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Symbols of power and communication in pre-Confucian China (on the anthropology of de) preliminary assumptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Vassili Kryukov
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Extract

If Clifford Geertz's definition of religion as a culturally determined system of symbols is valid, then it can be argued that the religious ideology of pre-Confucian—Early (or Western) Zhou—China is centred around the symbols of power and communication. Heaven, sacrifice, and gift-decree are some of the categories of this religious system, the majority of them reducible to the themes of a sacred hierarchy and communicative relationship between its subjects. The crucial position in this context is occupied by the concept of .

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Articles
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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , June 1995 , pp. 314 - 333
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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1995

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References

1 See Schwartz, B., The world of thought in Ancient China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), 41–2.Google Scholar

2 See The Book of Songs [Shih-ching], transl, by Waley, Arthur (Boston and New York, 1937), 346Google Scholar; Boodberg, P., ‘The semasiology of some primary Confucian concepts’, in: Selected works of Peter A. Boodberg (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 32.Google Scholar

3 Boodberg, , ‘Semasiology’, 32.Google Scholar

4 For instance, see Munro, D., The concept of man in early China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Creel, H., The origins of statecraft in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 65Google Scholar; Schwartz, , World of thought, 76.Google Scholar

5 Hereafter the figure in parentheses designates the number of the inscription according to the list of cited inscriptions given on page 51.

6 Vasiliev, K., ‘Religiozno-magicheskaya interpretatsiya vlasti vana v zapadnozhouskikh epigraficheskikh tekstakh’, v: Kitai: obshestvo i gostidarstvo (Moscow, 1973), 8.Google Scholar

7 There is no doubt that the oracle-bone inscriptions contain limited information, but the character of this limitation should be specified. First, the corpus of these inscriptions is a mass source (some 50,000 full texts and fragments; the vocabulary of oracle-bone epigraphies numbers about 1,500 words); secondly, it is a source dealing with the most important spheres of social life in Shang-Yin society—important according to the Shang view—above all, the sphere of state ritual. Therefore, although the oracle-bone inscriptions give only a partial knowledge of Shang culture, they cannot but reflect the main categories of this culture, or, in effect, the principles of Shang mentality. Besides these, we have at our disposal such comparative material as Shang inscriptions on bronze vessels (fourteenth-eleventh centuries b.c.). Most of them are very lapidary, but there are several dozen texts containing more than 20 graphs.

8 One of the early chapters of Shu jing—Jiu gao—is dedicated to the same problem.

9 Legge, J., The Chinese Classics (Peiping, 1939), vol. III, pt. 2, 449.Google Scholar

10 ibid., 443.

11 Hereafter the letter ‘S’ and the figure in parentheses designate a quotation from Kunio, Shima, Inkyo bokuji sorui (Tokyo, 1967).Google Scholar

12 The I Ching, or Book of Changes, Richard Wilhelm translation, 4, 1983: 16, 398.Google Scholar

13 See Moruo, Guo, Liang-Zhou jinwenci daxi (Beijing, 1958), vol. VII, 81Google Scholar; Xigui, Qiu, ‘Shi Qiang pan ming jieshi’, Wenwu, 1978, 30.Google Scholar

14 Legge, J., The Chinese Classics, vol. IV, pt. 2, 497.Google Scholar

15 ibid., 542.

16 Legge, J., The Chinese Classics, vol. III, pt. 2, 433.Google Scholar

17 ibid., 399–401.

18 ibid., 593–5.

19 ibid., 454.

20 ibid., 376.

21 Kryukov, V., ‘Dari zemniye i nebesniye (k simvolike arkhaicheskogo rituala v rannezhouskom Kitaye)’, v: Etika i ritual v Kitaye (Moscow, 1988), 71.Google Scholar

22 Kryukov, V., ‘Sotsialno-ekonomicheskiye i ritualniye aspekti sistemi darenii v drevnem Kitaye.’ Avtoreferat na soiskaniye uchenoi stepeni kandidata istoricheskikh nauk. (Leningrad, 1987), 9.Google Scholar

23 Nivison, D., ‘Royal “virtue” in Shang oracle inscriptions’, Early China, 4, 1978–1979, 54.Google Scholar

24 The interpretation of characters through their graphic form is often hampered by the absence of objective criteria: what can ensure that we will perceive the real meaning of a pictogram? Therefore this method, except in some simple cases, can have only limited significance. The mechanical transferal of meanings of graphically alike characters from classical texts to oracle-bone inscriptions is quite a vulnerable method as well. Indeed, an interpreter should proceed from the contrary assumption of the semantic difference of similar graphs and in each case prove the reliability of their lexical identification. The characters in oracle-bone texts, graphically the same as those of the later periods, could—and often did—have completely different meanings; otherwise, the problem of their decipherment would not exist.

25 Let us look at some examples cited by Nivison. In the inscription (S 320.4 Jia 2304) he finds a phrase zhen de (‘my de’). But to justify such identification it is necessary to analyse grammatically and lexically at least several ‘serial’ inscriptions with the graph zhen. For instance, in inscription (S 463.1 Yi 145) ‘zhen’ has a meaning other than ‘my’ (here ‘zhen’ precedes the personal pronoun ‘me’ and therefore cannot denominate a possessive pronoun). In Shima Kunio's index we also find inscriptions (S 320.4 Xu 5.11.4) and (S 320.4 Ren 3175). They are textually close to (S 320.4 Jia 2304) and date from the same period. Hence they can be considered to be a small series. From the inscription (S 320.4 Xu 5.11.4) it follows that graph ‘zhen’ is not a possessive pronoun, since it precedes an auxilliary word emphasizing the predicate. In this inscription ‘zhen’ is situated after ‘de’ and signifies an object of some action. And in the case of (S 320.4 Jia 2304) it occupies the position before ‘de’ and denotes the subject of the same action (in oracle-bone texts subjects and objects frequently interchange their positions). Consequently, ‘zhen’ here is most probably a proper noun (toponym/name of a tribe). Incidentally, the character which follows graph ‘de’ in (S 320.4 Jia 2304) and which is interpreted by Nivison as ‘vast’ has the structural element fang (‘tribe’) and is obviously also a proper noun (tribal name).

The inscription with the phrase that is interpreted by Nivison as yuan de (S 320.4 Ming 1370) is analogous to (S 320.4 Jia 2304) in its grammatical structure. Graph ‘yuan’, like ‘zhen’, denominates the subject of ‘de’ action. In this particular case we should also bear in mind that hi oracle-bone inscriptions there is no other example in which ‘yuan’ is used as an attribute of ‘de’. But there are many examples of ‘yuan’ as a toponym or a tribal name.

However, the most representative case is the inscription (S 320.4 Shi 5.1). Nivison reads it as follows: ‘Crack on ding-wei, the king divined: “It should be reverent care (Jing) about my virtue (de) that I do”.’ Actually the graph ‘Jing’ is simply qiang, a proper noun. And qiang (not ‘de’!) is nothing other than an object of a certain action. Here we meet an inversion which is signified by the emphatic particle wei 2 standing before qiang and pointing to a transferal of this word (as direct object) before the predicate. The correct translation is: ‘Crack-making on dingwei, the king divined: “Is it towards [the tribe of] Qiang that I make “de” action?”’ There are more than enough serial inscriptions about the tribe of Qiang and military expeditions against it, but none is known which can justify the interpretation of the graph qiang as jing. (Moreover, Nivison's argument about lexical similarity between the given inscription with a line from the Western Zhou bronze vessel Ban gui is not quite convincing. In the Ban gui inscription the particle wei 2 indicates the inversion of the predicate xian (‘to be noticeably displayed’): ‘Noticeably displayed was de which commands reverence’ (10). In the language of oracle-bone inscriptions, emphases of this type are not known (the only possible type is an inversion of the direct object indicated by particle wei 2). If the particle wei 2 in text (S 320.4 Shi 5.1) just emphasizes the following word, then it would necessarily imply a suppositional existence of a number of certain actions (or objects) in contrast to which the given action (or object) is emphasized: ‘Is it precisely against Qiang (not another tribe) that I should make “de” action?’ But in Shang sources we have no examples of any other actions concerning ‘de’ that are comparable with ‘jing’).

26 See Nivison, , ‘Royal “Virtue”,’ 55Google Scholar; compare Boodberg's interpretation of de as ‘inner arrectivity’: Boodberg, , ‘semasiology’ 33.Google Scholar

27 See Munro, , The concept of Man, 187.Google Scholar

28 ibid., 188.

29 ibid., 190.

30 Bingquan, Zhang, Xiaotun di'erbian: Yinxu wenzi, Bingbian (Taibei, 1957), vol. 1, pt. 1, N 87Google Scholar. ‘Small blood set’ is a set of animals subjected to blood sacrifice. Such ritual ‘sets’ included oxes, rams and pigs (in various combinations).

31 See Lehmann, F., ‘Mana’, v: Proiskhozdeniye religii v ponimanii burzhuaznikh uchenikh (Moscow, 1932), 94–197.Google Scholar

32 For example, see Mauss, M., A general theory of magic (New York, 1972)Google Scholar; Radin, P., Primitive religion (New York, 1957)Google Scholar; Norbeck, E., Religion in primitive society (New York, 1961)Google Scholar; Dupre, W., Religion in primitive culture: a study in ethnophilosophy (Mouton, Hague, Paris, 1975).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Cassirer, E., Language and myth (New York, 1953), 62–83.Google Scholar

34 Mackenzie, M., ‘Mana in Maori medicine—Rarotonga, Oceania’, in: The anthropology of power: ethnographic studies from Asia, Oceania, and the New World, (ed.) Fogelson, Raymond D. and Adams, Richard N. (New York, San-Francisco, London, 1977), 50.Google Scholar

35 Norbeck, E., ‘A sanction for authority: etiquette’, in Anthropology of power, 67–76Google Scholar. The concepts of sacred power, or force, are inherent in many archaic cultures, including those of the North American North-West Coast. It is interesting that among the Indian societies of the North-West Coast there existed several religious types which differed from each other in a way somewhat distinct from the ‘Oceanic’ model. For instance, in Kwakiutl and Tlingit cultures magical power was equally considered to be a privileged possession of the hereditary aristocracy. But among the Kwakiutl this privilege had an exclusive character; the sacred might of the chiefs was related to their shamanistic abilities. Among the Tlingit, the privilege of possessing magical power was only partial, since everyone in principle had access to this power, the aristocracy simply had more of it (Kan, S., ‘Why the aristocrats were “heavy” or How ethnopsychology legitimized inequality among the Tlingit’, Dialectical Anthropology, 14, 1989, 81–82).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Mackenzie, , ‘Mana in Maori medicine’, 50.Google Scholar

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38 Sperber, D., Rethinking symbolism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), x.Google Scholar

39 Ricoeur, P.. The conflict of interpretations: essays in hermeneutics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 288.Google Scholar

40 Here we should take into consideration that the crisis of Early Zhou ritual tradition was paralleled by the revival of blood and human sacrifices, as well as other excessive manifestations of ritual, in the states of Eastern Zhou, especially in the ‘semi-barbaric’ ones (Qin, Chu, etc.).

41 Zhou yi dazhuan xinzhu (Jinan, 1986), 444.Google Scholar

42 Keesing, R., ‘Rethinking mana’, 153.Google Scholar