Shang King Research Articles

The concept of religious authority and power of the monarch in Shang Dynasty

The Shang Dynasty people practiced theocentrism, Valuing Sacrifices and serving ghosts,and everything had to be predicted through divination. There are many deities in the Shang Dynasty, including three major systems: heavenly gods, earthly spirits, and human ghosts. Di has the greatest authority and is the ruler of nature. He has the characteristics of being extraordinary, not being influenced by human will, and is the supreme god in the belief world of the Shang Dynasty people. He is integrated with the ancestors of the Shang kings. The original meaning of Di was the ancestor and the god of reproduction of all things in the universe, which was very similar to the Western concept of 'God' as the creator. In the religious belief system of the Shang Dynasty, people did not directly offer sacrifices to the heavenly gods, and every request must be achieved through the intermediary of the ancestral ghosts. After the death of the Shang kings, they were all honored as Di, which led to the formation of the "combination of sorcerers and kings" and the "the unification of politics and religion" system in the late Shang Dynasty. In the late Shang Dynasty, a trinity structure of Di, Ancestral Spirit, and Kings was formed,which dominated the heavens and earth jointly, completed the integration of theocracy and kingship, and the combination of supreme god and extreme authoritarianism, formed a political ideological system of Religious indoctrination, had an important impact on later Chinese history and is worthy of our in-depth study.

Shang dynasty's “nine generations chaos” and the reign of Wu Ding: towards a unilineal line of transmission of royal power

AbstractThis article explores the political crisis before Wu Ding. The accession of king Wu Ding to the throne was not a given but the result of a political move by his father Xiao Yi. It must be seen as one of the consequences of an earlier political crisis named the “nine generations chaos” by Sima Qian, during which an attempt to share royal power between two royal lines finally collapsed and led to a move by Pan Geng to a new capital. This new city has recently been discovered north of the Huai river. The political crisis of the time led Shang kings to try to implement a unilineal system of succession. Other steps, ritual in particular, were involved after the reign of the king Zu Jia, one of the reigning sons of Wu Ding, in order to ensure the primacy of the unilineal system of royal succession.

Ancient Ritual Cannibalism in Late Shang China (ca. 1250–1046 BC)

In this paper the author attempts to interpret traditional, epigraphic and archaeological sources of the history of the late Shang state as evidence of the practice of ritual cannibalism. One of the religious concentrations of the Late Shang culture was large-scale regular human sacrifices regulated by the state. The ritual consumption of human flesh was a part of these sacrifices ensuring continuous communication of people with sacred forces. The author believes that the anthropophagic rituals of the Shang kings were a way of acquiring magical power which consisted in sacrificial food. Satisfying the gastronomic needs of their royal ancestors was employed by the Shang kings to increase their own sacred authority and power allowing them to maintain social stability and order in the state and thereby act as a guarantor of public well-being.

On the Shang Bone Annals Calculated by the Dates and the Moon Phases in Oracle Bone Inscriptions

Modern attempts to decipher the Shang bone scripts have been hampered by the fundamental assumption that the scripts are recordings of the sound of the language and not ideas. Some phonetic “translations” could be proposed without the possibility of verification, and some graphic “translations” without meanings are seen as the names of sacrificial rituals by previous scholars. Actually, a character is derived from a thought, and the thought is derived from a figuration, while the figuration itself is derived from the graphed object or event. Therefore, the same character can be used in different dialects or languages to depict the same concepts. Based on the bone scripts being ideograms, several bone scripts used frequently for the names of the day were assumed to be the moon phases; thus, the time interval between two corresponding days with its moon phase was calculated for verification. Extensionally, according to the time interval between the two days, and the moon phase recorded on the bone tablets (or bronze wares) and the chronological table of the kings of Shang compiled by the pre vious scholars, the assumptions of the moon phase characters are attested by the calculations of the numbering days of the solunar date. Solunar dates (Chinese: Gan-Zhi 干支) were used to record dates with a cycle of 60 days. Conversely, on consideration of the dates and moon phases for the bone inscription events, the prevous chronology is improved with iterative methed, and we propose new chronology for Shang kings. In addition, through computation, three records of a lunar eclipse on the Shang bronze inscriptions and on the Zhou bronze vessels are newly recognized, which helps to reconstruct the years of the kings of Shang and of the kings of Zhou; the Shang bone calendar’s New Year started from the summer solstice of the year, from the full moon of the lunar phase and from the dawn of the day.

RADIOCARBON DATING OF ORACLE BONES OF LATE SHANG PERIOD IN ANCIENT CHINA

ABSTRACTOracle bone script developed into a sophisticated writing system in Shang Dynasty of China more than 3000 years ago. The systematic scientific dating of oracle bones had not been previously reported. Here we present radiocarbon (14C) dates measured from the sequential samples of oracle bones that pertain to the Shang kings. The results indicate that King Wu Ding (who is called Wu Ting in some literature) reigned during 1254 BC to 1197 BC, and the Shang Dynasty terminated around 1041 BC. It also points that the Li group in the sequence of oracle bones is most probably related to the time of King Wu Ding and Zu Geng.

Metamorphosis and the Shang State: Yi 異and the Yi ding異[fang方

Despite a long tradition of scholarship on Shang religion, a clear and comprehensive account of that religion has proven elusive. Many scholars have relied on written accounts from the much later Warring States and Han eras purporting to describe Shang beliefs and practices, and have been misled into describing the Shang religion as bureaucratically institutionalized and characterized by tension between inner court and outer court worship of ancestral and nature deities. Other scholars have generalized about the nature of divinity in Shang time and have recognized the position of the king who as one with Di was divine. Rather than act as an intermediary between the living and dead, the Shang king was divine and equivalent to Di. The present study follows research recognizing that the Shang king ruled over a state system which I label “institutionalized metamorphism”. By “institutionalized metamorphism” a belief is implied in the metamorphic power of the Shang king that allowed him identification with and to a certain extent control over numinous spirits.

The Emergence of Kingship in China: With a Discussion of the Relationship between Kingship and Composite State Structure in the Xia, Shang and Western Zhou Dynasties

In ancient China, true kingship was supreme rule over all under Heaven by the royal houses of the Xia, Shang and Western Zhou dynasties (the Three Dynasties). It was associated with the Three Dynasties’ plural but unified composite state structure, and its birth was signaled by the emergence of the Xia dynasty. At the time, kingship was related to the appellation “king” (王wang), but was not absolutely equated to it. On the one hand, whenever oracle bone and bronze inscriptions and textual records refer directly to “king(s),” the word refers to the Shang and Zhou kings; but on the other, some bronze inscriptions preserve the use of “king” to refer to the chieftains of smaller tribal states in remote areas. When a supreme dynastic ruler bore the appellation “king,” this indicated the kingly power of the royal house; but when the ruler of a small remote state called himself “king,” the word expressed rule over his state. The appellation “king” was used for these two different levels because the Chinese character “王” and the corresponding royal title originated in the shape of the battle axe that symbolized command of armies. The Xia dynasty was not China’s first state, for in the age of Yao, Shun and Yu numerous local states had organized themselves into tribal federations. Xia dynasty kingship, where the king was “common ruler of all under Heaven” (天下共主tianxia gongzhu) developed out of the power wielded by the hegemonic chieftains in the age of very large tribal states.

Diets, social roles, and geographical origins of sacrificial victims at the royal cemetery at Yinxu, Shang China: New evidence from stable carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur isotope analysis

The practice of ritual killing, using both human and animal subjects, was prevalent in early Bronze Age China. This study addresses one key archaeological question that concerns the social roles and geographical origins of these human victims. Although oracle bone inscriptions from the site of Yinxu mentioned that many of these victims were war captives, little archaeological evidence could support or confirm this assertion. Using stable carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur isotope analysis, we reconstructed and compared the dietary practices of 68 sacrificial victims with those of 39 local residents from Yinxu. In addition, for 30 of the sacrificial victims, δ13C, δ15N, and δ34S values from two different bone elements per individual were compared to look for evidence of migration. Our results suggest that these sacrificial victims were likely not local, but moved to Yinxu and adopted the local diet for at least a few years before being killed. This discovery has significant implications for understanding the various tactics used by the Shang kings to consolidate power over their subjects, including the display of violence through mass sacrificial rituals.

The Duke of Zhou Changes: A Study and Annotated by Stephen L. Field

Reviewed by: The Duke of Zhou Changes: A Study and Annotated by Stephen L. Field Bent Nielsen (bio) Stephen L. Field. The Duke of Zhou Changes: A Study and Annotated Translation of the Zhouyi 周易. Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Band 97. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2015. xii, 281 pp. Paperback €58.00, isbn 978-3-447-10406-7. This new translation of the Zhouyi (The Zhou Changes) is divided into three parts: introductory material (pp. 5–57), the translation proper (pp. 59–248), and “Practical Applications” (pp. 249–257). The three parts are preceded by a list of contents (pp. v–vii), a preface (pp. ix–xii), a brief introduction (pp. 1–2), and a list of Chinese periods and dynasties (p. 3). The book concludes with a glossary (pp. 259–263), a bibliography of primary and secondary sources (pp. 265–271), and an index (pp. 273–281), followed by a hexagram location chart. In addition to that, seven tables and sixteen illustrations are provided. Field’s translation targets both the general reader and the specialist: “it maintains a minimum of exegesis so that the specialist can understand the derivation of what may initially appear to be unorthodox renditions of various passages” (p. xi). It furthermore includes subsections and charts that cater to readers who will want to use the book for divination purposes. The introductory material and the translated parts include Chinese characters for convenient reference. In his preface Stephen Field refers to some of the previous translations and declares his indebtedness to Richard Kunst, Edward Shaughnessy, Richard Rutt, and John Minford, all of whom have translated the older part of the Changes.1 However, unlike any of these translators Fields believes that the line texts of the Zhouyi were in fact composed by the Duke of Zhou 周公 (hence the title) who lived in the eleventh century b.c.e. The tradition that the two sets of texts of the Zhouyi, the hexagram texts and the line texts, were co-authored by Ji Chang 姬昌 (aka the Cultured King 文王) and his son Ji Dan 姬旦 (the Duke of Zhou)—both semi-legendary paragons of virtue in the eyes of Confucius (Kongzi 孔子) and his [End Page 38] followers—can be traced back to Ma Rong 馬融 (79–166) but may of course be older. A similar tradition had Confucius as the author of the so-called Ten Wings. In this reviewer’s opinion, it is entirely possible to appreciate the multilayered structure of the Yijing without subscribing to any of these attributions, which themselves seem to have arisen well over a thousand years after the deaths of the putative authors. The introductory material in part 1, “The Origin of the Zhouyi,” focuses on ancient Chinese history and ancient Chinese divination as well as the mythical and historical origins of the Yijing. These are generally reliable if somewhat speculative syntheses of archaeological discoveries and summaries of traditional Chinese accounts, although the latter appears with little or no critical distance and hardly any consideration of the contexts in which these stories came to life. The reign of the last Shang king “degenerated into tyrannical oppression” (pp. 10–11) while the father of the Cultured King was “a just and wise ruler” and the Cultured King himself had “qualities of meekness and humility [that] were so opposed to the cruelty and intimidation of the Shang kings that worthy people from all directions flocked to serve him” (p. 12; see also note 3 ibid.). Readers familiar with the Confucian canon will recognize this Confucian pro-Zhou spin to bolster the legitimacy of what may otherwise have been construed as the rebellion of a vassal against his lord. Instead, the Zhou takeover of the Shang was celebrated throughout China’s history as a just victory of the virtuous Zhou clan legitimized by the Mandate of Heaven. “[T]he tradition in which the Zhou figure so centrally is a Zhou creation,” writes Robert Bagley, and adds “it bears the stamp of symbolic history.”2 Again Field endorses authorship attributions which are highly uncertain at best and therefore abandoned by most scholars in the field (see page 16 for the Duke of Zhou’s alleged role in the formation...

The Family Instructions of Ji Dan Recorded in the Book of Documents

The five chapters of family instruction “Announcement to the Prince of Kang”, “Announcement about Drunkenness”, “Timber of the Rottlera”, “Against Luxurious Ease” and “Establishment of Government” attributed to Ji Dan in the Book of Documents are studied with reference to the political and social context of the Western Zhou period. In these chapters, Prince Kang and King Cheng of Zhou are reminded by Ji Dan to develop personal quality such as cultivation of virtue, modelling of exemplar Shang kings and observance of clan seniors’ instructions as well as rule the people by education, law and punishment, virtuous officials, and caring strategies. These family instructions which may be updated or created in the late Western Zhou are based on the beliefs “observe the will of Heaven” and “love the people” aiming to sustain and pass on the family-held sovereignty. A framework of family sustainability is constructed accordingly with reference to ethical concepts of filial piety and paternal concern. This framework can be extended from the royal family instruction to other social classes as sustainability of family is the major responsibility of Chinese while cultivation of virtue and development of administrative skills are still two key areas of education for Chinese.

Fighting for His Majesty (II): The Shang Art of War

AbstractThis essay, one of the two parts of my research on Shang militarism, focuses on Shang military rituals and war preparations. I tackle issues such as the Shang king’s way of decision-making in regard to battles and military actions, the Shang communications system and logistics network, and the details of how the Shang produced grains and meats. Finally, I argue that careful scrutiny of the excavated buildings at Yanshi city, an early Shang capital before Anyang, strongly suggests that the Shang excelled at defense as well. In contrast to the first part of my research, which relied on secondary materials published by modern Chinese scholars, in the present essay I utilize published collections of oracle bone inscriptions. I have analyzed more than one hundred inscriptions and also discuss several individual graphs in order to ground my arguments.

Book Review: Calendars and Chronological Tables, Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World

CALENDARS AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World. Edited by John M. Steele (Oxbow Books, Oxford, 201 1). Pp. iv + 179. $60. ISBN 978-1-84217-987-1.As stated in the editor's preface, the present book is a collection of six articles aimed at enhancing our current understanding of calendars and of chronological tables as essential auxiliary tools in the writing of history. Devoted to the Chinese, Indian, Jewish, Islamic and Mesoamerican worlds during the ancient and medieval periods, it complements a first volume limited to the Ancient Near East.These articles fall into the following three heterogeneous categories: (1) a critical examination of the state of the art in a particular domain (the Chinese Sexagenary Cycle and the ritual foundations of the Chinese calendar by A. Smith; the correlation between historical Maya and Christian dates by G. Adana); (2) an analysis of the calendrical aspect of particular historical sources (the 364-Day Year in the Dead Sea scrolls by J. Ben Dov; the Zij al-Sanjari, an Arabic treatise composed c. 1 1 15 by C. Montelle); and (3) an overview of the subject in a particular region over several millennia (K. Plofker and T. L. Knudsen on the Indian calendar; N. Sivin on mathematical astronomy and the Chinese calendar).This heterogeneity probably reflects the different modes of approach to a difficult subject involving small scholarly communities, Western and non- Western, interconnected or not. Consequently, the most recent findings have often been published in not-widely accessible languages. In this respect, the fact that Ben Dov's outstanding article, for example, which was originally only available in Hebrew, has been here translated into English is much appreciated. On the other hand, the two articles on China rely essentially on first-order but untranslated Chinese works, even a Ph.D. dissertation (p. 50).The first of these, A. Smith's article, is a critical presentation of questions concerning early China (the Shang king list, late Shang divination records, dates on late Shang bronzes, the cyclical sacrificial roster). In a domain that is fraught with difficulties and where implicit assumptions are often taken for granted without warning, even in works considered as authoritative, the clarity of Smith's approach makes it, henceforth, an indispensable reference tool. But since the author mentions the enigmatic terms 'heavenly stems' (or trunks) tiangan ^c^P and 'terrestrial branches' dizhi %3^ (p. 29), referring to the components of the Sexagenary Cycle, we might add here that these two terms evoke in fact the image of an inverted cosmic tree belonging also to the Indian culture since the Vedic period and to many other traditions, Arabic, Hebrew, European and Siberian.1The second article, by N. …

Fighting for His Majesty (I): Accretion of the Greater Shang (ca. 1200-1045 B.C.)

Abstract A series of new archaeological excavations in China has enriched the study of ancient Shang and Zhou history. Many Chinese scholars have devoted considerable research to the recently deciphered oracle bone inscriptions, which have illuminated the military and religious practices of the Shang in greater detail. Their achievements enable us to arrive at new understandings about the processes, purposes, and strategies employed by the Shang people to expand their territory. This article explores the structure of the Great Settlement of the Shang and what life was like in the late Shang period. Also, it intends to shed new light on the wars between the Shang and their enemies, including their military arrangements, the major generals of the Shang king, and their strategies for building alliances. Finally, I argue that the chief purpose of Shang expansion to the south was to procure a supply of a key natural resource, copper.

The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space and Community in Late Shang China (ca. 1200-1045 BC) (review)

Reviewed by: The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space and Community in Late Shang China (ca. 1200-1045 BC) John S. Major (bio) David N. Keightley . The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space and Community in Late Shang China (ca. 1200-1045 BC). China Research Monograph 53. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 2000. xiv, 209 pp. Paperback $15.00, ISBN 1-55729-070-9. The Shang dynastic proto-kingdom was founded somewhere in the lower-middle reaches of the Yellow River drainage basin around 1500 BCE. The first two-thirds of the dynasty's history is very imperfectly known, because the sites of its several successive royal towns have not been securely identified, and almost no written records survive from that period. Around 1200 BCE, however, the dynasty established a temple and palace complex (whether this can be called a "capital," properly speaking, is a matter of debate among specialists) at what is now the village of Xiaotun, near Anyang, in northern Henan Province. The move to Anyang ushered in a period known as the Late Shang, and from the soil of Anyang have emerged the first written records of an East Asian civilization. For a century and a half, from the reign of Wu Ding (the twenty-first king) through the reign of Di Xin (the twenty-ninth and last), the Shang kings held sway at the city they called Great Shang. Assisted by kinsmen, nobles, and an array of functionaries and artisans, they hunted, made war, asserted territorial control, collected and expended wealth, and, above all, carried out elaborate, recurring rituals designed to secure the favor of their deceased ancestors and various gods and powers. The actions of the Shang kings were accompanied by incessant, and indeed almost obsessive, measures to consult the ancestors and deities in order to learn how to deal with them. This was done, as is well known, by applying heat to specially prepared bovine scapulae and turtle plastrons so as to produce a distinctive kind of crack, some aspect of which (the shape? the sound?—no one is sure) was taken to indicate a positive or negative answer to the question (the "charge") posed by the diviner. In many cases, an engraver was ordered subsequently to inscribe the charge on the bone or shell; sometimes also the answer was indicated, and sometimes also the actual outcome of the event about which the divination had been performed. [End Page 460] Some forty-six thousand oracle bones are known to scholarship, most of them having been excavated from storage pits in which they were carefully archived. That is not far short of one for every day of the entire Late Shang period; moreover, many of the bones and shells were used multiple times, and often contain several written divination records. Although the inscriptions are silent on a great many things that we would like to know about the Shang, they are nevertheless in aggregate a historical resource of immense importance, and one from which a very impressive amount of information can be gained—some of it overtly obvious, some of it needing to be teased out by skillful scholarly work. David Keightley has made a brilliant career of interpreting this evidence. It is hard to remember a time when he was not the West's foremost scholar of oracle bones, and its most persuasive interpreter of the era that produced them. In dozens of articles, and in such influential books as Sources of Shang History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978, 1985) and the edited volume The Origins of Chinese Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), he has painted a remarkably full and rich picture of Shang civilization. His work has led him into a great many disciplines, from paleoclimatology and historical topography, plant genetics, and metallurgy to the interpretation of archaeologically recovered objects. But always at the center of his scholarship, the foundation on which all of his work is built, has been the corpus of oracle-bone inscriptions. The Ancestral Landscape is an admirable addition to Keightley's bibliography. The subject here is, as the book's subtitle has it, "Time, Space and Community in Late Shang China"—in other words, Shang...

The Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project: Methodology and Results

The Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project is a multidisciplinary research program that began in 1996. The ultimate goal of the Chronology Project is to provide a scientifically based absolute chronology of the Xia, Shang, and Western Zhou, the three earliest dynasties in Chinese history. The Chronology Project has involved the collaboration of more than 200 specialists in the fields of archaeology, history, astronomy, and radiocarbon dating from about 30 institutes and universities. Forty-four topics organized under nine themes, each with explicit, realizable goals, were set up to implement the Chronology Project. After more than four years of study,a new chronological chart of the Three Dynasties was derived and disseminated in the autumn of 2000. The new chart offers the exact reigns of nine late Shang kings and ten Western Zhou kings, and a framework for the chronology of early Shang and Xia. Some important datum points of the chronology are: the beginning of Xia and that of Shang are dated to ca. 2070 BC and ca. 1600 BC respectively; the date King Pan Geng moved the Shang capital to Yin is estimated to be ca. 1300 BC; and the Zhou conquest of the Shang, that is, the beginning of Zhou Dynasty, is set to 1046 BC.

中國古代存祀主義之國際王道思想

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. 據史實所可考知，中國古代自殷商時代已傳衍一種存祀的國際關係思想。可以命之為存祀主義。相傳殷商高宗武丁時代已有這種思想。 惟在後世聖賢學者與君后諸侯普遍信持的歷史記載，則多以周武王克商故事為根據。成為歷代傳承的丈事典範。故事內容十分具體而顯明。就是在武王克商之後除了殺掉妲己，並把纣王懸首在白旗上。同時散發鹿台（地名）之財，分發鉅橋（地名）之粟，分给黎民百姓。並派人釋放被囚的箕子（人名）和眾百姓，派人封比干（人名）之墓，表彰商容（人名）的門閭。更封紂的兒子武庚旅父（人名）保存原有的殷商政權。此外更分神農、黃帝、唐堯、虞舜、夏禹等帝王的後人立為封國。因是古代聖賢俱頌稱為王道。 在古代的學術思想名家，先後普遍頌揚武王的存祀主義的王道。有孔子、子思、荀子、以及儒家後學，一致宏揚孔子所説：「興滅國，繼絕世，舉逸民，天下之民歸心焉。」而法家的管子，更是幫助齊桓公實質履行存祀主義，儒家經典盛讚齊桓公的三存亡國，一繼絕世。因是使春秋時代的霸業，有一個存祀主義 王道思想。我人尚可以在《左傳》、《國語》書中發現此一實殘的例子。 存祀主義進入秦漢大一統之世，已在政治運行上消褪。然至明清兩代，更成為封貢體制(Tributary System)中一個政治信念。明清帝君對於朝貢國多有履踐。仍不廢王道。中國最後一次履行存祀主義，是在光緒五年(1879)在日本呑併琉球的交涉中，主張為琉球保存其所據大島，以延績琉球宗廟血祀。此為帝國主義者暗笑中國的迂闊愚昧。然而今世爭殺是尚，弱小民族如何避免征服，逃脱被奴役命運。此是世界人 類共同思考之大問題。According to historical records, since the Shang era, a nationally related ideology regarding the worship of royal ancestors had existed in ancient China. It was believed that such kind of thoughts existed in as early as the Gao-zhong Wu Ding period in the ancient Shang Dynasty. However scholars, kings, queens and the noblemen in later years generally tended to believe in records about inheritance that were based on the story of King Zhou Wu who conquered Shang. This had become the paradigm of historical inheritance. The story was very concrete and its message obvious. After King Wu conquered Shang, apart from killing the Shang King’s concubine Tan Ji and hanging up the head of the infamous King Zhou on a white flag, he also distributed the wealth in Lu-tai and the food in Ju Qiao to civilians; moreover he sent people to release the imprisoned Qi Zi and other civilians; he sent someone to honor the tomb of Bi Gan and decorate the door of Shang Rong; King Zhou s son Wu Gang Lu Fu was allowed to maintain Shang’s political power. In addition, the descendants of Shen Nong, Huang Di, Tang Yao, Yu Shun and Xia Yu were awarded territories. Many ancient scholars lauded such generosity as regal benevolence. Renowned thinkers and philosophers in ancient China had been praising King Wu's regal benevolence ideology. Confucius, Zi Si, Xun Zi and other confucius followers unanimously upheld what Confucius proclaimed, “Assist defeated states to recover, let political regimes of the ousted rulers continue, give glory to hermits of the previous dynasty, then all the people would whole-heartedly render support to the ruling power.” Guan Zi of the Legalistic School helped Qi Wun Gong (Duke of Qi) implement ancestral inheritance. In the Confucius classics, Qi Wun Gong was much acclaimed for rendering help to defeated states three times, and helping to perpetuate ancestral worship of ousted states. Thus we can tell that during the hegemony of the war-tom Spring-autumn era, such royal inheritance thoughts existed. Concrete examples can be found in classics such as “Zou Zhuan" and "Guoyu". The regal benevolence tenet faded out politically in the unified Qin and Han era. Nevertheless, in the Ming and Qing dynasty, it had evolved into a political ideology in the Tributary System The kings of Ming and Qing Dynasty upheld regal benevolence through pledging to protect their protege states. The last ancestral worship tenet was seen in the fifth year of Guang Xu's rule (1879) when Japan had taken Ryukyu Island. The Emperor of the Qing Dynasty insisted that Ryukyu Island should keep Da Dao (Big Island) so as to allow it to maintain its ancestral worship practice and blood-line. The imperialists sneered at China as ignorant and stupid. However, in contemporary time, amidst fighting and killings, how vulnerable tribes could avoid being conquered and enslaved is actually an important issue for all people to ruminate.

The Ghost Head Mask and Metamorphic Shang Imagery

The meaning of Shang ritual imagery has long baffled scholars. Art historians and anthropologists have wrestled with its meaning every since 1928 when bronzes began to be excavated at Anyang, the Late Shang capital. It is now possible to explore various data to identify the religious significance of Shang ritual art From an art historical point of view, it is evident that certain standard modes of representation were designed to symbolize the theme of metamorphosis from the human to the animal spirit realm. This symbolism also helps to explain why the ubiquitous animal image in Shang art is conceived as a mask. Epigraph-ical data support the interpretation that Shang religion was based on the belief of metamorphosis as represented in art, and that the Shang king once acted as shaman-priest, chief-in-charge of invocation and a mask wearing rite. This interpretation depends on data provided by key terms in Shang bone inscriptions, such as gui 鬼, usually translated spirit ghost and others, directly related, such as the unpronounceable ff and zhu 祝. My intention is to elucidate why spirit ghosts of ancestors, gui were envisioned as anthropomorphized animal masks and how this conception is connected with the shamanic foundation of Shang religion. Although bone inscriptional data indicates that there is a dramatic shift away from exorcistic practices of shamanic origin to cult worship focused on dead royal ancestors, the combined evidence from art and epigraphy strongly argues for a Shang religion founded on the belief in metamorphosis and the king as shaman-priest.

27. The Cemetery System of the Shang Dynasty

ABSTRACTThe Shang kingdom was a patriarchal (zongfa) slave society; political and clan authority were fused into one. The Shang king was the supreme ruler of the state; he was also the grand clan head of all the nobles, large and small, within the state. Local feudal lords (zhu hou) were the supreme rulers and clan heads of the nobles within the territory under his command. Within the clan the clan head combined political and familial authority in his one person. The commoners and slaves were ruled.The Shang cemetery system reflected the relations of class, rank, and blood ties within the patriarchal slave society of the Shang kingdom.The Shang king, being the supreme ruler of the state, had his separate burial site in the Xibeigang area of the Yin Ruins, as well as his own particular style of tomb and of burial rites. There was a separate burial area for the king's consorts. All others within the area of direct control of the Shang king, regardless of rank, status, or wealth, were buried in their clan cemeteries. However nobles had their own family burial area within the clan cemetery; the style of their tombs, of grave goods, and of burial rites all differed from those of commoners and of other family members. Local feudal lords also had their own separate burial areas within their own territories, while all others were buried in their clan cemeteries. Slaves were buried in ash pits or layers of ash close to residential areas.

28. Some Problems Concerning the So-Called Survivors of the Yin Dynasty

ABSTRACTThe basic error in Hu Shi's “An Exposition on Confucians” lay in discussing the basic nature of the Confucian school on the basis of the “tragic fate and miserable status of the survivors of the Shang”; for half a century this mistaken premise has been accepted by most historians as proven. On the basis of an analysis of pre-Qin literary sources, this paper first proves that there was no “tragedy of the defeated state”; on the contrary, the Yin survivors continued to possess considerable political power and quite high social status. Second, on the basis of newly un earthed Shang and Zhou inscriptions, the fate and status of the Shang survivors is set forth from three sides: (1) The history of the Wei Shi clan and Lu Sheng clan of the Guanzhong region, for which genealogies of seven-eight or six-seven generations exist, is reconstructed on the basis of, for the former, the Ding bronze horde newly unearthed from Fufeng Zhuangbai, and, for the latter, the inscriptions on already known as well as recently unearthed bronze vessels from the same area. Both clans were survivors from the Shang and close relatives of the Shang king; they possessed cities, subjects, and official positions, as well as holding offices in charge of troops. (2) The same conclusion may be reached in individual cases in various other kingdoms, such as for Mo Situ Sung of the state of Wei , and Dong Hefu of the state of Yan . As for the Ling Shi , Chen Chen and Deng of Cheng Zhou , Cheng Zhou is the ancient home of the Shang survivors, yet they seem not to have been the object of any special restriction or suppression. This section is based solely on inscriptions; the conclusions reached, however, are completely in agreement with those derived from literary evidence in the previous section. Finally an attempt is made to explain why the survivors of the Shang had land, subjects, offices, and power. We believe that it was due to a political and social structure with the clan as the primary unit. A complete explication of this question awaits a detailed study of oracle-bone and archaeological source material.

Zhouyuan Oracle-Bone Inscriptions: Entering the Research Stage?

In 1977, some 17,000 pieces of pyromantic turtle-shell, of which nearly 300 pieces were inscribed, were discovered at the site of the Zhou ancestral temple in Qishan, Shaanxi. Scholarship on this important inscriptional source has been hampered by the piecemeal nature of its publication. Now, Wang Yuxin, in his XiZhou jiagu tanlun, has brought together the information and conclusions of sixteen studies published through 1981. In addition, Wang has also presented his own research into the nature and periodization of these inscriptions. The author of this review article acknowledges Wang's contributions to the study of the Zhouyuan oracle-bone inscriptions, but finds fault not only with Wang's periodization but also with his assertion that a number of these inscriptions recording sacrifices to Shang ancestors manifest instead an exogamic relationship between the Shang and Zhou kings.