Investiture of the Gods
Also known as: Investiture of the Gods, Creation of the Gods, Canonization of the Gods, Fengshen Bang
A late-Ming mytho-historical novel recounting the collapse of the Shang and rise of the Zhou, interweaving immortals, demons, and humans as Jiang Ziya marshals heroes and deities toward the Battle of Muye and the final investiture of a new celestial bureaucracy.
Description
Set at the end of the Shang dynasty, the narrative opens with King Zhou’s impiety toward the goddess Nüwa and his enthrallment by the fox-spirit Daji. Heaven and the immortal sects divide over mortal affairs while Jiang Ziya, a disciple of the Chan sect, gathers human and divine allies for the Zhou cause. The novel blends court intrigue, battlefield campaigns, and wonder-tales—Nezha’s defiance, Lei Zhenzi’s transformations, Yang Jian’s stratagems—with large-scale magical warfare such as the Ten Ultimate Formations and the Nine-Curves Yellow River Array. Culminating in the Battle of Muye, the defeated Shang are overthrown and a vast pantheon is canonized: loyalists, villains, and immortals alike are assigned divine offices, establishing a new cosmic and political order that retroactively explains cults and deities of later popular religion.
Historiography
Circulating in multiple late-Ming prints with variant chaptering and commentaries, the text is traditionally attributed to Xu Zhonglin of Nanjing; some editions credit or implicate the scholar Lu Xixing. Its materials derive from Song–Yuan zaju, baojuan, and temple lore about Jiang Ziya, Nezha, and the Zhou conquest. Qing editors produced annotated redactions that standardized names and deity titles. Modern scholarship treats it as a syncretic mytho-historical romance that systematizes popular cults through the device of posthumous canonization.
Date Notes
Composite novel drawing on earlier popular tales and operas; earliest extant printed editions are late Ming; authorship uncertain.
Archetypes
Major Characters
- Jiang Ziya
- King Wu of Zhou
- King Zhou of Shang
- Daji
- Nezha
- Yang Jian
- Shen Gongbao
- Huang Feihu
- Lei Zhenzi
- Nüwa
Myths
- The Fall of the Shang
- Jiang Ziya’s Mandate
- Nezha’s Rebellion and Redemption
- Lei Zhenzi’s Transformation
- Daji and the Tyranny of King Zhou
- The Deification of the Heroes
Facts
- The novel retrofits a divine bureaucracy by assigning posthumous offices to historical and legendary figures.
- Authorship is uncertain; Xu Zhonglin is the conventional attribution, with some editions implicating Lu Xixing.
- Its plot frames the Zhou conquest of Shang as the working of Heaven’s Mandate mediated by rival immortal sects.
- Nezha’s most famous arc—self-sacrifice and rebirth—receives a canonical Ming-novel treatment here.
- Large-scale magical battles hinge on named tactical arrays, especially the Ten Ultimate Formations and Nine-Curves Yellow River Array.
- Kong Xuan’s five-colored light is portrayed as an overpowering cosmic force until countered by Buddhist-Daoist adepts.
- The Battle of Muye serves as the decisive human conflict that enables the celestial investiture.
- Characters who die—loyalists and antagonists—are often rewarded or constrained by divine appointments, explaining later popular cults.
- The work synthesizes Daoist, Buddhist, and popular-religious elements into a single mytho-historical narrative.
- Standard late-Ming printed editions count one hundred chapters; modern punctuated texts follow this structure.