Four Dynasties, Four Verbs: The Yin Line from Ku to Tang

Four sentences, one shape. 有虞氏禘黄帝而郊嚳，祖顓頊而宗堯 — the house of Youyu sacrificed di to the Yellow Emperor, offered jiao to Ku, took Zhuanxu as ancestor and Yao as the head of the line. 夏后氏亦禘黄帝而郊鯀，祖顓頊而宗禹 — the Xia did the same with the Yellow Emperor, offered jiao to Gun, and took Zhuanxu and Yu. 殷人禘嚳而郊冥，祖契而宗湯 — the Yin sacrificed di to Ku, offered jiao to Ming, took Qi as ancestor and Tang as head of the line. 周人禘嚳而郊稷，祖文王而宗武王 — the Zhou to Ku and Ji, King Wen and King Wu. Four houses, four verbs each, and the verbs never change; only the names do.

Four Verbs in One Frame

The page treats the four as a set: 七代之所更立者，禘、郊、宗、祖，其餘不變也 — what seven generations changed and established were di, jiao, zong and zu; the rest did not change. What did not change is stated just before: 大凡生於天地之間者皆曰命，其萬物死皆曰折，人死曰鬼，此五代之所不變也 — everything born between heaven and earth is called a life, the death of things is called a break, the death of a person is called a ghost, and this does not change for five generations. So the register is a list of verbs, not a story.

This article follows three of the four: 禘, 祖 and 宗. It does not open 郊. The word appears here only as one term in a parallel of four — generally taken as a sacrifice held outside the city — and nothing of it is described: not where, not how often, not who presides. The sentences that follow the list, on altars and victims, are not used at all. What stays is the two characters 郊冥: remove them and the four-fold parallel breaks, which would be rewriting, not caution.

Not a King, No Di

The same chapter of the rites gives both the limit and the definition. The limit is six characters, 禮不王不禘 — the rites do not allow di to one who is not a king — and the page carries them as a parenthetical, not as running text, which is how they are reported here. The definition: 王者禘其祖之所自出，以其祖配之，而立四廟 — a king sacrifices di to the one from whom his ancestor came, pairs the ancestor with him, and sets up four temples; and 庶子王亦如之 — a son by a lesser mother who becomes king does the same.

So di is not a sacrifice to the ancestor. It is a sacrifice to the one the ancestor came from, with the ancestor standing beside him. Who that is, the page never says, and this article does not guess. In the four sentences the pairs are visible: Youyu and Xia both sacrifice di to the Yellow Emperor; Yin and Zhou both to Ku. The list is read here as a list only — no genealogy is assembled out of it, no dates are added.

Ancestor and Line Are Not the Same Word

The mechanism is in the same chapter, but at family scale: 别子爲祖，繼别爲宗，繼禰者爲小宗 — a son who leaves the main house becomes an ancestor; the one who continues him becomes the line; the one who continues his own father is the lesser line. 别子 is generally taken as a son other than the heir, 禰 as the late father. In plainer words: 祖 is the man who opens a branch, 宗 is the man who carries it on — and in the dynastic sentences, 祖契 and 宗湯 are that same pair, lifted to the scale of a house.

Then the movement, in the strongest two lines on the page: 有五世而遷之宗，其繼高祖者也 — there is a line that shifts after five generations, the one that continues the great-great-grandfather; 是故祖遷於上，宗易於下 — so the ancestor shifts above and the line changes below. And the reason: 尊祖故敬宗，敬宗所以尊祖禰也 — one reveres the ancestor, therefore one honours the line, and honouring the line is how the ancestor and the father are revered. How the five generations are counted the page does not say, and this article does not work it out.

The next sentences make the same point with one character changed: 庶子不祭祖者，明其宗也, and 庶子不祭禰者，明其宗也 — a cadet son does not sacrifice to the grandfather, to make his line clear; does not sacrifice to the father, for the same reason. The passage then closes on four items: 親親、尊尊、長長，男女之有别，人道之大者也 — kin as kin, the honoured as honoured, elders as elders, man and woman distinguished: these are the great things of the human way.

He Died at His Post

Later in the same chapter the question changes: who deserves sacrifice at all? The answer is five clauses: 法施於民則祀之，以死勤事則祀之，以勞定國則祀之，能禦大菑則祀之，能捍大患則祀之 — those whose methods reached the people; those who died in the service of a task; those whose labour steadied the state; those who withstood a great disaster; those who warded off a great calamity. Five clauses, five ways onto the list.

Ming is on it: 契爲司徒而民成，冥勤其官而水死，湯以寬治民而除其虐 — Qi was minister of instruction and the people were formed; Ming laboured at his office and died in the water; Tang governed with leniency and removed the people's cruelty. And of all of them: 此皆有功烈於民者也 — these are the ones with merit and achievement for the people. Seven characters are all the page gives Ming: a water officer who died doing his job, which is the second clause exactly. In the dynastic list he is the object of a 郊, not an ancestor and not a line; what is written here is why he was remembered, not how the offering was made.

Outside the List

The chapter then closes the door: 及夫日月星辰，民所瞻仰也；山林、川谷、丘陵，民所取財用也。非此族也，不在祀典 — the sun, moon and stars are what the people look up to; the hills and rivers and valleys are what they take their goods from; and 非此族也，不在祀典, what is not of this kind is not in the sacrificial statutes. That is what the whole passage is: a list, with a rule for getting on it and a rule for staying off.

What the two pages do not give: any ritual whatsoever — no victim, no place, no order of service; no genealogy for the four houses; no answer to who the ancestor came from. This article narrates no sacrifice, assembles no genealogy, and writes no history of a system. Three neighbours: the Shang high god, which is about what the god grants and withholds; the songs and dances of ancestral sacrifice; and the Han suburban sacrifice to Heaven, which is a separate chapter and a separate article. Here there is only a frame of four verbs, a definition of di with its royal limit, a sentence separating ancestor from line, and seven characters about a man who drowned at his post.

Related reading：The Shang High God: Who Sends Fortune and Calamity · Seven Names and Five Kings: The Shang Ministers the Zhou Remembered · Seventy-Five, Fifty-Nine, Thirty-Three: Shang Reigns in a Zhou Speech