Yunmeng, a county town located in the northeast of Hubei, was once known to future generations because of Meng Haoran's poem "Steaming Cloud Mengze, Shaking Yueyang City" and Sima Xiangru's great endowment "Yunmeng, nine hundred miles away, including mountains".
In December 1975, archaeologists found many memories of the Qin Dynasty that had been buried underground for more than 2,000 years. A large number of bamboo slips, China's first family letter with a traceable history, and the first discovery of the national treasure-level historical relics Sleeping Tiger Land Qin Jane, let Yunmeng resound all over the country, and the reputation of "the hometown of bamboo slips" is well-known at home and abroad.
On September 23, 2021, about 3,000 meters west of the Qin Tomb in Sleeping Tiger Land, the Yunmeng Zhengjiahu Cemetery reproduced the world-shattering cultural relics - "China's first long Wenyao (pronounced gū, a wooden tablet used for writing in ancient times)". Because the text is the earliest and the longest in length, it involves many fields such as paleography, paleophilology, and ancient history, and has great academic value, providing valuable written materials for exploring important historical events during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period and studying Qin Li.
The Forgotten Vertical and Horizontal Family
Since September 2021, in order to cooperate with the construction of Yunmeng County, Hubei Province, the Hubei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the Yunmeng County Museum have jointly launched the excavation of the Zhengjiahu cemetery. In just a few months, more than 100 tombs and more than 800 cultural relics have been revealed. The archaeological site has uncovered a number of treasures of Chinese civilization: precious wooden inscriptions, rare plate paintings, and a large number of exquisite lacquerware of the Qin culture.
Among these precious relics, the most important is a wooden goose from the late Warring States period.
Yao is a kind of wine vessel in the Zhou Dynasty, similar in shape to a long-necked bottle. At the beginning, the standard shape of the goblet was the upper circle and the lower one, and later during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, many countries made the top and bottom of the goblet into a circle, which made Confucius, who had devoted his life to maintaining the Zhou rites, angry: "Goo is not gobbling, gob, gob! That is to say, it doesn't even look like a goblet, can this still be called a goblet?!
And this piece of wood in Zhengjiahu has a very unique shape, which can definitely make Confucius angry and turn his beard up: it is made of a log cut vertically, 34 centimeters long and about 4 centimeters wide. There are also seven flattened edges around the goblet, six of which have words, a total of about 700 words written in the Qin Dynasty official book, which can be called "China's first long text".
This 700-word "small composition" is similar in style and style to the familiar hand-me-down document "Warring States Policy", which tells the story of the Zonghengjia "Xiao" lobbying the King of Qin. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, many intellectuals lobbied the princes of various countries and were known as "Zonghengjia". The best of them can serve as the prime ministers of six countries at the same time like Su Qin. This article is not found in the various texts that have been handed down, and it is a completely new story.
According to the preliminary interpretation of the experts, the content of this "small composition" is roughly as follows:
In 250 BC, the Qin state attacked the Wei state, and the Wei prince Xinlingjun united the five states of Yan, Zhao, Han, Wei, and Chu to defeat the Qin army south of the Yellow River.
At that time, it was the late Warring States period, and the rising Qin State was eyeing the tiger, and the former capital of the Chu State, which is today's central Hubei, had been annexed by Qin. On the one hand, the six eastern countries formed an alliance to resist Qin and gained a chance to breathe, but on the other hand, they were also full of contradictions. A Zonghengjia named "筡" accepted the appointment of the king of Chu and went to the state of Qin as a diplomatic envoy to lobby the king of Qin, hoping that he would stop the reckless use of military force and adhere to the righteousness advocated by Zhou Li. At this time, the reigning King of Qin was Qin Shi Huang's father, King Qin Zhuang Xiang.
In the process of lobbying, Jun first cited various historical allusions as arguments, and warned the King of Qin with allusions such as the destruction of the country and the destruction of the temple of Wu Renzong. The incident mentioned in the "Wei, Yue and Wu tripartite defeats after the outbreak of war in the place of 'Suxu no Ye'" is not recorded in the history books.
Then, he talked about what he had seen and heard after coming to Qin, and observed that the people of Qin were "evil soldiers" and were no longer willing to support the army or participate in the war. In the end, Jun also put on a high hat to the king of Qin, praising that under his governance, the Great Qin has a vast land, strong soldiers and horses, a large population, and abundant products, and the king of Qin should also be content, so it is better to quickly restore the Zhou rites, stop the war, and let the people live and work in peace and contentment!
However, the King of Qin did not seem to be persuaded by the Zong. It is recorded in the text that the King of Qin "did not answer", "did not answer", "the gentleman also said, and the widow listened carefully", although his attitude towards the Qin was polite, but also a little cold.
Everyone knows the end of history, and in the end, the six kingdoms were annexed by Qin Shi Huang, the son of King Xiang of Qin Zhuang, and Shenzhou was unified.
Follow the discovery of small wood chips in the water
Zhao Jun, the person in charge of the archaeological project of Zhengjiahu cemetery of Hubei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, introduced that Qin Jian, the sleeping tiger land that shocked the world, was found in the Qin tomb a few kilometers away from the Zhengjiahu cemetery, so the excavators of Zhengjiahu cemetery paid special attention to the excavation of bamboo and wood chips. On September 23, 2021, an excavator found a small piece of wood during the excavation of Tomb No. 274 of Zhengjiahu. The incident attracted the attention of archaeologists, who suspected that it had surfaced from the waterlogged tomb from the coffin.
On the same day, the excavators found mud-stained and broken wooden goblets in the coffin of Tomb 274. On the afternoon of September 24, Li Lan, a professional from the Hubei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, made a special trip to the site of the Zhengjiahu cemetery to clean the wooden goose and found that there were words on both sides of the wooden goose.
On September 25, Professor Li Tianhong, deputy director of the Silk Research Center of Wuhan University, conducted a preliminary interpretation of the text on the wooden goose and found that the story of the strategist who lobbied the king of Qin to "sleep in the army and establish righteousness" was recorded in the script. Upon further investigation, this story is not recorded in the historical documents. The great value of the wood goose was thus discovered.
The owner of the tomb may have been a low-ranking official of the Qin State or an ordinary nobleman
According to Zhao Jun's analysis, according to carbon 14 dating, the owner of Zhengjiahu No. 274 tomb was buried after the Qin State occupied Anlu (now Yunmeng). Based on the size and shape of the tomb, as well as the unearthed stone inkstones, it is inferred that the owner of the tomb was a Qin person, who may have been a lower-level official or an ordinary nobleman.
According to historical records, in 279 BC, the famous general of the Qin State attacked Chubei Duyan (southeast of present-day Yicheng) on a large scale. Bai Qi diverted water to irrigate Yan, causing Chu to lose hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Then Liankechu Deng (present-day Xiangyangbei) and Xiling (present-day Yichang). In 278 BC, Bai Qi led his army to capture Anlu, and then occupied the capital of Chu, forcing Chu to move its capital, and Qin's hegemony began to appear. It was also in this year that Qu Yuan committed suicide by throwing himself into the water.
Previously, Luo Yunbing, the person in charge of the archaeological excavation project of Zhengjiahu cemetery and the vice president of the Hubei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, once believed that the era in which the tomb owner lived was the era when the Qin army continued to fight, and it was reasonable for the Qin people who stayed in Yunmeng to be war-weary, because the Qin army had to bring their own clothes and other equipment to go out, and the war had to pay a huge price. As the owner of the No. 274 tomb of the Qin people, it is natural to record the story of the strategists persuading the Qin king to stop the war on the wooden goblet, and use it as his own burial goods.
Professor Li Tianhong, deputy director of the Center for Silk Studies at Wuhan University, said that the lobbying of the Qin king recorded by Yaowen provides a picture of the era of struggle and mediation between various countries and Qin in the late Warring States period, and at the same time, Yaowen involves the relationship between Wei, Yue and Wu during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, which enriches our understanding of some important historical events.
Source: Comprehensive from "Yangtze River Daily" and "Haoran Literature and History"
Author: Ru Wei
Editor: Pan Xi
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