Chapter 18: The Battle of the Earthwork and the Tiger

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The relationship between Shang and the Turks can be said to be closer. Pen | fun | pavilion www. biquge。 infoIn the oracle bone inscription, in addition to the records of many wars such as "Wang's Province Earthwork", "Felling Earthwork", and "Conquering Earthwork", there is also an account of "Zhenbu Earthwork and Bubei", that is, records of physical transactions between Yin Shang and Earthwork. ("Shellfish" was both a precious ornament at the time and also a general equivalent in the exchange process, i.e., currency.)

According to the records of earthwork in the oracle bone inscriptions, Guo Moruo believed that the earthwork was the one that had the most relations with the Shang people and had the most frequent wars during the Yin Shang period. He deduced: "The earthwork is about 123 days away from Yinjing (Anyang, Henan), and the average daily journey is 80 miles, which is already thousands of miles away, so the earthwork is in the northern part of present-day Shanxi." ”

Wuding's hostile earthwork was a tribe in the north of the Yin Dynasty that was closer to Shang Wangji, and repeatedly invaded the Shang inhabitants, and once entered the eastern Shang to plunder the two inhabitants.

Divination records that once the Tufang invaded the new subordinate area of the northern Shang Dynasty, the Lan Dynasty, and the Lan Emperor had no choice but to send people to Wu Ding for help, and reported several times in five days, which shows the critical situation at that time. The invasion of the Turks gave Wu Ding enough reason to go to war, and the three-year war with the Turks began.

The war with the earthwork was presided over by the woman, and the woman sent at least "3,000 people to cut down the earthwork," and "sent a maximum of 5,000 people to cut the earthwork." ”

It was not until the final battle that it was led and commanded by Wu Ding himself, and the military commander who followed the expedition was Lan. As a result, the leader of the Tufang was killed, the people of the Tufang were subordinated to the Shang Dynasty, and the Tufang region became the northern soil of the Shang. After the earthwork was destroyed, Wu Ding often came here to inspect, and the divination was called "Wang Province Earthwork." ”

The war with the Turks ended in the victory of the Shang dynasty. After the Tufang sent troops to fight during the Wuding period, there are few accounts of its activities in the divination, and the Tufang people either surrendered to the Shang Dynasty, or were driven away, and defected to other forces such as the Ghost Fang.

After clearing the threat of the earth, the ghost side became the primary enemy of Wu Ding.

As mentioned earlier, the Ghost Fang tribe established by the descendants of the Xia Hou clan gradually replaced the meat porridge of the descendants of Emperor Yan and became the new generation of overlords of the northern grasslands. Their religious beliefs were similar to those of the Xia Dynasty, such as sacrificing the sun and the moon, killing animals, looking at the stars and divination, etc., but they did not build houses, did not observe etiquette, wore their hair on the left side, and lived as nomads. Because of the hatred of the Xia Hou clan, they often went south to plunder the Shang Dynasty. As a result of the gradual distancing from civilization, this kind of raiding no longer has a hateful character and becomes an inevitable measure to alleviate the harsh conditions of the North.

By the time of King Wuding of Shang, the power of the ghost side had extended to southern Gansu, Ningxia, northern Shaanxi, northern Shanxi, and western Inner Mongolia, and its influence was in the west and the vast areas of the Longshan and Weishui basins.

In the summer of the thirty-second year of Wuding (BC1302), Wuding sent women to kill ghosts. The two sides were at a standoff, and the Hufang (a branch of the Nanban, so Nanchaodi, Shou County, Anhui) in the south took the opportunity to attack the Shang Dynasty, and at this critical time, Wu Ding launched the Battle of Jingchu aimed at removing the threat of the Tiger behind the Shang Dynasty.

This battle was personally commanded by Wu Ding, launched a large-scale southern attack, conquered more than 20 countries such as Zeng in the Hannan region, and the results were brilliant. ”

In order to consolidate the results of the victory, Shang King Wuding led his troops to Panlong City (Huangpi District, Wuhan, Hubei) to set up an envoy to the south and strengthen the strength of the southern army to deter the Nanbang Tiger Fang.

The tiger as the name of the country in the oracle bone inscription, there are two kinds of records, Huhou and Hufang, Huhou is a close minister of the Shang king, whose territory is in Wangji, and the Shang king also often visits the tiger land, and the tiger fang is a country other than the Shang Dynasty.

The Tiger King was one of the regimes established by the Nanban centered on the Miao Yao people, the descendants of the three Miao who were defeated by Dayu, and its scope included the area south of the Yangtze River, north of the Nanling Mountains, west of Poyang Lake - the Ganjiang River Basin, and Dongting Lake - east of the Xiangjiang River Basin (the area inhabited by the ancient Sanmiao). Wucheng is the political, economic, and cultural center of the Tiger Fang.

This kingdom has built Tucheng (i.e., Wucheng, Zhangshu City, Yichun, Jiangxi), created writing, and is a powerful political group, using the Yangtze River as a natural barrier to prevent the southward advance of the Shang Dynasty, making the Shang Dynasty culture in the region self-contained and independent development, forming a unique Nantu bronze culture. The Wucheng culture and the Feijiahe type Shang culture are the archaeological culture of Hufang. These two types of Shang culture have strong elements of the Central Plains Shang culture, and have distinctive local indigenous characteristics, is a self-contained system of the indigenous bronze culture of the southern soil, and the proportion of the Central Plains factor and local characteristics in the geographical distribution is different, the further north, the stronger the Central Plains factor, the more south, the more obvious the indigenous characteristics, this characteristic is consistent with the fact that the Tiger Fang had contact with the Shang Dynasty, but was not surrendered.

In order to conquer the tiger side, the king of Shang asked whether to hold a sacrifice to the ancestors Da (Tai) Jia or Zu Ding and Zu Jia in order to be blessed and victorious. Taijia, Zu Ding, Zu Jia are all famous kings of the Shang Dynasty, regarded as the god of war, the king of Shang held a sacrifice to them because of the war, only seen in the conquest of ghosts, earthwork and a few other strong enemies, which shows that the tiger side is also very strong from one side, the king of Shang is very cautious about this, and the only one in the divination is the tiger side, this is because the Shang king Wuding lost the battle of the tiger side, and the future Shang king did not dare to act rashly, which is the reason why the tiger side is rare in the oracle bone inscription.

From the record of "Chi You received the gold of Lushan and made five soldiers", it can be known that the mining industry of Hufang has been produced as early as the beginning of summer, and its origin is very early, and Tongling J shaft is also the earliest copper mining remains in China and even in the world. Hufang's abundant copper ore resources and long-standing mining technology are the profound foundation for the prosperity and development of its bronze culture.

One of the characteristics of the Tiger Fang bronze smelting and casting technique is that red copper is used in conjunction with bronze. Red bronze ware, also known as red bronze ware, is generally considered to be a characteristic of the primitive stage of copper smelting, but in the Hu Fang, where the level of bronze smelting and casting was highly developed, it was still very popular in the Shang and Zhou dynasties. Such as the large copper cymbal unearthed in Hunan, the copper Dingzu unearthed in Wucheng, Jiangxi Province, etc., the copper content is more than 90%, and some even exceed 99%, and the large cymbals unearthed in Xingan Oceania also use the wrong red copper decoration process, which is the earliest wrong gold technology found so far. Red copper has a low melting point and is difficult to form, but the ancestors of Hufang made beautiful and tall red copper ware, which shows that they have mastered a high copper smelting technology from one side.

The degree of superstition of the Yin people about Yaojue is well known, but in the artifacts excavated by Hufang, there is a lack of Yaojue-like wine vessels, which shows us from the deep level that Hufang and the Yin people of the Central Plains are not of the same race, they belong to different political groups and have different cultural traditions.