Royal Canon of Tsinh

The Royal Canon of Tsinh is a list of Tsinh rulers to whom supplication was paid regularly. While the canon first appears in historical works dating to the late 4th century and contains 43 members, a version revised based on the contents of the Springs and Autumns of Six States has put the figure at 70; their lifetimes are estimated to range from the 8th or 9th centuries BCE down to the point the canon was set to writing.

Contents

Shaded in red are those who are referred to as "Eldest Sibling" (大兄, lats-hmrang); in green, "Second Sibling" (中兄, trungh-hmrang).

#	Week		Week		Week		Week		Weeks	Gap after
2	Prang I		(perhaps missing)						1	0
3	Qrut I		Neting Brilliant		(7 – 8 missing)				2	4
4	Neting I		Kerap Ancestor		Keq Ancestor		(7 missing)		3	4
5	Qrut II	Kerang I	Ting Face	Nem II Great	(1 – 2 missing)				2	1
6	Kerap II	Neting II	Prang III	Sin I	Keq II		Met Heir		4	0
7	Sin Later		Prang IV		Qrut III		(3 – 4 missing)		3	2
8	Kerang Later	Neting III	Ghwiq Heir		(3 – 4 missing)				2	2
9	Kerap III		Keq III		Prang V		Qrut Heir	Kerang Great	4	0
10	Qrut IV		Prang VI Prince	Sin III	Prang VII Lesser	Nem Heir			3
11	Qrut IV Defender		Neting IV	Met Middle	Sin Younger / Kerang III		Qrut V		4
12	Sin IV Outsider	Qrut VI Outsider	Kerap V	Neting V					3
13	Kerang III								1
12	Qrut V	Kerang IV							1
13	Prang Outsider		Kerap VI						2
14	Neting Glorious	Nem IV	Keq IV						1
15	Prang VIII Southerner								1
16	Kerang V								1
17	Sin V		Kerap VII						2
18	Neting VI								1
19	Prang IX								1
20	Sin V								1
21	Qrut Glorious-Mighty								1
22	Neting Brilliant-Mighty								1
23	Fortress-Mighty								1

General observations

There is a set of "general observations" of the Canon first published by E. R. Wentworth in 1881, as follows:

• All individuals on the Canon are named after one of the 10-member sequence of Heavenly Stems, which is also used to name days in a 10-day week. This is known as the "Ordinal Name" and is assumed not to be their personal names, but a posthumous title of some kind; it may not necessarily be given at the point of or after death, though it is probably only used after death.
• While there is a ordered sequence of the Heavenly Stems, individuals on the Canon do not appear in any order, and the specific order of the Heavenly Stems as days of the week appears to be consciously avoided.
• The day on which sacrifice is offered to these individuals always matches their names, i.e. sacrifices to Kerap is always offered on Kerap-days.
• There are never more than 2 sacrifices per 10-day week, even if a 3rd individual on the Canon has the correct name to allow this.
• The terms "Elder Sibling" and "Second Sibling" always appear before there are any repetitions in the names. That is, there can be a maximum of 10 individuals before a name is repeated, and therefore the Elder Sibling and Second Sibling titles must recur by that point, and often earlier.

Source and reconstruction

The earliest complete texts that mention the Royal Canon are histories that date to the late 4th century, which often contain the phrase "the ruler will now worship from Prang I, then Qrut the Brilliant and Nem I, then..." (公祀自先祖丙、次光乙、先祖壬、次…) Sometimes this phrase is state in full, down to the predecessor of the ruler who ordered the worship ceremonies. Other times, only Prang I is mentioned and then the total number of names "the ruler will worship from Prang I, then the 25 ancestors" (公祀自先祖丙其廿祖又九祖). It seems succeeding rulers always appended their immediate predecessors to this list, which grew to 31 ancestors by the time the last ruler was written of. It was therefore called the Royal Canon (公表) under the assumption it represented an exhaustive list of all former rulers from whom the current claimed descent.

The historians who lived during the Tsinh hegemony and late antiquity seemed to have little doubt this list represents an unbroken line of ancestors from Prang I to the current ruler. In the 18th century, with the Springs and Autumns gaining scholarly attention, it was discovered that more archaic versions of the Royal Canon could be reconstructed based on a chronologized listing of recorded sacrifices, as they were recorded one by one instead of given in a single statement. Contrary to all expectation, the archaic Royal Canon was not shorter than the one used in the hegemonic period but longer. There were names that had been omitted by the Classical historians. Published in his treatise in 1791, Baronet Pem's thesis has been called the discovery of the millennium in the study of Themiclesian history and the first meaningful step in understanding the Archaic Period.

Between 1810 and 1850, historians worked out a more consistent chronologization of the records in the Springs and Autumns, placing events in strict chronological order. Combined with the earlier knowledge that worship of a particular figure was always done on a day of the ten-day week that corresponded with his Ordinal Name, numerous gaps in the Canon sacrifices were found, i.e. the next figure was not always worshipped on the next permissible day. These gaps are too consistent to be considered accidents occasioned by natural disasters or other business of state. For example, there was always a 2-week gap between the known members of cycles 3/4, a 4-week gap between 4/5, and a 3-week gap between 5/6 and 7/8.

The prevailing assumption is that these gaps must have been occupied by figures to whom worship was withheld but still remembered. Given the constraint of ten rulers (never repeating in their Ordinal Names) in a single cycle and the length of the gaps, a further group of figures can be hypothesized and estimated. In combination with those who were still worshipped during the Archaic Period, the full Royal Canon down to the time of Prince Qhwang (皇中兄, r. 171 – 185) can be measured to between 73 and 81 names, consisting of the 25 who were worshipped during his lifetime, 32 worshipped during the Archaic Period, and another 16 to 24 whose presence was felt as gaps in the schedule during the Archaic Period.

Analysis

The orthodox position on the Canon in Themiclesian historiography is to read it as a list of successive rulers, if not specifically as a sequence of father-son successions. This was maintained in the educational establishment as late as the 1945, by which time the analysis had been thoroughly discredited in scholarly circles but was maintained in compulsory education for default of another formulation that achieved widespread agreement.

The foremost argument against this analysis is that nothing in the Canon itself actually says so—it is a sequence of individuals to whom supplication is offered (indeed it is by definition this way) but does not define their biological relationship. Sources external to the Canon provide that the final members of the Canon are father-son successions, and the more reliable historians state biological relationships when such are known and otherwise remain silent. In the 1700s, more learned individuals have accepted that beyond the last nine cycles (which contain only one member each with the exception of cycle 16, which has two members) biological relationships are not necessarily that between fathers and sons; however, in this period, the main alternative theory is that the Canon represents a successive list of kings who may be siblings or cousins, if not father-son successions.

As the 19th century progressed, more doubts surfaced regarding the interpretation of the Canon as a list of successive rulers, and these doubts are engendered by the archaeology of the Meng settlement. Containing some 80 names, "cramming" these into the period in which Meng settlement can be archaeologically confirmed results in average reigns of less than 7 years, very short compared with both later history and foreign royal dynasties operating on primogeniture or agnatic seniority principles. Such short-livedness is remarkable comparing the reigns of later Canon members (who are successive rulers), which is about 19 years and in line with foreign averages.

The current thinking is that the criterion for being added to the Canon during the period corresponding to the final cycles was indeed to have ruled as a king, which is a hereditary office. But this criterion would not have existed as such in the earlier period. Thus the Canon had transformed from a sacerdotal list into a royal genealogy.

Cycle 1

The first cycle, which has ten members in sequence of the Heavenly Stems, is usually considered mythical as their behaviour is fundamentally different from that in other cycles and quite transparent. Nevertheless, their inclusion in the Canon cannot have been recent and is likely to be ancient as well.

Cycle 2

Cycle 2 contains but a single individual, Prang I (先祖丙), who is very well known as the first ancestor mentioned in sacrificial records in the Archaic Period. Nevertheless, Prang I's solitary position is highly anomalous as the cycles immediately following all have multiple members. Not only do the following cycles have multiple named members, the presence of gap weeks permits the reconstruction of cycles 3, 4, and 5 as possessing all ten ordinal names, which makes cycle 2 all the more peculiar as it is not followed by any gap weeks that allow the insertion of other names.

There are two notable theories about this cycle. One is that cycle 2 may have been at a point in time so remote that no memory remains of the other names in this generation. The other argues that cycle 2 was a later addition that contains a fictional "progenitor of all" type figure, which reflects a more monistic political environment and projects that into royal genealogy.

Cycles 3 – 4

Cycles 3 – 4 are the locus classicus of the operation of the Royal Canon. The cycles are reproduced below:

• Cycle 3: two named individuals, four gap weeks
• Cycle 4: three named individuals, four gap weeks

Haskall observed that there are never more than two sacrifices offered per 10-day week, and only around 15% of the time a second possible sacrifice is not undertaken where it is permittd (and then only occasionally it is not undertaken). It can therefore be inferred that the four consistent gap weeks after cycle 3 are dedicated to eight individuals. By the same token, the three gap weeks after the four individuals of cycle 4 are inferred as belonging to seven individuals. There are therefore ten individuals in both these cycles, though now it is not possible to recover the specific names of the unnamed individuals as they do not appear in any order.

See also

• Themiclesia