In the year 2003, twenty seven pieces of Shan¡¦s bronzes pit with inscriptions were excavated in Yangjiachun village of Mexian County, Shannxi. Except for the work in mid Western Zhou The Tien Yu, all of them were cast in late Western Zhou. The most noteworthy items among these bronzes are The Lai Ding Tripod of the 42th Year, the 43th Year and The Lai Pan. The former two were cast for King¡¦s awards for Lai¡¦s military contributions, plus the honorary title Li-Ren that conferred to Lai in the following year. By contrast, the later was to record Lai¡¦s family history about his ancestors¡¦ loyalty to Kings of Western Zhou, which also explained his succession to fathers¡¦ position in the government. Since the Lai¡¦s bronzes pit got excavated, many studies have addressed to them such as exegetics of inscriptions, history of Western Zhou, or sociopolitical system in that era. However, there are still some issues remained controversial including decipherment of particular texts, the history, and nature of specific government positions. Therefore, we investigated issues over these bronzes with reference to previous findings, and the theses are presented here: Our introduction can be found in Chapter 1, and in Chapter 2 we selected some meaning-unsolved individual inscriptions on The Lai Ding Tripod of the 42th Year, the 43th Year as well as the Lai Pan for interpretation. Chapter 3 is an in-depth association for Shan¡¦s family, in which we connected the inscriptions of Lai¡¦s name and his ancestors in the Lai Pan with other possible associated bronzes for inductive reasoning. In Chapter 4, we discussed some questions related to the three bronzes mentioned above which included figures, geographical names, and nobility succession system of the Western Zhou. All our findings were summarized in Chapter 5, the conclusion. We hope that this article can provide some suggestions to the lost parts of history documents.

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Since the most ancient of the Shijing songs were accompanying the rites of the ancestral sacrifice, which already by definition represented communication with the past, the notion of history is present in these hymns as well. In the latter half of the Western Zhou period, significant changes occurred in the ritual practice. These changes are evident in the shift of perspective in several Zhou song hymns, too. At the same time, the banquet odes appear for the first time on Zhou court. These odes already explicitly describe the glorious history of the house of Zhou, and so become the means of legitimacy of the weakening royal clan. History here also represents the pattern of the exemplary rule and the source of premonitory precedents. By the end of the Western Zhou dynasty, the notion of remote past becomes fully idealized.