Patterns of Thought in the Chinese Bronze Age (Sept. 7, 2022, 10 A.M., Macau time) (original) (raw)
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Patterns of Thought in the Chinese Bronze Age
Chinese Philosophy and Its Thinkers: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, ed. Dawid Rogacz & Selusi Ambrogio, 2024
Defining the Bronze Age: Sources and Limitations Oracle-Bone Inscriptions: Fallibility and Interpretation “The Deity’s Command” and “Heaven’s Mandate” Looking for Philosophy in the Documents The End of the Bronze Age and the Rise of Doubt
Is the Ideology of the Mandate of Heaven already present in Western Zhou Bronze Inscriptions?
The compound tianming 天命 appears in none of the inscriptions of the Western Zhou bronzes that have been unearthed to date. Among these, there are nonetheless 14 bronze objects whose inscriptions record certain words (such as daling 大令 or daming 大命) that can be identified with the ideology of the Mandate of Heaven later developed and transmitted by the received tradition. In this paper I examine the context and meaning of the Mandate of Heaven related words in these bronzes by comparing the idea of Heaven’s appointment of the king to the ruling position with the kingly procedure of empowering and entitling officers in court. I argue that, while the expressions such as tianling 天令 can in certain instances be associated with particular commands, they certainly are never limited to these commands: they appeal to a meaningful relationship between past and present by which the present achieves recognition, power and legitimacy, and introduce the figure of Heaven in the human equation as the ultimate ground for politics. This study tentatively concludes that although, given the limited length and specific purpose of the inscriptions’ material format, we cannot know the level of completeness that the ideology of the Mandate of Heaven had by the Early Western Zhou period, there is much to learn about the features of this ideology through the analogy with royal appointments also recorded in the bronzes.
Historical Consciousness and the Use of the Past in the Ancient World, edited by John Baines, Henriette van der Blom, Y. S. Chen, and Tim Rood, 2019
This chapter compares two groups of inscriptions on ritual bronze vessels and bells from the 10th–5th centuries BC that refer to the distant past, examining how Early Chinese elites mobilized historical memory. The first group of inscriptions, commemorating the founders of the Zhou dynasty (ca. 1050–256), is from the Zhou metropolitan area around Xi’an and dates from the 10th–early 8th centuries. Inscriptions in the second group, also referring to earlier rulers, post-date the 8th century and derive from various polities. Comparison uncovers significant regional differences and temporal changes. Two late 9th century inscriptions exhibit the metropolitan practice of referring to the past in relation to royal appointments and rewards. Their ‘historical’ excurses are products of a Zhou memory policy that provided ideological support for the dynasty which, unlike rulers elsewhere in the ancient world, could not count on a shared pantheon to boost cohesion and loyalty among subordinates who were not royal kin. Zhou kings targeted discourse about the First Kings in order to maintain the hierarchy among metropolitan lineages. Elites imitated kings and used memory about royal ancestors to display and enhance their own prestige. Four inscriptions, commissioned by regional rulers and elites of the 8th to early 5th centuries, show that they only partly followed the metropolitan example of referring back to the early Zhou kings. In seeking legitimation for their autonomy or new political alliances they could evoke a more distant past or contrast the present Zhou kings to the dynasty’s founders. Thus, the roots of Chinese historiography go back to discourse about status and hierarchy among the Zhou elites from the 10th century onward, whereas deepening historical perspectives and the emergence of a critical approach to the past can be connected with political changes during the 8th–5th centuries.
Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 139, 2005 Lectures, 2007
This chapter discusses the twenty-seven inscribed ritual bronze vessels, which were uncovered in Yangjiacun, Mei Xian. The place where these vessels were discovered may have been near the seat of the powerful Shan lineage — several names of Shan family members are inscribed on the vessels. The chapter reveals that the inscriptions on the bronze vessels provide new insights into the structure and internal organisation of lineages in the Late Western Zhou-period China. These inscriptions also convey a feeling of shared identity among the members of the Shan lineage, particularly the male members. It is also shown that they illuminate the contexts in which a sense of history was beginning to form during the final half-millennium of pre-Imperial China.
2002 Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period, 722–453 B.C.E.
2002
This book, based on my PhD dissertation, explores political, religious, and ethical thought during China’s aristocratic age: the Springs-and-Autumns period (Chunqiu 春秋, 770-453 BCE). I argue that the speeches scattered throughout Zuo zhuan 左傳, the major historical text that covers that period, can serve as a reliable source for tracing the mindset of contemporaneous statesmen. Pace the title, the book shows not only how amid the crisis of the aristocratic society ideas emerged that were eventually incorporated into the subsequent Confucian ideology, but also how much the ideas of the aristocratic age differed from the normative orientations of later Chinese political culture. It was the age when political fragmentation was considered a norm and not an aberration, when justifications were sought for powerful ministers’ sidelining of their rulers, when pedigree mattered more than abilities in determining the individual’s career, when the concept of the Mandate of Heaven had little to do with the notion of universal rule, and when the lineage’s cohesiveness was subversive of rather than conducive to preserving the sociopolitical order. In many respects, this period appears as an inversion of traditional Chinese political values rather than their affirmation. As a PhD dissertation product, this book shares strengths and weaknesses of other dissertation-based monographs. In the years after its completion I reconsidered and fine-tuned many of my original arguments. Nonetheless, I think I can stand behind most of my conclusions presented in this book and am glad to share it with Academia.edu community.
Literary Responses to Religious Debates at the Northern Zhou Court
Early Medieval China, 2020
In the fifth and sixth centuries, the status of the Buddhist and Daoist teachings underwent constant change. The tension between the two religious groups over state sponsorship heightened during the Northern Zhou dynasty, especially under the reign of Emperor Wu 北周武帝 (r. 560–578). While records about these events abound in historical and religious texts, very few literary pieces have survived and thus have received little attention. This article investigates three literary texts against this background, a bell inscription by Emperor Wu, and two poems by Yu Xin 庾信(513–581 CE). My reading of Yu Xin’s allusions to Buddhism and Daoism reveals a complex attitude of the poet, who voiced veiled criticism of the sovereign through layers of allusions, and provides a rare window onto ways in which early medieval religions expanded the vision of literature of the time and enriched its imaginative realm.
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 2004
This little book is not what its title purports it to be. It is not in any sense a balanced presentation of everyday life in mankind's oldest literate civilization; instead it is a compilation of articles culled from various recent issues of L'histoire, a historical magazine published in France. All touch to a greater or lesser extent on that life. They are written for the most part by acknowledged masters of Assyriology and underpinned by decades of scholarly engagement with the enormous and intractable mass of cuneiform texts (the word used is 'dossier') that permit an intimate insight into all aspects of human activity that is unrivalled in the study of ancient civilizations. Georges Roux begins with two perplexing matters of prehistory, the questions of where the first settlers of Mesopotamia came from (Chapter 1: 'Did the Sumerians emerge from the sea?') and of what actually took place in the extraordinary mass graves ('death-pits') excavated by Sir Leonard Woolley (Chapter 2: 'The great enigma of the cemetery at Ur'). Both questions remain unanswered. Jean Bottéro takes over with two subjects of universal interest, food and love, on both of which he has written extensively over the course of a long and distinguished academic career (Chapter 3: 'The oldest cuisine in the world', Chapter 4: 'The oldest feast', Chapter 6: 'Love and sex in Babylon'). The second of these touches on an important feature of Mesopotamian mythology, that the gods often make decisions when drunk. But the point is not elaborated, though the theological implication is a serious one: that many of the faults in the world can be blamed on a less than sober divine assembly. Sandwiched between cooking, eating and loving is wine, another favourite topic, written up by André Finet (Chapter 5: 'An ancient vintage'). Beer was a staple in ancient Mesopotamia but sophisticated people developed a taste for wine and other imported liquor. The place and role of women are still fashionable topics. Jean Bottéro's study of feminist issues in a culture where women generally were owned by men (Chapter 7: 'Women's rights') appears in tandem with André Finet's chapter on some very up-market chattels, a royal harem of the early second millennium BC (Chapter 8: 'The women of the palace at Mari'). Appended to these is Georges Roux's investigation of an unusual Mesopotamian queen who, by virtue of wielding real power as her son's regent, became in Graeco-Roman antiquity the vehicle of a fascinating legend (Chapter 9: 'Semiramis: the builder of Babylon'). The rest of the book deals with intellectual topics. Ancient techniques for the treatment of disease and other physical and mental disorders, and the rationales that informed them, practical and theological, are analysed by Jean Bottéro (Chapter 10: 'Magic and medicine'). The same writer next gives an 230 REVIEWS Treasure comes from Takht-i Sangin, as opposed to the nearby site of Takht-i Kavad as suggested by nineteenth-century English and Russian sources (see now, on the provenance of the Oxus Treasure, M. Caygill and J. Cherry (eds), A.W. Franks: Nineteenth-Century Collecting and the British Museum, London, 1997, pp. 230-49). Then, although there are drawings of both the Eshmunazar sarcophagus and the Alexander sarcophagus, and references to them in the text (pp. 209, 490, 503, 608, 912, 952), he nowhere discusses the cemetery now in the suburbs of Sidon from which they come. All he says of the Eshmunazar sarcophagus (p. 952) is 'on the date and the circumstance of the allocation to Sidon, see Kelly 1987...'. Nor is there any mention of the impressive sanctuary of Eshmun on the outskirts of Sidon, which is one of the best examples of an Achaemenid stone building outside Iran. On the grounds that such a valuable book will surely be reprinted and updated from time to time, it may be useful (and the author of this review hopes he will be forgiven for doing so) to draw the attention of the author and publisher to a few areas where modifications might be considered. The references or footnotes are presented in 174 pages of 'Research notes' at the back of the volume which are gathered in sections following the order of the main text. They are not further linked to the text, which makes them difficult to use. It is also difficult to find out more about the illustrations. For example, the information that the Cypriot-Phoenician bowl illustrated in fig. 50c comes from Praeneste in Italy is buried in the notes on p. 983. The overall quality of the illustrations, which are all in the form of line-drawings, is regrettably poor. This criticism also extends to the maps. The translation on the whole is excellent, although there are a few slips-e.g. gold 'plate' for gold 'plaque' on p. 501, and Oxus 'Treasury' for Oxus 'Treasure' throughout (on pp. 215, 254, 501, 954, 1025). These are minor blemishes, however, and do little to detract from what is a magnificent achievement.