The Ancestral Landscape《content》

The Ancestral Landscape: Time Space and Community in Late Shang China (ca. 1200–1045 B.C.)

Keightley David N.

China Research Monograph 53

2000. 209 pp.

ISBN 1-55729-070-9

$15.00

This monograph presents insights of general historical and intellectual interest derived from the Shang Oracle Bone inscriptions from Anyang. These insights are integrated with an array of data from other fields of scholarship including metereology botany zoology astronomy sociology and archaeology. Keightley delivers well-reasoned opinions based on close scrutiny of the primary sources and then presents a stimulating synthesis of a wide variety of the evidence examined. The result is a lively and multifaceted picture of Shang realities.

Contents

Preface - vii

Citation and Transcription Conventions - xiii

1. Climate - 1

2. Agriculture - 9

Agricultural Schedule - 10

Pests and Diseases - 13

3. Time: Days Nights and Suns - 17

Day and Night - 19

Sun Cult - 25

The Shang Day - 29

4. Time: Calendrical Structures - 37

The Sixty-Day Cycle - 37

The Xun 旬 Week - 39

The Lunation - 43

The Five-Ritual Cycle - 47

The Numbered Si 祀 Ritual Cycle - 50

5. Space: Center and Periphery - 55

The Capital or Cult Center - 56

Tu 土: The Four Lands - 61

Fang 方 Areas and Powers - 66

Wu Powers - 72

Goings Out and Comings In - 74

6. Space: Cosmos and Orientation - 81

Orientation - 82

Cardinal Directions: The Land - 86

Cardinal Directions: The Weather - 91

Divination Bones as World Maps - 93

7. Community: The Land and Its Inhabitants - 97

The Royal Community - 98

Other Communities - 103

Men Animals and Landscape - 107

Powers on the Land - 113

8. Cosmologies and Legacies: The "Winds" of Shang - 121

Figures - 131

Tables - 143

Key to the Inscriptions Translated by Reference Number - 147

Index to the Inscriptions Translated - 153

Bibliography A: Abbreviations for the Oracle-Bone Collections and Reference Works Cited - 159

Bibliography B: Other Works Cited - 163

Index - 201