The Yellow River is the mother river of the Chinese nation, and the Yellow River culture is an important part of Chinese civilization. From the splendid Neolithic culture in the Yellow River Basin to the birth of the "state" civilization, to the formation of the orthodox concept and the concept of "great unification" as a cultural gene, to the cultivation of the liturgical civilization and rational humanistic genes, and then to the formation of the "free" Chinese nation, these five aspects fully demonstrate the rich connotation of the Yellow River culture and its historical significance.
Splendid Neolithic culture
Early Chinese civilization was born in two major river basins, the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. As far as the Yellow River Basin is concerned, before the 1960s, the international academic community referred to Chinese civilization as the "Yellow River Civilization", and together with the Nile Civilization in Egypt, the Two River Basin Civilization in West Asia, and the Indus River Civilization in India, it was called the world's four major civilizations. Since the 1970s, neolithic relics found in the Yangtze River basin have become increasingly abundant, and the Japanese scholar Michiharu Ito wrote an article proposing that Chinese civilization should be called "river civilization", where "river" is the Yellow River, and "river" refers to the Yangtze River. By the late 1980s, Su Bingqi proposed the "starry sky" theory of early Chinese civilization. However, due to the early civilization of the Yellow River Basin and the civilization of the Xia-Shang-Zhou Dynasty, the center of gravity of the Yellow River civilization was not shaken in the "Starry Sky".
Since the 1990s, a mainstream paradigm for mainland academics to study the origin of civilization is to combine settlement archaeology with social morphology, and to identify the process of social complexity with the evolution of settlement forms. During this period, the origin path of Chinese civilization was also summarized as "three evolutions of settlement forms": from the roughly equal form of agricultural settlements, to the central settlement form containing inequality and initial social stratification, and then to the "wanbang" form of the Duyi state.
As an archaeological site of three forms of settlement in these three stages, it has been found in the upper, middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River Basin. For example, as a well-known site of the generally equal agricultural settlement morphological stage, the upper reaches of the Yellow River have the sites of the first and second phases of The Dadiwan in Qin'an, Gansu; in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, there are sites such as Baoji Beishouling in Shaanxi, Jiangzhai in Lintong, Banpo in Xi'an, Xinzheng in Henan, Xishuipo in Puyang, and Cishan in Wu'an, Hebei; and in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, there are sites such as Beixin in Tengzhou, Shandong, and Wangyin in Yanzhou. As a famous site of the unequal central settlement morphological stage, the upper reaches of the Yellow River include the sites of the fourth phase of Dadiwan in Qin'an, Gansu, Majiayao in Lintao, Tianshuishizhao Village, and Leduliuwan in Qinghai; in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, there are ruins such as Miaodigou in Shaanxi County, Lingbao Xipo Village, Dahe Village in Zhengzhou, and Xishan Ruins in Zhengzhou; in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, there are sites such as Dawenkou in Tai'an, Shandong, LingyangHe in Juxian County, and Dazhu Village in the lower reaches of the Yellow River. As the state form of Duyi in the "Wanbang" era, there are the ruins of Shenmu Shiya in Shaanxi and Xiangfen Tao Temple in Shanxi in the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River, the ruins of Wangchenggang and Xinmi Ancient City in Henan, and the ruins of Zhangqiu Chengziya, Zouping Dinggong, Rizhao And liangcheng and Yaowangcheng in the lower reaches of the Yellow River. These sites paint a true picture of the origin of civilization and show the materialized form of the early Yellow River civilization.
The earliest civilization of the Duyi State
For the "three-stage formula" of evolution from primitive society to civilized society and state, we can find corresponding literature to further enrich them. Among them, the historical material called "Wanbang" or "Wanguo" is very appropriate for illustrating China's earliest civilized society and its national form and structure. In the pre-Qin literature, the Shang Shu Yao Dian says that Yao Shi "harmonized all nations, and Li Min yu changed the time Yong". The "Zuo Chuan" said in the seventh year of the Duke of Sorrow: "The princes of Yuhe are in Tushan, and those who hold the jade veil are all nations." "Lü Shi Chunqiu Yongmin" said: "When Yu was born, all the nations under the heavens, as for Tang and more than three thousand countries." Although the character "bang" in the oracle bone and gold scripts is different from the word "guo" in the jin text, and the meaning is slightly different, as far as the "state" and "country" in "all nations" and "all nations" are concerned, the two are one meaning and can be interchanged with each other.
The concept of "Wanbang Era" can be divided into two types: broad and narrow. The narrow sense of the "Wanbang Era" is the Yao Shunyu Era referred to in the above-mentioned Shangshu Yaodian, Zuo Zhuan and Lü Shi Chunqiu. The broad sense of "Wanbang Era" is equivalent to the "Broad Sense of Longshan Era" 5000-4000 years ago (the narrow Sense of Longshan Era refers to the era represented by Haidai Longshan culture, that is, the era 4600-4000 years ago), which is also slightly equivalent to the Era of the Five Emperors. Here, the reason why "slightly equivalent" is used is because the Five Emperors generally refer to the Yellow Emperor, Emperor Huan, Emperor Zhao, Yao, shun, as the Yellow Emperor period that began with the Five Emperors era, is a transition period towards civilized society and the state; while the early period of The Yellow Emperor and Emperor Zhao, Yao Shun and Yu should belong to the civilization form of the state called "Wanbang". "All nations" ("nations") are just a lot of words. In the "ten thousand states", there are a number of political entities whose social development has reached the initial level of the state, and there are many political entities that are still in clan tribes or chiefdoms, but because the nature of things is always determined by the main aspects of the main contradictions, we use the "era of all nations" to refer to the earliest national social period in the land of China, and its concept is clear. At that time, the pattern of the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River was on the one hand a number of states, and on the other hand, a powerful Yao Shun Yu state alliance was formed in the Central Plains. Therefore, Yao, Shun, and Yu all had dual identities: they were both the monarchs of their own states and the allies of the alliance.
The pattern of the "Wanbang Era" is basically consistent with archaeological discoveries. On the one hand, the civilizations born in this era are diverse, and there are many ruins of the capitals of the state civilizations found in the Yellow River Basin, such as the Ruins of Shenmu Shiya in Shaanxi, the Xiangfen Tao Temple in Shanxi, the Wangchenggang in Dengfeng in Henan, the Ancient City Of Xinmi, the Chengziya of Zhangqiu in Shandong, the Dinggong of Zouping, the two towns of Rizhao and the city of Yaowang. On the other hand, the crowds of many tribes gathered in the Central Plains from all directions formed the Yao Shun Yu Clan Alliance through the collision of war and peaceful coexistence. Such an alliance led to the emergence of a political center in the Yellow River Basin on the basis of multicultural civilizations, with the location of the alliance leader as the core, and this political center constituted a hegemony and became the predecessor of the Xia Dynasty.
The formation of the ideological concept of "great unification."
The Orthodoxy of the Central Plains is a traditional concept in Chinese history. The orthodox view of the Central Plains began in the Xia Dynasty and laid its foundation through the three dynasties of the Xia and Shang Dynasties. Through historical and geographical examination, it can be seen that whether it is the Xia Dynasty, the Shang Dynasty or even the Zhou Dynasty, its kings are in the middle reaches of the Yellow River. The Analects of yun: "Yin is due to Xia Li, the profit and loss can be known, and the profit and loss of Zhou because of Yin Li can also be known." It can be seen that the system of the Xia Shang Dynasty was developed on the basis of inheritance. Since the kings of Xia, Shang, and Zhou were all in the Central Plains, the orthodox view of the Central Plains was passed down from generation to generation and became a tradition in Chinese history.
"Great unification" is a traditional Chinese political ideology, which is inseparable from a unified multi-ethnic state. "Great unification" mainly refers to the unity of the country and the integration of the nation, which can be subdivided into: the unification of the national territory, the unification of government decrees, the centripetal of cultural harmony, and the unity and cohesion of the nationalities. Scholars generally believe that the real "great unification" of the country in Chinese history began in the Qin Dynasty, but the composite dynastic state structure of the Xia, Shang, Western and Zhou dynasties was another level of "unification". Only in this way can we understand what the Book of Poetry, Xiaoya Beishan says, "Under the heavens, there is no king's land; the coast of the land, can not be the king's subject." Regarding the source of the ideological concept of "great unification", the author once proposed that from the three generations of Yao Shunyu to the Qin and Han Dynasties, along with the changes in the form and structure of the country, it has experienced three kinds of "great unification" concepts pointed to by three backgrounds. That is, the concept of "unification of the world" with the color of "unity of alliances" that is compatible with the mechanism of alliance between the clans and states in the Yao Shunyu era; the ideological concept of "great unification" that is compatible with the "composite dynastic state" of Xia Shang zhou; and the ideological concept of "great unification" that is compatible with the centralized imperial state form of the county system after the Qin and Han Dynasties. These three backgrounds point to the ideological concept of "great unification" at three levels are the signs of the three stages of historical development. In the history of the mainland, the ideology and concept of "great unification" has always played a far-reaching and positive impact on maintaining national unity and stability, and the Xia, Shang, and Han and Tang dynasties, which were built in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, were two important stages for laying the foundation for them.
The formation of liturgical civilization and rational humanistic genes
Since ancient times, China has been known as the "State of Lilly". China's Lile civilization began in the Longshan era and laid the foundation by the Xia And Shang Zhou. Through the pottery and jade ceremonial vessels excavated from the site of The Xiangfen Tao Temple in Shanxi and some important sites of the Longshan culture in Shandong, we see that the "rites" tend to be institutionalized in the Longshan era (that is, the five emperors era). By the Xia And Shang Dynasties, sets of ceremonial instruments were the materialized form of the ritual system, and the ritual system gradually became the mainstream ideology of society.
The Western Zhou Lile is a rationally led and sublimated Lile civilization, which is rooted in the Yellow River culture. Historical documents say that one of Zhou Gong's contributions was to "make rituals and music". The author believes that there are two changes in the rituals made by the Zhou Gong: First, the transformation of the shang rites, the merchants' reverence for God and the Zhou people for the heavens into the framework of the etiquette system, put forward the concept of respecting the heavens and protecting the people, and thus transformed the Shang Dynasty's emphasis on "the etiquette of the relationship between man and God" into the Zhou Dynasty's emphasis on "the etiquette of interpersonal relations"; the second is to combine the etiquette system with the rule of virtue, promote the institutionalization of morality, and realize the dialectical unity of combining the mandate of heaven with the rule of virtue, and the rule of heaven and the will of the people.
The formation of the "free" Chinese nation
Fei Xiaotong once divided the formation of the Chinese nation into two stages: "self-reliant nation" and "conscious nation", which belonged to the "self-conscious" stage in ancient times and entered the "self-conscious" stage in modern times. The author believes that there is a correspondence between the national type and the combined structure of the state form. Beginning with the Qin and Han dynasties, the state structure became the "central county system", and the unified feudal dynasties were unified multi-ethnic states. Within the Great Unification Dynasty, there were two levels of nationalities: one was the Han nationality and other ethnic minorities as the dominant ethnic group; the other was the "forming" Chinese nation, including the Han nationality and other ethnic minorities, which was equivalent to the Chinese nation as a "free nation" as Fei Xiaotong called it. The emergence of the Chinese nation as a "free" began with the Qin and Han Dynasties, which is a "county system" structure ruled by the central unification. For more than 2,000 years, such a state structure itself has made the "great unification" of the country a high degree of stability to this day, and has made the national identity and the cohesion of the Chinese nation have a two-sided relationship.
The formation of the Chinese nation is linked to a unified multi-ethnic state. Fei Xiaotong proposed that the Chinese nation is "pluralistic and integrated", pluralism means that the Chinese nation is composed of 56 ethnic groups, and unity means that the Chinese nation as a whole is one. The author believes that the unity of the Chinese nation's pluralism and unity is also reflected in the unity of the "great unification" of the country, and the state structure of the "central county system" ensures the unity of the Chinese nation. Therefore, in history, the cohesion of the Chinese nation is inseparable from national identity. From the Qin and Han dynasties to the Tang and Song dynasties, the capital of this unified multi-ethnic state was built in the middle reaches of the Yellow River. As the capital of a unified multi-ethnic country, it is not only the political, economic and cultural center, but also the concentric circle center that unites the centripetal force of the Chinese nation. From this we say that the Yellow River Basin, especially the middle reaches of the Yellow River, has become the seat of the centripetal force of the Chinese nation because of its status as the capital of the country, and in this sense, the Yellow River culture has also become the root and soul of the Chinese nation.
Source: China Social Science Network, the author is a member of the Faculty of chinese Academy of Social Sciences and deputy director of the Faculty of History
Source: China Social Science Network
Original title: The cultural connotation of the Yellow River and the roots of China's history