Shang Military Establishment And Arms Research

This thesis can be divided into two sections: the establishment and the arms of the services. Those scholars who have published articles on these topics agree with the points that the establishment was scomposed of division, brigade and clan; and the anns of services included military cart drivers, infantry an cavalry. But they greatly dispute over whether the clan was the central force or the militia organization, whether garrison was a level of the establishment of a kind of arms of the services; how many soldiers a division consisted of~ etc. In view of the above mentioned factors, this thesis, by making the best of the inscriptions on Bones and Tortoise Shells of the Shang Dynasty, the archaeological data and the ancient documents, engages in textual research of the establishment and arms of the services of that time. Meanwhile, it tries to solve the following problems: the actual constitution of both the establishment and the arms of the services, the position of the clan armed forces in the army of the Shang Dynasty. Then, the author corrects some wrong ideas and puts forward his own ideas on some concrete problems. In the Shang Dynasty, the army was composed of division, brigade, clan, line and garrison, which were all organized in the order of Left, Middle and Right. Among them, the division, with 1 0,000soldiers, had the largest establishment. The brigade, with 1,000 soldiers, was directly under the jurisdiction of the division. Every ten brigades formed one division. As the local armed forces, the clan, formed by the clanmen, was led to fight by the king of the clan. The line was one military establishment in infantry under the jurisdiction of the division. And the garrison was specific bacause its members---clanmen, especially imperial kinsmen---were under the kings command during wartime, and returned to their own clan when the war came to an end. They normally defended the border and the important cities. Thus, the division, the brigade and the line were standing forces, while the clan and the garrison were militia organization, which formed a greater proportion in the whole army. Up to now, we can say that in the Shang Dynasty, standing army system went side by side with conscription system. Due to the need and the increasingly enlarged war, it was necessary to have different and independent arms of services such as: military cart drivers, infantry, boaters, 2 1~~ cavalry and shooters. And the last two had become the kings professional army. For the establishment, except that of the boaters, they were all ognized in the order of Left. Middle and Right, with every 300soldiers as a fighting unit. Among them, the infantry was the largest both in quality and in size, then came the military cart drivers and the shooters, the cavalry and the boaters, the smallest. The clanmen were considered to be the main force in the army as they nomally served as the infantry, the cavalry and the shooters. Through this discussion, we demonstrate that in the inscriptions on Bones and Tortoise Shells of the Shang Dynasty, the infantry is called 揋e man?or 揓i man? both? Gong man?or 揇eng man?in singular form in the Oracle Inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty on Bones and...