the oracle a depression was burnt in the shell so that cracks were
formed on the other side, and the future was foretold from their
direction. Subsequently particular questions were scratched on the
shells, and the answers to them; these are the documents that have come
down to us. In Anyang tens of thousands of these oracle bones with
inscriptions have been found. The custom of asking the oracle and of
writing the answers on the bones spread over the borders of the Shang
state and continued in some areas after the end of the dynasty.

The bronze vessels of later times often bear long inscriptions, but
those of the Shang period have only very brief texts. On the other hand,
they are ornamented with pictures, as yet largely unintelligible, of
countless deities, especially in the shape of animals or birds--pictures
that demand interpretation. The principal form on these bronzes is that
of the so-called T'ao-t'ieh, a hybrid with the head of a water-buffalo
and tiger's teeth.

The Shang period had a religion with many nature deities, especially
deities of fertility. There was no systematized pantheon, different
deities being revered in each locality, often under the most varied
names. These various deities were, however, similar in character, and
later it occurred often that many of them were combined by the priests
into a single god. The composite deities thus formed were officially
worshipped. Their primeval forms lived on, however, especially in the
villages, many centuries longer than the Shang dynasty. The sacrifices
associated with them became popular festivals, and so these gods or
their successors were saved from oblivion; some of them have lived on in
popular religion to the present day. The supreme god of the official
worship was called Shang Ti; he was a god of vegetation who guided all
growth and birth and was later conceived as a forefather of the races of