I would like to thank Professors Fan, Li, and Wang for what has been for me a most stimulating exchange of ideas on a problem of seminal importance in the history of early China. From these three scholars, we have seen three interpretations, radically different both from each other and also from the interpretation I presented above, of a small set of oracle-bone inscriptions. I believe that these four interpretations represent virtually every possible alternative and, by having them presented together in a forum such as this, the scholarly world should now be better able to evaluate their relative merits.

I believe it is clear from each of the above discussions that the differences in interpretation here owe more to anthropology than to paleography (although a correct paleographic interpretation of these inscriptions, and especially of H11:84, is an essential starting point). Would it have been possible for the leader of one kinship group to offer cult to the ancestors of a separate kinship group? I am grateful to Professor Fan Yuzhou for his citation of Sumerian evidence showing that such indeed has been possible in other historical situations. Nevertheless, as Professor Wang Yuxin has properly pointed out in critique of my own reference to Xiongnu sacrifices in honor of Han emperors, this type of evidence, being either temporally or culturally distinct from the society that produced these inscriptions, cannot be used to describe Shang or Zhou practice.