Western Zhou

History

The sequence of Western Zhou kings given by the Han historian Sima Qian is matched (except for a few minor character variants) by the list inscribed on the excavated Lai pan. Inscriptions and received texts hint at some irregularities in the succession, but these had apparently been smoothed out in the official narrative by the time of the Lai pan. Most scholars divide the Western Zhou into early, middle and late periods, which also correspond roughly to stylistic changes in bronze vessels.

Sima Qian felt unable to extend his chronological table beyond 841 BC, the first year of the Gonghe Regency, and there is still no accepted chronology of Chinese history before that point. The Cambridge History of Ancient China used dates determined by Edward L. Shaughnessy from the "current text" Bamboo Annals and bronze inscriptions. In 2000, the Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project produced a schedule of dates based on received texts, bronze inscriptions, radiocarbon dating and astronomical events. However, several bronze inscriptions discovered since then are inconsistent with the project's dates.

Conquest of the Shang

The conquest is reflected in the material record by the sudden appearance throughout the Wei River basin of burials in the Shang style and sophisticated bronze vessels of all the types produced by the Shang, from whom the Zhou had evidently acquired skilled craftsmen, scribes and abundant resources. They also expanded the Late Shang practice of inscribing bronze vessels to create lengthy texts recording the accomplishments of their owners and honours bestowed on them by the king. The inscriptions also show that the Zhou had adopted Shang ancestor rituals. This adoption of Shang practices suggests an effort to legitimate Zhou rule. However, the Zhou did not adopt human sacrifice, which was so extensive in the Late Shang, or even mention it in any of their texts.

The Shi Qiang pan, part of a family cache found in western Shaanxi, was cast in the reign of King Gong by the latest in a family of scribes descended from a scribe brought to Shaanxi after the conquest. The lengthy inscription, summarizing the history of the Zhou and that of the Wei (微) family, begins:

Accordant with antiquity was King Wen! (He) first brought harmony to government. The Lord on High sent down fine virtue and great security. Extending to the high and low, he joined the ten thousand states.

Capturing and controlling was King Wu! (He) proceeded and campaigned through the four quarters, piercing Yin [= Shang] and governing its people. Eternally unfearful of the Di (Distant Ones), oh, he attacked the Yi minions.

Longer accounts are found in later sources. Both the Historical Records and the Bamboo Annals describe campaigns by King Wen in southern Shanxi. They state that King Wen moved the Zhou capital from Qiyi to Feng, and his son, King Wu, made a further move to Hao across the Feng River. King Wu is said to have expanded his father's campaigns to the Shang, defeating them in the decisive Battle of Muye, which is also described in the "Great brightness" song of the Classic of Poetry.

The 33-character inscription on the Li gui gives a brief contemporaneous account of the conquest, confirming the sexagenary date given by received sources:

When King Wu rectified [= conquered] Shang, it was jiazi (day 1) morning. ... On xinwei (day 8), the king was at Jian encampment and gave officer Li metal, used to cast for my honoured ancestor Zhan this precious ritual vessel.

According to the Yi Zhou Shu, the Zhou army spent two months in the area mopping up resistance before returning to the Wei valley. The received texts relate that King Wen left two or three of his brothers (depending on the source) to oversee the former Shang domains, nominally ruled by Wu Geng, the son of the last Shang king.

Civil war and expansion

King Wu died two or three years after the conquest, triggering a crisis of the young state. According to the traditional histories, one of King Wu's brothers, the Duke of Zhou declared himself regent for King Wu's son, the future King Cheng. Later Confucian scholars, who glorified the Duke of Zhou, described the young king as a babe in his mother's arms, but other evidence indicates that he was a young man at the time. Some authors suggest that the Duke appointed himself king, and in the "Announcement to Kang" chapter of the Book of Documents he seems to speak as a king.

Wu Geng then rebelled against the new regime. The Shiji says that the brothers of King Wu tasked with supervising him conspired in the rebellion, but the Xinian in the Tsinghua Bamboo Slips says they were its first victims. The Duke of Zhou and his half-brother, the Duke of Shao, organized another eastern campaign. After three years they had regained the lost areas and expanded their domain over an area stretching into Shandong.

The victorious triumvirate of the Duke of Zhou, Duke of Shao and King Cheng then consolidated their control over this expanded territory. They built an eastern capital at Chengzhou (modern day Luoyang) and began founding colonies or states at strategic points in their domain. The most important were placed under members of the ruling family. These colonies are listed in the Zuozhuan, and some have been confirmed by archaeological finds. The inscription on the Mai zun narrates the ceremony in which King Cheng appointed a son of the Duke of Zhou to rule Xing.

Kings Cheng and Kang mounted numerous military campaigns to expand their domains. The Xiao Yu ding relates a victory over the Guifang, presumably in the Ordos region, late in the reign of King Kang. Several bronze inscriptions record a successful southern campaign in the Han River region, in the 16th year of King Zhao's reign. A second campaign in the same area three years later ended with King Zhao losing his armies and his own life, bringing the phase of expansion to a close.

Middle period

During the reign of King Mu, the Zhou state shifted to the defensive, particularly in the east. The Bamboo Annals records a campaign against the Xu Rong, who had to be driven back from the eastern capital. The inscription on the Dong gui celebrates a defeat inflicted by the Zhou on the Dongyi near Ying, a colony set up by one of King Cheng's brothers to guard the southern approaches to the capital.

With the passing of generations, the family relationships between the king and the rulers of the colonies had also become more distant. Instead, the Zhou state developed a bureaucracy and formalized relations between the elites. There were reforms of the military, official titles and the distribution of land. A drastic shift in the style and types of bronze ritual vessels, formerly based on Late Shang models, also suggests a change in ritual practice at this time.

Very little historical information is available for the reigns of the next four kings, Gong, Yih, Xiao and Yi. Western Zhou kings were customarily succeeded by their oldest sons, but Sima Qian states, without explanation, that King Yih was succeeded by his uncle, who became King Xiao, and that on Xiao's death "the many lords restored" King Yih's son, King Yi. Bronze inscriptions of the time use two different royal calendars, and the Bamboo Annals mentions King Yih moving out of the capital. Some authors suggest that King Yih was forced out by his uncle, and the two were rivals for a time, but whatever happened is now obscure. The succession was already presented as a linear sequence of kings in the Lai pan, cast in the reign of King Yi's grandson.

Both Sima Qian and the Bamboo Annals state that King Yi boiled the Duke of Qi (in eastern Shandong) in a cauldron. A bronze inscription confirms a Zhou attack on Qi at this time. This incident, in a state originally founded by one of King Wu's generals, indicates the waning authority of the Zhou king. Soon afterwards, the Zhou were attacked by Chu, who reached as far as the Luo River before being driven off in a counterattack described in the Yu ding and Yu gui.

Late period

King Li embarked on defensive campaigns in the east and northwest. The received texts all present him in a negative light, and record that he was driven out of the capital into exile in the Fen River valley. Sources disagree on whether this was a revolt of the peasantry or the nobility, but agree that the king's infant son was barely saved from a mob. The Bamboo Annals, confirmed by bronze inscriptions, relate that control of the state passed to Lord He, instituting the Gonghe Regency. Sima Qian's belief that it was a co-regency was based on a misinterpretation of the name.

When King Li died in exile, his son became King Xuan. Both received texts and bronze inscriptions suggest that King Xuan acted quickly to secure the state. In his 5th year, he ordered a campaign against the Xianyun in the west, and then appointed the successful general to command the eastern territories. According to the Bamboo Annals, in the following year he ordered a campaign against the Huaiyi in the southeast. Bronze inscriptions record victories in this campaign and others against the Xianyun. He reinforced the south by relocating settlements from the Wei valley to the Nanyang basin and sought to improve relations with distant Zhou states in the northeast and east. At the same time, the king also had to contend with succession struggles in some of the old Zhou states.

According to received texts, King You's reign began with ominous portents. The texts, as well as some of the Minor Court Songs, hint at factional struggles within the Zhou court. In his 11th year, the Quanrong attacked from the west, killing the king and causing the Zhou elite to flee from the Wei valley to the eastern capital, bringing the Western Zhou era to a close. Although Zhou royal power had been declining for over a century, this dramatic event presents a convenient milestone for historians. The Zhou would continue to occupy the eastern capital for another five centuries, but their sway over the states they had established became increasingly nominal.

Society

Kinship groups

The Zhou introduced clan names (xìng 姓) identifying broad kinship groups by their maternal origins. Some scholars suggest that clan names were introduced to regulate marriages between the different ethnic groups of the Wei valley that formed the pre-dynastic Zhou. About a dozen intermarrying clans are mentioned repeatedly in bronze inscriptions. The most prominent was the Jī (姬) clan of the Zhou kings, the rulers of most of the eastern colonies and much of the Wei valley aristocracy. More than half of the primary wives of Western Zhou kings belonged to the Jiāng (姜) clan.

The primary unit of the social, political and economic organization of the Western Zhou elite was the lineage, a smaller group within a clan, typically controlling several villages and their fields. In addition to personal names (míng 名), elite males were referred to by their lineage names (shì 氏), while elite women were referred to by their clan names. Commoners had neither clan nor lineage names.

Lineage leadership passed from father to the eldest son of his primary wife, with other sons forming families within the lineage. As lineages grew, branches might form minor lineages, which were expected to obey their primary lineage. This chain of obedience also governed the offshoot lineages set up by the royal family to rule the colonies they founded. Warring States texts describe a rule by which new lineages were formed every five generations, but there is no evidence of this in Western Zhou inscriptions.

By the middle Western Zhou, land originally bestowed by the king was treated as the property of a lineage, apportioned by the lineage head to the families of the lineage. Inscriptions record the transfer of parcels of land between individuals, including to settle lawsuits.

Settlements

The basic unit of Western Zhou society, as with the preceding Shang, was the settlement (yì 邑), a residential core surrounded by farmland, with peripheral forests and marshes. The Mencius and Rites of Zhou describe an idealized well-field system regulating the allocation of fields and taxation during the Western Zhou, but such a rigid system is incompatible with the inscriptional evidence. Settlements occurred in a range of sizes, from hamlets to cities, all with the same basic structure. At first, each settlement was populated by a kin group, but this changed over the centuries.

Government

Religion

Western Zhou inscriptions introduce a deity, Tiān (天 'heaven'), who does not appear in Late Shang inscriptions. There are occasional mentions of mentions of the Late Shange deity Dì (帝). Scholars are divided on the relationship between the two, with some maintaining that the names referred to the same deity, while others believe that they had distinct roles. Other powers do not appear in these texts.

Burial practices

Elite tombs in the early Western Zhou have a similar structure to those of the eastern plains. Burials took place in rectangular pits, with a north–south alignment. A ramp excavated to the south allowed the coffin and burial offerings to be brought to a wooden structure (guǒ 槨) constructed at the bottom of the pit. In high-status burials, a second ramp was excavated to the north, shorter and a little higher than the south ramp, and with steps, possibly for a select audience for the funeral. The coffin was typically placed north–south, with deceased placed in a supine position with the head usually to the north. A pit under the coffin (yāokēng 腰坑 'waist pit') held a sacrificed deer or dog. The area around the sides of the guǒ was filled with rammed earth to form a ledge (èrcéngtái 二層台 on which ritual vessels and further sacrifices, especially of horses, were placed. The grave was then sealed by filling the pit and ramps with rammed earth.

However, there were differences from Late Shang practices. The practice of burying attendants with their lord continued, but on a reduced scale, and the additional human sacrifices seen in Shang burials are absent from those of the Western Zhou. Vessels for grain offerings were added to the burial assemblage from the start of the Western Zhou period. Towards the end of the middle period, there was a dramatic change in the ritual vessels found in elite burials. Several new types were introduced. Vessels became larger, and were produced in matching sets, often with identical inscriptions. Shang-style goblets and pourers for alcohol were finally abandoned, replaced by pairs of hu alcohol storage vessels over 50 cm (20 in) tall. Matching sets of bells, based on southern models, were added. The addition of decorative objects in semi-precious stone grew steadily throughout the Western Zhou period. The practice of covering the faces of the dead with appropriately shaped jade pieces appeared in the late period.

Western Zhou burials, from the Wei valley heartland to Yan in the northeast and Shandong in the east, are remarkably uniform in proportion and furnishings, following standards apparently imposed across the Western Zhou domain. This uniformity would break down during the following Springs and Autumns period, as local lords displayed their power and also incorporated elements from neighbouring peoples.

Ancestral sacrifice

Sacrifices to ancestors were the central religious ceremonies of the Zhou elite. Many received texts discuss these rituals, but most of these texts date from the Warring States period, and reflect an idealization of the centuries-earlier Western Zhou. The primary sources are ritual vessels and their inscriptions, as well as the earliest parts of the Odes and Documents, though these texts may also be affected by idealizing tendencies. Jessica Rawson has suggested that the mid-Western Zhou changes to the vessel assemblages in elite tombs reflect a major change in ritual practice, including a shift from a small family setting to a larger event involving more of the lineage group.

The received texts describe these rituals as taking place in lineage temples, which is confirmed by the late-period Nangong Yousi dǐng:

Officer Nangong made [this] precious cauldron. May it last ten thousand years. [May] sons of sons, grandsons of grandsons forever treasure and use [it] in the lineage temple.

The most detailed early description of an ancestor ritual is found in one of the Minor Court Hymns of the Odes, "Thorny caltrop" (Chǔcí 楚茨). This hymn appears to be the primary source for the more elaborate accounts found in the Three Ritual Classics from the Warring States period. The ritual is described as a communal feast during which the spirits of deceased ancestors were invited to descend from heaven to the ancestral temple to communicate with the living. Three roles are identified:

• the "pious descendent" (xiào sūn 孝孫), who was the head of the lineage,
• the "august impersonator" (huáng shī 皇尸), a adolescent member of the family representing the deceased ancestors, and
• the "officiating invoker (gōng zhù 工祝), a ritual specialist mediating between the two.

The Ode opens with the lineage members preparing offerings of millet, meat and ale. As the feast proceeds with presentations and toasts, the invoker announces to the pious descendent:

Fragrant has been your filial sacrifice,
And the Spirits have enjoyed your spirits and viands.
They confer upon you a hundred blessings;
Each as it is desired, each as sure as law.
You have been exact and expeditious;
You have been correct and careful:
They will ever confer on you the choicest favours,
In myriads and tens of myriads.

Drums and bells sound to mark the conclusion of the rites and to escort the impersonator from the temple, marking the return of the spirits to heaven.

Many inscriptions describe ceremonies in which the king conferred honours or appointments taking place in temples dedicated to royal ancestors. These temples are often described as being part of the palace, further emphasizing their dual religious and administrative functions.

Arts

Western Zhou arts initially followed Late Shang models, but later incorporated external forms, especially from the south, and developed new styles. Several concurrent changes at the beginning of the late Western Zhou have been interpreted as reflecting a revolution in ritual practice.

Bronze vessels

The most common vessels throughout the period were the guǐ basin and dǐng cauldron. They were also the vessels most likely to carry long inscriptions.

Vessels of the early Western Zhou were elaborations of Late Shang designs, featuring high-relief decor, often with pronounced flanges, and made extensive use of the taotie motif. Wine vessels such as goblets and pouring vessels continued to be produced, but would largely disappear in later periods. Yǒu and zūn were usually cast in matching sets. The earliest guǐ were elevated on a base. Over time, vessels became less flamboyant.

By the mid-10th century BC (middle Western Zhou), the taotie had been replaced by pairs of long-tailed birds facing each other. Vessels shrank, and their profile became simpler. New types were the hú vase and xǔ vessel. Guǐ vessels of this period tend to have covers.

New types of vessel began to be introduced during the early 9th century BC, initially in western Shaanxi, then quickly spreading throughout the Wei valley. These new types, which were grouped in large sets, possibly reflect a change in Zhou ritual practice. Animal decorations were replaced by geometric forms such as ribbing and bands of lozenge shapes. Conversely, legs and handles became larger and more elaborate, and were often topped with animal heads.

Western Zhou dǐng cauldrons

Bronze bells

Bronze bells were developed in southern China from Guangxi to Jiangxi, with the greatest concentration in Hunan. The decoration changed from a pair of knobs derived from the eyes of the taotie motif to three rows of knobs on each side. Bells became longer and were given loops on their shanks, from they could be suspended. Bells of this type were imported to Shaanxi during the middle period. At first they were copied using moulds made from imported objects. Later local designs appeared as Zhou craftsmen mastered the techniques needed to produce tuned sets of instruments. Sets of three matching bells feature prominently in elite tombs, reflecting the role they had taken on in Zhou ceremonies honouring their ancestors.

Jade

Jade items were much rarer in early Western Zhou tombs than those of the Late Shang, and the fish- or bird-shaped amulets found may have been taken from the Shang. During the middle period, sophisticated jade working techniques were imported from the south, and combined with bead necklaces from the west. Popular motifs included birds and composite figures of human heads and dragons.