Ancient Chinese Warfare (3 page)

Although the
Shih Chi’s
account has traditionally provided the basis for popular portrayals, several other texts from the late Warring States and early Han preserve fragments that are often employed to amplify the depiction. For example,
Chuang-tzu
states: “Being unable to attain
to complete Virtue (and thereby persuade him to submit), the Yellow Emperor engaged Ch’ih Yu in battle in the wilds of Chuo-li. The blood flowed for a hundred
li
.”
²²
The
Hsin Shu
graphically asserts that “the Yellow Emperor implemented the Tao but Yen Ti did not obey, so they engaged in battle in the wilds of Chuo-li. The blood spilt was great enough to float a pestle.”
²³
A late T’ang dynasty work paints an even more melodramatic portrait: “The Yellow Emperor and Ch’ih Yu engaged in battle in the wilds of Chuo-li. Ch’ih Yu created a great fog so that the armies were all confused. The Yellow Emperor then ordered Feng-hou to fashion a needle instrument in order to discriminate the four quarters and subsequently captured Ch’ih Yu.”
²⁴

Another version of the battle appears in the
Canon of Mountains and Rivers
, a former Han dynasty compilation of late Warring States material.
²⁵
In discussing a “woman wearing blue clothes” who was sometimes sighted in the Ta-huang-pei area, the narrative notes: “Ch’ih Yu fabricated weapons and attacked the Yellow Emperor. The Yellow Emperor then ordered the winged dragon Ying to assault him in the wilds of Chi-chou.
²⁶
Ying Lung gathered up the waters, whereupon Ch’ih Yu asked Feng Po (Wind Duke) and Yü Shih (Rain Commander) to unleash fierce winds and rain. The Yellow Emperor then had the Heavenly female deity Pa (who wore blue clothes) sent down and the rain ceased. The Yellow Emperor subsequently slew Ch’ih Yu. However, Pa was unable to re-ascend to Heaven and wherever she dwelt it never rained.”

This version clearly reflects a clash of two regional cultures, the central Lungshan and Tung Yi. Each of the combatants strove to re-create familiar topographical conditions for which their long-accustomed tactics would be more suitable. If, as traditionally believed, the Yellow Emperor originally inhabited the comparatively dry central plains area where mobility was relatively unlimited, his forces would have found Ch’ih Yu’s damp, marshy (southeastern) environment inconvenient, if not fatal. The winged dragon was called upon to evaporate the water, which then formed clouds, but when Ch’ih Yu counteracted that measure, the Yellow Emperor called down celestial forces, essentially prefiguring his great Heavenly power in later Huang-Lao and Taoist religious thought. Rather than some ethereal figure, this Heavenly woman (also known as the “drought demon”) was so powerful that any area in which she
stayed would invariably dry out. To prevent future calamities among the people, the Yellow Emperor reportedly shifted her dwelling place north of the Red River.

A number of other threads in the Ch’ih Yu tradition have implications for both ancient and traditional military history in China. The conflict supposedly occurred about 2600 BCE, the incipient period of Chinese bronze metallurgy, and Ch’ih Yu is closely associated with discovering, or at least exploiting, copper’s ductility to fabricate new metal weapons, justifying his inclusion as one of eight Chou era spirits under the designation of Weapons Master.
²⁷
A paragraph in the
Kuan-tzu
on conserving natural resources for the state’s benefit reflects the underlying premise that multiplying the number of weapons had led to increased carnage:
²⁸

The chapter actually begins with Kuan-tzu, Duke Huan’s famous minister, asserting that copper is found in 467 of China’s 5,371 named mountains and iron in 3,609. Although the major deposits that would eventually be exploited by the Shang are located in the southeast, the provinces of Shandong and Shanxi (in the east and west respectively) both had limited reserves and would have been appropriate sites for the development of metallic weapons. Somewhat more fancifully, Ch’ih Yu is sometimes depicted as having a bronze head, and the drums in his army are similarly said to have been fashioned from bronze, vivid embodiments of his metallic nature as well as the metaphysical basis that
allowed the Yellow Emperor to employ the magical properties of oxhide drums to vanquish the metallic ones.
³⁰

Many legendary accounts that emphasize Ch’ih Yu’s fierceness and brutality point out that he coerced dissident groups into participating in his revolt through the creation of shackles and widespread use of five harsh punishments. His rebelliousness and mythical aspects were further exaggerated over the centuries. Imperial era tales thus describe him as extremely ugly, even abnormal, in various ways ranging from being marked by a dark red or black complexion to having the horns and feet of an ox or possessing six arms. Ch’ih Yu was supposedly so fierce that his name alone was sufficient to terrify the general populace, and the Yellow Emperor supposedly pretended he wasn’t dead in order to employ his image to frighten the perverse.

Paradoxically, Ch’ih Yu’s fierceness outweighed his brutality—or perhaps the two have a certain martial appeal in combination—because even today the Miao of southern China continue to worship Ch’ih Yu as their ancestor.
³¹
Furthermore, across history he has not only been highly esteemed but also inexplicably seen as one of the chief progenitors of the Hua-Hsia culture and the true embodiment of courage.
³²
Liu Pang, founder of the Han, venerated both the Yellow Emperor and Ch’ih Yu as war spirits. He continued to be revered in the Han, recent People’s Republic of China (PRC) theoretical publications have advocated emulating him, and some Koreans also continue to recognize him as an ancestor.
³³

Finally, in a ritual expression of magical thinking, Ch’ih Yu was supposedly dismembered after being defeated by the Yellow Emperor, perhaps even rendered into a meat paste and eaten, thereby symbolically vanquishing him and absorbing his courageous spirit. Two recently recovered bamboo texts dating to the late Warring States period include accounts of this primeval conflict.
³⁴
In one called “Five Rectifications” (“Wu Cheng”), the Yellow Emperor is depicted as trying to impose order on the world and eliminate warfare but being advised that anger and the impulses of blood and
ch’i
must first be eliminated. When his measures and (more important) Virtue fail to bring about the desired order, he is compelled to accept the painful lesson that even though warfare is baleful, failing to resort to it when necessary equally results
in failure. He therefore bestirs himself, engages Ch’ih Yu in battle, and captures him.

A second account, found in “Rectifying Chaos” (“Cheng Luan”), describes the ritualized punishments he inflicted upon Ch’ih Yu. The Yellow Emperor “peeled off his skin, made an archery target, and had his men shoot at it. Those who hit it the most received rewards. He cut off his hair and arrayed it below Heaven calling it Ch’ih Yu’s banner. He stuffed his stomach to make a football and had the men kick it, the most successful again being rewarded. He turned his body into mincemeat, mixed it with bitter salts, and had all under Heaven consume it.” Although the ostensible intent of these brutal punishments was frightening the realm into accepting his prohibitions and vision of order, such behavior dramatically contradicts the vaunted image of a paragon of Virtue and legendary Sage who held sway over the realm through righteous charisma alone.

Premised upon the existence of the Yellow Emperor, Red Emperor, and Ch’ih Yu, traditionally oriented historians continue to synthesize cohesive views of the Yellow Emperor’s battles. Before considering the archaeological data and demythologizing these tales as the product of Warring States thought, it may prove informative to summarize one influential twentieth-century interpretation that asserts historical evidence supports the veracity of these traditional versions despite a cascade of prominent works that firmly deny these titanic figures ever existed except as tribal totems.
³⁵

First, it is assumed that Ch’ih Yu and Yen Ti were the same person and that the earliest accounts portray a single series of battles rather than sequential struggles between the Yellow Emperor and two different antagonists. Second, these clashes apparently arose out of a fundamental conflict between the “agriculturalists,” who were descended from Shen Nung, honored even today in most temples as the progenitor of agricultural and medicinal knowledge, and members of the Yellow Emperor’s clan, who were distinguished by their ability to exploit such technological innovations as the chariot and bow. Because of the inherently disproportionate strengths of these fundamentally dissimilar orientations, the Yellow Emperor’s victory was inevitable. Bows and arrows would have enabled his forces to direct missile fire onto their enemies
before engaging, whereas Ch’ih Yu had to rely upon shock weapons despite being a skilled weapons fabricator. In addition, the Yellow Emperor may have exploited pipes and drums, two of his other inventions, to stimulate the troops’ morale before the engagement and direct them during the battle.
³⁶

Tactically, the Yellow Emperor was active and aggressive and learned as he proceeded. Having been cast in the role of a defender, someone protecting his home territory against brutal invaders, he also enjoyed the psychological advantage derived from “moral superiority.”
³⁷
Conversely, the blatantly aggressive Ch’ih Yu exhausted himself in assaulting numerous other states before undertaking the final expeditionary campaign, allowing the Yellow Emperor to fashion a preemptive defense by moving to establish himself at Chuo-li and intercept Ch’ih Yu. (Whether the Yellow Emperor’s troops arrived first and had an opportunity to rest and improve their position or were thrown pell-mell into the conflict remains unknown.) Given his much-praised sagacity, they should have been fighting upon chosen ground and therefore enjoyed some sort of positional advantage, just as Sun-tzu later advocated.

It is also believed that the Yellow Emperor’s clan benefited from improved transport because he had created the
ch’e
, a general term for wheeled vehicles. (Even without chariots, another invention often credited to the Yellow Emperor—boats and oars—would have been useful in crossing the Yellow River.)
³⁸
Moreover, he reputedly established a rudimentary bureaucracy that included an office for military affairs that was initially held by Li Mu, traditionally regarded as China’s first minister of war. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of this reconstruction is the contention that the battle arose not simply over regional hegemony, but over natural resources, apparently an inland salt production area near Chieh-ch’ih in the western province of Shanxi. Ch’ih Yu is therefore identified as the charismatic leader of the Chiu Li (Nine Li), who were reportedly centered in the area of modern Nanyang in Henan province, and thus as Yen Ti’s descendant as well as the earliest ancestor of the famous Chiang clan that would figure prominently in Chou military history.

Many other theories have been formulated to account for the scope and nature of what has traditionally been deemed China’s first war,
though always on the assumption that the extant traditional accounts preserve an essential kernel of facts about events that have been verbally transmitted, often in highly circumscribed geographic regions, from antiquity.
³⁹
The Yellow Emperor’s traditional association with central China is not unchallenged, and arguments over their origins and respective loci of activity sometimes result in a virtual refighting of the original clash by modern partisans. For example, one analyst has argued that the Red Emperor’s clan arose in the central plains area but the Yellow Emperor’s clan in the Shandong and identifies them with the Tung Yi,
⁴⁰
whereas another envisions the Yellow and Red Emperors as both having emerged during the P’ei-li-kang and Yangshao cultures and being active in the central Yellow river valley.
⁴¹
A variant of the Eastern interpretation sees the Yellow Emperor’s clan as arising in the east and defeating the Red Emperor’s clan to their west before assimilating them and moving into the central area themselves.
⁴²

Ch’ih Yu is sometimes seen as the leader of the Eastern Yi centered about Shandong rather than of the Miao in the south, and the conflict is understood as having arisen over grazing and agricultural lands in the central region of China, one in a series over rights and leadership among the Yellow Emperor, Agricultural Emperor (Shen Nung), Ch’ih Yu, and Fu Sui.
⁴³
Ch’ih Yu is also thought to have headed an alliance of eighty-one or other similarly large number of tribes that seem to have devoted themselves to martial activities and developed new weapons, possibly even of primitive bronze, under his clan’s leadership.
⁴⁴
They were therefore able to supplant the Yellow Emperor throughout the “nine corners” of his domain—the eight directions and the center—the number nine being an indefinite reference for “everywhere” in ancient China. In contrast, because the Yellow Emperor could only muster his own clan and five others, his forces would have been far fewer, accounting for his initial defeats.