“Steps” and “strikes”: textual note on Mushi chapter of the ancient Chinese Shangshu

Abstract

A new interpretation is proposed for a passage from the Mushi (The Oath on the Field of Mu) chapter of the Zhou Shu (Zhou Scriptures) section of the ancient Chinese Shangshu (Esteemed Book), or Shujing (Canon of Scriptures). The passage contains a speech by the Zhou king Wu-wang before the decisive battle with the Shang army, calling on the Zhou army to advance a few steps and then halt, to strike several times and then halt. In its literal form, this passage seems logically inconsistent. Liu Qiyu has provided criticism of the traditional interpretations of the passage and proposed to read this passage as a description of a war dance, performed immediately before the battle. The author, drawing on Zhouli (The Rites of Zhou) and other sources, corroborates the traditional explanation as a description of the rhythmic movement of troops, suggests the figurative nature of the passage, attributing this to the stylistic features of the text and proposing an analogy in the description of the actions of the Zhou troops with the process of writing the character wu (militantness), consisting of elements zhi (foot, stop) and ge (axe). The number of steps and strikes corresponds to the number of seven strokes in the character wu in its ancient writing in zhuan (seal) script. This proposal is based on the discussion by Zhuang-wang, the ruler of the Chu kingdom, on the composition of the character wu and the concept of militantness, consisting of seven virtues, presented in Zuo’s Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Chronicle (Chunqiu Zuo zhuan). The need to interpret the passage under consideration with the assumption of its euphemistic nature supports the opinion that the text of Mushi was recorded relatively late in the Eastern Zhou period.

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