SHAMANISM EXPRESSED IN EARLY CHINESE BRONZES

Fig 1

Authors such as Sarah Allan (The Shape of the Turtle 1991) and K C Chang (Art, Myth and Ritual 1983) have written very persuasively about the Shamanistic roots of Chinese Bronze Age culture and their writing has stimulated a number of thoughts which relate to three unusual bronze pieces which I have had in my collection for a number of years.

At the centre of bronze age life in China was a reverence for, and a fear of, the ancestors. Dead men exerted tremendous power over the living. Vast amounts of time and energy were given to divination practices by shamans, to ensure that the appropriate offerings were made to the spirits of the ancestors. Most of the nations resources were directed to sustaining an auspicious link with those beyond the grave. If the people drifted away from this aim it was believed that their security as a nation was under threat. Connection with the ancestors was seen as giving cohesion to society and maintaining harmony between heaven and earth. The shaman kept the boundary at the interface between these two worlds.

Chang quotes a very interesting 4th century BC text which talks of a myth of the severance of heaven/earth communication.

“Anciently men and spirits did not intermingle. At that time there were certain persons who were so perspicacious, single-minded, and reverential that their understanding enabled them to make meaningful distinction of what lies above and what lies below, and their insight to illumine what is distant and profound. Therefore the spirits would descend into them. The possessors of such powers were, if men, called (shamans), and if women called (shamanesses). It is they who supervised the positions of the spirits and at the ceremonies, sacrificed to them, and otherwise handled religious matters. As a consequence, the spheres of the divine and the profane were kept distinct. The spirits sent down blessings on the people, and accepted from them their offerings. There were no natural calamities.
In the degenerate time of ancestor Shao-hao virtue was thrown into disorder. Men and spirits became intermingled, with each household indiscriminately performing for itself the religious observances which had hitherto been conducted by the shamans. As a consequence, men lost their reverence for the spirits, the spirits violated the rules of men, and natural calamities arose. Hence the successor of Shao-hao appointed governors to determine the proper place of the spirits and the proper place of men.” (ie: the shamans were reinstated)

This myth is a very important textual reference to shamanism in ancient China and it provides a crucial clue to the central role that shamans played. This could be interpreted today as shamans represented the people at the boundary of this world and the spirit world, protecting society from a huge perceived threat, which if the rituals weren’t kept and the spirits respected, might lead to disaster. They saw the spirits as where all the wisdom and power lay. In the past everyone had had access to that wisdom and power through the shamans. “Overrule the shamans at your peril” was the message. They alone had the psychological muscle to keep a balance between the two worlds.

Our greatest insights into shamanism in ancient China come from artefacts of two types, oracle bone inscriptions and representations of animals in art. During the third and second millennia BC the shoulder blades of oxen were used for divination. Questions were put to the ancestors, and then the bones were heated and the cracks, that appeared, interpreted by the shaman. The king, who was the head shaman, would turn to his ancestors for confirmation or approval before undertaking such actions as building a new town, engaging in a battle, going on a hunt or a journey, or performing a ritual in a particular way. He might ask the ancestors about his fortune in the coming week, about a dream he had had, the birth of a child or a disease. This gave security to the king and the nation – they were part of a greater scheme of things.

But how did the ancient Chinese see contact with the ancestors being made? The inscriptions on the bones often contain the word pin, which in later texts is translated as “a guest” or “to be a guest” and it is placed between the word for “king” or “shaman” and the word for “ancestor”, and the sense is that the king or shaman makes the journey to the ancestors to make contact with the spirit world, rather than the other way round, and the shaman becomes a guest of the ancestor.
Other insights come from the art of the time, and particularly from the way animals are depicted. On the bronze ritual vessels, that were used for food or wine at ritual events in honour of the ancestors, or were placed in tombs to nourish the deceased on their journey to the spirit world, were representations of a variety of animals which were like and unlike animals that we know and there are early texts which speak of the function these animals were thought to play in the shamanistic process. In a text dated 606 BC there is a clear indication that images of animals were displayed on bronzes so that living people would know which animals were helping people to cross from earth to heaven and which animals were unhelpful or even harmful. So we are told that among the animals are some which are capable of helping the shaman on their journey to the place of spirits and that the images of these animals were cast in bronze for all to see. We also read that the helping animals were referred to as “armour” indicating some protective role in the communication process between earth and heaven.