Ba (state)
The Ba state ( Chinese 巴 國 , Pinyin Bāguó ) was a political entity in China at the time of the Warring States .
history
In contrast to Qin and Shu, the Ba Kingdom was not a firmly established state, but a loose association of tribes. According to the Book of the Later Han ( 後 漢書 / 后 汉书 , Hòu Hànshū ), the tribes Fan ( 樊 ), Sheng ( 瞫 ), Xiang ( 相 ) and Zheng ( 鄭 ) had come together under the leadership of the Ba tribe . The Pu ( 濮 ), Zong ( 賨 ), Ju ( 苴 ), Gong ( 龔 ), Nu ( 奴 ), Rang ( 獽 ), Yi ( 夷 ) and Dan ( 蜑 ) were added.
Among these tribes, Wuxiang (of Ba) won a competition and became the first ruler there as Lin of Ba. This will be a written legend .
A "Land Ba" has already been mentioned on Shang - oracle bones ; but the first certain mention of Ba is in the year 703 BC. Dated as an ally of the Chu state . The people of Ba were connected to Chu through trade and marriage transactions, and they also hired themselves as mercenaries. These arms services were not without problems: Ba mercenaries besieged and destroyed in 676 or 675 BC. The capital of Chu.
Since the 5th century BC BC the alliance area of the Ba included the east of the Sichuan basin and the adjacent mountains up to the valley of the Han . The tribes lived more from hunting and fishing than from agriculture and had no irrigation. They probably developed their own writing system: in the countries of Ba and Shu, bronzes were found showing pictograms and totem motifs which, with the exception of the symbol for “king” ( 王 ), do not match Chinese bronze inscriptions . Some scholars postulated a relationship with the Yi writing system .
The first capital of the Ba in Sichuan was Yicheng in Hubei , where the Ba settled. But there were other political centers: Pingdu , Zhi , Jiangzhou , Dianjiang and Langzhong .
316 BC It was subjugated by the Qin state together with the Shu state .
See also
literature
- Steven F. Sage: Ancient Sichuan and the Unification of China. State University of New York Press, Albany NY 1992, ISBN 0-7914-1038-2 .