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enemy were the people named the Qiang. Although superficially one might take it for granted that the Qiang were an enemy tribe waging war against the Shang, there is nevertheless a close similarity between the way animals were listed as prey in hunts and the way the Qiang recorded. Both Qiang and animals were similarly used as sacrifices to the ancestors. We should not exclude the possibility that the Shang nation regarded the Qiang as half-animal, and hunted them for sport and to provide material for sacrifices.
Sima Qian's Yin Ben Ji (Shiji: Yin Ben Ji: Di Wu Yi. Selby: 3D.) relates how Wu Yi resorted to black magic (“shooting at heaven') with the bow and arrow. Tentatively, I put 'magic' as one of the cultural attributes of archery in the Shang period.
Archery and education in the Zhou period
The tradition alluded to in the Zhou Li, in which archery formed part of the syllabus of the xiao xue education curriculum (Zhou Li: di guan - Bao Shi, Zheng Zhong's note.), as well as the rich ritual tradition of archery first recorded in the 'Rites' (Yi li, Li ji. Selby: 4D) and elsewhere, were probably recorded in the Spring and Autumn Period. But the ritual practices recorded would reflect Western Zhou usage.
Archery in Zhou tradition had a number of ritual expressions:
* the three-tier archery competition rituals (she li)
* the sou hunting ritual
* the 'bow and arrow dance'
* the ritual presentation of bows and arrows as tokens of office
These expressions can all be regarded as a natural out-growth of the use of the bow and arrow in hunting and warfare. Logically more remote, however, are the claims in the Confucian 'Archery Ritual' (Li Ji: She Yi. Selby: 5B.) that the shooting of a bow was a right of passage (at birth and puberty) and was the proper method of selection of officials. Key to the explanation is the use of two sets of puns: the She pun and the Ze pun. In one we see 'shooting' punned with 'release of emotion,' and
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enemy were the people named the Qiang. Although superficially one might take it for granted that the Qiang were an enemy tribe waging war against the Shang, there is nevertheless a close similarity between the
way animals were listed as prey in hunts and the way the Qiang recorded. Both Qiang and animals were similarly used as sacrifices to the ancestors. We should not exclude the possibility that the Shang nation regarded the Qiang as half-animal, and hunted them for sport and to provide material for sacrifices.
Sima Qian's Yin Ben Ji (Shiji: Yin Ben Ji: Di Wu Yi. Selby: 3D.) relates how Wu Yi resorted to black magic (“shooting at heaven' ) with the bow and arrow. Tentatively, I put 'magic' as one of the cultural attributes of archery in the Shang period.
Archery and education in the Zhou period
The tradition alluded to in the Zhou Li, in which archery formed part of the syllabus of the xiao xue education curriculum (Zhou Li: di guan - Bao Shi, Zheng Zhong's note.), as well as the rich ritual tradition of archery first recorded in the 'Rites' (Yi li, Li ji. Selby: 4D) and elsewhere, were probably recorded in the Spring and Autumn Period. But the ritual practices recorded would reflect Western Zhou usage.
Archery in Zhou tradition had a number of ritual expressions:
* the three-tier archery competition rituals (she li)
* the sou hunting ritual
*the 'bow and arrow dance*
* the ritual presentation of bows and arrows as tokens of office
These expressions can all be regarded as a natural out-growth of the use of the bow and arrow in hunting and warfare. Logically more remote, however, are the claims in the Confucian 'Archery Ritual' (Li Ji: She Vi. Selby; 5B.) that the shooting of a bow was a right of passage (at birth and puberty) and was the proper method of selection of officials. Key to the explanation is the use of two sets of puns: the She pun and the Ze pun. In one we see 'shooting' punned with 'release of emotion,” and
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