The Royal Year-Count of the Western Zhou Dynasty (1045-771 BC) and Its Use (r) s A Sociological Perspective (original) (raw)

2009, Time and Ritual in Early China, hrsg. von Xiaobing WANG-RIESE und Thomas O. HÖLLMANN, Asiatische Forschungen Monographienreihe, 125-151.

Of over six thousands Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, only several hundred contain dates, while only several dozens of these contain “full dating formulas” specifying a year of a certain – unnamed – king, a month, a term, referring to a month’s division, and a day of the ritual sexagenarian cycle. Whether to introduce a date in an inscription was plausibly a matter of individual choice of bronze objects’ commissioners. Approaching “time” as a social construct, this paper therefore examines the uses of the royal year-count kings against the social background of its users. This analysis reveals that initially, the royal year-count was used to structure and to register the activities of the king, whereas most early records of events referred not to the time, but to the place where they took place. The growing number of year-references in inscriptions from the Middle and Late Western Zhou periods as compared to the Early period demonstrates that the significance of the royal year-count was gradually increasing, although the circle of its user was mostly limited to the Zhou metropolitan elite. Occasionally, year-dates even appear for dating of private events such as marriages. This can be understood as an outcome of increasing social complexity coupled with the growing demand of metropolitan residents for more order and regulation. Nevertheless, the facultative application of the royal year-count even in records of royal receptions related to appointments and the issue of commands suggests that precise dating was not indispensable in official record-keeping. Indicating precise dates of events relevant to commissioners’ change of status in bronze inscriptions could even be a response to unsystematic documentary practices of royal scribes and secretaries. At the same time, the lack of dates in commemorations of ancestors suggests that precise dating was used only for structuring the present, whereas there was no demand for an accurate chronology of the past.