For those interested in ancient Yueh/Yue
For anyone interested in the very ancient states and ethinic groups in the territory that is now Southeast China bordering what is today Vietnam Eric Henry's recent posting, which came out on the Warring States Working Group list, will be of interest. Eric got into this through being asked to compile a list of the Yueh rulers, that list is also part of the post below.
cheers
Michele
Michele Thompson
Dept. of History
Southern Connecticut State University
Begin forwarded message:
From: Eric Henry <henryhme@bellsouth.net>
Date: February 9, 2007 10:34:00 PM EST
Subject: Re: [WSW] YWE
Reply-To: wsw@yahoogroups.com
Here it is: main source supplied at end of this note. -- E.H.
BIG SURPRISE (at least to me; maybe the rest of you knew this long ago): YUE WAS NEVER TOTALLY ANNEXED BY CHU DURING THE WARRING STATES ERA! On a few occasions, Yue had to yield large swaths of territory to Chu after suffering disastrous military defeats – but, however reduced in size, Yue not only continued to carry on, but posed a distinct military threat to Chu, and was even worrisome to Qin, until the the very end of the Warring States era. YUE, IN FACT, OUTLIVED CHU, if only by a few months. It was the seond-to-last state to be overrun by Qin; only Qi held out longer. So the old cliché about the “qi xiong,” “seven mighty powers” of the Zhanguo era is just as fanciful, historically as, say, “the ride of Paul Revere”; if we want to project ourselves back into the era, rather than back into myths about that era, we have to think in terms of, at least, the “ba xiong”: “eight mighty powers.”
Below are some notes, very rough and preliminary, concerning Yue chronology.
Yue is mentioned by name in Zuozhuan entries dated 0601 (Xuan-gong 8), 0544 (Xiang-gong 29), 0538 (Zhao-gong 4), 0537 (Zhao-gong 5), 0518 (Zhao-gong 24), 0510 (not in Zuozhuan; this is a Wu incursion into Yue mentioned in *Wu Yue Chunqiu*), and 0506 (Ding-gong 4), but the earliest Yue king whose name is known to us is (to the best of my current knowledge) is Gou Jian’s direct predecessor Yun Chang. His accession date is (I believe) unknown. He died and was succeded by Gou Jian in 0497. It appears likely that it was during the reign of this Yun Chang that Yue invaded Wu in 0506, taking advantage of the fact that Wu’s troops were then tied up with the occupation of Chu’s capital. So, we are constrained, for now at least, to put Yun Chang at the top of the Yue king list:
Yun Chang 允常 ? – 0497
Gou Jian 句踐 0497 – 0465
Yu Yi 與夷 0464 – ?
Mang Gu 盲姑 ? – 0449
Zhu Ju 珠句 0448 – c. 0405
(note: during the reigns of Gou Jian’s successors, Yue moved its capital far north to a Lang Ye 琅耶, a place that all but adjoined the southern reaches of Qi. From this location, the forces of Yue attacked and annexed a number of small states that had formerly been within the Qi and Lu spheres of influence, as follows:
0415: Teng annexed by Yue
0414: Tan annexed by Yue; its ruler Gu 鴣 taken captive, conveyed to Yue
around the same period: Ju 莒, Zeng 繒, and Bi 費 annexed by Yue
Wang Yi 王翳 c. 0405 – 0376 (assassinated by son Zhu Jiu, below:)
(note: in 0379, Wang Yi moved the capital of Yue from Lang Ye back to Gu Su (Suzhou), the old capital of Wu; this may reflect some setback in the realization of Yue’s territorial aspirations in the north.)
Zhu Jiu 諸咎 0375 – 0363 (assassinated by some court faction)
Wu Yu Zhi 無余之 0362 – 0351 (assassinated by son, Wangzi Sou below:)
(a.k.a. Mang An 莽安)
Wangzi Sou 王子搜 0350 – 0344
(a.k.a. Wu Zhuan 無顓)
Wu Qiang 諸咎 0343 – 0333
(When Wu Qiang came to the throne in 0343, he mounted attacks against Qi and Chu, and was for a time very powerful. In 333, at the behest of Qi, he attacked Qi, suffered a great defeat, and was killed. At this time, Yue had to yield most of the old territory of Wu to Chu, and move its capital back its original location in Kuaiji (just SE of present-day Shaoxing, Zhejiang province)
The names and reign-dates of some Yue rulers after Wu Qiang may still be recoverable; these notes, as I say, are preliminary; in the meantime here are a few further chronological notes:
Various passages in *Zhanguoce* refer to Yue being a threat to Chu and other states, throughout the 3rd century. *Zhanguoce* is of course a throughly suspect source; but a bronze vessel unearthed in 1977 in Pingshan district, Hebei, contains parallel references to 1) King Kuai’s loss of Yan (to Qi; 0315) and “the continued existence of Yue up to the present day.”
0312: In this year the king of Yue sent an emissary, Gongshi Yu 公師隅 to Nguei 魏, with the gift of a large ship (it had a name, “Shi Wang” 始罔), many bales of silk, many bundles of arrows, ivory, rhinoceros horn, and other treasures, with a view to making an alliance with them, so as to deal with the threat of Chu. (This is according to a note in *Shui Jing* quoting the Bamboo Annals).
0262: *Yue Jue Shu* has an annotation saying that in this year Chu “annexed Lang Ye, in the northern part of Yue.” This suggests that Yue at some point in the previous hundred years had regained Lang Ye, or somehow had never lost it.
0248: According to *Shi Ji*, Chunshen Jun (the “Chunshen Grandee”) of Chu was enfieffed inthe old capital of Wu in this year. Both *Wu Di Ji* and *Yue Jue Shu* mention defensive fortifications built south of this location by Chunshen Jun to guard against attacks by Yue. *Yue Jue Shu* also mentions defensive fortifications put up in this period by a Yue king, Sun Kai, to guard against attacks by Chunshen Jun. So here we go, another Yue king:
Sun Kai 孫開 c. 0255 – c. 0240
The period 0235 – 0225: various passages in *Zhanguo Ce* and *Hanfeizi* indicate, if we believe them, that Yue was still powerful in this period, and was full of schemes for forming alliances with other states to resist Qin. The Qin sequence of conquest in no way contradicts this possibility.
The Qin conquest: *Shiji* describes the sequence as follows: “In the 17th year of King Zheng (0230) he obtained the submission of the Han king and took all his territory, turning it into a commandery. In his 19th year (0228) he established control over all the Dongyang territory of Zhao and took the Zhao Zhao king captive. In his 22nd year (0225) the Nguei king asked to surrender; he took all of Nguei’s territory. In his 23rd year (0224) he took the Jing (Chu) king captive; in his 25th year (0222), he captured Xi, the Yan king, then went on to pacify the Jiangnan area of Jing (Chu), forced the surrender of the Yue king, and turned Kuaiji into a commandery. In his 26th year, he captured Jian, the king of Qi.
Notes on the above: 1) One can see from the names of the Yue kings above, and from other details, that Yue continued to be thoroughly non-sinitic throughout its existence as an independent state. 2) One notices that Yue princes, like Chu princes, sometimes got impatient and murdered their fathers, so as not to lose their chance to gain the throne. In both cases (Chu and Yue), this seems to reflect the perseverence of local, non-sinitic folkways. 3) Just how non-sinitic Yue was can be clearly seen in a recently excavated tomb of some as yet unidentified S. & A. ruler of Yue (a photograph can be seen at the Lu Xun memorial complex in Shaoxing). The structure is reminiscent of Siberian neolithic burial sites; consists of huge jagged stone slabs set deeply into the ground and leaning together at the top; a sort of teepee arrangement. The site is Yinshan mountain, just east of Mt. Kuaiji, which is itself just SE of Shaoxing. I’m told that burial sites of Wu rulers are now being discovered that resemble this Yue king burial site, but I have not yet seen any photographs.
Finally, I wish to say that in compiling these notes I have been very dependent on a fine book by Yang Shanqun entitled, simply, *Gou Jian* (Taibei, 1991).