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The Western Zhou (p=Xīzhōu; 771 BC) was a period of Chinese history corresponding roughly to the first half of the Zhou dynasty. It began when King Wu of Zhou overthrew the Shang dynasty at the Battle of Muye and ended in 771 BC when Quanrong pastoralists sacked the Zhou capital at Haojing and killed King You of Zhou. The "Western" label for the period refers to the location of the Zhou royal capitals, which were clustered in the Wei River valley near present-day Xi'an.
The early Zhou state was ascendant for about 75 years; thereafter, it gradually lost power. The former lands of the Shang were divided into hereditary fiefs that became increasingly independent of the Zhou king over time. The Zhou court was driven out of the Wei River valley in 771 BC: this marked the beginning of the Eastern Zhou period, wherein political power was wielded in actuality by the king's nominal vassals.
A vessel was typically cast for some member of the Zhou elite, recording a relevant event or an honour bestowed on the owner by the king. In the latter case, the inscription might include a narrative of the ceremony and report the speech of participants. These give a rich insight into Zhou governance and the upper levels of Zhou society.
Many inscriptions contain details that may be compared with later histories. More than a hundred of them commemorate a royal appointment to some government position. More than 50 of them describe military campaigns. Naturally the picture is incomplete, as very few inscriptions touch on military defeats or failures of government. As the Book of Rites says of these inscriptions, "The intention of the inscriber is to extol the beautiful and not to extol the ugly."
Inscriptions usually contain some dating information, but usually not the name of the current king. Scholars have devised a range of criteria to narrow down the reign of an inscription, including the style of the vessel, the form of the characters and details within the text.
The Book of Odes is a collection of songs, traditionally divided into 160 State Airs, 105 Court Songs (Major and Minor) and 40 Hymns (Zhou, Lu and Song), set to melodies that have since been lost. Most specialists agree that the Zhou Hymns date to the Western Zhou, followed by the Court Songs and the Airs of the States. The Airs are said to have been collected from throughout the Western Zhou domains, but have a consistency and elegance that suggests that they were polished by the literati of the Zhou court.
The Book of Documents is a collection of formal speeches presented as spanning two millennia from the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors to the Spring and Autumn period. Most scholars agree that the "Old Script" chapters are post-Han forgeries, and that many of the remaining "Modern Script" chapters were written long after the periods they purport to represent. The five "announcement" (or "proclamation") chapters use the most archaic language, similar to that of bronze inscriptions, and are thought to have been recorded close to the events of the early Western Zhou reigns they describe. However, they feature significant differences in vocabulary, grammar and outlook from bronze inscriptions dated to that period, and may date from the middle or late Western Zhou. Four more chapters, "Catalpa Timbers", "Many Officers", "Take No Ease" and "Many Regions", are set in the same period, but their language suggests that they were written late in the Western Zhou period. The prefaces written for each chapter, tying the Documents together as a continuous account, are thought to have been written in the Western Han period.
The Bamboo Annals provides a wealth of attractive detail, often varying from other sources, but its transmission history presents many problems. The original text was a chronicle of the state of Wei buried in a royal tomb in the early 3rd century BC and recovered in the late 3rd century AD, but lost before the Song dynasty. Two versions exist today: an "ancient text" assembled from quotations in other works and a fuller "current text" that Qian Daxin pronounced a forgery but some scholars believe contains authentic material.
The standard account is found in the "Basic Annals of Zhou", chapter 4 of the Shiji compiled by the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian. This account is a synthesis of earlier sources, relying most heavily on the Book of Documents for the early kings and the Guoyu for early ancestors and the middle and late Western Zhou period. Sima Qian's depiction of the entire Zhou dynasty as eight centuries of decline from its idealized founders has shaped views of the dynasty from his time until the present day.
The valley is a graben formed in the Cenozoic era as part of the Fen–Wei Rift System. It is bounded on the south by the Qinling Mountains and on the west by the Liupan Mountains. To the north lies the Loess Plateau, into which the northern tributaries of the Wei have carved deep valleys. The valley is broad, with fertile soil, abundant rainfall and ground water from the Loess Plateau and Qinling Mountains. The areas to the west and north are much drier and less suited to agriculture.
The valley was known historically as the Guanzhong, or 'land within the passes'. To the east, the route through the Hangu Pass in the narrow valley of the Yellow River leads to the North China Plain. The route to the interior follows the Jing River to Xiao Pass on an eastern spur of the Liupan range and thence down the valley of the Qingshui River to the upper reaches of the Yellow River. This route would later be part of the Silk Road, and was used by armies throughout history.
The origins of the Zhou are obscure. The archaeology of pre-conquest Wei valley is varied and complex, but no material culture comparable to the dynastic Zhou has been found. Archaeologists searching for the predynastic Zhou have focused on the Qishan County area, which is mentioned in early texts and was a key ritual centre of the Western Zhou. Two different pottery types are found in this area, and archaeologists differ on whether the people who produced one or the other, or both, were the ancestors of the Zhou. It is likely that several groups from across Shaanxi banded together to conquer the Shang.
Sima Qian felt unable to extend his chronological table beyond 841 BC, the first year of the Gonghe Regency, and there is still no accepted chronology of Chinese history before that point. The Cambridge History of Ancient China used dates determined by Edward L. Shaughnessy from the "current text" Bamboo Annals and bronze inscriptions. In 2000, the Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project produced a schedule of dates based on received texts, bronze inscriptions, radiocarbon dating and astronomical events. However, several bronze inscriptions discovered since then are inconsistent with the project's dates.
| + Western Zhou kings | |||
| Pre-conquest | |||
| King Wu | Fa (發) | 1049–1043 | 1046–1043 |
| Early | |||
| 1042–1021 | |||
| 1020–996 | |||
| 995–977 | |||
| Middle | 976–922 | ||
| 922–900 | |||
| 899–892 | |||
| 891–886 | |||
| 885–878 | |||
| Late | 877–841 | ||
| 841–828 | |||
| 827–782 | |||
| 781–771 |
The Shi Qiang pan, part of a family cache found in western Shaanxi, was cast in the reign of King Gong by the latest in a family of scribes descended from a scribe brought to Shaanxi after the conquest. The lengthy inscription, summarizing the history of the Zhou and that of the Wei () family, begins:
Accordant with antiquity was King Wen! (He) first brought harmony to government. The Lord on High sent down fine virtue and great security. Extending to the high and low, he joined the ten thousand states.Longer accounts are found in later sources. Both the Historical Records and the Bamboo Annals describe campaigns by King Wen in southern Shanxi. They state that King Wen moved the Zhou capital from Qiyi to Fenghao, and his son, King Wu, made a further move to Hao across the Feng River. King Wu is said to have expanded his father's campaigns to the Shang, defeating them in the decisive Battle of Muye, which is also described in the "Great brightness" song of the Classic of Poetry.Capturing and controlling was King Wu! (He) proceeded and campaigned through the four quarters, piercing Yin = and governing its people. Eternally unfearful of the Di (Distant Ones), oh, he attacked the Yi minions.
The 33-character inscription on the Li gui gives a brief contemporaneous account of the conquest, confirming the sexagenary cycle given by received sources:
When King Wu rectified = Shang, it was jiazi (day 1) morning. ... On xinwei (day 8), the king was at Jian encampment and gave officer Li metal, used to cast for my honoured ancestor Zhan this precious ritual vessel.According to the Yi Zhou Shu, the Zhou army spent two months in the area mopping up resistance before returning to the Wei valley. The received texts relate that King Wen left two or three of his brothers (depending on the source) to oversee the former Shang domains, nominally ruled by Wu Geng, the son of the last Shang king.
Wu Geng and the brothers of King Wu tasked with supervising him rebelled against the new regime. The Duke of Zhou and his half-brother, the Duke of Shao, organized another eastern campaign. After three years they had regained the lost areas and expanded their domain over an area stretching into Shandong.
The victorious triumvirate of the Duke of Zhou, Duke of Shao and King Cheng then consolidated their control over this expanded territory. They built an eastern capital at Chengzhou (modern day Luoyang) and began founding colonies or states at strategic points in their domain. The most important were placed under members of the ruling (姬) family. These colonies are listed in the Zuozhuan, and some have been confirmed by archaeological finds. The inscription on the Mai zun narrates the ceremony in which King Cheng appointed a son of the Duke of Zhou to rule Xing.
Kings Cheng and Kang mounted numerous military campaigns to expand their domains. The Xiao Yu ding relates a victory over the Guifang, presumably in the Ordos region, late in the reign of King Kang. This phase of expansion came to an end in a disastrous southern campaign in the Han River region, in which King Zhao lost his armies and his own life.
With the passing of generations, the family relationships between the king and the rulers of the colonies had also become more distant. Instead, the Zhou state developed a bureaucracy and formalized relations between the elites. There were reforms of the military, official titles and the distribution of land. A drastic shift in the style and types of bronze ritual vessels, formerly based on Late Shang models, also suggests a change in ritual practice at this time.
Very little historical information is available for the reigns of the next four kings, Gong, Yih, Xiao and Yi. Western Zhou kings were customarily succeeded by their oldest sons. However, Sima Qian states, without explanation, that King Yih was succeeded by his uncle, who became King Xiao, and that on Xiao's death "the many lords restored" King Yih's son, King Yi. Bronze inscriptions of the time use two different royal calendars, and the Bamboo Annals mentions King Yih moving out of the capital. Some authors suggest that King Yih was forced out by his uncle, and the two were rivals for a time, but whatever happened is now obscure. The succession was already presented as a linear sequence of kings in the Lai pan, cast in the reign of King Yi's grandson.
Both Sima Qian and the Bamboo Annals state that King Yi boiled the Duke of Qi (in eastern Shandong) in a cauldron. A bronze inscription confirms a Zhou attack on Qi at this time. This incident, in a state originally founded by one of King Wu's generals, indicates the waning authority of the Zhou king. Soon afterwards, the Zhou were attacked by Chu, who reached as far as the Luo River before being driven off in a counterattack described in the Yu ding and Yu gui.
When King Li died in exile, his son became King Xuan. Both received texts and bronze inscriptions suggest that King Xuan acted quickly to secure the state. In his 5th year, he ordered a campaign against the Xianyun in the west, and then appointed the successful general to command the eastern territories. According to the Bamboo Annals, in the following year he ordered a campaign against the Huaiyi in the southeast. Bronze inscriptions record victories in this campaign and others against the Xianyun. He reinforced the south by relocating settlements from the Wei valley to the Nanyang basin and sought to improve relations with distant Zhou states in the northeast and east. At the same time, the king also had to contend with succession struggles in some of the old Zhou states.
According to received texts, King You's reign began with ominous portents. The texts, as well as some of the Minor Court Songs, hint at factional struggles within the Zhou court. In his 11th year, the Quanrong attacked from the west, killing the king and causing the Zhou elite to flee from the Wei valley to the eastern capital, bringing the Western Zhou era to a close. Although Zhou royal power had been declining for over a century, this dramatic event presents a convenient milestone for historians. The Zhou would continue to occupy the eastern capital for another five centuries, but their sway over the states they had established became increasingly nominal.
Vessels of the early Western Zhou were elaborations of Late Shang designs, featuring high-relief decor, often with pronounced flanges, and made extensive use of the taotie motif. Wine vessels such as goblets and pouring vessels continued to be produced, but would largely disappear in later periods.
and were usually cast in matching sets.
The earliest were elevated on a base.
Over time, vessels became less flamboyant.
By the mid-10th century BC (middle Western Zhou), the taotie had been replaced by pairs of long-tailed birds facing each other. Vessels shrank, and their profile became simpler. New types were the vase and vessel.
vessels of this period tend to have covers.
New types of vessel began to be introduced during the early 9th century BC, initially in western Shaanxi, then quickly spreading throughout the Wei valley. These new types, which were grouped in large sets, possibly reflect a change in Zhou ritual practice. Animal decorations were replaced by geometric forms such as ribbing and bands of lozenge shapes. Conversely, legs and handles became larger and more elaborate, and were often topped with animal heads.
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