Shang Dynasty: Oracle Bones, Kingship, and Ritual Power

After Xia Falls, Shang Enters the Story

In the last episode, the rule of Xia rises with Qi and ends under Jie.

At the end, Tang of Shang raises troops and overthrows Xia. A new dynasty stands in its place.

That dynasty is Shang.

Shang is not short-lived.

It lasts for roughly six centuries and passes through more than thirty kings. Compared with the even older stories that feel closer to legend, Shang stands much nearer to visible history.

By the time we reach Yinxu, oracle bones, bronzes, ritual remains, and royal tombs begin to appear. Kingship is no longer transmitted only through stories. It starts to leave harder traces behind.

Tang Opens Shang With a Good Name

After Tang overthrows Xia, the most urgent task is not merely to sit on the new throne.

He must persuade the realm that Shang is not the work of a criminal usurper, but a house chosen to replace a broken dynasty under Heaven.

That is why Tang's image is shaped from the beginning as a sharp contrast to Jie of Xia.

Jie exhausts the realm for pleasure.

Tang is remembered as a man who can win hearts.

The most famous story is the one in which he sees a hunter surrounding birds with nets on all four sides. He thinks this is too ruthless, and tells the hunter to leave one side open and spare the rest.

The story sounds small.

In the context of dynastic change, it is not small at all.

It is telling people that Jie leaves no path to life, while Tang does.

One has lost virtue.

The other still has it.

That is how Shang builds its opening legitimacy.

Once the Dynasty Is Founded, Trouble Changes Its Shape

The problem of Xia is that hereditary kingship is still new, and the descendants cannot hold it steadily.

The problem of Shang is subtler.

How exactly should the throne be passed on?

After Qi of Xia, hereditary rule is already established.

But there are two ways to inherit.

A father can pass to his son.

Or an elder brother can be followed by a younger brother.

Father to son is a straight line.

Brother to brother also looks reasonable at first. Adult brothers can take turns ruling.

The problem comes afterward.

Once all the brothers are done, what happens next?

Do you give the throne to the elder brother's son?

Or to the younger brother's son?

As soon as that question arises, the court is ready for disorder.

In the early Shang, that is exactly what happens.

The Disorder of Nine Generations

By the sixth generation of Shang, succession has already begun to wobble.

Brothers pass the throne back and forth, then the next generation begins making its own claims. Court nobles line up behind different sides.

When the top is in disorder, the lower levels become unstable too. Once the nobles move, commoners and slaves move with them.

And when the capital itself turns chaotic, it becomes impossible to stay there.

So the early Shang court keeps moving from place to place across what is now Henan, Shandong, and Hebei.

History remembers this period as the Disorder of Nine Generations.

The phrase sounds simple, but it is heavy.

It tells us that Shang does not spend six hundred years sitting in perfect stability from the beginning. At one point, it is nearly torn apart by its own succession problem.

Only one king eventually forces the disorder back down.

That king is Pan Geng.

Pan Geng Moves the Capital to Yin

Pan Geng looks at the situation and understands that if the dynasty keeps moving like this, Shang will stop looking like a dynasty and start looking like a household of refugees.

So he decides to move the capital.

To where?

To Yin, near what is now Anyang in Henan.

Moving a capital is never easy.

A king may order it, but the nobles may not want to go. In the old capital they already have houses, land, interests, and roots.

You tell everyone to move with a single command, and everyone begins calculating private loss.

Pan Geng, however, is hard in his resolve.

He is not trying to keep everyone comfortable.

He is trying to keep Shang alive.

The old center is already too chaotic. If the court does not move, the legacy left by Tang may truly sink.

In the end, the nobles can do nothing but follow.

And once they do, Shang stabilizes.

From Pan Geng's move onward, the dynasty remains at Yin for a long time. That is why the later Shang is so often called Yin Shang. The oracle bones, bronzes, and royal remains later excavated at Yinxu are also what make Shang much more visible to us.

Under Wu Ding, Shang Reaches a High Point

Once Pan Geng stabilizes the dynasty, Shang power begins to rise again.

The man who pushes it to a peak is Wu Ding.

Wu Ding is an interesting figure.

He is not remembered as a king raised only inside the palace walls. Tradition says that in his youth he is sent out among the common people to experience labor and ordinary life.

A man like that is harder to fool when he comes to the throne.

He knows what life is like below, and he also knows the games of the court.

That is why, under Wu Ding, Shang becomes a very strong dynasty. Its internal government is firm, its external wars are effective, and both its territory and influence expand.

Two especially important figures stand beside him.

One is Fu Yue.

Fu Yue comes from a low background, yet he has real talent in governing. To bring him into service, Wu Ding even borrows the language of dreams and Heaven-sent worthies. This tells us something important about Shang culture: mandate, spirits, omens, and politics are constantly tied together.

The other is Fu Hao.

Fu Hao is Wu Ding's queen, but she is also remembered as a military leader and an active force in royal affairs. When her tomb is later discovered at Yinxu, the objects inside allow later generations to see much more vividly the power and life of the Shang royal house.

Under Wu Ding, Shang truly reaches a high point.

After the High Point, Decline Begins to Show

Wu Ding is strong, but strength has its own cost.

In his later years, he wages repeated campaigns, especially against the eastern peoples. War can expand influence, but it can also consume national strength. The longer the fighting lasts, the more money, labor, and grain it devours.

After Wu Ding, the condition of the Shang kings grows weaker and weaker.

Many rulers sink into drinking and pleasure, live short lives, and preside over politics that decline from generation to generation. Shang uses many bronze wine vessels, and its drinking culture becomes prominent. In later accounts of Shang's fall, this too is turned into a symbol of royal decay.

So Shang begins to slide downward.

At the end of that slide stands the final king:

Di Xin.

The one later known simply as King Zhou of Shang.

King Zhou Is Not Without Talent. His Talent Turns the Wrong Way

As a young man, King Zhou is not a fool.

He is handsome, strong, quick-minded, and highly articulate.

A man like that, if he had stayed on a better path, might have achieved a great deal.

But his very strength becomes the root of the problem.

He trusts himself too much.

When others cannot argue him down, he concludes he must always be right.

When others cannot persuade him, he decides they are not fit to guide him.

In the end, the only voices left around him say the same thing:

the king is brilliant.

For a ruler, the most dangerous thing is not to have no one praise him.

It is to be surrounded only by praise.

Daji Enters the Palace, and the Final Spectacle Begins

Like Jie of Xia before him, King Zhou gains a famous beauty during military conquest.

Jie has Moxi.

King Zhou has Daji.

Later stories paint Daji as demonic, but inside the logic of the narrative she often feels more like the one who enlarges everything already wrong inside the king.

He enjoys pleasure, and she helps make it more extravagant.

He likes displaying power, and she helps make it more cruel.

The Deer Terrace, the lake of wine and forest of meat, the torture called paoluo: the stories grow heavier one after another. They may sound extreme, but their meaning is clear enough. The royal house of Shang has turned wealth, labor, and punishment toward the most destructive possible use.

At this point, Shang is beginning to resemble the late Xia under Jie.

The higher the palaces rise, the deeper the resentment below.

The more wine and meat fill the court, the emptier the dynasty becomes.

The Death of Bi Gan

It is not as if no one tries to warn King Zhou.

Weizi warns him.

Jizi warns him.

Bi Gan warns him too.

But he does not listen.

With Bi Gan, the matter becomes especially grave. Bi Gan is his own uncle. If there is anyone whose words should carry weight, it ought to be an elder of the royal house. Yet not only does the king refuse him, he follows Daji's prompting and has Bi Gan cut open and killed.

If a loyal minister cannot turn him back, and even close kin cannot turn him back, then the dynasty is already unlikely to save itself.

Jie of Xia kills Guan Longfeng.

King Zhou of Shang kills Bi Gan.

The two doomed rulers end in much the same way:

they can no longer bear to hear a single honest word.

At This Moment, the Zhou Are Rising

At the height of Shang power, the Zhou are only a modest regional state in the west.

But the world does not always follow whoever is strongest at the moment.

Shang has descended into its own disorder. King Zhou has already spent away the support of the people. And because of that, the Zhou in the west suddenly have room to rise.

Here the story begins to turn in a new direction.

To overthrow Shang requires more than force.

It also requires a man who can wait for the right moment, judge the situation clearly, and assist a new lord.

That man is Jiang Ziya.

Continue Reading

The six centuries of Shang come to their end under King Zhou.

But the Zhou do not replace Shang in a single day.

In the next episode, we turn to Jiang Ziya:

an old man, a straight hook, and a patient waiting game for the right ruler.

The fall of Shang and the rise of Zhou begin with that fishing rod.