When did the river water turn yellow after flowing through the Loess Plateau? The "river" was called "Yellow River". Obviously, it got its surname from the color of the river water. If the name "Yellow River" began in the Eastern Han Dynasty, Does it mean that the river water was not yellow before this time, and it only started to turn yellow in the Han Dynasty? In fact, as early as the Spring and Autumn Period, there were written records saying that the water in the river was unclear. For example, in "Zuo Zhuan" in the eighth year of Duke Xiang (565 BC), Zi Si of Zheng State quoted "Poetry of Yizhou" and said: "As soon as the river is clear, how long will a person live!" It can be seen that the unclearness of the Yellow River has long been known. But there are also those who say it is clear. For example, the poem "Wei Feng·Fa Tan" in "The Book of Songs" has the lines "The river water is clear and rippled" and "The river water is clear and rippled". This may be a rather special time. Generally speaking, it is turbid. "Erya·Shishui" says: "The river comes out of Kunlun and is white in color. The canal where it merges with the Qianqiu River is yellow in color." It is believed that the yellow color of the river water is due to the fact that there are too many rivers merged into it. This touches on the geology a bit, but not completely. Because it is not attributed to soil erosion problems in the Loess Plateau. However, the yellow color of the river water is so eye-catching that people call it "Yellow River", which shows that its sand content increased during the Han Dynasty. For example, in the middle of the Han Dynasty, a great Sima Shi named Zhang Rong (also known as Zhonggong) said: "The water in the river is so turbid that it is called one stone of water and six buckets of mud." This is a phenomenon that no one had mentioned in the early Han Dynasty. In the middle of the Pre-Han Dynasty, Jingshui was famous for its turbid currents. During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, "a stone of Jingshui was worth several buckets of mud." At that time, Jingshui was diverted to irrigate farmland and also improve the soil. The Jingshui and Weihe river basins are the earliest areas for agricultural development on the Loess Plateau. With this kind of development, the original vegetation was destroyed, soil erosion increased, and the river became increasingly turbid. It probably became conspicuous during the Eastern Han Dynasty, hence the name "Yellow River". The yellow color of the river water is different from that of the Yellow River, but it is also closely related. When did the surname of the Yellow River become "Huang"? In the classics of the Qin, Han and pre-Qin dynasties in my country, the four rivers of Jiang, Huai, He and Han are called the Four Rivers, and "He" is the ancestor of the Four Rivers, and its status is equivalent to that of a doctor. The so-called "du" is said in "Erya" to be "the one who originates from the sea". Refers to a river that has its own source and flows directly into the ocean. The "jiang" in Sidu is the current Yangtze River, the "he" is the current Yellow River, "Huai" is the Huaihe River, and "ji" is the Jishui River. To this day, the Huai River has a history of entering the river many times without directly entering the sea. The lower reaches of the Jishui River have long been buried due to the displacement of the Yellow River bed. The only "Sidu" left are "Jiang" and "He". This "river" was the specific name of the Yellow River before the Qin and Han Dynasties, rather than the general name of the flowing river. Many examples can be found in ancient books of the Pre-Qin Dynasty. For example, "Shang Shu Yu Gong": "The river is led to accumulate stones, as far as Longmen, to Huayin in the south, to the main pillar in the north, and to Mengjin in the east." "The Classic of Mountains and Seas": "The river flows out of Kunlun." "The Book of Songs Wei Feng" : "Who knows that the Weihe River is so wide that a reed hangs it." The same book "Chen Feng" said: "If it eats fish, it must be the river's bream!" "The Analects of Confucius": "The river is not out of the picture," "Mencius": "The river is dangerous. , then moved their people to the east of the river," "The Biography of Zuo in the Spring and Autumn Period": "The river is worshiped." "Guoyu": "The river dried up and the Shang Dynasty died" and so on. The "river" refers specifically to the Yellow River. As for the common name of the river, it was called "Chuan" in pre-Qin classics. For example: "Famous mountains and rivers", "Lands collapse and rivers dry up", "The Master said on the river: 'The dead are like this!'". "Zhou Li·Zhi Fangshi" also uses the word "Chuan" when describing the rivers across the country: "Yangzhou, its rivers are three rivers", "Jingzhou, its rivers are rivers and Han", "Yuzhou, its rivers are "Ying" and "Han". "Luo", "Qingzhou, its Chuanhuai and Si", "Yanzhou", its Chuanhe River and Zi (should be Shuipang, that is, Ji), "Youzhou, its Chuanhe, Zi (should be Shuipang, that is, Ji) ), "Jizhou, its Sichuan and Zhangzhou", "Bingzhou, its Sichuan Hu (no waterside) Chi (i.e. Huchi, also Hutuo), Wuyi", "Yongzhou, its Chuanjing, Zhe (should be waterside) "When the autumn water arrives, hundreds of rivers fill the river" also illustrates this point. "Hundreds of rivers fill the river" means that hundreds of rivers (chuans) flow into the Yellow River (river). During the Pre-Han Dynasty, the Yellow River was still customarily called a river, without the name Yellow River. In the "Historical Records" written during the Zhenghe period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty (92 BC to 89 BC), the word "Yellow River" cannot be found in the entire book. However, some people believe that the word "Yellow River" has appeared as early as the early Western Han Dynasty. They also cite the "Gao Hui Gao Hou Wen Gong Chen Biao" (hereinafter referred to as "Han Biao") in the "Han Biao", which contains the great seal of Liu Bang, the emperor of the Han Dynasty. The hero's "oath of ennoblement" serves as evidence. Because this oath is like this: "Let the Yellow River be like a belt, and Mount Tai be as strong, so that the country will last forever, and love the Miao descendants." It means: Even if the Yellow River becomes a small river like a belt, Mount Tai becomes only the size of a whetstone. , the land that is sealed will exist forever and will be passed down to future generations. (These sentences are in line with the geological point of view: rivers and mountains are constantly changing, rivers will gradually disappear, and mountains will eventually be leveled.) If this evidence is credible, the term "Yellow River" will undoubtedly It appeared in the sixth year of Emperor Gaodi of the Han Dynasty (201 BC). However, as long as you check Sima Qian's "Historical Records" and its "Chronology of Gaozu's Heroes" (hereinafter referred to as the "Historical Table"), you will find that this is not the case. Because for the same thing, that is, the "oath" of the "Oath of Ennoblement" of Liu Bang's great heroes is: "Make the river like a belt, the Taishan Mountain like a strong, the country will be eternally peaceful, and the Miao descendants will be loved." The difference is: No. One sentence is missing the word "黄", ??and the third sentence is "Yongning" instead of "Eternal Life". Obviously, "Han Biao" has modified the "oath".
Regarding this issue, Wang Niansun (1744-1832), a scholar in the Qing Dynasty, had already noticed it. After his research, he proposed that the extra "yellow" character in "Han Biao" was added by later generations. However, according to the author's investigation, in Ban Gu's "Hanshu Geography", the word "Yellow River" has also been used in the explanation of "Changshan County Yuanshi County": "Jushui first flows through the spring valley from the west mountain of Zhongqiu, and reaches east to Tangyang entered the Yellow River. "Tangyang is now Xinhe County, Hebei Province. This Yellow River was the river course before the Yellow River was diverted in the late Western Han Dynasty. Therefore, the person who changed "making the river like a belt" to "making the Yellow River like a belt" was probably Ban Gu himself, not someone further back. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Yellow River began to have the surname Huang, and the word "河" gradually replaced the status of "Chuan" and was used as a general name for rivers. "Book of the Later Han·Biography of Li Yan" contains poems written by Li Yan. There are sentences like "Han Xin fishing in the meander of the river" in the poem. Li Xian (son of Wu Zetian), who annotated "Book of the Later Han" in the Tang Dynasty, noticed that Han Xin fished in the Huai River under the city of Huaiyin, and did not fish in the Yellow River, so he used "river, the general name of water." This is certainly the understanding of the Tang people, and it seems to be in line with the reality of the Eastern Han Dynasty. From "River" to "Yellow River", there is a transformation process. Can it be considered that it started in the Eastern Han Dynasty and was determined in the Tang Dynasty? In the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the word "Yellow River" was often used in literature. For example, in the "Ode to the Great River" written by the Western Jin Dynasty writer Cheng Gongsui, there is a sentence: "To see the magnificence of hundreds of rivers, nothing can be more beautiful than the Yellow River"; in Liang Dynasty Fan Yun's "Poetry of Crossing the Yellow River" ", taking the Yellow River as the title of the poem. Li Daoyuan, a scholar of the Northern Wei Dynasty, also used the word "Yellow River" many times in the "River" note in his famous work "Shui Jing Zhu", but the word "River" was used more often. By the Tang Dynasty, people often used "Yellow River" and "he" as the general name for rivers.
Li Bai's "The water of the Yellow River comes up from the sky and rushes to the sea and never returns," and Wang Zhihuan's "The sun ends behind the mountains, and the Yellow River flows into the sea," both of which are about women and children