History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0059/00595.txt

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$Title{Civilizations Past And Present
China: The Formative Centuries}
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$Date{1992}
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See Ancient China*0059502.scf
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Title:       Civilizations Past And Present
Book:        Chapter 4:  The Asian Way Of Life
Author:      Wallbank;Taylor;Bailkey;Jewsbury;Lewis;Hackett
Date:        1992

China: The Formative Centuries

     The formative period of Chinese history - the era of the Shang and Chou
dynasties, before China was unified politically - was, like the early history
of India before its unification by the Mauryan Dynasty, a time during which
most of China's cultural tradition arose. As in India, this tradition has
lasted into the present century.

The Land

     Chinese civilization arose and developed in a vast area, one-third larger
than the United States if such dependencies as Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, and
Tibet are included. For centuries China was almost completely isolated from
the other centers of civilization by mountains, deserts, and seas. This
isolation helps explain the great originality of China's culture.

     China proper is a vast watershed drained by three river systems that rise
close together on the high Tibetan plateau and flow eastward to the Pacific.
Three mountain systems also rise in the west, diminishing in altitude as they
slope eastward between the river systems. The Yellow River (Huang Ho),
traditionally known as "China's Sorrow" because of the misery caused by its
periodic flooding, traverses the North China plain. In this area, the original
homeland of Chinese culture, the climate is like that of western Europe. The
Yangtze River and its valley forms the second river system. South of this
valley lie the subtropical lands of South China, the home of ancient cultures
that were destroyed or transformed by Chinese expansion from the north. Here
the shorter rivers and valleys converging on present-day Canton formed the
third major river system.

     This pattern of mountain ranges and river systems has, throughout China's
history, created problems of political unity. At the same time, the great
river valleys facilitated the spread of a homogeneous culture over a greater
land area than any other civilization in the world.

China's Prehistory

     The discovery of Peking man in 1927 made it evident that ancient
humanlike creatures with an early Paleolithic culture had dwelled in China.
Certain physical characteristics of Peking man are thought to be distinctive
marks of the Mongoloid branch of the human race. Skulls of modern humans (Homo
sapiens) have also been found.

     Until recently, archaeologists believed that the earliest Neolithic
farming villages (the Yang Shao culture) appeared in the Yellow River valley
about 4500 B.C. Now a series of newly discovered sites has pushed back the
Neolithic Age in China to 6500 B.C. The evidence indicates that China's
Neolithic culture, which cultivated millet and domesticated the pig,
originated independently from that in the Near East.

     The people of China's last Neolithic culture, called Lung Shan, lived in
walled towns and produced a wheel-made black pottery. Their culture spread
widely in North China. Most scholars believe that this Neolithic culture
immediately preceded the Shang period, when civilization emerged in China
about 1700 B.C. Others now believe that the Hsia Dynasty, considered - like
the Shang had been - to be purely legendary, actually existed and flourished
for some three centuries before it was conquered by the Shang.

The Shang Dynasty: China Enters History

     With the establishment of Shang rule over most of North China and the
appearance of the first written texts, China completed the transition from
Neolithic culture to civilization. Shang originally was the name of a nomadic
tribe whose vigorous leaders succeeded in establishing themselves as the
overlords of other tribal leaders in North China. The Shang capital, a walled
city to which the tribal leaders came to pay tribute, changed frequently; the
last capital was at modern Anyang.

     The Shang people developed bronze metallurgy and carried it to heights
hardly surpassed in world history. Bronze was used to cast elaborate
ceremonial and drinking vessels (the Shang leaders were notorious for their
drinking bouts) and weapons, all intricately decorated with both incised and
high-relief designs.

[See Bronze Vessel: Bronze vessels, such as this one from the early tenth
century B.C., were designed to contain water, wine, meat, or grain used during
the sacrificial rites in which the Shang and Chou prayed to the memory of
their ancestors. Animals were a major motif of ritual bronzes. Courtesy of the
Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institutuion, Washington, DC]

     The Shang people also developed a distinctive writing system employing
nearly 5000 characters, some of which are still in use today. These characters
represent individual words rather than sounds and consist of pictographs,
recognizable as pictures of observable objects, and ideographs representing
ideas.

     Most Shang writing is found on thousands of "oracle bones," fragments of
animal bones and tortoise shells on which were inscribed questions put to the
gods and ancestral spirits, which were thought to continue a close
relationship with their living descendants as members of the family group. The
diviner would ask such questions as "Will the king's child be a son?" and "If
we raise an army of 3000 men to drive X away from Y, will we succeed?" The
shell or bone would then be heated and the resulting cracks would be
interpreted as an answer to the question.

     Shang China was ruled by hereditary kings who were also priests acting as
intermediaries between the people and the spirit world. Their power was not
absolute, being constantly limited by an aristocratic "Council of the Great
and Small." The oracle bones reveal that the kings often appealed to the
ancestral spirits in order to overcome the opposition of the council.

     Shang kings and nobles lived in imposing buildings, went to battle in
horse-drawn chariots resembling those of Homer's Greece, and were buried in
sumptuous tombs together with their chariots, still-living servants and war
captives. Warfare was frequent, and the chariot, a new military weapon,
facilitated the spread of Shang power through North China. The power of the
kings and nobles rested on their ownership of the land, their monopoly of
bronze metallurgy, their possession of expensive war chariots, and the kings'
religious functions.

     Unlike the common people, the kings and nobles had recorded ancestors and
belonged to a clan. They were the descendants in the male line from a common
ancestor to whom they rendered worship and who was usually a god or a hero,
but sometimes a fish, an animal, or a bird. The chief deity, called God on
High, was the ancestor of the king's own clan. There were regular animal
sacrifices and libations of a beerlike liquor were poured on the ground. The
object was to win the aid or avoid the displeasure of the spirits.

     Magic was employed to maintain the balance of nature, which was thought
to function through the interaction of two opposed but complementary forces
called yang and yin. Yang was associated with the sun and all things male,
strong, warm, and active. Yin was associated with the moon and all things
female, dark, cold, weak, and passive. In later ages, Chinese philosophers -
all male - would employ these concepts to work out the behavior pattern of
obedience and passivity that was expected of women.

     The common people were peasants who belonged to no clans and apparently
worshiped no ancestors. Their gods were the elementary spirits of nature, such
as rivers, mountains, earth, wind, rain, and heavenly bodies. Peasants were
virtual serfs, owning no land but working plots periodically assigned to them
by royal and noble landowners. They collectively cultivated the fields
retained by their lords.

     Farming methods were primitive, not having advanced beyond the Neolithic
level. Bronze was used for weapons, not tools or implements, and the peasants
continued to reap wheat and millet with stone sickles and till their allotted
fields with wooden plows.

[See Ancient China: Shang and Chou Dynasties.]

The Chou Dynasty: The Feudal Age

     Around 1122 B.C., the leader of the Chou tribe overthrew the Shang ruler,
who, it was claimed, had failed to rule fairly and benevolently. The Chou
leader announced that Heaven (Tien) had given him a mandate to replace the
Shang. This was more than a rationalization of the seizure of power. It
introduced a new aspect of Chinese thought: the cosmos is ruled by an
impersonal and all-powerful Heaven, which sits in judgment over the human
ruler, who is the intermediary between Heaven's commands and human fate.

     The Chou was a western frontier tribe that had maintained its martial
spirit and fighting ability. Its conquest of the Shang can be compared with
Macedonia's unification of Greece. The other Chinese tribes switched their
loyalty to the Chou leader, who went on to establish a dynasty that lasted for
more than 800 years (1122-256 B.C.), the longest in Chinese history.

     Comprising most of North China, the large Chou domain made the
establishment of a unified state impossible. Consequently, the Chou kings set
up a feudal system of government by delegating local authority to relatives
and noble magnates. These vassal lords, whose power was hereditary, recognized
the over-lordship of the Chou kings and supplied them with military aid.

     The early Chou kings were vigorous leaders who were able to retain the
allegiance of their vassals (when necessary, by their superior military power)
and fend off attacks from barbarians on the frontiers. In time, however, weak
kings succeeded to the throne, and the power and independence of their vassals
increased. By the eighth century B.C., the vassals no longer went to the Chou
capital for investiture by the Son of Heaven, as the Chou king called himself.

     The remnants of Chou royal power disappeared completely in 771 B.C., when
an alliance of dissident vassals and barbarians destroyed the capital and
killed the king. Part of the royal family managed to escape eastward to
Lo-yang, however, where the dynasty survived for another five centuries doing
little more than performing state religious rituals as the Son of Heaven.
Seven of the stronger feudal princes gradually conquered their weaker
neighbors. In the process they assumed the title wang ("king"), formerly used
only by the Chou ruler, and began to extinguish the feudal rights of their own
vassals and establish centralized administrations. Warfare among these
emerging centralized states was incessant, particularly during the two
centuries known as the Period of Warring States (c. 450-221 B.C.). By 221
B.C., the ruler of the Ch'in, the most advanced of the seven warring states,
had conquered all his rivals and established a unified empire with himself as
absolute ruler.

Chou Economy And Society

     Despite its political instability, the Chou period is unrivaled by any
later period in Chinese history for its material and cultural progress. These
developments led the Chinese to distinguish between their own high
civilization and the nomadic ways of the "barbarian dogs" beyond their
frontiers. A sense of the superiority of their own civilization became a
lasting characteristic of the Chinese.

     During the sixth century B.C., iron was introduced and mass producing
cast iron objects from molds came into general use by the end of the Chou
period. (The first successful attempts at casting iron were not made in Europe
until the end of the Middle Ages.)

     The ox-drawn iron-tipped plow, together with the use of manure and the
growth of large-scale irrigation and water-control projects, led to great
population growth based on increased agricultural yields. Canals were
constructed to facilitate moving commodities over long distances. Commerce and
wealth grew rapidly, and a merchant and artisan class emerged. Brightly
colored shells, bolts of silk, and ingots of precious metals were the media of
exchange; by the end of the Chou period small round copper coins with square
holes were being minted. Chopsticks and finely lacquered objects, today
universally considered as symbols of Chinese and East Asian culture, were also
in use by the end of the period.

     Class divisions and consciousness became highly developed under Chou
feudalism and have remained until modern times. The king and the aristocracy
were sharply separated from the mass of the people on the basis of land
ownership and family descent.

     The core units of aristocratic society were the elementary family, the
extended family, and the clan, held together by patriarchal authority and
ancestor worship. Marriages were formally arranged unions between families.
Among the peasants, however, marriage took place after a woman became pregnant
following the Spring Festival at which boys and girls, beginning at age
fifteen, sang and danced naked.

     The customs of the nobles can be compared in a general way to those of
Europe's feudal nobility. Underlying the society was a complex code of
chivalry, called li, practiced in both war and peace. It symbolized the ideal
of the noble warrior, and men devoted years to its mastery.

     The art of horseback riding, developed among the nomads of central Asia,
greatly influenced late Chou China. In response to the threat of mounted
nomads, rulers of the Warring States period began constructing defensive
walls, later joined together to become the Great Wall of China. Inside China
itself, chariots were largely replaced by swifter and more mobile cavalry
troops wearing tunics and trousers adopted from the nomads.

     The peasant masses, still attached serflike to their villages, worked as
tenants of noble land-holders, paying one tenth of their crop as rent. Despite
increased agricultural production, resulting from large-scale irrigation and
the ox-drawn iron-tipped plow, the peasants had difficulty eking out an
existence. Many were forced into debt slavery. A major problem in the Chinese
economy, evident by late Chou times, has been that the majority of farmers
have worked fields so small that they could not produce a crop surplus to tide
them over periods of scarcity.

The Rise Of Philosophical Schools

     By the fifth century B.C., the increasing warfare among the feudal lords
and Warring States had destroyed the stability that had characterized Chinese
society under the Shang and early Chou dynasties. Educated Chinese had become
aware of the great disparity between the traditions inherited from their
ancestors and the conditions in which they themselves lived. The result was
the birth of a social consciousness that focused on the study of humanity and
the problems of society. Some scholars have noted the parallel between the
flourishing intellectual life of China in the fifth century B.C. and Greek
philosophy and Indian religious thought at the same time. It has been
suggested that these three great centers of world civilization stimulated and
influenced each other. However, little or no historical evidence exists to
support such an assertion. The birth of social consciousness in China,
isolated from the other centers of civilization, can best be understood in
terms of internal developments rather than external influences.

Confucianism: Rational Humanism

     The first, most famous, and certainly most influential Chinese
philosopher and teacher was K'ung-fu-tzu ("Master K'ung, the Sage," 551-479
B.C.), known in the West as Confucius after Jesuit missionaries to China in
the seventeenth century latinized his name.

     Later Confucianists attributed to the master the role of composing or
editing the Five Confucian Classics (two books of history and one book each on
poetry, divination, and ceremonies), which were in large part a product of the
early Chou period. But the only work that can be accurately attributed to
Confucius is the Analects ("Selected Sayings"), a collection of his responses
to his disciples' questions.

     Confucius, who belonged to the lower aristocracy, was more or less a
contemporary of the Buddha in India, Zoroaster in Persia, and the early
philosophers of Greece. Like the Buddha and Zoroaster, Confucius lived in a
troubled time - an age of political and social turmoil - and his prime
concern, like theirs, was the improvement of society. To achieve this goal,
Confucius did not look to the gods and spirits for assistance; he accepted the
existence of Heaven (T'ien) and spirits, but he insisted it was more important
"to know the essential duties of man living in a society of men." "We don't
know yet how to serve men," he said, "how can we know about serving the
spirits?" And, "We don't yet know about life, how can we know about death?" He
advised a ruler to "respect the ghosts and spirits but keep them at a
distance" and "devote yourself to the proper demands of the people."

     Confucius believed that the improvement of society was the responsibility
of the ruler and that the quality of government depended on the ruler's moral
character: "The way (Tao) of learning to be great consists in shining with the
illustrious power of moral personality, in making a new people, in abiding in
the highest goodness." Confucius' definition of the Way as "moral personality"
and "the highest goodness" was in decided contrast to the old premoral Way in
which gods and spirits, propitiated by offerings and ritual, regulated human
life for good or ill. Above all, Confucius' new Way meant a concern for the
rights of others, the adherence to a Golden Rule:

     Tzu-king [a disciple] asked saying, "Is there any single saying
     that one can act upon all day and every day?" The Master said,
     "Perhaps the saying about consideration: 'Never do to others what
     you would not like them to do to you.'" ^4

[Footnote 4: Quoted in Jack Finegan, The Archeology of World Religions
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952), p. 351]

     Although Confucius called himself "a transmitter and not a creator," his
redefinition of Tao was a radical innovation. He was, in effect, putting new
wine into old bottles. He did the same thing with two other key terms, li and
chun-tzu. Li, meaning "honorable behavior," was the chivalric code of the
constantly fighting chun-tzu, the hereditary feudal "noblemen" of the Chou
period. As refined and reinterpreted by Confucius, li came to embody such
ethical virtues as righteousness and love for one's fellow humans. The
chun-tzu, under the influence of the new definition of li, became "noble men,"
or "gentlemen," whose social origins were not important. As Confucius said,
"The noble man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what is
profitable." Confucius' teachings have had a greater and longer-lasting
influence on China, and much of East Asia, than those of any other
philosopher.

Taoism: Intuitive Mysticism

     A second philosophical reaction to the troubled life of the late Chou
period was the teaching of Lao-tzu ("Old Master"), a semi-legendary figure who
was believed to have been a contemporary of Confucius. As with Confucius, the
key term in Lao-tzu's teaching is Tao, from which his philosophy derives its
name. But while Confucius defined Tao as a rational standard of ethics in
human affairs, Lao-tzu gave it a metaphysical meaning - the course of nature,
the natural and inevitable order of the universe.

     The goal of Taoism, like Confucianism, is a happy life. Lao-tzu believed
that this goal could be achieved by living a life in conformity with nature,
retiring from the chaos and evils of contemporary Warring States society and
shunning human institutions and opinions as unnatural and artificial "outside
things." Thus at the heart of Taoist thought is the concept of wu-wei, or
"nonaction" - a manner of living which, like nature itself, is nonassertive
and spontaneous. Lao-tzu pointed out that in nature all things work silently;
they fulfill their function and, after they reach their bloom, they return to
their origins. Unlike Confucius' ideal gentleman, who is constantly involved
in society in order to better it, Lao-tzu's sage is a private person, an
egocentric individualist.

     Taoism is a revolt not only against society but also against the
intellect's limitations. Intuition, not reason, is the source of true
knowledge; and books, Taoists said, are "the dregs and refuse of the
ancients." One of the most famous Taoist philosophers, Chuang-tzu (fourth
century B.C.), who made fun of Confucians as tiresome busy-bodies, even
questioned the reality of the world of the senses. He said that he once
dreamed that he was a butterfly, "flying about enjoying itself." When he
awakened he was confused: "I do not know whether I was Chuang-tzu dreaming
that I was a butterfly, or whether now I am a butterfly dreaming that I am
Chuang-tzu."

     Similar anecdotes and allegories abound in Taoist literature, as in all
mystical teachings that deal with subjects that are difficult to put into
words. (As the Taoists put it, "The one who knows does not speak, and the one
who speaks does not know.") But Taoist mysticism is more philosophical than
religious. Unlike Upanishadic philosophy or Christian mysticism, it does not
aim to extinguish the personality through the union with the Absolute or God.
Rather, its aim is to teach how one can obtain happiness in this world by
living a simple life in harmony with nature.

     Confucianism and Taoism became the two major molds that shaped Chinese
thought and civilization. Although these rival schools frequently sniped at
one another, they never became mutually exclusive outlooks on life. Taoist
intuition complemented Confucian rationalism; during the centuries to come,
Chinese were often Confucianists in their social relations and Taoists in
their private life.

     Taoism, with its individual freedom and mystical union with nature, would
in time have a deep impact on Chinese poetry and art.

Mencius' Contribution To Confucianism

     The man whose work was largely responsible for the emergence of
Confucianism as the most widely accepted philosophy in China was Mencius, or
Meng-tzu (372-289 B.C.). Born a century after the death of Confucius, Mencius
added important new dimensions to Confucian thought in two areashuman nature
and government.

     Although Confucius had only implied that human nature is good, Mencius
emphatically insisted that all people are innately good and tend to seek the
good just as water tends to run downhill. But unless people strive to preserve
and develop their innate goodness, which is the source of righteous conduct,
it can be corrupted by the bad practices and ideas existing in the
environment. Mencius taught that the opposite of righteous conduct is
selfishness, and he attacked the extreme individualism of the Taoists as a
form of selfishness. He held that "all men are brothers," and he would have
agreed with a later Confucian writer who summed up in one sentence the
teaching of a famous Taoist: "He would not pluck so much as a hair out of his
head for the benefit of his fellows."

     The second area in which Mencius elaborated on Confucius' teaching was
political theory. Mencius distinguished between good kings, who ruled
benevolently, and the rulers of his day (the Period of Warring States), who
governed by naked force and spread violence and disorder. Because good rulers
are guided by ethical standards, he said, they will behave benevolently toward
the people and provide for their well-being. Unlike Confucius, who did not
question the right of hereditary kings to rule, Mencius said that the people
have a right to rebel against bad rulers and even kill them if necessary,
because they have lost the Mandate of Heaven.

     As we have seen, this concept has been used by the Chou to justify their
revolt against the Shang. On that occasion, the concept had had a religious
meaning, being connected with the worship of Heaven, who supported the ruler
as the Son of Heaven. Mencius, however, secularized and humanized the Mandate
of Heaven by equating it with the people: "Heaven hears as the people hear;
Heaven sees as the people see." By redefining the concept in this way, Mencius
made the welfare of the people the ultimate standard for judging government.
Indeed, he even told rulers to their faces that the people were more important
than they were.

     Modern commentators, both Chinese and Western, have viewed Mencius'
definition of the Mandate of Heaven as an early form of democratic thought.
Mencius did believe that all people were morally equal and that the ruler
needed the consent of the people, but he was clearly the advocate of
benevolent monarchy rather than popular democracy.

Legalism

     Another body of thought emerged in the fourth and third centuries B.C.
and came to be called the School of Law, or Legalism. It had no single
founder, as did Confucianism and Taoism, nor was it ever a school in the sense
of a teacher leading disciples. What it did have in common with Confucianism
and Taoism was the desire to establish stability in an age of turmoil.

     The Legalists emphasized the importance of harsh and inflexible law as
the only means of achieving an orderly and prosperous society. They believed
that human nature was basically bad and that people acted virtuously only when
forced to do so. Therefore, they argued for an elaborate system of laws
defining fixed penalties for each offense, with no exceptions for rank, class,
or circumstances. Judges were not to use their own conscience in estimating
the gravity of the crime and arbitrarily deciding on the punishment. Their
task was solely to define the crime correctly; the punishment was provided
automatically by the code of law. This procedure is still a characteristic of
Chinese law.

     Since the enforcement of law required a strong state, the immediate goal
of the Legalists was to enhance the power of the ruler at the expense of other
elements, particularly the nobility. Their ultimate goal was the creation of a
centralized state strong enough to unify all China and end the chaos of the
Warring States period. The unification of China in 221 B.C. was largely the
result of putting Legalist ideas of government into practice.