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 slew them, sacrificed them to the earth, and distributed portions of the flesh of the sacrifice to the various owners of fields, who buried them.  At a later time all human sacrifices were prohibited, but we have reports down to the eleventh century A.D., and even later, that such sacrifices were offered secretly in certain regions of central China.  In other regions a great boat festival was held in the spring, to which many crews came crowded in long narrow boats.  At least one of the boats had to capsize; the people who were thus drowned were a sacrifice to the deities of fertility.  This festival has maintained its fundamental character to this day, in spite of various changes.  The same is true of other festivals, customs, and conceptions, vestiges of which are contained at least in folklore.

In addition to the nature deities which were implored to give fertility, to send rain, or to prevent floods and storms, the Shang also worshipped deceased rulers and even dead ministers as a kind of intermediaries between man and the highest deity, Shang Ti.  This practice may be regarded as the forerunner of “ancestral worship” which became so typical of later China.

3 Transition to feudalism

At the head of the Shang state was a king, posthumously called a “Ti”, the same word as in the name of the supreme god.  We have found on bones the names of all the rulers of this dynasty and even some of their pre-dynastic ancestors.  These names can be brought into agreement with lists of rulers found in the ancient Chinese literature.  The ruler seems to have been a high priest, too; and around him were many other priests.  We know some of them now so well from the inscriptions that their biographies could be written.  The king seems to have had some kind of bureaucracy.  There were “ch’en”, officials who served the ruler personally, as well as scribes and military officials.  The basic army organization was in units of one hundred men which were combined as “right”, “left” and “central” units into an army of 300 men.  But it seems that the central power did not extend very far.  In the more distant parts of the realm were more or less independent lords, who recognized the ruler only as their supreme lord and religious leader.  We may describe this as an early, loose form of the feudal system, although the main element of real feudalism