The difference between legend and record: Did Bo Yi and Shu Qi really starve to death in the end?

Wen | The Boy of the Forest House

Jiang Huanchu is the Marquis of Dongbo in the Fengshen Yanyi, and his daughter is Empress Jiang, based on the Ghost Hou; E Chongyu is the Southern Bohou in the Fengshen Yanyi, the prototype is Ehou (鄂通邢, 邢侯). The Spring and Autumn of the Lü Dynasty says that the King of Shang killed the daughter of the Ghost Prince and took away her ornaments. In the Warring States Policy, Ghost Hou, Ehou hou and Xi Bochang are the three dukes of Shang, and ghost hou has a daughter Meijin dedicated to the king of Sui, but the king of Qi hates the daughter of the ghost hou and thus chops the ghost hou into meat sauce; Ehou defends the ghost hou and is also killed to make jerky, and later the "History" also inherits this description. The Fengshen Yanyi is roughly similar to its record, but adds the plot of Dai Ji framing Empress Jiang.

In history, Ghost Hou was the patriarch of Ghost Fang, ghost Fang was a clan living in central and southern Shanxi, and was an enemy and friend of the Shang Dynasty, and was a Kui surnamed Chi Di in the Zhou Dynasty, and was successively destroyed by the Jin State in the Spring and Autumn Period; Ehou, Western Zhou Jinwen found that there was a powerful "bad country" in the south, and in the early days in the Suizhou area of Hubei, he was a prince with the surname of Jiao after the Yellow Emperor. In the late Western Zhou Dynasty, King Li of Zhou marched south to Huaiyi and also feasted on Marquis Yifang, but Xiahou Yifang eventually led Huaiyi to rebel, so that Zhou Tianzi launched the entire Zhou army to conquer the country of Huaiyi, killing all young and old. However, archaeology has found that there are still bronzes in the Nanyang Basin in the early Spring and Autumn Period, so it is possible that the Chu State will perish later.

Illustration of "Bo Yi Kao Tribute to atonement"

However, whether Ghost Hou, Ehou Hou and King Wen of Zhou could become the "Three Dukes" of the Shang Dynasty was in question; the "Three Dukes" of later generations were all Zaifu figures, while King Wen of Zhou was only "Xi Bo", that is, the head of the Western princes, and the kings of the Ghost Kingdom and the Bad Kingdom were not crowned as Hou Bo.

Bo Yi and Shu Qi were also "princes" in the "Fengshen Yanyi", and at Shouyang Mountain, they prevented the King of Wu from cutting down the silk without success, and did not eat Zhou Su Caiwei and starved to death. In the "History of Boyi Lie", the ending of the two is the same as that of the "Fengshen Yanyi", but the two were originally princes of the Lone bamboo kingdom (present-day Lulong, Hebei), and their father originally wanted to make Shuqi a king during his reign, but after his father's death, Shuqi wanted to push his brother Boyi; Boyi thought that his father's fate was difficult to violate, so he wanted to escape; Shuqi refused to take the throne and also wanted to escape. The two discussed it, and heard that King Wen of Zhou treated the elderly kindly, so he defected to the State of Zhou. The Analects say that Bo Yi and Shu Qi were starving under the Shouyang, but it does not seem to say that the two eventually starved to death.