4/20/2023 0 Comments Ding vessel meaning![]() ![]() ![]() Various inscriptions make it clear that only the Shang king or an heir in the royal line of succession could receive or be invested with a yiding. Due to the large size and royal burial origins of all late Shang tetrapod ding, it appears that when the power of the ding ritual bronze was invoked, it was in reference to the largest and most powerful manifestation of this ding type. The yiding binome thus can be read as "the tetrapod ding invested with metamorphic power" or "the metamorphically empowered tetrapod (Childs-Johnson 2008:70-78).Īlthough there is no clear-cut distinction in bone inscriptional terminology between ritual bronze round tripod and square or rectangular tetrapod ding, the yiding binome most likely refers to the largest of the ding, which are tetrapod. The specialized term yi in bone and bronze inscriptions means "'to be empowered due to (spirit) metamorphosis' or 'to cause to undergo metamorphosis'" (Childs-Johnson 2007). (56) "Metamorphic," is also a term used elsewhere but with a completely different meaning, in describing, for example, artistic style of representation, not religion or belief (Wu 1995:50-52). (55) This inscriptional term is one of several pieces of evidence to identify the meaning of Shang ritual imagery as metamorphic (Childs-Johnson 1998, 2008). ![]() Shang period oracle bone inscriptions often describe ding with the binome yiding (Fig. Yiding : Metamorphically Empowered Tetrapod Ding in Shang and Western Zhou Inscriptions ![]()
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