Weizi and the tyrannical, ****, and ruthless King Zhou were born from the same mother, two brothers, Weizi as a brother, and King Zhou as a brother. But when Weizi was born, his father had not yet succeeded to the throne and his mother was still in the position of a concubine. After his father succeeded to the throne, his mother was made a full consort and soon gave birth to King Zhou. King Zhou grew up to be an articulate and agile child, and was so strong and powerful that he could pull back a nine-headed ox, which endeared him to his father. When it was time to make a prince, his father and his father's father, Taishi, made use of the patriarchal law that "the first wife should be the most important, not the oldest" to make King Zhou the crown prince.
After King Zhou succeeded to the throne, Weizi became his minister, and **** with him to maintain the power of the Yin dynasty. At first, the weather was good, the country was peaceful, and the four barbarians were submissive. But the good times didn't last long, King Zhou became the second famous tyrant in history after Xia Jie, because of his brutality, extravagance, alcoholism, lust for sex, and his lack of respect for the government. Weizi advised him many times to change his ways, but he turned a deaf ear. Seeing that the country was in a precarious state and was about to be destroyed, Weizi was in great pain and had no way to serve his country despite his loyalty. He "wanted to die, but when he went, he could not decide for himself", so he sought advice from the father of one of the three dukes of the court (Min Zi). He said, "If I can rule the country, I will not be sorry if I die for ruling the country. If you want to die, you will not be able to rule the country, so you might as well go. ②Weizi listened to his father's advice and decided to leave the palace in order to save his heir.
Before he left the palace, Wei Zi spoke from the bottom of his heart to his father, the young master (Bi Gan), saying: "Father, young master, it seems that we can not rule the world of the State of Shang. Remembering the past, our high ancestor Cheng Tang founded the Shang Kingdom, but now, our King Zhou is drunk on wine and sex, corrupting the virtue of our high ancestor. The officials of Yin and Shang are all robbing and stealing and breaking the law, and the officials do not abide by the law, and the guilty are not punished, and the common people are rising up, and they have formed an enemy with us. Now Yin Shang may perish, and we shall be like wading into a great stream, and we shall not be able to find the crossing or the shore. Alas, Yin Shang is now in such a state that it is about to perish.
Father, young master, now I have to go."
This passage is y moving and expresses the helplessness of Weizi, who loved his country but could not change the situation. The Niu's children and grandchildren have a touching legend about the departure of Weizi, which is related to their own family name.
In 1704, the 42nd year of the Kangxi reign, the Niu family tree of Jiyuan City, Henan Province, in the old preface to the genealogy of the Niu family tree, reads: "Yin Zhou was ruthless and was insulted by the Five Constantinels, and poisoned the four seas. His concubine brother, Weizi, hid himself and went away in order to save the heir. When he went away, he raised his eyes to the noon, so he took the character "Niu" as his head, and thus he took the name of Niu. This is the origin of the surname Niu."
In the first year of the Qing Daoguang (1821), Henan Province, Yanling County, cattle set "cattle genealogy preface" contained:
"Yin Weizi sealed in Song. Go to the day said: for people can not be without a surname, when the day when the noon, that is, the 'noon' word out of the head of the 'cow' word for the surname, this cow's fate of the origin of the surname also."
Qing Tongzhi eleven years (1873), Yang Village, Yanshi County, Henan Province, "Niu genealogy - preface" contains:
"But I Niu's biography is Stuart Chee after also. Xiang Shun has the merit, to Tang and the world. During the six hundred years, there were six or seven wise and holy kings, and in the case of Zhou, his brother Weizi escaped from the chaos and went away. When he left, he looked up at the sky, saw the sun over the noon, because the word "noon" is the beginning of the word "cow", so because of the surname, the origin of the cow."
In many of the "Niu genealogy", similar to the above records are numerous, these legends show that: many of the descendants of the Niu family believe that when the micro-zee "raised his eyes over the noon", "is a line of cattle", the micro-zee as the originator of the surname of cattle.