Since moving to the Zhou Yuan, the Zhou have been vassals of the Shang Dynasty, at the cost of hunting Qiang people from the surrounding mountains to sacrifice to the Shang Dynasty as human sacrifices.
This relationship between Shang and Zhou began in the later years of Gu Gong's father, lasted through the two generations of Ji Li and Zhou Chang, and may even have lasted until the early years of King Wu of Zhou before the destruction of Shang. During the same period, the Shang Dynasty experienced four generations of Shang kings, Wu Yi, Wen Ding, Di Yi (Xiao Yi) and Di Xin (Shang Xi), spanning more than 50 years.
In the history books and documents, this history of the Zhou people has been erased, leaving almost no trace. Forgotten along with this history is the culture of ghost and blood sacrifice of the Shang Dynasty. Since the establishment of the Zhou Dynasty, people's memories have no longer been that bloody, terrifying and long era, and "history" has become a series of warm past events of ancient holy kings nurturing and educating the masses.
But even so, some clues have been preserved, and this is the Book of Changes by King Wen Zhou Chang. Zhou Chang lived in the dark Shang Dynasty and died before the fall of the Shang Dynasty, but he left many precious records in the I Ching, including the blood sacrifice rituals of merchants and the experience of the Zhou as human animal hunters.
After the establishment of the Zhou Dynasty, the oracle bone archives of the Shang Dynasty were completely destroyed, but no one dared to destroy the I Ching left by King Wen, but the cruel facts recorded by it became commonplace. It worked, for three thousand years.
Only when the Yindu ruins were excavated and the oracle bone documents unearthed were interpreted that the real Shang Dynasty past was gradually restored, and the words and phrases in the I Ching that had been misread for 3,000 years could be reinterpreted, and the era of King Wen of Zhou and King Shang began to be revived.
"Fu" as a captive
The Book of Changes written by King Wen Zhou Chang appears a lot of the character "fu". Its meaning is quite strange, since the Warring States, scholars have mostly interpreted it as a "letter" of credit, resulting in a large number of sentences that are difficult to explain. In fact, according to Mr. Gao Heng, who studied the I Ching, this "fu" is the original word for "prisoner" of prisoners.
"Saying": "Captured, captured by the army." "The capture of the enemy's personnel and goods by the army is said to be a blessing ... The ancients believed that this was a glorious thing, so it was called "there is Fu Light", and it was not a cloud: "The light of a gentleman has Fu." The sentence is the same.
However, when Gao Heng wrote and studied the relevant works of the I Ching, the archaeological results of the Shang Dynasty's murder and sacrifice had not attracted enough attention, and the history of the Zhou people who had captured prisoners for the Shang Dynasty for a long time had not yet been revealed, so scholars did not pay enough attention to the "fu" in the I Ching.
The I Ching is a product of the last years of the Shang Dynasty, and the interpretation of its texts requires reference to the oracle bone script of the merchants. The oracle bone character "fu" means to grab a child with one hand, meaning capture, and specifically refers to the human animal that was captured for sacrifice.
Such as Yin Hui oracle bone divination: "Zhen: I use Fu? (Collection 903) translated into vernacular is, "Divination: Shall I capture captives (and sacrifice) them with hunting nets?" This "罔" is a hieroglyph, and the glyph is a person holding a net with both hands. This indicates that the nets used by the merchants to capture prisoners were shaped like a net tied to two long wooden handles. In addition, there is also "use fu" in the oracle bone dictionary, that is, to kill prisoners and sacrifice.
"Collection" 903 positive: "Zhen: I use Fufu. ”
The capture of captives with hunting nets (罔) is also recorded in the Book of Changes, such as the sixth chapter of the first year of the Jin Dynasty: "Fu, Yu, no blame." "It means that when a captive is hunted with a net, there is a great harvest and no calamity. The name "Jin" originally means to attack, and the glyph is two arrows hitting the same target.
In addition, in many trigrams of the I Ching, such as Da Zhuang, Xie, Loss, Gain, Jing, Ge, Feng, Weiji, etc., there is "Youfu", that is, divination shows that there will be capture. Since his father moved to Zhouyuan, the Zhou people have been hunting Qiang people for the Shang Dynasty, so Zhou Chang paid great attention to predicting the outcome of the capture when studying the calculation method of the I Ching.
It's all capture techniques, and it's all about the need for capture. The experience of the Zhou people in hunting captives is recorded in the Yu Gu. "Need" means to wait. This trigram is mainly about the technique of setting ambushes and luring enemies.
There is Fu. Guanghyung, Jungkichi. Toshishi Okawa.
Ninth Grade: Need to be in the suburbs, use Heng. No blame.
Ninety-two: Need in the sand, small words, final luck.
Ninety-three: Need in mud, to Kou Zhi.
June Fourth: Need blood, from the acupuncture.
Ninety-five: Need for wine, Zhenji.
Upper sixth: Entering the cave, there are three uninvited guests coming, respecting, and finally lucky.
Let's look at the trigram first: "There is Fu." Guanghyung, Jungkichi. Toshishi Okawa. "It means that there will be capture, it will be glorious, sacrifices will be held, and the result of the calculation will be auspicious; It is conducive to crossing the great river.
The first three phrases are "need in the suburbs", "need in the sand" and "need in the mud", respectively, they refer to setting up ambushes in the countryside, sand and mud.
Chu Jiuyi said: "Need to be in the suburbs, make use of Heng." No blame. "To the effect that in the countryside, there must be patience and there will be no disaster.
Ninety-two said: "Need in the sand, small words, the final luck." "To the effect that an ambush was set up in the sand, but the Zhou people had a small argument about this (probably disagreeing about the location of the ambush), and the end result was auspicious, with capture.
Ninety-three said: "Need in the mud, to Kou Zhi." "To the effect that an ambush was set up in the mud and finally waited for the enemy to enter the ambush circle.
June Fourth said: "It needs blood, from the acupuncture." "It may be that after the battle to attack the enemy village, there were still bloody ambushes on the ground, but some Zhou troops were in no hurry to withdraw and set up another ambush in the village to capture the hidings (who fled into the cellars) when they appeared.
"You need to eat wine, Zhenji." "It may be that the result of divination is auspicious by pretending to hold a reception banquet to lure the other party into captivity.
Obviously, these tactics come from many successful combat examples, and should be based on the capture experience accumulated by the Zhou people since his father.
The last one reads: "Entering the cave, there are three uninvited guests coming, respecting, and finally auspicious." As mentioned above, the meaning of this sentence is roughly that the capture of the Zhou people began when three uninvited guests visited their father in the cave of the cave and invited the Zhou people to settle in the Zhou Yuan.
Why is there a true record of the lives of so many Zhou people in the I Ching? This involves Zhou Chang's purpose in creating the I Ching: to study the causal connections behind various things, and finally to establish a set of theories and operational methods of the Zhai merchants. We will introduce this later.
The I Ching never records the number of captives captured by the Zhou, but the aforementioned piece of oracle bone in the cellar of King Wen's mansion (H31:3) gives us rare information: "August Xin Qi: His Dream Qi; To the west, to die, to get fifty of them? "Apparently, this is King Wen's divination to capture fifty people. It seems that the number of Zhou people captured each time is in the range of dozens of people, which is not too large.
The escaped ram, the recalcitrant Qiang chieftain
The great triumph of the I Ching is also about hunting captives, and there are many scenes of rams (羝) being captured and escaped in the epigrams.
Da Zhuang: Li Zhen.
Ninth Grade: Strong than toes. Sign, fierce. There is Fu.
Ninety-two: Zhenji.
Ninety-three: The villain uses the strong, and the gentleman uses the. Chastity. The lamb touches the clan and picks its horns.
Ninety-four: Zhenji, repentance. The clan is by no means strong, and it is stronger than the public opinion.
Six-five: Losing sheep in Yi. No regrets.
Sixth: The sheep touch the clan, cannot retreat, cannot succeed. Nothing is profitable, hardship is auspicious.
The Zhou people captured the Qiang people. The oracle bone "Qiang" glyph, sheep's head, male body, so the ram in the big strong trigram should be synonymous with the Qiang people. The frequent occurrence of the word "Zhuang" in the dictionary is interpreted by Gao Heng as "戕", that is, injury.
The first nine years said: "Strong in toes, sign, fierce, and fu." "It means that the foot will be injured, and the result of the expedition will be dangerous, but there will be capture.
Ninety-three said: "The villain uses the strong, and the gentleman uses the." "This means that for low-status Qiang people (villains), they can be wounded and captured (with strong), but for the chieftains (gentlemen) of the tribe, it is better to capture them with hunting nets to avoid their injury. This is naturally because, among merchants, the higher the status of human animals, the more precious they are, and it is best to ensure that they are not damaged. The Yin Hui oracle bone shows that the Shang king would sacrifice with the "Qiang Fangbo", and this kind of Qiang leader was also most loved by the ancestors of the Shang king.
In addition, some of the captives who had use value may be released by Zhou Chang and entrusted with certain positions. There is a record in the "Mozi Shangxian": "King Wen raised the throne, Tai Ji in the midst of the chaos, gave the government, and obeyed the Western soil." "This means that both Hong Yu and Tai Yan were talents that King Wen found in the hunting net; King Wen let them manage the affairs, so the Western Tu tribes were all subordinate to the Zhou state.
This may be a use of captured upper-class figures by Zhou Chang in order to win the subordination of certain tribes. But the captives with such good fortune are certainly a very small minority. In addition, this record of "Mozi" is also quite strange, I don't know how it obtained the information of the Zhou people in the barbarian era, so its original meaning may also be to say that Hong Yu and Tai Yan were originally hunters who hunted with nets, and were later reused by Zhou Chang.
Returning to the Jiusan of the Great Zhuang, the Jiu Ci continued, "Zhenli", that is, the result of divination was not very smooth; Then, "the lamb touches the clan, and its horns are cut", that is, the ram rushes into the fence, and the horn is tripped by the fence. This seems to be a metaphor for the Qiang leader being captured by a hunting net.
Jiu Fourth said: "Zhenji, repent." The clan is by no means strong, and it is stronger than the public opinion. "Meaning, the result of divination is auspicious, and there is nothing to regret; The ram broke through the fence again and escaped, and also broke the spokes of the cart. This may be a metaphor for the Qiang leader who was caught in the net, who fled again, and also damaged the vehicle while resisting the chasing Zhou army. It can be seen that the Zhou people were captured in a carriage, and it was much more difficult to capture the complete and uninjured leader.
"Losing sheep is easy." No regrets. Obviously, the allusion used here is to the ancestor of the Shang Dynasty, Wang Hai, "lost the cow in Yi", but replacing the ox with a sheep representing the Qiang people should be a metaphor for the escape of some sheep (Qiang people) who were almost captured. The result of divination is no need to regret it. It can be seen that when Zhou Chang used the ancestors of merchants, he was not necessarily faithful to the original meaning, or he attached more importance to the use of the past for the present.
Shangliuyi said: "If the sheep touch the clan, they cannot retreat, and they cannot succeed." Nothing is profitable, hardship is auspicious. "It means that the Qiang leader who failed to escape the hunting net was like a ram with its horns entangled in its horns. The result of divination is that there is no gain, and after some hardships, there is an auspicious ending.
So, why did Da Zhuang use rams to represent the Qiang people, and write so vaguely? The book argues that this may be because the Zhou and Qiang people had ancient kinship, and it was a moral shame for the Zhou to hunt the Qiang people for the Shang dynasty. Therefore, even though Zhou Chang was already relatively commercial when he created the I Ching, using the language and thinking of merchants, he still expressed it very vaguely, and even refused to write the character "Qiang". Moreover, in the Book of Changes, Zhou Chang records the use of the word "fu" in fishing for Qiang—this word does not carry ethnic connotations, and should also have the meaning of not touching the hidden pain of the Zhou people.
Experience in escorting prisoners
In addition to the experience of captivity, the I Ching is more about how to bind and feed the Qiang captives, both to ensure that they could not flee and to keep them from dying of wounds and starvation.
There is the word "Jiaofu" in the 94th Chapter. The oracle bone character for "Jiao" resembles the crossed shape of a person's legs, so "Jiaofu" may refer to the need to tie the captive's legs to prevent him from escaping when camping on the way to escort. From the Longshan period to Yin Ruin, there are often bones with legs tied and buried alive, which may also belong to "intercourse".
The little animal said in six or four: "There is Fu, the blood will be tipped out, and there is no blame." "Meaning, there are captives, stop the bleeding for them, remove their fears, and there will be no trouble."
There is a big trigram six or five words: "Fu Jiaoru, Weiru." Lucky. "Meaning, there are prisoners who are tied up, but still imposing. This is an auspicious trigram. In addition, the family trigram's Shangjiuyan "There is Fu Weiru, Final Ji" depicts a similar scene.
"Ji" and "Final Ji" obviously do not refer to the fate of the captives, but to the arithmetic Zhou Chang: the Shang Dynasty liked to receive strong human animals, and if the captured prisoners were heroic and strong, it would be easier to escort them to Yindu without dying on the road, and the Zhou people would naturally receive more rewards.
There is "fu hesitation" in the sixth year of the first year, which refers to the prisoner walking and staggering and lame. This may have been the result of injuries sustained in the course of his arrest or of being beaten for disobedience. The trigram is "the buttocks have no skin, and its line is secondary." ", which means that the buttocks were beaten to pieces, making it difficult to walk; The result of the calculation is tribulation, but no major disaster. In addition, the Jiu Si also has "no skin on the buttocks, and its lines are secondary", which seems to be very common.
The aforementioned content is about ambushes and sneak attacks, but the Zhou people also have times when they go head-to-head with the enemy. Zhongfu trigram 63 said: "Winning the enemy, or drumming or beating, or weeping or singing." "This should refer to a battle where the two sides are prepared and will beat drums to help the army." or" indicates two choices, either drumming to march, or hastily retreating; There are also two kinds of results, either defeat, survivors crying, or victory, the victor singing triumphant.
Zhongfu Jiuwu said that the scene of victory: "There is Fufu Qiru. No blame. "Grab like a captive bundled into a string." The oracle character for "spasms", written as two or three strings of silk ropes in one hand, can be extended to lead a string of captives. The little animal also said: "If there is Fu Furu, rich is its neighbor." This "rich neighbor" probably means that a large number of captives are captured, and both themselves and their neighbors will become rich. It seems that the Zhou people are the tribal armed to go out on a campaign, and the rewards obtained after capturing prisoners and paying tribute can be shared by the whole tribe.
Bi Chu Liuyi: "There is Fu, compared to it, no blame." "Meaning, after there are prisoners, there will be no trouble lining them up (tiing up). Moreover, "There is Fu, Yingyi." There will be it in the end, Ji", which means that they will also be filled with clay pots with rice to eat, and even if something happens, it will eventually be auspicious.
Tai Gu records another situation. Ninety-three said: "Do not be sympathetic, but be blessed with food." "It seems to be that he was too stingy with food and refused to give it to the captives. Then, the June Fourth Sect said: "Pianpian is not rich for his neighbor, and he is not abstained from it." This means that if the captives are not guarded and they wait for the opportunity to escape, then everyone has no chance of making a fortune.
The content of the accompanying trigram is more complicated, mainly about the pursuit of escaped prisoners.
Sui: Wonhyung, Lee-jung, no blame.
Chu Jiu: Guan Youyu, Zhenji. Go out and hand over meritorious work.
Sixty-two: A boy and a husband lost.
Six-three: Husband, lost child. Please, demand, profit. Juzhen.
Ninety-four: Catch as you go, chastity. There is Fu in the way, Yiming, what to blame.
Ninety-five: Fu Yujia, Ji.
Sixth: What is bound is to be maintained. Wang Yongheng in the West Mountain.
Liuji is called "a boy, a husband has been lost", that is, the boy is captured and bound, but the adult man escapes. Liusan, on the contrary, "is a husband, loses a child." Zhou captives often raided Qiang tribes and homes, so the targets would be adult men and women, old and weak, women and children. The oracle word "tie" is like a person being tied around the neck, or with his hands tied to his neck. Wu Ding's oracle bone dictionary contains records of the "Qiang system" and "ten Qiang systems" (Collection 1097), referring to the capture and binding of Qiang captives by the Shang king. By the late Shang Dynasty, it was rare to see the Shang king personally capture prisoners, because at this time the capture work was mainly done by vassal tribes such as the Zhou people, and there was no need for the Shang Dynasty to take matters into its own hands.
Collection 1097: ... Qiang. Wang Zhan... 㞢 (again) two days of decano... Ten Qiang systems... Ten C (again)...
The "Fu in the way, Yiming" and "Fu Yujia" in the Ninth Fourth and Ninth Fifth Dynasties seemed to be calculating where the prisoners would flee and then hunting them down. The name "Sui" itself means to hunt down.
Shangliuxiao said that he captured the fugitive, tied them up more firmly (from Weizhi), and escorted them to Yindu: "Wang used Heng in the western mountains. According to Goheng's interpretation, "Heng" means "enjoy", that is, offering sacrifices to the gods and offering food. The west of Yindu is close to the Taihang Mountain Range, and it is possible that the Shang king will regularly enter the mountain to sacrifice, and the prisoners escorted by Zhou Chang this time are just used.
Regarding how Zhou Chang got the opportunity to go to Yindu, and what happened after arriving in Yindu, there are still some records in the I Ching, which we will detail later.
Of course, frequent trips to hunt prisoners do not mean that the Zhou people are already the most powerful tribe in the Western Tu and can sit back and relax. Because there are too many grievances, the Zhou people will also suffer reprisals from other tribes, causing them to live in fear and vigilance at all times. This is also reflected in the I Ching.
For example, Meng Yan Shangjiu said: "Unfavorable for Cole, Li Yu Kou." This means that it is not good for invading others, but it is good for defending against other people's invasions. Another example, Ding Gu Jiu'er said: "I have a disease, I can't do it, Ji." "It means that my enemies are sick and cannot come and attack me, and the result is auspicious. This is all Zhou Chang calculating whether the Zhou clan will be attacked by the hostile tribe.
In addition, there are three trigrams in the I Ching that contain "banditry, marriage", which means not an intruder, but a (foreign) person who has come to seek marriage. The scenes of Ben Liu Si and Tun Liu Er Yan are strange people outside the settlement, and some people are driving carriages, suspected of being the arrival of intruders.
Benru, Haoru, Baima Hanru, bandits, marriage. (贲卦六四爻)
The arc of opening first, the arc of speaking later. Bandits, marriages. (暌卦上九爻)
Tunru, Furu, riding horse Banru, bandits, marriage. (Tun 卦六二爻)
It can be seen that the Zhou people live quite alertly.
At that time, the Western Tu had not yet entered the national era, and there were frequent wars of plunder between tribes. In addition, this also shows that the Zhou people and neighboring ethnic groups practice extra-ethnic marriage, but even inter-tribal marriages cannot avoid war.
The opportunity to meet the king
For the first fifty years of King Wen's life, life has been relatively normal. At that time, he was a tribal elder who submitted to the Shang Dynasty, and apart from sometimes indulging in secret divination experiments, there was no possibility of mutation in such a life.
Originally, since Ji Li's death, there was no record of the Zhou clan leader going to Yindu, and the Zhou clan had never appeared in the Shang King Bu Ci during this period. However, some coincidences still gave Zhou Chang the opportunity to meet King Shang. This is not recorded in the history books, but the excavated oracle bone provides clues.
On the oracle bone (H11:3) excavated in the cellar of King Wen's mansion, three lines of small miniature characters as thin as mosquito feet are inscribed, from left to right: "Yiwangtian; As for the curtain; Wang Yutian? Like the oracle bones found in Yin Ruins, "Yi" is "Yin", and "Tian" is field hunting and hunting. Bu Ci explained: "King Yin (Shang) came to hunt; to the land of Palladies; Will King hunt well? ”
King Yin is the King of Shangxi. As for where it is, some researchers believe that it is in present-day Qianbai Town, Dali County, Shaanxi Province, which is slightly north of the confluence of the Wei River and the Yellow River. This is where King Wuyi (the great-grandfather of King Xiu) was "hunted in Hewei" and died by lightning. King Xi's trip to the west this time may have been to sacrifice King Wuyi.
Zhou Yuan oracle bone H11:3 enlarged photo
This trip to Guanzhong is not recorded in the oracle bone words unearthed in Yin Ruin, but it is probably the tenth year of King Xiu's reign. It seems that Zhou Chang is extremely concerned about the arrival of King Xun, otherwise he would not secretly divination. After all, the King of Shang had not been to the Western Earth for two generations and decades, and this could bring disaster or opportunity to the Zhou people.
Zhou Yuan Oracle Bone H31: 2 facsimile manuscript: Only the chicken comes to fall, its attachment? history (event)? In Urbuyi: Nangong Tai's work?
Another miniature oracle bone (H31:2) of King Wen's mansion involves another important Shang Dynasty figure, the Yijizi, Yin Jizi.
Zhou Changxian divination: "Yin Shang's Jinzi is coming (Zhou Yuan), will he arrest him?" Or can you serve him? Then, Zhou Chang divined in a place named "Hu'er": "Let Nangong Tai be responsible, right?" ”
Scholars generally explain this statement about Jinzi as follows: After King Wu of Zhou destroyed the merchants, when Jinzi came to Guanzhong to surrender to the Zhou Dynasty, how King Wu of Zhou should receive divination. But this explanation may not be valid.
According to the Shiji, Jinzi was a close relative of King Shang (later generations said that he was a brother or uncle). Before King Wu of Zhou felled merchants, Jinzi once angered King Xiang, was imprisoned, and survived by pretending to be crazy ("but was enslaved by feigning madness"). According to "Shangshu Hongfan", after King Wu of Zhou destroyed the merchants and occupied the Yin capital, he "ordered the public to release the prisoner of Jinzi", and also asked Jinzi for advice on governing the country. Judging from these contents of the "Shiji" and "Book of Shang", when he first occupied Yindu, King Wu and Jinzi already had contacts, and it is reasonable to say that there is no need for Jinzi to sacrifice near and far, and then surrender once in Guanzhong.
Therefore, H31:2's "chicken to come" should be from the Zhou Chang period, which is the same event as the hunting trip of King Xi to Palau: King Xi was stationed in the eastern part of Guanzhong and sent Jinzi to the west to inspect the Zhou tribe and other Guanzhong Fan states. In Yin Wubu, "descending" generally refers to the blessing of the gods or the coming of the gods to the world themselves. And Jinzi was an important minister of the Shang Dynasty, which was naturally very noble to Zhou Bang, so "coming to surrender" was not to surrender, but to come. At the same time, Zhou Chang was also very nervous, worried that Jinzi would arrest him during this trip (his execution? —He may have thought of his father Ji Li's fate in Yindu.
As for Nangong Tai, there is no such person in the history books, but when King Wu destroyed the merchants, there was a general called Nangong Kuo: "Order Nangong Kuo to scatter the wealth of Lutai and distribute the corn of the giant bridge." Therefore, "Tai" and "Kuo" may be different ways to write the same character, or they may be from the same family.
From this scattered information, it is speculated that Zhou Chang must have won the favor of this important minister of the Shang Dynasty when receiving Jinzi, and then he was allowed to visit the king of Xiang. For Zhou Chang, this was a desperate opportunity: usually, the highest-ranking merchant he could meet was the Chonghou of Old Niupo, but now he first received the ministers of the Shang Dynasty, and then went to worship the Shang king, so naturally he had the opportunity to be promoted.
At present, there is no record of Zhou Chang's first pilgrimage with King Xun, but it must have been relatively smooth, because Zhou Chang was given the opportunity to go to Yindu again. This time he may also be escorting a group of Qiang prisoners. There are many records of this in the I Ching.
Regarding Zhou Chang's experience on the way to Yindu to sacrifice prisoners, it has been introduced earlier. Here is a little more analysis about Miko. In the "Shiji" and other documents, Jinzi was a loyal subject of the Shang Dynasty, and because of his loyalty, he attracted the wrath of the king of Xi and imprisoned. But the reality can be much more complicated. As a royal family, Jinzi has a very high status, and if the situation of the dynasty changes, he is a person close to the throne - the Shang Dynasty has always had the practice of passing the throne from brother to son (although the recent generations have been passed down from father to son, but the tradition is not impossible), so his relationship with the king of Xi is more delicate. Considering that King Xian often suppressed the close relatives of the royal family in the later period of his reign, and thus attracted more and more opposition, it cannot be ruled out that after visiting Guanzhong and gaining some understanding of the potential military strength of the Zhou and other Fan states, he secretly came up with the idea of wooing the Fan states, so that in case the dynasty changed, he could gather forces loyal to him.
But neither Jinzi nor Zhou Chang should have thought of what kind of consequences their accidental acquaintance would bring.
Witness the Yindu sacrifice ceremony
After Zhou Chang escorted the prisoners to Yindu, he would naturally witness the merchants' various sacrifices for killing prisoners.
First, a captivity ceremony was held in the court of the Shang king. "Yang Yu Wang Ting, Fu is powerful." "Yang" is the subject's extoll on the greatness of the king, and "Yang in the royal court" is the idiom used by the courtiers to see the king during the Shang and Zhou dynasties. "Fu is powerful" means that there are prisoners screaming loudly, indicating that there may be a killing ceremony at the same time.
"Li Ji Suburban Characteristics" recorded: "Yin people are still sound, the smell has not been completed, and its sound is cleansed." Le Sanyan, and then out to welcome the animal, the trumpet of the voice, so the edict is also between heaven and earth. "Merchant sacrifices attach the most importance to sound, the so-called "Yin people shangsheng". The loud howl of the sacrificial animal is to report to the gods of the heavenly realm that the sacrifice is strong and qualified, the so-called "sound trumpet, so the edict is also between heaven and earth."
The Li Ji was written by people in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, who no longer knew much about the merchants' human sacrifices, so they thought that merchants, like the Zhou people, only used domestic animals for sacrifice. Restored to the real scene of the Shang Dynasty, this obviously contains the cries of human animals.
Observance: "If you don't recommend it, you will be ruo." "Bowl" originally means to ritually pour water and wash hands, and also refers to the gift of spilling wine on the ground and comforting the gods. But whether it is washing hands or pouring wine, it is a procedure at the beginning of the sacrificial ceremony.
"Recommend" refers to killing and sacrifice, and the term "recommending prisoners" in later generations comes from this, such as "Yizhou Shu Shi Prisoners" has "recommending prisoners Yin Wang Ding". But the content of the observation is a bit peculiar: this time, somehow, after the procedure of "serving", the killing of prisoners was delayed, the so-called "cupping without recommendation". This should be Zhou Chang's first time participating in the sacrifice ceremony of Yindu, and although he did not understand the principle of operation, he firmly wrote down his observations while waiting nervously.
"颙" originally meant the appearance of a big head, but for some reason, Kong Yingda of the Tang Dynasty, who annotated the I Ching, interpreted it as "a solemn appearance". In fact, it looks like it is here: after the ceremony begins, some of the captives are nervously looking forward to it.
The trigram is also what Zhou Chang saw after he arrived in Yindu, and the trigram contains the content of the Shang king's sacrifice of cattle (with large animals): "Heng, Lizhen, use big animal ji." ”
Among them, the sixth of the first year said: "If there is no end, it is chaos, if the trumpet, a shake is a smile." Don't shirt. Go, no blame. "This means that some of the captives had nervous breakdowns and tried to escape, or gathered together and howled loudly, while others laughed maniacally from insanity. But the conclusion is that there is no need to worry and it should continue.
"Fu is the use of Fu." This means that the captives were used precisely for the sacrifice. In the Shang Dynasty, Zen was a sacrificial ritual held in the spring. In addition, the Shengxia 92nd saying: "Han Nai uses the Zen, no blame", is also the same content.
"Fudu, Ji, repentance." ""Exchange", that is, "Yue", happy. This means that during the days of Yindu, some prisoners seemed to see some vitality and became optimistic. But by the end of the ninth five, it was "peeled and sharp", peeled and screamed.
"Youfu, Weixin, Heng." This means that the heart of the captive is taken out, burned and sacrificed. The heart is the blood supply center of the human body, and the ancients attached great importance to it, believing that it was the place where the human mind and soul were concentrated, and it was most suitable for worshipping the gods. For example, the human sacrifice rituals of the Mayan and Aztec civilizations placed the greatest emphasis on dissecting sacrifices. In addition to the kangua, other trigrams in the I Ching also have records of sacrifices with human hearts. The "Historical Records" also records that the king of Shangxi "cut through the dry and observed his heart". It seems that this behavior was more common in merchant sacrifices.
In addition to captivation and sacrifice, the I Ching contains many views and experiences of Zhou Chang's first arrival in Yindu, especially his life after he was imprisoned by King Xiu.
This article is excerpted from Li Shuo's book "Yin Shang: The Change of Yin Zhou and the New Life of China", a page of Folio Guangxi Normal University Press, October 2022. The Paper is authorized to publish, and the original notes are omitted.