# Guifang

Guifang (Chinese: 鬼方; Wade–Giles: Kuei-fang; lit. 'Demon Territory') was an ancient ethnonym for a northern people that fought against the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BCE). Chinese historical tradition used various names, at different periods, for northern tribes such as Guifang, Rong, Di, Xunyu, Xianyun, or Xiongnu peoples. This Chinese exonym combines gui (鬼 "ghost, spirit, devil") and fang (方 "side, border, country, region"), a suffix referring to "non-Shang or enemy countries that existed in and beyond the borders of the Shang polity."

## Overview

Chinese annals contain a number of references to the Guifang. Earliest sources mentioning the Guifang are the Oracle Bones. Extant oracle bones record no military action between Shang and Guifang, yet Guifang have been interpreted as hostile towards Shang or not hostile.
The Bamboo Annals, interred with King Xiang of Wei (died 296 BC) and re-discovered nearly six centuries later in 281 AD (Western Jin dynasty) in the Jizhong discovery, state that:
* In the thirty-second year of Shang King Wu Ding (fl. 1200s BCE), he attacked the Guifang, and stationed at Jing (荊); and in the thirty-fourth year, after a campaign of three years, the King's armies subdued the Guifang, and the Di and Qiang came as guests. Wu Ding's conquests against the Guifang are also mentioned in the Yi Jing "Book of Changes".
The oracle bones indicate that, following Wu Ding's conquest, the Guifang became Shang's subjects and even assisted the Shang against other polities, e.g. the Qiang. Gui officials even managed to achieve high statuses in the Shang court; for examples, a Gui official, Geng, was ordered to perform the gang sacrifice 剛 in the xiang 亯 sacrificial temple.
* In the thirty-fifth year of the Shang King Wu Yi (i.e. 1119 BCE), Zhou leader Jili attacked the Gǔiróng (Chinese: 鬼戎) in Xiluo (西落) and captured twenty Dí kings. Historians believe that the Guirong were identical to the Guifang.
Up to the time of Shang king Di Xin (lit. 'Thearch Xin'), Gui chiefs had been long-enfeoffed vassals of Shang and even participated in the Shang royal government. In Stratagem of the Warring States, Lu Zhonglian (魯仲連) related that the Marquis of Gui (鬼侯) ranked among Di Xin's Three Ducal Ministers (along with the Marquis of E (鄂侯) and the Western Count [Ji] Chang (西伯昌)) and married his beloved daughter to Di Xin. However, Di Xin considered her detestably ugly (惡), so he killed her and boiled alive the Marquis of Gui; the Marquis of E sharply criticized Di Xin and was butchered. A parallel account in Shiji features Marquis of Jiu (九侯), his daughter (九侯女), and Marquis of E (鄂侯); Marquis of Jiu was identified with Marquis of Gui. Another parallel account in Taiping Yulan states Marquis of Gui's daughter disapproved of Di Xin's debaucheries so Di Xin killed her and her father; and Di Xin had Marquis of Xing butchered instead of Marquis of E.
Among the succeeding Zhou dynasty's bronze inscriptions, the Xiao Yu Ding (小盂鼎) –cast in the twenty-fifth year (976 BCE) of King Kang of Zhou (r. 1005/03–978 BCE)– mentioned the Guifang, probably located northeast of the initial Zhou domain. After two successful battles against the Guifang, the Zhou victors brought captured enemies to the Zhou temple and offered to the king. The prisoners numbered over 13,000 with four chiefs who were subsequently executed. Zhou also captured a large amount of booty.
No events involving the Guifang are reported after 650 BCE, which is also the last mention of the Northern Rong (北戎). They were replaced by a new group of Northern foreigners, the Di (狄).
The Guifang do not seem to have seriously challenged Chinese rule, they did not invade China, and on the contrary were the victims of Chinese expeditions. They may only have been an early people which was conquered by the Western Zhou, and ultimately disappeared from history.

### Interpretations

As a result of phonetical studies and comparisons based on the inscriptions on bronze and the structure of the characters, Wang Guowei came to the conclusion that the tribal names in the annalistic sources Guifang, Xunyu, Xianyu, Xianyun, Rong, Di, and Hu designated one and the same people, who later entered history under the name Xiongnu.
Likewise, using Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian and other sources, Vsevolod Taskin proposes that in the earlier pre-historic period (i.e. the time of the legendary Yellow Emperor) the Xiongnu were called Hunyu; and in the late pre-historic period (i.e. the time of the legendary Emperor Yao and Emperor Shun) they were called Rong; in the literate period starting with the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BC) they were called Guifang, in the Zhou period (1045–256 BC) they were called Xianyun, and starting from the Qin period (221–206 BC) the Chinese annalists called them Xiongnu.
Even so, Paul R. Goldin (2011) reconstructs the Old Chinese pronunciations of 葷粥 ~ 獯鬻 ~ 獯鬻 ~ 薰育 as *xur-luk, 獫狁 as hram′-lun′, and 匈奴 as *xoŋ-NA; and comments all three names are "manifestly unrelated". He further states that sound changes made the names more superficially similar than they really had been, and prompted later commentators to conclude that those names must have referred to one same people in different epochs, even though people during the Warring States period would never have been thus misled.

### Other fang-countries

The Shang state had a system of writing attested to by bronze inscriptions and oracle bones, which record Shang troops fighting frequent wars with neighboring nomadic herdsmen from the inner Asian steppes. In his oracular divinations, a Shang king repeatedly showed concern about the fang (方, likely meaning "border-region"; the modern term for them is 方国 fāngguó "fang-countries"), groups of barbarians outside his inner tu (土) regions in the center of Shang territory. A particularly hostile tribe, Tufang (zh:土方) from the Yan Mountains region, is regularly mentioned in divinatory records. Another Chinese ethnonym for the animal husbandry nomads was ma (馬) or "horse" barbarians mentioned at the Shang western military frontier in the Taihang Mountains, where they fought and may have used chariots.

### Seima-Turbino culture as "Guifang"

Several of the Shang dynasty artifacts of the Yin Ruins and from the tomb of Fu Hao (died c. 1200 BCE), excavated in Shang capital of Anyang, are similar to Seima-Turbino culture artifacts, such as socketed spearheads with a single side hook, jade figurines and knives with deer-headed pommel. These Late Shang artifacts, visibly derived from the Seima-Turbino culture to the north, were made precisely at the same time the Shang reported intense protracted conflicts with the northern tribes of the "Guifang". Their century-long conflict with the Shang led to the transfer of various object and manufacturing techniques.
Particularly, the introduction of the socketed spearheads with a single side hook seems to date back to the period of the Taosi culture, when the earliest and most faithful Seima-Turbino types start to appear in China, circa 2100-2000 BCE. These early artifacts suggest that Chinese bronze metallurgy initially derived from the cultures of the Eurasian steppes. Soon however, China was able to appropriate this technology and refine it, particularly through its mastery of bronze casting, to create a highly sophisticated and massive bronze industry.
However, the Indo-European Seima-Turbino culture cannot be synonymized with the "Guifang".
Johannes Krause, professor and director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has stated the following:
"For example, the Afanasievo culture, an eastward extension of the Yamnaya steppe pastoralist culture, impacted Mongolia around the turn of the third millennium BCE, although in contrast to Europe, where Yamnaya ancestry became permanently established after it first arrived, a near-complete displacement of the ancestry brought by these migrants occurred in Mongolia following the decline of the Afanasievo culture. Strikingly, ancestry from the initial Yamnaya expansion (had only) survived in northwest China at least into the Iron Age. " (Modern Xinjiang, China).
https://phys.org/news/2021-02-genomic-insights-pre-historic-populations-east.html
The earlier Afanosievo Indo-European culture (3000 BC) which migrated to modern Xinjiang was confined from moving further eastwards by the westwards migration of northern Asian tribes within Mongolia. These tribes which have retained Ancient Northeast Asian ancestry (ANA) a.k.a. Amur Basin genetic ancestry, which is also the ancestral DNA of modern Mongolic, Tungusic, and Turkic peoples. In modern Mongolia and the Lake Baikal region such cultures still dominate. The Afanosievo culture was further confined from moving into China by the long established Neolithic Chinese tribes situated on both the northern Yellow River Plain as well as the southern plains of the Yangtze River, which was settled by such tribes as far back as 10 000 years ago. Therefore, the genetic influence of the Afanosievo culture upon various achthnolous Asian populations further East was at best, negligible.
The geographical boundaries of the Seima-Turbino culture expansion which occurred much later (1500 BC), was similar to the earlier Afanosievo and Chemurchek cultures. And once more, migrants of the Seima-Turbino complex also had a similar neglible impact on the genetic ancestry of westward migrating Asian populations including the Northeast Asian nomadic groups as well as the ancient Chinese with Yellow River Farmer genetic ancestry, who by 1600 BC had established the Shang dynasty (including the preceding Xia dynasty).
There is no evidence that the ancient Chinese of the Shang (or Xia) were in direct contact with Indo-European migrants of the later Seima-Turbino cultural complex, despite many of the bronze artifacts from both era's bearing striking resemblance to Seima-Turbino bronzes. The far more likely scenario is that the Shang Chinese had acquired decorative design elements for some of their bronzes (not all) from a process of diffusion due to their known interaction with North Asian tribes. And that these tribes had acquired design elements from direct contact with Seima-Turbino migrants. However, since Seima-Turbino genetic influence is negligible even in modern Mongolic populations, it is therefore concluded that the number of Seima-Turbino migrants in contact with said tribes was also highly minimal.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Northern_East_Asian

### Northern tribes in the Late Shang period

The nomadic leaders depicted in Deer stones in Mongolia, dated to 1400-700 BC, leading large-scale organized nomadic groups, may have affected the late Shang and early Zhou dynasties of China to their south.
They were equipped with weapons and instruments of war, such as daggers, shafted axes, or curved rein holders for their horses. They may not have ridden on horseback, but they are documented to have possessed horse-drawn charriots, with two or four horses, as shown in the drawings on Deer Stones and multiple finds of horse skeletons with heavy wear. These powerful nomadic leaders, leading large-scale organized nomadic groups capable of building monumental decorated stone tombs, may have being part of the nomadic challenge to the early Chinese dynasties. They may also be connected to the rise of the horse chariot during the Shang dynasty.

### Siwa culture (1300–600 BCE)

The Siwa culture culture is sometimes proposed as being connected to the northern tribes which challenged the Shang and Zhou dynasties, but questions are raised against this theory because the Siwa sites are small with low subsistence levels, whereas the northern tribes, particularly the Xianyun, seem to have been more advanced, using bronze weapons and chariots. According to Feng Li, the archaeological remains of the Siwa culture suggest that they could not have sustained an advanced society capable of rivalizing with contemporary Chinese armies. The debate remains open.

## Epigraphy

Comments about the conflicts against the Guifang appear in bronze inscriptions of the Western Zhou.
Guifang inscriptions :
| Name | Artifact | Inscription | Translation |
| Xiaoyu ding 小盂鼎 979 BCE (King Kang) | Lost in the Taiping Rebellion (19th century) The Xiaoyu ding was probably similar to the Da Yu ding made two years before, in 981 BCE: | | "It was the eighth month, after the full moon, the day was on jiashen [day 21]; in the morning dusk, the three officials of the left and the three officials of the right and the many rulers entered to serve the wine. When it became light the king approached the Zhou temple and performed the guo-libation rite. The king's state guests attended. The state guests offered their travel garments and faced east." "Yu with many flags with suspended Guifang...entered the Southern Gate, and reported saying: 'The king commanded Yu to take... to attack the Guifang and shackle chiefs and take trophies. [I] shackled two chiefs, took 482 trophies, captured 13,081 men, captured...horses, captured 30 chariots, captured 355 oxen and 38 sheep.'" "The king called out to...to command Yu with his trophies to enter the gate and present them in the Western Passageway... [He] entered and performed a burnt offering in the Zhou temple,... [He] entered the Third Gate, assumed a position in the central court, facing north. Yu reported..." "The guests assumed position. [He] served the guests. The king called out: 'Serve!' Yu in their...presented guests... At mid-morning, three Zhou...entered to serve wine. The king entered the temple. The invocator...the state guests grandly toasted...used a victim in ancestral sacrifice to the king of Zhou [i.e. King Wen], to King [Wu] and to King Cheng...divination cracks have pattern. The king toasted. Toast followed toast: the king and the state guests. The king called out to...to command Yu with the booty to enter. All of the booty was registered." |