1. Origin of the Di people

As an ethnic group that successively established the four states of Qiuchi, Qianqin, Houliang and Chenghan during the Wuhu Rebellion, and as the only ethnic minority that unified northern China during this period, we cannot generalize its ins and outs. Although the hero can be regardless of the origin, although it has long disappeared in the long river of history like Xianbei, the position it occupies in that period of history, as well as the stories and legends that arise because of it, and the ripples set off in the river of time, are also magnificent and earth-shattering.

The Di people, an ethnic minority in ancient China, changed from a place name to a clan name, calling themselves "盍 (hé) childish", and "氐" is the name of other ethnic groups. Because of the proximity of Di and Qiang, the pre-Qin people regarded it as the Qiang of Di Land, and felt that it was different from Qiang, because it was called Di Qiang, or simply called "Di Qiang". Kong Chao mentioned in the note of "Yi Zhou Shu Wang Hui Chapter" "Di Qiang Yi Luan Bird": "Di Qiang, Di Di Qiang, is different from Qiang, so it is called Di Qiang, and now Wei Zhi Di 矣." "After the Wei and Jin dynasties, it gradually became the self-proclaimed Di people.

There are two main theories about the origin of the Di people:

One theory holds that Di and Qiang have the same origin and different currents.

Those who hold this view believe that in the classical materials, Qiang is first seen in the records, and there are Qiang without Di or Qiang Di shared, such as the mention of King Wu in the "Shangshu Pastoral Oath", and the Zhou rate "Shu, Qiang, 髳 (máo), Wei, Lu, Peng, Pu people" cut down merchants, there are Qiang but no Di. Another example is the cloud of "The Book of Poetry, Shang Song, Yin Wu": "In the past, there was a soup, since the other side of the Qiang, don't dare not come to enjoy, don't dare not come to the king", Qiang and Qiang share. The data shows that before the Western Zhou Dynasty, there was no record of the existence of the Di people alone.

Therefore, there is a view that the Di people were able to form an independent nation in the end, because some Qiang tribes migrated from the plateau to the river valley, switched from nomadic herding to farming, and in the increasingly frequent contact with the surrounding Han people, they were influenced by the advanced economy and culture of the Han people, and their language, economy, and culture changed.

The Di people are the Qiang people who have been sinicized.

Another theory is that although Di and Qiang have been closely related since ancient times, they have always been two different peoples.

In ancient times, Qiang and Di both belonged to Xirong, and the territory was adjacent, and most of them lived in mixed places, and the relationship was very close. However, from the perspective of the primitive distribution of Qiang and Di, economic life, clothing habits, etc., the two are very different, and the Di people have their own unique language, customs, and psychological state, which are different from Qiang, so they are two independent ethnic groups since ancient times.

In fact, there is also a theory that the formation of the Di nationality is related to the "three seedlings". As a tribal group that appears in ancient legends in China, Sanmiao has a very close connection with the ancestors of the Chinese people. It was first distributed in the area north of the Yangtze River and south of the Huai River, and later the Huaxia people expanded to the south, and the Sanmiao were forced to migrate to the west and south, giving up their territory. Among them, there is a group that migrated to the northwest along the Han River, that is, the "three acres in the three dangers" mentioned in the "Shundian", and migrated to the upper reaches of Weishui and the area north of Minshan. Later, these areas became the birthplace of the Di people, so it is believed that the westward migration of the three seedlings is one of the origins of the formation of the Di people.

So, where did the Di people come from?

To sum up, we summarize as follows: the formation of the Di nationality is closely related to the Xirong and Sanmiao in ancient China, and because it is adjacent to the Qiang nationality and coexists, it also integrates and absorbs the elements of the Qiang nationality, and at the same time is deeply influenced by the Han nationality, and finally forms the ethnic group to be described in this article - the Di nationality.

In fact, you can completely believe any of the above statements, and it will not damage its prestige in the slightest. As stated at the beginning of "The Romance of the Two Jin Dynasty": The Chinese are not particularly noble, and the Yi people are not particularly despicable. What is honored, what we are to admire, is the civilization that they have.

In the Spring and Autumn Period to the Qin and Han dynasties, the range of activities of the Di people in the west from Longxi, east to Luoyang, south to the north of the Minshan Mountains, that is, the southeast of Gansu Province, the southwest of Shaanxi Province, the northwest of Sichuan Province at the junction, the Han Dynasty in the Di nationality settlement area with Wudu, Yinping County, juxtaposed thirteen Di Dao, the system began in Qin. The ancestors of the Luoyang Pu (Fu) clan (Qianqin) and the Lü clan (Houliang), who successively established political power during the Wuhu Chaohua period, all migrated from Wudu.

Due to the war, the Di people experienced two large-scale migrations during the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty (opening up the southwest) and the Three Kingdoms period (Cao Cao and Liu Bei contending), which further expanded their distribution range. In the Wei and Jin dynasties, in addition to the distribution of Wudu and Yinping counties, some counties in Guanzhong and Longyou also formed a staggered settlement area with the Han people and other ethnic groups, mainly two: one is centered on the three counties of Jingzhao (Chang'an), Fufeng and Shiping; The first is to take the three counties of Tianshui, Nan'an, and Guangwei (renamed Luoyang in the Jin Dynasty) in Longyou as the center.

During the period of the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms, wars became more frequent, the migration of the Di people became more frequent, and the distribution area also expanded. In the pre-Qin period, when the Di people were the most powerful, the Di people were distributed in Si, Hebei, Hebei, Henan, Yong and other prefectures, with a population of nearly one million.

If it weren't for the defeat of the former Qin Fujian in the Battle of Weishui, the collapse of the former Qin Empire, and the footprints of the Di people would have spread all over the north and south of the Yangtze River, up and down the Yellow River, inside and outside the Great Wall, and the population might have been as large as today's Han nation.

In terms of economic life, the Di people are mainly settled in agriculture. The village dwellings are all built with board houses, and in terms of style, they are all indigenous and have houses. Its house, weaving yak tail and wool covering" are completely different. The agricultural economy is developed, and there are clouds in "Wei Luo": Di "can weave cloth, be good at farming, and raise pigs, cattle, horses, donkeys, and mules". The "special silk cloth" woven by the Di people with different colors of hemp threads is sold well in the mainland.

In terms of social organization, each department of the Di people "has its own monarch", and many branches "have their own titles", and in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, the "king" and "marquis" of the tribe as representatives of the ruling class have been formed. "The Biography of Wei Luo Xirong" mentions: "The Di people have kings, and they have been there for a long time. "Each of the tribes has its own princes, and most of them are worshiped by China", "although they are all unified in the county now, they have their own princes in their vainness". That is to say, although a large number of Di people moved into Guanzhong or stayed in the same place, under the jurisdiction of the county and county, and accepted the canonization of the central government, they still retained their own tribal organization, forming a situation of large dispersion and small settlements, and were under the control of the marshal or small marshal of their own tribe.

The Di people have their own language. Because of the coexistence with the Han people and other mixed people, they have been friends for a long time, so they also speak Chinese. "The Biography of Wei Luo Xirong" cloud: "It is self-reliant, and it is self-talking." The "General Dictionary" wrote: "Its customs and language are not with China and Qiang, Hutong." When they came into contact with the Han people, they spoke Chinese, and when they returned to their homes, they spoke their own language. This is very similar to the Uyghur people today, most of whom are able to master Chinese as if they were their mother tongue.

The clothes of the Di people are still green, red and white, good at weaving special silk cloth, like to wear linen clothes (silk can not be worn), and the national characteristics are distinct. "The Biography of Wei Luo Xirong" clouds: "When her woman marries, she wears dew, and her edge decoration is like Qiang, and her dew is like a Chinese robe." All braided hair. "The Biography of Wuxing Guo" also mentions the characteristics of the clothing of the Di people, "wearing black string riding hats, long small sleeved robes, small trousers, and leather boots". Different from the Qiang people, who are "all dressed in brown clothes", "draped with felt as a top", and "covered by (draped) hair", they seem to be ethnic groups in two different social stages.

However, the early marriage customs of the Di people were similar to those of the Qiang people. "The Book of the Later Han Dynasty: The Biography of Xiqiang" cloud: "Its vulgar Di clan is uncertain, or the father's name and mother's surname are the seed name, and after the twelfth generation, they are married to each other." If the father is absent, the wife is the stepmother, and if the brother dies, the sister-in-law is accepted. "The Biography of Wei Luo Xirong" Yiyun: "His marriage is similar to Qiang." However, in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D., due to the mixed living with the Han people, the marriage customs and culture of the Di people were deeply affected, and the changes were quite large.

Many ethnic characteristics have not brought a rich and happy life to the Di people, just as the broad and profound Chinese civilization still makes the Chinese children suffer many disasters and difficulties, the Di people have always lived in dire straits, even during the unification of the Jin Dynasty, even if there is Taikang in the world, its life can still be described as miserable.

At that time, the ruling class proceeded from its own interests, under the domination of the ideology of "those who are not of our race, their hearts must be different, and they will not be the same as Huatong", on the one hand, they conferred official titles on the upper rulers of the Di nationality and co-opted them; On the one hand, the lower classes of the Di nationality were brutally oppressed and exploited.

At the beginning of the Jin Dynasty, it was stipulated: "Where the people are teaching fields, the husband is fifty acres, the rent is four hundreds, the household silk is three horses, and the cotton is three catties." "It's twice as much as the land rent in Cao Wei's time. And stipulates that "those who are far away and do not teach the fields lose righteous rice, the household is three, the far one is five buckets, and the extremely far one loses the money, and the person is twenty-eight Wen". "Serving and serving, the same as making up households". Moreover, most of the local officials are greedy or brutal, and they wantonly kill and exploit the ethnic minorities in their jurisdictions, which further deepens the suffering of the people of all ethnic groups who have migrated inland. The migrants were often reduced to dependent peasants or equivalent to dependent peasants, and were even sold into slavery and maidservants in large numbers. For example, the situation of that Shile is enough for us to get a glimpse of the leopard. Opportunities to move from slave to master are rare, but slavery is universal.

Fortunately, people of both ethnic minorities and Han nationalities, when living like dogs has become a luxury, they are not willing to wait for death in silence, but can rise up and fight to survive in a desperate situation with blood and life.

Among the rebellions carried out by the Di people, the Qi Wannian uprising in the Qin and Yong regions had the greatest impact.

The Qi Wannian Uprising lasted only two years before it was brutally suppressed by the Western Jin Dynasty, but their resistance killed the famous general Zhou Chu, who was the one who except for the "three evils" (tigers in the mountains, dragons in the water, and Zhou), and dealt a heavy blow to the Jin Dynasty. Moreover, due to the war, the Li Teh brothers and more than 100,000 displaced people from Qiang, Di and Han were indirectly driven to Shuzhong, which opened the prelude to the uprising of the displaced people in the Sichuan and Shu regions.

As for the Pu family, who founded the former Qin Empire, they did not go south to Shuzhong with the displaced people, but led their people to stay in Lüyang, and survived the war, survived the famine, and were able to write another legendary story of the Di people.