KUEI-FANG
Prior to the discovery of inscriptional hoards it had always been believed that Wu Ting’s most illustrious military accomplishment was his victory over the Kuei-fang (Ghost Quarter), thought to have inhabited an extensive region across Inner Mongolia, northern Shaanxi, and northwest Shanxi.
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According to line judgments found in the last two hexagrams of the
Yi Ching
, three years were required to conquer them: “Kao-tsung [Wu Ting] attacked the Kuei-fang and after three years conquered them” and “Fervently employ [the military] to attack the Kuei-fang and in three years there will be rewards in the great state.”
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Perhaps because of the images invoked by their name and its connotations, the conquest of the Kuei-fang has always been far more symbolically charged than victory over any other peripheral predator. Given the apparent magnitude of the conflict, the absence of oracle records comparable to those found for the Ch’iang or Kung-fang is puzzling. Furthermore, the few inscriptions that refer to the Kuei-fang depict them as a reconciled people who submissively undertook the duties incumbent upon an allied lord, including fighting the Ch’iang and capturing prisoners, and were therefore a subject of the king’s solicitous inquiry.
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At least one Kuei leader played an active sacrificial role in Wu Ting’s time and thereafter, seemingly precluding the possibility of enmity between them.
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Two theories have been offered to explain this apparent anomaly. The simplest yet most encompassing version concludes that since the Kuei-fang’s distribution in the northwest coincides with that projected for the Kung-fang, T’u-fang, and Ch’iang, and the Shang required more than three years to extirpate them all, the term “Kuei-fang” must be a broad form of reference, one that encompassed all these tribes. Accordingly,
the
Yi Ching
should then be understood as referring to the monumental totality of these conflicts.
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Variants of this explanation limit the scope of the term, making “Kuei-fang” synonymous with “Kung-fang,” the Shang’s most prominent enemy,
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or conversely, consider it to be similar to “Ch’iang,” a sort of generic name for the tribal groups out on the steppe.
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Because the
Yi Ching
was composed in the Western Chou several centuries after Wu Ting’s era, the term “X-fang” is thus thought to have already become a rubric for any of the numerous peoples in the west or northwest with whom the Chou itself had come into conflict in its predynastic days rather than a referent to any specific tribe or enemy people.
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The second approach, which focuses on the nature and intent of the
Yi Ching
itself, emphasizes that previous events are cited for prognosticatory purposes rather than the creation of a historical record.
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Moreover, contrary to traditional belief, it is assumed that the two lines refer to two different events rather than a single lengthy engagement with the Kuei-fang.
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The most famous conflict of Wu Ting’s era, his war with the Kung-fang, therefore somehow became the basis for the first entry and the name was simply transformed.
However, the second
Yi Ching
entry, which speaks about fervently rousing oneself to mount an attack that will require three years to succeed, focuses on trepidation: “With trembling they attacked the Kuei-fang and after three years received rewards from the great state.” This is thought to refer to a conflict recorded in the
Ku-pen Bamboo Annals
for Wu Yi’s thirty-fifth year: “Chi Li of the Chou attacked the Hsi-luo Kuei-fang and captured twenty barbarian kings.” This interpretation turns on the comparative sizes of the Chou, Kuei-fang, and Shang, the latter being the “great state” that will eventually grant the rewards, while the Kuei-fang, also being larger than the Chou, will compel the Chou to evince an attitude of serious commitment. Moreover, the campaign was probably a crucial step in an expansionist thrust that initially targeted the very tribes that had compelled the Shang to move to Mt. Ch’i in order to gain control over the greater area and stabilize it.
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A subsequent expansion of this approach stresses the contextual implications of the two hexagram names, “Completed” and “Not Yet Completed,” in interpreting the historicity of the lines.
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In the first
case, King Wu Ting, an appropriately powerful figure for undertaking a martial campaign, defeats an enemy known as the Kuei-fang, synonymous with the Kung-fang. However, the second hexagram describes a situation long prior to completion in which trepidation is required because the conquest of the “barbarians,” a people marked by their “otherness,” cannot but be difficult.
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The psychological and sequential implications being manifold, the line’s subject must prepare and strive to achieve the goal with its promised rewards. The hexagram is thus fraught with troublesome implications, the historical actuality of Chi Li’s campaign less so.
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Finally, the
Chin-pen Bamboo Annals
contain an entry for Wu Ting’s thirty-second year in which an attack on the Kuei-fang is noted,
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and another for his thirty-fourth year that simply states his armies conquered them.
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Although these entries would seem to confirm the
Yi Ching
account and provide a fixed date for these events, they may well have been derived from the latter rather than preserving an independent record. Nevertheless, despite the absence of oracular inscriptions, these classic entries asserting that an epic battle with the Kuei-fang occurred can perhaps be understood in the combined light of these theories. Obviously a significant clash occurred, no doubt the one between the Shang and Kung-fang, but the enemy’s identity somehow became transmuted into the Kuei-fang. The
Yi Ching
authors must have been sufficiently struck by the intensity and scope of the conflict to envision it as the core referent for hexagram sixty-three, “Completed,” in contrast with the idea of “Not Yet Completed” in hexagram sixty-four, itself illustrated by a later Chou campaign undertaken in radically different circumstances.
Questions of inscriptional dating underlie any characterization of Shang and Chou relations, but they seem to have fluctuated among cordiality, concealed antagonism, and open belligerency.
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It is well-known that two of the last three Chou kings, Chi Li and Wen, married women from the Shang, and that King Wen’s wife was Emperor Yi’s daughter. However, as attested by references to a “Fu Chou,” one or more of Wu Ting’s consorts must have originated among the Chou, and another Fu Chou
appears in the inscriptions dated to the conjoined reigns of Wu Yi and Wen Ting.
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Conversely, recently discovered inscriptions from Wu Ting’s era inquiring about the possible death of a woman from the Shang royal house who had become the wife of Chung Chou’s ruler indicate that marriages were made in both directions, no doubt to solidify the relationship.
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The Chou are sometimes noted as having sent items in tribute, including shells, shamans, and beautiful women, the latter perhaps a precursor of their subsequent efforts to exploit Shang licentiousness.
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Shang rulers occasionally employed prognostication to inquire about their general well-being, including whether they would not be harmed by enemies such as the Fang or Ch’üan.
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At times the Chou were referred to as the Chou-fang, indicating recognition but nonmembership in the Shang sphere; at others the ruler was termed a Hou (Lord) and even ordered to undertake some action
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—both evidence of subservient status and having been at least somewhat integrated into the Shang hierarchy. A commander Chou, presumably the Chou leader at the head of his own troops, is known to have acted in a battlefield capacity similar to commanders from other subject states in Wu Ting’s early period.
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Ironically, King Chi Li was designated as a Mu-shih (“Shepherd”), sort of the regional chief of the nearby states, in recognition of his aggressive martial activities, but was eventually executed. His son King Wen was appointed as the Hsi Po, a term that means “Duke of the West” but is generally understood as connoting Western Protector, though both of them also submitted to being imprisoned by the Shang, undeniable proof of their subservient status.
A fairly high-intensity campaign that targeted the proto-state of Chou and succeeded in ending their overt rebelliousness for the remainder of the dynasty seems to have been undertaken late in Wu Ting’s reign.
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Whether it stemmed from a collision of Shang and Chou interests as a direct result of the Chou’s growing presence at Pin or was triggered by a particular event is unknown. However, contrary to traditional accounts the Chou may have been trying to exploit the power vacuum created by Wu Ting’s preoccupation with the nearby T’u-fang and Kung-fang to aggressively expand.
One possible sequence concludes that the Shang’s efforts were initiated in the twelfth month when the leader of the Ch’üan (Yi), accompanied
by his troops, mounted a destructive attack on the Chou.
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Thereafter, from the third to fifth months the king dispatched him, several of the royal clan forces,
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and others to continuously attack,
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and had yet another minor lord assault the Chou in the eighth month.
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Although Wu Ting remained aloof, additional Shang and allied commanders such as the ruler of Meng and Lord of Ts’ang were also dispatched at various times, indicative of the conflict’s intensity.
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Whether the Chou finally submitted to these onslaughts turns upon the interpretation of one fragmentary strip inquiring whether the Fang will severely harm the Chou.
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Some scholars interpret the king’s interest as indicating that the Chou had again become submissive, but others contend that they disappear from the oracle records because they were no longer a matter of concern.
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This sudden inscriptional absence has also been tentatively explained with reference to late literary records that assert the Chou ancestral leader known as Tan Fu moved the populace from their original site at Pin (probably in the Fen river valley) out to Mt. Ch’i in order to avoid “barbarian” (“Ti”) pressures.
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Insofar as this transfer presumably shifted them beyond the Shang’s immediate sphere of concern, it is thought to account for their apparent quiescence.
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Although the oracle bones indicate that numerous groups apparently assaulted the Chou, since the Ch’üan have been identified as being the K’un-yi (who numbered among the Shang allies conquered by the Chou) and as members of the Ti, they may well have been the aggressors responsible for the Chou shift.
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Ironically, it would be ongoing pressure and finally an invasion by the Ch’üan Jung that would eventually compel the reputedly dissolute Chou ruler to abandon their dual capitals of Feng and Hao in 771 BCE and move eastward, precipitating the historical schism between the Western and Eastern Chou.
Traditional materials that record this shift, particularly the
Bamboo Annals
, date the Tan Fu’s migration to Wu Yi’s initial year, roughly fifty years after Wu Ting’s demise. No doubt on the assumption that this sort of precursor to the ongoing steppe-sedentary conflict witnessed throughout imperial history had already become a constant factor, it has been suggested that the migration was the result of another attack
mounted by the Ch’üan, prompted by a breakdown in Shang authority rather than by Shang enmity.
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Even though both explanations—defeat and displacement—are plausible, given the animosity marking Shang-Chou relations as chronicled by the
Bamboo Annals
, the martial nature of the Chou’s eventual multidirectional expansion, and their formalized role as a frontier bulwark prior to the dynasty’s overthrow, the Chou’s almost complete absence from the late oracle records remains puzzling. A significant number of oracle bones have been found at Chou-yüan, though fewer than 200 preserve inscriptions and considerable controversy marks their interpretation.
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Disagreement about their provenance has also resulted in confident assertions (based on their distinctive terms and a style of language similar to the Chou bronze inscriptions) that they must have originated in the Chou as well as equally vociferous denials that the content and perspective could not possibly be Chou, that they must have been left behind by visiting Shang rulers. (The second claim essentially focuses on these few in isolation, thereby ignoring the roughly 17,000 other bones that lack inscriptions, a number far too large to have been Shang remnants.)
The contents of three key inscriptions remain puzzling. The first records that the querent was planning to sacrifice two women, three rams, and three pigs to Kings T’ang and Yi of the Shang. One explanation holds that the sacrifices, presumably being offered by the Chou ruler, although unusual, were not impossible because the Chou were seeking protection from the ancestral spirits of their overlords. (This contravenes the idea prevailing from Confucius onward that sacrifices could only be properly offered within the clan and to one’s own ancestors, though this proscription may simply have formalized desirable practice.) Moreover, because the Chou were also closely tied to the Shang through marriage relations, King Wen’s consort having been the youngest daughter of Emperor Yi and his mother also having come from the Shang, he would have been doubly justified in seeking the blessings of the high Shang ancestors, especially his recently deceased father-in-law. Yet it must have caused him considerable consternation because his father had been slain by the Shang.