Zhuge Liang's uncle Zhuge Xuan

Zhuge Liang's uncle Zhuge Xuan

Zhuge Xuan, Zhuge Liang's uncle, was the key person who took Zhuge Liang out of Langya to Jingzhou. Studying Zhuge Xuan has a positive effect on understanding Zhuge Liang's activities in Jingzhou.

1. Zhuge Xuan served as the Taishou of Yuzhang

In 194 AD, Zhuge Liang's father Zhuge Jue died, and zhuge Liang's sister and brother, who had no one to rely on, were attached to their only relative, Zhuge Xuan. Zhuge Xuan was also appointed as the Taishou of Yuzhang, so it was logical for Zhuge Xuan to leave his hometown with Zhuge Liang's sisters and brothers to go to Yuzhang to take up his post. However, on the question of who appointed Zhuge Xuan as the Taishou of Yuzhang, the historical records are different:

Romance of the Three Kingdoms: "Liang was lonely early, from his father Xuan to Yuan Shu's Yuzhang Taishou, Xuan's general Liang and Liang's brother were all officials." The Hui Han Dynasty chose Zhu Hao's generation, and Xuan Su and Jingzhou Mu Liu Biao had an old and relied on it. Xuan 卒, Liang Gong Cultivating LongMu" (1). The Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms quotes the "Spring and Autumn of the Emperor Xian": "In the beginning, Yuzhang Taishou Zhoushu died of illness, and Zhuge Xuan on Liu Biao was Yuzhang Taishou and ruled Nanchang. The Han Dynasty heard that Zhou Shu died and sent Zhu Hao to dai Xuan. Hao assassinated Liu Xuan from Yangzhou to attack Xuan, Xuan retreated to Tunxi City, and Hao entered Nanchang. In the first month of the second year of Jian'an, the people of Xicheng rebelled, killed Xuan, and sent the first yixuan" (2). Pei Songzhi also discovered these problems, and added the phrase "What this book is clouded with is different from this biography" after quoting the "Spring and Autumn of the Emperor Xian".

The two records are very different, and two serious questions arise: 1. Who appointed Zhuge Xuan? The Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms records that Yuan Shu appointed him, and the "Spring and Autumn of the Emperor Xian" records that Liu Biao appointed him. 2. Where did Zhuge Xuan go after he lost his official position? The Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms records that Zhuge Xuan went to Yuzhou Mu Liu Biao after losing his official position, while the Spring and Autumn Of the Emperor Xiandi records that Zhuge Xuan was killed. These two questions are very critical to the study of Zhuge Liang's activities in Jingzhou, and it is necessary to make an analysis of the rationality between these two historical materials:

1. From the perspective of the authority of historical materials, Chen Shouzhi, the author of the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", was rigorous in his studies and already had a high reputation when he was alive, and when writing the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", he did not accept materials that did not conform to the facts. When Pei Songzhi made notes, many of the materials added were exactly the materials that Chen Shou did not use that year.

2. From the perspective of time sequence, Chen Shou, the author of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, is the closest to Zhuge Liang's time and is almost in the same era. When Pei Songzhi referred to the "Spring and Autumn of the Xiandi Emperor", he also lamented that "Yuan Ye (the author of the Spring and Autumn Of the Xiandi Emperor), Le Zi, and other records are obscene and false, and if this is the case, it is insurmountable to say", "I don't know who the disciples of The Capital and Ye are competing for, and they fail to identify whether they are or not, and they abandon Han Mo and give birth to heresies in vain in order to carry out their books." And so on, which is enough to slander the audio-visual and to make mistakes. The sinners of the actual historical records, the ones who do not take the learning" (3). At the same time, Pei Songzhi quoted the contents of the "Spring and Autumn of the Emperor Xiandi" here, and did not correct the meaning of the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", but treated this as a "strange story".

3. From the perspective of later history, Zhuge Liang once said to Liu Bei, "Jingzhou is north of Han Chu ... This is the only way to get a general, and the general doesn't care." Zhuge Liang hinted that Liu Bei was vying for Liu Biao's Jingzhou, which proved that there was no longer any affection between Zhuge Liang and Liu Biao. If Zhuge Xuan was really appointed by Liu Biao, Zhuge Xuan was "sacrificed in the line of duty", and Liu Biao would naturally take care of Zhuge Xuan's family, but the fact is that Zhuge Liang "ploughed" himself after Xuan's death and did not get any attention from Liu Biao.

Therefore, the record of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is accurate. Zhuge Xuan appointed Yuzhang Taishou by the former Nanyang Taishou Yuan Shu, and after Zhuge Xuan lost his official position, he did defect to Liu Biao, and after Zhuge Xuan's death, Zhuge Liang began a life of "cultivating Nanyang". In either case, Zhuge Xuan and Yuan Shu and Liu Biao at that time must have known each other.

II. Why Zhuge Xuan and Yuan Shu and Liu Biao are "old friends"

There is very little information about Zhuge Xuan, especially before Zhuge Xuan led Zhuge Liang away from Langya. However, judging from the fact that he could be appointed as The Taishou of Yuzhang and befriended Yuan Shu and Liu Biao, Zhuge Xuan at that time was also very remarkable. There are a few questions at this point:

1. Why is Zhuge Xuan not in Langya?

Zhuge Xuan's family was in Shandong, and his brother was once a county magistrate of Taishan County (equivalent to today's vice mayor). Under normal circumstances, Zhuge Xuan at this time should be employed in his hometown, rather than in a place where people in other places are not familiar with employment. But if Zhuge Xuan had always been in Shandong, how could Yuan Shu have known that there was a young man named Zhuge Xuan in Shandong, thousands of miles away, and appointed him to be the Taishou of Yuzhang? It can be seen that before the appointment, Zhuge Xuan must have had an "old friendship" with Yuan Shu and trusted each other.

2. Why did Zhuge Xuan have "old friends" with Yuan Shu and Liu Biao?

Liu Biao and Yuan Shu were both local princes who were separated from each other, and such identities were beyond the reach of ordinary people. Zhuge Xuan chose to defect to Liu Biao from Yuzhang, which shows that Zhuge Xuan and Liu Biao are indeed "old friends". Yuan Shu and Liu Biao did not have a good relationship, so why could Zhuge Xuan have "old friends" with two people with bad relations at the same time?

Synthesizing this information, we can analyze that Zhuge Xuan should have worked under Yuan Shu's account in Nanyang Taishou and was deeply trusted, and because Yuan Shu and Liu Biao had a relationship with each other, Zhuge Xuan also had an "old friendship" with Liu Biao. This analysis explains why Yuan Shu appointed Zhuge Xuan, and Zhuge Xuan went to Liu Biao in the later period.

III. Zhuge Xuan's final arrangement before his death

Zhuge Xuan died shortly after Xiangyang, and Zhuge Liang's siblings once again faced a situation of being helpless. However, before Zhuge Xuan died, he also made arrangements for Zhuge Liang's sisters and brothers, so that Zhuge Liang's sisters and brothers had a basic guarantee for their lives. According to ding Baozhai's "Longzhong Zhi" record, Zhuge Liang was 14 years old when he came to Xiangyang; Zhuge Xuan married Zhuge Liang's eldest sister to The Eldest Son of the Pu family, Qu Qi, and Zhuge Liang's second sister to Pang Shanmin of the Pang family, all of whom were local famous and prestigious families, and Zhuge Xuan's arrangement enabled Zhuge Liang's sisters and brothers to enter the local "upper class", when Zhuge Liang was about 15 years old. When Zhuge Xuan died, Zhuge Liang was about 17 years old and still young. After Zhuge Xuan's death, Zhuge Liang and his younger brother Zhuge Jun began to live a life of self-sufficiency, and then Zhuge Liang married Huang Yueying, the daughter of Huang Chengyan, a famous scholar in Southern Yuannan, and married his younger brother Zhuge Jun to the Nanyang Lin clan.

What needs to be noted here is that after Zhuge Liang got married, what happened to his life, why did Zhuge Liang marry a Xiangyang person himself, while his younger brother Zhuge Jun married a Nanyang person? Many scholars believe that after marriage, Zhuge Liang left his wife's mother's house with his wife Huang Yueying and went to Nanyang to start a life of "cultivating Nanyang", so he had to marry his wife Nanyang Lin for his younger brother Zhuge Jun, and only then did Zhuge Liang describe himself as "cultivating in Nanyang".

Fourth, the major information brought by the "Zhuge Ruins" in Pingshan

In today's Weidong District of Pingdingshan, Henan (formerly part of Ye County, Nanyang County), a "Zhuge Relic" was found, and there is an ancient inscription that records that "there is an old tomb of Zhuge Zhi here, in Gaoyang Huali, and then the father of Zhihou Ruozu took refuge from Langya, and was buried here, and cultivated Nanyang is still in the queen (4)", this record shows that Zhuge Liang's "father" once "lived" here and was buried here. The emergence of the "Zhuge Ruins" has broadened our horizons, and we can boldly speculate that this "relics" should be the "residence" where Zhuge Xuan lived when he served Yuan Shu during his time in Nanyang.

From this, we can also clearly see that Zhuge Xuan lived in Nanyang before his death, and traveled back and forth between Xiangyang and Xiangyang, and he was very familiar with this area. Under the influence of Zhuge Xuan, Zhuge Liang also had great feelings for this area of Nanyang and Xiangyang, which explained why so much information related to Zhuge Liang was left in Xiangyang, Wancheng, Xinye, Tang County, and Ye County.