173
THE DEIFICATION OF HEROES FOLLOWING THE STRUGGLE BY THE VASSAL STATE OF CHOU TO OVERTHROW THE SHANG DYNASTY
KEITH STEVENS
The lives of a great number of Chinese historical figures, heroes, worthies, bandits and revolutionaries, sovereigns and commoners over the centuries have become mythologized and the subjects of teashop story tellers. Their deeds and words have been fictionalised, themes known to the majority of Chinese. Some have found their way into religious life and become deified worthies. Many of these tales, ostensibly biographies of deities, are predominantly fantasy wedded with historico-fictional legends, a number of which comprise two or more volumes, others involve an enormous cast of heroes and worthies as well as scores of supernatural characters. Three major historico-legendary tales in particular have coloured popular religion beliefs. These are The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Journey to the West and The Deification of the Gods. Other works have also been sources of peasant knowledge about individual deities such as The Romance of the Sui-Tang [Sui-Tang Yanyi].
We are particularly interested here with The Deification of the Gods. [Fengshen Yanyi: a novel also known to foreigners as The Investiture of the Gods]. 'The Feng-shen Yen-i addressed the moral and philosophical question of the origins of the gods and is an unsophisticated version of history describing the overthrow of the dynastic house of Shang by the vassal Zhou which took place some 3,000 years ago, at a mythological time when the "human" gods were created. It has an overlay of Buddhism despite this religion in practice not reaching China until some thousand years after the overthrow of the Shang and the establishment of the Zhou and not incorporated into Chinese religious beliefs until the time of Christ. It is the story of the decline of a dynasty, the Shang, with its depraved, dissolute and brutal ruler, under the spell of a beauty, his concubine, leading at first to his ineffective attempts to subdue his vassal Zhou state, and later to the Zhou mustering its forces and allies to attack the Shang and lay siege to its capital.
173
THE DEIFICATION OF HEROES FOLLOWING THE STRUGGLE BY THE VASSAL STATE OF CHOU
TO OVERTHROW THE SHANG DYNASTY
KEITH STEVENS
The lives of a great number of Chinese historical figures, heroes, worthies, bandits and revolutionaries, sovereigns and commoners over the centuries have become mythologized and the subjects of teashop story tellers. Their deeds and words have been fictionalised, themes known to the majority of Chinese. Some have found their way into religious life and become deified worthies. Many of these tales, osten- sibly biographies of deities, are predominantly fantasy wedded with historico-fictional legends, a number of which comprise two or more volumes, others involve an enormous cast of heroes and worthies as well as scores of supernatural characters. Three major historico-leg- endary tales in particular have coloured popular religion beliefs. These are The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Journey to the West and The Deification of the Gods. Other works have also been sources of peasant knowledge about individual deities such as The Romance of the Sui-Tang [Sui-Tang Yanyi]
We are particularly interested here with The Deification of the Gods. [Fengshen Yanyi: a novel also known to foreigners as The Investiture of the Gods]. 'The Feng-shen Yen-i addressed the moral and philosophical question of the origins of the gods and is an unso- phisticated version of history describing the overthrow of the dynastic house of Shang by the vassal Zhou which took place some 3,000 years ago, at a mythological time when the "human" gods were created. It has an overlay of Buddhism despite this religion in practice not reach- ing China until some thousand years after the overthrow of the Shang and the establishment of the Zhou and not incorporated into Chinese religious beliefs until the time of Christ. It is the story of the decline of a dynasty, the Shang, with its depraved, dissolute and brutal ruler, un- der the spell of a beauty, his concubine, leading at first to his ineffec- tive attempts to subdue his vassal Zhou state, and later to the Zhou mustering its forces and allies to attack the Shang and lay siege to its capital.
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