King Tai of Zhou
King Tai of Zhou (Chinese:
Name
[edit]"King Tai" was a posthumous name bestowed upon him by his descendants. He was never a king during his lifetime. He was earlier known as Gu Gong Danfu (Ancient Patriarch Dan),[1]: 7 for instance, in the Classic of Poetry. Occasionally, a few scholars refer to him as Ji Danfu, referencing his surname Ji (
History
[edit]In the family hymns recorded in the Classic of Poetry, the Ji family is traced from the miraculous birth of the Xia dynasty culture hero and court official Houji caused by his mother's stepping into a footprint left by the supreme god Shangdi.[2] The Records of the Grand Historian instead makes Houji the son of the Emperor Ku,[3] connecting his family to the Yellow Emperor who was sometimes also given the Zhou's surname.[4]: 28
Sima Qian goes on to record Houji's son Buzhu abandoning court life and his fief of Tai, apparently taking up the nomadic life of the Rong and Di tribes around Xia. His son Ju continued this before Duke Liu settled his people at a place called Bin. The rulers of Bin were listed as Qingjie, Huangpu (
The prosperity of Bin led to attacks from hostile peoples: the Rong, Di, and Xunyu (
Danfu was later credited with much of the growth of the Zhou, receiving a hymn among the Great Odes of the Classic of Poetry and the "Mount Qi Song", a zither melody supposedly composed by the Duke of Zhou. In traditional Chinese records, he was considered to have himself created the state of Zhou, sometimes taken to be an indigenous place-name for his new settlement along the Wei River. In fact, modern excavation of the Shang oracle bones have found references to a Zhou polity at least a century before this during the reign of Wu Ding.[7] The earlier Zhou seems to be well away from the traditional locations for Bin, as well, leading scholars to posit a much longer migration west from Shanxi.
Posterity
[edit]By his wife, the Lady Jiang, Patriarch Dan was said to be the father of Taibo, Zhongyong, and Jili. Zhongyong was claimed as the ancestor of the kings of Wu; Jili, by the kings of Zhou. Later, Taibo was claimed by Japan as well.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Shaughnessy, Edward (1989). "Historical Geography and the Extent of the Earliest Chinese Kingdoms". Asia Major. 3. 2 (2). Academica Sinica: 1–22. JSTOR 41645435.
- ^ "Greater odes of the kingdom : Decade Of Sheng Min : Sheng Min". Shijing (in Chinese (Taiwan)). Retrieved 2023-01-06 – via Chinese Text Project.
- ^ a b c d e Sima Qian; Sima Tan (1739) [90s BCE]. "4:
周 本紀 ". Shiji史記 [Records of the Grand Historian] (in Chinese) (punctuated ed.). Beijing: Imperial Household Department. - ^ Chun, Allen J. (1990). "Conceptions of Kinship and Kingship in Classical Chou China". T'oung Pao. 76 (1/3). Leiden: Brill: 16–48. doi:10.1163/156853290X00029. JSTOR 4528471.
- ^ Bo Yang (
柏 楊).中國人 史 綱 . (in Chinese) - ^ a b Mengzi; et al. "
梁 惠 王 下 第 三 篇 ". Mencius. - ^ Wu, K. C. (1982). The Chinese Heritage. New York: Crown Publishers. p. 328. ISBN 0-517-54475-X.
External links
[edit]
- Thomson, John. "04. Mount Qi Melody".