Recent Affiliates

Religion

Instructions:
From the images given, such as the ritual vessels and the inscbied ox scapula, we know that there is an existand of priests. Conduct a research to learn more about the religion that the people of Shang Civilisation practiced. Blog your answers supported by pictoral or written sources as your evidence.


The Shang worshipped a figure they called "Shang Ti," or "Lord on High." This supreme god ruled over lesser gods of the sun, the moon, the wind, the rain, and other natural forces and places. Shang-Ti also regulated human affairs as well as ruling over the material universe.

This dual function would, in the Chou dynasty, be attributed to a more abstract figure, "t'ien," or "Heaven."

The Shang also believed that their ancestors dwelled in heaven after their death and continued to show an interest in their family and descendants.

The obligations within the family included, therefore, the ancestors. Failing in one's duties to the ancestors could bring all sorts of disaster on a family.

All of these divine and semi-divine figures, from Shang-Ti to a family's ancestors, were sacrificed to. However, we know little of the nature or the frequency of these sacrifices.

We do know, however, that in the Chou dynasty only the king could sacrifice to Shang-Ti; it is highly likely that Shang-Ti was the "local god" of the Shang kings who was subsequently elevated in order to elevate the Shang themselves. The one disturbing fact of Shang sacrifice is that it certainly involved humans; slaves and prisoners of war were often sacrificed by the hundreds when a king died.

Lesser numbers were sacrificed at the founding of a palace or temple.

T'ien Ming
When the Chou defeated the Shang in 1115 B.C. and began one of the longest dynasties in Chinese history (1115-221 B.C.), they were faced with the problem most usurpers faced when instituting a new government: how do you convince people that you are the proper people for the job of governing? This problem of legitimation is compounded by the fact that the authority is gained through conquest, which means that anyone with an army can legitimately take power, which means that people with armies start getting ideas as happened in Rome between 170-270 A. D. The Chou developed a political theory to justify their conquest and their usurpation of the emperorship in a doctrine called t'ien ming, or the "mandate" or "decree of Heaven."
Copyright:
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ANCCHINA/SHANG.HTM

---------------------------------------
SHANG RELIGION
A full description of Shang religion would include many facets. We would need to explore in detail the way in which the ancestral spirits were conceived, we would need to survey all non-ancestral deities and observe their powers, as reflected in divination, we would have to examine the complex system of ritual and sacrifice that paralleled Shang religious beliefs, and we would need to discuss the symbolic significance of the sacrificial bronzes that constitute the outstanding emblem of Shang society.

While this is clearly too ambitious a goal for this course, we will at least touch upon each of these elements. The principal purpose of this section is to introduce oracle inscriptions that have generally been taken to concern non-ancestral deities. These inscriptions have, since oracle texts were first deciphered, been seen as the reflection of a tripartite pantheon of spirits and gods. After the evidence for this model has been made clear, we will note some basic features of the data that may call it into question. Prior to this description of the pantheon, we will briefly consider the issues of ancestral spirits and the ancestral sacrificial calendar. In the following section, we will present a brief overview of the Shang bronzes and their problematic motifs.

The oracle texts document worship of a variety of deities that seem clearly associated not with any human lineage group, but rather with phenomena of the natural world. Some of these seem to have been concrete physical objects – the Yellow River and Mt. Song, a peak located in the region we believe housed a series of Shang Dynasty capital cities prior to the move north to the Anyang region. Others are probably better characterized as "forces of Nature": the winds of the four cardinal directions, the soil, the sun.

Above all these, too remote for direct worship through sacrifice but exemplifying the greatest range of powers, was a high deity known as Di. In the Shang oracle texts, no mention is made of the high god we are familiar with from the Classical era: Tian. Tian seems not to have been a part of the religion of the Shang, but rather to have been a religious figure of the Zhou people that was introduced into broader religious practice only after the conquest of 1045. Instead, Di seems to occupy the place of supreme spirit power in the oracle texts. So similar does Di seem to Tian, however, that it seems unsurprising that after the Zhou conquest, the terms seem to be used almost interchangeably in Zhou religious discourse.

Copyright: http://www.indiana.edu/~g380/Shang-Rel.pdf



Discovery

A Shang Dynasty oracle bone from the Shanghai MuseumThe Shāng-dynasty oracle bones are thought to have been unearthed periodically by local farmers, perhaps starting as early as the Hàn dynasty, and certainly by 19th century China, when they were sold as dragon bones (lóng gǔ 龍骨) in the traditional Chinese medicine markets, used either whole or crushed for the healing of various ailments. The turtle shell fragments were prescribed for malarial, while the other animal bones were used in powdered form to treat knife wounds. They were first recognized as bearing ancient Chinese writing by a scholar and high-ranking Qing dynasty official, Wáng Yìróng (王懿榮; 1845-1900) in 1899. A legendary tale states that Wang was sick with malaria, and his scholar friend Liú È (劉鶚; 1857-1909) was visiting him and helped examine his medicine. They discovered, before it was ground into powder, that it bore strange glyphs, which they, having studied the ancient bronze inscriptions, recognized as ancient writing. As Xǔ Yǎhuì
(許雅惠 2002, p.4) states:

"No one can know how many oracle bones, prior to 1899, were ground up by traditional Chinese pharmacies and disappeared into peoples’ stomachs."
It is not known how Wang and Liu actually came across these “dragon bones”, but Wang is credited with being the first to recognize their significance, and his friend Liu was the first to publish a book on oracle bones. Word spread among collectors of antiquities, and the market for oracle bones exploded. Although scholars tried to find their source, antique dealers falsely claimed that the bones came from Tāngyīn (湯陰) in Hénán. Decades of uncontrolled digs followed to fuel the antiques trade, and many of these pieces eventually entered collections in Europe, the US, Canada and Japan. The first Western collector was the American Rev. Frank H. Chalfant, while Presbyterian minister James Mellon Menzies (明義士) (1885-1957) of Canada bought the largest amount. The Chinese still acknowledge the pioneering contribution of Menzies as "the foremost western scholar of Yin-Shang culture and oracle bone inscriptions." His former residence in Anyang was declared in 2004 a "Protected Treasure" and the James Mellon Menzies Memorial Museum for Oracle Bone Studies was established

After the Zhōu conquest, the Shāng practices of bronze casting, pyromancy and writing continued. Oracle bones found in the 1970s have been dated to the Zhōu dynasty, with some dating to the Spring and Autumn period. However, very few of those were inscribed; these very early inscribed Zhōu oracle bones are also known as the Zhōuyuán oracle bones. It is thought that other methods of divination supplanted pyromancy, such as numerological divination using milfoil (yarrow) in connection with the hexagrams of the I Ching, leading to the decline in inscribed oracle bones. However, evidence for the continued use of plastromancy exists for the Eastern Zhōu, Hàn, Táng and Qīng dynasty periods, and Keightley (1978, p.9) mentions use in Taiwan today.

Copyright: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bones

1317 words.

Religion

Instructions:
From the images given, such as the ritual vessels and the inscbied ox scapula, we know that there is an existand of priests. Conduct a research to learn more about the religion that the people of Shang Civilisation practiced. Blog your answers supported by pictoral or written sources as your evidence.


The Shang worshipped a figure they called "Shang Ti," or "Lord on High." This supreme god ruled over lesser gods of the sun, the moon, the wind, the rain, and other natural forces and places. Shang-Ti also regulated human affairs as well as ruling over the material universe.

This dual function would, in the Chou dynasty, be attributed to a more abstract figure, "t'ien," or "Heaven."

The Shang also believed that their ancestors dwelled in heaven after their death and continued to show an interest in their family and descendants.

The obligations within the family included, therefore, the ancestors. Failing in one's duties to the ancestors could bring all sorts of disaster on a family.

All of these divine and semi-divine figures, from Shang-Ti to a family's ancestors, were sacrificed to. However, we know little of the nature or the frequency of these sacrifices.

We do know, however, that in the Chou dynasty only the king could sacrifice to Shang-Ti; it is highly likely that Shang-Ti was the "local god" of the Shang kings who was subsequently elevated in order to elevate the Shang themselves. The one disturbing fact of Shang sacrifice is that it certainly involved humans; slaves and prisoners of war were often sacrificed by the hundreds when a king died.

Lesser numbers were sacrificed at the founding of a palace or temple.

T'ien Ming
When the Chou defeated the Shang in 1115 B.C. and began one of the longest dynasties in Chinese history (1115-221 B.C.), they were faced with the problem most usurpers faced when instituting a new government: how do you convince people that you are the proper people for the job of governing? This problem of legitimation is compounded by the fact that the authority is gained through conquest, which means that anyone with an army can legitimately take power, which means that people with armies start getting ideas as happened in Rome between 170-270 A. D. The Chou developed a political theory to justify their conquest and their usurpation of the emperorship in a doctrine called t'ien ming, or the "mandate" or "decree of Heaven."
Copyright:
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ANCCHINA/SHANG.HTM

---------------------------------------
SHANG RELIGION
A full description of Shang religion would include many facets. We would need to explore in detail the way in which the ancestral spirits were conceived, we would need to survey all non-ancestral deities and observe their powers, as reflected in divination, we would have to examine the complex system of ritual and sacrifice that paralleled Shang religious beliefs, and we would need to discuss the symbolic significance of the sacrificial bronzes that constitute the outstanding emblem of Shang society.

While this is clearly too ambitious a goal for this course, we will at least touch upon each of these elements. The principal purpose of this section is to introduce oracle inscriptions that have generally been taken to concern non-ancestral deities. These inscriptions have, since oracle texts were first deciphered, been seen as the reflection of a tripartite pantheon of spirits and gods. After the evidence for this model has been made clear, we will note some basic features of the data that may call it into question. Prior to this description of the pantheon, we will briefly consider the issues of ancestral spirits and the ancestral sacrificial calendar. In the following section, we will present a brief overview of the Shang bronzes and their problematic motifs.

The oracle texts document worship of a variety of deities that seem clearly associated not with any human lineage group, but rather with phenomena of the natural world. Some of these seem to have been concrete physical objects – the Yellow River and Mt. Song, a peak located in the region we believe housed a series of Shang Dynasty capital cities prior to the move north to the Anyang region. Others are probably better characterized as "forces of Nature": the winds of the four cardinal directions, the soil, the sun.

Above all these, too remote for direct worship through sacrifice but exemplifying the greatest range of powers, was a high deity known as Di. In the Shang oracle texts, no mention is made of the high god we are familiar with from the Classical era: Tian. Tian seems not to have been a part of the religion of the Shang, but rather to have been a religious figure of the Zhou people that was introduced into broader religious practice only after the conquest of 1045. Instead, Di seems to occupy the place of supreme spirit power in the oracle texts. So similar does Di seem to Tian, however, that it seems unsurprising that after the Zhou conquest, the terms seem to be used almost interchangeably in Zhou religious discourse.

Copyright: http://www.indiana.edu/~g380/Shang-Rel.pdf



Discovery

A Shang Dynasty oracle bone from the Shanghai MuseumThe Shāng-dynasty oracle bones are thought to have been unearthed periodically by local farmers, perhaps starting as early as the Hàn dynasty, and certainly by 19th century China, when they were sold as dragon bones (lóng gǔ 龍骨) in the traditional Chinese medicine markets, used either whole or crushed for the healing of various ailments. The turtle shell fragments were prescribed for malarial, while the other animal bones were used in powdered form to treat knife wounds. They were first recognized as bearing ancient Chinese writing by a scholar and high-ranking Qing dynasty official, Wáng Yìróng (王懿榮; 1845-1900) in 1899. A legendary tale states that Wang was sick with malaria, and his scholar friend Liú È (劉鶚; 1857-1909) was visiting him and helped examine his medicine. They discovered, before it was ground into powder, that it bore strange glyphs, which they, having studied the ancient bronze inscriptions, recognized as ancient writing. As Xǔ Yǎhuì
(許雅惠 2002, p.4) states:

"No one can know how many oracle bones, prior to 1899, were ground up by traditional Chinese pharmacies and disappeared into peoples’ stomachs."
It is not known how Wang and Liu actually came across these “dragon bones”, but Wang is credited with being the first to recognize their significance, and his friend Liu was the first to publish a book on oracle bones. Word spread among collectors of antiquities, and the market for oracle bones exploded. Although scholars tried to find their source, antique dealers falsely claimed that the bones came from Tāngyīn (湯陰) in Hénán. Decades of uncontrolled digs followed to fuel the antiques trade, and many of these pieces eventually entered collections in Europe, the US, Canada and Japan. The first Western collector was the American Rev. Frank H. Chalfant, while Presbyterian minister James Mellon Menzies (明義士) (1885-1957) of Canada bought the largest amount. The Chinese still acknowledge the pioneering contribution of Menzies as "the foremost western scholar of Yin-Shang culture and oracle bone inscriptions." His former residence in Anyang was declared in 2004 a "Protected Treasure" and the James Mellon Menzies Memorial Museum for Oracle Bone Studies was established

After the Zhōu conquest, the Shāng practices of bronze casting, pyromancy and writing continued. Oracle bones found in the 1970s have been dated to the Zhōu dynasty, with some dating to the Spring and Autumn period. However, very few of those were inscribed; these very early inscribed Zhōu oracle bones are also known as the Zhōuyuán oracle bones. It is thought that other methods of divination supplanted pyromancy, such as numerological divination using milfoil (yarrow) in connection with the hexagrams of the I Ching, leading to the decline in inscribed oracle bones. However, evidence for the continued use of plastromancy exists for the Eastern Zhōu, Hàn, Táng and Qīng dynasty periods, and Keightley (1978, p.9) mentions use in Taiwan today.

Copyright: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bones

1317 words.