2000/01/01 by E. G. Pulleyblank · 3 citations
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Chinese history and philosophy #Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis #Japanese History and Culture #Clan #Polity #Ancestor #China #History #Genealogy #Western Zhou #Shang dynasty #Mythology #Ancient history #Kinship #Politics #Epigraph #Anthropology #Sociology #Literature #Classics #Law #Art #Political science #Archaeology
paper · doi:10.1017/s0362502800004259
openalex publication_date 2000/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstracts The rule of surname exogamy, which has been an important feature of Chinese social organization down to recent times, seems to have originated with the Zhou dynasty. Its importance is symbolized in the myth of Jiang Yuan姜媚 or 姜原, the mother of Hou Ji后稷, Lord Millet, the ancestor of the Zhou kings, whose surname was Ji姬. Contrary to a view that has become popular, it is argued that Ji and Jiang could not have been the names of two originally separate peoples with different geographical origins that came together and formed an intermarrying alliance but were the names of the two leading, intermarrying, clans of a single people. After the Zhou conquest of Shang, marriage politics, which required the rulers of originally non-Chinese states to have clan names of the same kind, played an important part in gradually incorporating such states into the Zhou, Hua-Xia華夏, polity. The fact that the surnames Ji and Jiang were also found among peoples known as Rong 戎 who were not recognized as Hua-Xia but were probably also Sino-Tibetan in language seems to be consistent with traditional accounts of Zhou's northwestern origins. The words Ji and Jiang are probably etymologically related and although yang羊 “sheep” plays a phonetic role in the graphs of both the surname Jiang and the ethnic name Qiang 羌, Jiang and Qiang are two separate words and need not have anything to do with one another.