Inscriptions mention many neighbours of the Shang with whom they were in more or less continuous state of war.  Many of these neighbours can now be identified.  We know that Shansi at that time was inhabited by Ch’iang tribes, belonging to the Tibetan culture, as well as by Ti tribes, belonging to the northern culture, and by Hsien-yuen and other tribes, belonging to the north-western culture; the centre of the Ch’iang tribes was more in the south-west of Shansi and in Shensi.  Some of these tribes definitely once formed a part of the earlier Hsia state.  The identification of the eastern neighbours of the Shang presents more difficulties.  We might regard them as representatives of the Tai and Yao cultures.

2 Writing and Religion

Not only the material but also the intellectual level attained in the Shang period was very high.  We meet for the first time with writing—­much later than in the Middle East and in India.  Chinese scholars have succeeded in deciphering some of the documents discovered, so that we are able to learn a great deal from them.  The writing is a rudimentary form of the present-day Chinese script, and like it a pictorial writing, but also makes use, as today, of many phonetic signs.  There were, however, a good many characters that no longer exist, and many now used are absent.  There were already more than 3,000 characters in use of which some 1,000 can now be read. (Today newspapers use some 3,000 characters; scholars have command of up to 8,000; the whole of Chinese literature, ancient and modern, comprises some 50,000 characters.) With these 3,000 characters the Chinese of the Shang period were able to express themselves well.

The still existing fragments of writing of this period are found almost exclusively on tortoiseshells or on other bony surfaces, and they represent oracles.  As early as in the Lung-shan culture there was divination by means of “oracle bones”, at first without written characters.  In the earliest period any bones of animals (especially shoulder-bones) were used; later only tortoiseshell.  For the purpose of the oracle a depression was burnt in the shell so that cracks were formed on the other side, and the future was foretold from their direction.  Subsequently particular questions were scratched on the shells, and the answers to them; these are the documents that have come down to us.  In Anyang tens of thousands of these oracle bones with inscriptions have been found.  The custom of asking the oracle and of writing the answers on the bones spread over the borders of the Shang state and continued in some areas after the end of the dynasty.

The bronze vessels of later times often bear long inscriptions, but those of the Shang period have only very brief texts.  On the other hand, they are ornamented with pictures, as yet largely unintelligible, of countless deities, especially in the shape of animals or birds—­pictures that demand interpretation.  The principal form on these bronzes is that of the so-called T’ao-t’ieh, a hybrid with the head of a water-buffalo and tiger’s teeth.