Hexagram 63: ALREADY ACROSSBack to index 'Origins of characters'
The wars against the Gui
Hexagram 63: ALREADY ACROSS
Hexagram 64: NOT YET ACROSS
Both mention a war against the Guifang:
63.3: Gaozong attacks the Guifang, in 3 years
he defeats them
64.4: Zhen herewith attacks the Guifang: in 3 years
he is awarded by the great state
64.4 refers to a later campaign by a Zhou duke
"Zhen" against the same enemy. This marked the beginning of the rise
of the Zhou.
Shaughnessy thinks that we have here a political
message: in 63 ALREADY ACROSS/COMPLETED, the end of the Shang dynasty, and in 64
NOT YET ACROSS/NOT YET COMPLETED) the rise of the Zhou dynasty that was to take
over the Shang.
"The eastern neighbor kills an oxen,
but it is
not as good as the western neighbor's YUE sacrifice in really receiving good
fortune."
The Easterners are the Shang, the Westerners are the
Zhou; what is the Zhou's superior YUE sacrifice? In hexagrams 46 and 45 the YUE
sacrifice is about FU. Shaughnessy writes that "the verb FU, to capture,
always refers in the Zhouyi to a human captive. This suggests that the western
neighbor's sacrifice is more successful because it makes use of a more valuable
offering, a human life."
Ed Shaughnessy doesn't mention this in his
dissertation, but is seems obvious: 64.5, the parallel line in the other "Zhou"
hexagram has: "The lordling's brightness, offer a captive; divining:
auspicious; no problems; auspicious." The Zhou are going to win.
Some interesting illustrations on http://gallery.sjsu.edu/sacrifice/chinese.html
For example the Yueh axe:
"Used as initially a battle-axe,
Yueh became later ceremonial weapons used in human sacrifices. In honor of the
ancestors, humans would sacrifice another human to gain a connection to the
heavens."
"People that were captured in
warfare were kept in captivity to be sacrificed to the ancestors. During the
ceremony the victim would be beheaded with an axe decorated in the Shang style.
Many times warriors were sent out on a specific mission to capture victims for
sacrifice. The deity of war would be honored with the brutal murders. The people
of Shang
believed that with these sacrifices the war-god would bring them victory."
The traditional interpretation
of the Zhou *YUE* sacrifice is that it was of lesser quality (agricultural) than
the Shang animal one, but that is was favorable because the Zhou were more
'virtuous' (which is not in the text). Here the modernist version of Shaughnessy
really makes more sense than the traditional one: the Zhou indeed had a *better*
sacrifice, war prisoners, which proved their valor since they had won the most
recent campaign, and explained why they got good fortune. They were the best.
The concept of moral virtue was something that only became important after
Confucius. Before that it was a warrior code of honor.
Thomas
The traditional interpretation is interesting as well in its
striking parallel to Western traditions. The difference between an animal and
vegetable sacrifice are found in Cain and Abel's sacrifice in Genesis that gave
rise to fratricide. Many have interpreted that difference to be between an
animal and vegetable offering, but the older Septuagint text of Genesis shows
that it was in fact the sacrifice being 'not rightly divided' that made Cain's
sacrifice inferior.
One scholar I spoke to said he thought this meant that Cain brought the fruit of
the field, but not the first and best. Essentially he brought a batch of old
bruised garbage, whereas Abel brought the unblemished firstborn of his flock.
I'm fairly sure this is all merely a coincidence between the two books, Torah
and Chou Yi, since both date to the same approximate period and both originate
from cultures with a mixture of herding and farming.
Chris Gait
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