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Searching for osier (making those baskets for the fruits) I came across this:
(cannot find the mails about the guest, so I made a new thread)
Guest: bin1 (or pin1), figures in hex.20 line 4
Shu Jing, book VIII, the charge to the count of Wei (tr. Legge):
The king speaks to the following effect:--'Ho! eldest son of the king of Yin, examining into antiquity, (I find) that the honouring of the virtuous (belongs to their descendants) Who resemble them in worth, and (I appoint) you to continue the line of the kings your ancestors, observing their ceremonies and taking care of their various relics. Come (also) as a guest to our royal House[1], and enjoy the prosperity of our kingdom, for ever and ever without end.
note:
[1. Under the dynasty of Kâu (= Zhou), the representatives of the two previous dynasties of Shang and Hsiâ were distinguished above the other princes of the kingdom, and denominated 'guests' of the sovereign, coming to his court and assisting in the services in his ancestral temple, nearly on a footing of equality with him.]
K. C. Chang, Art, myth and ritual, page 54
Was Shang divination an act of Shang shamanism? The inscriptions make it clear that inquiries were directed to long-departed ancestors, and that the diviner served as an intermediary. The inscriptions often contain the word pin, which in later classical texts usually means to receive as a guest or to be a guest. In the oracle bone inscriptions, the word is often placed between the word for king and the name of a specific ancestor or of Ti, the Supreme God. A phrase consisting of these elements is sometimes interpreted as "the king receives as a guest a specific ancestor ," or "the king receives as a guest the Supreme God." (18) But more likely it means that the king "called upon" a departed ancestor or God. Shan Hai Ching states that "Ch'i went up to pin heaven three times," making it clear that pin refers to the human chief going to the deity rather than the other way around. In any event, there was a Shang ritual that enabled the king and the spirits to be together, presumably brought about by some kind of middleman. The act of divination was intended, similarly, to bring the middleman diviner and the spirits together .
note:
18. Shima Kunio, lnkyo Bokuji Kenkyu (A study of the oracle bone inscriptions from Yin Hsii) (Tokyo: Kyuko Shoin, 1958), p. 201.
LiSe
(cannot find the mails about the guest, so I made a new thread)
Guest: bin1 (or pin1), figures in hex.20 line 4
Shu Jing, book VIII, the charge to the count of Wei (tr. Legge):
The king speaks to the following effect:--'Ho! eldest son of the king of Yin, examining into antiquity, (I find) that the honouring of the virtuous (belongs to their descendants) Who resemble them in worth, and (I appoint) you to continue the line of the kings your ancestors, observing their ceremonies and taking care of their various relics. Come (also) as a guest to our royal House[1], and enjoy the prosperity of our kingdom, for ever and ever without end.
note:
[1. Under the dynasty of Kâu (= Zhou), the representatives of the two previous dynasties of Shang and Hsiâ were distinguished above the other princes of the kingdom, and denominated 'guests' of the sovereign, coming to his court and assisting in the services in his ancestral temple, nearly on a footing of equality with him.]
K. C. Chang, Art, myth and ritual, page 54
Was Shang divination an act of Shang shamanism? The inscriptions make it clear that inquiries were directed to long-departed ancestors, and that the diviner served as an intermediary. The inscriptions often contain the word pin, which in later classical texts usually means to receive as a guest or to be a guest. In the oracle bone inscriptions, the word is often placed between the word for king and the name of a specific ancestor or of Ti, the Supreme God. A phrase consisting of these elements is sometimes interpreted as "the king receives as a guest a specific ancestor ," or "the king receives as a guest the Supreme God." (18) But more likely it means that the king "called upon" a departed ancestor or God. Shan Hai Ching states that "Ch'i went up to pin heaven three times," making it clear that pin refers to the human chief going to the deity rather than the other way around. In any event, there was a Shang ritual that enabled the king and the spirits to be together, presumably brought about by some kind of middleman. The act of divination was intended, similarly, to bring the middleman diviner and the spirits together .
note:
18. Shima Kunio, lnkyo Bokuji Kenkyu (A study of the oracle bone inscriptions from Yin Hsii) (Tokyo: Kyuko Shoin, 1958), p. 201.
LiSe