There is a saying that "it is better to believe in books than to have no books", in fact, the meaning of "book" in this sentence does not refer to books in general, but a type of work called "books". "Book" is actually a collective term for the historical documents of the Zhou Dynasty, and it is said that Confucius compiled the "Book" as a teaching material for students. During the Warring States period, hundreds of schools of thought competed, and many scholars also collected some "books". However, the purpose of everyone is not to preserve historical data, but to argue their own doctrine. In this way, many "books" are no longer the original face in the process of circulation, and even many of the "books" circulating at that time are pseudo-ancient works of people in the Warring States period.
The phrase "it is better to believe in books than to have no books" was first published in Mencius. Mencius said, "It is better to believe in the Book than to have the Book without it." I am in "Wucheng", take two or three strategies. The benevolent man is invincible to the world, so that the benevolent is unkind, and what kind of blood is the pestle? This means that it is better to believe in the "Book" than not to have the "Book", and what I believe in for the "Book of Wucheng" is only two or three pieces of bamboo. The benevolent have no opponents in the world, and if the most benevolent attacks the most inhumane, how can there be a situation of blood flowing and drifting pestles? This incident is generally believed to be the Battle of Makino of the Shang Zhou Dingge, which took place in 1046 BC on the outskirts of the Shang capital.
In the "History of Zhou Benji", the course of this war is recorded. It turned out that the King of Shang heard that King Wu of Zhou had led the princes to come, so he sent 700,000 troops to resist King Wu. King Wu sent the taishi Lü Shang (later known as Jiang Ziya) to challenge the Shang army with the centurion. Although the Shang army was large and powerful, they had no desire to resist and looked forward to the entry of King Wu into the lordship. As a result, the Shang army all turned against each other to help the King of Wu, and the King of Wu drove the chariot forward, and the Shang army collapsed and betrayed the King of Wu. The king fled to the capital to reach Lutai, put on Baoyu's clothes, and set himself on fire and died. After that, King Wu succeeded to the throne of Tianzi, divided the princes, and the Western Zhou Dynasty was formally established.
In the Zhou Benji, King Wu can indeed be said to be the "zhiren" in Mencius's mouth, and actually sent only two people to symbolically challenge, which completely collapsed the 700,000 troops of the Shang Dynasty, and then easily sat on the throne. But we can also see that in Mencius's time there was indeed a legend of the "blood flow pestle". Coincidentally, in the Book of Yi Zhou compiled by the Han and Jin Dynasties, there is a "World Prisoner", which mentions that after the King of Wu destroyed the Shang, "he marched to the four sides, and there were nine kingdoms in ninety countries, seventy-seven hundred and seventy nine in the country of Feng, and two hundred and thirty in 300 million prisoners." "100 million refers to 100,000, then the number of merchants who were beheaded by the Zhou people ("Steamed") reached 170,000, no wonder the "blood pestle".
In fact, the "Prisoner of the World" is generally considered to be the original text of "Wucheng", or the same historical source as "Wucheng". Interestingly, there is indeed an article titled "Wucheng" in later generations, and the content of this "Wucheng" is different from that of "Prisoner of the World". So, what exactly is this "Wucheng"?
It is said that after Qin Shi Huang unified China, in order to prevent the remnants of the Six Kingdoms from thinking of the ancients, he ordered that all the "poems" and "books" hidden by the people be burned. However, Fu Sheng, a native of Jinan, hid a batch of "books" in the wall himself, thus avoiding Qin's book burning and the Chu-Han war. After the establishment of the Western Han Dynasty, Fu Sheng took out this batch of bamboo janes and finished them to get 28 articles. After that, he used these 28 articles as teaching materials to give lectures in the Qilu area, because these "books" came from ancient times, so they were also called "Shang Shu". "Shang" means "Shang", the meaning of the previous generation and ancient times. Fusheng's disciples gradually formed three schools: Ouyang Shixue, Da xiahou shixue, and Xiaoxiaxiashixue.
From emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty to Emperor Xuan of Han, these three schools of Shangshu were successively appointed as academic officials, that is, they became official orthodox scholarship. The Book of Shang is therefore revered as one of the Confucian "Five Classics", known as the Book of Books.
However, from the middle of the Western Han Dynasty, there were some "Shang Shu" written in the six languages in society, the most famous of which is the family heirloom of Confucius XI Sun Kong Anguo. The great Confucian Liu Xin wanted to include them in the scholarly official, which led to the famous dispute between the ancient and modern texts. Because the "Shang Shu" handed down by Fu Sheng was written in the Han Dynasty script, it was called the "Shang Shu" of the present text; and the "Shang Shu" that appeared later was written in the six languages, so it was called the ancient "Shang Shu". Although the ancient Shang Shu was not appointed as a scholar in the Final Han Dynasty, it was continuously advocated by scholars and finally written into the officially promulgated Three-Body Stone Classic by the time of Cao Wei.
However, the good times were not long, and the wars in the last years of the Western Jin Dynasty were chaotic, and the present and ancient texts "Shang Shu" and stone carvings were lost. After the establishment of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Yuzhang Nei Shi Meizhao dedicated an ancient text "Book of Shang", of which there are a total of fifty-eight articles, which are consistent with what the Han people Liu Xiang and Zheng Xuan said, and one of which is marked with a note and a general preface by the Han Kong Anguo, so it is considered by scholars to be the ancient text "Book of Shang" transmitted by Kong Anguo in the Han Dynasty. By the Tang Dynasty, Kong Yingda composed the Five Classics of Justice, and the Shang Shu was based on this ancient text, the Shang Shu, which was later engraved into the Tang Shi Jing and became an officially certified version. Since then, the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties have been regarded as legal versions.
However, the Tang people began to doubt the authenticity of the ancient text "Book of Shang", and when the Song dynasty Wu Fan formally proposed the examination, after the Ming people Mei Que, the Qing people Yan Ruoxuan, and Hui Dong examined it, and finally determined that this book was a pseudo-ancient "Book of Shang", not transmitted by Kong Anguo, but a forgery by the Jin people. However, in these fifty-eight pseudo-ancient texts of the Book of Shang, twenty-eight authentic texts of Fusheng's Book of Shangshu have been preserved, but they have been split into thirty-three. Of course, to say that the "Book of Shang" is true is only relative to the pseudo-ancient texts concocted by the Jin people, it does not mean that its content is completely true, and the "Book of Yu" and "Book of Xia" are all written by the Warring States people.
Of these twenty-five forgeries, wucheng is prominently listed. It was actually written by the Jin people based on this title recorded by Mencius; as for the real Wucheng chapter, it also belonged to the ancient Shangshu in the Han Dynasty, but it was later lost. And it does not conform to the Confucian image of King Wu of Zhou, so the counterfeiters have not included him in the pseudo-ancient "Book of Shang". The real "Wucheng" chapter was instead compiled into the "Yi Zhou Shu" that was not included in the "Book of Shang", and the "Yi" of the title of the book means "Yi". In this way, the "Wucheng" chapter of the pseudo-ancient "Shang Shu" is a forgery, while the "World Prisoner" chapter of the "Yizhou Book" is actually a genuine product.
In recent years, in the Collection of Warring States Bamboo Jane excavated by Tsinghua University, there are many "Shangshu" style documents, such as "Yin Zhi" and "Yin Zhen", which can actually be regarded as the true ancient text "Shangshu" of the Warring States period, and the "Xian You Yi De" and "Fu Shuo's Fate" in the ancient "Shang Shu" that have been handed down to the ancient text can be found to be completely different, which can further prove the conclusion that the ancient "Shang Shu" is false.
bibliography:
Gu Jiegang, "Annotations, Writings and Commentaries on the Yizhou Shu and The Prisoners of the World", in Wenshi, Vol. 2, Beijing: Zhonghua Bookstore, 1963.
Liu Qimin: The Book of Shang, in A Brief Discussion of the Scriptures, Beijing: Zhonghua Bookstore, 2005.
Xie Weiyang: "Two or Three Things from Qinghua Jian's "Saying The Fate" on the Formation of Ancient Books and Texts"