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2024-2-416:14Creator in the field of high-quality science in Yunnan
The story of Dayu's water control should have been heard even by kindergarten children in the mainland.
In the legend, Dayu and the Xia Dynasty opened by him have also become the starting point of Chinese millennium history. However, over the years, in the academic fields such as history and archaeology, there have been countless controversies over whether Dayu and the Xia Dynasty really existed.
So, where are these controversies concentrated? Is Dayu a myth or a real person, and whether the Xia Dynasty existed, and how should we look at it?
Yu: Beasts, gods, and people
In the book "Zi Bu Yu" written in the Qing Dynasty, there is a story of King Yu killing the snake on the tablet. At that time, it had been thousands of years since Yu ruled the water, and this paragraph in the novel of gods and monsters was only a microcosm of Yu's miracles.
If you look at books that are older, whether it is historical materials or literary and artistic creations, the various legends surrounding Yu have been completely deified for thousands of years.
What does that mean? For example, when Qin Shi Huang or Liu Bang and Xiang Yu are mentioned now, people will automatically think that they are a figure in history and not a god.
Yu is different, in various accounts of later generations, he looks more like a god than a man. In the Spring and Autumn Period, people have been deified by Yu, and people's evaluation of Yu at that time was: beautiful Yu Gong, Mingde is far away. And also clearly listed it as the god of the shrine, and the later generations called "Sheji", one of which is Yu.
It is natural for the ancients to deify it, but in this way, the longer the time, the thicker the mystery on Yu, and the more difficult it will be for modern or future people to understand the real Yu.
Some people will say, what is mysterious about this, Sima Qian's "Historical Records", there is a detailed record of Yu and his water control. In addition, there are also records about Yu in the earlier "Shangshu", "Zuo Chuan" and "Classic of Mountains and Seas". It is enough to have these records, so why bother to bother with whether Yu is a god or a man, and whether he has ever healed water?
The public can think in this way, whether Yu is a god or a human, after thousands of years of precipitation, it does not prevent future generations of Chinese from treating him as the ancestor of the Chinese nation.
However, from a historical point of view, there is a boundary between myth and reality. Because of this, in the 20th century, when the historical community looked back at this period of time thousands of years ago, there were many reflections and countless opinions.
In 1923, Gu Jiegang published a long letter to Qian Xuantong, which opened a great debate in academic circles.
Qian Xuantong
In the view of some scholars, the older the history, the more blurred the line between myths and legends and real events. Gu Jiegang believes that Yu is a mythical existence rather than a reality, and even thinks that Yu may be an ancient beast. Later, although Gu revised his opinion, he still believed that Yu was not a real historical figure, but a myth and legend.
The throwing out of this view is tantamount to shaking the foundation of the existence of the Xia Dynasty. Although Yu became the lord of the world by relying on Zen, it was on this basis that his descendants opened the Xia Dynasty of the world, and since then it has also led Chinese history into the era of dynastic states.
But if Yu is a myth and legend, how should the Xia Dynasty explain it? Although Gu Jiegang questioned the authenticity of Yu's existence, he did not deny the existence of the Xia Dynasty.
However, in academic circles, there are still others who have been influenced by his view and believe that the Xia Dynasty did not exist. This controversy has continued since then, and even its scope of influence has gone abroad. To this day, there are still scholars in foreign historical circles who are skeptical about the existence of the Xia Dynasty.
However, in 1925, Wang Guowei believed that although historical facts and myths in ancient times were confused, there were also real elements in legends, which could not be denied.
Wang Guowei
The controversy surrounding the Yu and Xia dynasties gave birth to three schools: the letter of the ancient, the suspicion of the ancient and the interpretation of the ancient. As the name suggests, the belief in the ancient is to believe in the historical record, and the suspicion of the ancient is to doubt the relevant account, and the ancient is in between the first two.
Just when the debate was clueless, at the beginning of the 20th century, archaeologists discovered the ruins of Yin Ruins in Anyang. Things immediately took a dramatic turn, and scholars have since found that the contents of the Yin Shang section of the "Historical Records", including the kings of the past dynasties, can find correspondence in the unearthed oracle bone inscriptions.
The content of the "Historical Records" record the Yin Shang part is true, then the record part about the Xia Dynasty should also be able to find physical ruins.
It is a pity that the scholars who participated in the debate back then failed to see the physical objects of the Xia Dynasty and the earlier physical records around Yu. Because these things will not see the light of day until decades later.
The deeds of Yu recorded in the Western Zhou Dynasty
At the beginning of this century, a bronze suddenly appeared in the antique market, although it was very old, but due to the overall serious rust and the text on it was quite jerky, this cultural relic was almost unattended at that time.
Later, this bronze vessel went to Beijing, and after some research by the academic circles, it was determined that it was a tableware in the early Western Zhou Dynasty, that is, the tableware used for eating now.
What's more important is that on this cultural relic called "Feng Gong Xuan", there is a record of Yu Zhishui. This shows that 3,000 years ago, there was a record of Yu's deeds of controlling the water.
Moreover, unlike the records in historical materials, the inscriptions on daily life utensils are more authentic. At least it can show that the deeds surrounding Yu and his water control were already being praised in the early Western Zhou Dynasty.
After that, archaeologists found a batch of bamboo slips, which were determined to be relics of the Warring States period, and the contents of the bamboo slips were the missing parts of the "Book of Shang".
After research, there are also records about Yu on the bamboo slips, and these bamboo slips themselves are hundreds of years earlier than Sima Qian's time.
Modern scholars have studied these contents and found that the Yu recorded above has divinity and has the divine power to transform mountains and rivers. This seems to show that some of the arguments that Yu is a god seem to be correct.
Regarding the deeds of Yuhe and water control, although the historical community has found earlier records. However, as of now, there is still no definite conclusion whether Yu is a man or a god, when he was gradually deified, or whether he was a god by word of mouth in the beginning.
However, the Xia Dynasty after Yu's death, still half a century ago, there were major discoveries in the archaeological community.
The ruins of Erlitou are now alive
Xu Xusheng also participated in the debate around Yu Xia back then, and he was quite unimpressed with the ancient faction, so he went to the field in his early years, determined to find the clues of Xia in Yu Jin.
Although the ruins of Yin Shang were found before, it is a pity that no content about Xia has been found in the unearthed documents. Therefore, Xu Xusheng, who walked to the field, set his sights on the areas with the highest concentration of the Xia Dynasty in legends and documents—the central part of Henan and the southern part of Shanxi.
After more than a month of investigation and visits, more than 20 ruins and relics gradually surfaced, and the most concentrated or credible one was the site of Erlitou Village. After more than half a century of archaeological excavations, the total area of the site is more than 40,000 square meters.
It is worth mentioning that 20 years before the excavation of the Erlitou site, it continued to be surnamed "Shang" instead of "Xia", and there was a view that the site should be the capital of the Yin Shang era.
It was not until the late 70s that the determination of the Erlitou site gradually changed. First of all, the age of the site is even earlier, dating between 3500 and 3800 years, which is consistent with the middle and late Xia Dynasty recorded in the history books.
Secondly, the Erlitou site is located in the west of Henan, and the activity area of the Xia Dynasty recorded in the history books is also located in the western part of Henan. Today, the Erlitou site is an empirical relic of the middle and late Xia Dynasty, and has become a general consensus in the academic community.
However, there is one point that may make people wonder, the Xia Dynasty, as a dynasty that existed for hundreds of years before the Yin Shang Dynasty, why there is not even a trace of Xia in the documents and historical materials of the Yin Shang period?
Xia and Xiyi
There are still records, but many of them have long since been lost. Until 2008, a series of bamboo slips compiled by Tsinghua University included the lost documents "Yin Zhi" and "Yin Huan", which contained records about the destruction of Shang Xia.
Yin is Yi Yin, a well-known politician in the early Shang period, and the general situation of Shang's destruction of Xia is recorded in the literature, including the description of the direction of "Xiyi Xia".
Compared with the previously unearthed Yin Shang oracle bone inscriptions, it is found that the word "Xiyi" is often found in them. Therefore, under the mutual evidence, Xiyi Xia can be known to be Xiyi or even Xia. Since then, the archaeological community has further confirmed that Xiyi is the royal city in the early Xia period.
By confirming the relationship between Xiyi and Xia, and the mutual evidence of the Erlitou ruins in the actual archaeology, coupled with the records of the Shang Dynasty destroying Xia in various historical materials, it can be basically confirmed that the existence of the Xia Dynasty is certain.
However, there is another point, that is, so far, no text from the Xia Dynasty period has been found in the excavated ruins about the Xia Dynasty.
Is there a necessary relationship between writing and dynastic states?
The reason why Yin Shang can be recognized as existing is 100% because of historical records, historical sites on the other hand, and oracle bone inscriptions on the other. These texts can be corroborated with the records in the historical sources.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Wang Guowei had already successfully deciphered the oracle bone inscriptions, and since then, with the discovery of Yin Ruins, all the records in the history books have become credible.
Therefore, in some opinions, the next step is to further clarify the existence of the Xia Dynasty, and the relevant written records must be found to be more credible. It is a pity that the systematic text has not yet been discovered in the excavation around the Erlitou site.
However, there is an opinion that associating words with a national dynasty is actually the biggest misunderstanding. Because writing is not an inevitable product of the emergence of dynasties, throughout the history of the world, there have been civilizations without writing.
For example, the Inca Empire in the Americas was more than 10,000 miles away, but this civilization did not even exist in writing, not even metallurgy. Similarly, in the Harappan civilization found in the Indus Valley, archaeological excavations have only found some symbols, which cannot be confirmed to be writing.
Therefore, from this point of view, whether or not the Xia Dynasty has been found to have written writing, or whether there is a written language, cannot deny that it itself existed.
epilogue
To sum up, the debate surrounding Yu and the Xia Dynasty after his death, from historical materials to empirical evidence, from the criteria for judging civilization in history to the interpretation of historical materials in the field of archaeology, related research has lasted for decades.
Time is the best dust, and the longer it is, the thicker the coverage of earlier eras. Looking back and researching the work is like splicing the previous dynasty.
Historical sources can provide us with a rough outline, but they cannot prove the authenticity of the content. Therefore, the more complex the historical data, the more cumbersome the steps for future generations to verify.
Perhaps, looking back at history, we will never be able to completely remove the heavy loess. Just like facing King Dayu, whether he is a human or a god, the longer the time, the more future generations will freeze it as a god.
Resources:
"Searching for the Xia Dynasty in Literature and Legends," China News Weekly, October 31, 2023
"The First Archaeological Site: Is the Mysterious Xia Dynasty Real?There Is Only One Truth", China News Network, February 22, 2021
"60 Years of Erlitou Excavation—Have Archaeologists Found the Documented Xia Dynasty?" The Paper, December 20, 2019
"Solving the Goldbach Conjecture in Chinese Archaeology: A Quest for the Xia Dynasty Spanning 60 Years", Xinhuanet, November 30, 2019
Disclaimer: The content is taken from the Internet