Wu Yi Shoots the Heavens 武乙射天 | Chinese History - The Shang Dynasty E18

Hello and welcome to the show. My name is Api Ngo. I'm that Chinese history guy. Here, we share the stories from the myths, legends and histories of the Chinese people, from the first creator to the last imperial dynasty. More than 6,000 years of stories, one video at a time. And if you like stories like this, remember to like, sub, comment and share for this video and Now what do you do when theocrats, shamans and oracles threaten to displace the royal court and take over the rule of the land? How did one ruler forcibly suppress the power and influence these oracles and shamans held over the populace and basically single-handedly drag an entire civilization back from the brink of becoming a full theocracy? Now we'll find out about all that in today's episode of The Shang Dynasty. Now as we mentioned in the previous episode, King Zhu Jia brought about a kind of a cultural and economical golden age to the Shang dynasty. But did his efforts, did his progress continue after his reign? Unfortunately, not really. Now when King Zhu Jia passed away from illness after 33 years as the king of the Shang people, the throne went to his son Lin Xin who ruled for six years. Now during his six years on the throne, the kingdom started his long road of decline. Now the western tribes started growing stronger and stronger and the frequency of the incursions increased over the years. And although multiple expeditions from the central court and the surrounding vassal states were sent against these western invaders, the border issues in the west were never solved until the day he died. And after King Lin Xin, the throne went to his brother King Geng Ting, also known as King Kang Ting. He was on the throne even shorter. He was actually on the throne for a very short one year, just one year. But during his one year on the throne, he was able to come up with a effective strategy against ever more audacious western tribes and invaders led by the resurgent Shang people, who as we all know has been the the age-old enemy of the Shang people for ages. What King Kang Ting did was to order the border garrisons to avoid any direct confrontation or conflict with the invaders, instead to allow them to encroach deeper into Shang lands. While at the same time, he organized and deployed elite units of fighting men chosen from across the realm to reinforce the defenders and flank the Qiang positions as they move further away from the borders and deeper into Shang lands. Now when the opportunity arose, King Kang Ting ordered the trap to be sprung and to trap the invaders within Shang lands surrounded and cut off from any route of retreat or any form of reinforcements. Now the invading forces were handily defeated and the leader of the Qiang tribes was captured and executed. Now the Shang people at this time were even able to launch their own counter-offensive into Qiang lands and even conquered parts of them. However, they were not strong enough by this time to finish the job off and annihilate the Qiang people once and for all. They left behind quite an extremely troublesome problem for future Shang kings and this problem actually even extended into future dynasties. So after having accomplished this feat and making this contribution to the kingdom and to the dynasty within his one short year on the throne, King Kang Ting passed away and he was succeeded by his son, King Wu Yi. Now Wu Yi ascended to the throne circa 1147 BCE and he reigned for 35 years and while many historians view him as a kind of a arrogant mini tyrant, one could always argue that he was the only king of the late Shang dynasty that made any positive attempts at reversing the dynasty's ever declining fortunes. Now we mentioned earlier that the fortunes of the Shang people started on the root of decline after the reign of King Zhu Jia. So why did that happen? I mean didn't King Zhu Jia you know bring about the kind of a golden age or a period at least a period of growth in economy and culture? So why did the kingdom's fortune start declining after he passed away? Now in part it was also his fault. Remember he was very well known for his religious reforms and his spiritual reforms of the culture of the Shang people. Yeah that was the root of the problem. Because of this reform and the religious reform that was undertaken by his older brother before him, the theocrats, the oracles, the shamans started to wield more and more power and have more and more influence and sway over the royal court. And it got to the point of you know over the past decades, it got to the point where they were almost threatening to reduce the role of the king to being a mere figurehead in a full theocracy. And that was one of the main reasons for the decline in the Shang dynasty's power and influence over the land. So this was the background, this was the situation under which King Wuyi ascended to the throne. And so faced with internal political threats posed by these theocrats, and the external threats of foreign invasions by the surrounding tribes and the micro-states, King Wuyi, I guess you could say he didn't really have a choice. He had to rule with an iron fist, just to keep a firm grasp on his power and authority as a king. While at the same time he had to leverage every opportunity he had to diminish the power and influence of the oracles and the shamans within his own court. Now to discredit these theocratic powers within the Shang court and to reduce their influence over the populace, King Wuyi actually staged various spectacles to shame them and to insult their gods and to humiliate them, thus reducing their status and their position in the eyes of the people. Now on one occasion, King Wuyi ordered the best craftsman of the land to build this huge wooden statue of a god. He made sure the appearance of this statue would inspire awe, and he made sure to dress it up in rich ceremonial robes. He then announced that he would indulge in games of chances with the god, and he ordered a shaman of the court to play against him as the god's proxy, you might say. The thing is, fearing that winning against the king in public would mean losing his life, this shaman, who was the god's proxy, purposely lost all three games he played against the king. Now having won all three games of chances against the shaman, or rather against a god, albeit it is rigged, the king roared with laughter and pointed straight at the nose of the statue, or nose of the god, and he said, if you truly are a god, how could you have lost to me in games of chances? Are you even worthy of being called a god for being so useless that you could not even win against a mere mortal? After delivering his diatribe against the god, he ordered the ceremonial robes be stripped from the statue, and had his guards publicly flog the statue while hurling abuses and insults to the statue in front of the entire watching crowd, in front of the public. After flogging the statue and hurling all the insults, he ordered his guards to hack this whole statue into pieces, and have all these pieces burned in a bonfire. Although this spectacle caused a great dent in the credibility of the shamans and the oracles, he felt that it was not enough. The people still believed that the gods resided in the heavens above, in the skies, and so to fully discredit the gods, and to fully humiliate them, King Wuyi thought that, or rather felt that, he had to find a way to fight the heavens, or to fight the sky itself. Now it was at this time that one of King Wuyi's close servants came to him and said, now my lord, if you should wish to fight the heavens and the skies, I have a plan. I've got a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel. Now you could fill a container made of animal skins full of blood, then raise it high into the sky, then shoot arrows at it. This would signify you, my lord, shooting at the heavens itself. Now if there are really gods above, they would not allow this insult to pass, and they would not allow the skin to be pierced or the blood to flow. Now having heard this cunning plan, King Wuyi was greatly pleased, and he immediately ordered the necessary implements to be crafted. Soon, before long, a great timber pole, raising high above the ground, was erected in a public square within the capital city. At the top of this pole hung an animal skin bag filled with blood, and the entire court was ordered to turn up to witness the event. Of course, curious people from far and wide, from across the realm, gathered around the square to see what the king was up to this time. Now the gathered crowd, and officials, and the shamans, and the oracles, and basically everyone of import in the land who gathered around to watch, they didn't have to wait long, because soon King Wuyi appeared with a bow in hand and a quiver of arrows around his waist. Now after an announcement declaring his intention and his reasons for shooting the sky and the heavens itself, the king brought up his bow, knocked an arrow, aimed, and let loose. With a whoosh, the skin was pierced, and of course, you know, the skin popped, and raining down this massive spray of blood all over the gathered audience. Now roaring with laughter, once again King Wuyi declared to the gathered audience, today I shot a hole in the heavens itself, but I do not see, nor do I feel any consequences. How powerless, you know, the supposed gods are, and how wretched are the heavens. Now if even the supposedly almighty gods in the heavens itself are so useless, how much more so are the oracles and the shamans who reside among us on this mortal realm. Now after these two major major spectacles, you know, staged specifically for the benefit of the people, and of course, you know, all the political maneuverings in the background, the power and influence of the Kilkrets, you know, the oracles and the shamans, they were greatly reduced and suppressed over time, of course, and King Wuyi was able to finally forcibly, you know, split or separate religion from politics in the Shang court, just like how we say, you know, separation of church and state in today's politics. That's what King Wuyi accomplished at that time, you know, tasked preventing the development of Chinese civilization to go on a tangent into becoming a full theocracy. Now although ancestral worships and other, you know, major worship rituals still held an important significance in Shang society, the scale of these ceremonies were exponentially reduced in size and opulence, and the numbers of human sacrifices from after King Wuyi's reign until the end of the dynasty were significantly reduced, you know, to just about, on average, just about two humans sacrificed a year, you know, from, you know, the peak of, you know, sacrificing hundreds in one ceremony, it was down to just two human sacrifices a year, on average, after Wuyi, all the way until the end of the Shang dynasty. In fact, to a certain extent, the scale and the opulence of the rituals and the number of sacrifices were even smaller than the later Zhou dynasty in certain respects. Now while King Wuyi was systemically diminishing and suppressing the power and influence of the theocrats internally, the Yi tribes to the east of the kingdom were actually growing in strength and pushing their borders even further into the central plains of the realm, you know, encroaching on the sphere of influence of the Shang people. At the same time, you know, there were other new powers, you know, growing and threatening the rule of the Shang people. To the west, there was a Zhifang, which was a new up-and-coming foreign threat, and to the south, there was this Kui state that was also threatening to become too powerful enough to confront or have a full-scale conflict with the Shang people. However, it was not all bad news, because it was also at this time that the Zhou people, led by their legendary leader Tan Fu, moved into the region of the Qi mountains, and they grew in strength as well as a tribe, as a people. And luckily, they were a vassal tribe of the Shang, and they volunteered their men for the fight against all these foreign invaders. So what happened was that King Wuyi mobilized thousands of fighting men with the Zhou people forming the core of this new army, and he launched multiple campaigns against the Zhifang forces in the west. By this time, the battles were actually larger in scale and fiercer in intensity compared to those fought, you know, by King Wuting and Queen Fuhao. The battles by this time were, you know, basically comprised of like thousands of people on each side, definitely more than a thousand. So a thousand, two thousand, three thousand strong armies, you know, fighting on the borderlands. And so after years of relentless expeditions, they were finally able to, you know, put down the Zhifang tribe, and it was documented that in the final battle, they took more than two thousand prisoners of war back to the capital as slaves. Now for their efforts in assisting the Shang people and fighting these victorious battles, King Wuyi granted the lands of Qi to the Zhou people as their fiefdom, and he made Tanfu a duke of the land, or a duke of the Shang court. Now the Zhou people continued to fight for the and they also later helped to quell the Yi threat to the east, and conquered the lands of Gui, of the Gui state to the south. And apparently, I guess the Gui state was actually quite a problem because according to documents that were unearthed, you know, the king, King Wuyi was so frustrated by the incursions of the Gui state in the south that it was said that once they invaded the Gui homeland, King Wuyi actually ordered a massacre of all the civilians of the Gui state. So yeah, they must have done something to really take this guy off, yeah. Now the Zhou tribe, or the Zhou people, they remained loyal and close vessels of the Shang court, or at least they were loyal vessels of King Wuyi. And it was documented that in the 34th year of King Wuyi's reign, their new leader, Duke Jili, was documented as presenting himself to the Shang court to pay homage, or pay respects, and to give tribute to King Wuyi. And the king was said to be very pleased with this audience, and rewarded Duke Jili with more lands for the Zhou people, expanding their five-dom, expanding the size of their five-dom, you know, on top of giving him priceless jade, you know, some of the best horses of the realm, or at least the best horses of the royal stables. Now there are two versions of the story regarding King Wuyi's death. Now the first said that the king, who was very fond of hunts, and at the time he was hunting in the region between the Yellow River and the Wei River, and what happened was that he was struck by lightning and he died there. Yeah, okay, let's put this in perspective. I mean, lightning strikes, let's face it, to be honest, are relatively common phenomena, and they are very probable causes of death, even until today, you know, more so back in the days. However, most scholars and historians agree that this story was most probably conjured up by the disgruntled, you know, oracles and shamans, you know, the theocratic class of that time, and they actually framed it as divine retribution for spending his whole life insulting and humiliating the gods and the heavens. So yeah, this version of the story is not that believable. It was, you know, the religious or the theocratic classes' little way of getting their petty revenge against the man who reduced them from the influencers of history to insignificant bystanders of time, and all they could do was to besmirch the man's name after death. Now, the far more possible, but also far more mundane story is that King Wuyi died on one of the military campaigns to secure the stability of his kingdom, and, you know, basically he was leading an army on an expedition, and when they reached the regions mentioned, the Yellow River and White River region, he died, you know, most probably either by an ambush, or by illness, or simply exhaustion. Yeah, we don't really know, but the location is right, Yellow River, White River region, but the cause of death is most probably just a very mundane cause. He was not, you know, struck down by lightning, yeah. Now, whatever the case was, it's undeniable, let's face it, that King Wuyi drastically changed the direction that Chinese civilization took in terms of development. You know, while spiritual beliefs and superstitious practices were deeply ingrained into the culture of the Shang people, it was also, you know, due to the prominence and the influence of the oracles and the shamans that led to the late Shang dynasty's decline in fortunes. I mean, they were spending so much resources and efforts on these worships and rituals, and then, you know, important state decisions were based on what these omens were saying, what these oracles were telling them, what these shamans were telling them. So yeah, that's not exactly a very good way to run a kingdom or country or any type of organization, I believe. So yeah, King Wuyi's forced separation of church and state, forced separation of religion and government, you know, halted this move of turning a once glorious kingdom into a full theocracy. But, you know, after years of ingrained habit and traditions, it was a little, how do I say this, too little too late, you know. The Shang's decline was unstoppable by the time he came to the throne. But his efforts did ensure that the development of Chinese culture and civilization did not end together with his dynasty, and go down the road of becoming a theocracy. And what happened was that his efforts in splitting, you know, this religion from government and from splitting this religion out from the mainstream of Chinese culture, these efforts ensured that the future development of the Chinese civilization followed more along the lines of respecting the spiritual stuff in personal lives, but never allowing, you know, these esoteric or superstitious practices to influence governance and politics. And that is basically kind of like a core guideline of the Chinese mindset, the Chinese psyche, even until today. I mean, yes, we have a lot of traditions, the Chinese have a lot traditions, and some of them are pretty superstitious and such. But end of the day, we still have this mindset ingrained in us of, yes, we will respect the spiritual, but we will never allow the spiritual to overtake our secular duties and our secular decisions. So yeah, we can thank King Wuyi for helping the Chinese people develop this mindset and this concept, you know, until today. Well, that was a slightly longer video today, but I hope you enjoyed this story and the lessons behind it as much as I enjoyed telling it. And if you did, you know, the best way you can support this channel and support this little project is actually to be a patron of the channel, and you can do so on our Patreon page. The links are available in the description box below. And of course, don't forget to like, sub, comment, and share on this video and this channel. And yeah, I guess that's it for today, and I will see you, you, you, you, you, all you beautiful people out there. I will see you in the next episode.