Religion of the Shang dynasty

RegionYellow River valleyLanguageOld Chinese

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The state religion of the Shang dynasty (c. 1600 – c. 1046 BC) involved trained practitioners communicating with deified beings, including deceased ancestors and supernatural gods. Methods of communication with the spirits consist of inscribed divinations on oracle bones and sacrifice of living beings. The Shang dynasty also had large-scale constructions of tombs,^[2] which reflects their belief in the afterlife, along with sacred places. Numerous Shang vessels, as well as oracle bones, have been excavated in the kingdom's capital Yin.^[3][4] These archaeological discoveries facilitate understandings of Shang religious beliefs and practices through a large amount of evidence.^[5] Headed by the exalted Dì, the deities formed a pantheon.^[6]

The Shang kingdom's religion, which played an important role to royal adherents, accounted for a significant portion of court life. Their deities consistently received various honorary ceremonies. For this, Shang astronomers created a sophisticated calendrical system based on a sixty-day revolution.^[7] Complying with the calendar, royal adherents of the religion conducted liturgical rituals dedicated to those spirits. Regional estates maintained independent practitioners but worshipped the same deities for common purposes. Those acts of worship, which were formalized over time, were held for divine fortune along with prosperity of the late Shang state.^[8]

The Shang religion originated in the Yellow River valley, heartland of the Chinese civilization from around 1600 to 1046 BC.^[a] The earliest inscriptions date back to roughly one millennium before the end of ancient China, or c. 1250 BC, during the reign of the king Wu Ding, although the script is believed to be older.^{[10][11][12][13]} Throughout over two hundred years, this dynasty increased its religious influence and experienced cultural exchanges by various means. After 1046 BC, the Zhou dynasty, which replaced the Shang, gradually assimilated elements of Dì into its governing beliefs.^[14][15] These beliefs were transmitted throughout Chinese history to the present day, when many Shang traditions such as calendrical use and ancestor worship are integrated parts of countries in the Sinosphere.

There exist bureaucratic notions, or at least proto-bureaucratic aspects, within the Shang religious faith.^[16][17] They believed in a supreme being leading smaller spirits, including natural gods and ancestral deities, and focused on a cosmological concept centered around a celestial northern pole, which housed the most sacred gods in the Shang pantheon.

The highest of the Shang gods was Shàngdì ̣上帝,^[19] or simply Dì 帝.^[20][21][b] In many oracle bone inscriptions, Dì is described as a being who presided over all other spirits, including former humans and nature deities, and controlled these individuals in a hierarchy.^[23][24] This being did not give messages in preserved scriptures, and his will could only be known through oracle bones.^[25]

Dì exercised authority over both nature and the human world, often by giving commands (lìng 令).^[26][27] Dì controlled climatic phenomena, influenced harvests, and was always the being that the Shang asked for military support.^[28] Furthermore, Dì was the power that granted approvals and disapprovals to humans' everyday decisions and actions.^[29][30] The Shang also believed that while Dì could aid them in various aspects, he could also send down disasters.^[31][32] They conducted rituals to ensure Dì would not cast disasters; still, no evidence suggests that Dì was offered sacrifices, implying a great difference between the High God and other spirits.^[31][6]

Dì's identity has been a subject of debate, with various approaches proposed.^[33] This system of structured spirits featured Dì as the apex, hence making him corresponding with the 'leading' role of Zeus in Ancient Greece and Tiān in the Zhou dynasty.^[34]

One approach conflates Dì with the legendary Emperor Ku, who was mentioned in Sima Qian's Shiji as the Shang dynasty's progenitor, and who was addressed 'High Ancestor' in more than four inscriptions.^[35][36][37] Some historians assert that having the highest god as their ancestor, the Shang would ensure their rule on earth.^[38] There is another explanation inferred from inscriptions that the religion did not possess any 'High God' in its pantheon and that Dì was a generic word for the collectivity of all divine powers.^[39] According to Robert Eno, the word Dì was applied to the names of some ancestors despite the fact that those spirits were nowhere near Dì in power. From this, he offered that Dì was not any god but a word that could refer to any spirit.^[40] Didier, despite agreeing with Eno that the god not being singular, asserts that in all likelihood, there existed the impersonal, multiple Dì which was constituted of ancestors and nature powers.^[41]

The Shang developed a cult for the winds, which were often mentioned. Winds were associated with the phoenix and the four seasons, were thought to be controlled by four gods associated with each of the cardinal directions.^{[42][43][44][c]} Together, these four winds and their associated deities represented the cosmic will of Dì, and carried his authority to affect agriculture. Rituals were conducted to appease the wind gods, and to pray for successful harvests.^[48][49][50] Winds could also be harmful, and there are other spirits aside from wind gods that could control winds.^[51]

Worship of nature powers that directly affected agriculture seemed to be vital to the Shang, whose economy heavily depended on this sector.^[52] In particular, the possibly female-gendered Earth Power Shè 社, or in Shang inscriptions Tǔ 土, was associated with protection from misfortune.^[53][54] This deity might be in some ways related to the Shang's tribal neighbor Tǔfāng 土方, with which the Shang maintained agricultural relationships.^[55] The Shang natural cult also included the Mountain Power Yuè 岳, and the River Power Hé 河 (the Yellow River).^[56][57] These two were sometimes called 'High Ancestors' and received ancestral cult, which makes the difference between Shang natural and ancestral spirits less clear.^[58][59]

The Shang worshipped spirits such as the East, the West and the South.^[60] Some inscriptions refer to gendered spirits such as Xīmǔ 西母 'Mother of the West' and Dōngmǔ 東母 'Mother of the East' who received animal sacrifices.^[61] Although some identified these two spirits with the Sun and Moon, others claim that they were more likely to be spirits associated with directions and were therefore earthly deities.^[62] The worship of such mother-earth spirits might have originated from agricultural cults and representation of fertility goddesses.^[62]

Inscriptions also concern rituals dedicated to rains, snow, diseases, and locusts.^[63][64] The Sun was mentioned, but it was almost exclusively treated as a moving object and instances of rituals for it are very rare.^[65] Shang kings also worshipped the deity of the Huan River, which provided him ritual space.^[66]

The Shang dynasty established a complex ancestral cult.^[d] They identified six predynastic ancestral spirits which include Shang Jia 上甲, Bao Yi 報乙, Bao Bing 報丙, Bao Ding 報丁, Shi Ren 示壬, Shi Gui 示癸, and a dynastic line starting from Shi Gui's child Da Yi and progressing to the last king Di Xin.^{[e][70][71][72]} These spirits seemed to influence the reigning king, such as causing illness, or even influencing dreams as shown in a bone inscription in which Da Jia was addressed as the cause of the king's nightmare.^[73][74] The pantheon of ancestors is described as a "generational hierarchy", with power increasing with seniority.^[75][76] Shang Jia and the five other leaders of the Predynastic Shang were the most powerful, the beings who influenced the weather and harvests.^[76][77]

Ancestresses were also revered, especially consorts of main-line kings or mothers of kings.^[79] They were perceived as being unfriendly and angry on some occasions, and after such divinations they received offerings.^[80] However, ancestresses were still not as revered as male ancestors, because of the fact that their jurisdiction was only upon human reproduction, together with Shang rituals being five times more focused on male rather than female spirits.^[81] Some notable names in oracle bone divinations were Bi Ji 妣己, Bi Geng 妣庚, Bi Bing 妣丙, and most prominently Wu Ding's consort Fu Hao who was referred to by her posthumous names Mu Xin 母辛 ('Mother Xin') and Bi Xin 妣辛 ('Ancestress Xin').^[82][83]

There were several mysterious spirits addressed as ancestors, whose identity has not been fully comprehended. There were 'former lords' (先公; xiāngōng) like Wang Hai 王亥 and Nao 獶, whose names are pictographic characters.^[84] There were also similar individuals revered along ancestors, such as Yi Yin, his perceived consort Yi Shi, and Mo Xi.^[58][51][85] Deities such as Yi Yin seemed to command rains and assure good harvests.^[86] Some later appeared in Chinese classical literature as figures of traditional Chinese history.^[87][88]

The Shang believed in the divinity of an area surrounding the Ecliptic Pole, featuring the squared graph 口 associated with four stars surrounding the pole at the time of the Shang dynasty.^[f] In Shang script, 口 denoted the modern stem dīng, possibly through oral expressions, and was related to Shang lineal descent.^[90] Inscriptions reveal that the square can be interpreted in many ways. These include a ritual space, a cult recipient, or a ritual itself.^[91]

A visualization of the pole appear on Shang ritual bronzes, and was commonly referred to as the taotie.^[92][93][g] This motif typically depicts spirits through representation of various animals, a tradition similar to earlier cultures like Yangshao and Liangzhu.^[95][96][97] Several interpretations of the taotie's specific meaning to the Shang have been given.^[98] While some speculate the taotie motif to have conveyed no meaning to the Shang rather than serving for decorative purposes, most of the evidence points out that this was indeed a centrally religious aspect.^[99][100] Scholars claimed that since the taotie appears on Shang ritual vessels and ceremonial axes, it was not carved for decorations.^[101] These faces all bear strong resemblances with the polar area concerned in Shang cosmology. Specifically, the Shang taotie features nasal ridges surrounded by dots, a similarity to the ecliptic pole and its adjacent stars. John C. Didier asserted that these similarities indicate that the depicted figures were divine spirits with crucial importance to the Shang people.^[102]

The Shang believed that Dì was composed of two components. One of these, Shàngdì, was a manifestation of ancestors through the polar square.^[103] In other words, this 'upper' component was housed by the squared northern pole.^[103] Also in Shang beliefs, indicated by oracle bones, this squared polar area on the sky, containing the god's cosmic divinity, was composed of main-lineage ancestral spirits through the generic name Shàngdì, representing Dì's will to act favorably towards humans.^[104] Already in oracle bone script, there are two frequent characters depicting Shàngdì; one features the squared shape, and the other has parallel lines, which in turn was associated with heavenly divinity and the square itself.^[105]

Conversely, the Shang believed that Shàngdì, as Dì's superior component, possessed a negative counterpart associated with 'earth'.^[107] Many character versions depict the earthly counterpart of Shàngdì 上帝, named Xiàdì 下帝, composed of non-ancestral deities such as cloud spirits, rain spirits and the Earth Power.^[108] Therefore, Dì was believed to be both Shàngdì – heaven and positive – and Xiàdì – earth and negative, with the latter still being able to influence earthly matters that bear upon the Shang despite the efforts to make Shàngdì dominate Dì.^[103] Sometimes, the Shang referred to these two components in bronze inscriptions as the binome Shàngxiàdì 上下帝.^[109]

The Shang perceived that Dì possessed special subordinates called Wǔchén 五臣, the 'Five Adjutants'.^[110] They may be identified with the five planets, which transmitted messages to the human world about Dì.^[111]

In Shang beliefs, there exists a 'bird' belief which is a synthesis of both natural and ancestral elements. The names of several Shang ancestral and semi-ancestral spirits such as Wang Hai and Kui embody a bird symbol that seems to have been held sacred by the Shang people. This may be related to the Shang founding myth in the later traditional history as described by Chinese classical texts; the myth itself tells that the Shang progenitor Xie was born after his mother stepped on a mysterious dark bird's footprint.^[20] Some argue that this was a bird totem, a symbol in Shang perception, and some others attempted to trace the origins of this particular religious image.^[112][113] However, these names might also represent beasts rather than feathered animals.^[114]

The Shang dynasty's religion centered on systematic rituals that influenced traditional Chinese rites. Main Shang practices include divination, liturgical sacrifices, invoking prayers, and funerals. There was also an 'archery ritual' that Shang kings often conducted on the Huan River, demonstrated by an inscribed bronze turtle rewarded to an individual named Zuoce Ban.^[115] Oracle bones also reveal spiritual rituals such as holocaust, ale libation, and the Great Exorcism.^[116][117] Some inscriptions mention shāng 商 which was probably a dance ritual.^[118]

Divination to the Shang was a way of indirect communication with spirits.^[121] The Shang divined in temples, but they could also conduct it outside of the ritual center.^[122] Main materials include scapulae, turtle plastrons and some others, on which the staff applied heat after cleaning and preparing.^{[123][124][h]} The heat produced cracks on the bones, which were unclearly interpreted as a response and given to inscribers who wrote the interpretation on the bones.^[128][129] The oldest of such inscriptional examples were radiocarbon dated to c. 1250 BCE, representing the state religion of the Shang dynasty.^[i][11][131] Typically, a divinatory inscription includes a preface, the charge, and occasionally prognostication along with verification.^{[j][133][134][135]} It is common for multiple pairs of the same charge to appear on a single bone, in which case the date records help establish their sequence.^[136] Signs of proto-divination with trigrams and hexagrams also appear on inscriptions.^[137]

Through the oracle bones, the Shang communicated with spirits about warfare, agriculture, well-being, sacrifices, and weather, using the calendar for arranging days.^{[139][7][140][k][l]} For example, there are certain divinations about outside attacks, although none of them appeared during Yinxu Period V when the Shang had established control over a small, stable area.^[142] Additionally, divinations were carried out to determine suitable policies for public works and royal commissions, such as walling cities and commanding civil officers.^[143]

It has been recognized that there are divinations not made on behalf of the king, and that the aristocracy could create their own divinations, called feiwang buci (non-king divinations).^[144][145] A relative of Wu Ding, whose oracle bones were discovered in modern-day Huayuanzhuang East, conducted divinations on affairs happening in his estate.^[146][m] This patron's 537 inscribed bones contain personal divinations and bone receipt records, and exhibit a distinct writing style from that of royal inscriptions.^{[148][149][150]} The patron seemed to divine about various topics, of which the most frequent are constructing temples in his estate, relations with Wu Ding and the royal family, internal issues happening in his own land, or warfare-related affairs.^[146] This prince even appeared to be the diviner himself in about 26 divinations, a practice different from Wu Ding who never assumed such a role.^[151]

The Shang religion is a typical example of a sacrificial system, in which violence was ritualized, and which was aimed at obtaining divine appeasement.^[152][153] By the eleventh century BC, the king had to perform sacrifices to ancestors every day, with many objects for that purpose.^[154][155] The demand for such sacrificial materials spurred technological innovations for late Shang society.^[156]

The sacrifices that were not living beings were mainly bones, stones and bronze. Some of the bone products were shaped into hairpins or arrowheads, and there are instances of ivory found in elite tombs.^[157][158] Stone objects such as jade were molded into decorative ritual objects, such as those discovered in the Tomb of Fu Hao.^[159][160] Offering ceremonies involved bronze vessels with short inscribed characters, such as the dǐng 鼎, the access to which seemed to be an exclusive authority granted to the king and heirs in rituals.^{[161][162][163]} There were also accepted minor materials like ceramics, the designs on which were inherited from earlier cultures.^[164][165]

Some species of animal, after being hunted, served as offerings, both to the ancestral and supernatural sections of the religion's pantheon.^[166] There are four types of animal sacrifice, regarding two criteria.^[167] Usually, canines were sacrificed in a very flexible manner, ranging from being food of ancestors to being their post-mortem attendants.^[168][169] It was also common for the Shang to sacrifice sheep cattle and pigs, which were offered to the River, Earth and Mountain Powers with the wood-burning ritual.^[170][171] The Shang also sacrificed millet ale and grains with animals.^[172]

The Shang dynasty also practiced human sacrifice, which was evidently on a significantly large scale.^[172] Human sacrifice was a defining feature of Shang religion, and the degree of practice larger than any other Chinese dynasties. Inscriptions concern at least 14,197 human victims, and 1,145 inscriptions among them are without exact figures.^[173] The Shang often sacrificed enemy prisoners, such as the Qiāng 羌 who were either captured or sent by neighbors as gifts.^[174][175] Except for some prisoners who were spared, the rest, including women, were killed and their remains sacrificed to Shang spirits.^[176] A single sacrifice alone could require hundreds or even thousands killed.^[177][178] These victims were subject to different killing methods when offered to different spirits, such as being drowned if the recipient was the River Power, being buried for sacrificing to the Earth Power, being cut into pieces for the wind spirits and being burned to death if it was a sky spirit.^[179]

Inscriptions contain a rich number of words related to sacrifice. Such lexicon includes xisheng 'animal sacrifice', rensheng 'human sacrifice', nu 'females', qi 'dependent women', and qie 'servants', all of which referred to subjects of sacrifice.^[180] The Shang also sacrificed xiaochen, who otherwise served as minor royal officers receiving tax revenues.^[181]

Some oracle characters denote terms for general sacrificial methods. Some of these names are dou which refers to methods of killing sacrificial humans in bronze vessels, shan denoting single human sacrifice, or shi meaning ritualized offering at temples.^[182]

Sacrificial schedules evolved into a liturgical calendar for the first time with the Chu-diviner group inscriptions.^[183] A thorough schedule describing late Shang ritual order was inferred from investigation of a series of inscriptions by Chu and Huang groups, during the reign of the last three kings.^[184] The cycle was filled with five sacrificial rituals: ji, zai, xie, yong, and yi.^[185][186] At the beginning of each sacrificial round, a ceremony honoring all recipients called gongdian was held, and in every weekend, priests would make an inscription announcing the sacrifices for the next day.^[187][185] Some academics argue that ji was the opening ritual.^[185]

The schedule was constituted of interchanging 36 and 37 ten-day weeks.^[188] Of these, all but one were for the five sacrifices, which commenced after opening rituals, and the remaining one was for preparation of a new offering cycle.^[187] Therefore, a full cycle approximated a solar year, and was sometimes used as a term for a year itself.^[189] In fact, this terminology was even occasionally employed as a more secular calendar, as in this excerpt from a Late Shang bronze inscription:^[190]

隹王來征人方隹王十祀又五肜日
It was when the king returned from marching to regulate the Rénfāng; it was the king's fifteenth ritual cycle, (the time of) the yong-day rituals.

— Xiao Chen Yu zun

There are other bronze inscriptions that use the cycle to refer to a year.^[191] The Shang kings sometimes also conducted irregular sacrifices to ancestors who caused them misfortune.^[174] Due to the fall of Shang, the last two kings did not receive sacrifices.^[192]

Many oracle bone inscriptions suggest that the Shang often engaged in communicating with the spiritual world through the 'hosting' ritual (bīn 賓).^[193][194] This type of communication, as some scholars point out, can be interpreted as communication 'without direct encounter', meaning without shamanic elements, as this ritual never involved ecstatic communion or commingling within the king's body.^[195][196] However, interpreters of Shang ritual bronzes such as K.C. Chang assert that this perception is not satisfactory, and that the Shang dynasty's religion must have embraced shamanism.^[197] According to Chang and others of the same current, the Shang king acted as a shaman himself to connect with the spirits.^[198][199]

Oracle bone script features an ancient form of the wū 巫, who seemed to function as a medium between humans and spirits by prayers and astrology, and who was worshipped post-mortem together with other Shang spirits.^[200][201] Nevertheless, the roles of wū during the Shang dynasty is yet to be fully clarified.^[202] It is uncertain whether the Shang wū actually referred to shamans, who get into altered states of consciousness, or to another kind of practitioners who used other means to communicate with the spirits. Evidence suggests that the wū could reasonably come from non-Shang peoples, and sinologist Victor H. Mair supported the view that the wū itself was indirectly connected to that of Western Asia's maguš, priests that communicated with spirits through rituals and manipulative arts rather than shamanic characteristics like trance and mediation.^{[203][204][n]}. David Keightley also disagreed with the interpretation of the Shang wū as 'shaman'.^[205]

More recent investigations indicate that there is no reasonable evidence for shamanism in the Shang religion. Accordingly, K. C. Chang and others have misplaced data from the Zhou religious practices to that of Shang when arguing for the shamanic theory.^[206] Furthermore, the theory does not seem to account for the methods whereby the Shang maintained rule – discerning the High God, who is not concerned by the theory's proponents.^[207]

The largest place for the afterlife lay in the Royal Cemetery, located in what is now Xibeigang, Anyang, serving as the resting place for the elites, and was split into two directional zones probably to serve Wu Ding's own political purposes.^[209] There are nine royal tombs for kings of which seven are located in the cemetery's western zone, but only eight tombs were complete.^[210][211] Extensive studies reveal that these tombs were intended to be built in a complex manner, which indicates the buried individuals' relations to one another.^[212] Studying the cemetery's overall structure, scholars also pointed out that tomb positions align with the northern pole, which housed Shang ancestors in the form of Shàngdì.^[213]

A royal funeral may involve tombs constructed before the king's death.^[214] Alternatively, the king's body would be temporarily preserved while the burials were being built.^[214] The coffin and furnishings were prepared elsewhere before being carried to the tomb.^[214] The king, in his coffin, would be buried in a wooden chamber in the central shaft, surrounded with animals, servants, and bronze products such as vessels and weapons.^[215][216] The chamber was then sealed, and the Shang refilled earth into the tomb while performing additional rituals.^[214] Several tombs also served for the purpose of rites, and were topped by ancestral shrines.^[217] A foundation near the royal tombs may have been an offering hall, but scholars still debate on its identification.^[214]

Tombs of smaller sizes have been found all over Anyang but mainly concentrated west of the palace complex.^[218] They are probably reserved for minor elites, and bear design similarities to royal tombs.^[219] There exist tombs for diviners, such as the family grave of one diviner whose name appeared in several bronze inscriptions.^[220] Outside of the capital, the Shang site of Subutun features a four-ramped tomb which was the only one of that type discovered outside the Shang capital, and might house either a local rival or a favorite of the Shang king.^[221] Another site at Tianhu features Late Shang traditions mixed with indigenous cultures, and might have been the lineage cemetery of a Shang local leader.^[222] Non-elite burials outside of the capital area often lack grave goods.^[223]

Aside from the supernatural beings, the ancestors of the Shang kings were also revered. Those included both dynastic and pre-dynastic ancestral individuals, who were given posthumous names, based on a structured system of typically utilizing calendrical names for days.^[225][226] There were 10 weekdays whose names were used for ancestors: jiǎ 甲, yǐ 乙, bǐng 丙, dīng 丁, wù 戊, jǐ 己, gēng 庚, xīn 辛, rén 壬, and guǐ 癸.^[227][228] One sole special case concerns Wang Hai, a shadowy proto-ancestor whose name incorporates the 12th Earthly Branch instead of one among the ten Stems.^[229] It seems that the process of assigning day-names to the dead involved divination, which would allow deterministic elements and human manipulation.^[230] There is no comprehensive explanation as to why the calendar was used for naming ancestors.^[231]

David Nivison has speculated seemingly inherent patterns in the naming tradition, such as naming after first day of inaugural year, restraint from naming guǐ for dynastic spirits, and avoiding the same name as the previous king.^[232] Royal consorts of the Shang kings were given stem names not compliant with rules as for the kings. All of ancestral spirits, however, tended to receive sacrifices on the weekday of their stem-name; for instance, Zu Yi received sacrifices on the yǐ day 53 times out of 90 dates taken from a sample.^[233]

Posthumous names of some kings might be related to Shang cosmology, especially name with stems jiǎ, dīng and yǐ, which were probably projections of the celestial square.^[234] By being referred to by such stems, the spirits became perceived as powerful gods whose will significantly affected the living realm.^[234]

Since there were more kings than stems, the Shang added epithet-like prefixes for them.^[235] Some prefix indicates the addressed subject's familial relationship with the reigning ruler, and often with a much broader sense than their modern meanings:^[236]

1. Relatives who were two or more generations before the incumbent ruler would be referred to as zǔ 祖 ('grandfather', 'great uncle') and bǐ 妣 ('grandmother', 'great aunt').
2. Fù 父 ('father', 'uncle') and mǔ 母 ('mother', 'aunt') were used for spirits of the previous generation. For example, Wu Ding's sons referred to him as Father Dīng.^[237]
3. Only the graph for males of the same generation is found, which is xiōng 兄, ('older brother', 'cousin').
4. The Shang referred to spouses of the reigning king as fù 婦.^[238]
5. The king's sons and nephews were referred to as zǐ 子. The word is sometimes understood as a surname, while some understand it as a designation of the eldest son who led a family.^[239] It can be translated as 'lord'.^[240]

It is also the case for the Shang to apply other prefixes such as Dà 大 'greater' and Xiǎo 小 'smaller'.^[241] There are three kings – Jian Jia, Qiang Jia and Yang Jia – whose prefixes are of uncertain meaning.^[241]

The ritual center of the Shang lay on a hill separated by the Huan River, and was refurbished throughout the course of the late Shang state.^[242] The condition of the excavated site does not allow a definitive layout to be made.^[243] Nevertheless, modern studies agree on some points, that the central area of the center was the major locus of ritual sacrifices, called Yǐ, while the southern one houses small ritual buildings.^[244] Inscriptions refer to ritual buildings (zōng 宗) as generally consisted of elevated halls (táng 堂), courtyards (tíng 庭) and gates (mén 門).^[245] The Shang graph for a temple shows that it possibly contains spirit tablets, although no such tablets have ever been unequivocally attested.^[246] Some names that the Shang used to specifically refer to ritual buildings may be related to the celestial square, as those graphs usually embody the squared graph.^[247]

In the case of the central Yǐ complex, the major ritual locus of the Shang, those parts were all separated from the residential buildings.^[248] This complex began with a large entrance with matching towers, which indirectly connected with a central bridge, which in turn led to a reception hall with six stairways.^[249] Behind it lay a pair of colonnaded halls with nine rooms, together with a large platform on which the ritual focus, an open-air pyramidal altar with a higher altitude than any other parts, was located.^[249] The southern buildings seemed to be smaller projections of the Yǐ design, with a ratio of one to ten.^[250] Besides, the Shang also constructed columned halls without walls on top of royal burials, such as the temple of Fu Hao, which was built upon her tomb.^[217]

Exclusive access to religious buildings were granted for the royal family and ritualist groups. Pictographs suggest that the king routinely prayed in temples, in a posture of kneeling with his hands holding ritual objects.^[251] Inscriptions indicate that the Shang also announced to spirits with written ritual reports in temples.^[252][138] Outdoor altars, not housed within roof structures, seemed to be reserved for only two purposes. These include serving as the beng altar, where the Shang performed sacrifices and worshipped spirits of nature, and serving as the earthen altar for the Earth Power.^[253] The five cyclical sacrifices were often performed to ancestors at the buildings topping their tombs, which the Shang often referred to.^[217]

The Shang king was seen as the religious apex, actively involving himself in communication with the pantheon's gods by praying, divining and hosting rituals in order to assure that the spirits would give him guidance. In other words, he was considered a 'thearch'.^[254] The Shang court employed priests for assisting the king, divided into specialized groups, despite not being bureaucratic as conventionally described.^[255] It seems very likely that religious positions played a central role in the Shang government.^[256] These groups typically include:^{[257][258][259]}

• Diviners (duōbǔ 多卜). There are about 120 of them, many of whose names are known.^[260][135]
• Scribes (shǐ 史), tasked with writing divinations on oracle bones.
• Astronomers, who made observations of Mars and many comets, a notable feat.
• Dancers (wǔ 舞). As inscriptions show, they danced holding oxtails. Some academics linked the dance wǔ 舞 to the wū 巫.^[259]
• Liturgists (zhù 祝), who appeared several times in inscriptions.

It seemed that religious professions of the Shang might be acquired through forms of schooling.^[261] Texts written by Wu Ding's scribal officials contain the word xué 學 'to learn' which can come with a ritual name to imply a course of ritual education for people.^[262] In addition, there are inscriptions that seem to be used for teaching, described by Guo Moruo as possible model inscriptions used by teachers.^[263] However, the nature of those inscriptions as practice work has been questioned.^[264] Other suggestions have been proposed.^[265] It is also generally believed that the Shang might have institutionalized training locations for religious teaching.^[266]

The Shang state was composed of the capital region, which the Shang called Dàyì Shāng 大邑商, and extended areas administered by royal family members, though the latter varied over time and are difficult to delineate.^[267][268] Regions outside of the Shang territory were also culturally influenced. Evidence, though not as plentiful as that in the capital city, suggest the presence of Shang religion in those lands.

Four pieces of oracle bone were discovered in Zhengzhou, a site located 200 kilometers south of Yinxu, and were found to contain short inscriptions possibly made during Wu Ding's reign.^[269] Some turtle plastrons were unearthed in Daxinzhuang, Shandong, containing some divinatory inscriptions which bear similarities to Wu Ding's diviner groups.^[270][271] Hundreds of bones with inscriptions have been unearthed from the site of Zhouyuan, the homeland of the Zhou dynasty. These were probably produced during the last two reigns of the Shang and the early years of Western Zhou, with a distinct writing and calligraphy.^{[272][273][274]} They mention Zhou worship of Shang ancestors, especially the nearest kings to their time.^[275] Though, scholars still disagree about the nature of these divinations.^[276] Aside from oracle bones, Shang ritual bronzes from outside lands seem to display both Shang and local characteristics, such as those collected from Hanzhong, Shaanxi.^[277]

A portion of inscriptions were made by the prince possessing the Huayuanzhuang oracle bones in Róng 戎, a conquered land that was a member of the Shang state.^[o][281] He ordered an ancestral temple with spirit tablets to be built there, and made sacrifices with both local and imported materials.^[282] This prince also authorized several relatives to participate in sacrifices, ale libations, and musical rituals.^[283] Some of Wu Ding's divinations refer to Zǐ 子, which was a territory protected by the Shang state, and which was sometimes sanctioned to practice Shang sacrifices.^[284]

It is difficult to have a clear view of non-royal practices, since Shang inscriptions hardly mention about those.^[154] However, other sites have also yielded materials that indicate Shang religious influence. At the Shang site of Guandimiao, tombs nearly identical to those of Anyang have been excavated.^[285] The region that was traditionally called Dapeng probably practiced human sacrifice.^[286]

The Shang state relied on allies whose relation with the royal clan was sometimes unstable. One explanation for the king being able to gain allied support puts forth that he incorporated into the Shang religion their deities. One of these is probably Kui.^[287] By worshipping the allies' deities, the king would ensure influence over them.^[288]

For the Shang, men still played a greater role than women just as ancestors were more influential than ancestresses.^[289] As such, conception of male children was considered a serious matter by the Shang dynasty. It is observed that ancestral intervention played a role in deciding the children's gender, although oracle bones show that the Shang also considered the birthday to be related to gender formation. This may be demonstrated by the divinations about the conception of Fu Hao, which reveal the days that would make the child a boy or girl.^[290]

Before the dawn of organized states in China, the area was inhabited by various tribal confederations, which in many cases shared a common belief in the spiritual world, usually integrating elements similar to those of shamanism.^[291] Academics such as K. C. Chang propose the existence of shamanic practices in these Neolithic cultures' tradition, but their theory is not supported by any clear evidence.^[292] The spirits were thought to be powerful; therefore, Neolithic Chinese peoples engaged in communication with them, through a variety of methods ranging from prayers, grave goods to animal sacrifice.^[293] Also in many regions of China, Neolithic cultures practiced divination with bony materials, namely scapulae from cattle, sheep, pigs and deer.^[294][295]

Shang cosmology, as evidence suggests, might have originated from earlier cultures. Some prehistoric Chinese cultures produced artifacts that bear the 'AZ' motif, probably the ancestor of the Shang's taotie.^[296] The pattern is probably a Neolithic projection of the same celestial pole the Shang observed.^[297] A connection possibly exists between the 'AZ' motif and the Shang tradition of ancestor worship, since the motif itself may have represented Neolithic ancestral spirits, or at least a spiritual object of worship that offered protection to humans.^[298][299] A rectangular design from the northern Qijia culture might also be the ancestor of the motif found on Shang ritual bronzes.^[300]

In the Chinese traditional history, the tradition of venerating deities had already been existent during the Shang's predecessor Xia dynasty (c. 2070 – 1600 BCE).^[301] For example, the Xia's second sovereign Qi was described in multiple texts as a spirit-medium who communicated with Shàngdì and performed sacrifices to the deceased.^[302][303] The Book of Documents also mentions the Shang high god Shàngdì receiving annual sacrifices by Emperor Shun, even before the Xia dynasty.^[304] Although these periods are often considered mythical, their corresponding site of Erlitou (c. 2100 – 1500 BCE) offers evidence of bronze-using religious activities that were later adopted and developed by the Shang dynasty, such as the use of scapulae for divination.^[305]

Shang practices did not seem to be confined to the capital city despite limited evidence, as in the case of the inscribed bone in Daxinzhuang that have multiple divination texts.^[306] However, little evidence indicates pre-late Shang religious writing.^[307] Oracle bones before the Late Shang period are not of the same ordered style as Late Shang materials.^[305] A large amount of such bones appear in pre-late Shang sites, suggesting the prevalence of divination, although it was also likely to be practiced by the non-royal people together with those elites.^[308]

Some Late Shang kings made religious reforms, such as one unspecified king, whose reforms were documented in the Shangshu (Book of Documents), and Zu Jia, who was indicated by oracle bones to have initiated reforms.^[309][310] The reforms of Zu Jia was a thorough ritual schedule that Edward Shaughnessy described as "rigidly conservative" and a "reflection on the great constriction of the Shang kingdom".^[311] In the 20th century, sinologists also noticed a deviation from old diviner styles accepted by the last reigns that was a product of the reforms.^[312]

By the later periods of the era, the nature of Shang religious activities had changed. The High God Dì and nature spirits frequently appeared in divinations during Wu Ding's reign, but rarely mentioned during the last reigns when ancestors became dominant.^[313][314] These later divinations tended to be optimistic and not likely to request actions from ancestors, which probably shows that the Shang changed their beliefs about ancestral powers and the ability of the living to influence these spirits.^[315] At the same time, worship of ancestors became more systematized, and a new sacrificial system may have been employed.^[316][314] The Shang also switched their worship of some ancestor-like spirits, such as Huang Yin whose cult was prevalent during Wu Ding's reign but was replaced by Yi Yin during the time of Wu Yi.^[317]

In 1046 BCE, the Shang dynasty under the regime of Di Xin collapsed and was replaced by the victorious Zhou dynasty, which used the practices of Shang religion to explain his fall. Western Zhou literature denounces the last kings not only for licentiousness and drunkenness but also for their purported ignorance of ancestor worship.^{[318][319][p]} However, the Zhou simultaneously adopted many Shang traditions to ensure legitimacy.^[321]

The Shang liturgical calendar was surely adopted by the Zhou, although it is uncertain whether the Zhou court reset the day counting after the dynasty's establishment.^{[q][323][324]} There still exist distinctions between the Shang and Zhou's use of the cycle, such as the Shang name for a year sì 祀 being replaced by the Zhou term nián 年.^[325] Towards the end of the Western Zhou, the last term of the 60-cycle, dīnghài 丁亥, became frequently used.^[326] This calendar was revised through the regime's eight centuries of existence, and the diversification of its use took place during the Warring States period when cultural distinctions became more apparent.^[327] The sexagenary cycle central to the calendar remained the exclusive means of day counting throughout the entire Zhou period, but it was not extended to the naming of years.^[325][328] A new system for posthumous naming dead relatives was devised, although some early Zhou people still used the old tradition, including exceptional Zhou kings.^[323]

During the Western Zhou period, the notion of Dì and Shàngdì, as seen in classical texts, was integrated with that of Tiān 天.^[329] Dì was seen as the one who supported the existence of a dynasty, which coincidentally links the Shang's downfall to their historical neglect of Dì during the last decades.^[330] During King Wu's reign, Zhou liturgists inscribed on the Tian Wang gui tureen about King Wen of Zhou assisting the High God Dì on high.^{[r][331][332]} Dì and Tiān were sometimes used interchangeably in inscriptional contexts, such as the paragraph on the Fu gui tureen.^[333]

The early Western Zhou kept their prior Predynastic tradition of inscribing, on oracle bones, inquiries to Shang ancestral deities, such as Di Yi, as their former status was a state recognizing Shang suzerainty, and as a result of Di Yi's connection to the Zhou royal family as King Wen of Zhou's in-law.^[334]

Mass human sacrifices practiced by the Shang was critically reduced, though still employed.^[335] Oracle bones gradually ceased to be inscribed, as the Zhou compiled a new way of divination, the I Ching. The populace in later dynasties practiced distinct funeral and sacrificial traditions, mainly due to the influence of Confucianism, Taoism, and other currents; however, there were still some parallels between the two dynasties regarding sacrifices.^[113]

The Shang high god Dì remained to the present day through his heavenly component Shàngdì, who is still worshipped in countries of the Sinosphere. The word Shàngdì is sometimes used to denote the Christian God, and the Jade Emperor.^[s][336]

Traditional festivals in China, Vietnam and other influenced countries make use of the sexagenary cycle.^[t] The lunar calendar's organization of days names the years, months, days and even hours after the 10 Heavenly Stems and 12 Earthly Branches. There are various folk tales attributed to this calendrical system, many of which appeared much later.

Bronze vessels produced by the Shang dynasty constitute greatly to the cultural heritage of ancient Chinese civilization.

One of the Zhou's classical texts, the Book of Documents, contains moral discourse on Shang tradition, such as the belief in the Shang ancestor Tang to send down calamities on unworthy men.^[337] Additionally, this text highlights Shang pyromantic divination by referring to Pan Geng emphasizing on those who did not 'presumptuously oppose the decision of the tortoise'.^[338] However, the Zhou writers also seemed to focus on criticizing the lavish lifestyle and ignorance of the last Shang kings, and Western Zhou works do not mention Shang human sacrifices as well as female Shang deities, both playing significant roles during the Shang.^[339][340]

Han dynasty historian Sima Qian, writing 1,000 years after the Shang's fall, delved into its religion.^[341] Sima claimed that the Shang people were marked by their utmost devotion to divination and sacrifices, and had decayed from the mark of piety into a state of superstition, which Burton Watson considered substantiated claims that resonate with evidence collected from modern archaeology.^[341] He went on to describe the practices of the Shang dynasty, praise religious kings, and detail the negative impacts of offending the gods committed by Wu Yi and Di Xin.^[342][343] Sima's posthumous names in terms of both stem and prefix for late Shang kings largely match those given by the Shang inscriptions.^[344] However, his descriptions of the Shang religion is not without flaw, as it was colored with characteristics of the Han dynasty during which Sima lived.^[345]

By the time of the Han dynasty, the perception of Dì had been significantly altered.^[346] While the character retained its meaning as 'High Deity', it was used mainly as a prefix or suffix to add to another word for deifying its meaning.^[346] The Han-era Huainanzi, a compilation of debates led by imperial prince Liu An, describes Dì as stretching out "over the four weft-cords of Heaven" and lying on a polar referential star similar to the Shang dynasty, the star Kochab (Beta Ursa Minoris).^[347] Han texts also identify Dì with Tàiyī 太一, the 'Great One', who was believed to be worshipped by the early Zhou.^[348]

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