Chapter 27 Virtue from the stone

The Later Zhou Dynasty was the fifth and last dynasty of the Five Dynasties, so the northern part came to an end, let's talk about the southern part. As I said before, in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, except for one Northern Han Dynasty, the other nine kingdoms were all in the south.The Nine Kingdoms are actually not interesting enough. Those guys don't pay much attention to the theory of the Five Virtues, so there are more people claiming to be emperors, but few deducing the Five Virtues.What's more, many of them also have an inferiority complex, thinking that the orthodoxy is in the five dynasties in the north, and they are actually a local government. Chu didn't even dare to call himself emperor, he was only at the level of king.If they are not orthodox, they are not qualified to talk about virtue, so they took the initiative to shrink their heads.

There is a country that must be mentioned, and that is Qianshu.This former Shu was founded by Wang Jian. Although there is no record of "virtue", but in terms of auspiciousness, it is the most among the ten kingdoms. In the "New History of the Five Dynasties", almost one-third of the article "Family of Former Shu" is devoted to describing what kind of auspiciousness was encountered in which year, month, and place. For example, in the first month of the year when the Tang Dynasty fell (AD 907), it is said that giants appeared on Qingcheng Mountain, and then in June, phoenixes appeared in Wansui County, and yellow dragons appeared in Jiayang River.What's even more frightening is that "every state talks about nectar, white deer, white sparrow, tortoise, and dragon's auspiciousness."

There are too many auspicious signs, and it is impossible to list them all here. Let me just give an example, which shows how wild the imagination of the former Shu rulers and ministers was.In August of the third year of Wucheng in the former Shu (AD 910), someone claimed to have seen a dragon in Xunyang, and not one dragon, but fifty dragons!Even Ouyang Xiu, who studied history, wrote this, and couldn't help but say: Lord, this is too outrageous! Ouyang Xiu made a big comment about this, saying that he read this "Book of Shu" and found that all kinds of auspicious signs, including turtles, dragons, unicorns, phoenixes, and Zouyu, which were said to represent the rise of emperors in the past dynasties, all gathered in the country. This is really too strange.Especially dragons, things like dragons are miraculous if they are not seen by people. Flying in the sky, clearing clouds and spreading rain is its job. Now that its image is suddenly exposed, it is not godly. , As for publishing fifty at once, that's simply monstrous.

The end of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms was the Song Dynasty.But before talking about the Song Dynasty, there is another big country that needs to be introduced first, and that is Liao. Liao's official country name should actually be named after the clan, called "Khitan".The founding monarch of Khitan was Yelu Abaoji, who was in the same period as Li Keyong, the Taizu of the Later Tang Dynasty, and Zhu Huang, the Taizu of the Later Liang Dynasty.Although he is a Khitan, he has always been keen on Sinology, and his subordinates are Han Yanhui, Han Zhigu, Kang Moji and many other Han advisers.After the death of Yelu Abaoji, his second son, Yelu Deguang, succeeded to the throne. Shi Jingtang shamelessly came to ask for help, and volunteered to donate the sixteen prefectures of Yanyun, which are today’s Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, and northern Shanxi. Residential area.The Khitan people occupied these places and were not good at managing them. However, Yelude’s thinking diverged and he simply created a brand new regime model, dividing the officials into two parts. Han, Han people.

This two-part system shows that the Khitan Kingdom is a common country for the Fan people and the Han people. What is the most obvious sign?That is when the emperor and the empress came to court at the same time, the emperor wore Hanfu, and the empress wore Fanfu.So in many films, it is wrong to portray the Khitan king in a leather robe and a felt hat in the court hall. His formal attire should be a right-angled headdress with a round neck shirt. Later, when Shi Jingtang died, his son Shi Chonggui suddenly complained that Mao did not intend to become a minister, so Yelu Deguang honestly and unceremoniously led his troops southward, destroying the Later Jin Dynasty.Originally, Yelu Deguang did not intend to go back to the north this time. He wanted to establish his capital in Luoyang, be honored in the Central Plains, and be the real emperor of China. The vast ocean of war was forced to flee back in embarrassment.It can also be seen from this incident that the Khitan people regard themselves as Chinese and their country as the Chinese dynasty.Therefore, their internal country name is "Khitan", but when engaging in diplomacy with the Central Plains Dynasty, especially the later Song Dynasty, in order to prove that they are the orthodox Chinese, they set a Han-style country name of "Liao"—— Can't still be called Khitan, it looks like a barbarian, not Chinese.

By the way, because the Khitan and Liao soldiers pointed directly at the Western Regions, and neither the Five Dynasties nor the later Song Dynasty could exert even the slightest influence on the Western Regions, so the countries and nationalities of the generation of Central Asia at that time generally regarded the Khitan Liao is regarded as China, and then spread westward from them, all the way to Europe, they also regard Khitan as another name for China. To put it another way, since even the Chinese-style national title has been finalized, they certainly dare not ignore the theory of the five virtues that the Chinese dynasty has passed down in name for thousands of years (actually only a thousand years).But the biggest problem is that the Khitan Liao Dynasty has never had much connection with the Central Plains Dynasty, and this "virtue" is not easy to connect.

The second king of Khitan, Yelu Deguang who was later called Emperor Taizong of the Liao Dynasty, had no choice but to turn his attention to his ancestors.He was wise enough not to recognize an utterly irreconcilable Central Plains dynasty as his ancestor, but to honestly find reasons in the myths and legends of his ancestors.According to the origin myth of the Khitan nationality, at first a man riding a white horse met a woman driving a green ox cart by the Liaoshui River. The two got married and gave birth to eight boys, namely the Khitan Babu. ancestor.The Khitan people were born by the Liao River, so this virtue, of course, should be the virtue of water.

So after such a derivation process, they finally found the reason why Khitan deserves the virtue of water, and therefore set the Chinese-style country name-"Liao", to commemorate the mother river of the clan.Therefore, the Khitan Liao’s Water Virtue is very similar to the Tu Virtue of the Northern Wei Dynasty. It is not a cycle of five virtues, mutual generation or mutual restraint, but born out of nowhere, emerging from the stone.