At the same time, in the Songmo Dudu Mansion north of Yanshan Mountain, the winter camp under the Daqing Mountain on the upper reaches of Tuhuzhen River (now Laoha River, a tributary of Xila Mulun River in Inner Mongolia), is known as the descendant of Qingniu and Baima. The head of the eight tribes of the Khitan tribe of the Iron (Forging) Clan, the Yaoruan tribe, has just ushered in the season for herding and encampment.
Therefore, in the camp, shamans and witch priests, wearing feather crests and green wood branches, and covering their faces with cow and sheep anointing oil, danced hoarsely in front of the burning fire of all kinds of old felts and dried cow and sheep dung. In the Daqing Festival, the stables and fences outside the Daban Wai were successively opened by pious tribesmen.
I saw a herd of cattle, sheep, and horses who had been kept in captivity for the whole winter, and they could only survive by gnawing on hay and eating ice and snow. They almost came out in succession in the sound of a heavy horn; and shepherds who were riding horses galloping. Driven and guided by a whip with a pole, he quickly spread his legs along the bank of the spring flood.
For a time, in the melodious and one after another call signs and drum beats, just from the yellowish color after the white snow has melted, the light green and dripping new grassy grassland has been restored, and it also seems to be alive and kicking. One piece after another, intertwined by countless colorful herds, but like a beautiful picture scrolling like flowing clouds.
At this time, the ritual finally came to an end. In order to thank Changshengtian for his blessing, let them spend another winter without white and black disasters; a few were tied up with five flowers and cut open their throats, armpits and undergrowth. People who bleed continuously, but have not died, were also thrown into the blazing fire with their screams.
And it attracted the many tribes who were onlookers to chant in unison with the intoxicating noises and thunder and hand dances; because the worse the screams of people in the fire, the greater the continuous sound, the longer it appears to be dedicated Yu Changshengtian’s thank you gifts became more solemn and pious.
Therefore, the slaves and captives of the sacrifices were made by the witch sacrifices with the secret medicine of paralysis and pain. Fortunately, they could last longer under torture and burning. And as a special sacrifice among human sacrifices this time, there are even upper class losers from the distinguished status.
Therefore, after the celebration of the Spring Festival to worship the sky is over; it is also time for the follow-up content of the day of real carnival and fun. I saw the men and women who had dispersed, holding their arms hand in hand, receiving a burst of shouts of joy, and couldn’t wait to get into the leather tents that had been prepared everywhere, and then turned into a tumultuous, shaking heart. .
Even the most humble shepherds and limins were temporarily released from the shackles and restraints on their bodies at this moment, and they did not hesitate to get into a group of grasses that hadn't reached their knees. , And then used poles with tattered leather caps, toe caps, and cloth strips to mark the places where Xi Tianmu was entangled.
Because, it is said that within a few days after the Spring Festival, it is also the easiest time to multiply and conceive children after being blessed by God; therefore, even the most demanding tent owners and heads will not be in Constrain them at this time. There are even wandering exchanges during horse patrols to ensure that no one is disturbed.
Of course, in the winter every year, those who can live in and out of the Daban winter camp with a leeward wind and water, and are eligible to graze and live in the nearby aquatic plants, without discomfort, they are called "belly" far away. The relatives of the family, the various ministries near the branch, and the family members of the tent, etc.
As for the vassal tents or other tribes scattered in other places to spend the winter, there is no such luck and opportunity at all. Perhaps an unexpectedly larger and longer winter snowfall was an out-and-out disaster for them; even for this reason, they had to ride a weak horse and ride south to the edge of the band.
If you are lucky, maybe take advantage of it to cross the border and grab some food and utensils from Tangdi to support the winter; but most of the time, when Datang is defeated and become a prisoner, and as a slave to work everywhere, there is still a way to survive; or Simply Chen Qun's formation became the beheading of the Tangdi Frontier Army's military exploits.
This kind of internal and external system of closeness and distancing is also to ensure that the vassal and subordinate tribes in the periphery are struggling to get together and disperse on the grassland. The core Khitan clans headed by the Da Ba tribe, but The most and best support on the monopoly grassland can be steadily controlled, and the bottom line is that it can continue to grow and multiply for generations.
(Note: The black disaster means that there is little or no snow in the northern grasslands in winter, which causes livestock to lack water, epidemic diseases, reduced body condition, miscarriage of mother animals, and even a large number of livestock deaths. White disasters are caused by heavy snowfall for a long time. It is a natural phenomenon that large numbers of livestock freeze to death and starve to death because they cannot eat the grass roots under the snow. In ancient nomads, the backward productivity of nomads was basically a ghostly existence)
And under a large dome that is open on all sides, it is a place for the nobles of the clan to celebrate. In the middle, as the co-lord of the contemporary eight-part alliance, Hende Khan has reached his fate with a gray beard and a somewhat rickety figure, but his eyes are still sharp under the sunken face, and he is full of wolves, though old-fashioned. Dare to look directly and face the majesty.
Compared with the settled people of the Tang area in the Central Plains, the peoples outside the Great Wall, who have lived for a long time and went to nomadic pastoralism, in fact, generally have a much shorter life span. Under the endless storms and snowstorms outside the Great Wall, they can live to four After ten years of age, they are considered blessed; even as a pampered Khan, there are no exceptions.
Therefore, tents were laid on a high platform surrounded by groups of civil and military subordinates, sitting on the wolf skins warmed by the direct sun, and sitting close to and away from the many chiefs and ministers who sat on the floor with felt at a distance. The chiefs; eating meat with a knife in his hand and drinking in a big pot are his greatest pleasure at the moment.
Since the eighteenth year of Kaiyuan (730), the Yaonian clan under his leadership replaced the old Babu alliance led by the Dahe clan who began naturalization in the Tang Dynasty from Dahe Kuge. In the cracks between the great powers of the Tang and Uighur parties, they have worked hard to maintain relative independence, and have dominated the Qidan Great Babu League intermittently for a full eleven generations for about a hundred years.
And Hende Khan was the third son of the former generation of Moli Khan and the Xi tribe who gave birth to female slaves; when Moli Khan was out on a hunting trip, he was drunk and fell from a horse and fell into a sudden accident. Relying on the cronies who developed and wooed among the account guards, blocked news and controlled many concubines and servants in time, and mastered the situation of Wang account;
Then he attacked and killed many threatening uncles and brothers with a thunder and thunder. In exchange for foreign aid by the Xi family, he restrained the other seven chiefs from being able to unite, and successively accepted the fait accommodating facts of his superiority. He was selected as the Khan seven times by his own tribe (the co-lord and military leader of the Eight Departments sworn at the Sihekou every three years when the horse was fattened in autumn), and has been in power for 20 years.
Seeing that the next time for the election of Khan and the oath in the remote clan is not far away; and several of his sons are either young or just weak, but they have not shown any qualifications that can let him let go and work with confidence. This couldn't help but make him a little bit more worried and anxious; should the sweat position behind him be transferred to the hands of his uncle brother
Thinking of this, he couldn't help but glance at the place where the young generation subordinates were present with different performances, a figure that was quite brave and tall and well-known. The other party was invited to wrestle with a number of challengers in the banquet, shooting pills to add to the fun on the spot. Why can't his son be enviable like this one
You must know that the Diecha tribe from which Abaoji was born was originally a small tribe from the upper reaches of the Tuhe River, who guarded the ancestral land of Muye Mountain (in the area of Yiwulu Mountain in western Liaoning); it was just that the previous generations began to serve as the retinue of the king’s account. Yeluyun Deshi, Yelu Shilu, Yelucholu, including his grandparents and grandchildren, have served the two khans of the Yaoru clan for four generations.
(According to legend, there are gods and people riding on the white horse, from the Mayushan Floating River to the east, and a goddess driving a green ox cart down from the flat pine forest to the Huanghe River. To Muye Mountain, the two waters converge, and they meet as a spouse and give birth to eight children. It belongs to Chengsheng and is divided into eight parts. Every march and spring and autumn festivals, white horses and green cows must be used. Therefore, the eight Khitan parts are based on Muyeshan as their ancestral land)
The contemporary patriarch Yelu Shilu now worships Yuyue (in charge of government affairs in the league, more than the prime minister of the same clan); as a nephew, Yelu Abaoji is even more outstanding in martial arts, wisdom, and courage. He was attracted by the Khan when he was a teenager. He is one of the Tamar Tamarin (Huwei Officer), and now he is one of the commanders of his new and highly valued Wangzhang army.
In these years, he also made great achievements with the army. He successively descended to Xiaohuangshiwei, broke the tribes of Yuewu, Wugu, and Liuxi, and was hailed by the Chinese as "Azhushali" (Shali, "Langjun" in Khitan). When the limelight is in full swing. And his uncle has just recently admitted that he has the right to live alone, and rightly speaking, he owns pastures, tents, attached people, likou, and herds.
However, not long ago, the envoy of Li Quanzhong, the newly appointed envoy of Lu Long Jiedu, who had just assumed his position, named the most outstanding and well-known athlete in the Tang Dynasty as an envoy, representing the Khan’s envoy who continued to maintain harmony and goodwill. Youzhou City serves as a ceremony and witness. If so, that's all.
However, another request is a bit weird. Li Quanzhong not only asked Yelu Abaoji to go there; he also asked his newly-married wife for several years to come from the daughter of the Shulv Department of the Yao Nian vassal-Shuluyue Duoli , To go to Youzhou Road to congratulate and see the ceremony together, which is a bit weird.
It is necessary to know that the ancestors of the Shulubu originated from the Uighur khanate after the collapse of the Uighur Khanate, which was a different species of Uighurs that moved eastward. It was then attached to the incumbent Yaoru clan, and re-multiplied to become one of the ten arrows attached to the guardian king's account; But that's all. As the dominant Wang clan in the Qidan Great Eight Branch Alliance, the Yaoruan clan has similar existence.
In fact, every clan of the Khitan Da Ba tribe is a core tribe composed of kin bloodlines, plus a few middle tribes as in-laws and vassals for generations, and a bunch of small tribes outside the tribe. ; In addition to the strongest chieftain's line, under the core big tribe to which the clan belongs, there are also many branches and side lines that form small and medium tribes.
And in these middle-level tribes, they are also composed of many small tribes and settlements under the leadership of nobles; and the heads of these tribes and settlements are also owned by many tents as the most basic unit of grassland warfare. Formation; these account holders have one or several separate brothers in the family as a unit, and take women and children to herd cattle and sheep, arrange slaves, and apply to bring their own bows and horses.
And all of this is like the composition of countless large and small concatenations from top to bottom. The internal and external relations are distant and close, complicated and relatively stable. As long as there is not much external force intervention or serious internal changes, basically It is possible to maintain the rotation of the upper-level power with less and more, with light and heavy, and only pass it in a smaller circle.
The only characteristic of the Shulu Department is that it relied on the Yalu/Diescha Department, which was an important vassal and arm of the Yaoru family, to form a relationship with generations of in-laws and act as a medium in order to obtain the identity of the foreign survivors. Incorporate into the vassal system of the Yaoru clan, instead of degenerating into the peripheral miscellaneous forces formed by the deceased Turks, Tiele, and other survivors.
Thinking of this, Hende Khan couldn't help feeling a move in his heart. He seemed to think of some things passed down by word of mouth from the ancestors after the Yaoru clan replaced the decayed Dahe clan under the attack of Datang. At this time, it was as if he was thinking in his heart, and someone brought in with a silver horn cup, but it was a representative of the Ahui tribe of the Xi ethnic group in the east who had an in-law relationship, and said to him drunkly:
"Lord Khan, the Lord Shari under your account is really amazing. He has defeated more than ten brave men in a row with his bare hands..."
"In the future, I'm afraid that I won't be a hero like a elder brother or a Bodhisattva? It's a pity that I got married too early, otherwise my master..."
Although the other party's remarks were not meant to be provocative, or more of it came from the Xixi six tribes, who were forced to leave their hometowns because of their hostility with the Khitan after the split of the Xi tribe, were defeated and surrendered by Abaoji. The Lord of the Five Departments of Dongxi, who has a close relationship with the Khitan, is involuntary in his natural vigilance and the sad position of the rabbit and the fox.
But Hende Khan also had a bit of understanding. Now, as the important humerus and arm of the king’s tent, the Yelu clan of the Diechabu, seems to be too vigorous and public, so that the other tribes attached to the Ten Arrows and the members of the tribe from the Yaoru clan are somewhat covered and suppressed. After the limelight, even the younger generation has no shortage of admiring and following people.
Since this is the case, Yelu Shilu, who holds an important authority, cannot move lightly, but needs to continue to win over and maintain; but early in the civil strife, both parents died and were raised by his grandmother. As the Yelü tribe, Abaoji was completely the king's account. The messenger can take a trip to Han, but temporarily stagger the routine conquest to Liaodong.
Because this winter is blessed by God, there is no major disaster, and the cattle and sheep and herds have not lost much; therefore, the conquest after the beginning of the spring is more to declare authority, and at the same time, it is an armed parade that collects local tributes in disguise; Instead of using such brave talents as A Baoji, he can instead ensure a temporary harmony with Lu Longjun, and the truth and futility of the spy is more important.
Immediately he beckoned, and people summoned Yelu Shilu, a group of clan elders and accountants not far away, and then negotiated to bring his fourth daughter, who is also the territory of the Dudu Mansion of Rao Le, to the east. The daughter of the sister of the leader Tulles, with a hundred accounts dowry of the people, likou, and livestock to marry her elder; then he clapped his hands to pause the singing and music at the banquet, and began to announce the latest decision. (End of this chapter)