Elder clans (Themiclesia)
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The elder clans (公族, kong-tsok) were a group of lineages sharing common descent with the ruling patriarch or king and active as political units the end of the Hexarchy, but exact functions remain elusive.
Terminology
History
Pre-Hexarchy
The bronze and ocacular record, which extends into the 5th century BCE in Themiclesia, contain numerous references to the elder clan or clans. In Tsjinh, they were individuals whom the patriarch could, as a class, summon or arm. While the name "elder clan" is connected with the institution of the elder, their actual relationship is unclear. Scholars caution against the "simplistic" argument that the elders were the leaders of the elder clans and point out that there is no firm evidence in the record for or against elders possession of strong powers over elders clans.
Hexarchy
In Tsjinh state during the Hexarchy, the elder clans appeared as an "amorphous but tangible" group of people who were not geographically or professionally restricted. They lived at Tsjinh and other cities, and they could provide goods and services of many kinds, especially after an oracle that favoured these activities.
Regarding this state of affairs, the scholar S. Gik asserted with reference to cultic beliefs in his 1899 monograph Archaic Themiclesia the
elder clans were the distant relatives of the patriarch's tribe whose primary connection with him were at least partly religious in nature. It remains a hitherto-unchallenged observation, in Themiclesian oracles at least, that the ancestor-god relates to the living as parents. One addresses the question only to one's ancestors, not to those of others; an ancestor-god understands and holds power over only his descendants. Only very distant ancestor-gods are capable of predicting the elder clans' opinions; we may thus argue that the elder clans, collectively, are (at least theoretically or symbolically) the children of distant ancestor-gods.
As ancestor-worship is an extension of the family beyond the boundary of this world and the next, to touch and interact with a deceased ancestor, it horizontally affirms the relationship between the supplicant's with all the subject's descendants by re-animating a deceased parent. When the oracle-bone cracked, it is as though the deceased, as parent, answered his descendants, as children. The distant becomes immediate, the departed returned, and the silent audible...
The elder clans' role became less prominent after the Quarrel of the Princes.