What Makes the Shangs Land Special
What Makes the Shangs Land Special
The Shang dynasty that ruled the ancient Chinese kingdom, through the Bronze ages to the Neolithic ages, was the more powerful of the two prominent dynasties of that era, the Shang dynasty and the Western Chou dynasty. While discussing about the early civilization of China, David N. Keightley affirms this fact in his research paper entitled The Ancestral Landscape Time, Space, and Community in Late Shang China (c. 1200-1045 B.C.) .
The Shang kings and their people lived in a variety of intensely rural communities located across the North China plain. Undoubtedly, most of the political and religious policies that were to be the predecessors of the modern China s policies originated from these communities. However, the strength of the Shang culture was its ancestor worship , a series of religious rituals that were used by the living generation to worship their dead ancestors.
The oracle-borne inscriptions obtained from the sites of excavations reveal some interesting facts about the orderly religious rituals associated with the ancestor worship . These inscriptions were also helpful in shedding some light on the social and cultural development that the Shang land observed under the able guidance of the Shang kings. In the Shang s land, the Shang king was considered as the supreme authority and there certainly existed a defined social hierarchy based on certain social parameters such as royal lineage, proximity to the king, etc. The Shang king was placed at the apex of the hierarchy and below him his officers , mostly from the royal family itself. Labor gangs were placed at the bottom of the hierarchy and were responsible for the farm labor. The Shang king s officers were responsible for accompanying the king in his hunting parties as well as in supervising labor gangs .
Ancestor Worship
Though the ancestor worship was supposed to be a hard-core religious ceremony, in reality, this religious custom, being able to induce a harmonious feeling among the Shang people, played a critical role in the systematic administration of the Shang land. Prayers and sacrifices were regularly offered to ancestors and several aspects of divinations were attached to the dead Shang kings. In fact, these ancestral kings were also believed to be taking part in the rituals not only as receivers of the sacrifices but also as participants. Thus, these rituals were viewed as a holy ceremony where a communion between the dead ancestral kings and the living Shang king took place and their royal and divine powers were transferred to their living descendants. Perhaps, this is the reason why people believed that the Shang king s dreams were also inspired by his dead ancestors.
After discussing the rituals associated with the ancient worship , Keightley thoroughly analyses the political and religious implications of this custom on the Shang culture. Since a harmonious mood prevailed throughout the ancestor worship , the politically shrewd Shang kings might have used this custom to unite their people by instilling in them a sense of belonging and thus putting group harmony ahead of personal independence. In further analysis, he points out that ancestor worship might have been their best political strategy to establish the political and religious authority within the community and across all other communities. This might also have been used as a strategy to ensure that the kingship transferred from father to son within the royal community.
Going back to the details of the burial ceremonies and worshipping rituals associated with the dead, it is obvious that the Shang land worshipped its ancestors as gods with precise, systematic religious rituals. Tombs for the dead were made in big underground storehouses where numerous grave goods and hundreds of sacrificial victims were also buried along with the dead bodies that were accompanied by elaborate mortuary practices. Such tombs served as monuments to the affection that linked the living generation to the dead ancestors. This practice assumes great significance here as the Shang land viewed death as a continuity of life and its elaborate mortuary practices validated the importance of procreation. In Keightley s analysis, this particular system has a great demographical impact as it indirectly encourages population growth within the community. Similarly, the practice of burying material wealth promoted the production of material wealth. This makes the Shang land special among all lands as it was very particular in emphasizing life over death and accepting death as an inevitable part of a harmonious order, thus putting greater emphasis on life over death. Yet, a closer look at these rituals, particularly the human sacrifices or sacrificial victims that accompanied the dead, reveals another gruesome side of the Shang culture.
The accompanying-in-death , as the sacrificial victims often called, clearly indicates that a highly defined social hierarchy existed in the Shang land. That is, a high social status and superior powers were attributed to the Shang kings while the human sacrificial victims were supposed to be very inferior. It is quite obvious that the lives of the inferior people were not considered worthy in the Shang land and cruelty to them amounted to the level of burying them alive along with the dead. But Keightley s research completely overlooks this historically important fact. Another weakness of his research paper is, though Keightley narrates about the rituals associated with the ancestor worship at a great length, he does not elaborate the clearly defined social structures that existed in the Shang land.
Nature Worship and Ancient Worship
The Shang land deserves a special position among the ancient cultures for its intensive worship to the nature powers like the mountain power and the river power along with the ancient worship rituals. According to Keightley, when the Shang people offered prayers to Yang mountain power, yellow river power and other nature powers, they might have been trying to incorporate these powers into the powers of their dead ancestors so that they could have absolute power over all communities in their domain. But a closer analysis of the facts related to the nature worship reveals an underlying reason for their nature worship, i.e., their fear of natural disasters. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that perhaps, the Shang land might have been trying to please the natural powers in order avoid nature s fury.
Why the Shang Culture is Unique
Values and cultures of the Shang land differed from those of the Mesopotamia and the ancient Greece. Most importantly, the Shang culture was dominated by its optimistic attitude towards death and the acceptance of death as an inevitable part of a harmonious order while its surrounding cultures were quite pessimistic. This is quite evident from the Greek and Mesopotamian literature that glorified death and human tragedy.
This paper is a sincere attempt to explore all possible reasons behind the success of the Shang s land, among all ancient Chinese dynasties, by analyzing the historical facts discussed by Keightley in his research paper, The Ancestral Landscape Time, Space, and Community in Late Shang China (c. 1200-1045 B.C.) . This paper attributes the success of the Shang s land to a particular tradition of the Shang s land called ancient worship .
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