The Origins of Chinese Poltical Culture, ca. 1300 B.C.

FAIN: FT-11478-73

David N. Keightley
University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA 94704-5940)

To publish a book The Ancestral State, a two-part study of Bronze Age China ca. 1300 B.C. It presents the Shang dynasty as ancestral in two ways: first, as a state that was ancestor to the later Chinese dynasties such as the Chou and Han; second as a state which devoted a large part of its resources to satisfying the needs of the royal ancestors. The study also shows how religious beliefs shape, and evolve into, secular ones.