|
According to Chinese mythology, the Zhou lineage began when a consort of the legendary Emperor Ku miraculously conceived Qi (lit. "the Abandoned One") after stepping into a divine footprint.[1][2] Qi was a culture hero credited with surviving three abandonments by his mother and with greatly improving Xia agriculture,[1] to the point where he was granted lordship over Tai and the ancestral name Ji by his own Xia king and a later posthumous name (Houji, "Lord of Millet") by the Shang king Tang. He even received sacrifice as a harvest god. Qi's son Buzhu abandoned his position at court and either he or his son Ju abandoned agriculture entirely, living a nomadic life in the manner of their Rong and Di barbarian neighbors.[3] Ju's son Duke Liu,[4] however, led his people to prosperity by restoring agriculture and settling them at a place called Bin,[a] which his descendants ruled for generations. Old Duke Danfu later led the clan from Bin to Zhou, an area in the Wei River valley of modern-day Qishan County. The duke passed over his two elder sons Taibo and Zhongyong to favor Jili, a warrior who conquered several Rong tribes as a vassal of the Shang kings Wu Yi and Wen Ding before being treacherously killed. Taibo and Zhongyong had supposedly already fled to the Yangtze delta, where they established the state of Wu among the tribes there. Jili's son King Wen bribed his way out of imprisonment and moved the Zhou capital to Feng (within present-day Xi'an). Around 1046 BC, King Wen's son King Wu and his ally Jiang Ziya led an army of 45,000 men and 300 chariots across the Yellow River and defeated King Zhou of Shang at the Battle of Muye, marking the beginning of the Zhou dynasty.[b] The Zhou, however are later wave of the same or a more or less closely related group to the Shang. "Moreover, Shang dynasty Chinese at least in its syntax and lexicon seems not to differ basically from that of the Zhou dynasty whose language is amply attested in inscriptions on bronze vessels and which was transmitted in the early classical literature."[7] |
About us|Jobs|Help|Disclaimer|Advertising services|Contact us|Sign in|Website map|Search|
GMT+8, 2015-9-11 21:06 , Processed in 0.133903 second(s), 16 queries .
