Shang dynasty religious practitioners

A Shang religious text written by the Bīn 賓 group of diviners from period I, corresponding to the reign of King Wu Ding (c. 1250 BCE)

The second royal regime of China, the Shang dynasty (c. 1600 - 1046 BCE), developed a polytheistic religion that focused on worshipping spiritual beings. The dynasty developed a bureaucracy specialized in practicing rituals, divided into several positions tasked with performing different aspects of the religion. Usually, the head practitioners were the Shang king and other members of the royal family. Their activities, taking place at the Shang dynasty's capital city Yin, were recorded on oracle bones. The Shang religion also existed outside of the capital, being practiced by royal patrons who were entrusted to govern different regions within the Shang state.

Since c. 1250 BCE, the first instances of recorded rituals have been documented by the Shang people. Various positions were employed to either directly practice the religion or to provide related support. The involvement of shamans in the Shang religion is under debate. Researchers such as K. C. Chang support the view of active shamans in the court, while others claim that the dynasty did not actually adopted shamanism in ceremonies. In particular situations, the Shang king and royal members acted in a shamanic way when hosting rituals.

Practitioners

Oracle bone inscriptions reveal a considerable number of individuals associated with the Shang religion. In an imaginative account, David Keightley recreated a typical Shang ritual involving different practitioners. Based on actual inscriptions regarding Wu Ding's attempts to cure toothache using rituals. His account serves as a critical demonstration of a regular work done by religious figures in the Shang capital.

Chief priests

Shang king Wu Ding, a highly religious ruler.

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. 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 of ten days (xún). In many cases, 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 Xiǎo Yǐ. 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.

The Shang king's level of involvement strongly relates to his influence and gain sovereignty over remote polities. 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. Tǔfāng, a long-term opponent of the Shang dynasty, was assigned with Tǔ (earth), which strongly exemplifies outside influence. 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.

Participants of divination

Ox scapula recording divinations by a diviner named Zhēng 爭 in the reign of King Wu Ding

On divinatory ceremonies, the Shang king was assisted by a number of diviners (多卜), possibly directed by a supervisor (官占). 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. The divination process typically included cleaning meat out of bones, scraping and polishing the surfaces, anointing with blood, drilling holes through the bones, applying heat and inscribing characters. Often, divinatory inscriptions would include various kinds of information, and in many examples the diviner's name was written down.

Throughout the interval from c. 1250 BCE to 1046 BCE, several distinct scribal groups existed and often intermingled. Their style, calligraphy and inscriptional contents are comparably different. The 20th century classification method by Chinese scholars describes the diviners as two groups, referred to as the "Old School" and the "New School". According to this theory, since the religious reforms commissioned by Zu Jia during the 12th century BCE, the groups had experienced periods of high activity along with times in which they were not favored. Shang kings such as Geng Ding employed diviners and scribes of the type who worked under Wu Ding, while others like Wu Yi and Wen Ding favored those of the type working for Zu Jia. Diviners therefore were interpreted as interchanging groups. In modern studies of oracle bone inscriptions, various findings have challenged the hypothesis; a new classification is established. Diviners are classified into groups named after the most active diviner among them.

Classification of diviner groups

Anyang team pottery layer	Dong Zuobin's inscription periods		Kings' reigns	Major royal diviner groups
	Original	Subdivided
Yinxu I
	I		Wǔ Dīng	Shī 師/Duī 𠂤
Yinxu II				Bīn 賓	Lì 歷, type 1 (father Yǐ)
	II	IIa	Zǔ Gēng		Lì 歷, type 2 (father Dīng)
		IIb	Zǔ Jiǎ	Chū 出	nameless
Yinxu III	III	IIIa	Lǐn Xīn	Hé 何
		IIIb	Gēng Dīng
	IV	IVa	Wǔ Yǐ
		IVb	Wén Wǔ Dīng
Yinxu IV	V	Va	Dì Yǐ		Huáng 黄
		Vb	Dì Xīn

Using divinations written by diviner groups Huáng (黄) and Chū (出), which detail the religious calendar, scholars have been able to create a reconstruction of the Late Shang liturgical schedule.

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. Against Eno's suggestion, Kwang-chih Chang claimed that the absence of shamanism would make understandings of Shang religion incomplete.

The Shang dynasty had a court position called wu (巫, rendered as the shape of a "plus" sign in oracle bone inscriptions). The word has been generally translated as "shaman", though some have expressed disagreement towards this translation. Some scholars questioned about its true meaning, and whether it actually referred to a shaman or another kind of practitioner. According to G. Boileau, four meanings of this wu is identified:

1. "a spirit, wu of the north or east, to which sacrifices are offered"
2. "a sacrifice, possibly linked to controlling the wind or meteorology"
3. "an equivalent for shi 筮, a form of divination using achilea"
4. "a living human being, possibly the name of a person, tribe, place, or territory"

The inscriptions about this living wu reveal six characteristics:

1. Whether the wu is a man or a woman is not known;
2. It could be either the name for a function or the name of a people (or an individual) coming from a definite territory or nation;
3. The wu seems to have been in charge of some divinations, (in one instance, divination is linked to a sacrifice of appeasement);
4. The wu is seen as offering a sacrifice of appeasement but the inscription and the fact that this kind of sacrifice was offered by other persons (the king included) suggests that the wu was not the person of choice to conduct all the sacrifices of appeasement;
5. There is only one inscription where a direct link between the king and the wu appears. Nevertheless, the nature of the link is not known, because the status of the wu does not appear clearly;
6. He follows (being brought, presumably, to Shang territory or court) the orders of other people; he is perhaps offered to the Shang as a tribute.

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 *m^yag, related to the term maguš in Old Persian (he further claimed that "magician" is also a related term). In Zoroastrianism, magi (plural form of maguš) 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.

However, various oracle bone examples point out the presence of rituals involving the Shang king which were related to "invocation". In some ceremonies, the deities would be present as "guests", and the Shang king was the person who acted as "host". Hosting rituals took place at numerous temples, each housing a single or a group of spirits. Some scholars understand the "guest" rituals to have featured the kings as ceremonial hosts uniquely equipped to "hear" the spiritual messages in religious events.

Oracle bone inscriptions record instances in which the king played the major role, as demonstrated by the two examples below:

At divination on the gēngzǐ day Xi tested the proposition: As for meat cut with the yue it should be the king who carries out invocation.

— Fu yin 6

At divination on the gēngchén day: The king will carry out the rite of invocation to Father Xīn with sheep, pigs [and] you-buckets of millet wine.

— Jinbun 3014

The invocation ritual (zhù 祝) is interpreted to be semantically similar to a Shang ritual which involved the king calling out the spirits. Because this ritual was shown to be a prerogative of the Shang king, Childs-Johnson believed that he acted as a shaman-priest.

Other court religious positions

七日己未斲庚申月又食 On the seventh day jǐwèi (day 56) cleaving into gēngshēn (day 57), the moon was eaten.

oracle bone Heji 40610v.

The role of astronomers and 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. The Shang seemed to regard eclipses as ominous events forecasting terrible future, such as the demise and death of a king. Oracle bones of Wu Ding's reign record five lunar eclipses dated c. 1200 – 1180 BCE, one of which is the example of "the moon was eaten" on the left.

Chinese literature after the Shang dynasty mentioned Shang astronomers such as Wuxian, who allegedly composed a star map. The Grand Historian of the Han dynasty, Sima Qian, stated in the Shiji that he took Wuxian's celestial map as a source to identify the residence of Shàngdì on the sky. Wuxian was said to have served the Shang king Tai Wu, as both an astronomer and a shaman.

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 (舞) were chosen to handle the task under the command of a music director (瞽). Often, dancers would perform in religious sanctuaries, including natural landscapes such as the Yellow River.

Practitioners not belonging to the royal court

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. According to interpretations of oracle bone inscriptions, the prince led his own entourage of diviners, as well as relatives who were entrusted to conduct religious activities during his absence. His divinations, numbered up to 537 written texts, seemed to address only some individuals worshipped by the royal family at the capital city. In particular, the divinations concern extensively on Grandmother Gēng, who was mentioned in Wu Ding's divinations as the king's mother. Divination concerning this deceased ancestor are plentiful, and can be demonstrated through examples:

己亥卜：子于(戎)宿，夙殺牢妣庚。用。 Divined on jǐhài: Our lord, staying overnight in Rong, at dawn will kill some pen-raised cattle (for) Ancestress Gēng. Used.

— HYZ 267

戊申卜：其將妣庚于(戎)東官(館)。用。

Divined on wùshēn: Should carry in offerings (to) Ancestress Gēng in Rong’s eastern guesthouse. Used.

癸丑，將妣庚，其歲妣庚牢。在(戎)。一二三

On guǐchǒu, carrying in offerings (to) Ancestress Gēng, should sacrifice (to) Ancestress Geng some pen-raised cattle. At Rong.

— HYZ 248

Other ancestral deities revered by the Huayuanzhuang entourage include Ancestor Yǐ, Ancestor Jiă, along with approximately 20 other spirits. Wu Ding and Fu Hao were two living relatives mentioned in the Huayuanzhuang inscriptions, appearing to be in regular contact with the prince through meetings.

Other than divinations, this royal patron also participated in sacrificial rituals and establishing religious centers in his assigned estate. Mentions of sacrifice in his inscriptions suggest the presence of staff entrusted to conduct sacrifice on his behalf. In some occasions, he directly made sacrifices to the spirits, as one text indicates:

乙卯卜：歲祖乙牢，子其自，弜(勿)速。用。 Divined on yǐmăo: In sacrificing (to) Ancestor Yǐ some pen-raised cattle, our lord should do it himself; (he) ought not invite (anyone else). Used.

— HYZ 294

Many inscriptions excavated at Huayuanzhuang were made in Rong, a conquered place. According to interpretations, the prince began to settle there, organized ancestral spirit tablets in new worshipping places, and conducted offerings. He also commissioned additional constructions serving for this purpose, including an ancestral temple, a tower, and a guesthouse intended to store sacrifices. Wu Ding seemed to have played a role in these activities, as texts reveal that the king distributed to the patron materials like prisoners and special grains for ancestor worship. Other relatives, ranging from cousins to children, were commissioned by the patron to participate in religious activities. According to the inscriptions collected, these people included:

1. Zi Hua, entrusted to be a substitute conducting ale libation rituals ;
2. Zi Pou and Zi Yu, who participated in sacrificial ceremonies;
3. Zi Hu and Zi Bi, who were associated with rituals involving dance and music.

Further than Huayuanzhuang, texts from Daxinzhuang, 250 kilometers apart from Yin, have also been found.

It is believed that common people during this period may have taken part in popular religion. There are possibilities that the populace might have participated in seasonal festivals and sacrificial offerings. Commoners might as well have been involved in religious activities carried out by regional lords.

Training of practitioners

Scribal training

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, but he also noted that the process of acquiring full literacy for Shang scribes is not understood.

The Shang character for "learn" (xué 學) has been identified. Two plastrons inscribed during Wu Ding's regnal era, HJ: 8304 and HJ: 16406, are interpreted and indicate that xué could be written as both a verb and a noun. 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 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. Generally, it has been argued that the use of this word in oracle bone inscriptions definitely refers to a kind of scribal training.

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. Guo commented:

The content consists of the gānzhī for days 1 to 10 engraved repeatedly. In the fourth line of text, the graphs are finely written and orderly, as though engraved by a teacher (xiānshēng 先生) to serve as a model (fànbĕn 範本). The rest are crooked and inferior, as though written by someone learning to engrave (xuékè 學刻). This is no different from the method by which today’s children practice writing (xízì 習字). Shedding light on the educational circumstances of three thousand years ago, it is of the utmost interest. Furthermore, interspersed within the columns written by the trainee are finely written graphs identical to those of the model, where presumably the attendant teacher took up the knife. Examples include the 辰, 午 and 申 of the second line, and the 卯, 己 and 辛 of the third.

— Guo Moruo

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. 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.

Training other ritual activities

The records belonging to the royal relative at Huayuanzhuang indicate a form of dance schooling. In five inscriptions, the word xué comes with shāng (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. There are inscriptions about continuing to perform shāng, and there is an oracle bone anticipating Wu Ding's inspection of the dances.

It is generally believed that the Shang might have had some kinds of institutionalized training locations for religious teaching.

History of development

Neolithic precursors

The Longshan culture, where ancestor worship rituals were practiced.

Before the dawn of organized states in China, the area was inhabited by various tribal confederations. Each of the tribes practiced its own system of beliefs. The religious beliefs in prehistoric China were based on ideas of animism, totemism and shamanism. Many ancient tribes in pre-dynastic China shared a common belief in the spiritual world. The spirits were thought to possess divine powers. As such, they were able to intervene in and dictate the lives of the living realm's beings. That led to the necessity of direct communication with the spirits, through means of mystics. A group of specified individuals, known as shamans, arose and took responsibility for conducting their respective tribe's religious rituals. The cultures in the future heartland of the Shang dynasty had practiced sacrifices and funerals. In many regions of China, Neolithic cultures had utilized bony materials from cattles for divination.

Archaeological evidence indicates that music culture developed in China from a very early period. Excavations in Jiahu Village in Wuyang County, Henan found bone flutes dated to 9,000 years ago, and clay music instruments called Xun thought to be 7,000 years old have been found in the Hemudu sites in Zhejiang and Banpo in Xi'an.

During the Zhou dynasty

Around 1046 BCE, the Shang dynasty collapsed, and a new Zhou dynasty commenced its course. King Wu of Zhou, the first king of the new royal family, enfranchised the Shang prince Wu Geng and allowed him to continue worshipping Shang spirits. The early Western Zhou period (c. 11th century BCE) kept the old Shang religious practices by revering Shang spirits. Early Zhou oracle bones found in Zhouyuan contain inscriptions concerning Di Yi, one of the last Shang kings who used to be worshipped by the Shang people.

After King Wu's death, Wu Geng rebelled together with the Three Guards, but was defeated and killed by the royal army. The Zhou dynasty enfeoffed another Shang prince, titled Weizi, as ruler of Song. Weizi and his descendants adhered to the Shang religion throughout the Song state's existence. Shu Yi, a high official of Qi around 600 BCE, was a direct descendant of the Shang. He owned a bronze artifact named Shu Yi Zhong to memorialize his royal Shang ancestral spirits.

When Qi conquered Song in 286 BCE, the Shang religion ceased to be practiced formally, although the spirits of Shang kings were still revered in later imperial dynasties of China.

Traditional narrative

Many Chinese dynasties that ruled after the Shang composed various texts that mention alleged Shang religious practitioners. The Chinese classics of the Zhou dynasty, the Xunzi, the Records of the Grand Historian as well as others describe these figures as illustrious models for righteousness and virtue.

Tang of Shang, as depicted by Ma Lin

Chinese tradition describes the first Shang king, Tang as a religious and perspicacious figure in Chinese history. There is a story recorded by both the philosopher Xunzi and the historian Sima Qian about Tang's religious sentiments. For seven years after Tang's accession to the throne, (1766−1760 BCE according to the traditional chronology), there was a great drought accompanied by famine. It was suggested at last that a human being be offered in a sacrificial ritual to the Heaven, and prayer made for rain. Tang allegedly said, "If a man must be the victim, I will be he." Then he fasted, cut off his hair and nails. Tang, in a horse-drawn carriage, dressed as a sacrificial victim, and went to a forest of mulberry trees in which an altar was built. There he prayed, asking about which of his wrongdoing had led to calamities. It is told that a heavy rain fell when Tang had not finished his prayer, saving the Chinese people from further disasters. The story of Tang praying to the gods is used to praise him as a figure who earnestly obey Heaven, or alternatively, the Shang high god Shàngdì.

The Book of Documents also refers to a quote by Yi Yin, who was a chief minister of Tang, when he counsels the young new king Tai Jia after Tang's own death. Yi Yin purportedly made a writing:

The former king [i.e. Tang of Shang] kept his eye continually on the bright requirements of Heaven, and so he maintained the worship of the spirits of heaven and earth, of those presiding over the land and the grain, and of those of the ancestral temple; all with a sincere reverence.

— Yi Yin to Tai Jia, recorded in the Book of Documents (trans. James Legge)

Other than that, the ancient Chinese tradition additionally say of later Shang kings who were given counsels by their ministers. For the king Wu Ding, whose actual reign produced the majority of Shang oracle bone inscriptions, was portrayed a character in the Book of Documents chpater "Day of the Supplementary Sacrifice to Gaozong". According to the narrative, Wu Ding was carrying out a ritual honoring Tang when a wild pheasant was spotted on a sacrificial vessel. The king interpreted it as a negative sign from the gods, but his eldest son Zu Ji remonstrated with him, counselling him to made religious reforms by reducing offerings to Shang ancestral spirits, as to correct the meaning of sacrifices. Zu Ji's speech was recorded in the Book:

高宗肜日，越有雊雉。祖己曰：「惟先格王，正厥事。」乃訓于王。曰：「惟天監下民，典厥義。降年有永有不永，非天夭民，民中絕命。民有不若德，不聽罪。天既孚命正厥德，乃曰：『其如台？』嗚呼！王司敬民，罔非天胤，典祀無豐于昵 On the day of the supplementary sacrifice of Gaozong, there appeared a crowing pheasant. Zu Ji said, To rectify this affair, the king must first be corrected. He delivered accordingly a lesson to the king, saying, 'In its inspection of men below, Heaven's first consideration is of their righteousness, and it bestows on them (accordingly) length of years or the contrary. It is not Heaven that cuts short men's lives; they bring them to an end themselves. Some men who have not complied with virtue will yet not acknowledge their offences, and when Heaven has by evident tokens charged them to correct their conduct, they still say, "What are these things to us?" Oh! our Majesty's business is to care reverently for the people. And all your ancestors were the heirs of the kingdom by the gift of Heaven; in attending to the sacrifices, be not so excessive in those to your father.'

— Zu Ji to his father Wu Ding

Shang excessive sacrifices were further criticized by a figure named Fu Yue, who in traditional texts served Wu Ding. In Fu's counsels given to his king, too much sacrifices would be harmful and counterproductive, as they were not respectful to the spirits, and therefore brought disorder.

The last Shang king, Di Xin, was described by the Zhou dynasty as a ruler who completely neglected religious affairs, especially sacrifices. Zhou people interpreted his actions as one of the reasons why his regime collapsed eventually. The Book of Documents section "Book of Zhou - Speech at Mu" quotes:

今商王受惟婦言是用。昏棄厥肆祀弗答，昏棄厥遺王父母弟不迪。乃惟四方之多罪逋逃，是崇是長，是信是使，是以為大夫卿士，俾暴虐于百姓，以奸宄于商邑。

Now for Shou, the king of Shang, it is indeed the words of his wife that he follows. He blindly discards the sacrifices he should present and fails to respond [to the blessings he has received from the spirits]. He blindly discards his paternal and maternal uncles who are still alive and fails to employ them. Thus, indeed, the vagabonds of the four quarters, loaded with crimes—these he honors, these he exalts, these he trusts, these he enlists, these he takes as high officials and dignitaries, to let them oppress and tyrannize the people and bring villainy and treachery upon the City of Shang.

— King Wu of Zhou giving speech, translated by Martin Kern

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