The Oracle-bone inscription translations compiled by Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom date to the Shang Dynasty (c. 1554-1040 BCE). These inscriptions are divinatory records detailing Shang life and court activities, and they articulate a division between a corporeal world and an incorporeal world inhabited by gods and ancestors of the deceased. The bones serve as a method of communication between the king and Shang ancestors – the cracks, read only by the King, are attributed to specific ancestors or gods. The bone’s ascriptive quality indicates the conception of a social-spiritual hierarchy, particularly as a system in which ancestors or gods execute influence in the common world. This is evidenced by High-God Di and the role of nature spirits in divinatory records (de Bary and Bloom, "Oracle Bone Inscriptions," 10-11). The Book of Documents is a compilation, who some argue had been edited by Confucius, describing the courts of the ancient Sage Kings Yao and Shun until the courts of the early Zhou. The Book of Documents espouses a moral model of kingship and correct ritual, establishing the Confucian tenant to police righteous kingship (de Bary and Bloom, "Classical Sources of Chinese Tradition," 29). According to David Hawkes’s reading of Wang Yi, the Nine Songs originated in the southern lands of Chu. The songs were adopted for the northern courts during the Han dynasty, supposedly by Qu Yuan, supported by evidence that they were meant to be performed during ritual or as ceremonial accompaniment (Hawkes 95-97). A concern for the preservation of a natural order via engagement with gods and ancestors is a permeating theme among the Shang Oracle-Bone Inscriptions, the Book of Documents, and the Nine Songs. What becomes salient is an evolving capacity of the commoner to access the mechanism of ritual effectiveness.

 

The Shang Oracle-bone inscriptions frame the king as an intermediary between corporeal humans and incorporeal Gods and ancestors which arbitrate the powers of nature. The patterns of reading the cracks relied on a ten-day weekly cycle, as correlations were drawn between the temple names of ancestors at the times of their deaths and specific days in the cycle (de Bary and Bloom, "Oracle Bone Inscriptions," 6-7). The Oracle-bones, used as a divination tool, formed a direct link between the king (the representative of all Shang subjects) and the ancestors, and by extension, Di and other deities who determined meteorological events and organized the Shang’s enemies (de Bary and Bloom, "Oracle Bone Inscriptions," 12). The deities were often impartial to the fortunes of the Shang, or at other times would bring about direct harm:

Crack-making on dingchou. . . It is Shang Jia who is harming the rain (8). . . It is notShang Jia who is harming the rain (8). . . . Crack-making on wuzi. . . Di, when it comes to the fourth moon, will order the rain (11) . . . Di will not, when it comes to the present fourth moon, order the rain (11). . . Crack-making on bingwu. . . It is the Mountain Power that is harming the rain (13). . . It is the (Yellow) River Power that is harming the rain (13). . . Crack-making on renwu. . . To the (Yellow) River Power (we) pray for rain and offer holocaust. . . Crack-making on xinwei. . . To the Mountain Power, (we) pray for rain (13).

Shang Jia indicates a spirit that is a senior ancestor to the King who is powerful enough to have influence over the rain, a power shared by Di and the Yellow River Power. This implies the extensive role of the ancestor as intermediary between the people, represented by the Shang King, and the natural world. The ancestors in question are direct relations to the king, suggesting a barrier to the common man who remains at the mercy of the capacity of the throne to facilitate ancestral interactions (thus securing prosperity). Though the Oracle-bones provide records of conceptions of the hierarchical relationship between humans and spirits, the records rarely offer solutions, typically confined to sacrifice.

 

The Book of Documents, specifically the Canon of Yao and the Canon of Shun, enunciate a
hierarchical cosmos that assumes the role of the king as an agent that brings order through ritual. The Book of Documents maintains the calendar cycle and ancestor correlation established during the Shang. The Book tells of Shun, who “then charged Xi and He with reverence to follow August Heaven and calculate and delineate the sun, the moon, and the other heavenly bodies, and respectfully to give the people the seasons” (de Bary and Bloom, "Classical Sources," 29-30). The king’s ritual actions directly facilitate the seasons through careful parsing of celestial bodies. Should the king fail to uphold his duties, the balance of the cosmos becomes misaligned. Direct sacrifice to nature, God, and ancestors are also at the center of the maintenance of balance. To accomplish universal order “. . . Shun . . . made lei sacrifice to the Lord-on-High; he made Yin sacrifice to the six venerable ones; he made wang sacrifice to mountains and rivers, and he made comprehensive sacrifice to all the spirits” (de Bary and Bloom, "Classical Sources," 30). These actions reverberate beyond the incorporeal. Through physical enforcement of correct ritual, the king confirms the power of humans to bring order to the natural and spirit worlds. Exemplary of proper ritual, Shun “put into accord the seasons, the months, and the days. . . He delimited the twelve provinces and raised altars on twelve mountains, and he deepened the rivers” (de Bary and Bloom, "Classical Sources," 30). The Book of Documents transmits a conception of the king as a critical actor whose role is the preservation and strengthening of the world of men and spirits through ritual. Though governance through ritual remains monopolized by the king, the introduction of new forms of interactions with ancestors evidenced the potential for new opportunities of participation.
 

The Nine Songs are a method of ritual engagement between humans and spirits concerned with the proper ordering of the natural world. David Hawkes writes that his interpretation of the fourth song, Lady of Xiang, assumes the ritual performer to be a male shaman, representing a rival of Shun, or possibly Shun himself, calling out to one of his wives, the daughter of Yao, Xiang Jun (Hawkes 106). The lady is a deity associated with a shrine at the River Huai (Hawkes 104). The fourth song of the compilation, The Lady of Xiang features language expected in a romantic poem, rather than a ritual hymn performed at court. The performer calls out, “For a tryst is made to meet my love this evening” (Hawkes 108). Yet, the questions posed by the performer, “But why should the birds gather in the duckweed?//And what are the nets doing in the tree-tops? . . . . What are the deer doing in the courtyard?//Or the water-dragons outside the waters?,” convey the sense of a chaotic world (Hawkes 108). To remedy this, the man acts at temporally and spatially specific places: “In the morning I drive my steeds by the river; // In the evening I cross to the western shore” (Hawkes 108). Facilitated by these actions, the man proclaims, “I can hear my beloved calling to me,” and to be in her presence, he manipulates nature, deciding, “I will build her a house within the water // Roofed all over with lotus leaves” (Hawkes 108). Manipulation as a method of retrieving the divine is the grand display of man’s control over the natural world. He brings the natural to the realm of the constructed; “A thousand sweet flowers shall fill the courtyard, // And rarest perfumes shall fill the gates” (Hawkes 109). Through mastery of nature, man is able to express control over the incorporeal; “In hosts from their home on Doubting Mountain // Like clouds in number the spirits come thronging.” Hawkes interprets the shaman as a performer who seeks to embody the spirit using ritual performance. By way of devotional language and active participation, the fourth song creates a ritual paradigm in which the shaman can access control over the natural world and thus place the spirits at his disposal, evidenced by the role of the lady as something drawn to the man’s displays of grandeur. The misplacement of things signals a loss of natural order, corrected through the performance of the song; or, in other words, specific actions taken to evoke and re-dedicate the relationship with Lady Xiang.

 

To the Shang, ancestors, deities, and natural spirits controlled the physical realm and could influence the lives of the Shang and the natural world. With the king as divinator and ritual actor, there is no evidence provided by the Oracle-bone inscriptions that the Shang cosmos provided a means for commoners to influence the natural cosmos. Through sacrifice as a form of appeal and divination using cracks in bones as communication, Shang kings understood their ancestors as the intermediary between themselves and a larger natural order. The Book of Documents presents a fundamental shift in the way the king accesses nature. Evidenced by the example of Shun, correct ritual becomes a requirement for the maintenance of the world order. The conceptions of ancestors, like those of the Shang, remain central as the mode of achievement. The Book of Documents departs from the Shang Oracle-bone inscriptions in the introduction of new forms of ritual appeal, or rather, ritual governance. The Nine Songs, which find their way to court later, maintain conceptions of spirits as influential to the patterns of nature and re-articulate the ritual prescriptions of the Book of Documents. However, where Shun never lost access to the spirits and was the sole means of facilitation, the Nine Songs purport the necessity of the ritual actors who are not the king to directly manipulate nature as the method of correct ritual, evoking a capricious deity and bringing order.