1 A SON’S TRIBUTE TO HIS MOTHER An inscription on a bronze vessel (10th c. BCE)
This inscription on a tenth-century BCE bronze vessel recounts a successful campaign against a neighboring Rong tribe. The leading commander dedicated the vessel to his mother in gratitude for her guidance and protection.
Ancestor worship was a central religious practice in China from early times. During the Shang dynasty (ca. 1500–1045 BCE), pleasing and seeking instructions from the ancestors dominated every aspect of Shang society, and both male and female ancestors were assigned a date to be worshipped individually. With the Zhou dynasty (1045–256 BCE), patrilineal principles took priority and attention to female ancestors declined. While 97 percent of Shang dynasty sacrifices to a mother honored her in her own right, during the Western Zhou, this figure dropped to 64 percent. By the Han dynasty, female ancestors rarely received individual sacrifices.
The inscription on the bronze vessel known as the Dong gui is one of the longest dedicated to a mother from the Shang or Zhou period. The narrator, Dong, had the bronze food vessel made to “express his filial piety,” evidence that the ideal of filial piety was firmly established by the tenth century BCE. The importance of women in ancestor worship may have declined over time, but the moral principle of filial respect for mothers, so vividly reflected in this text, persisted throughout Chinese history.
This inscription can also be read as an autobiographical account. Dong tells us not only the date, locations, opposing forces, and weapons of the battles he waged but also how he felt about fighting them. From the list of the war spoils, we learn something of the hostility between the Zhou kingdom and its neighboring states, the scale of the battles, the types of weapons involved, and the disposal of the dead and the captives. At the time, it was a common practice that the severed heads of those killed in battle were brought back to be presented to ancestors during worship ceremonies, during which many of the captives would also be sacrificed.
Dong Gui
On the first day of the sixth month, the day of yiyou, at the Tang encampment, the Rong attacked [illegible]. I, Dong, led the supervisors and marshals to chase them a long distance. We stopped the Rong at Yulin and fought them off at Hu. My magnificent mother saw to everything, guiding my heart and protecting my body, enabling me to resolutely defeat the enemy. We returned with one hundred severed heads, two prisoners of war, and 135 of the enemy’s weapons and other equipment, including shields, spears, daggers, bows, quivers, arrows, garments, and helmets. We also brought back 114 Rong captives. All through the battle, my body was never harmed. I clap my hands and kowtow repeatedly in gratitude and praise my magnificent mother’s blessings and glory. I made this precious gui vessel for my magnificent mother, whose worship day is on the geng day. It will bless her son to live ten thousand years and to express his filial piety by presenting sacrificial offerings to the magnificent mother day and night. May my sons of sons and grandsons of grandsons use and cherish it.
SOURCE: Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Yin Zhou jinwen jicheng 殷周金文集成 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 2007), #4322. Another version of the translation can be found in Constance A. Cook and Paul R. Goldin, eds., A Source Book of Ancient Chinese Bronze Inscriptions (Berkeley, CA: Society for the Study of Early China, 2016), 69.
Further Reading
- Brashier, K. E. Ancestral Memory in Early China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
- Li Feng. Early China: A Social and Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
- Rosemont, Henry, and Roger T. Ames. The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009.
- Zhou, Yiqun. “The Status of Mothers in the Early Chinese Mourning System.” T’oung pao 99, nos. 1–3 (2013): 1–52.