Shang Dynasty

I

INTRODUCTION

Shang Dynasty (1570?-1045? bc), Chinese dynasty with the earliest-known written records. It is the most ancient of the Chinese dynasties for which documents are known to exist, marking the beginning of China’s written history. The cultural, religious, and political practices of the Shang elites strongly influenced the Zhou, who conquered the Shang in about 1045 bc and established the Zhou dynasty. A dynasty is a succession of rulers from the same family.

The Shang texts exist primarily in the form of carvings in the Shang script on animal bones and shells. These inscriptions recorded the king’s divinations (ritual acts designed to forecast the future). More than 200,000 fragments of the so-called oracle-bone inscriptions have been found. They provide an account of the daily concerns of the last nine Shang kings, from the 21st king, Wu Ding, to the 29th king, Di Xin. Their period of rule, from about the late 1200s to about 1045 bc, is known as the Late Shang.

The Shang state was centered in what is now called the Huabei Pingyuan (North China Plain), an expansive lowland area extending across north central China. Significant population growth and cultural interaction had been taking place there in the 3rd millennium bc, during China’s Neolithic Period, or New Stone Age. The Shang culture that emerged in the 2nd millennium bc, during China’s Bronze Age, was a product of that interaction.

The Late Shang kings exercised varying degrees of influence over present-day northern Henan, southwest Shanxi, and western Shandong provinces. At the same time, several other early states existed in and beyond this area, notably in the lower and middle Yangtze River valley, but they left few, if any, written records.

II

HISTORICAL RECORD

Archaeological excavations of sites tentatively identified as early Shang capitals—such as the walled settlements at Yanshi and Zhengzhou in north central Henan Province—have not uncovered any body of writings. Texts left by the later Zhou and Han dynasties refer to a series of 30 Shang rulers. All but one of the names of these Shang rulers also appear in the oracle-bone inscriptions of the Late Shang. Without any records from the early Shang period itself, however, the historical reliability of these later accounts is uncertain. Events traditionally associated with the early Shang dynasty, including the Shang’s reputed conquest of the Xia dynasty, therefore may be legendary.

A major complex of Late Shang settlements was located near the present-day city of Anyang in northern Henan Province. Of several sites in the vicinity, the most thoroughly excavated is centered on the present-day village of Xiaotun, located 3 km (2 mi) northwest of Anyang and to the south of the Huan River. This site covers an area of about 30 sq km (12 sq mi) and has been under scientific excavation since 1928. Archaeological digs have uncovered workshop remains, numerous storage pits (some containing caches of oracle-bone inscriptions), and more than 50 rammed-earth foundations of temple-palaces. Many burials of Shang elites, middle-status dependents, and sacrificial victims lay among and beyond the buildings. The Xiaotun settlement was linked to a complex of settlements and craft centers bordering the foothills of the Taihang Shan to the west. The absence of a wall around the site suggests the Late Shang kings were confident they could defend their settlement against attacks from outsiders.

On the north side of the Huan River, a Shang cemetery at Xibeigang contains the burial pits of eight of the last nine Shang kings. (Another tomb was evidently under construction when the last Shang king, Di Xin, was defeated by the Zhou.) These impressive burial pits were configured with entrance ramps oriented to the four cardinal directions. The ramps led to a deep vertical shaft that contained a wooden burial chamber. The rich grave goods in these tombs had all been looted by the time archaeologists discovered the site in the 1930s. The only royal tomb found completely intact in the Anyang area, and the only one whose occupant has been positively identified, is that of Wu Ding’s consort, Fu Hao. Her tomb was excavated in 1976. Although much smaller than the royal burials at Xibeigang, it offers a glimpse of how the others would have been furnished with a lavish assortment of cast bronzes (vessels, bells, mirrors, and weapons), carved jade ornaments, pottery, and objects made of ivory and marble.

The Anyang sites are the only major source of the Shang oracle-bone inscriptions. The largest and most varied group of divination inscriptions was discovered at Xiaotun in 1936. These inscriptions were primarily from the reign of Wu Ding, who died in about 1189 bc.

The Late Shang inscriptions recorded the king’s divinations on topics such as sacrificial offerings, divine assistance, military campaigns, settlement building, the weather, hunts, harvests, sickness, childbirth, and dreams. The king began his divination by proposing a specific prediction, such as “Today it might rain” or “The western lands will receive harvest.” His diviners, or ritual assistants, then applied intense heat to a specially prepared cattle scapula (shoulder blade) or turtle shell. The heat produced stress cracks that the king’s diviners interpreted as either lucky or unlucky. The king would then forecast what the future was likely to bring. Scribes carved a record of the divination topic, usually prefaced with the date of the divination, into the bone or shell. Sometimes they recorded the king’s forecast and the eventual result. The Shang also cast a small number of inscriptions, usually brief records of ritual matters, into their bronze vessels. Other Shang records undoubtedly existed, but they would have been written on perishable materials such as bamboo and silk.

III

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS

The Late Shang inscriptions portray a relatively weak dynastic state. The king presided over a rudimentary administrative hierarchy. His control over local lords and chiefs was often uncertain because it was exercised through a shifting network of alliances and required backing by military force. When the king patrolled and hunted in his domains, his presence reminded those in outlying areas of his power and of their obligations to him.

The kingship passed from brother to brother or from father to son, with father-to-son descent becoming the rule for the last five kings. The king called himself yu yi ren (I, the one man) and was titled wang (which is still the word for “king” in Chinese). He claimed to make military victories and good harvests possible through his prayers. He divined about topics such as issuing orders, joining allies in military campaigns, and mobilizing troops.

During the reign of Wu Ding, the Late Shang engaged in a series of mostly victorious campaigns against various non-Shang tribes to the west and northwest. Under Wu Ding’s son and heir, Zu Geng, however, the Shang started to suffer military defeats. The extent of Shang influence had shrunk by the dynasty’s end. No Shang records of the final defeat have been found. According to later texts, the Zhou ruler, King Wu, swept into Shang territory from the Wei River valley to the west and overthrew Di Xin, the last Shang king, at the Battle of Muye in northern Henan Province in about 1045 bc.

IV

SOCIETY

Late Shang life was dominated by overlapping considerations of kinship, status, and hierarchy. The values of Shang society and Shang religion were inseparable, with much of the discipline and hierarchy of Shang life reinforced by religious belief. The Shang appealed to their royal ancestors in a regular cycle of divination and ritual, believing that the ancestors could act on their behalf. This ancestor worship continually reinforced the political status of the king, whose lineage ties gave him privileged access to the assistance his ancestors could provide.

The dynastic ancestors belonged to an elaborate religious pantheon that also included various nature powers and the Shang high god, Di. The higher powers were less concerned with the well-being of Shang society than the ancestors were. Di, whose wishes were often hard to determine, could even cause the Shang harm. The nature powers could occasionally influence the wind, rain, and harvests, but only Di could actually order the weather. For an agricultural society such as the Shang, this was perhaps the greatest of all powers.

The king stood at the apex of the social and political pyramid, presiding over a dynastic state staffed by various officers and their dependents, some of whom were related to the royal family. They in turn presided over their own smaller communities. Ties of kinship and pseudo-kinship, both sanctioned by religious belief, established a web of reciprocal obligations. The king served and was rewarded by his ancestors, while the dependents served and were rewarded by the king.

The Shang believed that the ability of the royal ancestors to assist their descendants depended upon the king’s ritual offerings of grain, millet ale, and human and animal victims. Some 80 percent of Shang divination dealt with questions of sacrifice and ritual, as the king sought to determine the timing of his offerings and the number of sacrificial victims needed to please his ancestors and the other religious powers. The Shang routinely sacrificed animals and humans in the belief that these offerings strengthened the power of the ancestors. Archaeologists have found the remains of some 5,000 human victims both inside and outside the tombs in the royal cemetery at Xibeigang.

Such ritual sacrifices were also an expression of the Shang belief that both status and kin, or kinlike, relations would continue after death. Family members, elites, dependents, and armed guards followed a high-status lord or lady into death in the belief they would continue to serve their superior in the afterlife.

Peasants were at the base of the social pyramid. Although their hard labor benefited those who ranked above them, they were not slaves. No evidence suggests that Shang society included the buying or selling of humans. Terms like slavery and freedom cannot easily be applied to the varying degrees of obligation and dependency that characterized Shang society.

V

ECONOMY

Millet was the staple crop of the Shang realm. The peasantry subsisted on a share of the millet they planted and harvested. Some peasants, mobilized into labor gangs by the king, worked the royal fields. The Shang elites had the privilege of consuming the deer they hunted and the cattle, sheep, and pigs they raised. In addition, they offered domesticated animals in sacrifice, sometimes by the hundreds, to their ancestors.

Wu Ding benefited from certain forms of tribute—primarily the scapulas and shells used for divination—that his allies sent to him. The Shang kings rewarded their followers with strings of cowrie shells, which served as a store of wealth. Sometimes the shells were buried with the dead as a symbol of high status. Nearly 7,000 cowrie shells, for example, were found in the tomb of Fu Hao. That the Shang attached value to the cowrie shells was also indicated by their production of bronze replicas.

Much of the king’s power came from the dependent laborers who were attached to his court. They served in his armies and in the technologically advanced workshops that produced bronze ritual vessels and bells, bronze and stone weapons, high-quality ceramics, chariots and their bronze fittings, jade and bone ornaments, silk, millet ale, and other prestige items.

Bronze metalworking had become a large-scale industrial activity by the Late Shang period. It required both technological expertise and considerable social and political organization. Hundreds of laborers were involved in mining the ore, gathering the fuel to melt the ore and extract the metals, and pouring the molten bronze (an alloy of copper and tin) into clay molds. Skilled artisans created the clay models and sectional molds used for the piece-mold bronze casting. This casting process, which had developed in China during its early Bronze Age, permitted the precise detailing of intricate motifs. After the bronze had cooled and hardened in the molds, the Shang artisans hand-tooled and polished the final product. The Shang produced large quantities of ritual bronze vessels, the largest of which weighed almost a ton. Initially based on clay Neolithic prototypes, the shape and décor of the Shang bronzes took on a distinctive artistic style, involving intricate designs of animal shapes and other symbolic motifs.

VI

CULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS

Many characteristics of Shang culture, including burial practices, pot shapes, and design motifs, can be traced to the Neolithic cultures of eastern China. Metalworking and the horsedrawn chariot entered China from the northwest. The Shang developed their metalworking from small-scale primitive forms into an organized industry. Horsedrawn chariots were introduced toward the end of the 13th century bc. Richly ornamented with bronze, they demonstrated the prestige and status of the Shang elites. Combined with the advent of a writing system, these cultural developments contributed to the stratified Bronze Age civilization of the Shang.

The writing system of the Late Shang built on early forms of Chinese writing that had emerged during the late Neolithic and early Shang periods. In the Shang system, and in Chinese writing ever since, each word was represented by a single distinctive symbol, called a character, that recorded its sound and meaning. The scribes of the Late Shang wrote their inscriptions with a vocabulary of more than 1,700 commonly used characters. The Shang writing system was the antecedent of the traditional Chinese system, which had more than 40,000 characters.

The Shang oracle-bone and bronze inscriptions provide the earliest evidence of a calendar in China. The inscribed dates show that the Shang measured time by days, weeks, and, less frequently, months. The Shang named days in a recurring 60-day cycle and assigned 10 days to each week. The months varied in length in accordance with the lunar cycle. Each yue (month or moon) was numbered, with the first month of the year linked either to the winter solstice or to the start of the agricultural season in early summer. The year usually had 12 months, although the Shang occasionally added a 13th or 14th month to synchronize the lunar months with the solar year. By the end of the dynasty, the Shang were intermittently recording the number of the king’s ritual cycle, which was about a year in length. The king was not named, however, and the precise dates of individual reigns have not been firmly established.

VII

LEGACY OF THE SHANG

The discovery and decipherment of the Late Shang oracle-bone inscriptions during the first decades of the 20th century confirmed that the Shang had been a truly historical dynasty, rather than a legendary one. Many Shang cultural developments were adopted and modified by the Zhou and the cultures that followed. Like the Shang kings, the Zhou rulers presided over a state in which political and religious processes were inseparable. They continued the Shang tradition of appealing to divination to resolve matters of state. They also continued the practice of ancestor worship. The high god, Di, continued to stand at the apex of the religious pantheon, sharing that position with the Zhou deity Tian (Heaven). The Zhou used, and further developed, the Shang written script. The attention to ritual that was so evident in the Shang inscriptions also became a feature of many Zhou classical texts.