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Today I read, Art, Myth and Ritual: The path to political authority in ancient China. It was so lovely and refreshing to read a book in a day after slogging through the witch book for a couple of weeks. And it reminded me again how much I love Chinese history. The author was trying to take an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the three dynasties period, the bronze age of ancient China. (2200 BC to 250 BC) So he combined archaeological evidence alone with ancient texts, poetry and art. The book read as a series of short little essays on a variety of topics which all combined in the concluding chapters as things that someone needed to obtain political power in ancient China.
He outlined the structure of ancient towns and clans and lineages. How political power was, in theory, bestowed from heaven and should be treated as a privilege and responsibility. There was a great speech given by purportedly by T'ang the founder of the Shu dynasty on the way to attack the Hsia dynasty. It was much like a political speech of today; how the ruler of Hsia had committed all these terrible crimes against his people and that it was their job to go and get rid of him and free the multitudes from this evil tyranny. Except for the last line which states that "if you do not obey the words of this proclamation, I will kill you and your wife and children; there will be nobody who will be pardoned."
But my favorite chapters talked about shamanism. He put forth the theory that the animals (realistic and mythical) on the bronze ritual vessals found in the tombs were animal guides that helped the shamans make their connections with the heavens. They were illustrated so people would become familiar with the good and hurt full guides. This was a theory I had not heard before in connection with the bronzes. The book was written twenty years ago and I'm very interested to see what more recent scholarship has to say about these ideas. He also had stated that the King was seen as head shaman, with others to help him, The term they translated as shaman was wu and were seen as experts in "exorcism, prophecy, fortunetelling, rain-making and interpretation of dreams." They also mentioned how they danced to bring on the spirits. I find this aspect of chinese religion very interesting and hope to be able to research it further at some point. I've read several books about modern exorcism in China and Taiwan and am interested to see how this tradition, began and continued through the ages, and was influenced by the more standard religions of China, and how it was incorporated into them. The book I'm about to begin reading is about Taoism today and in the Sung.
Most of the books I find about this period of China's history are more archaeological in nature and frequently from museem collections, and while that leads to lots of nice pictures, it can also be dry reading, with little interpretation. Hopefully I'll be able to find more books like this one in the future.
He outlined the structure of ancient towns and clans and lineages. How political power was, in theory, bestowed from heaven and should be treated as a privilege and responsibility. There was a great speech given by purportedly by T'ang the founder of the Shu dynasty on the way to attack the Hsia dynasty. It was much like a political speech of today; how the ruler of Hsia had committed all these terrible crimes against his people and that it was their job to go and get rid of him and free the multitudes from this evil tyranny. Except for the last line which states that "if you do not obey the words of this proclamation, I will kill you and your wife and children; there will be nobody who will be pardoned."
But my favorite chapters talked about shamanism. He put forth the theory that the animals (realistic and mythical) on the bronze ritual vessals found in the tombs were animal guides that helped the shamans make their connections with the heavens. They were illustrated so people would become familiar with the good and hurt full guides. This was a theory I had not heard before in connection with the bronzes. The book was written twenty years ago and I'm very interested to see what more recent scholarship has to say about these ideas. He also had stated that the King was seen as head shaman, with others to help him, The term they translated as shaman was wu and were seen as experts in "exorcism, prophecy, fortunetelling, rain-making and interpretation of dreams." They also mentioned how they danced to bring on the spirits. I find this aspect of chinese religion very interesting and hope to be able to research it further at some point. I've read several books about modern exorcism in China and Taiwan and am interested to see how this tradition, began and continued through the ages, and was influenced by the more standard religions of China, and how it was incorporated into them. The book I'm about to begin reading is about Taoism today and in the Sung.
Most of the books I find about this period of China's history are more archaeological in nature and frequently from museem collections, and while that leads to lots of nice pictures, it can also be dry reading, with little interpretation. Hopefully I'll be able to find more books like this one in the future.