In the Spring and Autumn Period, a very strange event is recorded, in 722 BC, in the autumn and July of the first year of Lu Yin, king Zhou Ping of Zhou Tianzi sent a Zaiguan named Xuan (咺) as a special envoy, who rushed from Luoyi thousands of miles away to Qufu, the capital of the state of Lu, and sent two gifts to Lu Yin, who had just been regent. One of them was for the chariot and horse bundle used to help the funeral after the death of Duke Huigong's father, and the other was for the undead Lady Huigong, the mother of Duke Lu Huan, Zhongzi, and also for the funeral aid.
There are two extremely unpretentious points in this matter.
First, Lu Huigong had been dead for more than a year, and even if King Ping of Zhou had received news of the funeral and sent the deceased from Luoyang to lu, the distance between the two places would be more than a thousand miles, and the carriage would have to travel for more than twenty days, a month at most, and it should have reached luguo long ago. And because of the long distance, ancient funerals were held for a long time. It took seven months for the Son of Heaven to be buried, and all the princes had to send emissaries to attend; the princes had to be buried after five months, and the princes who were allies with the princes were also sent to send emissaries to participate, and the doctors had to go through three months, and the ordinary soldiers had to be buried after two months. Therefore, the ancient nobles attached great importance to funerals. Such a big event, as Zhou Tianzi, how could he make such a mistake?
Second, Lu Huigong's wife Zhongzi was still alive, and the family was living well, and Zhou Tianzi actually sent emissaries to send gifts for funerals to the living people. Not to say that it is Zhou Tianzi, even ordinary people cannot make such a mistake.
What is even more strange is that as the hidden duke of the Lu state, whether it is a regent or not, as the ruler of the princes, he has not reacted to this matter at all. There was no protest against Zhou Tianzi or his emissary Zai, let alone other ways to oppose Zhou Tianzi's behavior of similar insults to the State of Lu. It was just that the history books of the State of Lu made a little painful and uninvited account of dissatisfaction, and wrote down the name of the envoy of Zhou Tianzi who could not do things, "Zai Kui", to express dissatisfaction with this matter.
The Zuo Zhuan explains that "giving death is not enough to a corpse, hanging is not as good as mourning, Yu is murderous, and indecent is also." "That is, giving things to the deceased without catching up with the burial, hanging the living without catching up with the time of mourning, and giving things about the funeral in advance without dying are all extremely unpretentious acts."
Historians did not understand why King Zhou Ping treated the State of Lu in this way, and the analysis of the reasons for this was even more controversial. The ming Dynasty's Feng Menglong's historical novel Chronicle of the States of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty also paid attention to this event. The book gives an answer, and Feng Menglong believes that this is purely an act of revenge by King Zhou Ping. This has to be said before.
In 781 BC, the famous King You of Zhou in the history of the Zhou Dynasty ascended the throne. Yu Wang's name is Gong Ni. As soon as he was the king of the last week, he encountered a strong earthquake in the Weishui, Jingshui, and Luoshui areas near Hojing, and the earthquake collapsed qishan, and Weishui, Jingshui, and Luoshui all became dammed lakes. Most of us ancients were helpless against such a catastrophe in nature. The common people had no way, so they resented this Zhou Youwang as an ominous monarch. Therefore, King Youwang of Zhou is one of the representatives of the Emperor in history.
King Zhou You also favored a woman without roots, and did not like his queen. His queen was the daughter of Marquis Shen, an ancient vassal state with the surname Jiang, and legend has it that after Boyi, in present-day Nanyangbei, Henan.
King You of Zhou even deposed the crown prince of his son Yi Usu, who was born to the queen, and made bofu, the son of Li Bao, the prince. This angered the power of the queen with the Shen kingdom as the background. After the crown prince Yiusu was deposed, he fled to the house of his grandfather Marquis Shen.
When Shen Hou learned of this, he was very angry. In 771 BC, Shen Hou joined forces with the allied princes of the present-day southern city of Henan, and colluded with Xiyi and Inurong on the northwestern border of China to attack the Zhou Dynasty. King Zhou You, defenseless, was killed at the foot of Mount Li. That is, southeast of present-day Lintong, Shaanxi, the place north-northeast of Hojing at that time.
The ethnic minorities in the northwest, Xiyi and Inurong, were nomadic people who made a living by plundering, and they looted the property of the Zhou Dynasty, and Shen Hou, the founder of the Yong Dynasty, could not stop it. As soon as King You of Zhou died, the Western Zhou Dynasty, which lasted for 276 years, collapsed, and the palaces of the dynasty became ruins.
As for the ghost king who played the princes in order to please the concubines, this story is known to everyone, and I don't quite believe in the authenticity of this story, so I won't say it.
When King You of Zhou was killed, the State of Qin at that time was nearby, and the State of Qin was bordered by Xi Rong and Inu Rong, and the two sides hated each other, which was a feud. Therefore, Qin Xianggong was the first to lead an army to save the Zhou Dynasty, and after rushing to Xi Rong and Inu Rong, he saw that Haojing was already in ruins, and led his troops to escort Yi Usu to Luoyi.
In 770 BC, Shen Hou, Zheng Wugong and others established Yi Usu as king, that is, the King of Zhou Ping, and established the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. Qin Xianggong had made great contributions, and King Ping of Zhou made him a prince and gave xiang all the places west of Qishan. Most importantly, King Zhou Ping hated Xi Rong and Inu Rong to death, and he said to Qin Xianggong: "Xi Rong and Inu Rong are too ruthless, and have invaded the Qishan and Fenghao lands of my Zhou royal family, and if you can drive them away, the land there will be yours." ”
After Qin became a prince, he struggled to fight against Xi Rong and Inu Rong, occupied most of the northwest, and gradually became a powerful princely state.
Two years after King Zhou Ping ascended the throne, in 768 BC, Duke Hui of Lu took the throne and became the monarch of the State of Lu. Duke Hui of Lu reigned for 46 years, from 768 BC to 723 BC. During this period, the state of Qin became more and more powerful, and the monarch Qin Wengong began to ask King Zhou Ping to sacrifice heaven and earth with the gift of the Son of Heaven. If this is true, the Zhou Dynasty has declined, and the King of Zhou Ping is powerless to oppose the Qin State.
However, as a descendant of the Duke of Zhou, because of the contribution of the Duke of Zhou to the Zhou Dynasty, the State of Lu has always been responsible for the sacrifice ceremony of the Zhou Tianzi, and the sacrifice ceremony was formulated by the Duke of Zhou, and the State of Lu was the princely state in charge of the Zhou Ceremony. Therefore, lu Huigong was very angry when he learned that King Ping of Zhou had agreed to the Qin state to sacrifice heaven and earth with the gift of the son of heaven.
The State of Lu and the State of Qin are one in the east and the other in the west, and the State of Lu cannot treat the State of Qin as well. Lu Huigong went to king Zhou Ping to reason, but king Zhou Ping did not listen to Lu Guo's opinion, and he could not oppose Qin Guo's doing so. On the contrary, as a big country, the State of Lu was also a clan member of the Zhou royal family, and when the Youwang was in distress, he did not have the slightest merit to help the Zhou royal family, and the Zhou Ping King was already somewhat dissatisfied. Lu Guo, on the other hand, believes that this is entirely caused by your Yi Usu, that your grandfather colluded with foreign enemies to defeat your father, and your behavior is similar to that of a murderer. Your seat as king of the Zhou Dynasty is somewhat illegitimate. Our State of Lu is the authentic concubine of the Zhou Dynasty, and during the period of becoming king, we allowed the State of Lu to sacrifice the Duke of Zhou with the gift of the Son of Heaven.
After Lu Huigong returned to China, Lu Guo also sacrificed heaven and earth with the gift of the Son of Heaven. In this way, Lu Huigong completely turned his face with King Ping of Zhou.
In 723 BC, Lu Huigong died, as Zhou Tianzi did not come to mourn. It was not until the following year, in July after the regency of the Duke of Luyin, that an official of the rank of sergeant was sent to the country of Lu to send a gift to help the funeral. He also humiliated the wife of the living Huigong, Zhongzi.
Even if Zhou Tianzi was deliberate in this matter, Lu Yingong, who had just been regent, was not very good. Therefore, the history books do not record how Lu Yin reacted.
Of course, the above claims are not based on historical data, and most of them are speculative.
The "Biography of the Ram" believes that Zhou Tianzi did this improperly, but the more unreasonable Lu Huigong's wife Zhongzi was a concubine, and she was simply not qualified to let Zhou Tianzi send gifts to help the mourners. Since Zhou Tianzi wanted to elevate Zhongzi, he should also send another emissary, not the same emissary as Hui gong, so that there would be no distinction between honor and inferiority. After all, Lu Huigong was a prince, and Zhongzi was just a concubine.
The tale of The Tale of Gu Liang is even more different, with Gu Liang Chi believing that Zhongzi was Huigong's mother and a concubine of Duke Lu. When a concubine of the princes died, she was not eligible to accept zhou Tianzi's funeral gifts, but only when the princes' mother died. Therefore, the "Spring and Autumn" called "Huigong Zhongzi" because the mother was a child, and the addition of Huigong before Zhongzi showed that Zhongzi was huigong's mother to enjoy the treatment of Zhou Tianzi's funeral goods.
According to the Zuo Biography, Zhongzi died on December 15, 721 BC, in December 15, 721 BC. Therefore, Yang Bojun suspected that perhaps his wife Zhongzi was already seriously ill, and after the Zhou royal family heard about it, they prepared a copy for Zhongzi when they sent Lu Huigong a funeral gift. Unexpectedly, after the emissary arrived in the Country of Lu, Zhongzi was still alive.
In short, in July 722 BC, King Ping sent Zai Kui to the State of Lu to present Lu Huigong, Zhongzi's funeral items, late, and Zhongzi was not dead. It was like a "Rashomon."