“周人尚赤”说的历史考察

战国时代儒家提出的“周人尚赤”说,是通过夸大周人习用红色牺牲等个别事实的意义构拟的一种假说,它与西周春秋时代战旗尚白、礼服尚黑的历史实际相抵牾,故难以成立。儒家对“周人尚赤”的论证一开始就相当牵强,秦汉学者特别是董仲舒的一些补充,说明其已完全陷入不顾史实随意演绎的误区。将崇尚某种颜色列为一朝典制是从秦朝开始的,在此之前并不存在与“秦尚黑”类同的制度。“周人崇尚什么颜色”和“周朝属于五德中的哪一德”一样,都基于错误的理论预设,因而带有伪问题的性质。总体来看,“周人尚赤”说对于今人研究周代礼制没有太大的参考价值,轻信此说并据之推论周代的相关文化现象,极易得出错误的结论。

Historical Investigation of the Opinion of "People' s Advocacy of Red in the Zhou Dynasty"

The opinion of “people’s advocacy of red in the Zhou Dynasty”offered by the confucian in the Warring States Period is a hypothesis founded by means of exaggerating the meaning of individual facts like people’s habits of advocating red immolations in the Zhou Dynasty. The opinion is hard to establish for it is contradict to the historical facts that white flags and black formal attires advocated in the Western Zhou and the Spring and Autumn Period. Confucian’s argument of “people’s advocacy of red in the Zhou Dynasty”is very farfetched at first and supplementary explanations given by scholars especially Dong Zhong-shu in the Qin-Han Period are the results that they ignored historical facts and deduced randomly. Totally speaking, the opinion of “people’s advocacy of red in the Zhou Dynasty”is not much valuable for us to study ritual system of Zhou Dynasty as references. If we readily believe it and infer relevant cultural phenomenons of Zhou Dynasty according to it, mistaken conclusions will be reached easily.