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Cambridge Histories Online Cambridge Histories Online http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/histories/ The Cambridge History of Ancient China From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC Michael Loewe, Edward L. Shaughnessy Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521470308 Online ISBN: 9781139053709 Hardback ISBN: 9780521470308 Chapter 4 - The Shang: China’s First Historical Dynasty pp. 232-291 Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521470308.006 Cambridge University Press CHAPTER FOUR THE SHANG: CHINA'S FIRST HISTORICAL DYNASTY David N. Keightley The Shang $J (ca. 1570-1045 B.C.) is the first Chinese dynasty to have left written sources. Because those sources - primarily the oracle-bone inscrip- tions — have been found only for the reigns of the last nine Shang kings, true history, that of the "late Shang," can be said to cover only the period from the reign of Wu Ding SiT, the twenty-first king of the line, to the reign of Di Xin 'rfr¥r (d. ca. 1045), the twenty-ninth and last king (Fig. 4.1). Many features of Shang culture emerged from the Henan Longshan tluj or from other late Neolithic cultures to the east or northeast.1 It is only with the late Shang and its written records, however, that one can, for the first time begin to speak with confidence of a civilization that was incipiently Chinese in its values and insti- tutions, a civilization characterized by its political and religious hierarchies, centralized management of resources, and complex, deeply rooted art forms. The traditional view (first recorded in the third century A.D.), that the dynasty's name was Shang prior to Pan Geng's M.$t removal of the capital to Yin il£ and was Yin after it, is supported by neither contemporary evi- dence nor later use. The divinations of the last two Shang kings, for example, refer only to the da (tian) yi Shang % (^) B M - which may be translated either as "the great (or heavenly) settlement, Shang" or, taking Shang as the name of a core region, as "Shang of the great (or heavenly) settlements" — but make no reference to any settlement or region named Yin. Rather than being the Shang name for their last dynastic stage, Yin appears, in later texts that sometimes use Shang or Yin interchangeably, to have been a Zhou M term for the dynasty they had replaced.2 1 K. C. Chang, Shang Civilization (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 335-48; Huang Zhongye, "Cong kaogu faxian kan Shang wenhua qiyuan yu woguo beifang," Beifang wemvu 1990.1: 14-19; Zhongguo Shehui kexueyuan Kaogu yanjiusuo, Yinxu de faxian yu yanjiu (Beijing: Kexue, 1994), pp. 465-9. * Chen Mengjia, Yinxu buci zongshu (Beijing: Kexue, 1956), p. 262; Zhou Hongxiang, Shang Yin diwang bcnji (Hong Kong: Wanyou cushu, 1958), pp. 1-3. See the "Shang settlement" inscriptions transcribed 232 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 Downloaded from Cambridge Histories Online by IP 150.214.205.85 on Tue Sep 16 11:39:33 BST 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521470308.006 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2014 THE SHANG 233 The origins and meaning, if any, of the dynastic name itself are unclear. The Shang may, like the Zhou, Han 31, and many subsequent dynasties, originally have taken their name from a place. Sima Qian i?] JIM (ca. 145—86 B.C.) recorded the tradition that Xie M, the predynastic founder of the lineage, was enfeoffed at Shang.3 Some scholars have linked the dynasty name to the Shang j$j River and its River Power, a name that appears in the bone inscriptions (Y782.1-2).4 SOURCES Traditional Accounts The chroniclers and philosophers of the Eastern Zhou knew few details about the Shang dynasty. Confucius, for example, is supposed to have lamented that records from the Shang successor state of Song 5^ did not permit a full reconstruction of Shang ceremonial practice.5 In his "Yin benji" !§>£&£ (Basic annals of the Yin), the Han historian, Sima Qian, starts with the miraculous conception of Xie, whose mother conceived when she swallowed an egg dropped by a black bird. He then records anecdotes, events, charac- ter analyses, and moral judgments regarding fourteen predynastic ancestors and thirty dynastic kings, from Cheng Tang $Li§v, the dynasty's founder, down to Di Xin, the depraved last ruler, whom the Zhou king Wu ^ over- threw at the battle of Muye feU. Sima Qian ends his account with a brief reference to the abortive rebellion that Di Xin's son, Wu Geng iKiJi, led against the Zhou. The Han historian provides great narrative detail in some cases, little more than a royal name in others. He also refers to five removals of the Shang capital, the last being the move to Yin, under Pan Geng.6 in Yao Xiaosui and Xiao Ding, eds., Yinxu jiagu keci leizuan (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1989), p. 778.1. This concordance, hereafter abbreviated as Y, conveniendy transcribes the corpus of inscriptions in both oracle-bone and modern Chinese script. For Zhou use of the name Yin, see, below note 121. ' Shiji, 3, p. 91 (William H. Nienhauser, Jr., et al., eds., The Grand Scribes Records, vol. 1 [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994], p. 41). This Shang was traditionally located in the area of Shangxian fiiiji county in southeast Shaanxi; modern scholarship, however, now places it near Shangqiu ffiir in eastern Henan (Chang, Shang Civilization, p. 5). 4 The modern term "power" is used to refer to all the forces that, conceived animistically, affected the Shang world. Kaizuka Shigelci (Kyoto daigaku jimbun kagaku kenkyujo zo kokotsu moji. Hombun hen [Kyoto: Kyoto daigaku jimbun kagaku kenkyujo, i960], p. 534, no. 2139); Qu Wanli {Xiaotun dier ben: Yinxu wenzi — Jiabian kaoshi [Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1961], p. 98, no. 623), and Wang Yuzhe ("Shangzu de laiyuan diwang shitan," Lishi yanjiu 1984.1: 61-77) summarize the scholarship about die possible locations of die Shang River and other place-names associated with the Shang homeland. 1 Analects, 3/9. See also David N. Keighdey, "The Bamboo Annals and Shang-Chou Chronology," HJAS 38 (1978): 426 n. 14, p. 427 n. 18. 6 For Western-language translations of the "Yin benji," see Edouard Chavannes, tr., Les mimoires his- uriques de Se-Ma Ts'ien (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1895-1905; rpt., Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1967), pp. 173-208; Nienhauser et al., eds., The Grand Scribe's Records, pp. 41—54. Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 Downloaded from Cambridge Histories Online by IP 150.214.205.85 on Tue Sep 16 11:39:33 BST 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521470308.006 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2014 DAVID N. KEIGHTLEY Temple Name Generation Pi Shang Jia Jl? i PzBaoYilgZ, 2 P3 Bao Bing ISPf 3 P4 Bao Ding 1ST 4 P5 Shi Ren 7K3r 5 P6 Shi Gui 7F% 6 Kz Da Ding ^T 8 j. n K3DaJia^Ef3 K4 Wai Bing h (=^h) PI 9 j.__ n K6Xiao Jia 4s T 10 j. _, K7 Da Wu **£ K8LuJiBS 11 J. ! K9 Zhong Ding ^T K10 Bu Ren r> 3r 12 J. ! KaZuYifflZ- Knjianjia^¥ 13 j. -, K13 Zu Xin ffi^- K14 Qiang Jia ^ ? 14 J. -, K15 Zu Ding fflT K16 Nan Geng ft$ 15 I 1 1 1 I I I II I 1 Figure 4.1. The royal genealogy as recorded in late Shang sacrifice inscriptions. For particu- lar problems involving the reconstruction of the Shang king list see David N. Keightley, Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China (Berkeley, Calif.: Univer- sity of California Press, 1978), pp. 185-7, 2O4-S>; K. C. Chang, Shang Civilization (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980) pp. 6-7, 165-8. P = predynastic ancestor; K = king. The 4- indicates the main line of father-to-son descent known traditionally as the dazong^K^ (see note 45). Sima Qian acknowledges that he drew much of his information from the Shi jing B$M (Classic of poetry) and the Shang shu (Venerated documents; also known as Shu jing *M, Classic of documents); modern scholars have also traced his debt to a number of other Zhou and Han sources, such as the Zuo zhuan tE.M (Zuo's tradition), Guo yu HHio (Sayings of the states), and Da Dai Li ji AJScHtiS (Dai the Elder's record of ritual). The historicity of many of these accounts is uncertain, and modern scholars have devoted much Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 Downloaded from Cambridge Histories Online by IP 150.214.205.85 on Tue Sep 16 11:39:34 BST 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521470308.006 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2014 THE SHANG 235 i I II K20 Xiao Yi K19 Xiao Xin K18 Pan Geng K17 Xiang Jia 16 K21 Wu Ding ST I , , 4- 1 1 K^ZuJia K22 Zu Geng Zuji 1 1 i K25 Kang Ding MT K24 Lin Xin 0^ 19 20 i K27 Wen Wu Ding JtSST 21 i K29 Di Xin it^ 23 Figure 4.1. (Cont.) energy to comparing the "Yin benji" accounts with the information in the oracle-bone inscriptions.7 It is true that the Han historian, and the Zhou accounts upon which he must have relied, generally possessed reliable knowl- edge of the posthumous temple names of the Shang kings and the order in which the kings came to power. On the other hand, he and later historians were ignorant of many salient events and persons recorded in the divination inscriptions.8 Bronze Inscriptions As detailed in Chapter 3, thousands of ritual Shang bronzes have been exca- vated for the late Shang period, and their provenance and decor frequently provide archaeologists and art historians with valuable information about the extent of Shang culture, its regional variations, and rival states.
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