More than two hundred covenants (meng) were sworn in the Spring and Autumn period according to the historical records and they seem to have been one of the principal ways in which not only states managed interstate relations and tried to enforce agreements and alliances, but also lineages resolved differences of opinion over important issues, such as the leadership of the group, by vowing to abide by the oaths sworn (Walker 1953; Dobson 1968; Lewis 1990; Liu 1998; Pines 2002). There are even two cases in which a woman forced the man with whom she had sexual relations to recognize the offspring of the union. Dobson believes this latter practice is the earliest form of the covenant and possibly its origin, for the woman in one instance cut her arm and forced her partner, a Duke of Lu, to smear his lips with the blood and promise her that he would make her his wife (Dobson 1968: 278). In other words, Dobson believes that covenants originated in blood-oaths that created kinship ties. While this is possible, i believe it is more likely that the origin is to be sought much earlier, in the practice of allies gathering together to sacrifice enemies to the ancestral spirits and the gods of the Shang dynasty.
The covenant consisted of several steps. The agreement between the parties was drawn up in writing presumably by the person who was demanding the ritual pact (the Lord of the Covenant); an animal, usually a sheep or an ox, was slain, the left ear was cut off, and the blood that flowed from this wound was used to smear the lips of the participants in the rite. It was considered very important that a strict order of precedence was preserved, first in the right to hold the ear, and second in the order in which the blood was smeared: on several occasions competing claims of relative power among the participants led to serious disagreements. The document was then inscribed on jade tablets, apparently frequently in red ink (which, if not originally the blood of the sacrificed victim, was certainly symbolic of the blood shed), and the animals and jade tablets were buried in pits in the ground. The text consisted of several parts: a preamble that gave the precise day of the ritual and the names of the participants in order of precedence, a detailed description of the terms of the agreement, an oath or curse that called down disasters on those who might violate the oath, and a list of the ancestral spirits and other gods who bore witness to the oath and through whose spiritual power the violators would be punished. Copies of the covenants were given to each participant and stored in a special treasury of covenants. The records of these covenants were kept for many years, in one instance, at least 150 years, and states could use these records to call attention to violations of the oaths that had been sworn.
These covenants were supposed to be sworn willingly, and a forced oath was not considered legally or ritually binding: the participants were not supposed to bring armor and weapons with them. There are even cases in which belligerents forged covenants to try to trick an opponent into thinking that an agreement had been made when in fact none had. Covenants sworn by private parties in a state were often made right outside the walls of a city in a sacred field or in the ancestral temple in the presence of the ancestral tablets, but covenants between interstate partners (the joint covenant, tongmeng) were usually made in liminal spaces between states, for example, in the wilds near a river, especially after the practice of requiring covenants of subordinate allies by the dominant hegemon of the age began with Duke Huan of Qi in 678. These bilateral or multilateral treaties (one treaty was signed by twelve states) were subsequently known by the name of the location where the ritual had taken place. The ritual bonds of mutual obligations between the swearing parties essentially seem to have been of a personal nature, for when one of the principals died, the oath had to be “rewarmed” by his successor, although not all of the ritual steps were then considered obligatory. Thus in early times, it was the rulers of the states themselves who traveled to the ritual, but in late Spring and Autumn times it was powerful ministers who took over the right to swear on behalf of their states.
A typical example of the text of an interstate covenant is the one recorded for the year 562 between Jin, the dominant power and Zheng, who actually intended to betray it:
Every participant of our alliance will neither accumulate grains nor monopolize profits [of mountains and rivers], neither shelter criminals nor keep traitors. [Everybody] should help others in the case of natural calamity, share likes and dislikes, and support the royal dynasty. If anybody violates this order, then let the Lord Inspector, the Lord of Alliances, [deities] of famous mountains and rivers, all the deities and all those who accept sacrifices, [spirits of] former kings, former lords, ancestors of the seven clans, and the twelve states [-let all these] numinous deities punish him; may he lose his people, may his life be cut short and his lineage destroyed, his state and family overthrown (Pines 2002: 123).
That alliance members sent each other grain supplies in time of famine is well attested in the historical records, as is the yielding by one state of criminals wanted by another, although it was equally common for exiles to find refuge in other states. Clearly the requirement to share allies and enemies was a very important element of the oath for it was what maintained peace between the parties. In other instances, the texts listed various types of moral behavior, such as filial piety, that had to be observed by the signatories. The curse at the end reveals just how embedded these treaties were in the contemporary religious beliefs and practices.
No physical evidence of multilateral treaties has yet been discovered by archaeologists, perhaps because they were sworn in out-of-the way places, but two examples of intra-lineage covenants have been discovered at Houma, the capital of the state of Jin, Shanxi province, probably dating from the early fifth century, and Wenxian, located near the bank of the Qin river. These texts were written on jade tablets in either red or black ink and are even more complex in structure and form than those recorded in the histories, comprising loyalty texts, pledge texts, restoration texts, curse texts, and divination texts (Weld 1997). It is quite possible that such texts were also prepared for the interstate meetings, but only the central texts recording the obligations of the parties have been handed down.
The system of covenants was able to keep the peace for several centuries, but in the late sixth century, more and more examples of cynical manipulation took place, especially by the southern state of Chu. The result was that interstate rivals no longer found the interstate meeting and the swearing of a covenant a practical means of resolving disputes and establishing and maintaining friendly relations. The legal force of oaths seems to have been ignored, a trend that led directly to the internecine warfare of the Warring States.10
World History
