Jiang Ziya
Chinese · mortal · zhou · mortal
The premise of the book is an administrative one and he is the administrator: a war is fought, and the people killed in it are then appointed to divine offices from a roster, so that the Chinese popular pantheon is staffed by the casualties of the Shang-Zhou transition. Jiang Ziya holds the roster. Whatever one thinks of the novel as evidence for the eleventh century BC, it is unambiguously evidence for what sixteenth-century Chinese people believed about where their gods came from — and the registry held four of its minor characters and not the man with the list.
Domains
- strategy
- investiture
Relations
- subordinate to: King Wu of Zhou
- enemy: Shen Gongbao
- enemy: King Zhou of Shang
Sources
- Reference treatments of the Fengshen Yanyi, Jiang Ziya and the Fengshen Bang.