battlefield weapon use rather than performances demonstrating weapon
skills. Any Zhou court performance would have provided an audience of
aristocratic martial artists trained in precisely the weapons on display. The
martial dance to them must have been an invocation of martial spirit as
well as a tribute to previous victories. Martial dances commemorated past
battles as a physical reminder of history for a largely illiterate audience and
emphasized their connection to their ancestors.
Martial dances served a historical as well as a cultural function.
Through music and dance, a past event was connected to a particular set
of emotions and imprinted on succeeding generations who then shared a
common understanding of history. The performance of these dances in the
Zhou court or before a battle legitimized the authority of the audience by
affirming their connection to successful ancestors, or by tying the group
together through the shared emotional bonds of a common experience.
Political legitimacy was derived from seeing the dance performed in exactly
the way it had been performed before by all previous courts. This was true
for other dances and ceremonies as well. Exact repetition was a sign of
orthodoxy, and variation a sign of heterodoxy. We see similar concerns
today over the correct transmission of a martial arts form from a founding
teacher to the schools of his students. Martial dances in the Zhou were a
physical, unwritten system for demonstrating political, social, and cultural
identity.
Although I have discussed the military and social facets of martial
dances, I have thus far only alluded to the spiritual aspects of dance and
music. Dance and music were performed in court in honor of past rulers. It
is debatable whether these dances contained a spiritual or religious com-
ponent. They clearly involved emotions, rather than simply the intellect,
but defining them as“spiritual”or“religious”depends upon one’sdefi-
nition of those terms. If by“spiritual”we mean connecting to some emo-
tional, nonintellectual human need, or connected to the otherworldly
spirits of the ancestors that Shang and Zhou aristocrats believed were
present in their world, then these dances were indeed spiritual. To the
extent that the dances were for the benefit of those spirits, then they were
also“religious”under some definitions. More to the point, Chinese mar-
tial arts from the earliest times fulfilled a role beyond training for violence.
This role existed before any of the Warring States schools of thought were
formulated, and far in advance of the arrival of Buddhism in China
(indeed, long before even the inception of Buddhism in India).
The performance aspect of martial arts has always been present in
China, and it is important to understand that this went beyond simple
28 Stone Age through the Spring and Autumn Period