On the basis of inscriptional evidence, it is proposed that the following principles governed the system of succession and inheritance among the lineages forming the Shang dynasty:

(1) The great Royal Lineage consisted of certain kings (Great Ancestors) and their consorts, selected from a federation of ten patrilineages, named by the ten kan stems; these patrilineages were linked by ties of marriage and consanguinity.

(2) Kan names were inherited through the male line; sons and daughters both inherited the kan name of their biological father.

(3) Marriage was exogamous; a male could not marry a female bearing the same kan name as his own; nor could he, in general, marry a female who bore the same kan name as his mother.

(4) When kingship remained in the same generation it passed from one classificatory “brother” to another. When kingship descended a generation, it passed not from the king to his son, but from the king to his consort's sister's son. Only a king who was the son of a king's consort's sister and whose consort's sister was the mother of a king was eligible for Great Ancestor status.

(5) Kings of the same generation had to be of different kan; when a kan lineage had occupied the kingship in one generation, it could not do so again in the generation immediately succeeding.