thank you for the video, ancient china from 2000bce-200ce distinctly feels a very under covered subject in english considering how insanely vast it is and how much it ended up distinctly influencing the world. It's a real rabbit hole.
Agreed. Some years ago I picked up a book on China in a remaindered and 2nd hand book shop in the UK and realised that all I knew about Chinese history and culture was a bit about the opium wars.( Not a great moment in British history though they succeeded in forcing China to continue producing opium. I forget why. )
I like watching this guy. He's like the professor character in a hollywood adventure movie who helps the main character. In this movie they're trying to prevent the bad guy from collecting all nine cauldrons from ancient tombs and become the ruler of China.
@@philipbailey9670Yeah, he gets fridged midway through Act 2 just as the hero is starting to waver in his commitment to recovering the cauldrons. The sad killing of the Professor steels our hero’s nerves and he determines to defeat the villain and recover the cauldrons. With his dying breath, the Professor tells the hero that he deliberately mis-translated one of the characters in the sacred scroll as saying “North” instead of “South” and has sent the villain off 200 miles in the wrong direction. That might just be enough of a delay for the hero to get to the real location of the cauldrons… [cue theme music]
Lovely video and I love this is being talked about!!! Spring and Autumn era history really should be studied more A tiny context: The warlord was more than a warlord at this point. By this point the Zhou kings were figureheads and all of the realm knows about it, the Spring and Autumn era was an age of warring feudal lords, and the southern, only partially Sinicized state of Chu was so brazen it declared itself a kingdom and its ruler (who were once only Viscounts of Zhou) it's own kings. The warlord you mentioned eventually became one of the strongest rulers of this period~ King Zhuang of Chu, who was one of the 5 Hegemons of this era. Him vaguely invoking this forbidden item, which was long associated with the ruling royal Ji clan of Zhou was essentially toying (brazenly toying) with the idea of seizing the throne for himself. ie, an egregious playful flex of the highest treason under the veil of a harmless question. Wang's rebuke was legendary, and amount to saying that even if the physical (sacred) item was lost, it was inconsequential, because the legitimacy and the internalized legitamacy (in hearts and minds of the common folk and other lords) will never be displaced. And those who brutally seized corporeal objects- including the throne itself cannot *really* unseat the rightful owner of that throne. Zhou was the dynasty that first raised the idea of "Mandate of Heaven" and was consecrated by that ethos btw.
Thanks for elaborating, I think Prof. Miano said it had been a "minister", or a "ministerial". Possibly the question was asked several times? But indeed, it was self-proclaimed Wang Zhuang who (also?) raised the question while mobilizing his armies, and he was recognized at the Zhou court as merely Zi Zhuang, a small viscount. We should also recognize that history books speak of Five hegemons, there were approximately ten hegemons over the course of two centuries. Chinese historians just disputed which 5 were the greatest (it had to be five for historical harmony reasons).
For those who are interested, there's actually a continuation of the futile search for the missing cauldrons. Like Prof. Miano said in the video, the nine cauldrons were powerful symbols for rulers who wished to legitimise their right to rule. A newly formed state could only be viewed as the legitimate successor of the former if the new ruler got hold of the nine cauldrons. Since the Qin empire was established after the destruction of the Zhou, emperor Qin Shihuang needed the nine cauldrons to symbolically legitimise his right to rule. Without the cauldrons, Qin Shihuang risked being viewed as a usurper, thus undermining his power. In order to solve this quandary, Qin Shihuang ordered the making of a state seal from the legendary Heshi jade (which the Qin was in possession at that time), carved with an inscription that stated "Having received the Mandate from the Heaven, may the emperor live a long and prosperous life". This Imperial Seal, named the Heirloom Seal of the Realm, carved from a legendary jade, was made the new symbol of Mandate of the Heaven, ultimately legitimised Qin Shihuang's right to rule. Unlike the cumbersome nine bronze cauldrons, the Imperial Seal was mobile, thus making the transfer of ownership easier. After Liu Bang established the Han dynasty to replace the short-lived Qin dynasty, the last emperor of Qin handed the Imperial Seal to Liu Bang, symbolising the transfer of the Mandate from the Qin to the Han. The Imperial Seal was passed on despite changing dynasties and passed through at least six different Chinese dynasties, spanning roughly one millennia before it was lost during turbulent fall of the Tang dynasty. Like the nine bronze cauldrons, the whereabouts of the Imperial Seal became a mystery.
I think of it like this: It’s possible the cauldrons were the devices which one would use to collect taxes in actual metal. A 7ton cauldron had the space to load and melt s7 tons worth of ore… All 9 states had 1 official cauldron cast and added to the project of the joint govt. this symbolizes the states each willingly contributing said state weight in *collectable” tax😢. The weight of the vessel is literal, meaning with that specific cauldron you could physically melt that much more ore (collect that much more in tax.) the “mandate of heaven” means u can collect the most tax in ore because u get to use all 9. Am I able to convey what I’m trying to here? The cauldron is a brilliant idea here!
I’m totally in favor of more ancient Chinese history! It’s so little talked about in the west and it’s very fascinating with a rich culture spanning thousands of years. It’s really interesting!
Another excellent video. While you're researching Chinese history, I just heard about the Longyou Caves and immediately went to go look to see if you'd done a video on it. When you're considering what to do next as a video topic, I'd love to hear your thoughts on those caves. I'm skeptical that they're entirely hand-made, but it's hardly impossible so I don't know. There's a lot of nonsense and conspiracies around them, so it's hard to find anything out about them as a layman without encountering bullshit artists, but the uniformity, consistency and sheer quantity of the diagonal cuts on every surface makes me think power tool.
As always, Prof. Miano, a very interesting and thought provoking video. I have a Korean version of chinese bronze tripod. I rescued it and some other bronze ritual objects in 1972 that were to be melted down for government projects. The tripod is an incense burner and the cover has slits in I-Ching trigrams, and it is fairly heavy. The Koreans are sometimes said to be more Confucian than the Chinese, but though there is influence, these items could be related to Confucian and/or the native shamanic religion. I'm now thinking of donating these things to Boston's MFA. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, I haven't thought about such things for years!
I find it interesting that the designs on some bronze objects from that period superficially resemble Mesoamerican ones. Just don't tell Graham Hancock.
I think the record said after emperor Qin unified China, he sends soldiers to bring him these nine cauldrons, however 2 cauldrons were lost during transport, and they are currently at the bottom of some river. Even if the other 7 gets destroyed over the years, those 2 at the bottom of the rivers will still be there and waiting to be discovered. Looking for something at the bottom of river lost over 2000 years ago is no easy job.
Thank you for this lecture! I can only imagine how difficult it is to interpret 2000+ years old writings that have tons of meaning "between the lines".
@@danyelnicholas @danyelnicholas Do you think they could have been kept as burial goods, or melted down to support a struggling central government, or is it entirely undecided at this point?
Interesting! I hadn't heard of the caldrons. The caldrons were clearly symbolic objects. An aspect of the symbolism you didn't touch on was military strength. The ability to product a large caldrons implies the ability to produce a large number of bronze swards.
The quad cauldron at the end, owned by a woman, makes sense to be 4 feet (a yin number as 3 is a yang number). THe number of cauldron available to different intentions is also important. Why 9 for the king? That goes back to the Luoshu magic square, the spacial paradigm deriving from the bagua. This model can actually be seen in the Atomium of Luxembourg. 9 cauldrons allow for a sacrificial fire in all 9 realms of the Luoshu. Qigong practice uses 9 rings that constrict the flow of energy. It can also be considered to be associated with the 9 cauldrons as well; the first 3 are called wells in foot, knee and pelvic floor and reflect the Earth trinity. The hips, belly and heart reflect the trinity of Man in the Middle, and the heart is the throne for the Emperor. Throat, face and crown are the trinity of Heaven, or 3 heavens of Sky, Space and North Star.
One dimension of the Ting I don't think you touched on was its use as a food vessel. This is mentioned in the text of the Yi Jing, Hexagram 50, whose subject is the form and use of the Ting as a vessel for preparing food. This suggests to me (I am not a scholar) that the Ting signified not only a right to perform sacrifices, but the ability of a ruler to provide for his subordinates.
One of the interesting things about Skinwalker ranch is that one of the underworld beings looks exactly like and american indian. This isn't coincidence. In my opinion most ancient humans got thier cultural forms from thier interaction with spirit beings. Yoshi's men for example dress exactly like ancient chinese warriors because the japanese are emigrees from china. Notice the association of the cauldrons with the supernatural. Containing 'things' (representations of demons for example) within the cauldrons apparrently 'constrained' thier local influence and allowed for a more a peaceful existence. Certainly a tool an ancient dynasty would find handy for maintaining thier influence. You should look up the traditional meaning of the word cauldron. The pop culture depictions are probably more or less accurate. It would have been a roiling mass of captive spiritual potentials (represented by individual 'things')...a set of tools for a different era from which something specific could be pulled to influence local people, events or other things. This is what troubles me about modern academia. The actual explanations are automatically discounted. The real purpose behind the money religion called science is too become the proprietors of knowledge. This is why pharmaceuticals cant be from natural sources. CERN is the perfect example. Those explanations were had centuries ago. The real truth is more like a cauldron of potential as opposed to 'brownian' particals bumping into another in a soup of nested frequencies
Prof. Miano, you straightened out that we can't know if the legends around the tripods are true; but I can't remember a passage where you stated that the entire Xia dynasty is legendary, including the founder Yü the great. So I wanted to point that out: Xia is legendary and aside from "historical" accounts written 1000 years after the fact, we can know little about them. Archaeology has only proven Chinese history up to the middle of the Shang dynasty. It is a prescribed party line in the PRC that China's history (as a centralized, ordered state) reaches back 5000 years, as explored by the XSZ-chronology project; and the Erlitou site has been "identified" as the Xia capital... but that is CPC party truth. The first proven Chinese king dates from ~3200 years back. Or has there been a breakthrough in the last 15 years that I'm not aware of?
Do you accept the Xia dynasty as historically established? I've been under the impression that it's still largely considered legendary and unsupported by archaeological evidence.
@@WorldofAntiquityrather, it is down in the earth. The documents preserved in the Shu Jing and Yi Li are so detailed that it seems only hard core anti Chinese propagandists still deny the Xia. On the sites of the pre Shang Erlitou culture the earliest Ding cauldrons were found. The only questionable thing is the size: Earlier bronze vessels tended to be rather delicate as compared to the mammoth 后母戊鼎 of the Shang, but then again, their virtue might have been more splendid at the time.
Fascinating story. It sounds to me like the weight of the cauldrons were linked to metallurgy. Just like in the Roman Empire (and elsewhere) in times when the Empire, or the Emperor was 'weak' or 'corrupt' the coinage would be debased by the inclusion of high amounts of non-precious metals, which made the coins impure and 'light'. In contrast, when the governance was 'good' the coinage would be made with much more purity and therefore be 'heavy'. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin/arsenic, and so the metallurgy could be manipulated by the Emperor to reflect the current economical situation; wealthy ('virtuous') = heavy bronze made of high purity ores. Impoverished ('corrupt') = a lighter alloy made from inclusion of dross ores to bulk out the material. That would be my best guess.
Due to Chinese influence, the Nguyễn dynasty in Vietnam also created their own Nine Tripod Cauldrons, which can still be seen in the imperial city of Huế.
China, Nine Tripod Cauldrons: The Records of the Grand Historian recount that once Yu the Great had finished taming the floods that once engulfed the land, he divided the territory into the Nine Provinces and collected bronze in tribute from each one. Thereafter he cast the metal into nine large tripod cauldrons.[6] Legend says that each ding weighed around 30,000 catties equivalent to 7.5 tons. However, the Zuo Zhuan or Commentary of Zuo, states that the nine tripod cauldrons were cast by Yu the Great's son, Qi of Xia, the second Xia king, and it was he who received the tributes of bronze from the Nine Provinces.[7][8] The Xia Shu (夏書) section of the Book of Documents contains the Yu Gong or "Tribute of Yu" that describes the rivers and mountains of the Nine Provinces. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Tripod_Cauldrons
Cauldrons, grails, swords, seals & spears are all magical artifacts indicating the divine right to rule (of whoever possessed them) from across different cultures. Fascinating stuff mythologically & archaeologically/historically.
You are definitely NOT ancient, in fact you are bloody hot 🔥 Your accent gives me goose bumps and your videos are really informative and bring history to life for an ancient language learner but non historian! Thank you so much for sharing your work with us, Rob from Cymru in the United Kingdom 😍
🙃leprechaun and “Pot O’ Gold” comes to mind with this video 🤔 gold in those days wouldn’t have been the pure-ish versions we have today and probably were heavy in bronze and vice verse (all golden metals probably had that green hue to them that copper leaves behind and that copper is found in all traces of antiquated civilizations im aware of)…. to the taller northerner (Norse and Sous or north & south), the bronze cauldrons origins would have come from “a far off land, full of magical elf or fae like beings, shorter than the average man”… when you consider the mythos to its location speaking of another location, it makes SOME of the myths a bit more relatable ❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥 as for those 9 cauldrons, it would explain the connection to “magic use” when taking the mythos with fact…. As for survival of humanity and the elements of nature 🤷♀️ that’s a lonnnnng time … water might have “memory” but also it really beats the hell outta everything it gets it’s droplets on… and rains everywhere else 😘❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥 Big Love all ways ❤️🔥always
it would make sense if the cauldrons are created to be filled by tribute from each province. if they were not filled then they were light which could have been interpreted as a failure of the government (mandate of heaven). Either by lacking the authority or the power to collect the tribute.
Great Video..... And given these times we're in U.S senators would do well to remember and possibly learn some of the ancient Chinese history and for that matter their ancient diplomacy as the Chinese are a very learned nation and have been for thousands of years so a little more respect should be shown to them geopolitically,especially when coming from a Nation like the United States which is nothing more than a footnote in the annals of history.
Never much got into social media. I only have two, RU-vid which I like and Facebook where I have five friends who are real life friends. Twitter always seemed silly to me.
Does this have to do with the monks who pick up the hot caldrons with their forearms so the design on the caldrons burns a scar on their arms signifying something?
I doubt such important ritual objects would be melted down for coinage, though perhaps they might have been destroyed to prevent them from falling into the hands of a rival warlord or Qin Shi Huang himself. Assuming they ever existed.
I am inclined to believe Chinese history in many cases. Obviously they all embellish but still, they're pretty accurate. If they're ever found I would bet they're somewhere around the Terracotta Warriors. Seems like something a huberis emperor would bury with them.
Awesome channel, great video. One thing.....your ceiling fan reflected in your 100k RU-vid aware is incredibly distracting from you. This is a bad thing since you are an excellent lecturer. It could just be me. Oooo.....shiny thing over there...... Since I'm being honest, for everyone who is on camera on RU-vid, braces and teeth whitening. The above professor has white enough teeth, but does need braces. It's probably an American thing. Mostly braces and/or teeth whitening is a European issue.
Nine cauldron in Chinese is call 九鼎，九 （nine） 鼎（cauldron） ，Chinese alphabets or should I call it words are one of the oldest language in the world which is still using by billions people even now. This character 鼎 （Ding）first appeared in the 《ancient oracle bone inscriptions 》（most on turtle shell）of the 商 （Shang）Dynasty, and its ancient character resembles a container tripod with an eye (目) 鼎 in it means animal head or human head. 鼎 Ding is an ancient utensil for cooking food. In ancient times, 鼎 Ding was not only used for cooking food, but also a ritual vessel used for offering to the （天）sky or heaven, and the ancient emperor would sacrifices live stocks or enemy captives which is the Qiang people (羌人) which the shang conquered at the west, the shang pray to the heaven 天 during the annual Harvest or dry season in ancestral temples. 《we modern chinese still pray to the heaven and ancestry during Lunar new year 》 Ding 鼎 is very big and heavy, so "ding" also means grand, For example when chinese describe person who is famous we said ：他ta［he］ 就jiu 是shi［is］ 鼎鼎dingding 大da名ming ［very famous］的de 王wang 先sian 生sheng ［Mr Wang］，鼎鼎大名＝Name as big as those Cauldron. Or 鼎盛晚宴，Ding sheng wan yan，means the Grand Dinner. And also if anyone wanna know why the shang 商人 people 献祭 sacrifice 羌人 Qiang people to the heaven? Because the shang was with war to the WEST，the Qiang people羌人 ， and the ancestor of the 周人 zhou dynasty were the mercenaries hired by the Shang 商， later the Shang dynasty 商朝 was also defeated by the 周 zhou， which is the mercenary they hired. Which started 周朝 zhou Dynasty。 If anyone interested in ancient Chinese history you can leave me a comment asking me anything, I'm a student of ancient Chinese history many years ago, now I'm just a ordinary businessman.
Spring & Autumn did not mention "nine" cauldrons, and the corresponding Zuo commentary did not say "nine" either. It was Sima Qian's History that borrowed the Chu king's mouth to have mentioned "nine". In the late Zhou Dynasty, many writings were philosophical discourse, not a discourse based on historic facts. In the Han Dynasty, a lot of forgeries were made to make up for the loss of literature after the book burning. If you buy the stuff in the Han Dynasty books, you will never get the truth. Not even the most distinguished Sinologists could tell this. The wise persons are numbered or could have already passed away. Because of this confusion, it is not worthwhile to debate with today's Sinologists who in my opinion cannot change their narratives after believing in the Han Dynasty forgeries all their lives. Every time, a dynasty was changed, there happened the pillage, with the precious metals scooped up and tombs dug up. In this line, the Xia and Shang ritual instruments were both pillaged, and most likely remolded into new three-legs or four legs' things. From what I read from the history, the Shang cauldron, just one, was most likely preserved in the Song state after Shang's demise. The cauldrons in Luoyang could be something else. There was a Qin king who lifted a cauldron and died of wound from the drop of the cauldron. It probably tells you the approximate weight of similar cauldrons in Luoyang. You don't want to believe in the forgery book that said this many people spent this effort to haul the cauldron to Luoyang from the Shang's capital. The Shang city was plundered, and no way you could expect some Shang cauldron to be safeguarded at the pillaged site and then hauled to Luoyang that took many years to be built into a fort from the ground up. Do I make sense to you?
@@danyelnicholas Don't know who else is among "us" you mentioned here. As far as I know, late Professor Nivison and his students all believed in the forgery book that was called the contemporary copy of the bamboo annals, and fully took the Qin Dynasty book Lüshi Chun Qiu for granted. The bamboo book, that could be of the same age as the Zuo commentary from the 3rd century B.C. or earlier, could be original when first dug up in the 3rd century but was then lost, and today's copy was forged. Lüshi Chun Qiu was much older and had more credibility than the Han Dynasty books; however, it was what you called an encyclopedia book that just put together various philosophy thoughts of the time, and those philosophies used lots of metaphors, allegories and fables, and hence should not be taken as true history but some discourse. People today don't know how to read China's history for three things here: one, you can't take Lüshi Chun Qiu as history as Nivison did; second, you cannot take the bamboo book as the credible source because it was lost and forged; and three, you need to know the reason why Sima Qian's Histories had errors versus the Zuo commentary. The reason is: the Zuo commentary was not read by SIma Qian as today's people though. Where was the Zuo commentary from then? The only explanation is that it was among a batch of old books discovered from Confucius' mansion, or a cart of books donated by a Han king to Emperor Wudi, but at the time of Sima Qian, this Zuo commentary was not accepted by the imperial academy. Because the academy used the orally-prepared Gong Yang and Gu Liang commentaries. You want to check out the texts here ctext.org Among the classics, Book of Poetry, and Chu Ci could be one hundred percent taken as original and before the Qin and Han dynasties and the rest compiled in the Han times, with some more credible but most not: Ancient Classics +Book of Poetry +Shang Shu +Book of Changes +The Rites of Zhou +Chu Ci +Yili +Shan Hai Jing +Jiaoshi Yilin +Jingshi Yizhuan +Shi Shuo The Book of Tites could have some validity of being old, but like as old as the early Zhou times. This could be seen in the "numbers" like Zhou using the three-leg tripods and Shang four-leg cauldrons, like 3,5,7,9 for different levels of rankings, like October, November and December for different dynasties' start of a new year. You just need to know ancient Chinese did not fixate on the intercalary method till the middle of the 1st millennium B.C. This meant the various rites-related talks could be late into the millemmium just like the way the first month of a year was set. There were recent archaeological excavations, such as Excavated texts +Guodian +Mawangdui Guodian texts, like Lüshi Chun Qiu and Qu Yuan's Tian Wen, were influenced by the varied philosophies of the times, and could be used as a yardstick to filter the Han forgeries philosophy-wise. And, philosophy-wise, today's people are mostly misled by the so-called Taoism which was very late like Zhuang Zi's times, not a contemporary from Confucius' times. So you actually have both a philosophic yardstick, and a history yardstick to tell forgeries from the originals. The history's yardstic is the Zuo commentary, not Sima Qian's Histories.
Ironically, when a science dude mentions the concept of heaven's mandate as merely an ancient belief, I feel like this fondamental concept of human society's place in the Cosmos and this original understanding of the role of government is what's missing in modern civilization.
Interesting that you use a Western/Biblical dating reference of BCE to date the events of Ancient Far Eastern CHINESE mythological stories. Do modern day Chinese historians use the term BCE to date historical events as well?
Yes. However.. We should start using the Human Era calendar. That is currently the year 12,023HE. It is inclusive of all human cultures, gets rid of the negative backwards counting for much of history and is easy to convert to (just add 10,000 years to the CE calender, i.e. a simple 1 in front).
@@bobkoroua Yes I understand that this video is in English and not Chinese. He is using references from historical Chinese sources, so I am assuming he is transforming the dates given by those sources into a Western, or I'm sorry Occidental, dating point of reference.
@@christopherdaffron8115 Considering the way that traditional Chinese dating methods are done (X year of Y ruler of Z dynasty), the audience would, in msot cases, first have to be familiar with the entirety of Chinese history in order place a specific date.
