Human Sacrifice and the Rituals of War in Early China
p. 153-173
Note de l’auteur
J.-L. Durand, “Ritual as Instrumentality,” in M. Detienne, J.-P. Vernant (eds.), The Cuisine
of Sacrifice among the Greeks, trans. P. Wissing, 1989, p. 119.
Texte intégral
“To celebrate a rite is to do something. There is nothing more difficult than imagining how something is done without going to see it. The spatial distribution of actors and actions, the layout of the space itself, the unfolding and organization of the series of movements, the atmosphere and geography of the rite – all are critical.”
Problems in the Study of Early Chinese Ritual and Human Sacrifice
1Historians of ritual in early societies, such as those of ancient Greece and China, are confronted with intractable problems since they cannot observe the rituals in person in the way that anthropologists can when they observe rites in contemporary societies.1 Nor can they interrogate native ritual experts for explanations of the meaning of the rituals in the way that Victor Turner did for his fascinating studies of the Ndembu in Central Africa.2
2For early China, we only have at our disposal for interpretation, first, a limited number of writings, a very small percentage of the texts recorded in the bibliographical chapter of the Han shu (History of the Han dynasty, first century C.E.).3 The imperial library included thirteen texts on various rituals in 550 sections (pian),4 of which only one is recorded as being on military ritual, the Junli Sima Fa (Military Rituals: the Sima Fa) in 155 pian, which survives in extremely fragmented form as one of the Seven Military Classics,5 and three others survive as part of the Confucian canon.6 These latter texts provide much information on the prescriptions for ritual performances, especially ancestor worship, that Confucian scholars thought were ritually appropriate. They have been profitably analyzed by a number of scholars in recent years.7 However, the extent to which these prescriptions were actually put into practice remains an open question. There is certainly no discussion about the protocols for human sacrifice which was still being practiced in certain circumstances (see below). Thus we do not possess the wealth of representations of human sacrifice in literary texts that survive from ancient Greece, as discussed in Pierre Bonnechere’s essay for this volume. So, unlike Greece, where there is no evidence for the actual practice of human sacrifice, we have evidence for the actual practice in ancient China, but extremely limited literary representations of it.8
3Next, we have site reports of archaeological excavations, which have become more numerous and more detailed in recent years. Chinese archaeologists have, of course, also excavated innumerable objects that the early Chinese used in their rites (for example, bronze vessels for holding food and wine sacrifices) and daily life (for example, jade ornaments, pottery, and, later, lacquer ware, clothing, items of a personal nature, and texts), most of which have been retrieved from a very particular ritual space, tombs.9 Until recently, most Chinese archaeological excavations concentrated on the more spectacular sites of the tombs of the members of the elite, such as the mausoleum of the First Emperor of China, near Lintong, Shaanxi Province, with its world-famous pits of pottery terracotta warriors and horses; the graves of ordinary people tended to be ignored or treated cursorily and only en masse.10 Thus the geography of cemetery sites and the burial practices of the lower orders of society in the different states prior to the establishment of the empire in 220 BCE are not as clear as they could be.11 Developing and expanding a custom apparently initiated by the state of Qin in the Warring States Period (ca. 479-221 BCE),12 by the Han dynasty (206 BCE- 220 CE), replicas (mingqi) of objects of daily use and figurines of attendants were made especially for the tomb, probably the result of the belief that the dead (Yin) and the living (Yang), and the objects they used, should be kept separate. The figurines may have originated as substitutes for live sacrificed human beings (see below). Third, we also have some visual images that have survived by chance.13
4In some of those writings that have been transmitted through the centuries are to be found some male elite theories of ritual, the most important of which was elaborated by the third century BCE Confucian philosopher Xunzi.14 His ideas were influential on the later tradition and were even assumed by anthropologist Radcliffe-Brown to be similar to his own on the value of ritual as being conducive to social cohesion and social order, rather than possessing any particular magical efficacy in its own right. Nevertheless, James Laidlaw has recently correctly pointed out that Xunzi “was indeed interested in the fact that rites reproduce order, but this order was, as we should see it, natural and indeed cosmic and supernatural, as much as it was social.”15 Still, as Ronald Grimes points out, “ritual is the hardest religious phenomenon to capture in texts or comprehend by thinking, therefore we need to encounter it concretely, directly, in the field, or the study of religion suffers.”16 Thus historians of early China are at a distinct disadvantage in analyzing early Chinese rites, for their sensory
5(auditory, visual, olfactory) aspects, their spatial and processual organization, and the native interpretation of the symbolism and meaning of the rites, are largely lost to us.17
Fig. 1

6In contrast, and fortunately for Durand, whose words are quoted at the head of this essay, the Greeks painted illustrations of ritual scenes on their pottery vases, and so he was able to decipher, by a careful analysis of the positions of the figures, many aspects of the rituals inscribed there, but this was not a practice of early Chinese potters or bronze smiths, as Keightley has cogently pointed out. Indeed, Keightley seems to despair of us moderns making sense of the decoration on the Chinese hu vessel he describes (see Fig. 1) in contrast to the apparent individuality and liveliness on Greek vases, other than it “expresses the ideals of organization that were being applied with increasing effectiveness during the period of the Warring States (453-221 B.C.).”18 These ideals he characterizes as “stereotyping” and “bureaucratization of experience.”
7While there is much to be said about the hu vessel, one of several with similar decor that have been discovered, thus indicating that it was a popular motif in Warring States (fifth to third centuries BCE) times in quite distinct regions of the country,19 I do not intend for this essay to be a detailed explication of this particular object. I merely wish to point out that Keightley is correct in stating that all the scenes depicted on it are ritual in nature. The hu includes the scenes of battles on land and water, of a siege, of a hunt, of the playing of bells and stone chimes (by women it should be noted), of drinking (by men, who wear their swords at their waist), of gathering leaves (not branches for bows, the baskets are too small and it is women who are doing the gathering, for the figures do not have swords at their waists) and target magic.20 There is a clear indication from this vessel that rituals took place both inside in buildings and in the open air, that men and women both participated, that both humans and animals were objects of sacrifice, that correct positioning and posturing in rituals was important and that the ancestors were called to be present in battles, for both the prow of the boat and the halberds are decorated with pennons and streamers.21 Thus the hu does provide some insight into spatial organization of rituals in Warring States China and it does provide insight into the postures of the participants at critical moments in relation to others, their relations with the natural and the spirit world, even though deciphering the ritual codes, gestures, and polyvalent meanings of the particular scenes remains difficult.22
8What, then, can we say about human sacrifice in early China? How was it conceived of and how was it practiced? How did it fit into general understandings of the relation between humans and the divine, those between humans and animals, and between humans and other humans? Why were humans sacrificed?
9A recent monograph devoted to the subject by Huang Zhanyue divides human victims into two basic types, “those offered to spirits and those buried with the dead.”23 He argues that there were three influences that resulted in China having the longest history of human sacrifice in the world, lasting from Neolithic times down to the twentieth century. These three are, first, Confucianism, especially in its revived form of neo-Confucianism from the Song dynasty (960- 1278) on, which emphasized submission of juniors to seniors and loyalty to one’s lord as one of the prime ethical virtues, in other words Confucian ideology; second, the existence of various forms of slavery, polygamy, and concubinage, and the great number of male and female servants that existed throughout history, in other words long-lasting forms of subordination and dominance in the social structure, with radical differences of status between individuals in the rigid social hierarchy; and, third, the continuing existence of baleful customs of minority tribes and peoples, especially in South and Southwest China. Despite these claims, Huang’s detailed study clearly shows that human sacrifice goes back far into China’s prehistory, into the Neolithic period (prior to ca. 2000 BCE), and reached its climax in the Shang dynasty (ca. 17th to mid-11th centuries BCE), long before Confucian ideology was articulated by Confucius (died 479 BCE) and his later followers. So these three influences were not general throughout the entire course of the history of human sacrifice in China.
10Huang is correct, however, when he identifies later examples of the self-sacrifice by individuals, particularly young women, who chose to commit suicide either to avoid rape by attackers, or because they had been violated,24 or in order to show complete loyalty to their deceased husbands or betrothed, as being influenced by Confucian ideology. This was part of the cult of female chastity that began to take shape in the yuan dynasty (1260-1368) and reached its apogee in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), when the state and local elites actively sponsored it. However, the state itself came to disapprove of young women committing suicide as a result of the decease of their betrothed and tried to ban the practice as early as the reign of the Kangxi Emperor (reigned 1662-1722). The earliest surviving edict banning the practice was issued in 1688. Nevertheless, it appears that the practice of committing ritual suicide to follow in death became quite popular, especially in the province of Fujian, where parents even put psychological pressure on their daughters to commit suicide in public, usually by hanging themselves in their fiancé’s bedroom, in order to gain a name for their daughters and for themselves and their lineage for raising a faithful and a chaste maiden. While this “following in death” may have ultimately descended from human sacrifice in early China, the form it took and the rituals surrounding its occurrence were particular to the social formation and neo-Confucian ideology of late imperial China. They have been studied in all their complexity by a number of feminist scholars in recent years.25 I will therefore not pursue this aspect of the topic here.
11With regard to the practice of human sacrifice among minority peoples (as opposed to the Han majority), Huang cites some quotations in later historical records that associate the practice with offerings to ghosts and spirits in so-called “excessive cults” (yinsi), in other words, cults that were not approved of by the imperial authorities and Confucian state officials. However, it may be that some of the purported cases were merely hearsay, and expressions of the elite’s views of the “otherness,” barbarity and lack of civilization among those on the margins who were in conflict with the dominant majority and state powers at the centre. Such descriptions and representations of barbarism and similar atrocities are similar to those recorded by travelers and missionaries of cultures in other parts of the world, and perhaps say more about the attitudes of the observers towards the “unnaturalness” of their objects’ gaze than the realities of those people’s actual customs. Nevertheless, for behavior patterns in early China similar to those recorded in later writings, we do now have images of human sacrifices being carried out by the Dongson people who lived in the area of the modern southwest province of Yunnan in the Han period, for archaeologists have retrieved several large bronze drums cast by the Dongson themselves with a three-dimensional depictions of such rites decorating the flat surface at the top of the drum.26 However, the Dongson culture was illiterate, and therefore there are no native explanations of the function and purpose of these rites of human sacrifice, nor any indication who the victims were and to whom they were sacrificed on what occasions.
12Finally, in the present essay, for lack of space, I will not discuss the practice of cannibalism that was a frequent occurrence in Chinese history right down to the Cultural Revolution in the 1960’s, which was sometimes practiced for ritual and sometimes for economic reasons in times of war,27 nor discuss the use in the Chinese medical pharmacopeia of human body parts, which was accepted in official compendia down to 1964.28 These imply changing beliefs concerning the power of bodily fluids and components which I cannot go into here.
Types of Human Sacrifice in Early China
13Turning to the issue of human sacrifice in early China more directly, since the turn of the twentieth century Chinese archaeologists have uncovered a significant body of evidence documenting its practice beginning as early as the Neolithic age (ca. 5000-2000 BCE). Huang has amply reviewed the evidence in his monograph and observes that human sacrifice was practiced by a wide variety of cultures, from those in the far northwest, in modern Gansu and Qinghai provinces, in the north in modern Inner Mongolia, in the central plains, Henan province, along the east coast, in Shandong province, and down to the southeast, near Shanghai (Jiangsu province). Huang divides the examples found in these widely separated cultures into three main categories.29
14The first is blood sacrifices to an agricultural deity. As Huang follows a Chinese Marxist interpretation of history, he assumes that this deity must have been gendered female. This phenomenon he suggests appears as early as the Yangshao culture (the Banpo culture, Xi’an) in the west and central plains and then, slightly later in the Hongshan culture in northeast China. He speculates that this type of human sacrifice, together with offerings of grains and alcohol, were performed to ensure the fertility of the soil. Several sites contain the remains of humans and animals that do not appear to have died from natural causes, although it is not possible to determine for certain whether these were actually victims of sacrifices.
15From approximately 3000 to 2000 BCE, China transformed, according to Huang, from a matriarchal society to a patriarchal society, and an increase in the number and range of types of victims in certain cultures, namely the Dawenkou, Longshan, and Qijia, appeared.30 He reports that some victims had their heads separated from their bodies, some were dismembered; some had their spines twisted or seemingly had their hands or feet bound before interment. Some lacked graves and were buried without grave offerings; some were interred together with animals; and the numbers of victims also varied, from a single individual to more than ten in a single site. It also seems that both men and women and young and old were sacrificed. In one site belonging to the Miaodigou Phase 2 culture, i.e., an early Longshan-type site, at Bancun, Minchi County, Henan, four victims who had apparently had their bones beaten and broken with a blunt weapon, were interred in a small pit within the compound of a pottery kiln.31 One possible reason for such a sacrifice, which Huang does not mention, is that pottery making was ritually significant and its success was somewhat technically uncontrollable. Whether or not the people of that culture worshipped a particular deity of the kiln to whom the human sacrifices were killed as offerings or as a type propitiatory act to secure help in the production of pottery, or for protection of the kiln from malicious influences that might affect the success or failure of the firing process, cannot be determined. Further, it cannot be determined what the social status of the victims was, whether they were enemy captured in warfare or whether they were individuals from the lowest ranks of society. What is known is that the period was marked by increasingly fierce warfare between competing communities, as evidenced by the fortifications that were erected to protect settlement sites and more and more individuals were killed and captured in warfare. As a result, some political powers grew larger and extended their control over smaller, less organized and defensible communities, and incorporated them into larger, hierarchically-organized polities.
16Huang’s second type of early human sacrifice in the Neolithic period, practiced in the Yangzi River Valley and further south, was head-hunting. This custom does not appear to have been practiced by cultures in the north China plain. The evidence for this custom comes, in one case, from the Qilihe site, Fang County, Hubei province, where excavators unearthed a skull beneath the platform of a semi-subterranean building, another three in a shallow oval pit nearby slightly outside, and another skull under the opening to the fire chamber in a kiln.32 What meaning these cultures attached to human skulls and to burying them in this ritual fashion cannot now be reconstructed.
17The third type of human sacrifice was interment in the foundations of buildings or city walls. This custom was practiced extensively in north China and first appeared in the Yangshao culture, continued into the Longshan period, and into the Bronze Age Shang dynasty. The victims tended to be young men—the earliest example in the Banpo site in what may have been a building dedicated to religious ceremonies was one such—but babies also were buried in pottery containers in a late Yangshao culture site of Xishan excavated in the northern suburbs of Zhengzhou between 1993 and 1996, underneath the walls to the west of the north gate of the settlement. In other words, this type of human sacrifice had appeared in China from 5300 to 4800 BP.33
18Finally, in the same period, accompanying in death seems also to have been extensively practiced in this same time period and in the same region. Usually the man was buried with his face up and an accompanying female or females were buried on their sides facing the owner of the tomb. It is debatable to what extent such burials should be considered as examples of “human sacrifice.”34 While it is clear that the females buried in this way were of a lower status than that of the man, it cannot be proved that they were either unwilling victims or that they were the secondary wives of the man and had been killed specifically for the burial. Discussing later examples of this mortuary practice, Falkenhausen points out that the females must have had some ritual status as they tended to be buried with some funeral goods. He further suggests that their rank had to have been “incomparably higher than ordinary sacrificial victims,” but not as high as the master’s principal wife or wives who were given their own separate burial chambers, coffins and offerings, a clear mark of higher status.35
19However, the most abundant evidence has been discovered later in the Bronze Age at the last capital of the Shang state located at Anyang, Henan Province, roughly 1250-1045 BCE. This evidence is in the form of inscriptions scratched on bones of animals, usually tortoise scapulae or the shoulder-blades of cattle, that recorded in brief clauses divinations made by a succession of Shang kings to their ancestors and other divine spirits, the so-called oracle-bones, and in the form of the excavations of thousands of human skeletons, many of them mutilated either before or at the point of death. The Shang killed humans in many ways, and they developed a highly complex nomenclature for different types of sacrifices, some of which cannot be identified. Paul Serruys, in an extended review of a German work,36 has documented that the Shang treated their victims in the following ways: they burned them at the stake, liao-burned them, drowned them, beheaded/decapitated them, possibly cooked them, sprinkled their blood on an altar, offered their ears to a mountain deity, and beat them to death. There may well have been other methods of execution in the oracle bone inscriptions that are not included in Serruys’ review. From the inscriptions, it can be determined that human sacrifice was performed for the following purposes: 1. To avert drought and bring rain; 2. As a sacrifice to various gods and spirits; 3. To secure the foundations of buildings;37 4. As an accompaniment for elite members of society, especially kings, in death.
20The human victims for the first type of sacrifice seem to have been usually young women, probably either taken from or chosen from peoples either in alliance with or enemies of the Shang, as the graphs for their names are composed of the signific for “woman” with a place-name. These women were sacrificed to the Lord of the (Yellow) River or other deities by drowning or by being burned. Many scholars have taken these women to be shamans, who were supposedly conceived of as having particular access to the divine.38 Others suggest that they were slaves or female shamans,39 or prisoners-of-war.40 Which interpretation is correct cannot be entirely determined. In later myth and later historical times, even down into the twentieth century, rulers and officials exposed themselves to the blazing sun to avert drought, and rituals were performed to a wide array of nature deities, river spirits, mountain deities, the four directions, the clouds, the god of the earth, the spirit of a sky constellation, and royal ancestors, to avert the disasters of drought or floods.41
21While there are plenty of examples in the oracle bone inscriptions of the second type of human sacrifice,42 archaeologists have revealed that the largest number of human sacrifices was, however, made in the fourth category, to accompany high status individuals, especially kings (and queens),43 in death. These have been amply documented by Huang Zhanyue and the practice continued into the Western Zhou dynasty, but usually with fewer numbers of individuals slaughtered.44
War as Human Sacrifice
22The main point I wish to emphasize in this article is, however, that war was a ritual for the early Chinese, and it was conceived of as a form of human sacrifice, and there were many actions within the time and space of a campaign that were also ritualized. In the rest of this paper I shall provide some examples explicating the multiple dimensions of human sacrifice, military ritual, and ritual practice as recorded in the texts through the centuries.45
23The Zuo zhuan, one of three commentaries on the Spring and Autumn Annals of the state of Lu and one of the Confucian classics, dating from approximately 300 BCE but describing conditions in the early Eastern Zhou period called the Spring and Autumn period (approximately 722 -500 BCE), provides many fascinating details on rituals relating to the practices of war,46 and among them perhaps no speech on the topic is more famous than the one recorded under Duke Zheng year 13 (576 BCE). This firmly embeds warfare within the discourse and cultural practice of religious ritual:
I have heard it said that the people receive (the region) between heaven and earth to live in, and this is what is called their fate (ming). From that they have the means to act and create—ritual and right behavior, and the rules of authority and deportment— so as to determine this fate. The able nurture these so as to secure good fortune, while those without ability contravene them and earn misfortune. For this reason superior men diligently observe ritual, and lesser men exhaust their physical strength. In diligently observing ritual, nothing is so essential as utmost respectfulness; in exhausting one’s strength, nothing is so essential as genuine sincerity. That respectfulness consists in nourishing the spirits, that sincerity in attending to duty. The great affairs of the state are sacrifice and warfare. At sacrifices one grasps cooked meat, and in war one receives raw meat: these are the great ceremonies of the spirits.47
24Warfare was, in this explanation, a great ritual, a sacrifice essential to provide food to maintain the continued existence of the spirits of the dead ancestors, which thereby generated good fortune for the living descendants. In it, the individual expressed his conformity to the appropriate behavioral norms of the society for such a solemn rite and transformed himself so that he could embody those norms. It was justifiable to wage war to preserve the state and the authority of the ruler, and to acquire the raw meat of enemy soldiers which was presented in sacrifice to provide the blood and flesh needed for the continuing survival of the open-air altar of soil that was the symbol of the state and for the feeding of the spirits of the ancestors. Should the altar be denied meat or, even worse, be covered over by an enemy and unable to receive the fecundating rain and air of the cosmos, it was deemed to die, and the state destroyed. Likewise, if the ancestors were not fed meat, grain, and liquor, they were also believed to die. Then they could not help their descendants meet the challenges that they faced. These attitudes towards warfare continued to be held throughout Chinese history up to the end of the imperial period, and to the extent that the Chinese saw the person of the ruler as a religious figure, the Son of Heaven, who was responsible for maintaining the harmony of the cosmos and for the continuation of the sacrifices to his ancestors and the preservation of the imperial line, to that extent warfare was also seen as a religious activity.48
25What were the origins of these beliefs and practices? It is possible that they started as early as the Shang dynasty in the late second millennium BCE, although probably the practices were not exactly the same. On the basis of archaeological excavations at the last Shang capital of Yinxu, the modern Anyang, Henan Province, especially of sacrificial pits associated with the royal tombs, where mostly young male victims were buried, often as headless corpses buried in one type of pit and their heads stacked symmetrically in another, and on the basis of inscribed oracle bones in which at least 14,197 human sacrificial victims are mentioned (this works out to approximately 4.7 human victims per month for the entire 250 period of the late Shang dynasty), Gideon Shelach has argued that the Shang state made the capture in warfare of Qiang people, who lived to the west of the Shang in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, their primary objective.49
26Dismissing claims by Chinese scholars who believe that the Qiang were captured in order to be worked as slaves, Shelach argues that “the practice of sacrificing large numbers of Qiang can be seen as serving two functions: symbolizing the “otherness” of the Qiang, who were thought to belong to a different “category” of humans from the Shang, and serving to enforce the authority and increase the prestige of the Shang kings.” Such an interpretation is certainly possible although probably never provable. As various types of animals, including sheep and cattle, were also sacrificed, often at the same time as the human victims, does that mean that the Shang considered enemies to be a type of animal?50 Alternative interpretations might be possible. For example, perhaps there might have been a more religious reason for these mass executions, namely, that the blood of the victims was believed to sanctify the ground where the Shang kings were buried, or possibly the victims were believed to protect the living from the powerful aura of the dead kings’ spirits.51 This may be the reason why young men were chosen to suffer this fate. Certainly in later Zhou times, volunteering to accompany a dead lord in death came to be considered a privilege for his closest supporters, although often the dead lord had unwilling victims from the lower orders accompany him, too.52
27How exactly were blood offerings made to altar of the soil? In the Spring and Autumn period, enemy who were killed had their left ears cut off and these were presented to the altar of the victorious state in a solemn ritual. I am not sure of the exact meaning of this act. On a practical level, of course, left and right ears are different in shape, so it would not have been necessary to take more than one ear to identify how many enemies had been slain. On a symbolic level, however, I should note that in the ceremony of the covenant (meng), an important legal institution in Zhou times before the establishment of the system of statutes and ordinances characteristic of the centralized states of late Warring States times, the agreement between parties was sealed by the sacrifice of a sheep.53 The “Lord of the Covenant” who was presiding over the covenant had the right to be the first to grasp the left ear of the sheep, slice it off, and smear his lips with the blood which testified to his agreement to abide by the terms of the covenant; after he had completed the act, everyone else who swore to uphold the covenant then did likewise in order of precedence. Thus the blood of the left ear must have been believed to have some special spiritual efficacy. Whether the sheep substituted for humans in this legal ceremony must await further research.
28Further, it also seems as though it was expected that war drums, which, with flags and pennons, gave directions to the increasingly large armies in Spring and Autumn and Warring States times, would be consecrated with the blood of a sacrificed enemy, although Mark Edward Lewis cannot find evidence of such a military ritual being recorded as historical fact: it appears only in speeches of combatants in the Zuo zhuan as a reasonable or even likely possibility.54 Another leading sinologist, Timothy H. Barrett states “in fact there is no text known to me from any period of Chinese history that explicitly recommends the act [of human sacrifice].”55 Below, I shall adduce some evidence to dispute this assertion.
29Not infrequently the corpses of slain enemy, or their left-earless heads, were piled up on the battlefield into vast mound called a jingguan 京觀 ( “Viewing the capital”). One of the earliest mentions of this term is recorded in the Confucian canonical text, the Zuo zhuan under the 12th year of Duke Xuan of Lu (597 BCE), when a courtier recommends the ruler of the southern state of Chu erect such a mound be made out of the corpses of soldiers of the state of Jin, whom the Chu had just defeated. The ruler in the end decides not to proceed with such a grisly memorial.56 A passage in the later Spring and Autumn Annals of Lü Buwei (Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋), a text that was presented to the First Emperor of China before the establishment of the empire while he was still King Zheng of Qin, probably in 237 BCE, records how this was done and what the implications were for a defeat on the battlefield:
When Qi attacked Linqiu, Zhao sent Kong Qing at the head of a suicide squad to save it. He fought the army of Qi and inflicted a great defeat on them, in which the Qi general died. Kong Qing then gathered into two mounds (jing) the two thousand chariots and 30,000 corpses of the Qi army.
Ning Yue said to Kong Qing, ‘How unfortunate! It would have been better to let them take the corpses home in order to attack from within. I have learned that in antiquity those who were skilled at warfare would withdraw by one day’s march after the clamor of the conflict, to allow the enemy to gather up his corpses. Chariots and armor were used up in the conflict; the wealth of the storehouses and repositories would be consumed in burying the war dead. This is what ʹattacking from withinʹ means.’
‘What should be done if Qi does not gather its corpses?’ asked Kong Qing. Ning Yue replied, ‘Their first crime then would be that they fought and lost; their second crime, that they had left with all their men but did not return with all of them; and their third crime, that we gave them the corpses but they would not take them. On account of these three crimes the populace of Qi would hate its superiors. The superiors then would be at a loss to employ their subordinates, and the subordinates would be unable to serve their superiors. This is called ‘attacking them twice’.’57
30While Ning Yue’s knowledge of past military practice and precedent may be said to be a bit shaky, this quotation implies that there was a very close connection between war, ritual, and law in early China. Specifically, the types of capital punishments and bodily mutilation coupled with hard labor that were the standard method of punishing crimes in Warring States, Qin, and Han times,58 were believed to have originated in the military punishments inflicted by sage emperors on rebellious and recalcitrant powerful spirits at the beginning of time, starting with the Yellow Emperor. This belief was certainly held by Ban Gu, the author of the “Treatise on Punishments” of the Han shu (History of the Han Dynasty), the first written analysis in China on the development and theory of the law, who also argued that “punishments and penalties emulated the killing and destruction of Heaven’s thunder and lightning,”59 thus providing a conceptual link between the system of punishments and the religious ordering of the cosmos.60 For the most serious punishments armor and arms were used; for next most serious, they used ax and battleaxe—the ax that was used to decapitate the Qiang victims in the Shang and that was used in a military ritual in which a ruler gave his general the right to kill the enemy and execute his own soldiers without interference from the ruler or civil authorities; the middle-type of punishments were inflicted using knife and saw and then drill and chisel, which refers to the five mutilating punishments of shaving the head and facial whiskers, cutting off the nose, tattooing the forehead, cutting off the left lower leg, cutting off the right lower leg, and castration, all of which rendered the victim less than human;61 and the least severe punishments were inflicted with whip and rod.62
31Human sacrifice continued into the imperial period beyond the date that Mark Lewis notes, 383 BCE, when the King of Qin tried to ban the custom for all time.63 Human victims, young women, were sacrificed to accompany the First Emperor on his death in 210 BCE, as were young men and women, and one older woman aged about forty, on the death of the second ruler of the Kingdom of Nanyue in the second century BCE.64 The remains can be seen in the Museum built on the site of his mausoleum in downtown Guangzhou (Canton). Concubines continued to be sacrificed at the death of emperors right through the imperial period down through the last dynasty, the Qing, as Huang Zhanyue points out.
32In war, human sacrifice continued to be advocated in Chinese military manuals in later times, despite the opinions of Tim Barrett I alluded to above. The following are some examples:
33The first comes from the first military encyclopedia Shenji zhidi Taibo yin jing (Secret Contrivances for the Defeat of Enemies; the Manual of the White Planet) compiled by the Daoist Li Quan in the middle of the eighth century during the Tang dynasty.65 Here we find in section 58, chapter 5, that on reaching the border of enemy territory, the general sends out scouts to capture an enemy and he is forced to stand underneath the grand standard of the invading army. A ritual pronouncement is made by the leading general who claims that the enemy is lacking in the Dao, the Way or morality, and opposes the constancies of Heaven, and that he has been entrusted by the Emperor to destroy the inauspicious. The victim is forced to kneel under the standard and is cut in two at the waist (the most serious penalty that could be inflicted for the crime of treason, less serious than being decapitated and having the head exposed in the market place); the head portion is placed on the left side of the road and the leg portion is placed on the right. The blood is scooped up and used to consecrate the drums and the great standard that will be used to direct the invading army in the coming campaign; and the army then marches over the road between the head and the legs of the unfortunate victim, symbolically severing the enemy and assuring victory. This was called “sacrificing the enemy.”66
34My second example comes from the following dynasty, the Song, claimed by most historians to have been oriented towards civil virtues. Here we find XU Dong in his early eleventh-century military encyclopedia Huqian jing (The Tiger Seal Canon), likewise establishing the procedures at the beginning of a campaign.67 The flags erected at the centre of the general’s headquarters are clearly intended to generate and delineate a kind of axis mundi: “The five colors on the flags outside the headquarters tent follow Heaven and Earth68 and the Four Seasons,” he states. And the text continues with recommendations for raising different colored flags to imitate the changing manifestations of the cosmic qi as indicated by different colors of clouds:
As far as the colors of clouds are concerned, [when they appear] you should raise a flag: when you see green clouds, raise a green flag. The other [colors] should all be the same as this.
Quell Earth with green flags; quell fire with black flags; quell metal with red flags; quell water with yellow flags; quell wood with white flags. At the top of the banners or flags that are being used to quell, mark them with the design of a bear or tiger to symbolize their fierceness. Mark them with the design of a kun or cock to symbolize their aggressiveness. Mark them with the design of the sun, moon, stars, or constellations to imitate the heavenly patterns. Mark them with ghosts, spirits or cloud-qi to copy their ability to transform.
35Then, in a more lurid vein, Xu recommends the general:
Sit criminals down beneath white flags and kill them beneath black streamers. When you first capture enemy, cut out their hearts and use them to make sacrificial offerings to the flags. Smear their blood to consecrate the drums. Make the commands for your [army] follow what you have ordered. Therefore the Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals (in other words, the Zuo zhuan that we encountered earlier) states: ‘Apply paint to the banners and flags to awe their eyes. At night, light fires and beat the drums to awe their hearts.’
36For these reasons, the use of flags and banners is the foundation of a great army.
37While it is not possible at present to determine whether Tang and Song generals actually carried out the prescriptions recommended by the above two authors, it is certain that many of the weapons, tactics, and strategies they describe in their works were, in fact, adopted by the generals of their day. So it seems as though it was not inconceivable to the readers of their treatises that human sacrifice could be carried out in the army for important ritual purposes. The recommendation to practice human sacrifice is particularly notable in the case of the Song example, for the Song government and the Song emperors are renowned in history for their promotion of Confucian virtues and for setting a moral example to their people,69 this despite the fact that they were faced with three competing empires along their northern and north-western borders, the Liao, the Jin, and the Xixia. Historically speaking, the Song is considered to have begun to downplay martial prowess in favor of civil virtue, yet it was under their rule that the formula for gunpowder was first invented,70 that more than a million men were under arms out of a population of approximately one hundred million, and more than eighty percent of the state budget went to support the army.71
Conclusion
38To conclude briefly: as Barrett asserts at the beginning of his article, “No collective study of human sacrifice in the Old World can afford to ignore China, for it raises disturbing questions for any researcher.” There is much to be learned from the Chinese evidence of ritual in general, and human sacrifice in particular. However, I have not had the occasion in this article to expose my theoretical perspective. I have been strongly influenced by the work of the late Catherine Bell in her numerous writings, but particularly in her book Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice.72
39The second part of her book is an attempt at “critical theorizing.” She argues cogently and persuasively that ritual does not consist of “isolated, paradigmatic acts,” but should be situated within the social life of the community or culture as a whole. Here she draws on the work of Marshall Sahlins and Pierre Bourdieu with their exploration of “social praxis” and the “theory of practice.”73 So she chooses the term “ritualization” as a “strategic way of acting” and proceeds to examine how this differs from other forms of acting or social praxis. Through a careful analysis, she demonstrates that ritualization appears to be a particular way in which the socialized body interacts with its environment, especially, but not exclusively the social environment, to give the latter its particular structure in a given society. It is true, she argues in part 3, that ritual acts as a form of social control with respect to belief, ideology, legitimation, and power, but all the latter concepts are not imposed from above, and are negotiated in the interplay of social practice. In that interplay, individual selves are created and all actors in society appropriate, misinterpret, consent, and resist the distribution of power in their society. What, therefore, I have not been able to accomplish in this paper, for lack of sufficient evidence, is to explore how human sacrifice in early China was embedded in contemporary beliefs and social practices.
Notes de bas de page
1 By emphasizing “doing things” in ritual, Jean-Louis Durand is probably drawing on the insights of C. Lévi-Strauss (The Naked Man: Introduction to a Science of Mythology, vol. 4), and others; see C. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, New York, 1992, p. 110-111. A. Thote likewise notes with respect to interpreting the religious meanings of funeral practices in relationship to beliefs, “if the rites associated with death include gestures, words, songs and various material manifestations and, as such, form an essential part of the religion of the times, the archaeological approach has only the data from the material culture to go on, that is the arrangement and content of isolated tombs and cemeteries” (A. Thote, “Shang and zhou Funeral Practices: Interpretation of Material Vestiges,” in J. Lagerwey, M. Kalinowski (eds.), Early Chinese Religion Part One: Shang through Han (1250 BC-220 AD), Leiden, 2009, p. 103).
2 See, inter alia, V. Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, Ithaca, 1967; The Drums of Affliction: a Study of Religious Processes among the Ndembu of Zambia, Oxford, 1968. Turner also had the advantage of being accompanied by his wife who could participate in women’s rituals and thus gain insight into the women’s perspective on the ritual performances of the Ndembu.
3 BanGu 班固 and BanZhao 班昭, Han shu 漢書, Beijing, juan 30, p. 1701-1784.
4 Han shu, juan 30, p. 1709-1710.
5 For a complete translation of these texts, see R.D. Sawyer, The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China, Boulder, 1993.
6 These are the Book of Rites (Li ji 禮記), the Institutes of Zhou (Zhou guan 周官 or Zhou li 周 禮) and the Rites and Ceremonies (Yi li 儀禮).
7 See, for example, G. Boileau, “Some Ritual Elaborations on Cooking and Sacrifice in Late Zhou and Western Han Texts,” Early China 23-24 (1998-1999), p. 89-123; M. Puett, “The Offering of Food and the Creation of Order: The Practice of Sacrifice in Early China,” in R. Sterckx (ed.), Of Tripod and Palate: Food, Politics, and Religion in Traditional China, New York-Basingstoke, 2005, p. 75-95; M.-C. Poo, “Ritual and Ritual Texts in Early China,” in J. Lagerwey, M. Kalinowski (eds.), Early Chinese Religion Part One: Shang through Han (1250 BC-220 AD), vol. 1, Leiden, 2009, p. 281-313.
8 See G. Vankeerberghen’s essay, in the present volume.
9 Of course, a number of the texts retrieved from tombs since 1970 apparently have no equivalent in the Han shu bibliography. Either they had passed out of circulation and were lost before the middle of the Han, or they were particular records of individuals, as are the Baoshan divination texts: see C.A. Cook, Death in Ancient China: The Tale of One Man’s Journey, Leiden, 2006, or they were of insufficient interest or importance to have been deposited in the imperial library. The retrieval of texts from tombs has been one of the most exciting types of archaeological finds and has enabled scholars to begin the process of rewriting the history of many aspects of early Chinese culture, including philosophy, law, divination practices, and popular beliefs and practices.
10 Thote notes that the Xibeigang royal cemetery complex near the late Shang capital of Anyang, Henan, has been the most extensively excavated Shang burial complex. See Thote, o.c. (n. 1). For the Western Zhou, approximately seven lineage cemeteries have been (mostly partially) excavated; for example, the Yan state cemetery at Liulihe, 43 km southwest of Beijing. See Beijing Shi Wenwu yanjiusuo 北京市文物研究所, Liulihe Xi-Zhou Yan guo mudi 琉璃河西 周燕國墓地 1973-1977, Beijing, 1995, and the extensive analyses in L. Von Falkenhausen, Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius (1000-250 BC): The Archaeological Evidence, Los Angeles, 2006. All the sites reveal great discrepancies in social status between the entombed individuals: many high status persons were buried in tombs of sometimes great size with inner and outer coffins, accompanying horse and chariot burials, and with numerous grave offerings, most notably bronze vessels of various shapes and quantities, and including sacrificed humans, whereas those of middle range status had only inner coffins and fewer offerings, while the lowest status were buried with few or no offerings and without either inner or outer coffin.
11 For the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 C.E.), one discovery stands out: the cemetery of criminals buried in shaft graves in parallel rows with usually only a tile scratched with the name of the deceased and the criminal status held at the time of death. See Zhongguo shehui KexuEyuan Kaogu yanjiusuo 中國社會科學院考古研究所 (ed.), Han Wei Luoyang gucheng nanjiao Dong-Han xingtu mudi 漢魏洛陽古城南郊東漢刑徒墓地, Beijing, 2007.
12 L. Von Falkenhausen, “Mortuary Behavior in Pre-imperial Qin: A Religious Interpretation,” in J. Lagerwey (ed.), Religion and Chinese Society, vol. 1, Hong Kong-Paris, 2004, p. 109-172.
13 See J. Rawson, “Ancient Chinese Ritual as Seen in the Material Record,” in J.P. Mcdermott (ed.), State and Court Ritual in China, Cambridge, 1999, p. 20-49.
14 See chapter 19 “Discourse of Ritual Principles,” J. Knoblock (trans.), Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, vol. 3, Books 17-32, Stanford, 1994, p. 49-73; P.R. Goldin, Rituals of the Way: The Philosophy of Xunzi, Peru, 1999.
15 J. Laidlaw, “On Theatre and Theory: Reflections on Ritual in Imperial Chinese Politics,” Mcdermott (ed.), o.c. (n. 13), p. 411-413, quote on p. 413.
16 R.L. Grimes, Beginnings in Ritual Studies, Columbia, 1995, p. 5.
17 Of course, as recent theorists of ritual have pointed out, there are perhaps as many different interpretations of a rite as there are participants.
18 D.N. KEightley, “Early Chinese Civilization in China: Reflections on How It Became Chinese,” in P.S. Ropp (ed.), Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilization, Berkeley, 1990, p. 15-54. Our Fig. 1 is drawn from p. 18: drawing of the decor of an Eastern Chou (late 6th to 5th cent. BCE) hu wine vase, excavated in 1965 at Baihuatan, Chengdu, Szechwan. The present location is unknown.
19 Cf. C.D. Weber, Chinese Pictorial Bronzes of the Late Chou Period, Ascona, 1968, p. 183-206; J. So, “The Inlaid Bronzes of the Warring States Period,” in WenFong (ed.), The Great Bronze Age of China: An Exhibition from the People’s Republic of China, New York, 1980, p. 316-317.
20 For the latter ritual, see J. Riegel, “Early Chinese Target Magic,” Journal of Chinese Religions 10 (1982), p. 1-18.
21 For this last point, see below.
22 For gestures and the exfoliations of the body in ritual, see J. Gil, Métamorphoses du corps, Paris, 1985. It should also be remembered that this vessel would have been used in ritual performances. Perhaps it is even represented in the drinking ceremony depicted in the scene in the third register from the top, at the right hand side by the handle, sitting on a wooden or metal stand. So the decor is self-referential in that the surface of the vessel reveals the time, spatial positioning, function and activity of its entire body-self. In this case the vessel is being used in a ritual being performed by males, even though it is likely that the contents may have been prepared by both males and females.
23 HUANG Zhanyue 黃展岳, Gudai rensheng renxun tonglun 古代人牲人殉通論, Beijing, 2004, p. 304. Cf. Z. Huang, “Human Sacrifice and Ancient Chinese Society,” Archaeological Review from Cambridge 8.1 (1989), p. 76-80.
24 Some women took their sense of moral purity so seriously that they committed suicide after an unrelated man touched them or even spoke to them. Women in elite families in late imperial China were expected to be completely claustrated in their inner chambers and only to have communication with immediate family members. Cf. M.H. Sommer, Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China, Stanford, 2000; J. Theiss, Disgraceful Matters: The Politics of Chastity in Eighteenth-century China, Berkeley, 2004. Nevertheless, other scholars have shown that women were much more visible, mobile, and active and engaged members of their society than the precepts of Confucian ideology would lead us to believe. See, for example, D. Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China, Stanford, 1994, and the essays in Grace S. Fong and Ellen Widmer (eds.), The Inner Quarters and Beyond: Women Writers from Ming through Qing, Leiden, 2010.
25 See, for example, Weijing Lu, True to Her Word: The Faithful Maiden Cult in Late Imperial China, Stanford; P.S. Ropp, P. Zamperini, H.T. Zurndorfer (eds.), Passionate Women: Female Suicide in Late Imperial China, Leiden, 2001.
26 Zhongguo qingtongqi quanji 中國青銅器全集, Zhongguo qingtongqi quanji bianji weiyuan hui 中國青銅器全集編輯委員會 (ed.), vol. 14, Beijing, 1993, plates 13-20.
27 R. Des Rotours, “Quelques notes sur l’anthropophagie en Chine,” T’oung Pao Series 2, 50.4-5 (1963), p. 386-487, identifies four types of cannibalism in China: 1. Cannibalism resulting from famine, itself the result of wars or bad weather. 2. Cannibalism for ritual reasons, including vengeance. 3. Cannibalism for culinary preferences, usually found only in later literary novels. 4. Cannibalism for medical reasons, to effect a cure or to acquire courage (by eating the victim’s liver, where the Chinese thought courage was located [p. 387]). Cf. ibid., “Encore quelques notes sur l’anthropophagie en Chine,” T’oung Pao Series 2, 54.1-3 (1968), p. 1-49. For a review of Western language scholarship on the topic of this essay and on cannibalism, see T.H. Barrett, “Human Sacrifice and Self-Sacrifice in China: A Century of Revelations,” in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Strange World of Human Sacrifice, Leuven, 2007, p. 237-257. For works specifically on cannibalism, see Key Rey Chong, Cannibalism in China, Lakewood, 1990; and for its occurrence during the Cultural Revolution, see J. Gittings, Real China: From Cannibalism to Karaoke, New York-London, 1996; Gang yue, The Mouth that Begs: Hunger, Cannibalism, and the Politics of Eating in Modern China, Durham, 1999; D. Sutton, “Consuming Counter-revolution: The Ritual and Culture of Cannibalism in Wuxuan, Guangxi, China, May to July 1968,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 37 (1996), p. 136-174.
28 W.C. Cooper, N. Sivin, “Man as Medicine: Pharmacological and Ritual Aspects of Traditional Therapy Using Drugs Derived from the Human Body,” in S. Nakayama, N. Sivin (eds.), Chinese Science: Explorations of an Ancient Tradition, Cambridge-London, 1973, p. 203-272.
29 Huang, Gudai rensheng renxun tonglun, o.c. (n. 23) p. 9 sq.
30 Huang is following the standard Chinese conception of the evolution of civilizations derived from the nineteenth-century theories of L.H. Morgan, Ancient Society, or, Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization, Chicago, 1877, and F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, in the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan, New York, 1972. In contemporary Western anthropological terms, these cultures appear to be increasingly stratified and the period can be characterized as developing from simple to complex chiefdoms. See Li Liu, The Chinese Neolithic: Trajectories to Early States, Cambridge-New York, 2004.
31 Huang, Gudai rensheng renxun tonglun, o.c. (n. 23), p. 11.
32 Ibid., p. 13.
33 Huang, Gudai rensheng renxun tonglun, o.c. (n. 23), p. 14.
34 A. Testart, Les Morts d’accompagnement. La servitude volontaire I, Paris, 2004, in a highly erudite and broad-ranging comparative analysis, holds that accompanying deaths are not examples of human sacrifice. I have serious reservations concerning his interpretation of the concept of “sacrifice” and their associated rituals, especially in relation to ancestor worship, but this is not the place to critique his interpretations. He also relies on somewhat dated scholarship for his Chinese evidence. It is important to remember that a dead person in the ancient Chinese context was not just a dead man or woman, but a newly dead ancestor, whose potential behavior towards the living, especially his/her descendants was unpredictable, and could be dangerous, even deadly. For a recent analysis of the implications of ancient Chinese mortuary ritual, and the fruitful suggestion that the living were in an agonistic relationship with the newly dead, see M.J. Puett, To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China. Cambridge, MA, 2002.
35 Falkenhausen, Chinese Society, o.c. (n. 10), p. 94.
36 P. L.-M. SErruys, “Studies in the Language of the Shang Oracle Inscriptions,” T’oung Pao 60.1- 3 (1974), p. 12-120. The work under review is Chang Tsung-tung, Die Kult der Shang-Dynastie im Spiegel der Orakelinschriften (Eine paläographische Studie zur Religion im archaischen China), Wiesbaden, 1971.
37 Barrett, l.c. (n. 27), p. 252.
38 Qiu Xigui, “On the Burning of Human Victims and the Fashioning of Clay Dragons in Order to Seek Rain as Seen in the Shang Dynasty Oracle-Bone Inscriptions,” V.K. Fowler (trans.), Early China 9-10 (1983-85), p. 290-306; Chen Mengjia 陳夢家, Yinxu buci zongshu 殷虛卜辭綜述, Beijing, 1956; E. H. Schafer, “Ritual Exposure in Ancient China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 14 (1951), p. 130-184; cf. R.D.S. yates, “War, Food Shortages, and Relief Measures in Early China,” in L. Newman, W. Crossgrove, R.W. Kates, S. Millman, R. Matthews (eds.), Hunger in History: Food Shortage, Poverty, and Deprivation, New York, 1990, p. 128-157.
39 Hu Houxuan 胡厚宣, “Zhongguo nuli shehui de renxun he renji (xiapian)” 中國奴隸社會的 人殉和人祭 (下篇), Wenwu 文物 1974.8, p. 56-67, 72.
40 Yao Xiaosui 姚孝遂, “Shang dai de fulu” 商代的俘虜, Guwenzi yanjiu 古文字研究 1 (1979), p. 337-390.
41 Yates, l.c. (n. 38), p. 153. For the myth in which the founder of the Shang dynasty, Tang, offered himself as a sacrifice to the supreme deity, Shangdi, in order to terminate a seven-year drought, see S. Allan, “Drought, Human Sacrifice and the Mandate of Heaven in a Lost Text from the Shang shu,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 47.3 (1984), p. 523-539.
42 For example, one inscription raises the possibility of one or three thousand men being sacrificed on a given occasion (Serruys, l.c. [n. 36] p. 70).
43 For human sacrificial victims and sacrificial dogs, as well as victims accompanying the death of the Shang dynasty’s greatest queen, Fu Hao, see Zhongguo Shehui Kexueyuan Kaogu Yanjiusuo (ed.), Yinxu Fuhao mu, Beijing, 1980, p. 8-9.
44 Huang, Gudai rensheng renxun tonglun, o.c. (n. 23), p. 42-167.
45 In fact, the technical term in the Shang oracle bone inscriptions for the beheading/decapitating ritual was the word fa 伐. This later came to be used for an attack on an enemy.
46 Cf. D. Schaberg, A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography, Cambridge, 2001, and Wai-yee LI, The Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography, Cambridge, 2007.
47 F. Kierman, Jr., “Phases and Modes of Combat in Early China,” in F. Kierman, J.K. Fairbank (eds.), Chinese Ways in Warfare, Cambridge, 1974, p. 28 with emendations; J. Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 5: The Ch’un ts’ew with The Tso chuen, Hong Kong, 1960, text 379, trans., p. 381. M.E. Lewis, Sanctioned Violence in Early China, Albany, 1990, p. 17, understands the last part of the passage somewhat differently, “In the sacrifices one takes the meat from the sacrifices in the ancestral temple, and in warfare [before setting out on campaign] one receives meat from the sacrifices at the she altar.”
48 For sacrifice in later Chinese religious practice, see T. Kleeman, “Licentious Cults and Bloody Victuals: Sacrifice, Reciprocity, and Violence in Traditional China,” Asia Major 3rd series, 7.1 (1994), p. 185-211.
49 G. Shelach, “The Qiang and the Question of Human Sacrifice in the Late Shang Period,” Asian Perspectives 35.1 (1996), p. 1-26; cf. Lewis, o.c. (n. 47), p. 26-27.
50 For a study of the conceptual relations between men and animals in ancient Chinese texts, see R. Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China, Albany, 2002. In later times, it was necessary for sacrificial animals to be clean and pure before they were killed in sacrifice. The officiant also had to undergo a process of abstinence and purification before he/she could perform the ritual. This is similar to practices in ancient Greece. Whether this was equally true in Shang times is not known, nor is it known who actually performed the executions. Was it a priest, a specially-designated executioner, or the king himself?
51 Shang ancestors could either assist their descendants or could also cause them troubles or injuries. Hence the necessity for making divinations to determine what ancestors or spirits needed to be propitiated with what kind of sacrificial offering.
52 In 537 BCE (Qin shi biannian 秦史編年, WANG Yundu 王雲度 (ed.), Xi’an, 1986, p. 34), Duke Jing of Qin had 166 human sacrificial victims accompany him to his outsize grave, some of them willing followers who were given coffins and grave offerings, others unwilling who were interred with little or no ceremony. The entire funeral was far beyond what was deemed ritually correct. See Von Falkenhausen, l.c. (n. 12), p. 117-20; R.D.S. Yates, “The Rise of Qin and the Military Conquest of the Warring States,” in J. Portal (ed.), The First Emperor, Cambridge-London, 2007, p. 33. Marquis Yi of the small southern state of Zeng that was allied with Chu, but which appears almost not at all in the transmitted historical records, had twenty-one young female attendants, probably mostly musicians, buried with him in approximately 433 BCE when he died between the ages of 42 and 45. The women apparently were aged from between 13 and 26 years old. See Zeng hou Yi mu 曾侯乙墓, Hubei sheng bowuguan 湖北省博物館 (ed.), vol. 1, Beijing, 1989, p. 56; for illustrations of the skeletons, skulls, and pelvic bones of the victims and tomb owner, see vol. 2, plates CCLXXXIII-CCXCI.
53 For a discussion of the system of covenants, see R.D.S. Yates, “Making War and Making Peace in Early China,” in K.A. Raaflaub (ed.), War and Peace in the Ancient World, Malden-Oxford, 2007, p. 44-46. For a discussion of covenant texts that have been recovered by archaeological excavation, see S. Weld, “The Covenant Texts from Houma and Wenxian,” in E.L. Shaughnessy (ed.), New Sources of Early Chinese History: an Introduction to the Reading of Inscriptions and Manuscripts, Berkeley, 1997, p. 125-160. The Houma primary texts on jade tablets have been published as Houma mengshu 侯馬盟書, Shanxi sheng wenwu gongzuo weiyuan hui 山西省文物工作委員會 (ed.), Beijing; revised edition Zhang Han 張頷, Tao Zhenggang 陶正剛, and Zhang Shouzhong 張守中, Taiyuan, 2006.
54 Lewis, o.c. (n. 43), p. 27-28. Lewis also observes that one form of capital punishment, the chopping up of traitors, pickling their meat into a sauce, and sharing it among loyal courtiers and soldiers, was another form of human sacrifice, which also appears in early myths. See Lewis, o.c. (n. 43), p. 28 and chapter 5.
55 Barrett, o.c. (n. 27), p. 239.
56 Chunqiu jing zhuan jijie 春秋經傳集解, vol. 2, Shanghai, 1988, p. 590; Du Yu’s 杜預 comment note 152, p. 603.
57 Lüshi chunqiu 15/6.4, J. Knoblock and J. Riegel (trans.), The Annals of Lü Buwei: a Complete Translation and Study, Stanford, 2000, p. 361-362.
58 Administrative errors and malfeasance by officials were usually punished with fines. For an overview of the late pre-imperial and early imperial legal system, see R.D.S. Yates, “Chinese Law, History of: Eastern Zhou, Ch’in State and Empire,” in S.N. Katz (ed.), The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History, vol. 1, Oxford, 2009, p. 406-412; “Chinese Law, History of: Han Empire (206 BC-AD 220),” vol. 1, p. 412-418; and “Mutilation in Chinese Law,” vol. 4, p. 196-197.
59 Han shu, 23.1079; A.F.P. Hulsewé (trans.), Remnants of Han Law, vol. 1: Introductory Studies and Annotated Translation of Chapters 22 and 23 of the History of the Former Han Dynasty, Leiden, 1955, p. 322.
60 However, I should note that the most eminent British historian of pre-modern Chinese law, G. Maccormack, in a recent essay, “On the Relationship between Law and Religion in Early China: Some Issues,” Xingda lishi xuebao 興大歷史學報 18 (2007), p. 1-20, denies that law was embedded in religious practice in early China. I think that the evidence does not support his contention. Further, it is certainly possible that early Chinese considered capital punishment as a form of human sacrifice, since the executions took the same form in both practices, cutting off the head and cutting in two at the waist. For the relationship between capital punishment and human sacrifice in contemporary times, see B.K. Smith, “Capital Punishment and Human Sacrifice,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 68.1 (2000), p. 3-25.
61 For mutilated individuals conceived of as being “non-humans,” see R.D.S. yates, “Slavery in Early China: A Socio-cultural Perspective,” Journal of East Asian Archaeology, 3.1-2 (2002), p. 283-331, at p. 299.
62 In fact, the punishment of cutting off the lower leg appeared as early as the Shang dynasty.
Huang Zhanyue, “Yin dai de yuexing” 殷代的刖刑, Kaogu 考古 1973.2, p. 108-117, at p. 91, has identified a number of graphs in the Shang oracle bones that represent this punishment and even cites the case of an individual who had suffered that punishment and then was interred as a human victim in a grave.
63 Lewis, o.c. (n. 43), p. 27.
64 Guangzhou shi wenwu guanli weiyuan hui 廣州市文物管理委員會, Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan kaogu yanjiusuo 中國社會科學院考古研究所, and Guangdong sheng bowuguan 廣 東省博物馆, Xi-Han Nanyue wang mu 西漢南越王墓, vol. 1, Beijing, 1991, p. 17-18, 254-259.
65 The Tang was renowned for its martial value system; it should be remembered that Daoists and Buddhists had ostensibly given up blood sacrifices, as Terry Kleeman argues.
66 Li Quan 李筌, Shenji zhidi Taibo yin jing 神機制敵太白陰經 (Zhongguo bingshu jicheng 中 國兵書集成 ed.), juan 5, pian 58, Shenyang-Beijing, 1988, p. 555.
67 Xu Dong 許洞, Huqian jing, juan 7, section 69 Zhongguo bingshu jicheng, vol. 6, Shenyang-Beijing, 1992, p. 138-139.
68 A textual variant reads, “the qi of Earth.”
69 P.B. Ebrey, M. Bickford (eds.), Emperor Huizong and Late Northern Song China: The Politics of Culture and the Culture of Politics, Cambridge, 2006.
70 J. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 5, part 7: The Gunpowder Epic, Cambridge, 1986.
71 P.J. Smith, “Do We Know as Much as We Need to about the Song Economy?” Journal of Sung-Yuan Studies 24 (1994), p. 327-333.
72 C.M. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, New York, 1992.
73 M. Sahlins, Culture and Practical Reason, Chicago, 1976; P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. R. Nice, Cambridge, 1977.
Auteur
McGill University
(PhD Harvard, 1980) is James McGill Professor of East Asian Studies and History and Classical Studies, at McGill University. He was Chair of the International Society for the Study of Early China (2003-2010). He is a specialist in Chinese history, concentrating on early China, with a focus on the histories of science and technology, law, and women. With J. Needham, he published vol. V (6) of Science and Civilisation in China. He is currently working on the Qin and early Han legal texts from zhangjiashan : a co-edited volume, The Birth of Empire : The State of Qin Revisited will be published in 2013.
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
Comparer en histoire des religions antiques
Controverses et propositions
Claude Calame et Bruce Lincoln (dir.)
2012
Sacrifices humains
Perspectives croisées et représentations
Pierre Bonnechere et Renaud Gagné (dir.)
2013
Le porc en Égypte ancienne
Mythes et histoire à l’origine des interdits alimentaires
Youri Volokhine
2014
Fabriquer du divin
Constructions et ajustements de la représentation des dieux dans l’Antiquité
Nicole Belayche et Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge (dir.)
2015
Henri Hubert et la sociologie des religions
Sacré, Temps, Héros, Magie
Jean-François Bert (dir.)
2015
Dévotion et légitimation
Patronages sacrés dans l’Europe des Habsbourg
Marie-Élizabeth Ducreux (dir.)
2016
Démons iraniens
Actes du colloque international organisé à l’Université de Liège les 5 et 6 février 2009 à l’occasion des 65 ans de Jean Kellens
Philippe Swennen (dir.)
2015
Aux sources des liturgies indo-iraniennes
Céline Redard, Juanjo Ferrer-Losilla, Hamid Moein et al. (dir.)
2020