Seven Names and Five Kings: The Shang Ministers the Zhou Remembered

The chapter called 'Lord Shi' (君奭) is the Duke of Zhou speaking, and he does first what a man does when he wants to move another: he recites names. Tang had Yi Yin; Tai Jia had Bao Heng; Tai Wu had Yi Zhi, Chen Hu and Wu Xian (巫咸); Zu Yi had Wu Xian (巫賢); Wu Ding had Gan Pan. Five reigns, seven men. The list is the argument's opening move, and it is also the whole of what the page says about them.

Five Reigns, Seven Names

The passage itself: 'I have heard that in former times, when Tang had received the mandate, there was one like Yi Yin, who reached to August Heaven. Under Tai Jia there was one like Bao Heng. Under Tai Wu there were ones like Yi Zhi and Chen Hu, who reached to Shangdi; and Wu Xian (巫咸), who governed the royal house. Under Zu Yi there was one like Wu Xian (巫賢). Under Wu Ding there was one like Gan Pan' (我聞在昔，成湯既受命，時則有若伊尹，格于皇天。在太甲，時則有若保衡。在太戊，時則有若伊陟、臣扈，格于上帝；巫咸乂王家。在祖乙，時則有若巫賢。在武丁，時則有若甘盤).

What the list gives is a king to a man, and a phrase for what the man did: Yi Yin and Yi Zhi and Chen Hu 'reached' to Heaven or to Shangdi, Wu Xian 'governed the royal house'. What it does not give is an office, a date, a birth, a death, or a family. The names are not sorted by rank or by family, and no reign is given a length. To read the passage as a table of Shang officialdom would be to add everything that makes it a table.

Why the Names Are Recalled

The next sentence is the reason for the list: 'It was through men such as these, set out in their places, that Yin was kept in order. Therefore the rites of Yin ascended and were paired with Heaven, and it lasted many years. Heaven gave its pure blessing, and Shang was full of the hundred clans and the king's men, none of whom failed to hold virtue and show pity; the lesser servants screened the lords' domains and the royal domain, and all of them hurried about their business. It was virtue alone that was raised to office, to govern their lord' (率惟兹有陳，保乂有殷，故殷禮陟配天，多歷年所。天惟純佑命，則商實百姓、王人，罔不秉德明恤；小臣屏侯甸，矧咸奔走。惟兹惟德稱，用乂厥辟). And then the sentence that gives the passage its weight: 'when the one man had business in the four quarters, it was like consulting the tortoise and the milfoil: nothing was not trusted' (故一人有事于四方，若卜筮，罔不是孚). The point is not that the ministers were talented; it is that a king with such men could be relied on as a divination is relied on.

The same speech then does the same thing for Zhou. 'There were also such men as Guo Shu, as Hong Yao, as San Yisheng, as Tai Dian, as Nangong Kuo' (亦惟有若虢叔，有若閎夭，有若散宜生，有若泰顛，有若南宮括), the men around King Wen; and four of them lived on to serve King Wu. Two lists, one shape: the Duke of Zhou is remembering Shang's ministers in the grammar he uses for his own. That is the layer this article can offer — a Zhou memory of good government, applied to Shang and Zhou alike.

Three Appointments, Three Capable Men

The other page, 'Establishing Government' (立政), turns the same idea into a formula. After the example of Xia, it comes to Tang: 'When Tang ascended, he greatly ordered the bright mandate of Shangdi; he used the three appointments and could fill them; he spoke of the three capable men and could fill them with the capable. Solemnly he made them the great model, and could use the three appointments and the three capable men. In the Shang capital it worked to harmonise the capital; in the four quarters it was a great model and showed virtue' (亦越成湯陟，丕釐上帝之耿命；乃用三有宅，克即宅；曰三有俊，克即俊。嚴惟丕式，克用三宅三俊。其在商邑，用協于厥邑；其在四方，用丕式見德).

The 'three appointments' (三宅) are the three posts the chapter names a little later: the 立事, the 牧夫 and the 準人 — the man of affairs, the herdsman-shepherd of the people, and the man of the standard. The 'three capable men' (三俊) are the men found for them. The claim made for Tang is not that he chose well once but that he made the choosing the model; and the effect is stated in two places, the capital and the four quarters.

The Same Rule, Written for Zhou

The chapter then joins the two dynasties in one clause: 'From ancient times the men of Shang, and also our King Wen, in establishing government — the 立事, the 牧夫 and the 準人 — could appoint them and could select them' (自古商人，亦越我周文王，立政：立事、牧夫、準人，則克宅之，克由繹之). Shang and Zhou stand on one line here, and the line is the appointment of three kinds of officer, not a list of Shang titles.

What follows is a long roll of Zhou offices: 'In establishing government: the 任人, the 準夫 and the 牧, as the three affairs; the tiger guards, the robe-keepers, the horse-grooms, the small officers, the attendants left and right, the hundred officers and the many stores; the great city and the small lords, the familiar men, the outer officers of the hundred bureaus; the grand scribe, the heads of the noble houses, the many heads of the good men; the 司徒, the 司馬, the 司空 and the 亞旅; the 夷, 微 and 盧 and the 烝, and the heads of the three Bo and the slopes' (立政：任人、準夫、牧，作三事；虎賁、綴衣、趣馬、小尹、左右攜僕，百司庶府；大都、小伯、藝人、表臣百司；太史、尹伯、庶常吉士，司徒、司馬、司空、亞旅；夷微盧烝，三亳阪尹). This roll is the order of King Wen and King Wu — a Zhou order. It is quoted here as the comparison the chapter itself sets up, not as a list of Shang offices.

The chapter's picture of how a king used such men is one sentence about King Wen: 'King Wen did not take on the many words, the many lawsuits or the many cautions; it was the 牧夫 and the officers who were taught and employed; the many lawsuits and the many cautions King Wen did not presume to know' (文王罔攸兼于庶言、庶獄、庶慎，惟有司之牧夫，是訓用違；庶獄、庶慎，文王罔敢知于兹). A king who appoints and does not take the cases back is the other half of the appointment rule.

What These Two Pages Are

Both are early Zhou pronouncements. The first is the Duke of Zhou speaking; the second is addressed to the young king — 'Ah, the boy is king now' (嗚呼！孺子王矣) — and presses him to keep the appointment rule. Neither is a Shang text: the Shang ministers are recalled by a Zhou speaker, with a Zhou argument, and the second chapter moves straight from Shang to the Zhou founders without a break. What the pages give is a Zhou memory of what good government looked like, with Shang as its first example. So the ministers stay names. No birth, no death, no pedigree, no deed beyond a phrase; no list of Shang offices; no account of how any of these men was chosen. And the roll of offices that follows is Zhou, not Shang. Set side by side, the two pages offer a king-by-king list on one page and a three-post rule on the other, and both belong to the same Zhou argument: good order is the work of men who are appointed and then left to work, and the proof is that Yin lasted many years. What Shang itself thought of its ministers, these pages do not say.

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