Translated by Ji Dewei and Chen Jiali: The Landscape of Ancestors: Time, Space and Society in the Late Shang Dynasty

2022-02-23 05:55:14

Translator's Order

Introducing Professor Ji Dewei's "Ancestral Landscapes: Time, Space and Society in the Late Shang Dynasty" to readers in the Chinese-speaking world, I felt that there was a long way to go, and after I finished translating the manuscript of the whole book, I felt it necessary to explain to the reader the importance of this book to the Chinese literary community and explain the translation process of this book.

The Chinese literary community has produced a wealth of research on the history of Yin Shang and oracle bones, and there are remarkable results published every year. In recent years, sinologists of ancient Chinese history outside the region have gradually published their research results in Chinese, and the relevant fields of Chinese literature have developed by leaps and bounds. Nevertheless, we still feel the need to translate Ji Dewei's book into Chinese to make up for Tho's work.

The title of this book, "Time, Space and Society", undoubtedly reveals that the theme that Ji Shi wants to explore is the worldview of Yin Shang. The Shang king worshipped ancestors and gods of nature, which is fully reflected in the oracle bone. Ji Dewei skillfully used the evidence of Bu Ci to combine the 60-day dry branch cycle calendar of Yin Shang with the geographical environment of Xiaotun Yin Ruins to reconstruct the society of Yin Shang. Ji Dewei solemnly reminds us that the Yin Shang calendar is extremely systematic, which makes time run in an orderly manner and is arranged as a schedule for the Shang king to sacrifice to the ancestors. Yin Shang also recorded the calendar by observing the lack of the moon, so he advocated the use of "first moon" and "second moon" to illustrate the Shang calendar; he also believed that there should be two different calendar systems between the Yin Shang commoners and the royal family. For space, Ji Dewei is divided into two categories: one is the center and the periphery; the other is the universe and the orientation. The territory of the Yin merchants was obviously quite large, and the borders were uncertain, and their relations with the neighboring countries were also friends and enemies, so that there are a large number of hunting or conquest records in the Bu Ci. Ji Dewei spends a lot of time discussing the "Four Directions" and "Four Soils", the former is far from the center of Yin Shang and may be the location of the enemy, so it is regarded as a source of ominousness in the Bu Ci; the latter has almost no hostile forces, and even has a harvest, and the Zhen people are not worried about the Four Soils. In the last two chapters, Ji Dewei combines time and space to outline a late Shang society with both living and dead, both humans and animals, in order to present the religion and mythological beliefs of Yin Shang. In order to more effectively present the Yin Shang society, Ji Dewei also cites rich information such as the natural environment, agriculture, animals, plants, etc. as evidence.

Although it has been twenty years since Ji Dewei's book came out, it is still rare for the Chinese-speaking world to study the history of Yin Shang or oracle bones in this way. Carefully tasting this book, Ji Dewei obviously studies the history of Oracle and Yin Shang from the perspective of world civilization, and in today's words, it is the study of Oracle and Yin Shang history from the perspective of "globalization". Although giga Gia does not use such concepts as "globalization" and "world history", it is clear from the bibliography of this book alone that he had this idea, and his bibliography contains a large number of research works in different regions and categories of the world, involving religious rituals, religious life, myths and legends, historical memories, and even paleozobotany and paleoanthropology. In the text, Ji Shi skillfully uses these materials as an explanation, giving us a careful description of what the face of human society in the ancient world should be. This book presents not only the world of yin merchants, but also the world's yin merchants.

Of course, the comparative study of ancient civilizations in the world has become a prominent study, but Ji Dewei's kung fu is not comparative research, he has consistently done the history of Yin Shang, which is his specialty, and the comparison between civilizations is only his method. In a book review of this book, Magnus Fiskesj mentions that Ji Dewei's work is thinking about a big question: how China came about from the perspective of global comparison. Ma Sizhong believes that the history of Yin Shang, and even the history of antiquity, should be examined from a global perspective, and the legacy left by Yin Shang history is not only left to the future Zhou and Han China, or to the future imperial China, but also to world civilization. Obviously, twenty years ago, Ji Dewei had already made a contribution to this aspect. As an American scholar, Ji Dewei brought the original Chinese Yinshang Oracle to the world, at least to english-speaking academic circles. Today, we should translate it into Chinese and bring it back to China.

Chen Jiali

The first draft of the Year of the Pig was first drafted in Honolulu, USA

The Year of the Rat is set in Sai Kung, Hong Kong

Translated by Ji Dewei and Chen Jiali: The Landscape of Ancestors: Time, Space and Society in the Late Shang Dynasty

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