Deities and the Extrahuman in Pre-Qin China: Lesser Deities in the Zuozhuan and the Guoyu

Abstract

Work on deities and the extrahuman has been relatively sparse in studies on religion in Early China, tending to only incorporate the topic in so much as it matters to other discussions. This paints a picture of religious activity in which the extrahuman is at best passively involved and at worst simply not present. This article illustrates that such understandings are far from accurate and that deities are actually a very common and complex element of the religious practices and activities displayed in pre-Qin (pre-221 BCE) writings by looking at Lesser Deities, specifically shen 神, in the Zuozhuan 左傳 and Guoyu 國語, two texts that display a vast swathe of information of this period. It shows that these texts depict these Lesser Deities in complex ways, constructing identities for them as active agents in socio-political roles with prescribed duties and responsibilities in the religious systems espoused by these texts.