Chapter 21 The Calendar of the Seasons

readx;? After Di Xin succeeded to the throne, he attached great importance to agriculture and mulberry, so the social productive forces developed and the national strength gradually became stronger. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

After the national strength of Di Xin was strong, he thought about expanding the territory and opening up the territory. It can be seen that the national strength of the Shang Dynasty was still strong at that time, and if the reader was born at that time, he would definitely not feel that this was the era of the last Shang king. It can be seen how important Sun Tzu said: "Soldiers, the major affairs of the country", it is precisely because of the military affairs that Di Xin finally died in the country.

At that time, Shang's main enemies were mainly Dongyi in the east and Xirong in the west, while Zhou was a potential threat to the west.

Because of the crusade against Dongyi in the era of Emperor Yi, which led to the disintegration of the Yi side, Emperor Xin decided to cut off the threat from the West first, especially Zhou.

In the fourth year of Emperor Xin (BC1158), Emperor Xin thought that the time had come and planned to move his troops to attack Zhou, and transferred most of the country's troops to Li in Li (now southwest of Changzhi, Shanxi) in the name of reviewing the army, without revealing his intention to destroy Zhou. Di Xin originally wanted to annihilate the Zhou army in one fell swoop, but due to the emptiness of the southeast caused by his transfer of troops, after the Yifang tribes that Di Yi had conquered and defeated were divided, they were divided into the Dongyi Tribal Alliance (the tribes of the Yi side were independent, but they still dealt with foreign enemies together in the form of an alliance), and took the opportunity to attack Shang on a large scale. But Di Xin was not reconciled, and took a defensive position against Dongyi, always thinking about how to attack Zhou.

In the same year, Emperor Xin invented the punishment of cannon burning to deter the princes, that is, he ordered the prisoners to walk on a bronze pillar covered with oil, and light a charcoal fire underneath, and if they slipped, they would fall into the charcoal fire, and their skin would be charred and rotten. This became a major crime in the historical evaluation of Di Xin.

The Shang Dynasty has always implemented the system of brother to brother, that is, as long as the king dies, the brother is still there, although there is a son, the brother must inherit it, which is the cause of the rebellion of the early Shang Dynasty IX.

Therefore, after arriving in Wuyi, in order to fundamentally solve this problem, the Shang Dynasty began to abandon this system and implement the father-son inheritance system.

This effectively deprived the brothers of their inheritance, and from Wu Yi onwards, there was constant infighting. Therefore, Di Xin's accession to the throne is actually contrary to the interests of Jizi and Bigan.

Di Xin was naturally wary of Jizi and Bigan, and Jizi and Bigan often worked for the well-being of the people as the spokesmen of the people, and they often did not consider the dignity of Di Xin as an emperor, and their advice often put Di Xin in an embarrassing situation.

It was in this suspicion of Di Xin that Fei Zhong, who curryed favor with Di Xin everywhere, got to the top of the position.

Fei Zhong was good at sycophants and greedy for financial gain, and Di Xin began to covet pleasure under his influence. The people of the Shang Kingdom were miserable and separated from Emperor Xin.

Emperor Xin was fond of drinking, so he asked the musician Juan to make new folk music for him; the treasury was full of money, and the grain in the Juqiao granary was full; he looted beautiful women among the people, built a large number of palaces and pavilions, caught a large number of wild beasts and birds, placed them in them, collected dogs, horses and novel playthings, and filled the palace; he was arrogant and disrespectful to ghosts and gods, and disrespectful to Nuwa Niangniang in "Fengshen Bang".

However, these crimes do not seem to constitute the inevitable relationship of the death of the country.

The hobby of drinking is a personal hobby; the full of money and grain, compared with the full grain warehouse during the reign of Wenjing, is a manifestation of the strength of the country, and it also reflects that a country must have strategic grain reserves, which is no problem at all; disrespect for ghosts and gods, that is, the restriction of the political influence of priests on the royal power, this is the inevitable trend of the early dynasty from a theocratic state to an independent royal power that began as early as the Shang King Wuyi's reign.

And the priest class to the kings after Wu Yi, also did their best to slander the kings, Wu Yi was shocked to death by the thunder of the sky, punished by heaven, Di Xin was disrespectful to the beloved Nuwa Niangniang, but also made up by the myth of "Romance of the Gods", no matter how unwise Di Xin was, he would not do this kind of thing. The scattered story of "The Romance of the Gods" was obviously written by the priestly class who had the right to record history at the time, and the rulers of Zhou were also happy to see this happen. Later generations then added these scattered stories, and then added the stories of Buddhist characters that appeared in the Western Han Dynasty, and compiled them into a collection, which became the "Romance of the Gods" that people see today. It shows that at that time, during the Dixin period, the witch priest class, which had always occupied the upper position within the ruling class, had separated from the Shang Dynasty, and the national strength of the Shang Dynasty was further weakened due to internal struggles.

In the summer of the fifth year of Emperor Xin (BC1157), Emperor Xin began to spend a huge amount of money to build Lutai (Xingtai, which can be seen its height), build luxurious palace gardens, and ordered Fei Zhong to supervise the construction. From Jiang Ziya's story, it can be seen that the construction of Lutai took 20 years, and the project is not yet over.

In the same year, a large amount of dust fell from the sky in Hao (Shangqiu, Henan), the land of Longxing in the Shang Dynasty.

The priests thought this was a bad omen, and the Lord was in danger of seizing the throne of the princes. Emperor Xin then appointed evil to monitor the civil and military officials in the court and the various vassal states, and once the princes complained about the rule of Emperor Xin, they immediately reported to Emperor Xin, and their duties were like those of the Ming Dynasty's Dongchang.

Evil came to take the opportunity to blackmail the various princes and kings, and once the princes and kings did not hand over a large amount of property, they falsely accused them of speaking ill of Emperor Xin, and once Emperor Xin decided to punish him, he might face the threat of cannon burning. As a result, the princes became more and more distant from the Shang.

In the spring of the sixth year of Emperor Xin (BC1156), Xibo Jichang carried out the ceremony of sacrificing to the heavens for the first time in Bi (north of Xianyang, Shaanxi).

According to the weekly ceremony, the ritual of worshiping the Son of Heaven is divided into four seasons, which are called 礿 [yuè] in spring, 禘 in summer, taste in autumn, and 烝 in winter.

In the ninth year of Emperor Xin (BC1153), Evil Lai heard that there was a leader of the Su clan, Su Huyou, who was extremely beautiful, so he mentioned this matter to Emperor Xin, and Emperor Xin issued an edict asking Su Hu to sacrifice his daughter, but Su Hu refused to accept it, declared independence, and never went to court. Di Xin was furious and sent a merchant army to attack the Su clan, and the Su clan was in trouble and had to sacrifice a woman to protect himself.

I have introduced the origin of the Guardian clan earlier, and now I will briefly review it:

In 2186 BC, the Kunwu Kingdom was named the Bo Kingdom. As mentioned earlier, Emperor Yu killed his nephew Chongli and appointed his incompetent brother Wu Hui as the leader of the Zhurong tribe. Wu Huisheng Lu Zhong, Lu had six sons, namely: Kunwu (his surname), Shenhu, Zhuo Keng (Peng Zu), Huiren, Cao surname, Ji Lian, of which the sixth son Ji Lian, half a surname, is the ancestor of Chu. And this Kunwu country is a vassal state established by Lu Zhong's eldest son Kunwu.

In 2040 BC, the children of the Kunwu clan established a feudal state of Su. This is the country of Su, that is, the country of Su Daji who will be chaotic in later generations. In other words, Su Daji is actually a descendant of Kungo.

In 1738, Shang Tang and the princes joined forces to destroy Kunwu, killed Xia Bo, the lord of Kunwu, and entered the land and people of Kunwu.

So this country with Su is also a country with its own surname, this is the origin of Yousu.