. Born
Ji Chang (), Wen was the son of Tairen and
Ji Li, the Elder of
Zhou, a vassal clan of the Kingdom of Shang along the
Wei River in present-day
Shaanxi. Jili was betrayed and executed by the Shang king
Wen Ding in the late 12th century BC, leaving the young Chang as the Elder of the Zhou lineage. The
received text of
Mencius literally calls Ji Chang "one of the western
barbarians" (, ), although commentators gloss this as describing him as "close" to the
Xirong and other non-
Huaxia tribes. According to
Annals of Zhou in the
Records of the Grand Historian, upon becoming the Elder of Zhou, Wen was said to continue his father and their ancestor
Hou Ji's legacy by ruling with benevolence, respecting elders while treating the young with kindness, and allowed talented individuals to counsel him. Among these counsellors became important officials of Zhou, such as
Yuxiong,
San Yisheng, and Hong Yao (閎夭), and later
Jiang Ziya. Over time, Wen gained respect and reverence of the other regional lords, whose quarrels were also mediated by Wen. King Wen is also credited with having stacked the eight
trigrams in their various permutations to create the sixty-four hexagrams of the
I Ching. He is also said to have written the judgments which are appended to each hexagram. The most commonly used sequence of the 64 hexagrams is attributed to him and is usually referred to as the
King Wen sequence. During this time, Wen married
Taisi and fathered ten sons and one daughter by her, plus at least another eight sons with concubines. At one point,
Di Xin, King of Shang, fearing Wen's growing power, imprisoned him in
Youli (present-day
Tangyin in
Henan) after he was slandered by the Marquis of Chong. His eldest son,
Bo Yikao, went to Di Xin to plead for his freedom, but was executed in a rage by
lingchi and made into meat cakes which were fed to his father in Youli. However, many officials (in particular San Yisheng and Hong Yao) respected Wen for his honorable governance and gave Di Xin so many gifts including gold, horses, and women that he released Wen, and also bestowed upon him his personal weapons and invested him with the special rank of Overlord of the West (Western Shang). Wen offered a piece of his land in Western Luo to Di Xin, who in turn allowed Wen to make one last request. He requested that the Burning Pillar punishment be abolished, and so it was.. Subsequently, upon returning home Wen secretly began to plot to overthrow Di Xin. In his first year as Overlord of the West, he settled a land dispute between the states of Yu and Rui, earning greater recognition among the nobles. One anecdote claims that the rulers of Yu and Rui became ashamed of their dispute once they entered Zhou territory and saw its people sharing their farmlands and caring for the elderly. It is by this point that some nobles began calling him "king". The following year, Wen found
Jiang Ziya fishing in the Pan River and hired him as a military counselor. He also repelled an invasion of the
Quanrong barbarians and occupied a portion of their land. The following year, he campaigned against Mixu (, now
Xinmi in
Henan), a state whose chief had been harassing the smaller states of Ruan and Gong, thus annexing the three of them. The following year, he attacked Li, a puppet of Shang, and the next year he attacked
E, a rebel state opposed to Shang, conquering both. One year later he attacked Chong, home of Hu, Marquis of Chong, his arch-enemy, and defeated it, gaining access to the Ford of Meng through which he could cross his army to attack Shang. By then he had obtained about two thirds of the whole kingdom either as direct possessions or sworn allies. That same year he moved his administrative capital city one hundred kilometers east from Mount Qi to
Feng, placing the Shang under imminent threat. The following year, however, the Overlord of the West died before he could cross the Ford. Nonetheless, other sources suggest he died in battle during the Zhou campaign against the Shang. The Chinese long preserved a tradition that he had been buried in
Cheng, a tribe and city annexed by the Zhou, located between the
Jing and
Wei Rivers in what is now
Xianyang,
Shaanxi. ==Legacy==