The Bu Qi Gui inscription and genesis of the Qin state

The aim of this paper is to define the institutional difference between the aristocratic lineage ruling the service fief of the Western Zhou era and the royal dynasty, reigning over the independent state of the Eastern Zhou era. Different approaches to the genesis of the Qin State are discussed in this paper: the archaeological approach and the “Zhou fiefdom” approach. The first one lacks data directly describing the political process. The problem of the second one is its being based practically on one written source that postdates the events described by 500 years. Therefore, to escape the failures of these methods, the author developed a specific approach that would both deal with political and institutional data on the one side while using data from different sources contemporary to the events in question. Data explicated from Bu Qi gui, Qin gong zhong and Guo ji zi Bai pan - three inscriptions on the bronze vessels dating between IX and VII centuries BC was scrutinized and compared. Two of them were cast by Qin rulers and the third describes the events leading to the creation of the Qin domain. Comparing information of these sources with the data from Sima Qian’s Shi ji allows to determine the precise moment of the Qin domain being transformed into the Qin State and show the institutional innovations that went along with this process. The interior political change of this time is described (i.e. the political crisis of royal inheritance) as well as the exterior change in Qin’s place inside the hierarchy of Zhou domains, particularly the changing relations between the Qin State and the domain of Xiao Guo. This clarified the place that the process of territorial expansion had in this transformation. As a hypothesis, the author built a model presenting the properties distinguishing a service fief and an independent state.