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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 involvement of shamanism 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.

Chief priests

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, that is, ten days. In many cases, the 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 Xiao Yi. 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. In some ceremonies, the deities would be present as "guests", and the Shang king was the person who acted as "host".

The Shang king's level of involvement in religion may explain why he could 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. J. C. Didier, in advocate of this, pointed out that the Tufang, a long-term opponent of the Shang dynasty, was assigned with Tu (earth); that explains the unusually frequency of Tufang in Shang inscriptions. 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.

Diviners and inscribers

On divinatory ceremonies, the Shang king was assisted by a number of diviners (duobu 多卜, lit. "many diviners"). 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. In many cases, they only divined about whether the week was fortunate, and their predictions might be rejected by the king. Robert Eno suggested that the "diviners" may be alternatively called the "crackers", since bone cracking was a task certainly assigned for them. The diviners were directed by a supervisor, guanzhan (官占). Many diviners are known by their names, which appear in almost every text recording the corresponding divinatory ritual they conducted. Some of them are: Bin, Que, Ji, Pin, Zheng, and Huang. During the reign of the religious king Wu Ding, over 70 diviners were recruited.

Diviners collaborated with the court inscribers ̣̣(taishi ling 太史令), who recorded divinations (as well as state affairs and other royal events). Their role in divinations were to write questions on the bones, and write the answers subsequently given after heating. Inscribers put down detailed information about each ceremony, from the name of conductors (the Shang ruler would be simply referred to as "the King") to the receiver of questions, and also the day of that ritual. In sacrifices, specific information about the subjects used for offering as well as their amount would also be written down.

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, in oracle bones it is rendered as the shape of a "plus" sign). The word has been generally translated as "shaman". Some scholars however questioned about its true meaning, and whether it actually referred to a shaman or another kind of practitioner. 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 "myag", related to the term "magus" in Old Persian (he further claimed that "magician" is also a related term). In Zoroastrianism, "magi" (plural form of "magus") 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.

But some divinatory records indicate the opposite: several oracle bones mention the Shang king "receiving" the spirits as "guests". Some scholars understand the "guest" rituals to have featured the kings as ceremonial hosts uniquely equipped to "hear" the spiritual messages in religious events. In this sense, the king would be a shaman, directly communicating with his ancestors as well as non-royal deified spirits.

Astronomers and astrologers

The role of astronomers / 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. They may have participated in making the Shang calendar, organizing a year into smaller periodical units.

Regional practitioners

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. Some of the Huayuanzhuang inscriptions were intended for the prince's own personal errands, while others concern Wu Ding's contemporary relationship with him.

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

References

1. ^ Eno (2010a).
2. ^ Eno (2010b).
3. ^ Wang & Yang (1996).
4. ^ Chang (1983). sfnp error: no target: CITEREFChang1983 (help)
5. Mizoguchi & Uchida (2018).
6. ^ Didier (2009).
7. Chang (1994).
8. Smith (2011).
9. ^ Mair.
10. Childs-Johnson (2008).
11. Smith (2019).

Sources

• Eno, Robert (2010a). "History G380: Shang Religion" (PDF). Indiana University.
• Eno, Robert (2010b). "History G380: Shang Society" (PDF). Indiana University.
• Wang, Yuxin; Yang, Shengnan (1996). Zhongguo zhengzhi zhidu tongshi (中國政治制度通史). Vol. 2, Xianqin (先秦). Beijing: Renmin chubanshe.
• Chang, Kwang-Chih (1994), "Shang Shamans", in Peterson, Willard J. (ed.), The Power of Culture: Studies in Chinese Cultural History, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, pp. 10–36, ISBN 978-962-201-596-8.
• Mizoguchi; Uchida (31 May 2018). "The Anyang Xibeigang Shang royal tombs revisited: a social archaeological approach". Antiquity. 92 (363): 709–723. doi:10.15184/aqy.2018.19. S2CID 165873637.
• K.C. Chang (1983). Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• Smith, Adam Daniel (2011). "The Chinese Sexagenary Cycle and the Ritual Origins of the Calendar". In Steele, John M. (ed.). Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and time in the ancient and medieval world. Oxbow Books. pp. 1–37. doi:10.7916/D8891CDX. ISBN 978-1-84217-987-1.
• Mair, Victor. Old Sinitic Myag, Old Persian Magus, and English 'Magician'"(Early China 15, 27-47).
• Childs-Johnson, Elizabeth (2008). The Meaning of the Graph Yi 異 and Its Implications for Shang Belief and Art.
• Didier, John C. (2009). "In and Outside the Square: The Sky and the Power of Belief in Ancient China and the World, c. 4500 BC – AD 200". Sino-Platonic Papers (192). Victor H. Mair. Volume I: The Ancient Eurasian World and the Celestial Pivot, Volume II: Representations and Identities of High Powers in Neolithic and Bronze China, Volume III: Terrestrial and Celestial Transformations in Zhou and Early-Imperial China
• Smith, Adam (8 August 2019). "The Chinese Sexagenary Cycle and the Origin of the Chinese Writing System". The Chinese Sexagenary Cycle and the Ritual Foundations of the Calendar. MPRL – Proceedings. Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften. ISBN 9783945561355.