31. Kingship and Kinship: The Royal Lineages of Late Shang

Abstract

On the basis of inscriptional evidence, it is proposed that the following principles governed the system of succession and inheritance among the lineages forming the Shang dynasty:

(1) The great Royal Lineage consisted of certain kings (Great Ancestors) and their consorts, selected from a federation of ten patrilineages, named by the ten kan stems; these patrilineages were linked by ties of marriage and consanguinity.

(2) Kan names were inherited through the male line; sons and daughters both inherited the kan name of their biological father.

(3) Marriage was exogamous; a male could not marry a female bearing the same kan name as his own; nor could he, in general, marry a female who bore the same kan name as his mother.

(4) When kingship remained in the same generation it passed from one classificatory “brother” to another. When kingship descended a generation, it passed not from the king to his son, but from the king to his consort's sister's son. Only a king who was the son of a king's consort's sister and whose consort's sister was the mother of a king was eligible for Great Ancestor status.

(5) Kings of the same generation had to be of different kan; when a kan lineage had occupied the kingship in one generation, it could not do so again in the generation immediately succeeding.