Abstract
A contextual analysis of nine Yin and Zhou bronze inscriptions shows that the bronzes were commissioned by women and dedicated to their husbands. Seven of the nine inscriptions involved the character “pi 辟.” Three of the seven inscriptions fit into the formula of “Wen 文 + kinship term + ri 日 + one of the ten stems (jia 甲, yi 乙, bing 丙, ding 丁,...etc.)” which is the standard name formula for a deceased relative. They are “Wen pi ri ding 文辟日丁” and “Pi ri yi 辟日乙” respectively. The deceased with the same types of names -- such as Wen fu ri yi 文父日乙, Wen kao ri gui 文考日癸, Wen mu ri geng 文母日庚, Wen zu yi gong 文且乙公, Wen bi ri wu 文匕日戊, Wen gu ri gui 文姑日癸 and Wen zi ding 文子丁-- are quite common in the bronze inscriptions of the Yin and western Zhou periods. In these cases, the characters behind “wen 文” are all kinship terms. Based on this comparison, the author argues that “pi 辟” should also be a kinship term. It is supported by a line in the Liji Quli《禮記‧曲禮》 which says that “In funerary ritual, ... the deceased husband should be called huang pi 皇辟.” Thus the character pi in both bronze inscriptions and classical records can denote a term used by a woman to designate her deceased husband. The same kind of usage can be found in bronze inscriptions of the western Zhou periods such as the inscriptions of Mengji Zhi gui《孟姬簋》and Jin Jiang ding《晉姜鼎》. In other inscriptions of this group, the patron addressed herself as fu 婦 without clear designation of her relationship with the dedicated. The name of the dedicated becomes gui 癸 or ri-gui 日癸 without the kinship term. Nevertheless, the context shows that the dedicated was the patron’s husband. The author suggests that the character pi was abbreviated because the other kinship term fu meaning “wife” already expressed the woman’s relationship with her husband. From this analysis, the author concludes that the primary sense of fu in the bronze inscriptions of the Yin and Zhou periods should be “wife” instead of “son’s wife” as suggested by Li Xueqin.
Keywords
archaic Chinese kinship terms, pi as the deceased husband, fu as the wife
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