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peoples traced their ancestry to Hou Ji, whose second name translates as “millet.” This semidivine figure reputedly instructed his descendants in the basics of farming. Inhabiting as it did the areas west of the Shang kingdom in the Wei river valley, the Zhou had often bellicose relations with its neighbor for several generations before their final confrontation in the eleventh century BCE . Despite these conflicts, the Zhou was influenced by the Shang. Designs and techniques of early Zhou bronzes and ceramics resembled Shang prototypes, and their rituals were often similar.
    Culmination of the strained relationship occurred during the reigns of the stereotyped, almost legendary father-and-son monarchs, Wen and Wu of Zhou. The sources endow Wen (his name signifying “accomplished” or “learned”) with the attributes of a sage-ruler. Intelligent and benevolent, Wen believed in negotiations and compromise in relations with others and in governing his own people. His remarkable character paved the way for his son Wu (his name meaning “martial’) to battle with and overwhelm the Shang. The sources praise Wu for his military successes, but Wen represented the ideal. Even at this early stage in Chinese culture, civil virtues were more highly prized than military skills. The sources, for example, extol the Zhou for their magnanimity toward their defeated enemies. Instead of adopting a military solution and extirpating the Shang royal family, the leaders of Zhou gave them land in order to permit them to continue their ancestral rituals.
    Early Chinese attitudes can be discerned even more clearly in the descriptions of the Duke of Zhou, the leading cultural hero of the period. The Duke of Zhou, Wu’s brother, was first a regent and later a minister for King Cheng, his young nephew. In later accounts, he is credited with stabilizing the Zhou by enfeoffing collateral members of the royal family and other nobles who had been instrumental in the overwhelming victory over the Shang. Recognizing that the Zhou needed to reward these loyal retainers, the Duke of Zhou initiated the practice of granting them land and allowing them to govern their domains, relieving the Zhou court of a task it did not have the administrative or military capability to undertake. He is also revered for his patronage of scholars, a quintessential Chinese value in later times. He is most celebrated, however, for his promotion of the concept of the Mandate of Heaven. This view justified the Zhou usurpation of the throne because the mandate to rule offered by Heaven (Tian, who became the most important deity and superseded the Di and the wind, mountain, and other Shang deities) was not granted in perpetuity. Future rulers could lose the mandate, which would be revealed by their lack of concern for their subjects’ welfare. When rulers lost such support, their subjects had the right, if not the obligation, to depose them. The Duke of Zhou and other exponents sought to use the theory to exonerate themselves from accusations of sedition and to legitimize the new dynasty. According to the Duke of Zhou, the Shang kings had not performed the divinely ordained rituals, had scarcely concerned themselves with government, and had selected ministers with hardly any interest in public welfare. Thus, the Zhou was absolutely justified in overthrowing the discredited and disreputable Shang kings. In this view, the king’s role was essential. It is all the more ironic, then, that the Duke of Zhou took the initiative in developing a decentralized political system that eventually circumscribed the king’s authority and turned over much of the responsibility for the public welfare to the nobility. The question is: did the Zhou kings and the Duke of Zhou have any other choice in light of the technological limitations of centralized government at that time?
    The early Zhou rulers devised a set of offices for the central government, but the operation of these agencies and