Arthur Cotterell - The Imperial Capitals of China: A Dynastic History of the Celestial Empire

This edition first published in the United States in 2008 by

The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

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New York, NY 10012

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Copyright 2007 by Arthur Cotterell

Illustrations copyright 2007 Ray Dunning

except for p. 181, 183 Meghan Houlihan

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

ISBN 978-1-46830-605-7

The capital of Shang was a city of cosmic order,

The pivot of the four quarters.

Glorious was its fame,

Purifying its divine power,

Manifested in longevity and peace

And the sure protection of descendants.

T HIS ANCIENT POEM IN ALL PROBABILITY PRAISES A NYANG, THE LAST capital of the Shang kings who ruled north China from around 1650 to 1027 BC. Prior to the foundation of Anyang, or Great Shang as it was called in oracle inscriptions, the Shang dynasty had moved its capital on several occasions. The first requirement of a Chinese kingdom was a permanent capital, but these frequent moves were a necessity until the perfect locationthe location that most pleased the Shang kings divine ancestorswas discovered.

Even before the birth of Confucius in 551 BC, the pivotal importance of the ruler as the Son of Heaven formed the basis of Chinese thinking about politics. From Shang times, the earliest period in which written records were kept, we know how all earthly power was believed to emanate from the One Man, the king who was the Son of Heaven: only he possessed the authority to ask for the ancestral blessings, or counter the ancestral curses, which affected society. It was Shang Di, the high god of Heaven and the ultimate Shang ancestor, who conferred benefits upon his descendants in the way of good harvests and victories on the battlefield. Through divination the advice of the Shang kings immediate ancestors could be sought as to the actions most pleasing to this supreme deity.

Hence King Pan Gengs anxiety lest his people dally in an unlucky capital. In the Book of History, a collection of documents edited during the fourth century BC, are recorded the difficulties faced by Pan Geng when he wished to move the capital. Speaking firstly to the most senior members of his court, he countered their resistance with these words:

Our king Zu Yi came and fixed on this location for his capital. He did so from a deep concern for our people, because he would not have them all die where they could not help one another to preserve their lives. I consulted the tortoise shell and obtained the reply: This is no place to live. When former kings had any important business they paid reverent attention to the commands of Heaven. In a case like this they were not slow to act: they did not linger in the same city. If we do not follow the examples of old, we shall be refusing to acknowledge that Heaven is making an end to our dynasty. How small is our respect for the ways of former kings! As a felled tree puts forth new shoots, so Heaven will decree us renewed strength in a new city. The great inheritance of the past will be continued and peace will fill the four quarters of our realm.

Separately Pan Geng charged his nobles with stirring up trouble amongst the multitudes through alarming and shallow speeches, a grievous crime, he pointed, out considering how their own ancestors shared in the sacrifices offered to former kings. Unless they treated the ruler, the One Man, with sufficient honor and loyalty, Heaven would inflict inevitable punishments. In order to ram home his point, Pan Geng then addressed the multitudes, who were charged to take no liberties in the royal courtyard and obey the royal commands. He told the people of the reasons for the removal, stressing the calamity the founder ancestor of the dynasty would surely inflict on the existing capital, and let it be understood that nothing would affect his unchangeable purpose.

Having won the day by direct speech, Pan Geng transferred everyone across the Yellow River to Anyang, where he instructed his officers to care for the lives of the people so that the new city would be a lasting settlement. The episode is interesting for a number of reasons. Implicit are the cosmological threats of the priest-king to invoke the royal ancestors in order to punish dissidents, yet Pan Gengs conviction of impending disaster if there were no change of site was sincere: he genuinely believed that only his great concern stood between the Shang and their ruin.

Again it was Heaven that had given the crucial sign via the cracks on the tortoise shell. Always closely related to ancestor worship in ancient China was divination from the cracks that develop in scorched tortoise shells or animal bones. By 1300 BC divination had become elaborately standardized; Shang kings used only such oracle materials after they were expertly prepared. On them were inscribed the questions to be asked of the ancestral spirits, and sometimes even the answers received.

How then could Pan Geng afford to ignore a warning that his divination had so clearly revealed? When great disasters come down from Heaven, he commented, the former rulers did not fondly remain in one place. What they did was with a view to the peoples welfare, and so each moved their capital to another place. Only the conspicuous absence of a surrounding wall has caused doubt about Anyang as a capital. Was it rather a Chinese Delphi, whose purpose was principally oracle-taking? We still cannot be sure, as excavation is still patchy outside the royal cemetery and palace. It is possible that the last royal seat of government was so large and its garrison forces so concentrated that a rampart was thought to be unnecessary. On the other hand, the destruction of Great Shang in 1027 BC could have been made easier by Anyangs apparently sprawling layout. That year the city was razed to the ground.

Notwithstanding its undiscovered defenses, Anyang was the last known residence of the Shang kings and the place where the cosmology of the Chinese capital assumed its distinctive form. Employing the rammed earth method of construction, the multitudes set their plum-lines, lashed together the boards to hold the earth and raised the Temple of the Ancestors on the cosmic pattern. In this building, according to the Book of History, the king used the tortoise shell to consult the ancestral spirits, after which the court and the common people agreed about a course of action. It is called the Great Accord.

This passage captures the patrimonial nature of Chinese rule, royal or imperial. The authority of the Shang king over his people was simply an extension of his patriarchal control over his own family, an idea later developed by Confucius into a political justification for the state. Since this influential philosopher viewed the state as a large family, or rather a collection of families under the care of a leading family, the virtue of obedience was the key characteristic defining the relationship between a ruler and his subjects. When asked about government, Confucius replied: Let the prince be a prince, the minister a minister, the father a father, and the son a son. So China could be described, indeed as it often is today, as the Hundred Families. While he regarded correct familial relations as the cornerstone of society, Confucius possessed a profound sense of personal responsibility for the welfare of mankind. After his philosophy became dominant under the Former Han emperors in the first century BC, the Chinese empires administrators came to see themselves as protectors of the people, inheritors of Pan Gengs fatherly concern for their wellbeing.