Abstract
Most scholars have viewed the Heavenly Stems of the Shang elite as the “temple names,” namely, posthumous designators. Studies of various recently discovered zhi group oracle bone inscriptions that bear the ding characters have found that the Heavenly Stems actually could refer to someone who was alive. Some scholars further suggest this ding refers to the Shang king Wuding, which poses an enormous challenge to the traditional view. By classifying and analyzing different types of bronze inscriptions of the Shang elite, this article concludes that the Heavenly Stems, when occurring alone, designated the names of the lineages, not personal names. They could also be used posthumously. In this case, the Heavenly Stems appear in the formula as “kinship term ＋ (ri) ＋ heavenly stem.” By examining the terms used by the Shang kinship, especially the usage of different kinship terms for women before and after marriage, I have shown in other articles that the Shang elite comprised more than three lineages and formed marriages similar to “patri-lateral cross cousin marriage” among different lineages. This essay further studies the taboo against tong-gan bu-hun (not marrying someone from one’s own gan lineage) recorded in the oracle-bone and bronze inscriptions, suggesting that the Heavenly Stems served as the designators for different lineages. On the grounds of the above studies, the social structure of the Shang elite can be reconstructed to demonstrate that in contrast to other uni-lineage clans (such as ji, jiang, and si) the Shang elite consisted of ten different lineages, each of which was designated by one of the Heavenly Stems. Regulated by the principle of tong-gan bu-hun, the Shang elite inter-married among lineages within their group.
Keywords
Shang elite, kinship structure, ten Heavenly Stems, tong-gan bu-hun
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