The second royal regime of China, the Shang dynasty (c. 1600 - 1046 BCE), developed a polytheistic religion that focused on worshipping spiritual beings.[1] The dynasty developed a bureaucracy specialized in practicing rituals, divided into several positions tasked with performing different aspects of the religion.[2][3] Usually, the head practitioners were the Shang king and other members of the royal family.[2] Their activities, taking place at the Shang dynasty's capital city Yin were recorded on oracle bones.

The involvement of shamanism in the Shang religion is under debate. Researchers such as K.C.Chang support the view of active shamans in the court,[4] while others claim that the dynasty did not actually adopted shamanism in ceremonies.

Chief priests

The deities worshipped by the Shang, aside supernatural beings, were spirits of deceased ancestors. The reigning Shang king would be responsible for communicating with all the spirits for the state's welfare and successes.[2] He communicated through means of divination, written on oracle bones. The Shang kings usually gave the final prognostications about upcoming events, by interpreting the patterns on heated bones (ox scapulae, turtle plastrons, etc.). Predicted events were intended to last a full Shang week, that is, ten days.[2] In many cases, the divinations made by the kings (indicated by bone inscribers) predicted ominous and unfortunate situations.

The Shang monarchs also acted as organizers of ceremonies. When a king died, his successor would be responsible for giving him a proper burial ritual: an example is Wu Ding (r. 1250 - 1192 BCE), who was the organizer of the burial of his father Xiao Yi.[5] His role in this aspect was not restricted to deceased predecessors, as he also directed burials and rituals for relatives who died during his reign. In some ceremonies, the deities would be present as "guests", and the Shang king was the person who acted as "host".[1]

The Shang king's level of involvement in religion may explain why he could influence and gain sovereignty over remote polities.[6] Over time, the Shang dynasty gradually expanded and increased interaction with tribes and chiefdoms. Its religion possibly adopted gods worshipped by those polities into its own pantheon, and could also have associated the polities themselves with Shang gods. J. C. Didier, in advocate of this, pointed out that the Tufang, a long-term opponent of the Shang dynasty, was assigned with Tu (earth); that explains the unusually frequency of Tufang in Shang inscriptions. By worshipping both his own and others' gods, the king would be able to maintain suzerainty over the regions.

Within the royal palaces at Yin, several royal members apart from the ruler featured themselves as head priests. The most active of them was Fu Hao, the secondary queen. She was among the most frequently mentioned names in Shang divinatory texts.

Diviners and inscribers

On divinatory ceremonies, the Shang king was assisted by a number of diviners (duobu 多卜, lit. "many diviners"). They were tasked with heating the oracle bones which contain questions to Shang ancestors, and interpreting the cracks made by the heat to obtain the response.[7] In many cases, they only divined about whether the week was fortunate, and their predictions might be rejected by the king. Robert Eno suggested that the "diviners" may be alternatively called the "crackers", since bone cracking was a task certainly assigned for them.[1] The diviners were directed by a supervisor, guanzhan (官占).[3] Many diviners are known by their names, which appear in almost every text recording the corresponding divinatory ritual they conducted. Some of them are: Bin,[1] Que,[1] Ji,[1] Pin,[1] Zheng, and Huang.[8] During the reign of the religious king Wu Ding, over 70 diviners were recruited.

Diviners collaborated with the court inscribers ̣̣(taishi ling 太史令), who recorded divinations (as well as state affairs and other royal events). Their role in divinations were to write questions on the bones, and write the answers subsequently given after heating. Inscribers put down detailed information about each ceremony, from the name of conductors (the Shang ruler would be simply referred to as "the King") to the receiver of questions, and also the day of that ritual. In sacrifices, specific information about the subjects used for offering as well as their amount would also be written down.

Shamans

It is unknown whether shamanism was an important practice to the Shang dynasty or not. Robert Eno argued that communication with the deified spirits was done via sacrifices and technical manipulation of bones, and therefore could not be shamanism since it did not involve direct encounter with the spirits.[1] Against Eno's suggestion, Kwang-chih Chang claimed that the absence of shamanism would make understandings of Shang religion incomplete.[4]

The Shang dynasty had a court position called "wu" (巫, in oracle bones it is rendered as the shape of a "plus" sign). The word has been generally translated as "shaman". Some scholars however questioned about its true meaning, and whether it actually referred to a shaman or another kind of practitioner. Some pointed out that "wu" during the Shang dynasty could be deciphered in other ways apart from the commonly used speculation. Victor H. Mair, researching into the connection between early Chinese civilization and Inner Asia, theorized a possible meaning of "wu" by looking at linguistic evidence. According to his theory, "wu" during the Shang dynasty had the pronunciation "myag", related to the term "magus" in Old Persian[9] (he further claimed that "magician" is also a related term). In Zoroastrianism, "magi" (plural form of "magus") denotes priests. Therefore, there is a possibility that the "wu" during the Shang dynasty were originally people migrating from Inner Asia, and that they were non-shamanic priests. Mair supposed that the "wu" are better understood as people able to communicate with the spiritual world through art and sacrifices rather than shaman's practices like stance and mediation.[9]

But some divinatory records indicate the opposite: several oracle bones mention the Shang king "receiving" the spirits as "guests". Some scholars understand the "guest" rituals to have featured the kings as ceremonial hosts uniquely equipped to "hear" the spiritual messages in religious events.[10] In this sense, the king would be a shaman, directly communicating with his ancestors as well as non-royal deified spirits.

Other court religious positions

The role of astronomers / astrologers in the religion is incompletely understood but was possibly important. The shape of Shang characters for religious figures imply a complex comprehension and interpretation of the North Pole. Shang cosmology concentrated on the squared area defined by the Pole's surrounding stars at the time of the Shang, probably using Thuban as the reference celestial object.[6] They may have participated in making the Shang calendar, organizing a year into smaller periodical units.

The Shang rituals featured and necessitated the use of music. Divination was conducted to determine the kind of music going to be performed, usually dance. A number of dancers ("wu" 舞) were chosen to handle the task uder the command of a music director (gu 瞽)[11]

Regional practitioners

Aside from the central government at Yin, the Shang religion was also practiced in other areas of the state. Over 1000 oracle bones, many of which bear divinatory inscriptions, were excavated at Huayuanzhuang, near the historical site of Yin. The initial owner was a royal relative, a close kin of Wu Ding who was authorized to conduct his own religious activities.[2] Some of the Huayuanzhuang inscriptions were intended for the prince's own personal errands, while others concern Wu Ding's contemporary relationship with him.

Further than Huayuanzhuang, texts from Daxinzhuang, 250 kilometers apart from Yin, have also been found[12]

Training of partitioners at Yin

Literacy training for scribes

Oracle bone script, the writing system developed by the Shang dynasty, is thoroughly complex. Literacy among scribes was considered very important, for the purpose of divination and record rituals. Robert Bagley articulated saying that Shang literacy was tied to a maximal extreme,[13] but he also noted that the process of acquiring full literacy for Shang scribes is not understood.

The Shang character for "learn" (學, "xue") has been identified. Two plastrons inscribed during Wu Ding's regnal era, HJ: 8304 and HJ: 16406, are interpreted and indicate that "xue" could be written as both a verb and a noun.[14] Some inscriptions reveal that when the word is used in collocation with "大", the resulting phrase "大學" could refer to an alternative place for performing an unknown ritual. Xué (學) could possibly be a noun in HD: 181 (wǎngxué 往學 ‘to go to the xué’) and in HD: 450 (rùxué 入學 ‘to enter the xué’), but these examples could equally be verbs (i.e., ‘to go to learn,’ ‘to go in and learn’).[14]

Scholars have interpreted a large number of oracle bone inscriptions and suggested that a method of training scribes through repetitive practice of imitating model texts. In a 1937 annotated catalog, Guo Moruo examined the piece CB: 1468=HJ: 18946 which contains the information of sexagenary days and noticed such "learning" pattern. In the fourth line of the texts, the characters were written finely in thorough order, as if made by a teacher who had mastered the writing techniques. Meanwhile, the rest were much more crooked, probably due to unsuccessful attempts to copy the model texts. Guo Moruo also noted that among the badly written words on the same piece, there were several isolated characters with a fine style, namely those denoting the stems jia, "ji", "xin" and the branches mao, chen, wu. In such cases, he speculated that the supposed teacher carved those words to correct mistakes.[14] In a work by Matsumaru Michio, 156 occurrences of Shang date tables were studied and classified into three groups according to the degree of writing competence. The most finely texts of one group were proposed to be models for learning, while those from the other two categories were student copies.[15] However, the author did not make any claims about whether the students in that case were acquiring literacy or learning engraving skills.

Literacy and engraving techniques are distinguished from one another; therefore, some have questioned Guo Moruo's interpretation of the bones. In replying to Guo's remarks on the training, Zhang Shichao commented that the former's theory was flawed since crooked writing was not enough to prove the action of learning written language. He claimed that the trainees might have been actually literate at that time, and the texts might be their attempts in learning writing techniques.[16]

Training other ritual activities

The records belonging to the royal relative at Huayuanzhuang indicate a form of dance schooling. In five inscriptions, the word "learn" comes with "shang" (商) which coincides with the Shang dynasty's name but in the context has a different meaning. The character was speculated to denote a form of dance.[17] There are inscriptions about continuing to perform shang, and there is an oracle bone anticipating Wu Ding's inspection of the dances.

References

Sources

  • Eno, Robert (2010a). "History G380: Shang Religion" (PDF). Indiana University.
  • Eno, Robert (2010b). "History G380: Shang Society" (PDF). Indiana University.
  • Wang, Yuxin; Yang, Shengnan (1996). Zhongguo zhengzhi zhidu tongshi (中國政治制度通史). Vol. 2, Xianqin (先秦). Beijing: Renmin chubanshe.
  • Chang, Kwang-Chih (1994). "Shang Shamans". In Peterson, Willard J. (ed.). The Power of Culture: Studies in Chinese Cultural History. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. pp. 10–36. ISBN 978-962-201-596-8.
  • Mizoguchi; Uchida (31 May 2018). "The Anyang Xibeigang Shang royal tombs revisited: a social archaeological approach". Antiquity. 92 (363): 709–723. doi:10.15184/aqy.2018.19. hdl:2324/2244064. S2CID 165873637.
  • Chang, Kwang-Chih (1983). Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China.
  • Smith, Adam Daniel (2011). "The Chinese Sexagenary Cycle and the Ritual Origins of the Calendar". In Steele, John M. (ed.). Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and time in the ancient and medieval world. Oxbow Books. pp. 1–37. doi:10.7916/D8891CDX. ISBN 978-1-84217-987-1.
  • Mair, Victor. Old Sinitic Myag, Old Persian Magus, and English 'Magician'"(Early China 15, 27-47).
  • Childs-Johnson, Elizabeth (2008). The Meaning of the Graph Yi 異 and Its Implications for Shang Belief and Art.
  • Didier, John C. (2009). "In and Outside the Square: The Sky and the Power of Belief in Ancient China and the World, c. 4500 BC – AD 200". Sino-Platonic Papers. Victor H. Mair (192). Volume I: The Ancient Eurasian World and the Celestial Pivot, Volume II: Representations and Identities of High Powers in Neolithic and Bronze China, Volume III: Terrestrial and Celestial Transformations in Zhou and Early-Imperial China
  • Smith, Adam (8 August 2019). "The Chinese Sexagenary Cycle and the Origin of the Chinese Writing System". The Chinese Sexagenary Cycle and the Ritual Foundations of the Calendar. MPRL – Proceedings. Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften. ISBN 9783945561355.
  • Theobald, Ulrich (2018). "Shang Period Government, Administration, Law".
  • Stephen D. Houston, The First Writing, ed. (2004). "7 (pp. 190–249)". Anyang Writing and the Origin of the Chinese Writing System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Smith, Adam (2011a). "The Evidence for Scribal Training at Anyang". In Li Feng; David Prager Branner (eds.). Writing and Literacy in Early China. University of Washington Press.
  • Matsumaru Michio (松丸道雄) (2003). "Jieshao yi pian sifang feng ming keci gu" (悦紹М片四方風名刻辭骨)". In Wang Yuxin; Song Zhenhao (eds.). Jinian Yinxu jiaguwen faxian yibai zhou nian guoji xueshu yantaohui lunwenji (紀念殷墟⭢骨文發現М百周年國際學術研討會). Beijing: Shehui Kexue Wenxian Chubanshe. pp. 83–87.
  • Zhang Shichao (2002). Yinxu jiagu ziji yanjiu: Shizu buci pian (殷墟甲骨字跡研究— 師組卜辭篇). Changchun: Dongbei Shifan Daxue Chubanshe. pp. 27–28.
  • Song, Zhenhao. Cong jiaguwen kaoshu Shang dai. pp. 224–25.
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