Was There a High God Ti in Shang Religion?

Abstract

This paper calls into question a consensus belief that the term “ti”帝 (and the term “shang-ti” 上帝), as used in the Shang oracle texts, denoted a supreme deity. Such an interpretation of the term is entirely satisfactory for textual sources postdating the first century of Chou rule, but the evidence of Shang texts suggests that term ti was employed therein as a corporate term denoting deities collectively, as a generic term referring to members of the Shang pantheon individually but not by name, or as an honorific term for the father of the Shang ruler. By exploring the semantics of the term ti through Shang usage and cognate words, a speculative root meaning of “father” is proposed, the graph being a representation of the ancestral altar or of altar figures. If this theory is valid, it calls into question the extent to which proto-bureaucratic features can be ascribed to the Shang pantheon. It also suggests that the concept of supreme divinity in China was either derived from the pre-conquest religion of the Chou, centered upon the deity T'ien, or through a post-conquest universalization of the Chou religion.