Matai Shang

“ Answer me, Kulan Tith—I have asked you a question."
"Three women came with the Father of Therns," replied Kulan Tith. "Phaidor, his daughter, and two who were reported to be her slaves. If these be Thuvia of Ptarth and Dejah Thoris of Helium I did not know it—I have seen neither. But if they be, then shall they be returned to you on the morrow."
As he spoke he looked straight at Matai Shang, not as a devotee should look at a high priest, but as a ruler of men looks at one to whom he issues a command. ”

“ Why had the sight of that evil countenance not warned me to greater caution? Why had I permitted the rapid development of new situations to efface the recollection of that menacing danger? But, alas, vain regret would not erase the calamity that had befallen.
Once again had Dejah Thoris fallen into the clutches of that archfiend, Thurid, the black dator of the First Born. Again was all my arduous labor gone for naught. Now I realized the cause of the rage that had been writ so large upon the features of Matai Shang and the cruel pleasure that I had seen upon the face of Phaidor. ”

“ It is not quite so vague as T'ien, which seems to be more of an abstraction, while Shang Ti is a genuinely personal God. Reference to T'ien is usually associated with fate or destiny, calamities, blessings, prayers for help, etc. The commandments of T'ien are hard to obey; He is compassionate, to be feared, unjust, and cruel. Shang Ti lives in heaven, walks, leaves tracks on the ground, enjoys the sweet savour of sacrifice, approves or disapproves of conduct, deals with rewards and punishments in a more particular way, and comes more actually into touch with the human race. ”

“ By-and-by Miss Tertia got up and said she was going, whereupon her sister rose to take leave also; but Mr. Shang asked her not to be in a hurry, and requested the elder to assist in persuading her. “You needn’t hurry,” said she to Miss Quarta; and accordingly the latter remained chatting with Mr. Shang without reserve, and finally told him she was a fox. However, Mr. Shang was so occupied with her beauty, that he didn’t pay any heed to that; but she added, “And my sister is very dangerous; she has already killed three people. Any one bewitched by her has no chance of escape. ”

“ Shang took his advice and no help was sent. When the messenger returned without success T‘an was very angry and showed it by putting Fêng Chi to death. He also began to talk of surrendering to Ts‘ao. Soon spies brought news of this to Shang and again Shên P‘ei was called in. Said he, “If he goes over to Ts‘ao they will both attack Ch‘ichou and we shall be in great danger.” Finally Shên P‘ei and Su Yu were left to take care of the defence of the city and Yüan Shang marched his army to the rescue of his brother.
“Who dares lead the van?” said Yüan Shang. ”

“ Treat us as clods, as deaf and blind! And then we will venture to ask you to instruct us."
"I have no doctrine," replied Shang. "I am perfectly unconscious of possessing any special power. Nevertheless, there is one point which bears upon the matter, and I will try and explain it to you. Lately, two of your number passed a night in my cottage, and I overheard them expatiate upon the great fame and influence of Mr. Fan; saying how he held men's lives in his hand, and how he could enrich the poor and impoverish the rich. ”

“ When T‘an heard of the inadequate force sent and their destruction he was very wrath and roundly abused Fêng Chi. Fêng replied, “Let me write to my lord and pray him to come himself.”
So Fêng Chi wrote and the letter was sent. When it arrived Shang again consulted Shên P‘ei who said, “Kuo T‘u, your elder brother’s adviser, is very guileful. Formerly he left without discussion because Ts‘ao was on the border. If Ts‘ao be defeated there will certainly be an attempt on you. The better plan is to withhold assistance and use Ts‘ao’s hand to destroy your rival.” ”

“ The fourth division of the Book of History deals with the decadence of the Hsia rulers and their final displacement in B.C. 1766 by T'ang the Completer, founder of the Shang dynasty. By B.C. 1122, the Shang sovereigns had similarly lapsed from the kingly qualities of their founder to even a lower level of degradation and vice. Then arose one of the purest and most venerated heroes of Chinese history, popularly known by his canonisation as Wên Wang. He was hereditary ruler of a principality in the modern province of Shensi, and in B.C. 1144 he was denounced as dangerous to the throne. ”

“ It was not that Heaven had any private partiality for the lord of Shang;—it simply gave its favour to pure virtue.* It was not that Shang sought (the allegiance of) the lower people;—the people simply turned to pure virtue. Where (the sovereign's) virtue is pure, his enterprizes are all fortunate; where his virtue is wavering and uncertain, his enterprizes are all unfortunate. ”

“ When all the princes with their hosts were assembled, the king reviewed the hosts, and made the following declaration:—'Oh! ye multitudes of the west, hearken all to my words.
'I have heard that the good man, doing good, finds the day insufficient; and that the evil man, doing evil, also finds the day insufficient. Now Shâu, the king of Shang, with strength pursues his lawless way. He has driven away the timeworn sires, and cultivates intimacies with wicked men. ”

“ Now Shâu, the king of Shang, follows only the words of his wife. In his blindness he has neglected the sacrifices which he ought to offer, and makes no response (for the favours that he has received) ;* he has also cast off his paternal and maternal relations, not treating them properly. They are only the vagabonds from all quarters, loaded with crimes, whom he honours and exalts, whom he employs and trusts, making them great officers and high nobles, so that they can tyrannize over the people, and exercise their villainies in the cities of Shang. ”

“ Confusion of ideas and paucity of primitive language lead to personification and worship of a thing or being in which a spirit has taken up its abode in place of or in addition to worship of the spirit itself. Thus Heaven (T’ien) itself came to be personified and worshipped in addition to Shang Ti, the Emperor who had gone to Heaven, and who was considered as the chief ruler in the spiritual world. The worship of Shang Ti was in existence before that of T’ien was introduced. ”

“ By this method new cities were provided with urban, refined people and, most important, with skilled craftsmen and businessmen who assisted in building the cities and in keeping them alive. Some scholars believe that many resettled Shang urbanites either were or became businessmen; incidentally, the same word "Shang" means "merchant", up to the present time. The people of the Shang capital lived on and even attempted a revolt in collaboration with some Chou people. The Chou rulers suppressed this revolt, and then [Pg 32] transferred a large part of this population to Loyang. ”

“ Shang Ch'iu-k'ai bore all their rudeness without the slightest appearance of anger, until the ingenuity of his assailants was exhausted and they themselves tired with their game. Then they drove him to the top of a high tower, and one of them cried with a loud voice, "A thousand ounces of gold to any man who will jump down!" The rest all vied with one another in professing their willingness to do it; but Shang Ch'iu-k'ai, believing them to be in earnest, threw himself over at once. His body looked like a flying bird, and he alighted on the ground without sustaining the slightest injury. ”

“ Shang took the money and went home, doing as the young lady had told him; and by-and-by in she herself came, and threw on the table a roast chicken and a shoulder of salt pork, which she at once proceeded to cut up. They now set to work to enjoy themselves, and had hardly finished when they heard some one coming in, and the next minute in walked Miss Tertia and her sister. The strange young lady didn’t know where to hide, and managed to lose her shoes; but the other two began to revile her, saying, “Out upon you, base fox; what are you doing here?” ”

“ The supreme god of the official worship was called Shang Ti; he was a god of vegetation who guided all growth and birth and was later conceived as a forefather of the races of mankind. The earth was represented as a mother goddess, who bore the plants and animals procreated by Shang Ti. In some parts of the Shang realm the two were conceived as a married couple who later were parted by one of their children. The husband went to heaven, and the rain is the male seed that creates life on earth. ”

“ In order to promote the fertility of the earth, it was believed that sacrifices must be offered to the gods. Consequently, in the Shang realm and the regions surrounding it there were many sorts of human sacrifices; often the victims were prisoners of war. One gains the impression that many wars were conducted not as wars of conquest but only for the purpose of capturing prisoners, although the area under Shang control gradually increased towards the west and the south-east, a fact demonstrating the interest in conquest. In some regions men lurked in the spring for people from other villages ”

“ They come in multitudes.
King has the Ho for its outer border [6] .
That Yin [7] should have received the appointment (of Heaven) was entirely right;—
(Its sovereign) sustains all its dignities.
↑ The father of Shang is Hsieh, who has already been mentioned. The mother of Hsieh was a daughter of the House of the ancient state of Sung, and a concubine of the ancient ruler Khû (B.C. 2435) . According to Mâo, she accompanied Khû, at the time of the vernal equinox, when the swallow made its appearance, to sacrifice and pray to the first match-maker, and the result was the birth of Hsieh. ”

“ Some of the Shang popular deities, however, were admitted into the official Heaven-worship. Popular deities became "feudal lords" under the Heaven-god. The Shang conceptions of the soul were also admitted into the Chou religion: the human body housed two souls, the personality-soul and the life-soul. Death meant the separation of the souls from the body, the life-soul also slowly dying. The personality-soul, however, could move about freely and lived as long as there were people who remembered it and kept it from hunger by means of sacrifices. ”

“ He appears in it commissioning 'his great uncle,' an elder brother, that is, of his mother, to go and rule, as marquis of Shan, and chief or president of the states in the south of the kingdom, to defend the borders against the encroaching hordes of the south, headed by the princes of Khû, whose lords bad been rebellious against the middle states even in the time of the Shang dynasty;--see the last of the Sacrificial Odes of Shang.
Grandly lofty are the mountains, With their large masses reaching to the heavens. ”

“ It is in the age of the (last) sovereign of Hsiâ.'
↑ The meaning seems to be that, whatever miseries might prevail, and be ignorantly ascribed to God, they were in reality owing to men's neglect of the law of Heaven inscribed on their hearts. ↑ We speak of 'turning night into day.' The tyrant of Shang turned day into night. Excesses, generally committed in darkness, were by him done openly. ↑ These 'demon regions' are understood to mean the seat of the Turkic tribes to the north of China, known from the earliest times by various names—'The hill Zung,' 'the northern Lî,' 'the Hsien-yun,' &c. ”

“ T‘an asked his strategist what should be done next and he said, “The city is short of food, the enemy is flushed with victory and we cannot stand against them. My idea is to send some one to offer surrender to Ts‘ao Tsʻao and thus get him to attack Ch‘ichou. Your brother will be forced to return thither, which will leave you free to join in the attack. We may capture Shang. Should Ts‘ao begin to get the better of your brother’s army we will lend our force to help him against Ts‘ao Ts‘ao, and as Ts‘ao’s base of supply is distant we shall drive him off. ”

“ In addition to the nature deities which were implored to give fertility, to send rain, or to prevent floods and storms, the Shang [Pg 24] also worshipped deceased rulers and even dead ministers as a kind of intermediaries between man and the highest deity, Shang Ti. ”

“ Shang was the name under which the dynasty that superseded Hsiâ (B.C. 1766) held the kingdom for fully 300 years. Yin then began to be used as well as Shang, and the dynasty was called indifferently Shang or Yin, and sometimes Yin-Shang by a combination of the two names. The ruling House traced its origin into the remote times of antiquity, through Hsieh, whose appointment by Shun to be Minister of Instruction is related in the Canon of Shun. For his services Hsieh was invested with the principality of Shang, corresponding to the present small department of the same name in Shen-hsî. ”

“ The result is that he is confounded by time and space; and that trammelled by objective existences, he fails to reach apprehension of that age before anything was.
"But the perfect man,—he carries his mind back to the period before the beginning. Content to rest in the oblivion of nowhere, passing away like flowing water, he is merged in the clear depths of the infinite.
"Alas! man's knowledge reaches to the hair on a hair, but not to eternal peace."
A man of the Sung State, named Ts'ao Shang, acted as political agent for the prince of Sung at the court of the Ch'in State. ”