For thousands of years, the Chinese literati have had a backbone, that is, they dare to "advise", which can be gentle and roundabout, can be straightforward, and even can be scolded, all in order to persuade the king. The so-called loyal words are against the ear, so there is a danger to life at the time of "advice", and the number of people who have died because of "advice" in history is innumerable, but the earliest and most tragic of them is Bigan.
According to the "Yin Benji" record, the king of Lu was absurd and tyrannical, and The emperor of Mizi, Mizi, and Zuyi successively advised, but the king of Lu did not listen to the advice, and Bi Gan said that "those who are subjects to others have to fight with death", so they risked death to direct advice, which aroused the anger of the king of Lu, he said, "I heard that the heart of a saint has seven tricks", so he killed Bi Gan and watched his heart. Therefore, it is generally believed that Bigan "died because of advice", died a great death and died a magnificent death, because of this incident, Bigan got the reputation of daring to direct advice and loyal subjects throughout the ages, and the history of Youth was passed down, becoming a model for future generations.
However, the history books also record that the courtiers at that time directly advised the king, and the language was as fierce as Hai Rui's direct advice to Jiajing, "Jiajing Jiajing, the family (poor) is clean." Minister Zui said, "Woohoo! But there are many sins, but if you are above, you can be blamed on heaven", King Gong, you have sinned too much, and you are high above, can you still count on Heaven to bless you? And "Now our people are reckless and mournful, that is, 'Heaven does not surrender its might', and the great fate is not sincere, and now the king is like a platform?" "There is no one in the people who does not want you to perish, they are all shouting ,"How is it that God does not show the spirit", and now that The punishment of Heaven has not come down, what are you going to do? The strength of the direct advice that condemns and curses like Zui is basically rare in ancient and modern times, and it can even be said that there is no one who has never come after the ancients, and it is unlikely that the strength of the direct advice is more than that of Zuyi. If this is the case, why didn't king Huan kill the more "arrogant" Zuyi but cruelly killed Bigan? Is it really more intense than dry rhetoric than Zoui?
In the later years of the Shang Dynasty, although the King of Lu also achieved many military victories, especially in the attack on the Eastern Yi tribes, he captured countless people, but due to natural disasters and the King of Lu's lies, resulting in the people's livelihood withering, the people were in deep water, and the princes were alienated from Germany, corresponding to the zhou tribe's growing strength, posing a serious threat to the Shang Dynasty.
Therefore, Weizi (the brother of the King of Sui) persuaded the King of Qi to reform himself, and after being refused, he went to Talk to Miko and Bi gan to discuss where to go. Miko thinks it might be better to flee, and he persuades Miko to leave Asaka as well, and Miko later leaves, establishing the Miko regime on the Korean Peninsula. But at that time, Bigan did not say a word, and judging from his behavior in advising the king, he advocated staying. What is particularly subtle is that Bigan tolerates Miko's "desertion" behavior and does not condemn it, so it can be seen that Bigan is tolerant and cultivated, rather than a grumpy and extreme language person, otherwise he will have to argue with Miko. It is not difficult to deduce from this that when he "advises" the king of Lu, the rhetoric will not be too intense, and the intensity will not exceed that of Zuyi.
If this is the case, why can the King of Sui tolerate the minister Zuyi, but not his uncle Bigan? In fact, the sentence that King Lu said, "I have heard that the heart of a saint has seven tricks, and the faith has all kinds of knowledge" has already revealed the truth.
Generally speaking, there are four kinds of leaders: mediocre talents can tolerate people, mediocre talents cannot tolerate people, and cadres can tolerate people, and cadres cannot tolerate people. Among them, mediocre talent and ability are relative to the ministers, and sometimes the more capable the ministers are, the more mediocre the king is, and sometimes the more mediocre the ministers, the more capable the king is.
Judging from the records of the "Yin Benji", the king of The Dragon belongs to the type of "capable but cannot tolerate people", thinking that he is like the Xiang Yu of the later generations, Sima Qian introduced the King of the Emperor, saying, "Emperor Huanzi discerns the disease, smells very sensitively; the material is superior, the hand is fierce; the knowledge is enough to distance the advice, the words are enough to decorate the wrong, the people are able to speak, the world is high, and they think that they are all under themselves", the former sentence is that the King of The King of Lu is both literate and martial, and the latter paragraph is that his wisdom is enough to refuse the advice of his subordinates, and his words are enough to cover up his mistakes. He boasted in front of the ministers with his talents, and raised himself everywhere with his prestige, believing that the people of the world were inferior to him, and the arrogance of the king of Lu was evident, and it was naturally difficult to tolerate that the courtiers were wiser and more famous than him, so the king was a monarch who was jealous and jealous.
The king of Lu said to Bi gan, "I have heard that the heart of a saint has seven tricks, and there are all kinds of faith?" Therefore, Bigan should have been called a "saint" at that time, and many legends of Bigan patriotism for the people were circulated in Weihui, Henan, which can also prove that Bigan should have a very high and very good reputation at that time. There is no doubt that the higher the reputation of Bigan, the more unhappy the King of Qiu, when Bigan is called a "saint", it is estimated that the king of Ling is already angry, even he does not have the title of "saint", but the courtier has the title of "saint", which is intolerable!
For the psychology of the King of Ling, Bigan must have been more understanding, so he has been reluctant to make a head, not to give the King of Qiu the opportunity to seize the opportunity to kill him, but as the situation changes, the country is in danger, the ministers or flee or rebel, the Shang Dynasty has reached the most dangerous moment, Bigan abandoned his personal life and death to advise the King of Qi, perhaps it is just an opportunity to get rid of Bigan, or perhaps there is also the country's shame and shame into anger, so the King of Qiu will kill Bigan to satisfy his vanity of "being able to be a subordinate to the people, and to be proud of the world" and "to be able to be a subordinate, to be high in the world, and to think that they are all under their own".
King Huan's jealousy of the title of "saint" was the key reason why he killed Bi gan, rather than boringly wanting to see the Seven Tricks of The Heart and not killing Zuyi, who was more powerful, because Zuyi did not have too high a reputation, and the reason for this judgment was that there was another history that could be corroborated.
At that time, the Shang Dynasty took Xi Bochang (Ji Chang, later King Wen of Zhou), Jiuhou and Ehou as the three dukes, and after the King of Qi killed the Ninth Marquis and the Marquis of E, "Xi Bochang heard about it and sighed", Ji Chang secretly complained a few words, which was certainly not a crime, but what people did not expect was that Chonghou Hu knew about it and told the King of Qi, and then the King of Qiu imprisoned Ji Chang in "yǒu". If you look at it in normal logic, the King of Lu is obviously too sensitive, but if you look at the records in the "Imperial Century" of the Eastern Han Dynasty Emperor Fumian quoted in the "History of Justice", then it is in line with the personality logic of the King of Lu.
Before King Huan imprisoned Ji Chang, the eldest son, Bo Yikao, was already a hostage in Shangdu, and his position was to drive for King Shang. After the King of Lu imprisoned Ji Chang, he cooked Bo Yi Kao to death and made a meat soup and gave it to Ji Chang, saying that "a saint should not eat his son's soup", that is, a true saint will not eat the meat soup made by his son, but Ji Chang endured the pain of eating it, so the King of Qiu said, "Who is called the Sage of Xi Bo?" Eat his son soup is not yet known", and then released Ji Chang. This record is still relatively credible, because in the "Yin Benji", the King of Lu "saw the courtesy and opened his eyes" and released Ji Chang, which is not in line with the previous evaluation of him such as "high in the world, thinking that everyone is under their own" and so on, on the contrary, the record in the "Imperial Century" is undoubtedly more in line with the character of the King of Lu.
That is to say, at that time, Ji Chang was called a "saint", which made the King of Qi very unhappy, so he found a reason to imprison him, and then used Ji Chang to eat bo Yi Kao's meat soup to measure whether he was a saint or not, and the result was that Ji Chang ate it, and the King of Ji Chang thus thought that Ji Chang was not a saint, and the Zhou Kingdom was a powerful prince who could not easily provoke war, so he released Ji Chang. Of course, both the sugar-coated cannonball and Ji Chang eating his son's meat soup may have happened, but the key reason for the release of Ji Chang by the King of Lu should be the latter, and the sugar-coated cannonball only acts as a lubricant.
In short, the deep-seated reason why King Ling killed Bigan was not that Bigan had violated Yan Zhizhi, nor that he maliciously wanted to see the "Seven Tricks of the Sage's Exquisite Heart", but that Bi Gan was "famous and high-minded", and the same as Bigan was Ji Chang, but Ji Chang escaped the disaster by eating his own reputation.
However, although Bigan died in the name of the saint, his death also fulfilled the name of his saint, engraving the image of a loyal subject who dared to speak out, and his good name is still circulated to this day. As for Ji Chang, if it were not for the Zhou Kingdom destroying the Shang Dynasty and becoming the ultimate victor, it is estimated that the "eating son" incident would have left him with an extremely ugly image in history.
References: Chronicle of History, Century of Kings, etc