Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.2, 2013

The Discovery of New Historical Materials and the Confirmation of the “Eastern Origin of the Qin Ethnicity”

(Abstract)

Wang Hongjun

The ancestors of Qin were the Shanggai (Shangyan) people who were relegated by the Zhou people to the Shaanxi and Gansu region. Shangyan was originally the capital and then a “vassal state” of the Shang dynasty. The Shangyan people were of Shang ethnicity. The Shangyan people referred to themselves as the descendants of Shaohao, with the surname of Ying. When the Qin people worshipped Shaohao, they were worshipping their earliest ancestor. It was based on this kinship that the Shang official Feilian, along with Lufu and other Ying-surnamed states of Xu, Huang and Jiang, waged several rebellions against Zhou. After the rebellion in the Shangyan State was put down, the Zhou people conferred the land of Shangyan and some Shangyan people onto Boqin. The Shangyan emperor and some of his subjects were exiled to Pugu of the Qi state, under the care of Qi. The children of Elai and other Shangyan people were exiled to the area between Qian River and Wei River. They were the first comers during the earlier period of the Zhou dynasty. The descendents of Zhongyu who guarded the western border of Zhou were known as “Qin barbarians” in unearthed documents, and the later on Shangyan people were called “Shuqin people,” namely the “ancestors of Qin” in Tsinghua bamboo slips. When the Shangyan descendants became stronger, and when Emperor Xiao of the Zhou Dynasty granted some land of Daluo’s heir son to Feizi, the Ying-surnamed Qin became the bureaucrat and then the vassal, and was granted thousands of miles of land. It finally unified China.