Dong Yuanben ‖ Liu Bang took Han as the national name and had good intentions, but Sima Qian was "troublesome"

Original text/ Dong Yuanben (Suqian, Jiangsu)

The Han Dynasty was founded by Emperor Gao Liu Bang after Liu Bang defeated his fierce enemy Xiang Yu in 202 BC. Why did Liu Bang set the name of the new dynasty as Han? It is reasonable to say that Han was originally the title of the princely state that Xiang Yu, the king of Western Chu, gave to Liu Bang, and Liu Bang took Han as the state name, and did he lead the "Han army" to oppose Xiang Yu. Are the nascent dynasties not politically inferior? In fact, Liu Bang's use of Han as the name of the country was good for him and the newborn dynasty, which should be the result of his deliberations.

First of all, Liu Bang found a reason to fight Xiang Yu on the basis of respecting the historical fact that Xiang Yu had crowned himself king of Han. During the war with Xiang Yu for the world, Liu Bang always existed in the name of the King of Han, and his army was of course also called the Han Army, which was an important strategy for Liu Bang to win the princes of the world to betray Xiang Yu in order to form an alliance with himself. So, was it a crime for the King of Han to attack the Overlord of Western Chu? No, because Liu Bang used Xiang Yu's murder of Emperor Yi as his reason for his crusade against Xiang Yu, the so-called Emperor Yi was just a puppet of Xiang Yu, but after all, Emperor Yi was established by Xiang Yu as the co-lord of the world, and Liu Bang led the Han army with white clothes and white flags to seek revenge on Xiang Yu in the name of Emperor Yi, which was naturally relatively reasonable.

Second, Liu Bang can falsify history through chronology and ignore the existence of the Xiang Yu era. At the time of Chen Sheng's Wuguang uprising, the Qin Dynasty was still in the Qin II period, Qin had not yet perished, and the Zhang Chu regimes of Qin and Chen Sheng had their own chronicles; after Chen Sheng's death, the King of Chu Huai continued to chronicle with Qin; after the death of Qin, the reign of the Western Chu Dynasty began to chronicle. It is reasonable to say that after the death of the Western Chu Overlord, Liu Bang could begin the chronicle, and Sima Qian did consider this in the "Records of History". Sima Qian deliberately ignored the chronology of Chen Sheng and King Huai of Chu before the fall of Qin, and directly realized the continuity and scientificity of the chronology with the "Qin Benji", "Xiang Yu Benji", and "Gao Zu Benji" concise, historically responsible, and seamless docking. However, Liu Bang's idea was not like that of the later Sima Qian, Liu Bang took Han as the state name of the new dynasty, then the han chronology should start from the time when Xiang Yu divided Liu Bang as the king of Han, and Xiang Yu's chronology also began from that time, so that the entire chronology of Xiang Yu could be replaced by Han. Through the chronicle, Liu Bang pushed the starting point of the Han Dynasty to the time of the fall of Qin, and Liu Bang replaced Xiang Yu as the "legitimate" heir of the Qin Dynasty's imperial estate.

During the Qin Dynasty and the Han Dynasty, Xiang Yu was after all a existence that could not be ignored, and since Liu Bang "committed" a crusade against Xiang Yu as the King of Han and ignored Xiang Yu in the way of chronology, how to deal with Xiang Yu's name? Liu Bang buried Xiang Yu's head in Gucheng (谷城, in present-day Dongping County, Shandong Province), which belonged to Ludi, and before the death of Qin, King Huai of Chu had made Xiang Yu the King of Lu, and Liu Bang personally participated in the ceremony of burying Xiang Yu in Gucheng, apparently seeing Xiang Yu as a prince of the anti-Qin period. Focusing on the Han name and the national name, through the use of the Yidi card, the ji nian card, the funeral card and other comprehensive means of cutting history, Liu Bang successfully flipped his relationship with Xiang Yu's dignity and inferiority. Sima Qian saw through Liu Bang's intentions, and in the spirit of xinshi, he returned the history of the first few years of the Han Dynasty to Xiang Yu and wrote a "Xiang Yu Benji", no wonder Sima Qian did not please Emperor Wu of Han.

(Editor: Dong Yao)