Feizi (; died 858 BC), also known as Qin Ying and Ying Feizi, was the founder of the state of Qin.
Mythical origin of Qin
According to the
of Qin recorded in the
Records of the Grand Historian by
Han dynasty historian
Sima Qian, Feizi descended from the mythical
Yellow Emperor and his grandson and successor
Zhuanxu. Zhuanxu's granddaughter Nüxiu (女脩) gave birth to Daye (大業) after swallowing the egg of a swallow. Daye's son Boyi (伯益) was awarded the ancestral name Ying () by the mythical Chinese ruler Shun.
Ancestry
During the
Shang dynasty, Boyi's descendant
Zhongjue was in charge of Xichui (西垂, also called Quanqiu, in present-day Li County, Gansu) in the midst of the Rong tribes. Zhongjue's son Feilian (蜚廉) and grandson
Elai served King Zhou of Shang, and Elai was killed when King Wu of Zhou overthrew the Shang and founded the
Zhou dynasty. Feizi's father Daluo (大骆) was the great-great-grandson of Elai.
However, Daluo's legal heir was not Feizi, but his other son , because Cheng was born to Daluo's main wife, the daughter of the Marquess of Shen.
Founding of Qin
Feizi lived in Xichui and was a skilled horse breeder.
King Xiao of Zhou learned of his reputation and put him in charge of breeding and training horses for the Zhou army. To reward his contributions, King Xiao wanted to make Feizi his father's legal heir instead of his half-brother Cheng. However, the Marquess of Shen, Cheng's grandfather, objected and said that the
Rong people would revolt if the king deposed Cheng. The king changed his mind and awarded Feizi the small
fief of Qin instead (in present-day Zhangjiachuan County,
Gansu), separate from his father's fief of Xichui, and gave Feizi the title Qin Ying, a combination of his fief and ancestral name.
This was the beginning of the State of Qin that would, over six centuries later, conquer all of the other Zhou states and unify China under the rule of Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of the Qin dynasty.
After death
Feizi died in 858 BC and was succeeded by his son, known as the Marquis of Qin. In 842 BC the
Rong people rebelled, destroying the clan of Feizi's half-brother at Xichui. Twenty years later, Feizi's great-grandson
Qin Zhong was also killed by the Rong in 822 BC. However, Qin Zhong's son and successor Duke Zhuang of Qin defeated the Rong and annexed Xichui, thus reuniting the territories of the two branches of the House of Ying.
Notes
