The Shang High God: Who Sends Fortune and Calamity

On these two pages, 'Di' (帝) is the subject of only a handful of verbs. The first is the closing line of the first stanza of the Shang hymn Changfa: 'the lord of Shang was deep and wise, his auspices long drawn out; the flood was vast, and Yu spread the earthworks; the outer great states were bounded, and the breadth and length were long; the You Rong were then about to grow great — God set down a son and gave birth to Shang' (有娀方將，帝立子生商). God as subject, 'set down' as verb, a son as object. This piece lines up those few sentences and asks, for each, who is the subject and what the verb is; it asks nothing else of them.

One: in Changfa, God sets down and commands

Look first at where that line stands. The stanza moves from the deep wisdom of Shang to the flood and Yu's earthworks, to the bounding of the outer states, and only then to the You Rong 'about to grow great', ending in God setting down a son by whom Shang is born. The page explains nothing of that: no gloss on 立, no word about the mother, no story. This piece adds none. The poem gives an account of origins in four characters and stops.

Further on, God is again the subject of 'command': 'the commands of God were not disobeyed, and so it came to Tang' (帝命不違，至于湯齊). Then: 'his brightness was slow, slow; Shangdi was reverenced; God commanded, and he became the model for the nine regions' (昭假遲遲，上帝是祗，帝命式于九圍). 上帝是祗 puts the object first: it is Shangdi who is reverenced. Both sentences turn on 命, to command; 'became the model for the nine regions' is the usual reading of 式于九圍, and the page carries no note. The hymn is a song about how the Shang rose and how Tang became the standard — not a record of an institution.

Two: blessing is credited to Heaven

Note where the hymn puts fortune. After receiving the small and great jades and being 'the tassel of the lesser states', it says 'how we bear Heaven's blessing' (何天之休), then 'a hundred blessings gather to him' (百祿是遒); after the great jades, 'how we bear Heaven's favour' (何天之龍), then 'a hundred blessings are gathered' (百祿是總). 何 is generally read as 荷, to bear or receive (generally so taken; the page glosses nothing). So on this page the giver of blessing is written 天, Heaven, while 帝 is the subject of 'set down' and 'command'. This piece does not merge the two names.

Three: in Pangang, God restores an ancestor's virtue

The other page is the third part of the Pangang speech, and its one mention of God is a reason for moving the capital. It opens after the move: 'when Pangang had moved, he settled what they should dwell in; he set the positions right and comforted the host' (盤庚既遷，奠厥攸居。乃正厥位，綏爰有眾). Then the speech: the former kings 'made many achievements and went to the mountains'; now 'our people are scattered and homeless, with no fixed limit'; and they ask him why he shakes the myriad people with a move. His answer: 'therefore Shangdi will restore the virtue of our high ancestors and order our house' (肆上帝將復我高祖之德，亂越我家) — and then 'I and the earnest and reverent respectfully receive the people's mandate, to be forever settled in the new city… nor do I dare disobey the divination, but to enlarge this great work' (非敢違卜，用宏兹賁).

Two cautions about that sentence. It is a reason offered in a speech, not a rule: 'Shangdi will restore the ancestor's virtue' is Pangang's ground for the move, and the page reports it as what he said. And the divination is mentioned — 'nor do I dare disobey the divination' — but the page does not say what was divined, how, or with what outcome. This piece supplies no ritual and no oracle text.

Four: the oracle bones are not here

The third source one would want is missing. In the oracle bones, Di is the subject of sentences about rain, wind, harvest and war, and 'Di commands rain', 'Di does not command rain', 'Di sends down calamity' are exactly the sentences this subject needs. They are not on these two pages. Neither page contains a single divination record, a single bone inscription, or a single sentence of that form. So this piece writes it plainly: none here. It quotes no oracle text and does not reconstruct Shang religion out of later books.

A note on the names. The two pages use three: 帝 (God set down a son; the commands of God), 上帝 (Shangdi was reverenced; Shangdi will restore), and 天 (Heaven's blessing; Heaven's favour). And a note on the verb 'send down': 降 occurs twice, once of the former kings — 'thereby to send down our fierce temper' (用降我凶德) — and once in 'sent down to the ministers' (降予卿士), where the subject is not stated. Neither is God sending calamity. This piece quotes each as it stands. It does not render them as 'the supreme being', does not fit them to a typology of monotheism, and does not decide whether the three words name one being or more — the pages make no such statement.

Five: what kind of texts, and what is missing

The two pages are different kinds of text. The Changfa is a hymn in the Shang songs, seven stanzas, and the page even notes the stanza lengths; it prints the Mao preface with it — 'Changfa: a great di sacrifice' (《長發》，大禘也) — which is a later statement of what the poem was used for, not part of the hymn. The Pangang is a transmitted Shang speech whose wording was fixed by later hands (generally so taken). Neither is a Shang archive, and what the hymn says about God and about Shang's origin is the hymn's own claim.

Division of subjects: the piece on the Tang oath takes the reasons given for attacking the Xia; the piece on the oracle-bone ancestors takes how the Shang sacrificed to their forebears. This piece takes one thing only: the sentences on these two pages in which 帝, 上帝 or 天 is the subject or the giver.

What the pages do not give: what Di looks like, how Di was sacrificed to, whether Di was ever divined to, any oracle sentence, any narrative of a god's actions, any account of how 帝 and 天 relate. None of it is supplied; this piece argues no 'Shang religious worldview' and writes nothing on the origin of the Chinese idea of God. No reign year is converted into a Western date; the texts are named as the Shang songs and the Pangang. What is left is four or five sentences and their verbs — set down, command, reverence, restore — with blessing written under Heaven.

Related reading：The Yin Fields: Seventy Mu, a Public Field, and Millet · Praying for Rain: Dong Zhongshu's Rite and Wang Chong's Doubt · The Lanting Gathering: One Spring Outing, One Preface