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The Shang dynasty dedicated many temples ̣(and altars) for veneration of ancestral deities. Most of the temples were designed in a squared form, consistent with the role of the Celestial Square in the ancestors' spiritual identity. Many scholars assert that this square was also used linguistically to denote the Shang words for ancestral temples.
Shang ritual was based on an ancestral hierarchy. The king was able to convene directly with his most recent ancestors, who could themselves provide access to more senior spirits – who in turn passed the king's requests to Di. [109] Prominent Shang practices included divinations, liturgical sacrifices, prayers, and funerals.
The Eulogies of Zhou are the oldest eulogies among those dedicated to the three first dynasties of China, and consists of songs created and sung during early Western Zhou ancestral rituals, with the very oldest ones probably dated to the Zhou conquest of Shang (c. 1046 BCE), and the youngest ones being much more recent. [41]
Among Predynastic Shang rulers Shang Jia (1st generation) and the five other leaders including Bao Yi (2nd generation), Bao Bing (3rd generation), Bao Ding (4th generation), Zhu Ren (5th generation), and Zhu Gui (6th generation) were addressed the Six Spirits, the beings who dictated harvests, by the kings of the Shang dynasty who practiced a spiritual religion that includes veneration of ...
The Zhou dynasty enfeoffed another Shang prince, titled Weizi, as ruler of Song, and Weizi's lineage continued the old ancestral worship. Shu Yi, a high official of the state of Qi around 600 BCE, was a direct descendant of the Shang. He owned a bronze artifact named 'Shu Yi Zhong' to memorialize his royal Shang ancestral spirits. [111]
Many religious beliefs and practices of prehistoric China are claimed to be precursors of the Shang religion, which in turn influenced Chinese civilization due to similar elements among them. Certain traits such as animism, ancestor veneration and pyromancy characteristic of the Shang are found to be existent during the Neolithic and Bronze Age ...
Royal authority flowed from the person of the king, enforced by his military. Neighbouring clans were allied through marriage and adopted into the Shang ancestral temple. [7] A poem about the last years of the Shang dynasty reads "Heaven sends down death and disorder; famine comes repeatedly."
The Shang period had two methods to enter in contact with divine ancestors: the first is the numinous-mystical wu (巫) practice, involving dances and trances; and the second is the method of the oracle bones, a rational way. [1] The Zhou dynasty, succeeding the Shang, was more rooted in an agricultural worldview. [1]