Page 340 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

The Wide View (II) 287

never heard) was campaigning north through Syria and erecting
his boundary stone by the Euphrates, the first emperor of the
Shang dynasty had led his troops into the valley of the Yellow

River from their homelands in the south and cast, and had over­
thrown the kings of the Hsia dynasty. But it was an uneasy king­
dom into which the Shang emperors had come, constantly ex­
posed to the marauding campaigns of the nomads to the north
and west, and by no means always secure against the attacks of

kinsfolk, and nominal vassals, in the east and south. The score
of emperors in a score of decades was proof enough that kingship
was a hazardous business; and five times the capital had been
transferred to another town under the threat of invasion. Now
there was to be an end to the movement of capitals. The Great
City of Shang, with its wall and river moat, would be an im­

pregnable bulwark against the western barbarians.
As the buildings of the city rise, the visits of the emperor
and his court become more frequent. The ancestor tablets are
now installed in the palace temple, and the ancestors must, of
course, be consulted in all affairs of state. And the bronzeworkers,

too, have set up their foundry in the city, and there are always
sacrificial and ceremonial vessels to be commissioned from them.
Bronze is not a new thing in China. Though tradition says
that the Hsia kings of the previous dynasty had no bronze, and
though the coolies and peasants even today use stone tools and
weapons, the knowledge of bronzeworking had reached the coun­

try in the early years of the present dynasty two centuries and
more ago. And the native bronzesmiths, in addition to turning
out weapons and ornaments for the nobles and their bodyguards,
harness for their horses, and ornamental fitments for their

chariots, are becoming adept at casting in bronze the compli­
cated shapes of the ceremonial vessels, which, even within the
memory of man, had previously been made of clay.
The bronze vessels are made for the ancestors, who demand
and deserve the best of everything. In the family temples, of the
imperial family as well as of the nobles, offerings of food and wine

must regularly be made to each of the many ancestors, even
when no especial favors are required. (When they are, the offer­
ings will be supplemented by sacrifices of animals or of slaves.)