Wu Ding

Wu Ding a king of the Shang dynasty of ancient China, one of the most celebrated rulers of the dynasty and the first whose reign is richly documented by contemporary inscriptions. He is remembered for consolidating Shang power, for his long reign of peace and prosperity, and for the oracle bone records of his court that preserve the earliest substantial body of Chinese writing.

The King of the Oracle Bones

Wu Ding was a king of the Shang dynasty who reigned in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries before the common era, a period for which contemporary written evidence survives. His reign is the best documented of the Shang kings, and the oracle bones inscribed with questions put to the ancestors and to the powers of the spirit world provide a vivid picture of his court and government.

The oracle bones are the shoulder blades of cattle and the shells of turtles on which the diviners of the Shang court carved questions and then applied heat, reading the cracks that formed in order to obtain answers. They record the concerns of the king and his ministers, from war and hunting to weather, sacrifice and the sickness of the royal family. Wu Ding appears in many of these inscriptions as the central figure of the realm.

From these records historians have been able to reconstruct the structure of the Shang state, its officials, its campaigns and its rituals. Wu Ding's reign thus marks the point at which the history of China emerges from legend into contemporary documentation, and he is associated with the richest surviving body of evidence for the ancient kings.

Consolidation and Expansion of the Realm

The traditional accounts describe Wu Ding as a vigorous and successful ruler who strengthened the dynasty and extended its influence. He is said to have gathered able ministers about him and to have reformed the government, and the oracle bones confirm a wide range of royal activity, including the organisation of the army, the conduct of campaigns and the management of the royal domains.

The inscriptions record numerous military expeditions against neighbouring peoples, some of them led by the king himself and others by his generals and by members of his family. A celebrated figure in these campaigns is Fu Hao, a consort of the king who appears in the oracle bones as a leader of armies and a person of great authority, and whose richly furnished tomb was discovered intact in the twentieth century.

Wu Ding is credited with the pacification or subjugation of many of the peoples on the borders of the Shang realm, especially in the north and west. His reign, according to the later histories, was one of the high points of the dynasty, a time of strong central government and of the extension of Shang power over a wide territory.

Government, Ritual and the Ancestors

The religion of the Shang court centred on the ancestors of the king and on the supreme power known as Di, or heaven above. The king served as the chief intermediary between the human community and the spirit world, and the welfare of the realm was thought to depend on the correct performance of sacrifice and divination. Wu Ding appears in the inscriptions as the principal performer of these rites.

The sacrifices of the court were elaborate and were offered in fixed cycles to the ancestral kings and their consorts. The inscriptions show the king consulting the ancestors before important undertakings and seeking their approval for the continuing affairs of state. Religion and government were inseparable, and the ritual order both expressed and maintained the political order.

Wu Ding is also remembered for the administrative structure of his reign. The oracle bones reveal a court with officials responsible for agriculture, war, ritual and the royal household, and they record the tribute and the labour service by which the state was supported. The picture is of a developed government, far more complex than the simple chieftainship once imagined.

Fu Hao and the Women of the Court

The most remarkable discovery relating to Wu Ding is the tomb of his consort Fu Hao, unearthed in the twentieth century at the site of the Shang capital. The tomb was found intact and contained an extraordinary treasure of bronze vessels, jades, bone objects and other offerings, together with the remains of human and animal sacrifices, giving an unprecedented view of the material culture of the Shang court.

The oracle bones show Fu Hao as a woman of exceptional standing. She led armies on campaign, conducted sacrifices, administered territory and took part in the affairs of state, and the king consulted the ancestors about her health and her wellbeing. Her prominence has made her one of the best known individual women of the ancient world and a subject of continuing study.

Her tomb and the inscriptions that name her have transformed historians' understanding of the role of royal women in ancient China. They show that elite women of the Shang court could hold military and religious authority, and they illustrate the richness and complexity of the civilisation over which Wu Ding presided.

Influence and Legacy

Wu Ding was remembered in the later tradition as one of the great kings of the Shang, a ruler who restored the fortunes of the dynasty and governed with wisdom. The classical histories praise his diligence and his choice of able ministers, and the tradition of a reign of order and prosperity became a standard by which other kings were measured.

His greatest legacy is documentary. The oracle bones of his reign and of those of his successors provide the earliest substantial body of Chinese writing and the earliest detailed record of a Chinese court. From them the study of ancient China has drawn most of what it knows about the Shang state, its religion, its economy and its wars.

The site of the last Shang capital and its royal cemetery have yielded thousands of inscribed bones and the great bronze vessels of the period, and the excavation of Fu Hao's tomb stands among the most celebrated discoveries of Chinese archaeology. Wu Ding thus occupies a unique place: a king of the remotest antiquity who is nevertheless known directly through the words of his own time.

References

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↑ David N. Keightley, The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space, and Community in Late Shang China, University of California Press, 2000.
↑ David N. Keightley, Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China, University of California Press, 1978.
↑ K. C. Chang, Shang Civilization, Yale University Press, 1980.
↑ Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy, The Cambridge History of Ancient China, Cambridge University Press, 1999.

[r1-1] David N. Keightley, The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space, and Community in Late Shang China, University of California Press, 2000.

[r2-2] David N. Keightley, Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China, University of California Press, 1978.

[r3-3] K. C. Chang, Shang Civilization, Yale University Press, 1980.

[r4-4] Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy, The Cambridge History of Ancient China, Cambridge University Press, 1999.

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