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A HISTORY OF CHINACHAPTER II.THE SHANG DYNASTY(1600-1028 B.C.)Part ONE
1.-
Period, origin, material culture
About 1600 BC we come at last into the realm of history. Of the Shang
dynasty, which now followed, we have knowledge both from later texts and from
excavations and the documents they have brought to light. The Shang
civilization, an evident off-shoot of the Lung-shan culture (Tai, Yao, and
Tunguses), but also with elements of the Hsia culture (with Tibetan and Mongol
and/or Turkish elements), was beyond doubt a high civilization. Of the origin
of the Shang State we have no details, nor do we know how the Hsia culture
passed into the Shang culture.
The central territory of the Shang realm lay in north-western Honan,
alongside the Shansi mountains and extending into the plains. It was a peasant
civilization with towns. One of these towns has been excavated. It adjoined the
site of the present town of Anyang, in the province of Honan. The town, the
Shang capital from 1300 to 1028 BC, was probably surrounded by a mud wall, as
were the settlements of the Lung-shan people. In the centre was what evidently
was the ruler's palace. Round this were houses probably inhabited by artisans;
for the artisans formed a sort of intermediate class, as dependents of the
ruling class. From inscriptions we know that the Shang had, in addition to
their capital, at least two other large cities and many smaller town-like
settlements and villages. The rectangular houses were built in a style still
found in Chinese houses, except that their front did not always face south as
is now the general rule. The Shang buried their kings in large, subterranean,
cross-shaped tombs outside the city, and many implements, animals and human
sacrifices were buried together with them. The custom of large burial mounds,
which later became typical of the Chou dynasty, did not yet exist.
The Shang had sculptures in stone, an art which later more or less
completely disappeared and which was resuscitated only in post-Christian times
under the influence of Indian Buddhism. Yet, Shang culture cannot well be
called a "megalithic" culture. Bronze implements and especially
bronze vessels were cast in the town. We even know the trademarks of some
famous bronze founders. The bronze weapons are still similar to those from
Siberia, and are often ornamented in the so-called "animal style",
which was used among all the nomad peoples between the Ordos region and Siberia
until the beginning of the Christian era. On the other hand, the famous bronze
vessels are more of southern type, and reveal an advanced technique that has
scarcely been excelled since.
There can be no doubt that the bronze vessels were used for religious
service and not for everyday life. For everyday use there were earthenware
vessels. Even in the middle of the first millennium BC, bronze was exceedingly
dear, as we know from the records of prices.
China has always suffered from scarcity of metal. For that reason metal
was accumulated as capital, entailing a further rise in prices; when prices had
reached a sufficient height, the stocks were thrown on the market and prices
fell again. Later, when there was a metal coinage, this cycle of inflation and
deflation became still clearer. The metal coinage was of its full nominal
value, so that it was possible to coin money by melting down bronze implements.
As the money in circulation was increased in this way, the value of the
currency fell. Then it paid to turn coin into metal implements. This once more
reduced the money in circulation and increased the value of the remaining
coinage. Thus through the whole course of Chinese history the scarcity of metal
and insufficiency of production of metal continually produced extensive
fluctuations of the stocks and the value of metal, amounting virtually to an
economic law in China. Consequently metal implements were never universally in
use, and vessels were always of earthenware, with the further result of the
early invention of porcelain. Porcelain vessels have many of the qualities of
metal ones, but are cheaper.
The earthenware vessels used in this period are in many cases already
very near to porcelain: there was a pottery of a brilliant white, lacking only
the glaze which would have made it into porcelain. Patterns were stamped on the
surface, often resembling the patterns on bronze articles. This ware was used
only for formal, ceremonial purposes. For daily use there was also a perfectly
simple grey pottery.
Silk was already in use at this time. The invention of sericulture must
therefore have dated from very ancient times in China. It undoubtedly
originated in the south of China, and at first not only the threads spun by the
silkworm but those made by other caterpillars were also used. The remains of
silk fabrics that have been found show already an advanced weaving technique.
In addition to silk, various plant fibres, such as hemp, were in use. Woolen
fabrics do not seem to have been yet used.
The Shang were agriculturists, but their implements were still rather
primitive. There was no real plough yet; hoes and hoe-like implements were
used, and the grain, mainly different kinds of millet and some wheat, was
harvested with sickles. The materials, from which these implements were made,
were mainly wood and stone; bronze was still too expensive to be utilized by
the ordinary farmer. As a great number of vessels for wine in many different
forms have been excavated, we can assume that wine, made from special kinds of
millet, was a popular drink.
The Shang state had its centre in northern Honan, north of the Yellow
river. At various times, different towns were made into the capital city;
Yin-ch', their last capital and the only one which has been excavated, was
their sixth capital. We do not know why the capitals were removed to new
locations; it is possible that floods were one of the main reasons. The area
under more or less organized Shang control comprised towards the end of the
dynasty the present provinces of Honan, western Shantung, southern Hopei,
central and south Shansi, east Shensi, parts of Kiangsu and Anhui. We can only
roughly estimate the size of the population of the Shang state. Late texts say
that at the time of the annihilation of the dynasty, some 3.1 million free men
and 1.1 million serfs were captured by the conquerors; this would indicate a
population of at least some 4-5 millions. This seems a possible number, if we
consider that an inscription of the tenth century BC which reports about an
ordinary war against a small and unimportant western neighbour, speaks of
13,081 free men and 4,812 serfs taken as prisoners.
Inscriptions mention many neighbors of the Shang with whom they were in
more or less continuous state of war. Many of these neighbors can now be
identified. We know that Shansi at that time was inhabited by Ch'iang tribes,
belonging to the Tibetan culture, as well as by Ti tribes, belonging to the
northern culture, and by Hsien-yn and other tribes, belonging to the
north-western culture; the centre of the Ch'iang tribes was more in the
south-west of Shansi and in Shensi. Some of these tribes definitely once formed
a part of the earlier Hsia state. The identification of the eastern neighbors
of the Shang presents more difficulties. We might regard them as
representatives of the Tai and Yao cultures.
2
Writing and Religion
Not only the material but also the intellectual level attained in the
Shang period was very high. We meet for the first time with writing--much later
than in the Middle East and in India. Chinese scholars have succeeded in
deciphering some of the documents discovered, so that we are able to learn a
great deal from them. The writing is a rudimentary form of the present-day
Chinese script, and like it a pictorial writing, but also makes use, as today,
of many phonetic signs.
There were, however, a good many characters that no longer exist, and
many now used are absent. There were already more than 3,000 characters in use
of which some 1,000 can now be read. (Today newspapers use some 3,000
characters; scholars have command of up to 8,000; the whole of Chinese
literature, ancient and modern, comprises some 50,000 characters.) With these
3,000 characters the Chinese of the Shang period were able to express
themselves well.
The still existing fragments of writing of this period are found almost
exclusively on tortoiseshells or on other bony surfaces, and they represent
oracles. As early as in the Lung-shan culture there was divination by means of
"oracle bones", at first without written characters. In the earliest
period any bones of animals (especially shoulder-bones) were used; later only
tortoiseshell. For the purpose of the oracle a depression was burnt in the
shell so that cracks were formed on the other side, and the future was foretold
from their direction. Subsequently particular questions were scratched on the
shells, and the answers to them; these are the documents that have come down to
us. In Anyang tens of thousands of these oracle bones with inscriptions have
been found. The custom of asking the oracle and of writing the answers on the
bones spread over the borders of the Shang state and continued in some areas
after the end of the dynasty.
The bronze vessels of later times often bear long inscriptions, but
those of the Shang period have only very brief texts. On the other hand, they
are ornamented with pictures, as yet largely unintelligible, of countless
deities, especially in the shape of animals or birds—pictures that demand
interpretation. The principal form on these bronzes is that of the so-called T'ao-t'ieh,
a hybrid with the head of a water-buffalo and tiger's teeth.
The Shang period had a religion with many nature deities, especially
deities of fertility. There was no systematized pantheon, different deities
being revered in each locality, often under the most varied names. These
various deities were, however, similar in character, and later it occurred
often that many of them were combined by the priests into a single god. The
composite deities thus formed were officially worshipped. Their primeval forms
lived on, however, especially in the villages, many centuries longer than the
Shang dynasty. The sacrifices associated with them became popular festivals,
and so these gods or their successors were saved from oblivion; some of them
have lived on in popular religion to the present day. The supreme god of the
official worship was called Shang Ti; he was a god of vegetation who guided all
growth and birth and was later conceived as a forefather of the races of
mankind. The earth was represented as a mother goddess, who bore the plants and
animals procreated by Shang Ti. In some parts of the Shang realm the two were
conceived as a married couple who later were parted by one of their children.
The husband went to heaven, and the rain is the male seed that creates life on
earth. In other regions it was supposed that in the beginning of the world
there was a world-egg, out of which a primeval god came, whose body was
represented by the earth: his hair formed the plants, and his limbs the
mountains and valleys. Every considerable mountain was also itself a god and,
similarly, the river god, the thunder god, cloud, lightning, and wind gods, and
many others were worshipped.
In order to promote the fertility of the earth, it was believed that
sacrifices must be offered to the gods. Consequently, in the Shang realm and
the regions surrounding it there were many sorts of human sacrifices; often the
victims were prisoners of war. One gains the impression that many wars were
conducted not as wars of conquest but only for the purpose of capturing
prisoners, although the area under Shang control gradually increased towards
the west and the south-east, a fact demonstrating the interest in conquest. In
some regions men lurked in the spring for people from other villages; they slew
them, sacrificed them to the earth, and distributed portions of the flesh of
the sacrifice to the various owners of fields, who buried them. At a later time
all human sacrifices were prohibited, but we have reports down to the eleventh
century A.D., and even later, that such sacrifices were offered secretly in
certain regions of central China. In other regions a great boat festival was
held in the spring, to which many crews came crowded in long narrow boats. At
least one of the boats had to capsize; the people who were thus drowned were a
sacrifice to the deities of fertility. This festival has maintained its
fundamental character to this day, in spite of various changes. The same is
true of other festivals, customs, and conceptions, vestiges of which are
contained at least in folklore.
In addition to the nature deities which were implored to give fertility,
to send rain, or to prevent floods and storms, the Shang also worshipped
deceased rulers and even dead ministers as a kind of intermediaries between man
and the highest deity, Shang Ti. This practice may be regarded as the
forerunner of "ancestral worship" which became so typical of later
China.
3
Transition to feudalism
At the head of the Shang state was a king, posthumously called a
"Ti", the same word as in the name of the supreme god. We have found
on bones the names of all the rulers of this dynasty and even some of their
pre-dynastic ancestors. These names can be brought into agreement with lists of
rulers found in the ancient Chinese literature. The ruler seems to have been a
high priest, too; and around him were many other priests. We know some of them
now so well from the inscriptions that their biographies could be written. The
king seems to have had some kind of bureaucracy. There were "chen",
officials who served the ruler personally, as well as scribes and military
officials. The basic army organization was in units of one hundred men which
were combined as "right", "left" and "central" units
into an army of 300 men. But it seems that the central power did not extend
very far. In the more distant parts of the realm were more or less independent
lords, who recognized the ruler only as their supreme lord and religious
leader. We may describe this as an early, loose form of the feudal system,
although the main element of real feudalism was still absent. The main
obligations of these lords were to send tributes of grain, to participate with
their soldiers in the wars, to send tortoise shells to the capital to be used
there for oracles, and to send occasionally cattle and horses. There were some
thirty such dependent states.
Although we do not know much about the general population, we know that
the rulers had a patrilinear system of inheritance. After the death of the
ruler his brothers followed him on the throne, the older brothers first. After
the death of all brothers, the sons of older or younger brothers became rulers.
No preference was shown to the son of the oldest brother, and no preference
between sons of main or of secondary wives is recognizable. Thus, the Shang
patrilinear system was much less extreme than the later system. Moreover, the
deceased wives of the rulers played a great role in the cult, another element
which later disappeared. From these facts and from the general structure of
Shang religion it has been concluded that there was a strong matrilinear strain
in Shang culture. Although this cannot be proved, it seems quite plausible
because we know of matrilinear societies in the South of China at later times.
About the middle of the Shang period there occurred interesting changes,
probably under the influence of nomad peoples from the north-west.
In religion there appears some evidence of star-worship. The deities
seem to have been conceived as a kind of celestial court of Shang Ti, as his
"officials". In the field of material culture, horse-breeding becomes
more and more evident. Some authors believe that the art of riding was already
known in late Shang times, although it was certainly not yet so highly developed
that cavalry units could be used in war. With horse-breeding the two-wheeled
light war chariot makes its appearance. The wheel was already known in earlier
times in the form of the potter's wheel. Recent excavations have brought to
light burials in which up to eighteen chariots with two or four horses were
found together with the owners of the chariots. The cart is not a Chinese
invention but came from the north, possibly from Turkish peoples. It has been
contended that it was connected with the war chariot of the Near East: shortly
before the Shang period there had been vast upheavals in western Asia, mainly
in connection with the expansion of peoples who spoke Indo-European languages
(Hittites, etc.) and who became successful through the use of quick, light, two-wheeled
war-chariots. It is possible, but cannot be proved, that the war-chariot spread
through Central Asia in connection with the spread of such
Indo-European-speaking groups or by the intermediary of Turkish tribes.
We have some reasons to believe that the first Indo-European-speaking
groups arrived in the Far East in the middle of the second millennium B.C. Some
authors even connect the Hsia with these groups. In any case, the maximal
distribution of these people seems to have been to the western borders of the
Shang state. As in Western Asia, a Shang-time chariot was manned by three men:
the warrior who was a nobleman, his driver, and his servant who handed him
arrows or other weapons when needed. There developed a quite close relationship
between the nobleman and his chariot-driver. The chariot was a valuable object,
manufactured by specialists; horses were always expensive and rare in China,
and in many periods of Chinese history horses were directly imported from
nomadic tribes in the North or West. Thus, the possessors of vehicles formed a
privileged class in the Shang realm; they became a sort of nobility, and the
social organization began to move in the direction of feudalism. One of the
main sports of the noblemen in this period, in addition to warfare, was
hunting. The Shang had their special hunting grounds south of the mountains
which surround Shansi province, along the slopes of the T'ai-hang mountain
range, and south to the shores of the Yellow river. Here, there were still
forests and swamps in Shang time, and boars, deer, buffaloes and other animals,
as well as occasional rhinoceros and elephants, were hunted. None of these wild
animals was used as a sacrifice; all sacrificial animals, such as cattle, pigs,
etc., were domesticated animals.
Below the nobility we find large numbers of dependent people; modern
Chinese scholars call them frequently "slaves" and speak of a
"slave society". There is no doubt that at least some farmers were
"free farmers"; others were what we might call "serfs":
families in hereditary group dependence upon some noble families and working on
land which the noble families regarded as theirs. Families of artisans and
craftsmen also were hereditary servants of noble families--a type of social
organization which has its parallels in ancient Japan and in later India and
other parts of the world. There were also real slaves: persons who were the
personal property of noblemen. The independent states around the Shang state
also had serfs. When the Shang captured neighboring states, they resettled the
captured foreign aristocracy by attaching them as a group to their own
noblemen. The captured serfs remained under their masters and shared their
fate. The same system was later practiced by the Chou after their conquest of
the Shang state.
The conquests of late Shang added more territory to the realm than could
be coped with by the primitive communications of the time. When the last ruler
of Shang made his big war, which lasted 260 days against the tribes in the
south-east, rebellions broke out which lead to the end of the dynasty, about
1028 B.C. according to the new chronology (1122 B.C. old chronology).
Part TWO
CHAPTER III.THE CHOU DYNASTY(1028-257 BC)
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