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The Meaning of Changes in the Ritual System of Late Shang As Seen the Oracle Bone Inscriptions: Focusing on the Cyclical Ritual

Lim Hyunsoo 1

1한국종교문화연구소

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this essay is to research what means the appearance of the ritual according to the pre-decisive manual in the religious history of ancient China. The Shang Dynasty originally decided whether the various rituals would be committed or not by divination. But the establishment of the ancestor worship called the cyclical ritual(周祭) brought on the moment those practises were modified wholly. The cyclical ritual involved five rituals, rong (彡), yi(翌), ji(祭), zai( ), xie( ). It was committed repetitively in the prescribed rule. The cyclical ritual indicates that there was a standard manual on recipient, time, oblation, method etc. of ritual. In this essay the meaning of the cyclical ritual was considered to make the divine capacity be under the control of human. The establishment of the cyclical ritual minimalized the burden of Shang kings given the responsibility of grasping the divine will through divination.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.