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Was There a High God Ti in Shang Religion?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2015

Robert Eno
Robert Eno*
Affiliation:
Dept. of East Asian Languages and Cultures, U. of Indiana, Bloomington, IN 47405
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Abstract

This paper calls into question a consensus belief that the term “ti”帝 (and the term “shang-ti” 上帝), as used in the Shang oracle texts, denoted a supreme deity. Such an interpretation of the term is entirely satisfactory for textual sources postdating the first century of Chou rule, but the evidence of Shang texts suggests that term ti was employed therein as a corporate term denoting deities collectively, as a generic term referring to members of the Shang pantheon individually but not by name, or as an honorific term for the father of the Shang ruler. By exploring the semantics of the term ti through Shang usage and cognate words, a speculative root meaning of “father” is proposed, the graph being a representation of the ancestral altar or of altar figures. If this theory is valid, it calls into question the extent to which proto-bureaucratic features can be ascribed to the Shang pantheon. It also suggests that the concept of supreme divinity in China was either derived from the pre-conquest religion of the Chou, centered upon the deity T'ien, or through a post-conquest universalization of the Chou religion.

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Articles
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Early China , Volume 15 , 1990 , pp. 1 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Study of Early China 1990

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References

1. The term shang ti occurs on only three oracle texts (listed in Kunio, Shima 島邦男, Inkyo bokuji sōrui 殷墟卜辭綜類 [Tokyo: Daian, 1967], 149cGoogle Scholar). In the sole instance where context is sufficient to judge, the term functions indistinguishably from ti.

2. My discussion will focus on oracle texts that employ the graph 采 as a noun, and also those that employ the cognate graph 汞 as a noun. (Listings for such texts appear in Inkyo bokuji sōrui, 157–59.) In general, these two graphs correspond respectively to the modern graphs ti 帝 and ti 褅 (in Shang texts, a verb denoting performance of a ritual I will refer to as the “ti-sacrifice”). The graphs are sometimes used interchangeably, and occasionally the interpretation of a text may vary according to whether such loan usage is attributed.

3. Whether these deities were conceived as places and natural forces or as the gods of these places and natural forces is a moot point. In a static model it would make no difference functionally, although it might profoundly affect further religious and philosophical elaborations over time.

4. The most complete discussion of which I am aware is Hu Hou-hsüan's 胡厚宣 two-part article, “Yin pu-tz'u chung te shang-ti ho wang-ti” 殷卜辭中的上帝和王帝, in Li-shih yen-chiu 歷史硏究 1959.9, 23–50Google Scholar; 1959.10, 89–110. Summary discussions appear in Meng-chia, Ch'en 陳夢家, Yin-hsü pu-tz'u tsung-shu 殷虛卜辭述 (Beijing: K'o-hsü eh ch'u-pan-she, 1956), 671–82Google Scholar, and Kunio, Shima, Yin-hsü pu-tz'u yen-chiu 愈墟卜辭硏究 ((translation of Inkyo bokuji kenkyū [1958]; Taipei: Ting-wen, 1975) 186–95Google Scholar.

5. Instances of ancestors receiving prayers for crops are numerous; both semi-mythical ancestors and dynastic kings are included (for a listing see Enoy, “Masters of the Dance: the Role of Tien [Heaven] in the Teachings of the Early Juist Community” [Ph.D. diss.: University of Michigan, 1984], 111Google Scholar). It should be noted that the portrait here is synchronic. The interaction of ancestral and natural deities actually varies over the history of oracle inscriptions, and is a central feature of Tung Tso-pin's 董作賓 theory of two divination schools.

6. A well known theory concerning the root meaning of the word ti identifies the semantic origin of the term as the calyx of a flower. I will discuss this theory later in this article. However, “calyx” would not function in any sense parallel to “Wind” or “River” (if those terms are taken to refer to Nature spirits). The theory has only to do with etymological origins. Note that if Ti does not denote an object in the natural world, it stands in contrast to the Chou deity T'ien in this regard, and this is reflected in Chou texts, as I will discuss below.

7. This assessment is based on a survey of texts referring to River, Mountain, Clouds, and Wind in Inkyo bokuji sōrui. Exceptions may occur in the “ho-jo” 河若 series (181d), but I do not think that “river” should be read as a deity in these texts. The asymmetry with regard to the powers of ancestors and nature deities may reflect a historical process whereby Shang kings extended the legitimacy of the royal Tzu clan rule by broadening the powers of their ancestors, tending towards a coincidence between the pantheons of the clan and the state.

8. See Hu, “Yin pu-tz'u chung te shang-ti ho wang-ti”, part I, 24–44; Ch'en, , Yin-hsü pu-tz'u tsung-shu, 564–71Google Scholar; Shima, , Yin-hsü pu-tz'u yen-chiu, 191–93Google Scholar.

9. “In asking for rain or for good harvest, prayers had to be offered to the ancestors at the left and right of Ti, asking them to pass the message along to Ti”; Hu, “Yin pu-tz'u chung te shang-ti ho wang-ti”, part II, 104.

10. Keightley, David N., “The Religious Commitment: Shang Theology and the Genesis of Chinese Political Culture,” History of Religions 17.3–4 (02-May 1978), 219CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. With the exception of one text, Yi-pien 3121 (Inkyo bokuji sōrui, 46c), in which River orders rain, Ti is the only figure in the pantheon to issue orders (ling 令). This may be an issue of appropriate rhetoric. When concerns are raised about other deities affecting natural events, the rhetoric typically involves the consequences of a sacrificial act. Since such acts did not apply to Ti, as we shall see, a different rhetorical formula was necessary.

12. Yi-pien 2452; Chui-ho 195 (inkyo bokuji sōrui, 157b).

13. Among about thirty inscriptions in which Ti orders rain, three include the phrase, Ti ling to yü 帝令多雨: “Ti shall order much rain”, (Inkyo bokuji sōrui, 157a). Unless we posit a spirit corps of “the Many Rains”, these allow us to infer that Ti's orders are for weather conditions, and not to weather deities. Five inscriptions concerning thunder (reading as lei 雷 with Yü Hsing-wu 于省吾 [see Hsiao-ting, Li 李孝定, Chia-ku wen-tzu chi-shih 甲骨文字集釋 (Nankang: Academia Sinica, 1965), 3427–30]Google Scholar), permit the ambiguity (Inkyo bokuji sōrui, 157b). No other inscriptions picture Ti issuing orders.

14. Yi-chu 935 (Inkyo bokuji sōrui, 158b), on which see Shima, , Yin-hsü pu-tz'u yen-chiu, 196–97Google Scholar.

15. Arguments for interpreting shih as a sacrifice term are given in Yin-hsü pu-tz'u yen-chiu, 185, The most convincing example is Ts'ui-pien 91: 貞田史五牢, “Divined: to Shang-chia shih-sacrifice five sets of sacrificial beasts.” (Mo-jo, Kuo 郭沬若 places shih at the end of the text due to the spacing of the inscription [Yin-ch'i ts'ui-pien k'ao-shih 殷契粹編考釋 (Beijing: K'o-hsü eh ch'u-pan-she, 1965), 18b]Google Scholar. Shima's reading is used here (Inkyo bokuji sōrui, 422b].)

16. Inkyo bokuji sōrui, 341b. The verb “to pin-sacrifice” appears in parallel with other such verbs in many cases, and with shih on Hou-pien I.6.1: Wang pin shih Fu-chi 王史父己: “The king pin-sacrificed and shih-sacrificed to Fu-chi.” (Shima reads the text awkwardly in reverse order as Fu-chi shi wang bin 父己史王 [Inkyo bokuji sōrui, 422b]. I am unclear why; it is the sole text on the fragment)

17. It should be noted that Ch'en Meng-chia casts a broader net to cover up to ten inscriptions which he believes name or allude to the five ministers; Yin-hsü pu-tz'u tsung-shu, 572.

18. For example, Michiharu, Itō 伊藤道治, Chūgoku kodai ōchō no keisei 中國古代王朝の形成 (Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1975), 10Google Scholar.

19. Shima, , Yin-hsü pu-tz'u yen-chiu, 195–97Google Scholar.

20. The other four include T'ung-tsuan II.1Google Scholar and Yi-chu 935, discussed above. In both cases, Shima's interpretalion relies on the poorly grounded assumption that a ti-sacrifice in which the sacrificial object is unnamed is necessarily a sacrifice to Ti. In a third example, K'u-fang 985, Shima interprets the phrase 其丅帝 as “perhaps shih-sacrifice to Ti”; however, ti could equally well be taken as a verb of sacrifice (in addition, Ch'en Meng-chia has questioned the authenticity of this inscription [Yin-hsü pu-tz'u tsung-shu, 652]). In a fourth example, Hsü-pien 2.18.9, Shima's claim rests on an asserted identity between the graphs ם and 采, which evidence does not support; see Eno, , The Confucian Creation of Heaven, (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), 184Google Scholar.

21. Ch'en, , Yin-hsü pu-tz'u tsung-shu, 579Google Scholar.

22. Inkyo bokuji sōrui, 460a-b.

23. Shima takes “fang-ti” as designating the chiao 郊-sacrifice to T'ien; Shima, , Yin-hsü pu-tz'u yen-chiu, 200Google Scholar. Wu Ch'i-ch'ang 吳其昌 takes both ti and fang as sacrifice names; Yin-hsü shu-ch'i chieh-ku 殷虛書契解妯 (1934; rpt. Taipei: Yi-wen, 1960), 54Google Scholar.

24. Not only would the fang-sacrifice be the sole type of sacrifice offered to Ti, but Ti would also be the sole object of the fang-sacrifice. The few inscriptional examples are brief and cryptic; it seems unlikely that the only sacrifices made directly to Ti would be divined about in so cursory a manner.

25. Eno, , “Masters of the Dance”, 65Google Scholar.

26. Chang's appraisal, written over forty years ago, has been published in Bagley, Robert W., Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sadder Collections (Washington D.C. and Cambridge, Mass.: The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, 1987), 528Google Scholar. Its findings have been previously adopted by Hu Hou-hsüan (“Yin pu-tz'u chung te shang-ti ho wang-ti”, part II, 91n) and Kane, Virginia (“The Chronological Significance of the Inscribed Ancestor Dedication in the Periodization of Shang Dynasty Bronze Vessels”, Artibus Asiae 35 [1973], 362n)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. Ch'en Meng-chia applies this model in discussing the pin -sacrifice; Yin-hsü pu-tz'u tsung-shu, 573. Shima interprets the ti-sacrifice in this light; Yin-hsü pu-tz'u yen-chiu, 199).

28. The locus classicus for this tradition is the Han text Hsiao-ching 孝經, 9, but there are earlier references. The Hsiao-ching text reads, “Nothing exalts the father more than [taking him to be the] helpmate of T'ien …. Of old, the Duke of Chou took Hou-chi to be T'ien's helpmate during the chiao-sacrifice, and performed the tsung-sacrifice to King Wen in the Bright Hall, that he should be helpmate to Ti above.”, (The relation between T'ien and Ti, which I will address below, need not concern us at this point.) The original image of the “p'ei” is a marital one, hence the translation “helpmate” (a rendering suggested to me by Anne Behnke). P'ei was used as a loan for fei 妃, “wife” (see Yü-ts'ai's, Tuan 段玉裁 comments in Fu-pao, Ting 丁福保, Shuo-wen chieh-tzu ku-lin מ說文解字詁林 6667a)Google Scholar. The Kung-yang chuan 公羊傳 (Hsüan 3) discusses the p'ei-ssu 配祀, helpmate sacrifice, by analogy with marriage: “Why must the king take an ancestor as helpmate [for Ti]? One who goes out from within does not proceed without a mate (p'i 匹); one who comes from without does not stay without a lord (chu 主).” In fact, the p'ei-ssu style of sacrificing to T'ien and Ti may well have been an elaboration of an established Chou tradition of sacrificing to an ancestor and his wife together. In the Yi-li 儀禮, “Shao-lao k'uei-shih li” 少牢饋食禮, the wife is the p'ei in the formula: “[I] offer annual grain-sacrifice to august ancestor Po-X, taking his wife (fei) X as helpmate (p'ei), neé X”; Yi-li chu-shu 儀禮注疏 (chu-shu, Shih-san ching ed.), 47.1196Google Scholar.

29. Suetoshi, Ikeda, “Hai ten kō” 配天考, Vukui Hakase shosu kinen Tōyōbunka ronsō 福井博士頌壽記念東洋文化論集 (Tokyo: Waseda University, 1969)Google Scholar.

30. Instances of the phrase p'ei-t'ien 配天 do occur in sources such as the Shang shu and Shih ching, but as Ikeda notes, these generally carry the idea of “to be worthy of T'ien” in an ethical, not a religious sense; “Hai ten kō, “37–42. Ikeda does cite one instance that he believes referred to a p'ei-t'ien ritual, which records King Wu's orders to the Duke of Chou:

舂秋匪解 Spring and autumn never lax

享祀不戎 In sacrifice be unerring

皇后帝 Great august lord (hou) Ti

皇祖后稷 August ancestor Hou-chi. (Shih ching 300/3)

This may suggest a sacrificial form such as the p'ei-ssu 配祀, but the language is very vague, and the only other instance of the phrase hou-ti 后帝 of which I am aware clearly refers to an earthly ruler (Tso-chuan, Chao 1; commentary tradition identifies this as Yao). It may be that “Hou-ti” is Hou-chi, his title being varied to avoid rhetorical monotony. Western Chou bronze inscriptions provide no evidence of the p'ei-ssu being applied to either T'ien or Ti, with one possible exception. That is the inscription of the Ta feng kuet 大豐甚 (also called the T'ien-wang kuei 天亡甚), which includes the following passage: 衣祀于王丕顯考文王事喜上帝, “[The king performed an] yi-sacrifice to the king's brilliant father King Wen, serving and hsi-sacrificing to Ti above”, Shima takes this to be an example of the p'ei-ssu (Yin-hsü pu-tz'u yen-chiu, 184).” Shih hsi shang-ti” 事喜上帝 could equally well take King Wen as the subject, in which case it would read, “who serves and pleases Ti above”, If hsi is indeed used in the sense of a sacrifice name, then the inscription would indicate parallel sacrifices, one to King Wen and one to Ti, which would not be a p'ei-ssu style sacrifice at all, as I understand it. We will confront further problems with this passage below, in the section on Shang and Chou religious contrasts.

31. Ping-pien 36 (Inkyo bokuji sōrui, 275d). The ceremony involved in these inscriptions is called the pin -ceremony, and may be related to the common sacrifice denoted by the similar graph, pin . However, grammar and usage distinguish the two: the latter ceremony was performed by the king to an ancestral spirit, while the one in question here links two spirits, and divinations concerning it require the use of the particle yü 于. Keightiey, interpreting the two ceremonies as identical, takes these inscriptions as evidence of a hierarchical generational interaction among a heavenly proto-bureaucracy; “The Religious Commitment”, 218.

32. Yi-pien 2977 (Inkyo bokuji sōrui, 276a).

33. Although these inscriptions resemble the p'ei-ssu formula in some respects, they differ in that the more distant object of the ceremony is in most instances unquestionably an ancestor who elsewhere receives sacrifices directly. It would appear from the consistent positions of junior and senior spirits that this pm-ceremony involved sacrifices to the junior spirit at the shrine of the senior “host”, precisely the opposite of the p'ei-ssu model.

34. The proper limits of the royal lineage and the appearance or nonappearance of ancestral names prior to Shang-chia are complex issues, not directly relevant to our discussion. It may be noted that the inscriptions I am discussing suggest that Ho Ping-ti's claim that Ti was K'u has at least some degree of plausibility; Ho, , The Cradle of the East (Hong Kong: Chinese U. of Hong Kong Press, 1975), 329Google Scholar.

35. There exists an even more striking possible illustration of Ti conceived as an individual anthropomorphic god if we follow Hu Hou-hsüan's interpretation of Ning-hu 1.517Google Scholar: 翌曰辛帝降其入于大实在束. Hu apparently reads this as, “On the next hsin day, Ti will descend, perhaps entering the great shrine at X; [divined at] Y”; Hu, , “Yin pu-tz'u chung te shang-ti ho wang-ti”, part I, 32Google Scholar. (The phrase 小乙实, “shrine of Hsiao-yi,” appears next to this text, but how it is related is not clear.) I do not claim to understand the text well, but the following problems exist with Hu's interpretation: (1) The use of chiang 降 as an intransitive verb, “descend”, is highly unusual in oracle inscriptions (on the basis of texts employing the term listed in Inkyo bokuji sōrui, 178, the divination concerning the descent to earth of a spirit would seem to be unique); it would be more natural to assume the rhetorical ellipsis of an object word denoting a disaster. If such a word were supplied, the subject of the following verb, ju 人, “enter”, (or na 納, “submit sacrifidally”) would most likely be the king or a ritual subordinate. (2) The word ch'i 其 ordinarily indicates that the described event would be an undesirable one. If the event is indeed the descent to earth of the high god Ti, occurring at an obscure shrine (a side room, according to Ch'en Meng-chia [Yin-hsü pu-tz'u tsung-shu, 472]), in an obscure place apparently distant from the Shang ritual center and mentioned in only this one known inscription — and this event is undesirable — then our ideas of Shang religion may be in need of rather thorough revision.

36. Inkyo bokuji sōrui, 327d. “Strike the king with illness” is a tentative rendering, taking as chao 筆 (with Shan, Ting 丁山; Chia-ku wen-tzu chi-shih, 3757Google Scholar) and as ch'uang 广 (with Yang Shu-ta 楊樹達 ibid., 2521–22).

37. The term hsia-shang occurs with reasonable frequency; relevant passages appear in Inkyo bokuji sōrui, 149d - 150a. See the discussions of this term in Hu, , “Yin pu-tz'u chung te shang-ti ho wang-ti”, part II, 93–96Google Scholar, and in Suetoshi, Ikeda, Inkyo shokei kōhen shakubunkō 殷墟書契後編 文蝻, (Hiroshima: Hiroshima Daigaku Bungakubu Chūgokutetsugaku kenkyūshitsu, 1964), 45Google Scholar. Shima, Hu, and Ch'en all take the term to combine Shang Ti with various other spirits; Yin-hsü pu-tz'u yen-chiu, 195. During the Chou period, we encounter a similar collective term, “shang-hsia ti” “the Ti above and below”, as I will discuss below.

38. Hsü-ts'un 1.1594Google Scholar (Inkyo bokuji sōrui, 158c). Hu Hou-hsüan discusses the phrase wang-ti by tacitly assuming that the term must be singular, denoting the father of the reigning king; Hu, , “Yin pu-tz'u chung te shang-ti ho wang-ti”, part II, 92–93Google Scholar.

39. Ch'en, , Yin-hsü pu-tz'u tsung-shu, 579Google Scholar.

40. There is some evidence that ti served as a generic term in naming nature deities; for example, Hsü-pien 2.4.11 reads: 寮于帝云 “Liao-sacrifice to Cloud Ti.” This would support the arguments made here, but the evidence is weak.

41. Ch'en Meng-chia believes that in at least one instance ti is used as a posthumous title for an ancestor other than the reigning king's father; Yin-hsü pu-tz'u tsung-shu, 422. Ch'en's argument relies on a debatable reading of a Shang bronze inscription on the Pi-ch'i yu (II). The authenticity of this inscription has been discredited by Chang Cheng-lang (see note 26 above; the remarks concerning the Pi-ch'i yu (I) there apply to this vessel as well). Ch'en's interpretation has, in any event, been rebutted by Yetts, Percival (“A Datable Shang-Yin Inscription”, Asia Major, n.s. 1 [1949–1950], 93–94)Google Scholar and Shima, (Yin-hsü pu-tz'u yen-chiu, 143, 183)Google Scholar.

42. The Tso-chuan notes, “Today's ‘wangs’ are yesterday's tis” (Hsi 25).

43. Shih ching, 235/1

44. Herrlee Creel has been the foremost proponent of this view; The Origins of Statecraft in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 494–501Google Scholar. It is shared by Hu Hou-hsüan, Ch'en Meng-chia, and Kuo Mo-jo; see Shima, , Yin-hsü pu-tz'u yen-chiu, 214Google Scholar.

45. Itō, , Chūgoku kodai ōchōno keisei, 58–64Google Scholar.

46. For our purposes here, I am avoiding possible complexities in the evolution of the term T'ien.

47. It is difficult to conceive how existing evidence might adjudicate between the notion of these texts as immediate records of speeches and the vaguer possibility of “Western Chou authorship.” (For evidence supporting much later dating of these texts, see, Eno, , “Masters of the Dance”, 122–24Google Scholar.) We might note that in the case of references to Ti in the Shih ching, a number of scholars view the oldest Chou portions of the text to be the “Chou sung”, and internal evidence suggests that these cannot be dated before the mid-tenth century B.C.; see, e.g., Wan-li, Ch'ü 屈萬里, Shih ching shih 詩經釋義 (Taipei: Hua-kang, 1974), 261Google Scholar; Shizuka, Shirakawa 白川靜, Shih ching yen-chiu 詩經硏究, Cheng-sheng, Tu 杜正勝 trans., (Taipei: Yu-shih wen-hua, 1974, 218–19)Google Scholar, which would not be inconsistent with our hiatus theory.

48. This assumes a ninth century B.C. date for the companion inscriptions on the Tsung Chou chung 宗周鐘 and the Fu kuei 夫簋 (see, Hsi-chang, Lo 羅西章, “Shensi Fu-feng fa-hsien Hsi-Chou Li Wang Fu kuei” 陝西扶風發現西周厲王害夫簋, Wen-wu 文物 1979.4, 89–91Google Scholar), which are sometimes dated to the reign of King Chao (c. 977–957 B.C.).

49. This interpretation relies on my punctuating after pen-tsou 奔走. Ch'en Mengchia reads the passage with a break after shang-hsia. This would distort the sense of pen-tsou, which is used to refer to political rather than religious service, and ignores the fact that shang-hsia ti () is inscribed as a single graphemic unit; Ch'en, , “Hsi-Chou fung-ch'i tuan-tai” 西周銅器断代, Part 3, K'ao-ku hsü eh-pao, 1956.1, 75Google Scholar. Kuo Mo-jo punctuates as I do, but interprets shang-hsia ti to be the spirits above and the king below, which neither conforms to normal terminology in calling a living ruler a ti, nor fits the meaning of the passage; Liang-Chou chin-wen-tz'u ta-hsi k'ao-shih 兩周金文辭大系考釋 (Peking: K'o-hsüeh ch'u-pan-she, 1958), III.39bGoogle Scholar.

50. See note 30 above.

51. Shizuka, Shirakawa, Kinbun tsūshaku 金文通釋 (Kobe: Hakutsuru Bijutsukan, 1962–1984), fasc. 1, 34–35Google Scholar.

52. Kinbun tsūshaku, fasc. 1, 20.

53. Kinbun tsūshaku, 1, 37. The Ta feng kuei is said to have been unearthed in the mid-nineteenth century in Shensi Province.

54. It is only fair to note, however, that if we confine ourselves to inscriptional sources, even T'ien is not much in evidence during the earliest period of the Western Chou.

55. Creel, , The Origins of Statecraft in China, 502Google Scholar.

56. Eno, , The Confucian Creation of Heaven, 181–83Google Scholar.

57. Good evidence concerning T'ien in the pre-conquest period has yet to appear.

58. Tōdō, , Kanji gogen jiten 漢字語源辭典 (Tokyo: Gakutei, 1965), 470fGoogle Scholar. Chou pronunciations are according to Karlgren, Bernhard, Grammata Serica Recensa (Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 29 [1957])Google Scholar.

59. I am not considering here the range of traditional speculations based on the Shuo-wen chieh-tzu “ta-chuan” 大家 version of the character.

60. Ikeda, , “Shaku Tei, Ten” 釋帝天, Hiroshima Daigaku Bungakubu kiyō 廣島大學文學部記要 3 (1953), 23–43Google Scholar.

61. For Katō, see Fa-kao, Chou 周法高, Chin-wen ku-lin pu 金文詰林補 (Nankang: Academia Sinica, 1982), 1.125–26Google Scholar. Shirakawa sets his ideas forth in his Setsubun shingi 說文新義 (Kobe: Hakutsuru Bijutsukan, 1974), vol. 1, 23–28Google Scholar.

62. See Chia-ku wen-tzu chi-shih, 1.27–28Google Scholar. Yeh shared the general opinion that the liao-sacrifice was offered to Ti through the “p'ei-ssu” format. The Shang graph for liao, , does seem to depict bundled sticks, and resembles the lower portion of the graph ti.

63. The ideas of Cheng, Wu, and Kuo are coliected in Shirakawa's analysis; Setsubun shingi, vol. 1, 24–26Google Scholar.

64. The issue of whether T'ien and Ti are names of deities or terms for deities who may not have had names has not, to my knowledge, been explored.

65. Chen-yü, Lo 羅振玉, San-tai chi-chin wen-ts'un 三代吉金文存 (1936; rpt. Beijing: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1983) 4.19aGoogle Scholar. The inscription is on a dowry vessel, and appears to be mid-Chou. Other inscriptions including the phrase “ti-k'ao” include the X-shu Mai kuei 叔買 (San-tai, 8.39a; the graphemic form used is 啻) and the Chou K'o ting 周客鼎 and companion kuei (San-tai, 4.10aGoogle Scholar; 8.31b). The rendering of “lordly” is speculative.

66. This usage is rare in texts. See the instances cited by Chün-sheng, Chu 朱験聲 in Shuo-wen chieh-tzu ku-lin, 5592bGoogle Scholar.

67. See “Shensi Fu-feng Chuang-pai yi-hao Hsi-Chou ch'ing-t'ung-ch'i chiao-ts'ang fa-chüeh chien-pao” 陝西扶風莊白一號西周靑銅器窖藏發掘簡報, Wen-wu 1978.3, 1–2Google Scholar; Kinbun tsūshaku, 50, 369–72Google Scholar. Shirakawa interprets the phrase I have rendered “Ti-hou” to be “ti-ssu” 帝司, denoting, in his interpretation, the “ ti-sacrifice offered to the high god Ti. Apart from the obvious conflict with the ideas of this paper, his reading presumes that the bestowing dignitary is unnamed (a very unusual omission) and that there is an inverted passive verb.

68. Kinbun tsūshaku, fasc. 50, 371.

69. Examples, noted in Fa-kao, Chou, Chin-wen ku-lin 金文話林 (Hong Kong: Chinese University, 1974–1975), 11.633Google Scholar, include the K'ai kuei 簋, Shih-hu kuei 師虎簋, and Shih-hungkuei 師訇簋.

70. Erh-ya (pei-yao, Ssu-pu ed.), 2.7aGoogle Scholar.

71. See the commentary of Fu, Kuei 桂複 in Shuo-wen chieh-tzu ku-lin, 1344bGoogle Scholar.

72. Kuo, , Liang-Chou, I.31a, III.59Google Scholar. All commentators I have encountered date the inscription to the reign of King Mu, King Chao's son.

73. The Hsiao Yü ting is famous for its illegibility. I cannot make out more than the first named king, “King Chou” 周王, which name I am taking here to refer to an unidentified “founding” ancestor. The other two names are variously read; Kuo cannot read the second and gives the third as King Ch'eng (Liang-Chou, III.35bGoogle Scholar); Ch'en reads King Ch'eng and King Wu (“Hsi-Chou t'ung-ch'i tuan-tai,” Part 4, K'ao-ku hsü eh-pao 1956.2, 87Google Scholar). The inscription is universally dated to the reign of King K'ang, King Ch'eng's son and King Wu's grandson.

74. Meng-chia, Ch'en, “Hsi-Chou t'ung-ch'i tuan-tai”, Part 6, K'ao-ku hsü eh-pao 1956.5, 112Google Scholar.

75. Sun Hsi-tan 孫希旦, Li-chi chi-chieh 禮記集解 (Taipei reprint), “Sang-fu hsiao-chi,” 793; “Ta chuan”, 827.

76. On this royal prerogative, see Eno, , “Masters of the Dance”, 85–88Google Scholar.

77. This idea seems implicit in Chao K'uang's 趙匡 T'ang period commentary to Li-chi, “Chi-fa”: “The fact that the Yü royal lineage [the Emperor Shun's line] performed the ti-sacrifice to the Yellow Emperor was probably because Shun's grandfather, Chuan-hsü, ‘came from’ the Yellow Emperor, and thus it was a ti-sacrifice to that whence came his forbear’”, Li-chi chi-chieh, 1093.

78. The best summary I have seen of these issues appears in Suetoshi, Ikeda, “Byōsei kō” 廟制考, Nippon Chūgoku Gakkai hō 11, 13–26Google Scholar. See, also, Kōkō's, Takezoe 竹添光鴻 excellent discussion in Tso-chuan hui-chien 左傳會赛 (reprint of Sashi kaisen; Taipei: Kuang-wen), 4.9–12Google Scholar; the comments of Kuei Fu in Shuo-wen chieh-tzu ku-Un (64b); and Shima, , Yin-hsü pu-tz'u yen-chiu, 208–11Google Scholar.

79. Commentary tradition is very confused on these issues. My characterization here is merely a choice among competing models, and is consistent with a good percentage of the relevant passages in the Li-chi and other early texts, but relies most heavily on two later Han sources: the Kung-yang chuan, Wen 2 (Li, Ch'en 陳立, Kung-yang yi-shu 公羊義疏 [hsü-pien, Huang-Ch'ing ching-chieh ed.], 38.20aGoogle Scholar) and the lengthy discussion in the Han-shu 漢書 biography of Wei Hsüan-ch'eng 韋玄成 ([Beijing: Chung-hua shu-chü ed.] ch. 73, 3108–19)Google Scholar, which recounts memorials composed at the time of the short-lived ritual reforms of 40 B.C. Ikeda Suetoshi considers the entire concept of the t'iao a late Chou perversion, designed to legitimize usurping feudal houses (“Byōsei zokkō” 廟制縯考, Hiroshima Daigaku Bungakubu kiyō 9.1–34Google Scholar). Ikeda claims that no shrine to the founding ancestor existed in early Chou traditions, and that aristocrats constructed shrines only to the ancestors of four preceding generations, spirit tablets of prior generations being buried and receiving at first fewer, and later no further sacrifices. However, even if the t'iao itself was a late institution, Ikeda's model is not truly inconsistent with mine, as the shuffled tablets may have eventually made their way to a common burial site, or “chao-yü” 兆域, as grave mounds were known. In the late Chou, these “mounds” constituted full-fledged temple complexes, as evidence from the P'ing-shan excavations of the fourth century B.C. site of Chung-shan attests (see Wen-wu 1979.1, 23–24Google Scholar, where an inscribed bronze map of a chao-yü, referred to in the inscription as a “t'ao,” 逃 is reproduced). The tradition of moving tablets from ancestral temples to a common grave complex would be adequate for my model.

80. A further possible piece of evidence here concerns two early bronze inscriptions (datable to the late Shang on the basis of calligraphy) known as the Ti-chi Tsu-ting Fu-kuei ting 帝己祖丁父笑鼎 and yu . These inscriptions name three ancestors called, in ascending order, “fu” 父, “tsu” 且, and “X” ▼ (San-tai, 3.17aGoogle Scholar; 13.22b). This last appellation is considered by some to be a form of ti 采 (see Chen-yü's, Lo comments in K'-chai chi ku-lu 憲齎集古錄, 18.17aGoogle Scholar, Mo-jo's, Kuo in Chia-ku wen-tzu chi-shih, 1.25–26Google Scholar, and Ta-ch'eng's, Wu in Chin-wen ku-lin, 1.48–49Google Scholar). The three ancestors named may be the father, grandfather, and lineage founder, conforming to the structure of lineage worship I am suggesting here. However, the uniqueness of the inscriptions and the speculative identification of the graph ▼ as ti make this evidence inconclusive.

81. A number of commentators, noting the inconsistencies in the traditions associated with the ti-sacrifice, have suggested that the Chou texts conflate several different rituals under one name (see Yü-ts'ai's, Tuan comments in Shuo-wen chieh-tzu ku-lin, 64Google Scholar). The Li-chi several times lists the ti-sacrifice as one of the four great seasonal sacrifices (“Wang chih”, 314–15; “Chi-t'ung”, 1144), and it seems possible that the texts are confusing a Shang equinox or solstice ritual, whose performance was a royal prerogative, with a clan ritual, which may or may not have predated the Chou. A similar conflation of traditions seems to apply to the chiao 郊-sacrifice; see Kōkō's, Takezoe discussion in Tso-chuan hui-chien, 14.38Google Scholar). Some texts picture the chiao and ti as complementary seasonal sacrifices, the former paired with the she -sacrifice as a ritual performed at outdoor altars and directed to T'ien (or Ti) and the spirits of Nature, the latter paired with the ch'ang -sacrifice as a ritual performed in the ancestral temple and directed to the ancestral lineage (Li-chi, “Chung-ni yen-chü”, 1160; “Chung-yung,” section 19).

82. Three successive predynastic kings are named with this honorific, which appears in the Shih-chi as pao 報 (the logic for the evolution to this character has not, to my mind, been satisfactorily illustrated).

83. The Shih-chi listing gives this honorific as chu 主, also denoting the spirit tablet. It is applied to two successive predynastic kings.

84. Ch'en, , Yin-hsü pu-tz'u tsung-shu, 406Google Scholar.

85. Li-chi chi-chieh, “Ch'ü-li” II, 117Google Scholar. The final phrase could also be read to say that it is the late king who is then called ti.

86. Ch'en, , Yin-hsü pu-tz'u tsung-shu, 440Google Scholar.