sunpuerh
May 22nd, 2004, 04:43 AM
The Zhou tribe totem was the bear which does relate to the Yellow Emperor, and in fact the tribal surname Ji's idiogram is "female" next to a bear footprint. Their founder Hou Ji was supposedly born by another Gao Xin wife, Jiang Yuan, whose name indicates descent from the Jiang tribe that claimed to be descendents of Emperor Yan and was later closely allied with the Zhous, and its chief Jiang Tai Gong was the Zhou army supreme commander, who was then granted the dukedom of Qi, hence the Qi pedigree from Emperor Yan, both ally and competitor to Yellow Emperor.
The name Zhou seems related to their agricultural practice: the ideogram was originally a rectangle divided into four parts, each with a dot in the middle probably indicating seed or fertilizer, and the meaning of the word is "boundary", probably footpaths dividing fields into farming plots. The use of fertilizers to maintain productivity and retard soil exhaustion, and the use of boundaries to reduce top soil loss from water flow, were probably important agricultural inventions, which the Zhous may or may not have made.
The name Hou Ji actually means Lord Grain; it is not clear whether the Ji is connected with the Ji used for the tribe surname(different ideogram). Ancient Tibetan books referred to them as "dragons", so apparently they inherited the dragon totem from the Emperor Yan tribes and took it westwards.
The Zhous have a rather weird story about succession: the uncles of King Wen, the founder of Zhou state, were supposed to be so impressed with their nephew that they voluntarily renounced their claims to succeed their father so that their younger brother, King Wen's father, could later pass the chiefdom to him. In actual history, after their father's submission to Shang as vassal, the younger brother was allowed to marry a Shang princess, thus attaining a higher status - indeed part of Shang king's objective was to ensure that a close relative would rule the vassal state. Confucian scholars, however, eagerly seized on the story as a moral tale of virtue and modesty. This younger brother was initially well trusted by the Shang King, his cousin by marriage, and given authority to conquer western barbarians lands, but soon his success started to threaten the Shangs, and he was executed using some convenient pretext. Despite this, his son Prince Wen initially served the Shangs loyally and was allowed to marry the Shang King's sister (who did not produce an heir however - Prince Wu was born of the Youxin princess), but was himself imprisoned and probably died in custody, though the official story was that he was released after his ministers organized a successful bribe.*
When his son King Wu set off the invade the Shang capital, he brought in a chariot the shrine tablet representing the spirit of his father, presumably to receive the blessing of King Wen in his effort to avenge all the wrongs inflicted on the Zhous by the Shangs. Zhou propaganda downplayed this issue however, preferring to see the war as heaven mandated assertion of right to rule rather than tribal vendetta. ***
***The accepted idea that the Duke of Zhou (King Wen's son) wrote the line statements of the Yi can also be questioned because the Duke spent most of his life at the Shang court and could have written down the line statements and hexagrams as part of his learning and training at the Shang court.
****You see here that the author says that a shrine tablet was carried into the battle of Mu rather than the dessicated corpse of King Wen as speculated by S. Marshall in the Mandate of Heaven.
This article was written by a Chinese professor educated in the United States.
The name Zhou seems related to their agricultural practice: the ideogram was originally a rectangle divided into four parts, each with a dot in the middle probably indicating seed or fertilizer, and the meaning of the word is "boundary", probably footpaths dividing fields into farming plots. The use of fertilizers to maintain productivity and retard soil exhaustion, and the use of boundaries to reduce top soil loss from water flow, were probably important agricultural inventions, which the Zhous may or may not have made.
The name Hou Ji actually means Lord Grain; it is not clear whether the Ji is connected with the Ji used for the tribe surname(different ideogram). Ancient Tibetan books referred to them as "dragons", so apparently they inherited the dragon totem from the Emperor Yan tribes and took it westwards.
The Zhous have a rather weird story about succession: the uncles of King Wen, the founder of Zhou state, were supposed to be so impressed with their nephew that they voluntarily renounced their claims to succeed their father so that their younger brother, King Wen's father, could later pass the chiefdom to him. In actual history, after their father's submission to Shang as vassal, the younger brother was allowed to marry a Shang princess, thus attaining a higher status - indeed part of Shang king's objective was to ensure that a close relative would rule the vassal state. Confucian scholars, however, eagerly seized on the story as a moral tale of virtue and modesty. This younger brother was initially well trusted by the Shang King, his cousin by marriage, and given authority to conquer western barbarians lands, but soon his success started to threaten the Shangs, and he was executed using some convenient pretext. Despite this, his son Prince Wen initially served the Shangs loyally and was allowed to marry the Shang King's sister (who did not produce an heir however - Prince Wu was born of the Youxin princess), but was himself imprisoned and probably died in custody, though the official story was that he was released after his ministers organized a successful bribe.*
When his son King Wu set off the invade the Shang capital, he brought in a chariot the shrine tablet representing the spirit of his father, presumably to receive the blessing of King Wen in his effort to avenge all the wrongs inflicted on the Zhous by the Shangs. Zhou propaganda downplayed this issue however, preferring to see the war as heaven mandated assertion of right to rule rather than tribal vendetta. ***
***The accepted idea that the Duke of Zhou (King Wen's son) wrote the line statements of the Yi can also be questioned because the Duke spent most of his life at the Shang court and could have written down the line statements and hexagrams as part of his learning and training at the Shang court.
****You see here that the author says that a shrine tablet was carried into the battle of Mu rather than the dessicated corpse of King Wen as speculated by S. Marshall in the Mandate of Heaven.
This article was written by a Chinese professor educated in the United States.