Yandi’s Dynasty

Yandi, being the inventor of “farming on the burnt wilderness” and “herbal medicine”, was said to be the same as Shennong-shi (the Divine Farmer), carrying the Fiery Overlord title. Yandi was said to be a successor to the Shennong-shi reign. In the classics [《白虎通义》],  the Divine Farmer [神农] was considered one of the Three Sovereigns: “三皇者何谓也,伏羲、女娲、神农是也。” That is, either the ancient Chinese had compacted two figures of Yandi [i.e., the fiery lord] and Shen-nong [i.e., the divine farmer]  into one person, or the two persons were different. The forged records pointed out that there were eight Yandi dynasty rulers till the ascension of the Yellow lord.

In the Han dynasty, there was wide citation of a figure called Shen-nong-shi, who was equated to Yandi the Fiery Lord, with a claim of some seniority over Huangdi the Yellow Lord. After what Sima Qian called by the Shen-nong-shi dynasty failed to reign in the vassals, Huangdi (the Yellow Overlord) came to assert his power.

GUO YU used the term Jiu-li, not Chi-you, for some group of rebels who caused disturbance [in the area of making no distinction between the mundane people and the gods/ghosts] during the late Shao-hao-shi’s reign but were put under control by Lord Zhuan-xu, with the Jiu-li’s descendants being the [Jiang-surnamed] San-miao people during Lord Yao’s reign. Chi-you was seen in SHI JI, LV-SHI CHUN-QIU, YI ZHOU SHU, GUAN ZI, SHAN HAI JING, and YUE JUE SHU etc. Sima Qian could have expanded on Chi-you on basis of the record in LV-XING of SHANG SHU. YI ZHOU SHU made a sensational story about Chi-you attacking west, Yan-di failing to stop Chi-you, and Huang-di appearing on the stage to defeat both.

ZUO ZHUAN, i.e., more ancient records, merely talked about the progenitor of both the Yandi and Huangdi as someone called Shao-dian, without any reference to a mystic figure called Shen-nong or the divine farmer –a figure that could have mutated from the record on the ancient Lie-shan-shi clan which produced a son called by Zhu, i.e., the first recorded agricultural guardian of prehistoric China.

《易·系辞》:“包牺氏没,神农氏作。斫木为耜,揉木为耒,耒耜之利,以教天下,盖取诸益。”

《易·系辞》:“神农氏作,木为耜,揉木为耒。耒耨之利,以教天下”。

《竹书纪年》:“炎帝神农氏,其初国伊,继国耆,合称,又曰伊耆氏。”

《庄子·盗跖》:“神农之世,卧则居居,起则于于,民知其母,不知其父,与麋鹿共处,耕而食,织而衣,无有相害之心”。

《史记·补三皇本纪》:“炎帝神农氏……斩木为耜,揉木为耒,耒耨之用以教万人。始教耕,故号神农氏。”

《汉书.古今人表》,《易·系辞》: “炎帝神农氏”。

《三皇本纪》:“神农尝百草,始有医药;又作五弦之瑟;教人日中为市,交易而退,各得其所乃归。.遂重八卦为六十四爻,立一百二十年崩,葬长沙”。

《淮南子·修务训》:“神农乃始教民,尝百草之滋味,识水泉之甘苦,……当此之时.一日而遇七十毒,由是医方兴焉”。

《淮南子·修务训》:“古者民茹草饮水,采草木之实,食螺蚌之肉,时多疾病毒伤之害。于是神农乃始教民播种五谷”。

《帝王世纪》:“神农氏作,是为炎帝”

《帝王世纪》:“炎帝神农氏,姜姓也。母曰任姒,有蟜氏女登为少典妃,游华山之阳,有神龙首,感女登于常羊,生炎帝。人身牛首,长于姜水。有圣德,以火德王,故号炎帝。初都陈,又徙鲁。又曰魁隗氏,又曰连山氏,又曰烈山氏。”

《宋书·符瑞志》:“有神龙首感女登于常羊山,生炎帝神农。”

《路史·后纪三》:“炎帝神农氏,姓伊耆,名轨,一曰石年,母安登感神于常羊,生神农于烈山之石室。”

《纲鉴·三皇纪》:“少典之君娶有蟜氏女,曰安登,少典妃感神龙而生炎帝。”

《幼学琼林》:“炎帝居南方丙丁火,生为炎帝,死为祝融”。

《说文解字》释:“炎,火光上也”。
《玉篇》:“炎,热也,焚也”。
《汉书·卷七十四》:“南方之神炎帝”。

《帝王世纪》:“炎帝神农氏,……,尝味草木,宣药疗疾,救夭伤人命,百姓日用而不知,著本草四卷”。

《白虎通义》:“古之人民皆食禽兽之肉。至于神农,人民众多,禽兽不足,于是神农因天之时,分地之利,制耒耜,教民农耕。神而化之,使民宜之,故谓之神农氏”。

(《水经注·伊水》: “南望墠渚,陂方十里,佳绕鱼苇,禹父之所化。昔有莘氏女采桑于伊川,得婴儿于空桑,长而有贤德,即伊尹也。伊水又北过新城县南”。

《淮南子》:“鲧作三仞之城,城之始也。”)

Shennong-shi (the Divine Farmer) = ‘Huang’

&

Yandi = ‘Di’

Confucius was possibly faked by the recent scholars to have put out some writing in stating that the ancient Paoxi-shi invented the fishing net, studied geography and astronomy, and created the Eight Trigrams. Note that Confucius abridged classics to make into what was known later as the book SHANG SHU that started with Lord Yao, with no mentioning of any figure beyond Yao, which was to say that should anybody say Confucius had mentioned an earlier figure, it would be a forgery. Further, the forgery writers made a pretension to state that it was Kong An’guo who wrote the preface to SHANG SHU, namely, SHANG SHU XU, in which a statement was made to the effect that in the remote antiquity, Fuxi-shi took reign of the land, and began to invent the Eight Trigrams and create the wood-carved language characters. This would be Kong Yingda, a Tang dynasty historian and Confucius’ 32nd generation grandson, who authored the text SHANG SHU XU (preface to SHANG SHU). Hence, Chinese prehistory was mechanically pushed out to have become something that started with Paoxi-shi, aka Taihao. This was something that provided fodder to the 20th century doubt-ancient scholars who had a point in saying that the more recent it became, the more detailed the stories about the ancient sovereigns became. Paoxi-shi was said to have marked the beginning of the so-called ‘Human’ or ‘Mt Taishan’ Era of ‘huang’ (splendidness or magnificence) which was successive to the Heaven ‘huang’ and the Earth ‘huang’. The ‘huang’ story could be still a fuzzy concept at the time Qin Emperor Shihuangdi coined the title of ‘huang-di’ for emperor.

Note the important thing about the ancient lord Huangdi’s paying pilgrimage to Mt. Taishan, a manifestation that the earliest lords had their center of activities around this mountain, instead of the later Xia nation or the Da-xia land of today’s Shanxi Province. In this webmaster’s opinion, the third ‘Huang’ was taken as the Human ‘Huang’ possibly because Mt Taishan was the place where the ancient Chinese inscribed the names of overlords since antiquity. Hence, Human ‘Huang’ = Mt. Taishan ‘Huang’.

According to Wang Xiantang (王献唐), the ancient Chinese called Yandi by ‘huang2′, not ‘di4′, for a reason.  Wang Xiantang pointed out that we ancient Chinese used ‘huang’ for the Three Sovereigns and ‘di’ for the five ancient lords, with a different terminology which could be be inferred to be a change of lineage: “炎族为酋长部落时代,以皇尊君,为雄长,绝无奥义。黄帝称帝,已含神权意昧,与皇绝不相同。以名称之不同,知民族不同……伏羲、神农同称为皇,亦必同为一族,故名号无别。” Wang Xiantang’s point was that the prehistoric legends about Yandi using the ‘huang2′ title meant that the mandate or the ruling dynasty had changed when lord Huangdi, the Yellow overlord, succeeded the reign and called himself by ‘di4′.’ (The foundation on which Wang Xiantang made the claim was not solid, as there was no such concept at the time of Qin Emperor Shihuangdi other than the heaven huang, eath huang and Mt. Taishan huang.)

《尚书大传·卷第四》:“神农为农皇也…神农以地纪,悉地力种谷疏,故托农皇于地”。(Shang-shu Da-zhuan was a Wei-category forgery.)

《史记·封禅书》,《史记·五帝本纪》,《帝王世纪》:“神农氏作,是为炎帝”。

Similarly, Scholar Xu Xusheng [徐旭生], in《中国古史的传说时代》, claimed that the ancient Chinese might have compacted two remotely-ancient persons of Fuxi [伏羲] and Taihao-shi [太皞] as one, not knowing that Fuxi, meaning voice or zero or ether in ZHUANG ZI’s fables, was made up from the thin air or electron hole: “据我们研究,伏羲女娲实属这一集团,传说同南方传至北方。” “东夷集团……这一集团较早的氏族,我们知道的有太皞(或作太昊,实即大皞),有少皞(或作少昊,实即小皞)……太皞在后来与伏羲成了一个人,是齐鲁学者综合整理的结果”。

This webmaster’s intuition here is that Yandi was an admixture of the O3-haplogroup and possibly O2/O1-haplogroup people. Purportedly, Yandi originally dwelled in the Yi-qi-shi land in the heartland of ancient China and then made the eastward push towards the coast where they had uprooted the O2 people, dispersing them to the seas and southern China. Using the modern DNA technology, we could tell that along the Chinese coast, from south to north, there were originally the O2 people who mutated into the two groups of O2a and O2b, whereas the ancient Yi people could be the same as the ancient Yue people for the relation of O2a=O2b. The forged history about the thearchs in The Bamboo Annals (Zhu Shu Ji Nian) stated that Yan-di, who was called by the Shen-nong-shi, first set the nation’s capital at ‘Yi’, then moved the capital to ‘Qi’, and hence was called by the Yi-qi-shi. In the Soong dynasty, Luo Mi wrote the exact same sentence in the section on Yan-di the Fiery Thearch in the book Lu4 Shi (grand history), one of close to fifty fingerprints showing that Luo Mi was the forger of the contemporary version (Jin Ben) of The Bamboo Annals. The earliest records regarding Yi-qi-shi was seen in Li-ji, in which there was a sentence about Yi-qi-shi making the winter sacrifice in the lunar month of December to the hundred gods and praying for the harvest of the coming year. This was a Qin-era four-sentence ballad, stating that the earth returned to its original place (‘tu fan qi zhai2’), and the water returned to its gully (‘shui gui qi he4’); insects and pests please do not breed (‘kunchong wu zuo’), and vegetation and grass back to its swamp (‘caomu gui qi ze2’). In this context, the ‘Yi-Qi’ land was taken to be the very origin of prehistoric agricultural China.

In the section on the barbarians, this webmaster had expounded the ethnic nature of the various Rong-di people, cleared the dispute in regards to the ethnicity of the ‘Rong’ people, and proven that the Rong people, being the mainly Sino-Tibetan speaking Qiangic people, shared the same blood-line as the Xia Chinese but differred in ‘Culture’ such as cuisine, clothing, money and language.

The same origin validation could be seen in ZHENG YU of GUO YU, wherein Shi-bo, in a dialogue with Zheng Lord Huan’gong, expounded the distinction between the Sinitic principalities [related to the Zhou royals, the brothers of the Zhou royals' mothers, and the nephews and uncles on the mothers' side] from those related to the Maan, Jing, Rong and Di barbarians, not counting the Yi barbarians who were taken to be beyond the eastern statelets of Qi, Lu, Cao, Soong, Teng, Xue, Zou, and Ju. For the barbarians, Shi-bo apparently made a case of identifying the Sinitic cliques ruling the barbarians from the barbarians themselves. Shi-bo, in the passage on the ‘Jing’ or Chu barbarians [who were counted among the southern 'Maan' group], explicitly listed the lineage of the ‘Jing’ or Chu ancestors, stating that Chu lord Xiong Yan had born four sons Bo-shuang, Zhong-xue, Shu-xiong and Ji-xun, with names bearing the Sinitic brotherly order, among whom the 3rd son fled to be a ruler among the southern ‘Pu’ [i.e., the later Hundred Pu] people and the 4th son took over the lordship in the spirits of ancient ancestors Chong-li — also taken to be two brothers of Chong and Lih[2] — with the Lih line tacking on the hereditary fire guardian [minister] post known as ‘Zhu-rong’ [i.e., virtues shining like fire]. Shi-bo’s point was that in extrapolating on the achievements of descendants of Yu-mu [lord Shun's line], Xia-yu [lord Yu], Zhou-qi [Zhou ancestor Qi or Hou-ji], it was claimed that inevitably Zhu-rong’s descendants, who had produced Count Kunwu[-shi] in the Xia dynasty and Count Da-peng and Count Shi-wei[2] in the Shang dynasty, should see the Mi-surnamed Chu people asserting themselves in the Zhou dynasty time period. Altogether, Shi-bo pointed to the Jiang-surnamed people [i.e., descendants of Bo-yi{-fu} who assisted overlord Yao as protocol minister], Ying-surnamed people [i.e., descendants of Bo-yi who assisted overlord Shun as interior minister], and Jing-Mi-surnamed Chu people as possible contestants for the Zhou dynasty’s rule — another Sinitic theme of power rotation.

The Guan-zi Controversy

Sima Qian felt fuzzy about things beyond Huangdi, and touched upon the ancient overlord Fu-xi briefly. Sima Qian was said to have cited Guan-zi as to how the ancient Chinese paid pilgrimage to the ancient lords on Mt. Taishan. However, Guan-zi’s forged statements in the chapter on the Mt. Taishan pilgrimage [《管子·封禅篇》] were very self-apparent. The geography in regards to Da-xia [or Bactria as claimed after Zhang Qian's trip to Central Asia was wrong. The real Da-xia was in today's southern and central Shanxi Province, along the Fen-shui River.)

《太史公自序》:“余闻之先人曰:‘伏羲至纯厚,作《易》八卦’。”

《史记·卷二十八·封禅书第六》: 《尚书》曰,舜在璇玑玉衡,以齐七政。遂类于上帝,禋于六宗,望山川,遍群神。辑五瑞,择吉月日,见四岳诸牧,还瑞。岁二月,东巡狩,至于岱宗。岱宗,泰山也。柴,望秩于山川。遂觐东后。东后者,诸侯也。合时月正日,同律度量衡, 修五礼,五玉三帛二生一死贽。五月,巡狩至南岳。南岳,衡山也。八月,巡狩至 西岳。西岳,华山也。十一月,巡狩至北岳。北岳,恒山也。皆如岱宗之礼。中岳,嵩高也。五载一巡狩。” ...  “秦缪公即位九年,齐桓公既霸,会诸侯于葵丘,而欲封禅。管仲曰:“古者封 泰山禅梁父者七十二家,而夷吾所记者十有二焉。昔无怀氏封泰山,禅云云;虑羲 封泰山,禅云云;神农封泰山,禅云云;炎帝封泰山,禅云云;黄帝封泰山,禅亭亭;颛顼封泰山,禅云云;帝俈封泰山,禅云云;尧封泰山,禅云云;舜封泰山, 禅云云;禹封泰山,禅会稽;汤封泰山,禅云云;周成王封泰山,禅社首。皆受命 然后得封禅。”桓公曰:“寡人北伐山戎,过孤竹;西伐大夏,涉流沙,束马悬车, 上卑耳之山;南伐至召陵,登熊耳山以望江汉。兵车之会三,而乘车之会六,九合诸侯,一匡天下,诸侯莫违我。昔三代受命,亦何以异乎?”于是管仲睹桓公不可 穷以辞,因设之以事,曰:“古之封禅,鄗上之黍,北里之禾,所以为盛;江淮之 间,一茅三脊,所以为藉也。东海致比目之鱼。西海致比翼之鸟,,然后物有不召而自至者十有五焉。今凤凰麒麟不来,嘉谷不生,而蓬蒿藜莠茂,鸱枭数至,而欲 封禅,毋乃不可乎?”于是桓公乃止。”(Could someone after Sima Qian had inserted the "Guan-zi" statements into Sima Qian’s 《史记》? )

《史记·封禅书》:“泰山东北址有古时明堂处,齐有泰山之明堂也。”

东汉 王充《论衡·书虚篇》:“百王太平,升封泰山。泰山之上,封可见者七十有二,纷纶湮灭者不可胜数。”

While the book 'Yi' (《易·系辞》), written in the name of Confucius, could be real, Guan-zi could be very much a forgery written in Han Dynasty or in another sense a book with numerous forged chapters on top of the original chapters. (Example to show How Sima Qian could not have been said to have cited Guan-zi in claiming that Qi Lord Huan'gong i) had campaigned against Da-xia  and ii) stepped onto the Kumtag Desert -- which appeared to me to be a latter day add-on:《管子·封禅篇》:桓公:“寡人北伐山戎,过孤竹;西伐大夏,涉流沙,束马悬车, 上卑耳之山;南伐至召陵,登熊耳山以望江汉。Did someone insert Guan-zi's forged statement into Sima Qian's Shiji? I have to reserve my judgment. There is no chance for Qi Lord Huan'gong to ever travel beyond the central land of today's Shanxi-Shenxi provinces. Alternatively, Qi Emperor Shihuangdi ordered stone inscription to be erected, stating that he had reached as far as the land of Da-xia to the north, which was ascertained to be in today's central Shanxi Province. It would be after Zhang Qian's trip to the Central Asia that Chinese records began to designate today's Afghanistan as Da-xia, which alternatively substantiated my claim that Guan-zi was a forgery, and similar statements in Sima Qian's Shi-ji could be later insertion. More, this webmaster believed that the 'liu sha' designation, which was commonly reserved for the quick sand Kumtag desert, could be in fact the sandy Sha-he River in today's central Shanxi Province while Beier-shan Mountain is the Taihang mountain range. )

During the Han dynasty, scholars could have recompiled the book GUAN ZI to make a wild assertion to the effect that the Qi army having trepassed the Jinn Princiaplity's land to reach the Yellow River inflexion area to conquer the barbarians in the 'da-xia' [grand Xia] land, coined with the phrases of crossing the ‘liu sha’ [quick sand] and climbing the ‘bei-er’ [?Zhongtiao] mountain. This webmaster believed that what the records stated about Qi Lord’s trekking ‘liu sha’ or the flowing sand could be nothing more than wading the sandy Sha-he River to climb the Mt. Bei-er-shan of today, not what ‘liu sha’ [moving sand/quick sand] historically referred to as the Kumtag Desert. Further, Qi Huan’gong might have never intruded into today’s central Shenxi at all, with the ‘liu sha’ [moving sand/quick sand] sentence being a latter-day forgery. Per QI YU of GUO YU, the Qi lord could have reached the Yellow River inflexion line, where the Bei-er Mountain was said to be located; however, the path to reach the inflexion point was not clear in QI YU of GUO YU, but was described by GUAN ZI as a sensational campaign of crossing the ‘liu sha’ [quick sand] and climbing the ‘bei-er’ [?Zhongtiao] mountain. That was in fact an aborted mission on the part of the Qi lord in the competition with the Qin lord for escorting some competing Jinn prince to the Jinn throne. The Qi lord stopped at Gaoliang and then returned to the Shandong peninsula.

Yandi Dynasty lasted eight generations, a forgery

Citation from Yi’ (《易·系辞》):

《易·系辞》“古者包牺氏之王天下也,仰则观象于天,俯则观法于地。观鸟兽之文与地之宜,近取诸身,远取诸物,于是始作八卦,以通神明之德,以类万物之情。作结绳而为网罟,以佃以渔,盖取诸离。包牺氏没,神农氏作,……神农氏没,黄帝尧舜氏作,通其变,使民不倦,神而化之,使民宜之。”

《易·系辞》疏引《帝王世纪》:“炎帝”之号,凡传八世:帝临魁、帝承、帝明、帝直、帝嫠、帝哀、帝榆罔。

Following citations from Zhuang-zi (《庄子》, [approx. 369-286 B.C.E.]) have to be taken with grain of salt as part of Zhuang-zi could be forgeries from the Han Dynasty. Zhuang-zi, if 100% real originals, could have confirmed the writings from the excavated silk/bamboo books from the Chu Principality –a non-central-plains and a non-Huangdi line nation that supposedly had inherited the original agricultural Chinese heritage since prehistory.

《庄子·胠箧》:“子独不知至德之世乎?昔者容成氏、大庭氏、伯皇氏、中央氏、栗陆氏、骊畜氏、轩辕氏、赫胥氏、尊卢氏、祝融氏、伏犠氏、神农氏,当是时也,民结绳而用之,甘其食,美其服,乐其俗,安其居,邻国相望,鸡狗之音相闻,民至老死而不相往来。”

《庄子·缮性》:“逮德下衰,及燧人、伏羲始为天下,是故顺而不一;德又下衰,及神农、黄帝始为天下,是故安而不顺。”

《庄子·田子方》:“古之真人,知者不得说,美人不得滥,盗人不得窃,伏戏、黄帝不得友。”

Later historians had more detailed forgery writings on the antiquity.

《汉书·律历志》引刘歆《世经》:“庖牺继天而王,为百王先。首德始于木,故帝为太昊。”

《白虎通义》:“三皇者何谓也,伏羲、女娲、神农是也。”

晋代皇甫谧《帝王世纪》:“女娲氏……承庖牺制度。……及女娲氏没,次有大庭氏、柏皇氏、中央氏、栗陆氏、骊连氏、赫胥氏、尊卢氏、浑混氏、昊英氏、有巢氏、朱襄氏、葛天氏、阴康氏、无怀氏,凡十五世,皆袭庖牺之号。”

For details on the forgeries, see http://www.zangshu.com/2011/0209/21878.html

The meaning of the ancient “Di4″ title – meaning justice, a nation’s imperial name or the person who combined the virtue with the Heaven.

《尔雅》:“林、烝、天、帝、皇、王、后、辟、公、侯,君也。”
《说文》:“皇,大也,自从。自,始也。始皇这,三皇太君也。”
《风俗通》:“三皇:道德玄泊,有似皇天,故称曰皇。”
《独断》:“上古天子:庖牲氏、神农氏称皇,尧、舜称帝,夏、商、周称王。”
《白虎通义》:“德象天地称帝,仁义所生称王,帝者天号,王者,五行之称。”
《管子》:“明一者皇,察道者帝。”
西汉孝武皇帝《诗谱》:“德合北辰者皆称皇,感五帝坐星者皆称帝。”
《史记 秦始皇本纪》:“采上古帝位号,号曰皇帝。”
《独断》:“皇帝至尊之称。皇者,煌也。盛德煌煌,无所不照也。帝者,谛也。能行天道,事天审谛,故称皇帝。”

《说文解字》:“帝,谛也,王天下之号也”。(“谛”指“审谛”。)

《白虎通义》:“德合天者称帝”。

Historical conflict concerning Yandi’s relationship with Huangdi & Resolution

《国语·晋语四》:“昔少典氏娶于有蟜氏,生黄帝、炎帝。黄帝以姬水成;炎帝以姜水成。成而异德,故黄帝为姬姓,炎帝为姜姓。韦昭注:姜,水名;成,谓所生长以成功也。”(《水经》渭水注入歧水,又东经姜氏城,南为姜水。按《辞源》,姜水即歧水,今歧山县西。)

《水经注》:“岐水,又东迳姜氏城南,为姜水。”

《帝王世纪》:“黄帝有熊氏,少典之子,姬姓也,母曰附宝,其先即炎帝母家有蟜氏,世与少典氏婚。”

《春秋纬·元命苞》:“少典妃安登游于华阳,有神龙首,感之于常羊,生神农。人面龙颜,好耕,是谓神农,始为天子。”  (The [纬] ‘wei’-suffixed books were mostly later forgeries as well.)

(西周“轲尊”铭文周武王定都洛邑:“唯王初迁宅于成周,则廷告于天曰:余其宅此中国”)

For the intricacy as to the rivalry between Huangdi and Yandi, please see my postulation as to the land of the Nine Yi people being the interface ground among the main Mongoloid groups of O1-, O2- and O3-haplogroup people, plus possibly some C-haplogroup Tungunsic people.

To resolve the historical confusion as to the relationship between Huangdi and Yandi, we could glean some truth from two different data sets. The first was the book SHAN HAI JING, in which we could tell that there were in existence an ancient ‘Jiang’ surname statelet or multiple such Jiang-surnamed statelets in eastern China or specifically on the Shandong peninsula, with the legendary Lord Di-jun (i.e., ancestor of the Shang dynaty) possibly carrying the Jiang surname.

–The later historians’ bundling the Qiangic people of northwest China with the Jiang surname often obscured the fact that the Jiang surname originated in the land of East China, not western China. From the astrology perspective, the Zhou people’s in-law family, namely, the Jiang-surnamed ancestress Jiang Yuan and descendant Jiang-tai-gong could have origin from the east, or the central plains of China. On the maternal side, Jiang-surnamed Pang-gong, i.e., father of Madame Jiang Yuan and father-in-law of Overlord Di-ku, had his position in the ‘xi mu’[-‘xing ji’] sector division(s) of the ecliptic [equating to the Sagittarius and Capricorn Palaces], namely, about the place of the tail, winnowing-basket, and dipper mansions. Madame Jiang Yuan, i.e., the wife of Overlord Di-ku, was represented by the fortune star ‘jian-xing’ [the ‘Establishment’ star in the Dipper mansion]; and Jiang Shang, a nephew of Madame Tai-jiang, was represented by the fortune star ‘qian-niu’ [the ‘Drum at the river’ or the ox star of the Ox mansion].

The second dataset would be the famous ZUO ZHUAN. The origin of the Shang Dynasty, which was a puzzle, could be used to find clues about its possible descending from the the Yangdi line. Two books, THE BAMBOO ANNALS & SHAN HAI JING, plus the Oracle bones, talked aout Wang-hai, son of Marquis Yin-hou, who was killed by You-yi-shi during the 12th year of Xia King Xie, which implied that the Shang people had the mandate to repair the Yellow River and dwelled along the course of the Yellow River which flowed northeastward towards the estuary near today’s Tientsin. In ZUO ZHUAN we could find the most direct hint as to the nature of the Shang people and the ‘Jiang3′, ‘Ren4′ and ‘Su4′ surnames:

国语. 晋语. 四》:吾闻晋之始封,岁在大火。阏伯之星也。实纪商人,商之飨国三十王,瞽史记之曰:唐叔之世,将如商数。
昭公十年斋
【经】十年春王正月。夏,齐栾施来奔。秋七月,季孙意如、叔弓、仲孙玃帅师伐莒。戊子,晋侯彪卒。九月,叔孙婼如晋,葬晋平公。十有二月甲子,宋公成卒。古
【传】十年春,王正月,有星出于婺女。郑裨灶言于子产曰:“七月戊子,晋君将死。今兹岁在颛顼之虚,姜氏、任氏实守其地。居其维首,而有妖星焉,告邑姜也。邑姜,晋之妣也。天以七纪。戊子,逢公以登,星斯于是乎出。吾是以讥之。”

This prophesy statement was made to the effect that Tang-shu or Uncle Tang, a fief conferred by Zhou King Chengwang onto Shu-yu or Uncle Yu in the early Zhou dynasty rule for the southern Shanxi land of Tang, would inherit the spirits of Shang Dynasty [after it was to be overthrown by what happened to be successor Zhou Dynasty] for the inherent reason that the Shang people could be of the same family as clans of the ‘Jiang3′, ‘Ren4′ and ‘Su4′ surnames.

How to interpret further to validate the point that the Shang people were of the same family as the Jiang surname people who descended from Yandi, the Fiery Lord?

In the ancient land of [central and eastern] China, i.e., it was called Lord Zhuanxu’s Ruins. This is because this part of the country that used to belong to Jiang-surnamed and Ren-surnamed people, were later administered by Lord Zhuanxu and descendants of lord Zhuanxu. The Qin people, and the Shang people, who dwelled on this land, were part of the “eastern” people, with the lineage related to Lord Zhuanxu.  The prophesy stating that the descendants of Uncle Tang, or ancient lord Tang-yao, [not Tang-shu or Shu-yu who would not appear in history till the Zhou overthrow of the Shang dynasty,] would one day inherit the spirits of Shang Dynasty [when Shang dynasty was to be overthrown one day, i.e., by the Zhou people]. So, after Zhou overthrew Shang, Uncle Shu-yu, i.e.,  a Jiang-surnamed brother of King CHengwang’s mother, [not a posthumous son of Zhou King Wuwang or King Chengwang's brother as the common interpretation was,] was to be conferred the land of Jinn to carry on the Shang spirits. Since the ancient classics stipulated clearly that only the same surname clan could inherit the spirits of their respective ancestors, it naturally follows that only the Jiang-surname Tang-shu or junior uncle Tang could have succeeded the ancient Jiang-surname lineage of Yandi, the Fiery Lord, as the Shang people or the eastern people were mainly of the Jiang surname, the Ren surname etc.

From the genetic perspective, Li Hui of Fudan University of China had analyzed the Asian DNAs to have derived a conclusion that the ancestors of the Asians possessed a distinctive Mark M89 by the time they arrived in Southeast Asia. About 30,000 years ago, from the launching pad of Southeast Asia, the early Asians went through a genetic mutation to marker M122. Li Hui claimed that the early migrants to the Chinese continent took three routes via two entries of today’s Yunnan and Guangxi-Guangdong provinces. More studies done after Li Hui had ascertained the dates of the O1, O2 and O3 haplogroup people, with the the (O1, O2) entrants along the Southeast Chinese coast dated to have split away from the O3-haplogroup people like 20,000 years ago, much earlier than the continental peers, i.e., the Sino-Tibetans (O3a3c1-M117), Hmong-Mien (Miao-Yao, O3a3b-M7) and Mon-khmers. According to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5255561/ “Y chromosome suggested Tibeto-Burman populations are an admixture of the northward migrations of East Asian initial settlers with haplogroup D-M175 in the Late Paleolithic age, and the southward Di-Qiang people with dominant haplogroup O3a2c1*-M134 and O3a2c1a-M117 in the Neolithic Age. Haplogroup O3a2c1*-M134 and O3a2c1a-M117 are also characteristic lineages of Han Chinese, comprising 11.4% and 16.3%, respectively. However, another dominant paternal lineage of Han Chinese, haplogroup O3a1c-002611, is found at very low frequencies in Tibeto-Burman populations, suggesting this lineage might not have participated in the formation of Tibeto-Burman populations.” Namely, the haplogroup O3a1c-002611 Sinitic people was responsible for engendering the Yangshao and Longshan civilization, and partially with the N-haplogroup people, engendering the Hongshan civilization. (Since the O3a1c-002611 people were separated from the Northwestern cousins and Tibeto-Burmese at an early age, for it to have a part in the history of Northwestern China, the explanation would be to treat the Haplogroup O3a2c1*-M134 and O3a2c1a-M117 people as the historical Qiang and Hu barbarians, with the latter’s paleo-Northwestern genes replacing the paleo-North-China and paleo-Central Plains genes of O3a1c-002611 Sinitic people by the Soong dynasty. Namely, the Zhou people and their in-law Jiang-surnamed clan could only belong to the same Sinitic big family of the O3a1c-002611 people.)

This webmaster’s minor reconciliation of Lord Zhuanxu and the eastern Chinese land: Lord Zhauanxu, whom the Shang people, the Qin people, the Chu people, and some other southern Chinese had treated as ancestor, was said to be born from the Yellow Lord’s line, something Sima Qian had talked about in the section on the Three Sovereigns and Five Lords, could be indeed a later day polishing to make the Chinese history to appear to be of the same family. Sima Qian, after the Qin book burning, had access to mainly the book Chun Qiu (i.e., the spring & autumn annals) and parts of the Qin chronicle, and hence might not have grasped the true essence of prehistory. Or, this webmaster would claim that Lord Zuanxu, though from the Sino-Tibetan Yellow Lord’s line, had become ‘naturalized’ into the eastern land of the Jiang-surname Hmong-mien people, and hence became a symbol of the eastern people.
This entry was posted in Ancient China. Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.