Pigs are prominent in the ceremonial and ritual iconography of the Hongshan culture, including jade pig-dragons found in high-status burials, a life-sized pig statue made of unbaked clay, and a mountain that resembles a pig. To attempt to link real pigs with the iconography, the place of actual pigs in the society is examined. Continuity of artifact types from sites 7000-3500 B.C. allows the assumption that pigs were initially important in the subsistence base. I suggest that pig iconography implies pig rituals, and that the pig rituals may have aided in the formation of an elite class. The elite are archaeologically manifested in the elaborate tombs, and their existence can also be inferred by the need for managers in creating the tombs and the artifacts within, as well as in procuring jade and possibly copper.

This paper investigates the relationships between the Early Metal Age cultures of the Inner Mongolia and Gansu-Qinghai area with the Erlitou culture of the Central Plains region, and addresses the issue whether specific metal objects characteristic of these cultures may have their source of inspiration in areas as remote as southern Siberia and present-day Afghanistan and southern Turkmenistan. The proposal that China at the very beginning of its Bronze Age may have been affected by long-distance cultural transmissions depends upon recent reevaluations of the early history of the Eurasian steppe, in particular the advent of nomadic pastoralism and horse riding, and upon newly recalibrated carbon dates ascertained for specific Siberian sites and for the Bactrian-Margiana complex.

For nearly a century scholars have debated the meaning of the oracle ¬bone graph shang 商 used by the Bronze Age theocracy in reference to itself and one of its settlements. Since the Zhou, the word shang has borne a political significance as the term for a ruling power group, yet there is no agreement as to the graph's meaning or why it stood as the eponym of China's first historic civilization. Following from Wang Guo-wei's 1923 contention that shang was first a place name — a claim attested to in inscriptions in the common phrase dayi shang (great settlement Shang), the present essay finds that this place was the hallowed site of the ancestral sacrifices of the Zi clan, and offers philological and artifactual evidence that the graph shang first depicted a rite performed before an ancestral image. Over the course of several centuries, the original, literal meaning of shang as the graphic depiction of the telling ritual, gao 吿, was generalized and extended to refer to the ancestral temple, the city where the temple was located, and finally to the Shang dynasty itself.

The meaning of Shang ritual imagery has long baffled scholars. Art historians and anthropologists have wrestled with its meaning every since 1928 when bronzes began to be excavated at Anyang, the Late Shang capital. It is now possible to explore various data to identify the religious significance of Shang ritual art From an art historical point of view, it is evident that certain standard modes of representation were designed to symbolize the theme of metamorphosis from the human to the animal spirit realm. This symbolism also helps to explain why the ubiquitous animal image in Shang art is conceived as a mask. Epigraph-ical data support the interpretation that Shang religion was based on the belief of metamorphosis as represented in art, and that the Shang king once acted as shaman-priest, chief-in-charge of invocation and a mask wearing rite. This interpretation depends on data provided by key terms in Shang bone inscriptions, such as gui 鬼, usually translated spirit ghost and others, directly related, such as the unpronounceable ff and zhu 祝. My intention is to elucidate why spirit ghosts of ancestors, gui were envisioned as anthropomorphized animal masks and how this conception is connected with the shamanic foundation of Shang religion. Although bone inscriptional data indicates that there is a dramatic shift away from exorcistic practices of shamanic origin to cult worship focused on dead royal ancestors, the combined evidence from art and epigraphy strongly argues for a Shang religion founded on the belief in metamorphosis and the king as shaman-priest.

The fixity of urban centers has been deeply implicated in models of political development from chiefdom to the state and early empire. For this reason, both Western and Chinese scholars have neglected the importance of non-permanent or shifting ceremonial centers or capitals like China's in the evolution of complex society. A brief examination of the touchstone cultures of early Mespotamia and Classical Greece, to which China is compared, demonstrates how narrowly conceived and exclusive the Euro-American view of complex society constructed by archeologists and historians has been on the issue of mobility and the relation of ruler and polity to territory. The Chinese case, like those of India and South Asia, suggests that the moving center should be recognized as a common variant in the process of socio-political development and change. The integration of the Asian state and early empires into the comparatist project seeks to analyze the formative relations between religious and cosmological conceptions and social, political and economic development.

A preoccupation with cosmology and the correlation of celestial events with terrestrial activity dates back to the very beginnings of Chinese civilization. The existence of such a mindset is shown by archeo-logical discoveries from the Neolithic as well as the early Bronze Age. The belief in heaven-dwelling high gods like Shang Di and Tian also had antecedents in the pre-Shang period. In addition, analysis of scientifically verifiable accounts of planetary massings from the second millennium B.C. suggests that important cosmological and astrological notions took shape much earlier than previously thought. On the basis of this evidence it now appears likely that such conceptions are intimately connected both with influential later beliefs about a Mandate of Heaven, which asserted heavenly intervention as the cause of change in temporal governance, and with later Five Elements speculative schemes, which claimed to discern a preordained phenomenological pattern in the dynastic succession. The cosmicization of experience in the archaic period to which the evidence points and the vehement reassertion of Heaven's Mandate by the Zhou dynasty founders together confirm the epoch-making historical role of the Shang-Zhou transition in decisively reaffirming “patterning oneself in Heaven's image” (xiang tian 象天) as the fundamental metaphor in Chinese political legitimation.

This article presents a new translation of the “Shao gao” chapter of the Shang shu. Contrary to the views of Edward Shaughnessy in Early China 18, the author argues 1) that the main speaker is the Duke of Zhou, not the Duke of Shao; 2) that the political philosophy expressed is consistent with other texts ascribed to the Duke of Zhou; and 3) that the Duke of Zhou did not die in disgrace or in exile. The author dates the Duke of Zhou's death to the twenty-first year of King Cheng's reign, either 1017 or 1015 B.C.

Scholars have often treated the concept of xiao as an unchanging notion with a transparent meaning. In the West, the translation “filial piety” has reinforced this tendency. By endeavoring to ascertain the precise meaning of the term in pre-Qin texts, this paper shows that xiao had multiple meanings and was constantly being reinterpreted to suit new social and political circumstances. In the Western Zhou, it was inti¬mately related to the cult of the dead and its recipients extended well beyond one's parents or grandparents. The ru of the Warring States emphasized that it meant obedience and displaying respect, and made parents the sole recipients of xiao. By the late Warring States, ru recast xiao not only as obedience to one's parents, but also as obedience to one's lord. Filial sons were reinvented as loyal retainers to meet the needs of the newly emerging bureaucratic state.

This essay begins by examining divination records from the Zhou dynasty (such as those from Zhouyuan and Baoshan, as well as records in traditional texts) showing that the topic of divination was invariably announced in the form of a “charge” indicating the desire of the person for whom the divination was being performed. Next, other accounts of turtle-shell divination (in the Shiji, Guo yu and Zuo zhuan) are examined to determine how the results of the divinations were interpreted. The author shows that the diviner was responsible for producing a yao 竊 or “omen-text” that was composed of three lines of four characters, the first describing the crack in the shell (i.e., the omen), followed by a couplet linking this omen to the announced topic of the divination, similar to the way in which the nature evocations of the Shijing are linked to events in the human realm. Finally, the author shows that this omentext is formally identical to the most developed form of the line statemerits of the Yijing, and proposes that from this form can be discerned the divinatory context that originally produced these line statements.

Bronze Inscriptions of the Western Zhou period show how ritualists were once dedicated to maintaining the ritual apparatus supporting the divine authority of the royal Zhou lineage. Bronze and bamboo texts of the Eastern Zhou period reveal, on the other hand, that ritualists able to manipulate local rulers reliant on their knowledge subsequently subverted power into their own hands. Ritualists such as scribes, cooks, and artisans were involved in the transmission of Zhou “power” through the creation and use of inscribed bronze vessels during feasts. The expansion and bureaucratization of their roles in the Chu state provided economic and ultimately political control of the state. This was particularly the case as the Chu, like the Zhou before them, fled east to escape western invaders.

Through close analysis of the traditional hermeneutics of the Zhou li sections on the Si 丽(Manager of the Spirit Mediums), Nanwu (Male Spirit Mediums), and Nüzou (Female Spirit Mediums), this article attempts to reconstruct the classical image of spirit mediums during the Zhou dynasty. It shows that spirit mediums, though grouped under the “bureaucratic” hierarchy of the Zhou li, have traditionally been assumed to be distinct in function and activities from the officials with whom they interacted duringceremonies. As specialized religious virtuousi capable of communicating with the supernatural forces, they apparently continued to play a distinguished role in political ritual — possibly derived from Shang court shamanism, and undoubtedly ancestral to the function of mediums in late traditional popular religion.

The dispute over whether burial rites should be frugal or lavish is a prominent feature of late Zhou philosophical literature. It originated with Mozi's attack on ritual and then continued unabated as the Ru and Mo schools argued the issue and hurled epithets at each other. The two Lüshi chunqiu chapters “Jiesang” and “Ansi” represent the arguments in favor of moderation in the middle of the third century B.C. While the chapters clearly owe their overall position to their Mohist forebears, they nonetheless ignore or reject several arguments that are central to the Mozi. Nowhere in them do we see, for example, Mozi's urgent call for the conservation of resources. On the other hand, they embrace Ruist concepts, most prominently the innate feeling of loyalty and concern that the Mengzi claims mourners have for their deceased relatives. The Lüshi chunqiu justifies its arguments by pointing to changing social realities, most notably an uncontrollable epidemic of grave robbery. Other features of style of disputation in the Lüshi chunqiu can be traced to the text7s attempts to blend together harmoniously what were originally conflicting points of view. None of the sources in the debate provides much insight into ancient conceptions of death and the afterlife. The elaborate architecture and rich furnishings of tombs excavated in the last several decades are not so much a contradiction of arguments in favor of moderation as they are testimony of a system of religious belief not at all reflected in philosophical literature.

This essay studies seven aspects of administration in the Qin state and empire in the light of the texts found at Shuihudi written on bamboo strips: rules for appointment of officials; age and other limitations; length of tenure in office; guarantees of performance; reports; methods of checking an official's performance; and salaries. The evidence is compared with that drawn from traditionally transmitted historical and philosophical texts. In addition, these administrative techniques are situated within the metaphysical and cosmological framework that guided actual Qin bureaucratic practice.

The silk manuscript texts of the Yijing and Comtnentatires — “Xici” “Yi-zhiyi,” “Yao,” and “Ersanzi Wen” — though excavated more than twenty years ago were published, albeit incompletely, for the first time in 1993. The physical state and the organization of these versions of the classic and commentaries were described by Edward Shaughnessy in Early China 19 (“A First Reading of the Mawangdui Yijing Manuscript”), and it is my intention in this article to begin to explore in some depth the differences between the silk manuscript Commentaries and the received text of the Xici to determine what they tell us about our understanding of the Zhou yi tradition. Even with our partial scholarly understanding of these texts it is possible to venture some preliminary judgments on the structure of the Commentaries, on the differing content of the silk manuscript version, on the enigma of the recurring phase “Zi yue” and on the date of its composition. Three main differences can be identified: discrepancies in characters, in sentences, and in chapter sequence. Nevertheless, the structure of the silk manuscript Xici and that of the received Commentaries are largely in agreement and what differences are in evidence, such as the scattering of certain parts of the received Xici in the heretofore unknown Yizhi Yi and Yao commentaries, may be explained by Qin discrimination against ru tradition following the conquest of Chu in 278 B.C. One of the principal discoveries resulting from comparison of the excavated and received texts is the presence of numerous loan graphs in the silk manuscript text, and it is through a better understanding of the function of such loans that a satisfactory explanation of the age-old enigma of “Zi yue” that occurs frequently and in the same places in both texts may be obtained.

The bamboo-slip medical manuscript entitled Yinshu (Pulling Book) from Zhangjiashan tomb 247, Hubei (burial dated ca. mid-second cen¬tury B.C.), includes a passage that uses the analogy of the bellows attested in received literature in Laozi V. In Yinshu the analogy is placed at the head of a macrobiotic technique. This article discusses the technique and argues that the bellows analogy most likely developed as part of the Warring States medical tradition of macrobiotic hygiene; that is, the bellows analogy in Laozi V was borrowed from medicine.