EARLY CHINESE CULTURES— EBERHARD 525 



two-pointed spade characteristic, like the above-named traits, of the 

 Southern Culture. This type of implement was long retained in 

 eastern China until somewhere around the middle of the first millen- 

 nium before our era, there appeared the plow, possibly as a develop- 

 ment of the spade. The difficulty about this last point lies only in 

 this; that the plow seems first to have been known in western China, 

 where we as yet hear nothing of the existence of an implement of the 

 spade class. Possibly this may mean that the plow has been intro- 

 duced into China from abroad. At all events it soon spread through 

 the north and then over the center and south of China. The presence 

 of survivals among the agricultural processes in use even today shows 

 that Yiieh influence on the Shang culture was also by no means 

 negligible. The many cowry shells, objects of mother-of-pearl, and 

 bones of the whale that have been found suggest that the Shang 

 people carried on trade with the east coast, where, according to tradi- 

 tion, the Yiieh were already seated. The influence of the latter on the 

 Shangs is, I believe, likewise shown by the "kimono" cut of their 

 clothing and especially hj the style of the decoration found on 

 their bronzes. 



Finally, this Shang Cidture also contained an element derived from 

 the Western Culture, and which seems to have been growing stronger 

 with the passage of time. Wliile the Shang rehgion appears to have 

 been at first only agrarian in its character and so to be explained as 

 due to the influence of the Southern Culture, there appears in it later 

 on a worsliip of sacred mountains which may well be ascribed to the 

 Yiieh Culture; while later still we can trace a change to an astral type 

 of religion, as indicated by the inscriptions on the oracle bones. For 

 the latter, we may now assert with confidence, the bones of oxen were 

 used at first. We must infer, therefore, that the use of chicken bones 

 and still later of their eggs, for oracular purposes, was typical of one or 

 other of the southern cultures, whether of that of the south itself or 

 that of the coast; and that, further, between these oracles and those 

 drawn from the bones of oxen there exists some sort of connection. 

 As yet, however, we are not well enough informed as to the nature of 

 the cattle sacrifice in use among the Shangs to try to bring its ox-bone 

 type of oracle into direct relationship with the ox cult and the ox 

 sacrifice of the Coast Culture. Later, in place of ox bones, the shells 

 of tortoises were employed by the Shangs. That the latter should 

 thus have come to prefer tortoise shells is only explicable on the ground 

 that, as stated by later texts, they saw in the rounded upper shell 

 (carapace) a symbol of the vault of Heaven, and in the flat lower one 

 (plastron; the part used in consulting the oracle) that of the plain of 

 Earth. Thus already we find here evidence of astrological speculations 

 like those which became especially conspicuous later on, in the cidture 

 of the Chou people (to be considered later), under the stimulus of the 

 predominantly astral religion of the latter. This we can hardly explain 



