The ancient inhabitants of China, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas, as well as many other peoples throughout history, believed that the gods controlled the forces of nature and shaped destinies. Starting from this premise, they practiced various techniques of divination—the effort to interpret phenomena in the natural world as signs of the gods' will and intentions. Through divination the ancients sought to communicate with the gods and thereby anticipate— even influence—the future.
The Shang ruling class in China frequently sought information from ancestors and other higher powers. The Shang monarch himself, with the help of religious experts, often functioned as the intermediary, since he had access to his own ancestors, who had a high ranking in the hierarchy of the spirit world. Chief among the tools of divination were oracle bones. Holes were first drilled in the hard surface of the shoulder bone of an ox or the bottom shell of a turtle to weaken it, and a red-hot pointed stick was applied, causing the bone or shell to crack. The cracks were then “read" by skilled interpreters as answers, on the part of the ancestor who was being consulted, to whatever questions had been asked. The questions, answers, and, often, confirmation of the accuracy of the prediction were subsequently incised on the shell or bone, providing a permanent record of matters of importance to the ruler, such as imminent weather, the yield of the upcoming harvest, the health of the king and his family, the proper performance of rituals, the prospects of military campaigns and hunting expeditions, and the mood of powerful royal ancestors and other divine forces. Tens of thousands of oracle bones survive as a major source of information about Shang life.
In Mesopotamia in the third and second millennia b. c.e. the most important divination involved the close inspection of the form, size, and markings of the organs of sacrificed animals. Archaeologists have found models of sheep's livers accompanied by written explanations of the meaning of various features. Two other techniques of divination were following the trail of smoke from burning incense and examining the patterns that resulted when oil was thrown on water.
From about 2000 b. c.e. Mesopotamian diviners foretold the future from their observation of the movements of the sun, moon, planets, stars, and constellations. In the centuries after 1000 b. c.e. celestial omens were the most important source of predictions about the future, and specialists maintained precise records of astronomical events. Mesopotamian mathematics, essential for calculations of the movements of celestial bodies, was the most sophisticated in the ancient Middle East. Astrology, with its division of the sky into the twelve segments of the zodiac and its use of the position of the stars and planets to predict an individual's destiny, developed out of long-standing Mesopotamian attention to the movements of celestial objects. Horoscopes—charts with calculations and predictions based on an individual's date of birth—have been found from shortly before 400 b. c.e. In the Hellenistic period (323-30 b. c.e.), Greek settlers flooding into western Asia built on this Mesopotamian foundation and greatly advanced the study of astrology.
Greeks and Romans made frequent use of divination before making decisions in both public and private life. Most famous among the many oracle sites in Greece was Delphi, in a stunning location overlooking the Gulf of Corinth, where advice was sought from the god Apollo. A private individual or the official embassy from a Greek community, after leaving the customary gift for the god and entering the temple, had his question conveyed to the priestess, who fell into a
Since written documents only appear toward the end of Shang rule, little is known about how the Shang rose to dominance. These documents are the so-called oracle bones, the shoulder bones of cattle and the bottom shells of turtles that were employed by Shang rulers to obtain important information from ancestral spirits and gods (see Environment and Technology: Divination in Ancient Societies). The writing on the oracle bones contains information about the king, his court, and religious conceptions, with very little about other aspects of
Chinese Divination Shell After inscribing questions on a bone or shell, the diviner applied a red-hot point and interpreted the resulting cracks as a div'ne response. (Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica)
Trance (recent geological studies have discovered that the temple lay directly above a fissure, and scholars speculate that a gas rising up into the chamber may have put the priestess into an intoxicated state) and delivered a wild utterance that was then “translated" and written down by the priests who administered the shrine.
Information and advice from the god at Delphi played a major role in helping Greek communities choose where to place new settlements during the centuries of colonization throughout the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and it is easy to suspect that the Delphic priests collected information from the many travelers who came their way and then dispensed it by means of oracles.
Greek and Roman sources make occasional references to practices of divination among the Celts. Prediction of the future is one of the many religious functions attributed to the Druids, but certain sources distinguish a specialized group of “seers." Among their methods were careful observation of the flight patterns of birds and of the appearance of sacrificial offerings. In Ireland a ritual specialist ate the meat of a freshly killed bull, lay down to sleep on the bull's hide, and then had prophetic dreams. The most startling form of Celtic divination is described by the geographer Strabo:
The Romans put a stop to [the] customs... connected with sacrifice and divination, as they were in conflict with our own ways: for example, they would strike a man who had been consecrated for sacrifice in the back with a sword, and make prophecies based on his death-spasms.
Reports about this and other Celtic practices, such as human sacrifice and the display of heads of conquered enemies, were used by the Romans to justify the conquest of Celtic peoples in order to “civilize" them.
Little is known for certain about the divinatory practices of early American peoples. The Olmec produced polished stone mirrors whose concave surfaces gave off reflected images that were thought to emanate from a supernatural realm. Painted basins found in Olmec households have been compared to those attested for later Mesoamerican groups. In the latter, women threw maize kernels onto the surface of water-filled basins and noted the patterns by which they floated or sank. By this means they ascertained information useful to the family, such as the cause and cure of illness, the right time for agricultural tasks or marriage, and propitious names for newborn children.
It may seem surprising that divination is being treated here as a form of technology. Most modern people would regard such interpretations of patterns in everyday phenomena as mere superstition. However, in the context of the laws of nature as understood by ancient societies— wherein the gods control and direct events in the natural world—divination involved the application of principles of causation to the socially beneficial task of acquiring information about what would happen in the future. These techniques were usually known only to a class of experts whose special training and knowledge gave them high status in their society.
Shang society. The same innate limitations apply to the archaeological record, primarily treasure-filled tombs of the Shang ruling class.
The earliest known oracle bone inscriptions date to the thirteenth century b. c.e., but the system was already
So sophisticated that some scholars believe writing in China could be considerably older. In the Shang writing system the several hundred characters (written symbols) were originally pictures of objects that become simplified over time, with each character representing a
The Zhou Period, 1045-221 b. c.e.
One-syllable word for an object or idea. It is likely that only a small number of people at court used this system. Nevertheless, the Shang writing system is the ancestor of the system still used in China and elsewhere in East Asia today. Later Chinese writing developed thousands of more complex characters that provide information about both the meaning of the word and its sound.
Scholars are able to reconstruct the major features of Shang religion from the oracle bones. The supreme god, Di°, who resides in the sky and unleashes the power of storms, is felt to be distant and unconcerned with the fate of humans, and cannot be approached directly. When people die, their spirits survive in the same supernatural sphere as Di and other gods of nature. These ancestral spirits, who are organized in a heavenly hierarchy that mirrors the social hierarchy on earth, can intervene in the affairs of the family. The Shang ruler has direct access to his more recent ancestors, who have access to earlier generations, who can, in turn, intercede with Di. Thus the ruler is the crucial link between Heaven and earth, and he uses his unrivaled access to higher powers to promote agricultural productivity and protect his people from natural disasters. This belief, which persists throughout Chinese history, has been an extremely effective rationale for authoritarian rule.
Other information about the Shang comes from the excavated tombs of Shang royal and elite families, primarily from the vicinity of Anyang° (see Map 3.1). The tombs contain large quantities of valuable objects made of metal, jade, bone, ivory, shell, and stone, including musical instruments, jewelry, mirrors, weapons, and bronze vessels. These vessels, intricately decorated with stylized depictions of real and imaginary animals, were used to make offerings to ancestral spirits. Possession of bronze objects was a sign of authority and nobility. The tombs also contain the bodies of other people, apparently family members, servants, and prisoners of war who were killed at the time of the burial. It appears that the objects and sacrificed people were intended to serve the main occupant of the tomb in the afterlife.
Shang cities are not well preserved in the archaeological record, partly because of the climate of northern China and partly because of the building materials used. With stone in short supply, cities were protected by massive walls of pounded earth, and buildings on pounded earth foundation platforms were constructed with wooden posts and dried mud. A number of sites appear to have served at different times as centers of political control and religion, with palaces, administrative build-
Di (dee) Anyang (ahn-yahng) ings and storehouses, royal tombs, shrines of gods and ancestors, and houses of the nobility. The common people lived in agricultural villages outside these centers.
The Shang elite were a warrior aristocracy whose greatest pleasures were warfare, hunting, exchanging gifts, feasting, and drinking. They fought with bronze weapons and rode into battle on horse-drawn chariots, a technology that originated in western Asia. Frequent military campaigns provided these warriors with a theater for brave achievements and yielded considerable plunder. Many prisoners of war were taken in these campaigns and made into slaves and sacrificial victims.
The oracle bones suggest that the king was often on the road, traveling to the courts of his subordinates to reinforce their loyalty, but it is uncertain how much territory in the North China Plain was effectively controlled by the Shang. Excavations at sites elsewhere in China, such as at Sanxingdui° in modern Sichuan province, show artistic and technological traditions so different that they are probably the products of independent groups. Both the lack of writing elsewhere in early China and the Han-era conception that China had always been essentially unified obscure from us the probable ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity of early China.
In the mid-eleventh century B. C.E. the Shang were overthrown by the Zhou° people, whose homeland lay several hundred miles to the west, in the valley of the Wei° River. While the ethnic origin of the Zhou is unclear (their traditions acknowledged that their ancestors had lived for generations among the western “barbarians”), they took over many elements of Shang culture. The Zhou line of kings was the longest lasting and most revered of all dynasties in Chinese history. The two founders of Zhou were Wen, a vassal ruler who, after being held prisoner for a time by his Shang overlord, became the focus of a rising resistance movement among disaffected Shang subjects; and his son, Wu, who mounted a successful attack on the Shang capital and was enthroned as the first ruler of the new dynasty. Wu justified his achievement in a manner that became the norm throughout subsequent Chinese history. He claimed that the last Shang ruler was depraved and tyrannical, neglecting to honor gods and ancestors and killing and abusing his subjects. The Zhou invoked their own highest deity, Tian° (“Heaven”), who was more compassionate than the aloof Di of the Shang.
Sanxingdui (sahn-shing-dway) Zhou (joe) Wei (way) Tian (tyehn)
They claimed that Heaven granted authority and legitimacy to a ruler as long as he looked out for the welfare of his subjects; the monarch, accordingly, was called the “Son of Heaven.” The proof of divine favor was the prosperity and stability of the kingdom. But if the ruler persistently failed in these duties and neglected the warning signs of flood, famine, invasion, or other disasters, Heaven could withdraw this “Mandate” and transfer it to another, more worthy ruler and family. This theory of the Mandate of Heaven, which inextricably connected the religious and political spheres, served as the foundation of Chinese political thought for three thousand years, and it also contributed to the persistence of autocracy (the rule of one man) in Chinese history.
Much more is known about the early centuries of Zhou rule (the Western Zhou Period, 1045-771 b. c.e.) than the preceding Shang era because of the survival of written texts, above all the Book of Documents, a collection of decrees, letters, and other historical records, and the Book of Songs, an anthology of 305 poems, ballads, and folksongs that illuminate the lives of rulers, nobles, and peasants. Additionally, members of the Zhou elite recorded their careers and cited honors received from the rulers in bronze inscriptions.
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The Book of Documents
To consolidate his power, King Wu distributed territories to his allies, relatives, and associates, which they were to administer and profit from so long as they remained subordinate and loyal to him. These regional rulers then apportioned pieces of their holdings to their supporters, creating a pyramidal structure of political, social, and economic relations often referred to as “feudal,” borrowing terminology from the European Middle Ages.
When Wu died, his son and heir, Cheng°, was too young to assume full powers, and for a time the kingdom was run by his uncles, especially Dan, the Duke of Zhou. The Duke of Zhou is one of the most famous figures in early Chinese history, in large part because the philosopher Confucius later exalted him as the ideal, selfless administrator who ably served as regent for his young nephew at a delicate time for the new dynasty and then dutifully returned power to the lawful ruler as soon as he came of age.
The early Zhou rulers constructed a new capital city in their homeland (near modern Xi’an), and other urban centers developed in succeeding centuries. These cities were laid out on a grid plan aligned with the north polar star, with gates in the fortification walls opening to the cardinal directions and major buildings facing south. This was in keeping with an already ancient concern, known as feng shui° (“wind and water”), to orient structures so that they would be in a harmonious relationship with the terrain, the forces of wind, water, and sunlight, and the invisible energy perceived to be flowing through the natural world.
Religion played a large role in both public and private life in the Zhou era. Alongside the new primacy of the Zhou deity Tian and continuation of practices inherited from the Shang era, new forms of divination developed. One increasingly popular method involved throwing down a handful of long and short stalks of the milfoil or yarrow plant and interpreting the patterns they formed (tradition claimed that the practice had been devised by the Zhou founder Wen). Over time a multilayered text was compiled, called the Book of Changes, that explained in detail the meanings of each of the sixty-four standard patterns formed by the stalks. In later ages this practice and the accompanying text also came to be used as a vehicle for self-examination and for contemplating the workings of the world.
The Book of Songs provides extraordinary glimpses into the lives, activities, and feelings of a diverse crosssection of early Chinese people—elite and common, male and female, urban and rural. We can glean much from these poems about the situation of women in early China. Some describe men and women choosing each other and engaging in sex outside of marriage. Other poems tell of arranged marriages in which the young woman anxiously leaves home and birth family behind and journeys to the household of an unknown husband and new family. One poem describes the different ways that infant boys and girls were welcomed into an aristocratic family. The male was received like a little prince: placed on a bed, swaddled in expensive robes, and given a jade scepter to play with as a symbol of his future authority; the female was placed on the floor and given the weight from a weaving loom to indicate her future obligations of subservience and household labor.
Over the period from the eleventh to eighth centuries B. C.E. the power of the Zhou monarch gradually eroded, largely because of the fragmentation inherent in the feudal division of territory and power. In 771 b. c.e. the Zhou capital was attacked by a coalition of enemies, and the dynasty withdrew to a base further east, at Luoyang°. This change ushers in the Eastern Zhou Period (771-221 b. c.e.), a long era in which the Zhou monarchs remained
Cheng (chung)
Feng shui (fung shway) Luoyang (LWOE-yahng)
Confucianism, Daoism, and Chinese Society
As figureheads, given only nominal allegiance by the rulers of many virtually independent states scattered across northern and central China.
The first part of the Eastern Zhou era is called the Spring and Autumn Period (771-481 b. c.e.) because of the survival of a text, the Spring and Autumn Annals, that provides a very spare historical record of events in the small eastern kingdom of Lu. Later writers added commentaries that fleshed out this skeletal record. The states of this era were frequently at odds with one another and employed a wide variety of ways to protect themselves and advance their interests, including diplomatic initiatives, shifting alliances, and assassinations and coups, as well as conventional warfare. The overall trend was gradual consolidation into a smaller number of larger and more powerful kingdoms.
Warfare was a persistent feature of the period, and there were important transformations in the character and technology of war. In the Shang and early Zhou periods, warfare largely had been conducted by members of the elite, who rode in chariots, saw the battlefield as an opportunity for displays of skill and courage, and adhered to a code of heroic conduct reminiscent of the warriors in Greek, Celtic, Iranian, and Indian legends. But in the high-stakes conflicts of the Eastern Zhou era, there was a shift to much larger armies made up of conscripted farmers who fought bloody battles, unconstrained by noble etiquette, in which large numbers of people were slaughtered. Some men who undertook the study of war became professional military commanders and composed handbooks, such as Sunzi’s Art of War. Sunzi° approaches war as a kind of chess game in which the successful general employs deception, uses both conventional and unorthodox tactics, intuits the energy potential inherent in the landscape, and psychologically manipulates both the enemy commanders and troops and his own soldiers. The best victories are achieved without fighting so that one can wholly incorporate the unimpaired resources of the other side.
Technological advances also impacted warfare. In the last centuries of the Zhou, the Chinese learned from the nomadic peoples of the northern steppes to put fighters on horseback. By 600 b. c.e. iron began to replace bronze as the primary metal for tools and weapons. There is mounting evidence that ironworking also came to China from the nomadic peoples of the northwest. Subsequently metalworkers in southern China, who had limited access to copper and tin for making bronze, were the first in the world to forge steel by removing carbon during the iron-smelting process.
Another significant development of the age was the increasing size and complexity of the governments that administered Chinese kingdoms. Rulers ordered the careful monitoring and recording of the population, the land, and its agricultural products so that the government could compel peasants to donate labor for public works projects (digging and maintaining irrigation channels and building roads, defensive walls, and palaces), conscript them into the army, and collect taxes. Skilled officials supervised the expanding bureaucracies of scribes, accountants, and surveyors and advised the rulers on various matters. Thus there arose a class of educated and ambitious men who traveled from kingdom to kingdom offering their services to the rulers—and their theories of ideal government.
The Eastern Zhou era offers the paradox of a chaotic period that is also a time of great cultural development. Political fragmentation, frequent warfare, and anxious uncertainty were the context and the catalyst for the creation of many of the most important and characteristic elements of Chinese civilization. The two most influential “philosophical” systems of Chinese civilization—Confucianism and Daoism—had their roots in this period, though they would be further developed and adapted to changing circumstances in later times.
Kongzi° (551-479 b. c.e.), known in the West by the Latin form of his name, Confucius, withdrew from public life after unsuccessful efforts to find employment as an official and adviser to a number of rulers of the day. He gathered around himself a circle of students to whom he presented his wide-ranging ideas on morality, conduct, and government. His sayings were handed down by several generations of disciples before being compiled in written form as the Analects (see Diversity and Dominance: Human Nature and Good Government in the Analects of Confucius and the Legalist Writings of Han Fei). This work, along with a set of earlier texts that were believed (probably wrongly) to have been edited by Confucius—the Book of Documents, the Book of Songs, the Book of Changes, and the Spring and Autumn Annals— became the core texts of Confucianism.
Confucius drew upon traditional institutions and values but gave them new shape and meaning. He looked back to the early Zhou period as a Golden Age of wise rulers and benevolent government, models to which the people of his own “broken” society should return. He also placed great importance on the “rituals,” or forms of behavior that guide people in their daily interactions with one another, since these provide a way to maintain harmony in human relations.
Confucius believed that the family was the fundamental component of society and that the ways in which family members regulated their conduct in the home would prove valuable to them as citizens of the state. Each member of the family had his or her place and duties in a hierarchical order that was determined by age and gender, just as each citizen had his or her social status and obligations in the larger community. The “filial-ity” of children to parents, which included deference, obedience, reverence, and love, had its analogue in the devotion of subjects to the ruler. Another fundamental virtue for Confucius was ren°, sometimes translated as “humaneness,” which traditionally meant the feelings between family members and was expanded into a universal ideal of benevolence and compassion that would, ideally, pervade every activity. Confucianism placed immense value on the practical task of making society function smoothly at every level. Thus it provided a philosophical and ethical framework for conducting one’s life and understanding one’s place in the world. But it was not a religion. While Confucius urged respect for gods, ancestors, and religious traditions, he felt that such things were unknowable and that one should avoid looking into matters of the divine.
Confucius’s ideas were little known in his own time, but his teachings were preserved (at first orally, then in writing) and gradually spread to a wider audience. Some disciples took Confucianism in new directions. Mengzi° (known in the West as Mencius, 371-289 b. c.e.), who did much to popularize Confucian ideas in his age, believed in the essential goodness of all human beings and argued that, if people were shown the right way by virtuous leaders, they would voluntarily do the right thing. Xunzi° (ca. 310-210 B. C.E.), on the other hand, concluded that people had to be compelled to make appropriate choices. (This approach led to the development of a school of thought called Legalism—see below.) As we shall see later (Chapter 6), in the era of the emperors a revised Confucianism became the dominant political philosophy and the core of the educational system for government officials.
If Confucianism emphasized social engagement, its great rival, Daoism°, urged withdrawal from the empty formalities, rigid hierarchy, and distractions of Chinese society. Laozi° is regarded as the originator of Daoism,
Ren (ruhn) Mengzi (muhng-zuh) Xunzi (shoon-zuh) Daoism (DOW-izm) Laozi (low-zuh)
Although virtually nothing is known about him, and some scholars doubt his existence. Laozi is credited with the foundational text of Daoism, the Classic of the Way of Virtue, a difficult book full of ambiguity and paradox, beautiful poetic images, and tantalizing hints of “truths” that cannot be adequately explained with words. It raises questions about whether the material world in which we operate is real or a kind of dream that blocks us from perceiving a higher reality, and along the same lines it argues that education, knowledge, and rational analysis are obstacles to understanding and that we would be better off cultivating our senses and trusting our intuitions. The primal world of the distant past was happy and blessed before civilization and “knowledge” corrupted it. The Daoist sage retreats from the stresses and obligations of a chaotic society, avoids useless struggles, and chooses not to “act” because such action almost always leads to a different outcome from the one desired, whereas inaction may bring the desired outcome. He strives to lead a tranquil existence, making himself soft and malleable so that the forces that buffet people can flow harmlessly around him, and he has no fear of death because, for all we know, death may be merely a transformation to another plane of existence. In the end, in a world that is always changing and lacks any absolute morality or meaning, all that matters is the individual’s fundamental understanding of, and accommodation to, the Dao, the “path” of nature.
Daoism, like Confucianism, would continue to evolve for many centuries, adapting to changes in Chinese society and incorporating many elements of traditional religion, mysticism, and magic. While Daoism and Confucianism may appear to be thoroughly at odds regarding the relationship of the individual and the larger society, many Chinese through the ages have drawn on both traditions, and it has been said that the typical Chinese scholar-official was a Confucian in his work and public life but a Daoist in the privacy of his study.
The classical Chinese patterns of family and property took shape in the later Zhou period. The kinship structures of the Shang and early Zhou periods, based on the clan (a relatively large group of related families), gave way to the three-generation family of grandparents, parents, and children as the fundamental social unit. Fathers had absolute authority over women and children, arranged marriages for their offspring, and could sell the labor of family members. Only men could conduct rituals and make offerings to the ancestors, though women could help maintain the household’s ancestral shrines. A man was limited to one wife but was permitted additional sexual partners, who had the lower status of concubines. A man whose wife died had a duty to remarry in order to produce male heirs to keep alive the cult of
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