Research On The Source Of The Merchant Temple Name

People in Shang Dynasty highly respected their ancestors.They put the spirit tablet of their deceased ancestors into the ancestral temple for frequent and grand sacrifices.People in Shang Dynasty used heavenly stems to name temple names.Choose the date of sacrifice according to the ancestral temple name.The origin of the temple name involves the patriarchal clan system,sacrifices and social customs of the Shang Dynasty,and is an important issue in the study of the history of the Shang Dynasty.Due to the shortage of documents in the Shang Dynasty,this issue has always been concerned and debated by academic circles.This article is mainly composed of three chapters:The first chapter evaluates the previous research results on the origin of temple names in Shang Dynasty.These research results can be divided into five categories according to their contents,namely,the temple name originates from the day of birth and death,order,social grouping,divination and lucky days.Discuss the reasonableness of each argument.Among them,it is more reasonable to say that the temple name originated from divination and auspicious day.The former is based on two groups of exact oracle bone inscriptions,while the latter conforms to the divination custom and auspicious concept of Shang Dynasty.However,these two statements are still imperfect,that is,they do not fully explain the regular phenomenon in the temple name and the phenomenon that the temple name can be used as a living name.The second chapter studies the naming rules of temple names and their relationship with auspicious days.With the in-depth study of the issue of temple names,scholars have gradually discovered the law of choosing temple names.The frequency of using ten heavenly stems is different when choosing temple number.More than half of the king's temple names use jia(?),yi(?)and ding(?)of the heavenly stems,while the vast majority of noble's temple names use five even-numbered heavenly stems,namely yi(?),ding(?),ji(?),xin(?)and gui(?).The king and his son,brother and wife chose different temple names,while other nobles did not.The difference in the choice of temple titles between the Shang royal family and other nobles is due to their different times and status.The temple name of Shang king ShangJia(??),BaoYi(??),BaoBing(??)and BaoDing(??)was later given.After that,the temple number should be chosen by divination,which is the main choice of the temple number.People in Shang Dynasty predicted the good or bad of things through divination.The origin of temple name should be related to the auspicious day of divination.By comparing the distribution of temple names and auspicious days in the heavenly stems,Shang people chose temple names because of people's idea of auspicious days.The concept of auspicious day is a part of the Shang Dynasty's customs and culture,and is the basic principle followed in choosing temple names.The third chapter mainly discusses the phenomenon of temple name being used by living people and its causes.Oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions of Shang Dynasty show someone can use temple names alive,such as the characters "ding"(?)and"geng"(?)in huadong(??)oracle inscriptions.They are new materials for study of the origin of the temple names.From the perspective of era and cultural connotation,the phenomenon of living people using temple names in Shang Dynasty is the most similar to the phenomenon of living people using posthumous title in Western Zhou Dynasty.The related records of posthumous title in the Western Zhou Dynasty in the documents handed down from ancient times are far more perfect than those of temple names in the Shang Dynasty.The reasons for the use of temple names by the living in the Shang Dynasty can be traced back to these data.The temple names is consistent with posthumous titles.It is neither a given name nor style name,but an honorific title.Shang people worshipped the sun,so they took heavenly stems as their titles.This kind of honor is a high summary of his achievements,not only obtained by election after death,but also used by election while alive.