In place of the traditional view that raids and invasion from the north introduced new weapons and chariots to the Shang (c. 1200 BC), we argue that archaeological evidence illustrates the presence of several regional groups at or near the late Shang centre, Anyang. Here we review burial practices at Anyang dating to the late second millennium BC, and describe a substantial group of prone burials that reflect a ritual practice contrasting with that of the predominant Shang elite. Such burials occur at all social levels, from victims of sacrifice to death attendants, and include members of lower and higher elites. Particularly conspicuous are chariot drivers in some chariot pits. An elite-level link with chariots is confirmed by the burial of a military leader in tomb M54 at Huayuanzhuang at Anyang, with tools that match exactly those of chariot drivers. Given that prone burial is known to the north, in the Mongolian region that provided chariots and horses to the Shang, a route can be traced eastwards and southwards, down the Yellow River, and then through mountain basins to Anyang. Our inference is that a group originally from outside the Central Plains can be identified in these distinctive burials. This marks a first step towards understanding the heterogeneity in the central population of the late Shang.
This paper introduces a new reading of the “Shi fu” (Hauling of Captives), a chapter in the Yi Zhou shu (Leftover Zhou Writings) that is commonly read as an early record of the conquest of China’s first historically attested dynasty of Shang by King Wu of Zhou in the middle of the eleventh century BCE. I argue that this conventional reading does not give justice to the structural complexities of the “Shi fu” and disregards the fact that certain compositional units of the text are unrelated to the conquest event. I propose to analyze the “Shi fu” against a better studied corpus of the Near Eastern royal inscriptions where there are surprisingly similar examples of compositionally heterogeneous texts that constitute a textual celebration of successful universal kingship based on military valor. Notably, such a notion of universal kingship is largely alien to the later Chinese tradition where an emphasis is put on the kings’ reign by virtue. While there are no reasons to consider seriously the possibility of the “Shi fu” being immediately influenced by the Near Eastern inscriptions, this parallel can be explained by the structural similarity of the societies that produced them, in particular, the similarity of how royal power was understood, legitimized, and celebrated.
In this paper, I compare the material in the Pāli canon of Theravada Buddhism, a textual tradition famous for the abundance of numerical lists, with certain chapters of the Yi Zhou shu 逸周書 and chapter “Hong fan” 洪範 of the Shang shu 尚書, where numerical lists are equally important. I propose a classification of the insufficiently studied numerical lists in the Yi Zhou shu and point out the divergences in them, suggesting that they were produced by competing communities that developed slightly discordant systems of knowledge. I compare the evolution of complex frameworks of numerical lists in the Buddhist traditions and in early China, arguing that both created comprehensive systems of knowledge-practice out of simpler lists. The peculiar form of numerical lists as vehicles of systematised knowledge-practice attested in both cultures may have originated in hierarchical communities with indisputable knowledge authority. Such communities are known to have existed in early Buddhism, and they have convincing parallels in China’s contemporary political practice, where numerical lists are used to unify the patterns of thinking and behaviour in hierarchical groups.
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