Metamorphosis and the Shang State: Yi 異and the Yi ding異[fang方]鼎

Abstract

Despite a long tradition of scholarship on Shang religion, a clear and comprehensive account of that religion has proven elusive. Many scholars have relied on written accounts from the much later Warring States and Han eras purporting to describe Shang beliefs and practices, and have been misled into describing the Shang religion as bureaucratically institutionalized and characterized by tension between inner court and outer court worship of ancestral and nature deities. Other scholars have generalized about the nature of divinity in Shang time and have recognized the position of the king who as one with Di was divine. Rather than act as an intermediary between the living and dead, the Shang king was divine and equivalent to Di. The present study follows research recognizing that the Shang king ruled over a state system which I label “institutionalized metamorphism”. By “institutionalized metamorphism” a belief is implied in the metamorphic power of the Shang king that allowed him identification with and to a certain extent control over numinous spirits.

Despite a long tradition of scholarship on Shang religion, a clear and comprehensive account of that religion has proven elusive. Many scholars have relied on written accounts from much later Warring States and Han eras purporting to describe Shang beliefs and practices, and have been misled into describing Shang religion as bureaucratically institutionalized and characterized by tension between inner court and outer court worship of ancestral and nature deities (see e.g., Shima 1958; Akatsuka 1977; Chang 1970; Eno 2008; Keightley 2000). Nevertheless, many scholars have correctly observed that the Zhou concept of the “Mandate of Heaven” originated from the Shang belief in the power of the cosmological deity, Di, and that Zhou and later reverence for the power of ancestral spirits was based on rites of Shang origin (Chen 1937; Chang 1970; Hu 1959; Allan 2007). Many of these arguments in turn may be based on inscriptional data but few take a holistic approach in combining written information with other related data. Few scholars rely on Shang period inscriptional data in combination with visual and archaeological material. In order to more fully understand belief in a Shang setting, particularly the belief in metamorphosis yi 異 and Shang rulership, certain visual data will be reviewed, as will the view that the king possessed the power of yi 異as a divine ruler allied with Di, the high Cosmological Spirit of Shang.

The present study also follows research recognizing that the Shang king rules over a state system which I have labeled elsewhere “institutionalized metamorphism” (Childs-Johnson 2008, p. 51). By “institutionalized metamorphism” a belief is implied in the metamorphic power of the Shang king that allowed him identification with and to a certain extent control over numinous spirits. By metamorphism, the power of a human (i.e., the king) to spiritually identify with a divine power is implied1.

1. Background for the Meaning of Yi異 and Yiding異鼎 in Shang and Western Zhou Time

The Shang king has been described as a shaman by many eminent late scholars, (see e.g., Chang 1983 and Chen 1937). As outlined by the English historian Robert Hutton in 2001 (Hutton 2001), the best definition of “shamanism” is one which refers to “the indigenous religions of Siberia and neighboring parts of Asia,” where the term originated (Paper 1995, p. 51) and where shamanic practice is ongoing. Although shamanism is a well-defined entity in the northern areas of China and Mongolia, and may also be in historic ancient China, there is no term for shaman or shamanism in Shang script that may unambiguously be understood as “shaman”. It is preferred here to identify the terms that do exist in the context of contemporary belief systems as a prolegomena to the study of ancient Chinese “religion”.2 The most expedient pieces of data for belief systems in the Shang period are documented in art and script of this time.

The profound belief in the power of spirit metamorphosis, or yi異, as known in bone inscriptions and in artistic representations of Shang date, continue during the subsequent Western Zhou period, and in the latter context signify what appears to be a smooth transition in terms of common belief in metamorphic power from one early Sinitic kingdom to another. The binding adhesive for this transition is the continued use during the Western Zhou for the hewen term yiding 異鼎 (= fangding 方鼎) to signify the ruler’s power to rule as a divinity in the company of Di (later Tian) (Childs-Johnson 2008, 2013). Hewen refers to a binome, a combination of two graphs into one word. As reviewed below, the evidence for this continuity is documented by new inscriptional and archaeological data. The term yiding, identifiable as a fangding or square/rectangular (hereafter simplified to rectangular) ding with four legs, is not only documented by Shang period data but by what is entirely new, a Western Zhou period inscription and vessel from Dahezun, Shanxi.

During Shang time, oracle bone terms, such as yi 異 “to spiritually transform,” and bin 賓 “to identify with a spirit(s)” document the royal prerogative of the Shang king (Childs-Johnson 2008). The primary artistic image and its variations on ritual bronzes and related Shang art document the same belief, the right of the king who may identify with Di and other divine spirits. This substratum of belief in metamorphic royal power is invested not only in the living king but in dead kings and Di. The realm that the Shang king oversees may thus be described as “a state of institutionalized metamorphism”. The King ruled at the center 中商 (Shang at the Center) over a cosmological sifang 四方or four equal parts that extended outward in axial directions. The king was divine, one with Di, and one with sifang. His control was Machiavellian and peripatetic, relying on image, inspections, and tribute, and in particular on the spirit world, divination, and rites. In addition, it is noteworthy that the Shang royal ancestral cult grew out of a well-established cult of exorcism Da Yu大禦, that became codified into a ritual program known as zhoujisi 周祭祀, or cyclical sacrificial rites (Childs-Johnson forthcoming). Although these rites were eventually terminated during the Western Zhou period, belief in the divinity of the ruler, and specifically his identification with Di (later Tian) remained steadfast in the politico-religious practice of Zhou rulership.

The royal symbol of metamorphic power, yi 異, to be spirit-empowered, dominates Shang period art. The image is primarily a semi-human invested with wild animal attributes but to date may be specifically ascribed to only one mythic spirit power, Kui夔, the legendary founder of the Shang kingdom (see Figure 1 below).

The significance of these yi or metamorphic power images is directly allied with the king’s cosmological power to rule, as revealed in a related term, yiding (異鼎), the hewen (two graphs joined into one graph) known in a variety of early inscriptional contexts including Shang and pre-conquest Western Zhou divinatory inscriptions and Western Zhou bronze vessel inscriptions. As will be analyzed below, these inscriptional contexts corroborate that yiding refers specifically to the tetrapod fangding, and secondly to a fangding with yi spirit power, the basis of a king’s power to rule in Shang time and apparently also in Western Zhou time. The types of data that exhibit a continuation of Shang belief in these symbolic attributes are both archaeological and paleographic, depending on extant or excavated fangding and their inscriptions. As will become clear, royal fangding and yiding were one and the same vessel.

2. Early through Late Western Zhou Inscriptional Evidence for Yiding

As recently analyzed by Wang Ziyang, several graphs cited in the inscriptions on ritual bronzes from the newly discovered burial M1017 at Dahekou cemetery in Yicheng, Shanxi (“Excavation of No. 1017 Tomb of the Western Zhou Dynasty Graveyard in Dahekou, Shanxi,” Kaogu xuebao 2018.1) have sparked lively debate about the function of the ritual bronze vessel and its inscription.

(http://www.xianqin.org/blog/archives/9917.html?from=timeline&isappinstalled=02018).*

One in particular is the middle Western Zhou, Ba Bo (Duke of Ba) fanggui 霸伯方簋 (read here as Ba Bo (Duke of Ba) yi(fang)ding 霸伯異鼎) (see Figure 2). The inscription reads:

“In the first month the King carried out meat sacrifice [at] Di氐, [at the time of] Da Qin大奏 (a Great Performance?). The King awarded Duke of Ba 10 strings of cowries which the Duke of Ba used to make a precious B (name of a vessel). May sons and grandsons forever treasure it唯正月王 [ jiang = ]于氐, 大奏。王赐霸伯贝十朋。霸伯用作宝B，其万年孙子 ₌ 其永宝。”

* I would like to thank Professor Han Ding 韩鼎 for bringing this article by Wang Ziyang to my attention.

B is the name of the vessel, written , as a rubbing, and , as a photograph (Wang 2018; Shanxi 2018). The graph is composed of three components, jin金, ge戈, and xing行, of which ge is allegedly the sound element and jin and xing the signifier elements. Although Wang reads the graph as yi, not ge or jin 釴 (see Wang: footnote 11), and although釴 may be documented by various textual references of Han date, such as the Er Ya尔雅, Hanyu Dazidian 漢大字典, Suoyin索隐, and others, alongside their commentaries, the graph is clearly a corruption of the word yi 翼/異 in classical texts and Zhou inscriptions, as analyzed by Yachu Zhang (1992)3. Zhang’s interpretation is in turn supported by references to 異in the Mozi, as translated by Sun Yirang孙詒让 (Sun 2001), and quoted in (Wang 2018: text and notes 23–4). 釴 is a corrupt loan graph for the word yi翼(異), the same yi found in earlier Western Zhou and Shang inscriptions.

Wang provides other obvious evidence that the graph B釴 = 翼/異 does not refer to a gui ritual vessel as used in the archaeological report to label this two-handled rectangular bronze. Typologically, the vessel shape has nothing in common with the bronze gui vessel type; it is square (or rectangular; fang方 is used for both rectangular and square shapes) with four sides in two parts, an upper basin and lower foot in addition to two side loop handles (Figure 2). None of the latter features characterize gui basins; inscribed and self-named gui vessels are more typically circular with a circular foot and a pair of opposing handles (a few exceptions include Kai Hou gui 楷侯簋 (Wu 2012 Mingtu 5129) and the Ya Chou gui (Wu 2012 Mingtu 3670 亚醜簋). For this and other reasons the vessel is not a gui.

Comparisons with the Duke of Ba vessel include three more or less contemporary ones dating to the middle and late phases of the Western Zhou through the Spring and Autumn periods (see Figure 3). All are similar in shape and may be used to date the Duke of Ba bronze: the Li Zhen fangli, an animal-footed fangli, and a fangliding from the Zhuangbai cache in Shaanxi (see Figure 3). These three vessels are not only similar in shape, date, and decor, but in function. The lower bellies of the four bronzes are hollow for purposes of heating the contents in the basin above. Three of the vessels have supporting legs in the form of birds or dragons; the latter are decorative attachments typifying the whimsical direction of decor during the middle phase of the Western Zhou period (see e.g., Childs-Johnson and Major forthcoming). The Dahezun vessel (Figure 2) typologically is easily read as a degenerate version of the three rectangular basins with four fanciful legs. The decor and legs of the Dahezun bronze, however, have been stripped away due to the simplification of the more artistic versions just discussed. The Duke of Ba bronze nonetheless retains their shape, with an upper body that is slightly rounded at its corners and the lower body that is rectangular.

Further comparisons indicate that these whimsical versions of tetrapod belong to the category of rectangular ding or fangding that are four-sided and four-legged. The inscription of the third bronze, excavated from the Zhuangbai cache in Zhouyuan, Shaanxi, is self-inscribed with the hewen , transcribed鎘 li (金 signifier + 鬲sound/鎘). Li鎘[ ] and ding 鼎words are based on the ding vessel signifier. The two, li and ding are often interchangeable in function in that both are specifically designed for ritual meat sacrifices. The bronze vessel name li furthermore is rarely used for the name of the vessel (whether tripod or tetrapod) in ritual bronze vessel inscriptions. Various names for sacrifices involving the ding vessel, in addition, more frequently employ the graph for ding than for li (e.g., 鼐, 鼒, 鼏) whether the bronze vessel is a li or ding in shape. Ding is more typically used to name both tripod and tetrapod in inscriptions. Thus, it is apparent that this middle phase version of vessel during the Western Zhou is a ding with four legs.

One of the prototypes and earlier versions of this middle period Western Zhou tetrapod rectangular ding is inscribed with the name of the vessel, fangding 方鼎, meaning rectangular (or square) shaped four-legged ding (see Figure 4). Although this self-inscribed name is extremely rare during the Western Zhou period (and more typical of Han period texts), it is another piece of evidence that the four-legged rectangular bronze is a ding and the shape with four legs and four sides is the rectangular version of the ding. It may also be noted at this point that the fangding graph is typically characterized by a pair of multiple short prongs on its legs as opposed to the more standardized graph for ding vessel that has only four or less prongs (see Li 1965, p. 2333).

Bronze cast ding functioned as vessels used in flesh or meat sacrifices from Shang through Zhou periods. Corroborative data are plentiful. One such sacrificial piece of data appears in the Duke of Ba inscription itself. This graph, written [ ] is comprised of the meat 肉and knife 刀radicals, in addition to the generic dou 豆 for a vessel used in sacrifice. The sacrificial term is a reduction of the Shang bone inscriptional terms and ( )(將+鼎), and another hewen yet different from yiding. The latter is similarly composed of meat 肉 and knife 刀 radicals, in addition to a vessel, in this Shang case, the ding 鼎vessel radical or the 俎 graph for meat cutting board. Both are variations of cut flesh offered in ding vessels, transcribed ( )(將+鼎), (Childs-Johnson 2013). The evidence from this vessel inscription thus agrees with the typical function of this vessel as one used in meat and flesh sacrifices.

Thus far, it is clear that the rectangular ding are used in meat sacrifices, are self-named (with some variation, such as liding for ding), that釴was a corruption of the term yi異, and that tetrapod rectangular ding are known archaeologically from early through late Western Zhou time. These tetrapod square ding are nonetheless special when they are self-named yiding (異鼎). Two additional groups of inscriptions of early Western Zhou date use the hewen yiding: one includes a set of four or more commissioned by a scribe named Da (probably of Shang origin and heritage) (see Figure 5 and Figure 6). Scribe Da of Zuo cast a set of medium size tetrapod fangding in honor of a commemorative occasion that the scribe witnessed- the casting by the Duke (probably Duke of Zhou, also known as Da Bao, Grand Protector) of yiding honoring the founding Western Zhou kings, Cheng and Wu. The inscriptions and fangding, belonging to Zuoce Da作册大 are illustrated below:

The inscriptions read as follows:

When the Duke came to cast [in honor of] King Cheng and King Wu an yiding (異鼎), in the fourth month, second quarter of the month, jichou day, the Duke awarded Zuoce Da (Scribe Da of Zuo) a white horse. Da extolled the August Heavenly Governor Da Bao’s (Great Protector’s) grace [and] made for what he witnessed what must have been large-scale glossy tetrapod ding cast for Kings Cheng and Wu4.

In a second early Western Zhou bronze vessel inscription identified as the Tian Wang gui 天亡簋 (see Figure 7), yiding again appears to be used in reference to a major royal occasion and display of royal power. In this case Tian Wang, evidently a royal house member, witnessed and assisted King Wu in celebrating a major series of events, including the performance of the Great Feng Drum rite and a sail in the moated piyong, followed by sacrifice in the Tianshi (Hall of Tian/Heaven) and several further days of feasting and drumming (yihai to dingchou day). During what must have been a majestic display of power and spirit control, King Wu not only witnesses the descent of King Wen’s spirit but his plea that the spirit of King Wen accept King Wu’s kingship and termination of the royal rites of Yin (Shang). The spirit of King Wen descends and decrees to Tian Wang: “[Tian] Wang has obtained the yiding (spirit empowered tetrapod ding(s)) and thereby restored the royal title? ”5 Many scholars simply do not translate the graph that follows 得, “to restore”. The lower part of this graph is the ding 鼎graph. The upper part is indistinct yet was clearly marked by an additional element, here interpreted to be yi 異, as used in the hewen term yiding. Given the context of the inscription and the graphic representation of the ding vessel, translation of yiding is appropriate. 王降亡得異鼎復 .6

The purpose of holding a grand Xiang feast and yi meat platter offering is to attract the dead king’s spirit’s descension. This happens and (Tian) Wang obtains the yiding to restore X —the title to the current ruling king (King Wu). The graph , although difficult to translate probably means something close to “royal title”, as suggested by Hwang.

A similar context of recovering royal ding bronzes is repeated in the “Shi Fu 世俘 (Great Capture)” chapter of the Yi Zhoushu 逸周書 (Lost Book of Zhou), dating to the early Western Zhou period:

On the xinhai (day 48) [the Zhou] presented the captured royal ding [flesh and meat offering bronze vessels) of the Yin [Shang] kings. King Wu then with spirit-empowered awesomeness (yi) displayed his gui jade insignia and codice(?), in announcing (this achievement) to Shang Di (Cosmological Power on High) in the Heavenly Temple[…]

辛亥，薦俘殷王鼎。武王乃異矢珪，矢憲，告天宗上帝.

Reproduced after (Hwang 1996, p. 146; Huang et al. 1995).

3. Shang Period Evidence for Yiding

Clearly the ding and more specifically the tetrapod fangding were all-important symbols of royal spirit power. As analyzed in an earlier article, “The Big Ding and “China” Power” (Childs-Johnson 2013), and in the book, The Meaning of the Graph Yi 異 and Its Implications for Shang Belief and Art (Childs-Johnson 2008), yi appears in Shang period oracle bone divinations with the same meaning as in the Western Zhou inscriptions. Yet, certain aspects are clearer in the context of the king’s role as ruler. Not only does yi as used in the binome yiding refer to a tetrapod ding but to a symbolically, metamorphically empowered tetrapod square ding (see Figure 8). The hewen yiding is not just a reference to a tetrapod ding but to a royally empowered tetrapod ding that guaranteed the king the royal right to rule as dictator over the sifang kingdom of Shang at the Center.

The hewen yiding (異鼎), combines two graphs, yi 異at the top and ding 鼎at the bottom. In bone divinations yi serves variously but always in connection with power of Shang Di (Cosmological Spirit on High), dead king spirits, such as Fu yi or others, and the ruling king (Childs-Johnson 2008).

The last bone inscription is all-important since specific spirits and individuals are named (Figure 8C,D). Although the hewen appears elsewhere yet often without context in bone inscriptions (Childs-Johnson 2008), here the divinatory inscriptions match the content of the bronze inscriptions. The yiding is only associated with kings and their dead predecessor spirits. Since the king and royal dead spirits were believed to be divine, the bestowal of an yiding from spirit Father yi on the ruling king, Wu Ding, is significant as a symbol of continued divine rulership (see Childs-Johnson 2013). In the Heji 2274 inscription, although the two graphs are not written as a hewen (as an adjectival modifier of the ding), yi is used verbally, “to spirit empower” from one dead king spirit Fu yi to another, the living king Wu Ding. The two other divinations of Western Zhou origin are also significant in concerning whether the subject, understood as the king, should “shou yiding” receive or be bestowed with the spirit empowered ding (yiding)” and whether the understood subject, the king (Western Zhou ruler) “should invoke a spirit(s) with the newly [cast] yiding”. Western Zhou kings evidently followed Shang precedent for an initial period after their conquest before reverting to their preference for honoring their own founding kings, King Wen, King Cheng, and King Wu with ancestral rites. The addition of the fu 父 father radical to the side of the ding in the yiding hewen in the Heji 2274 inscription may be interpreted as a signifier of the fu father generation of the Shang royal lineage, a symbolic reference to the maintenance of Shang royal power. For other uses of yi異 in bone inscriptions see Childs-Johnson 2008.

What is significant is that yi 異, yiding (異鼎), and related cognates, wei 畏(威), weiyi 畏異, and gui 鬼 in Shang bone inscriptions take their meaning from the same root, , spirit power or spirit mask.7

Although wei is not generously represented in bone inscriptions, its identity and appearance undoubtedly led directly to the frequent use of wei and weiyi in Western Zhou bronze inscriptions8. As identified by Karlgren, wei 畏 (no. 573) is pronounced iwer/jwei and gui is pronounced kwei/kjwei (Karlgren: no. 569). “Gui 鬼 means spirit, ghost, demon (Shi)… and [t]he graph is a drawing.” The wei 畏 “graph shows a demon (see no 569a–c above [gui [鬼]) holding an object of which is uncertain.” yi (Karlgren no 954), pronounced “giag/i/yi”, shows a “[…]graph of a human figure with raised hands and a head like that of a demon (see Karlgren no 569 above)”. The three graphs are based on a similar graphic for mask, and thus the three yi 異, gui 鬼 and wei 畏 are cognates.

Although in my 1995 and later articles on metamorphism I did not advance my hypotheses as far as claiming that gui 鬼 ancestral daemon spirits were one and the same as one who possesses daemonic power or yi, metamorphic power, this is almost certainly the case during the Shang era. Daemonic powers can go both ways, positively and negatively. The signifier (mask morpheme) shared between oracle bone graphs for gui, wei, and yi may be traced to a mask and its underlying connotations of fear and awe, from Shang through to Han time (Childs-Johnson 1995). Although what westerners view as a mask may be skewed by the abundant examples from pre-literate societies in Mongolia stretching across Siberia and into North America, early China clearly entertained this physical and religious concept. As maintained, the remnant examples of wood sculptures of tigers and related daemonic images carved in wood that overlay the tops of several of the royal tombs at Xibeigang were undoubtedly involved in some type of exorcistic and spirit identity context at the time of death, perhaps presided over by the living (successive) king (Childs-Johnson 2013).

The pictorial data from Late Neolithic Jade Age China strongly supports what must have been a widespread use of the mask and its imagery to identify with the spirit realm (see, for example, Fang Xiangming’s opinion that the excavated Lingjiatan jade diagrammatic cosmological plaque and tortoise were designed together to form a mask on the corpse of the deceased, Fang 2013, pp. 8–10). Certainly the turquoise and jade inlaid shroud covering the burial of an Erlitou aristocrat corpse makes a similar suggestion of transformational power. Perhaps the cosmological images of semi-human animal zoomorphs served as “helpers” in the sense as once postulated by K.C Chang (1983). Although these symbols do not appear to be “helpers” in the “shamanic sense,” they were power symbols with which the king identified and advertised his right as a divinity on earth.

Relevant to our current argument is the evidence that yiding and yi are specifically associated with royal power in Shang bone inscriptions. The subjects of yi are in all cases limited to dead rulers, Di (the Cosmological Power on High), and the living ruler (see Figure above with inscriptions). The king was a living apotheosis of the daemonic realm of Di and dead rulers of the Shang lineage. Although we cannot call the king a mediator, as one may in identifying the powers of shamans in Siberian and related cultures, the king was clearly the pivot of spirit control during the Shang era. The major symbol of this power is the investment of the Shang king with the yiding or tetrapod fangding. The most telling inscription appears in Figure 8C above where it is queried whether the dead king spirit, Fu yi (father of Wu Ding) would or would not bestow the power of the yiding on his son, the next in line to be king.