carry heavy loads during migration. If we call the steppe nomads the peoples on horseback, perhaps we can call the peoples living in the Daxing'an Mountains the peoples on the backs of the reindeer, whose homes and everything are transported by reindeer during migration.
At present, the more common view is that the original meaning of the word "Xianbei" is "Rui" or "God". According to the "History of Suoyin": "Xianbei Guo Luo Belt, Rui Beast Name Also, Dong Hu Hao Fuzhi", "Guo Luo" is a transliteration of "Kwuk-luk", meaning beast, "Xianbei" is a transliteration of "Sai-bi", which means Rui and God. The two are combined, and the meaning of "Xianbei Guoluo Belt" is the Divine Beast Belt. It is generally believed that "Xianbei" is the "Divine Beast" encountered by Jie fen on the way to the south, but what the prototype of this divine beast is, we do not know today. It is likely that like the Han Divine Beast Dragon, this Divine Beast only existed in the imagination of the Xianbei people.
Some scholars have pointed out that it is inappropriate for us to interpret the word "Xianbei" as "Rui" or "God" in the Manchu "sabi" at present. First of all, based on the meaning of modern ethnic words to go up, to compare the meaning of ancient ethnic words, this kind of research idea is problematic. The meaning of the word cannot be unchanged in its thousands of years of circulation, and we have no evidence to prove that the modern Manchu "sabi" is the word "Xianbei" in the ancient Xianbei language. Secondly, there are quite a few words with similar or even identical pronunciations, but far different meanings, and even if the Manchu word "sabi" is pronounced the same as the word "Xianbei" in the Xianbei language, it cannot be proved that the meaning of the two words is also the same. In the Tungusic languages, such as the OrenChun language, sabi means "shoe" instead of "xiangrui", and similarly pronounced words include sarbu, sabu, sapki, sap, respectively, "chopsticks" in Orenchun, Evenk, Hezhe and Xibe, and in the Mongolian language Daur, the pronunciation of the word "shoe" is also sabi.
Some scholars tend to think that Xianbei is "Zibai", and the two are pronounced similarly, which may be homophones. The so-called Zibai is the legendary refutation, that is, the "Horse" recorded in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", it is said that this divine beast is like a white horse, sawtooth, and can eat tigers and leopards. The leading image unearthed in the Xianbei tomb has the so-called "Pegasus" or "Divine Horse", and its shape characteristics are probably: the shape resembles a horse, the top corner, the tail is ambiguous, there are hooves and claws, there are wings that can fly, and the head is wide, which is extremely similar to the description of "駮" in the Classic of Mountains and Seas. The beast that may be a humble person refers to a kind of pegasus in the legend of the humble people.
In fact, among the Xianbei tribes, the southward migration of the Tuoba department was relatively late. In the legendary era when Tuoba Bu encountered the divine beast, other tribes of the Xianbei people were already active in the southern desert grassland, and the historians of the Central Plains had already called these peoples from the far north xianbei. Apparently, the word Xianbei was used as a clan name much earlier than it was used to refer to the beast. The name of the Xianbei people is clearly recorded in the history books, because they originated from the Xianbei Mountains, so other ethnic groups called these peoples by the names of the mountains where they originated, and gradually they accepted the new titles of other nationalities and called themselves Xianbei. As for the connection between the name of the mountain and the name of the beast, it is a difficult mystery.
Perhaps, this kind of divine beast that appeared in the legend of the Tuoba Xianbei people was originally out of imagination and existed in the land of nothingness, and we must pull it into reality to study, which is already a mistake in itself.
Regardless of whether the divine beast encountered by the Tuoba Xianbei people was Xianbei or not, it was said that they survived the difficulties under the guidance of the legendary divine beast and finally completed the migration. We know very little about the migration of the Tuoba tribes, for a long time, they almost disappeared from the historical record, and when they once again appeared in the vision of the historians of the Central Plains, they had come to the "homeland of the Xiongnu". Historians have not been able to come up with a conclusion as to where the "homeland of the Xiongnu" recorded in the history books is today, some say in Ordos, some say in the Hetao area, but more scholars believe that it should be in the Yinshan Mountains.
Yin Shan, whose Mongolian name is "Dharankara", means "Seventy Black Mountain Heads". The Yinshan Mountains are ancient fault-block mountains that stretch from Huashan Mountain in eastern Hebei in the east to Wolf Mountain in the central part of Inner Mongolia's Bayannaoer League in the west. It stretches for more than 1,200 miles from east to west and 50 to 100 kilometers wide from north to south, spanning the central region of Inner Mongolia.
This is the northern boundary of the Yellow River Basin, and the undulating mountains become the main theme of the natural geographical landscape. Vegetation is sparse in the mountains, and there are only a small forest on the shady slopes of the eastern section, with birch, aspen, juniper, cypress, oil pine, mountain willow and other tree species. The middle and western mountains are dotted with mountain meadows of varying sizes and have historically been important pastoral areas. There are several lakes formed by water in the center of the basin and in front of the mountain in the inner basin of the mountain, the famous ones are Wuliang Suhai, Daihai and Huangqihai.
The climate of the Yinshan Mountains varies significantly from north to south, and has been the natural dividing line between farming and nomadic areas since ancient times. Generally speaking, the mountainous areas themselves are staggered areas of agriculture and animal husbandry, which can provide high-quality winter and summer pastures for animal husbandry, and the mountain basins with better conditions can also develop dry-land agriculture, planting spring wheat, wheat, potatoes and other crops, but the yield per unit area is low and unstable. In the Hetao area at the southern foot of the Yinshan Mountains, there has been a developed intensive farming industry since very early on, known as the title of "Saiwai Rice River".
In Chinese history, there has always been a transition zone between agrarian and nomadic economies centered on the Yinshan Mountains, extending eastward to the Xilamulun and Laoha river basins, and west along the Hexi Corridor to the edge of the desert. This transitional zone plays a crucial role in the rise and fall of agrarian and nomadic peoples. When the agrarian peoples firmly controlled the transition zone, they could not only promote intensive farming to this area, but also use it as a base to send troops deep into the Mongolian steppe; and when the nomadic people occupied the transition zone, the southward was already an endless plain, and there was nothing to stop them from going south to herd horses and conquer the Central Plains. It can be said that in the competition between the agrarian peoples and the nomadic peoples, whoever controls the transition zone has the initiative.
Qin Shi Huang once ordered the general Meng Tian to carry out the Northern Expedition, which was a transitional zone with the Xiongnu for the agricultural and animal husbandry economy, including the Hetao region. In the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, the Huns firmly controlled the transitional areas and had always had the upper hand in the war with the Han Dynasty; after Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty northernly attacked the Xiongnu and forced the Huns to evacuate the Yin Mountains, there was nothing that the Huns did not weep over when they passed through the Yin Mountains again. After that, the Xiongnu were also inferior in the war against the Han Dynasty, until they had to move west away from the Mongolian steppe. The first hero of Xianbei, Tanshi Locust, also arose here, but after that, both the Yellow River Basin and the Mongolian steppe were in a state of chaos and division, and the contradiction between the agricultural economy and the nomadic economy was no longer obvious, and the transitional zone was no longer valued. Now, a northern tribe that has never been taken seriously has moved into the region, and no one realizes for a while that they will open a new chapter in China's history.
The "Homeland of the Xiongnu", which was once the place where the Xiongnu rose up in Shan Yuman and Mao Dun, has now nurtured a new nation, a nation that is about to traverse northern China, and another magnificent historical drama is about to begin to be staged here.
Author: Wen Ding, our special guest author