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The Myth of The Xia Dynasty
The Myth of The Xia Dynasty
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By Sarah Allan
Was there a Xia Dynasty? By the mid-nineteen thirties, the works of Henri
Maspero and other scholars in the West and of Gu Jiegang ?% SS ffl'J and his
compatriots in China had clearly established the originally mythological charac
ter of Yu 4), the founder ofthe Xia Dynasty (traditionally ca. 2200-1760 B.C.)
and of the rulers who preceded him in traditional Chinese historiography.1 The
excavations near Anyang of late Shang palaces, tombs and inscribed oracle bones
had also established the authenticity of the Shang Dynasty which followed the
Xia, or at least of the latter part of it. In 1936, Chen Mengjia f& $ % published
an article in which he related the Xia king list to the Shang and argued that the
two periods were the same.2 For the next forty years, the question of the
authenticity of the Xia was left largely in abeyance although most scholars did
continue to assume that the Xia Dynasty, which was hereditary like the Shang,
would some day be authenticated by archaeological excavation.3
Recently, however, Chinese scholars have begun to classify archaeological
finds as 'Xia'. What has brought about this change? The most important exca
vations of the major 'Xia' site, Erlitou in Henan Province, were done before
1964 but at that time they were classified as 'early Shang'.4 No new inscriptions
which could confirm the existence of an earlier dynasty have been found. Indeed,
although Tang :Jb, traditionally the founder of the Shang Dynasty, is revered in
the oracle bone inscriptions as a high ancestor, the genealogy goes back toWang
Hai .? S , the first mythical ancestor of the Shang, without any indication that
this was the critical juncture at which the dynasty was founded or that other
rulers were defeated. The cause of this change appears to be the intro
primary
duction of radiocarbon dating: we now know that finds at Erlitou and other
sites date to within the traditional Xia period.5
In the following paper, I shall reconstruct the role ofthe Xia in early Chinese
mythology. I shall argue that the Shang had a myth of the Xia as a previous
people who were their inverse, a dark and watery people who had been overcome
by the Shang sun-kings. This myth was transformed into a previous dynasty
when the Zhou conquerors of the Shang proposed the theory of a changing
mandate of Heaven. To demonstrate that there was a Shang myth about the
Xia is not to prove that the Xia were a myth. Nevertheless, an historical recon
struction should not be based on materials which are part of a mythological
system.
Myths in the traditional sense are stories of the supernatural set in a time
'long ago'. From the Zhou Dynasty on, the past in China was interpreted in
terms of repeating themes and a dynastic cycle. As I have discussed in The heir
and the sage, 'history' in Chinese texts from the 5th to the 1st centuries B.C. had
Yet, according to the Zhou legend, Shun did not continue to rule but abdi
cated in favour of Yu who founded the Xia. Only when the last Xia ruler Jie -&
was defeated by Tang was the Shang Dynasty established. Why was the Shang
rule not continued if their progenitor was appointed by the High Lord? The Xia
are ubiquitous in Zhou texts, including those chapters from the Shang shu which
may be dated to the early Western Zhou.8 In these the new Zhou kings sought
to legitimize their overthrow of the Shang by citing the precedent of a Xia
Dynasty overthrown by the Shang and arguing that the mandate of Heaven is
not constant. For this propaganda which was addressed to the Yin (i.e. Shang)
people to have been effective, the Shang must have believed that a Xia people
had preceded them and lost the favour of the High Lord. The problem is to
determine the nature and meaning of this belief.
In the following, I shall demonstrate that the mythical themes associated with
the Xia are an inversion of those associated with the Shang in Shang mythology.
The relationship is similar to that of later yin-yang dualism of which it was the
harbinger. The Shang were identified with the ten suns, birds, the Mulberry
Tree, the East, the sky and life. The Xia, on the other hand, were identified
with water creatures such as dragons and turtles, the Ruo Tree, the West, the
Yellow Springs and death. This dualism was part of a single mythological system
which preceded and laid the foundation for the Zhou theory of a dynastic cycle
and the changing mandate of Heaven.9
The genealogy of the Xia rulers can be divided into three eras: The earliest,
a clearly mythological period, is from the 'Yellow Lord' Huang Di to Yii the
flood hero's son Qi. Next there is the period from Tai Kang to Shao Kang in
which rule was "usurped" by the descendants of Archer Yi. Finally, there is the
period from Yu to the last king Jie when the Xia are supposed to have reigned
over "all-under-Heaven". This paper will be primarily concerned with the first,
mythological period, but I will conclude with some remarks about the two
following periods and the historicity ofthe Xia.
The cosmology
In 'Sons of suns', I traced an association between the ten-sun myth and the
Shang. In the following, I shall argue that opposing elements of the same mytho
logical system are consistently associated with the Xia. Those elements of the
ten-sun myth relevant to the present discussion are summarized as follows: In the
far east, there was a Mulberry Tree (Fu sang $l j& ) on the branches of which
the ten suns These suns were also birds and they rose one one on the
perched. by
ten days of the Shang week to fly across the sky and roost on the Ruo Mu % ^ ,
the Western counterpart of the Fu Sang. The Ruo Mu forms a pair with the Fu
Sang but there is no trace of a distinct cult in the textual tradition.
The Valley ofthe Sun, Yang Gu 1% & (i.e. **,*$, or^) lay at the foot of
the Mulberry Tree and in it was a pool of water, sometimes called the Xian Chi
A /<?j in which the sun-birds bathed before their morning flight. There was
also a gorge at the foot of the Ruo Tree, called the Yu Yuan jt #?|. This has
been identified by Chen Bingliang with the Feather Abyss $ '$ where the
sun-ravens shed their feathers when they were shot by the Archer Yi and where
Gun was transformed into a yellow dragon or three-legged turtle, as I shall dis
cuss below.10 The water in this gorge is sometimes called the Meng ^.('Hidden')
?
Si>?i si means a stream which returns to its source.
The motifs of the Fu Sang and Ruo Mu are sometimes transformed into the
Kong Sang ? & , or 'Hollow Mulberry', and the Kong Tong ? ?\, 'Hollow
Paulownia'. The Kong Sang which is an axis mundi and is identified with rule
in the mythology of the Xia discussed below was the birthplace of Yi Yin,
traditionally the minister of the Shang founder Tang. The Kong Tong was a
place of death and disgrace, the death place of Tang and the place to which
Yi Yin banished his son Tai Jia.
(*g'wang),17 but their meaning is quite distinct and it is unlikely that the cult
of the Yellow Emperor, which was very popular in the late Warring States and
Han times, could have derived from a taboo character. Huang, 'august' (origi
nally a shining sun over earth) refers to the sky (as in da huang & %-) and itwas
used as an adjective to describe Shang Di as early as the Shijingi^f ,*1.18 (Only
after the 'First Emperor' of Qin styled himself Shi Huangdi, did huangdi come
to refer to an earthly ruler rather than the August Lord.) Huang, 'yellow', on
the other hand, is the colour of the earth as well as the springs which ran under
the earth, of dusk, and of the centre in five-element theory.19
Another possibility is that the Yellow Lord was originally the Lord of the
underworld, the counterpart of Shang Di, the Lord on High. The netherworld
in ancient China was called the Yellow Springs (Huang Quan-? &). This watery
region beneath the earth is depicted in Han tomb art with turtles, dragons, or
large fishlike creatures, water animals such as those implied by the Yellow Lord's
surname.20 The earliest explicit reference to the Yellow Springs as the land of
the dead which I have found is a passage in the Zuo zhuan Js~fy in which
Duke Zhuang of Qing who had been wronged by his mother swore to his mother
that: "We shall not meet one another until we reach the Yellow Springs". Later
on he regretted his oath, so he accepted advice that "if you scoop out the earth
until you reach springs (quan) and then, having dug a tunnel, meet one another,
who could say that it was contrary [to your oath] ."21
This device suggests that all underground springs were branches of the Yellow
Springs. The Mencius, Xunzi, and Huainanzi also record the belief that worms
"eat soil and drink from the Yellow Springs".22 Similarly, Wang Chong observed
in the Lun heng that people do not like to work in mines because they are
"next to the Yellow Springs".23 The Yellow Springs, then, ran under the earth
just as the sky surmounted it. This dualism is sometimes made explicit. The
Zhuangzi, for example, speaks of "treading the Yellow Springs and climbing
to the great sky (da huang).2* The great flood, as I shall discuss below, was a
problem of controlling these waters which were rising up and threatening heaven.
In five element theory, Huang Di was associated with the earth, yellow,
dragons, and the centre. According to the Lushi chanqiu which was written in
the late 3rd century B.C. and includes one of the earliest formulations of five
element theory, "In the time of the Yellow Lord, Heaven first caused large
earthworms and mole-crickets to appear. The Yellow Lord said, "The spirit of
earth is in ascendancy'. The spirit of earth was in ascendancy, therefore he
esteemed yellow as his colour and took soil as his concern" (13/4a). Earth
worms, as mentioned above, both eat soil and drink from the Yellow Springs.
Mole-crickets bore in the earth and sing sadly in the evening.25 The Huainanzi
(3/3a), about a century later, stated, "As for the central land, its lord is the
Yellow Lord,... his animal, the yellow dragon." Elsewhere in the Huainanzi
(4/11 a), we are told that the Yellow Dragon born ofthe ether of the central
earth (after a number of transformations) hides in the Yellow Springs. The
yellow earth and the yellow springs which run beneath it are thus connected.
However, Huang Di is not only the Lord of the central region. He is fre
quently identified with a cult of immortality associated with the Kun Lun
Mountains in the far west of China. At the foot of the Kun Lun Mountains,
there was a Ruo (*niok) Ik River identifiable with the % (*riiak) River which
had its source at the Ruo Tree.26 This was the birthplace of Huang Di's des
cendants, as I shall discuss below. It may also have been an entry to the land
of the dead. (Ultimately all waters must have derived from the Yellow Springs).
The Kun Lun mountains were also the home of Xi Wang Mu 3h ^ ^ , the
Queen Mother ofthe West who gave the Archer Yi the elixir of immortality.
In ancient China, there were two souls, the hun ^and thepo *fe ,the ethereal
and the corporeal, the "heavenly" and the "earthly".27 The hun ascended
whereas the po settled. Thus, the Yellow Springs may not have been simply
the land of the dead, but more precisely, the land of the po souls. The origin
of this belief in two souls is difficult to determine because only the hun soul
was the of the ancestral cult. There was also a reluctance to discuss what
object
when
happened to a person after death before the late Warring States period
the two souls began to be discussed in connection with the developing yin-yang
Chang Yi to Zhuan Xu
According to the Shi ji, Huang Di had a son by the 'Woman of the Western
Mound', Lei Zu ,*&& called Chang Yi ? *.31 In the Shanhai jing, Lei Zu is
written as 'I? & , "thunder ancestress".32 Chang Yi and his descendants are
identified with the West, water, and death or immortality. In the Xia Annals,
Chang Yi was the father of Zhuan Xu 8jk *&, but in the Shanhai jing, Han Liu
Jtff y$u intervenes between the two generations:
Huang Di's wife Lei Zu gave birth to Chang Yi. Chang Yi des
cended and made his home in the Ruo River. He begot Han Liu.
Han Liu had a long throat and small ears, a human face with a
pig's snout, a scaly body, thighs like wheel rims and pettitoed
feet. He took Zhuozi i$ 4- who was called A Nil Vi & as his
wife; she bore Di Zhuan Xu.33
The Guben zhushu jinian also records that Chang Yi descended and made his
home in the Ruo River although in that confusion of sequence which is charac
teristic of this mythological ? called Han
era, Chang Yi and his son Huang
$t fej in this text ? are placed before Huang Di.34 The Ruo River, as I noted
above, had its source at the Ruo Tree, the western counterpart of the Fu Sang.
These texts might have been interpreted as "made his home at the Ruo River,
but since Han Liu's appearance is that of a dragon, I assume he lived in the
river. Di Zhuan Xu is also described as a water creature in the Shanhai jing:
"There is a fish which is withered on one side. Its name is Yu Fu & -k^ ('Fish
Lady'). When Zhuan Xu had died, he thus came to life again. The wind blew
from the North, and then the sky became a great spring of water. A snake was
transformed into a fish. This is what is called Yu Fu: Zhuan Xu who had died
come to life again.35 The term 'withered on one side' (bian guifa ii) is also
used for Zhuan Xu's descendant, the flood hero Yu.36
Earlier in the same section ofthe Shanhai jing, it also states that ".. . there is
a mountain called the Great Wasteland Mountain which is where the sun and
moon set. There are there who have three faces. These are the sons of
people
Zhuan Xu. They have three faces and one arm. Three-faced people don't die."37
These three-faced descendants of Zhuan Xu appear to be an inversion of the
three-bodies sons of Xihe, the mother of the ten suns. The Xia are further
identified with the far West ? where the sun and moon set ? and with life
beyond death.
The Lushi chunqiu (5/9a) also states that Di Zhuan Xu was "born from the
Ruo River", and adds, "he actually made his home in the Hollow Mulberry.
Thereupon, he rose up and became Lord (di). When heaven was harmonized,
the principal wind blew . . . .Di Zhuan Xu liked its sound and so he ordered the
Flying Dragons to make sounds which imitated the eight winds and bestowed
the name 'Containing Clouds' on (the music) for making sacrifice to the High
Lord." The Hollow Mulberry in this passage is an axis mundi, allowing access
?
to the heavens. Zhuan Xu's retinue were dragons, those which fly on clouds
clouds rose from as water mist and fell again as rain, thus although
springs
dragons were water creatures, they sometimes ascended to the skies.38
the second of the five lords, however, Zhuan Xu was opposed by Gong
As
Gong. According to the Huainanzi (3/la?b), "Long ago, Gong Gong contested
with Zhuan Xu to become Di. He became angry and butted Bu Zhou Mountain
(in the northwest corner of the earth), breaking the pillar of Heaven and sever
earth's cord. Heaven inclined in the northwest, so the sun and moon, stars
ing
and constellations move in that direction; earth did not fill up the southeast, so
the water and dust turn towards there." Elsewhere in the Huainanzi (15/lb),
we are told that when Zhuan Xu contested with Gong Gong, Gong Gong caused
a "water
catastrophe".39
The earliest reference to Gong Gong's rampage is in the Chu ci, Tian wen
(ca. 5th century B.C.), "When Kang Hui was greatly angered, why did the earth
incline in the southeast? How were the nine states divided and why were the
river valleys made deep?"40 The first of these two questions refers to Gong
Gong's butting of Bu Zhou Mountain; the second to Yu's division ofthe central
kingdom into nine states and dredging of the riverbeds to drain the flooding
waters. Thus the tilting of the earth and the flooding are once again linked. The
Tian wen do not, however, tell us when these events occurred except for refer
springs" and it seems that those waters which surged to heaven and pressed
the Hollow Mulberry in cosmic battle of sky and water were those which were
later confined to the netherworld from which they watered the riverbeds.44
In theMencius (5/1 lb, 3A.4), we are told, "In the time of Yao, the world was
not yet level, and the flooding waters flowed laterally (i.e. not in riverbeds),
inundating the world." Although this passage does not mention the tilting of
the earth caused by the attack on Bu Zhou Mountain, the sense is similar. In
no text is the flood ever attributed to rainfall, nor is there any suggestion of
divine punishment. William Boltz has identified the etymonic root of Gong
Gong as 'bellicose' or a
'wanton'45 and there is battle between order and dis
order, and between the high and the low in the story of the flood, but the
biblical concepts of sin, guilt and retribution are completely absent.
Gun
Gun $& whose name may be divided into xuan yu ~? P., 'dark fish' tried,
according to the Chu ci, Tian wen, to allay the flood by following a pattern
made by owls and turtles, symbols of night and water: "the owls and turtles
linked together, tail inmouth; why did Gun follow them."46 According to the
Shanhai jing, "Gun stole Di's swelling mould (xixiangis *H) and thus dammed
up the flooding waters,"47 but his attempts failed and he was executed by
Di.48
Although Gun was executed, he did not die but was transformed into a
yellow nai%, a three-legged turtle or possibly a dragon,49 and thus he gave birth
to Yu. The earliest reference to this story is once again that in the Tian wen,
"Long he lay cast off on Yu Shan. Why did he not rot for three years? Lord
Gun brought forth Yu from his belly. How was he transformed?" and again,
"When Gun came to the end of his westward journey, how did he cross the
heights? He turned into a yellow turtle, how did the shamans bring him back
to life?"50 The answer to the questions may be found in the Gui cang, "When
Gun had been dead for three years and did not putrefy, they cut him open
with a knife of Wu. He was transformed into a yellow turtle (nai). They tore
him open with a knife of Wu ?and thus he gave birth to Yu."51 And in two
almost passages in the Zuo zhuan (Zhao Gong 1) and the Guo yu
identical
(Jin yu 8, 14/4b): "Long ago, when Yao executed Gun on Yu $ ('Feather')
Mountain, his spirit was transformed into a yellow turtle (nai) and thus he
entered the Yu ('Feather') Abyss."
This story has many of the motifs discussed above in association with the
Xia ancestors. The Yellow Lord Huang Di had the surname nai. According to
the Shanhai jing, Zhuan Xu's descendants were three-bodied, matching the
three-faced descendants of Shun. Gun was a three-legged turtle rather than
three-bodied, but as such he is a counterpart for the three-legged sun-bird of
the Shang. The Feather #1 (*giwo) Abyss is the & (*ngiwo) Abyss, the gorge
where the sun set at the foot of the Ruo Tree52 ? the land of death and entry
to the Yellow Springs.
Yu and Qi
Yii (*giwo) was born when Gun was transformed and his name is phoneti
cally identical with that of the Feather Abyss. It means chong A, a class of
animals usually translated as 'insects' but which includes both dragons and
tortoises. The story of how Yu dredged the riverbed and built up the high
land so that the water flowed peacefully in channels to the sea is the best
known of early Chinese myths and need not be recounted in detail here. Just
as Gun followed a pattern made by owls and turtles, Yu followed yellow
dragons.53 Yu's wife was the Lady of Tu Shan^ ^. She is sometimes identi
fied as Nu Gua -k Jfo who in still another version of the cosmogonic myth
recorded in the Huainanzi (3/6b) cut off the four legs of a turtle to prop up
the sky when all four poles were broken causing fire and flood. This story
may give a clue to the origin of the three-legged tortoise for if only Bu Zhou
Mountain were broken as in other versions of the myth, only one leg would
have been needed to prop up the sky.
Yu also had a miraculous transformation in the
resulting supernatural
birth of his son Qi &. The earliest reference to this story is probably a line
from the Tian wen which refers to a diligent son who slew his mother.55 A late
account explains that when controlling the flood, Yu passed through Han Yuan
Mountain (Han Yuan was one of Huang Di's surnames) and was transformed
into a nai. The Lady of Tu Mountain saw him and fled in fright. When she
reached Song Gao Shan % % X9 she turned into a stone. Yii said, "Return
my son to me" and the stone broke open, giving birth to Qi.56
Thus far we have been within a mythical era, a time long ago' when the
world was first taking shape before there was a separation between the super
natural and human worlds. Yii gave the world its physical order when he con
trolled the flooding. He also gave it its political order for he harmonized the
nine states and had cast the nine sacrificial ding vessels. Qi whose name
means 'Beginning' was the last of the Xia ancestors to be born miraculously. He
was also the first hereditary ruler in the historiography of ancient China. His
reign was that in which heaven and earth were separated and his role was tran
sitional.
Qi still had access to Heaven from which he took music, the Jiu ge Ju %L,
the Jiu bian A, #f , and, according to some texts, the Jiu shao Ji>4S . This
tradition goes back to the Tian wen and Li sao of the Chu ci51 and is made
explicit in the Shanhai jing: West of the Floating Sands (i.e. in the extreme
west), there is someone with green snakes in his ears who rides amount of two
dragons. His name is Xia Hou Qi %_ & &. Qi ascended and played host to
(bin 4%) Heaven three times. He obtained the Jiu ge and Jiu bian and des
cended . . . ."58 Yii had cast the now, with sacred sacrifice could
ding; music,
be made by those below.
The Chu ci includes texts entitled Jiu ge which includes eleven rather than
the nine songs indicated by the title) and Jiu bian. The meaning of the 'nine'
(jiu) in these texts has been much disputed, but the meaning may be understood
in the light of the myth of Yu and Qi. Yu laid out the earth which was square
in nine States. Ideally, these must have been arranged like the fields in the
fabled well-field system-*. Nine, then, symbolically represented all-under
heaven and it was the number of the imperial sacrificial vessels. The nine songs,
etc., were thus the sacred music of the nine states and the man who ruled over
them.
The stories of the era from Huang Di to Qi are clearly myths in the tradi
tional sense of stories of the supernatural set in a time 'long ago'. From the time
of Qi, Heaven and earth were separated and the Xia "Dynasty" begins officially.
But it begins strangely ? with the loss of the state.
many lords rebelled. Heaven sent down two dragons, a male and female, but
Kong Jia could not feed them as he had no descendant of the Dragon-feeding
clan in his service. He appointed a descendant of Yao who had studied training
dragons from the Dragon-feeding clan, but the female died and he fed it to the
Xia ruler. When Kong Jia requested the dragon, he fled in fright.
The Guben zhushu jinian genealogy is slightly different from that in the
Shi ji and it does not include Kong Jia. It does, however, include a Yin Jia who
is not in the Shi ji genealogy but may be identifiable with Di Jin M. Yin Jia
"dwelt at the Western River. Heaven had an ominous disaster: the ten suns came
out together. In that year, Yin Jia died."64
Both of these stories are about the decline of the Xia. The supernatural
motifs which signify this decline are consistent with the mythological pattern
established above. In the first story, the Xia declined after the Xia ruler ate a
?
a creature of his own kind for his ancestors were such creatures. In the
dragon
second, the ruler who lived on the Western River (once again the Xia are assoc
iated with the West and water) is cursed with an omen of ten suns, the symbol
of the Shang kings.
Conclusion
In the above, I have argued that the Xia were regularly associated with a
?
series of motifs the water and water creatures, the Ruo River which was at
the foot of the Ruo Tree where the ten sun-birds set, the West, the netherworld,
the colour yellow and death. These motifs were part of a single mythological
system which can be traced back to the Shang in which the Shang kings repre
sented the opposite values, light as opposed to darkness, the birds which were
suns and rose each morning from the Mulberry Tree in the East, the world
above, the sky, life itself. We also know from the Western Zhou chapters of the
Shang shu in which the founders of the Zhou Dynasty argued to the Shang
people that their ancestors had overthrown a Xia people before them that the
myth of the Xia preceded the Zhou. In these same chapters, however, this
dualism of Xia and Shang, this myth of a dark and watery people from the land
of death overcome by the Shang ancestor Tang, he who emerged from the pool
of water in the Valley of the Sun, has been transformed into a theory of dyn
astic cycles in which the Xia and Shang were two dynasties succeeded by the
Zhou because of the changing mandate of Heaven.
But was there a Xia Dynasty or even a Xia people defeated by the Shang
who provided the background for this myth? An analysis of the myth cannot
answer this question. Nevertheless, it can assist in understanding the materials
upon which any historical reconstruction would have to be based. Those mater
ials which are mythological in the true sense, i.e. the stories until the time of
Qi when the human world was ordered and separated from the heavens, cannot
be considered as historical in any sense. Thus, the identification of the neolithic
site at Deng Feng -gr ?$ in Henan Province with the flood hero Yu's capital
must be treated with suspicion.65 Similarly, since the Xia were symbolically
associated with the West in this mythological dualism, we cannot take an identi
fication with the West as factual. Some scholars have noted that the region of
the Xia tradition was essentially that of the Shang, but if the Xia were a Shang
myth, this is as we should expect.
I have concentrated in this paper on the mythological aspects of the Xia
and dealt only very cursorily with the later king list. There is very little infor
mation about these kings in early texts other than the mythological material
which I have discussed and the story of Jie's evil deeds which will be dealt with
in a later paper. However, there is no reason to doubt that this king list is an
authentic genealogy. The problem remains: whose list was it? Where and when
did they rule, if they did so, and what was the nature of their power?
Postscript: Since completing this article, a brief report of a new find of the
remains of an ancient city at Yanshi Huxianggou in Henan Province has appeared
in Kaogu 1984.4 (p. 384). Huxiang f ftp was identified in the Han shu as the
site of Tang's capital Xi Bo and the authors of this report believe this city to
be the first Shang capital. It is only five or six kilometres from Yanshi Erlitou
and they further call into question the identification of those remains with the
Xia.
NOTES
1
Henri Maspero, 'Legendes mythologiques dans le Chou king', Journal Asiatique
CCIV (1924), 1-100; Gu Jiegang ti t* fl-J, ed. Gu shi bian-t A *f , 7 vols., Peking and
Shanghai, 1926-41; see also Wolfram Eberhard, Lokalkulturen im Alten China I (supple
ment to T'oung Pao, v. 37, Leiden, 1942), II (Monumenta Serica, monograph III, Peking,
1942).
2
Chen Mengjia .& 'f % , 'Shangdaide shenhua yu wushu' $ -K fi ft Ifc $? & ^,
Yanjing Xuebao .? t, f ?1 XX, Dec, 1936, p. 291.
3
See, for example, K.C.Chang, Archaeology in China, 3rd ed., New Haven, Yale
Univ. Press, 1977, p. 216.
4 t 9 s <?
Xu Xunsheng i? te i., '1959 nian yu xi diaocha "Xia Xu" de chubu baogao'
f ?fc s t$ & ( 1 *? ) #J ^ ? #1 ? A^c^w 1959, no. 11, pp. 592-600; 'Henan Erlitou
yizhi fajue baogao' :?\ % ^ *f> - ? $ it & # ^ & ? A:<zo#w 1965, no. 5, pp. 215
224;'Henan Yanshi Erlitou zao Shang gongdian yizhi fajue jianbao'>7 .*> lit #F - ? M -f
$ f t it ^ f t p| i tftfo^w 1974, no. 4, 234-48; Henan Yanshi Erlitou yizhi
san ba qu fajue jian bao' >T ft -'& ^f - 1 f if tt ^ a ^ j? 4& ^ #. Kaogu 1975,
no. 5, pp. 302-9.
5
For a sympathetic summary of the new attributions see K. C. Chang, Shang Gviliza
tion, New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1980, pp. 335-55.
6
CMC, San Francisco, 1981.
7
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies XLIV, pt. 2,1981, pp. 290
326.
8
E.g., the Shao Gao, Duo Shi and Duo Fang. See The heir and the sage, p. 4.
9
For discussion of the development of the theory of a changing mandate of Heaven, see
also S.Allan, "Drought, Human Sacrifice and the mandate of Heaven in a lost text from
the Shang shu", B.S.O.A.S., forthcoming.