Where is the Yelang Kingdom in "Yelang Arrogant" today?

Many people must know the Yelang Kingdom because of the idiom "Yelang is arrogant". The Yelang Kingdom can be said to be an ancient and mysterious country. After 300 years of glory, this magical country has , but mysteriously disappeared from history. However, the words of King Yelang, who had lived in the mountains for a long time, "Which one is older, Han or me?" made the world laugh for thousands of years. So let’s talk about how arrogant this Yelang Kingdom is today?

First of all, the size of a country can be viewed from the perspective of comprehensive national strength or region. Yelang claimed to have "one hundred thousand elite soldiers" at that time, and its commercial activities were also very active. Even the Shu people living in the Land of Abundance traveled thousands of miles to do business here.

Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty wanted to attack South Vietnam, so he sent Tang Meng as an envoy to South Vietnam to inquire about information. Tang Meng ate a kind of food called wolfberry sauce in South Vietnam, and curiously asked the South Vietnamese people where they bought it. The South Vietnamese told him that he bought it from a place called Cang Cuo. After Tang Meng returned to Chang'an, he asked people about this place. Someone told him that the corpse was in the Yelang Kingdom. Nanyue wanted to bribe the Yelang Kingdom and gave them a lot of property, but the Yelang Kingdom still refused to surrender to South Vietnam.

So Tang Meng wrote to the court saying that the King of Nanyue occupied more than ten thousand miles of territory and was very powerful. He was nominally a foreign minister of the Han Dynasty, but in fact he was the master of a state. It is impossible to go to South Vietnam by water from Changsha and Yuzhang. However, I heard that Yelang State has more than 100,000 elite soldiers. If surprise troops are sent out from Qunjiang and the strength of the Han Dynasty is used to recapture Yelang, then South Vietnam will definitely be defeated.

So Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty sent Tang Meng to lead a thousand soldiers, plus a transport team of tens of thousands, to enter the Yelang Kingdom from Bashu. Tang Meng gave the Yelang people a lot of cloth and property, preached to them the mighty virtues of the Han Dynasty, and agreed to set up officials in Yelang Kingdom and make Yelang people officials. Therefore, the Yelang people agreed to form an alliance with the Han Dynasty.

Currently, the archaeological community has two opinions on the territory of Yelang Kingdom: the "several county theory" and the "one county theory".

The "Several Counties Theory" is based on the "Book of the Later Han Dynasty". According to the record in the Book of the Later Han Dynasty, Yelang during the Warring States Period "is bounded by Jiaozhi to the east, Dian Kingdom to the west, and Qiongdu Kingdom to the north." It is speculated that Yelang is not only It had three counties: Jianwei, Jiango and Wuling in the Han Dynasty. At its peak, it was even centered on the entire province of Guizhou. It stops in southern Sichuan and northeastern Yunnan in the north, reaches Tianlin and Nandan in Guangxi in the south, Xinhuang in Hunan in the east, and Qujing and Luliang in Yunnan in the west. "

One County Theory" believes that the land of Yelang is only in Jianqi County. During the Han Dynasty, the dozens of surrounding tribes with the same genus as the Yelang tribe did not belong to the scope of the Yelang Kingdom. They were only Just take Yelang as the leader.

Today, more than two thousand years later, with the development of tourism economy, "Yelang Tourism" has become a hot topic. Anshun, Tongzi, Liuzhi, Wangmo and Huishui in Guizhou. Places such as Changshun and Sandu, Xuanwei in Yunnan, and some areas in Guangxi, Sichuan and Hunan all call themselves the hometown or capital of Yelang. Some places even change the existing place names to Yelang. What makes Yelang so attractive? Where is it?

There is a record in "Historical Records" that the Han Dynasty granted royal seals to King Yelang and the King of Dian. Some people said that as long as you find the royal seals, you can know where the capital of Yelang Kingdom is. In the winter of 1956, " "The Seal of the King of Dian" was discovered by archaeologists in Jinning Stone Village on the east bank of Dianchi Lake in Yunnan Province. This not only confirms that Sima Qian's records are true, but also the existence of the "Yelang King Seal" is also possible.

In 2001, a clamp seal composed of three Chinese seal characters and three ancient Yi characters was discovered in Zhuzhou City, Hunan Province. It was read as "Ghost Kingdom Wu Wei'edeng", which means "Wu Clan of the Ancient Kingdom" "Long Zhang", in 2004,

A Miao man from Zhenning Autonomous County, Guizhou Province showed people a large seal, which was said to be a self-made seal by King Yelang.

This seal is made of bronze, 3.8 centimeters high,

5.5 centimeters wide, with Yang characters, a butterfly-like pattern in the middle, three rows of characters that look like seal script but not seal script, and 28 A garden circle is arranged around the pattern, and there are two characters "王" above and below.

Scholar Lin Guoen understands these symbols this way: the two characters "Duode" below are the "Duotong" of the Night King recorded in "Historical Records"

(ancient " "De" and "同" have similar pronunciations). The character "王" represents King Yelang, who was proclaimed king by a Hou. The butterfly is the symbol of this nation and can also be understood as a picture card. The middle circle represents King Yelang himself, the three national circles below represent his three sons, and the 24 surrounding national circles represent the 24 tribal alliances under his jurisdiction.

Although both seals are estimated to be 2,000 years old, they are very different in form. Are they really Yelang Wang's seal? Will Zhuzhou and Zhenning be the capitals of the Yelang Kingdom?

The archaeological community believes that the key to the research of Yelang's ancient capital does not depend on the Yelang King's seal. Rather, it depends on whether sufficient ruins and relics can be used to corroborate the literature or word-of-mouth information. In 2000, archaeologists unearthed a total of 111 tombs from the Warring States, Qin and Han Dynasties in a place called Keke in Hezhang County, Guizhou Province.

In the process of cleaning up the cultural relics, people found that the burial method of the tomb was very unique: the corpse was covered with a copper ax head, feet, cover and other different forms. Among the more than 500 funerary objects, bronze weapons and decorations are the largest and most distinctive. There are also funerary objects of different textures such as pottery, copper, iron, jade, and bone. Such as copper belt hooks, copper bracelets and copper bells with gold and silver patterns embedded in them.

Why are the artifacts unearthed from Yelang's tomb so carefully crafted? Can these artifacts prove that this is the former capital of Yelang Kingdom? Or does it just mean that the Yelang people are a nation that loves beauty very much? There seem to be more mysteries about Yelang Kingdom waiting for us to reveal!