Historical Interpretation The Zen concession system does not exist You know, then do you know that

Controversy Project

Li Ji is the father of Chinese archaeology.

I'll get straight to the point and start with two things about historical identification.

First, Western countries did not recognize China's "5,000-year-old civilization" before **, but only recognized the history of about 3,000 years after the Western Zhou Dynasty; **During the period, after Li Ji presided over the initiation of several archaeological excavations of the Yin Ruins in Anyang, Western scholars began to recognize the Shang Dynasty in China. However, the existence of the Xia dynasty and its predecessors (if any) has not been acknowledged to this day.

In this case, many of us may feel that this is because Western countries are biased against China, so they do not recognize our history. However, in fact, the main difference lies in the fact that the academic circles at home and abroad have different standards for dynastic and historical identification.

The international standard is that historical records and archaeological objects corroborate each other, while we focus more on historical records, in legal terms, the international academic community "needs both confessions and evidence (and forms a chain of evidence)", and we refer more to "confessions".

Taking the identification of dynasties as an example, the identification of the Shang Dynasty is because the direct text content of the oracle bone inscription and the cultural relics excavated at the Yinxu site jointly prove the existence of the Shang Dynasty, but no cultural relics of the Xia Dynasty that directly contain text symbols have been found, and no information about the Xia Dynasty has been found in the oracle bone inscription, so the historical period of "Yellow Emperor-Yao Shunyu-Xia" before the Shang Dynasty is still a controversial "hypothesis" in the academic community.

Second, the main reason why Western countries do not regard "what we think of as historical materials" as the core criterion for the identification of dynasties or historical events is that there are problems with historical materials, and at the same time, the recorder may not be a historical witness (may be apocryphal), and even the historical data are contrary to the real history because of the position of the recorder.

For example, let's say "Zen concession system".

Our perception of it as modern people is that it is a kind of democratic system explored by the ancient Chinese ancestors, but in fact, in the Spring and Autumn Period, the "Zen concession system" has been questioned.

The first time to explicitly confirm the relationship between Yao Shunyu and Zen was Mencius:

Heaven and the virtuous, then the virtuous; Heaven and the Son, then with the Son. ......Confucius said: Tang Yu Chan, Xia Hou Yin Zhouji, its righteousness is also.

This point was written by Xunzi, another Confucian giant after Mencius, in a column - "Xunzi Fei Twelve Sons":

The case is decorated with his words, and only respects it, saying: This is really the words of the first gentleman. Zi Si sang it, Meng Ke and it. The ditch of the world is still Confucian, and he doesn't know what it is not, so he accepts it and passes it on, thinking that Zhong Ni and Zigong are thicker than later generations: it is the sin of Zisi and Meng Ke.

We don't know how the current Shangshu differs from the earliest version, but it is clear that the book must have added a lot of "content" to the Confucian circulation. This shows that the version that eventually circulated has lost the authenticity necessary for first-hand historical sources.

Therefore, under the premise that the "Shangshu" itself needs to question the authenticity of its content, the "Zen concession system" supported by it is more like a "castle in the sky".

But it is such a point of view that cannot stand up to questioning, it has always existed as common sense in China's long feudal history, and has been propagated as a Confucian political ideal.

What is the purpose of this example? The most important thing is to tell you that our ancient books, as historical materials and "confessions", have their limitations in the identification of historical events, after all, books are written by people, and most of the people who can write books have their own thoughts and positions, and what he writes is biased, so relying on these things to confirm the existence of a piece of history is indeed logically problematic.

In addition, it is to use this "Zen concession system" to give everyone a preventive shot, and there are many things that we have believed in for many years, and these things have even been believed by generations of people for a lifetime in the history of 2,000 years, but tracing back to the source, these may be wrong information from the root. And the truly correct information, the truth of history, may have long been drowned in the long river of history.

But I still want to try to deduce the truth of some topics of that era from the existing information, of course, this discussion is essentially a kind of nonsense, you can take a look. Let's talk about the question of "whether the Yellow Emperor, the ancestor of Chinese humanities in ancient times, existed".

Someone may be a little blindsided, wait, what do you mean by this question, if the Yellow Emperor does not exist, what are we Chinese still called the descendants of Yan Huang?

It's not that I like to raise the bar, the Yellow Emperor is most likely a mythical character made up by a certain school of thought during the Warring States Period.

First of all, the name of the Yellow Emperor began to be documented, and it began to be recorded from the Warring States Period:

At the beginning of the 20th century, the historian Gu Jiegang said in the article "On Ancient History Books with Mr. Qian Xuantong":

"The most ancient person in the minds of the people of the Zhou Dynasty is Yu, there is Yao Shun when he arrives at Confucius, there is the Yellow Emperor Shennong when he goes to the Warring States Period, there are Three Emperors when he arrives in Qin, and there is Pangu after he arrives in the Han Dynasty. "The worship of the Yellow Emperor originated in the Qin State, maybe the Yellow Emperor is the "Yellow Dragon Earth Moth" and the like."

The earliest book in which the Yellow Emperor appears is the Book of Shang, which is said to be edited by Confucius, and the book that made the Yellow Emperor famous was the famous Historical Records. In addition, Fu Sheng, a Confucian scholar of the Han Dynasty who appeared in front of him who dictated the "Jinwen Shangshu", was Sima Qian's teacher. These two books both mention the Yellow Emperor and Yao Shunyu's "Zen concession system", which can be regarded as echoing and inheriting.

Secondly, the term "descendants of Yan and Huang" became popular and spread widely in the late Qing Dynasty, which was the late Qing intellectuals' attempt to construct their national identity under the impact of Western nationalism, so they chose the mythical figure Yellow Emperor, emphasizing that he was the "ancestor" of the Chinese nation. It was also at this time that the concept of "descendants of Yan and Huang" became a commonly accepted self-title.

Again, if this Yellow Emperor really exists, he must be a human being. And as we all know, there are many ways for humans to **, but there is obviously no option to ride a dragon.

So even if we don't want to admit it, the facts are in front of us, we accept that the "Yellow Emperor", the ancestor of humanity that has existed for thousands of years, whether we are in the hometown of the Yellow Emperor or in the mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor, the Yellow Emperor we worship does not actually exist.

Confucian Yasheng Mencius.

The truth of the matter may come from a thought: one day during the Warring States Period, a certain academic tycoon of the hundred schools of thought had a full meal and looked at the stars, and suddenly began to think about a question: Who are we? Where do we come from? Are we going to **?

Thinking about the first two questions may have given rise to the idea of building a cultural and ethnic inheritance system "from ancient times to the present", and he wanted to solve: Who are we? We come from", perhaps for this purpose alone, he and his peers created a "root" for our civilization, and the Yellow Emperor was born.

Of course, there is also a possibility that it comes from profit, and some people find that creating such a system to expound and promote their own doctrines is more likely to be appreciated and recognized by the rulers.

Besides", these scholars in the Warring States period thought arrogantly, "Anyway, I haven't seen Dayu's previous written records, and there is no proof of nonsense, we say that the Yellow Emperor will not ride a horse when he rides a dragon on a business trip, so willful."

Once such a lineage representing the Chinese inheritance is established, the rulers of the later generations will spare no effort to recognize and improve the system in order to maintain the legitimacy of their own rule, and Confucianism will spare no effort to recognize and improve this system for their own political demands.

What is false becomes true.

Then someone wants to ask me, is it a bit stupid that there are so many people who worship the Yellow Emperor and claim to be the descendants of Yan and Huang?

Of course not.

I think we should look at these things from a different angle:

In thousands of years of cultural inheritance, or in the hundred years of humiliation since modern times, the Yellow Emperor has become more similar to a spiritual force, which allows those of us who use Chinese characters and identify with Chinese civilization to have a place of origin and return in the vast world and long history, let us know who our compatriots are, how we are different from people of other nationalities, let us see our own heels, give us courage, and give us confidence.

He is actually an externalization and beautification of the national soul, we worship not an ethereal person, but countless ancestors who have done their best for the continuation, inheritance, development and brilliance of our civilization in the years we don't know, and the national soul they condensed is the Yellow Emperor.

Therefore, I think it is very respectable to worship or call themselves the descendants of Yan and Huang, and the author himself has worshipped.

Speaking of which, I think of the discussions I saw on the Internet arguing about the birthplace of the Yellow Emperor, and I thought it was very unnecessary.

In folk worship, it is obvious that the Yellow Emperor has become a mythical figure, and since he is a mythical figure, then the relevant historical records are obviously apocryphal. So far, including the "Bamboo Book Chronicle" unearthed during the Jin Dynasty, there is not much information about the Yellow Emperor.

Then the relevant records of ancient history books such as "Chinese Jinyu" and "Guizang" relying on myths and legends are obviously empty pavilions and cannot withstand scrutiny.

What's more, many of these controversies end up being antagonistic between regions. Obviously, the image of the "Yellow Emperor" was created to bring us closer together – this is not an inappropriate contradiction.

One last word, it's an easter egg:

As the ancestor of humanity riding the dragon ** of the Yellow Emperor does not exist, but in the ancient period when no words were found, about 5000 years ago on the land of China, but there were a large number of tribes, and they even formed an early country in the form of a tribal alliance, their leader may not be called the Yellow Emperor or the Yan Emperor, but there is a high probability that the leader of a large tribe is called Xuanyuan, he did not leave any words to future generations, but he left his surname - Ji.

Also because of the continuation of the bloodline, Emperor Yan, who was not the head of the cow, also left his surname-Jiang, and in the battle of Zhou to destroy Shang, his descendant Jiang Ziya also made a lot of limelight.

As a story about them that can be traced, we will tell them later.