Древний Китай. Том 2: Период Чуньцю (VIII-V вв. до н.э.)

Васильев Леонид Сергеевич

What calls to notice is the historical amnesia of the Shang people and the lack of mythology or any ideas about gods. In hundreds of thousands of brief inscriptions deciphered by specialists one can find addresses to the "upper ancestors" of the wang (ti or shang-ti) with requests of a current everyday character: about the crops, rain, victory over the enemy, successful delivery for the wang's wife, etc. But there is no mention of past glorious deeds, the events of a former period of time or clashes with enemies in the past. The people of Shang had no gods or temples devoted to them or priests serving them.

Chou, the ruler of one of the fast developing neighbouring tribes, married his son Ch'ang to the daughter of one of Shang aristocrats. Having become a ruler and adopting many elements of the Shang culture, including literacy, from his mother, Ch'ang did a lot to weaken the Shang people and conquer them. At the end of his long period of reign he even took the title of wang which was an open challenge to the Shang wang. But Wen — wang (Wen was his posthumous name which is familiar to every Chinese person) did not live to the desired victory. His son Wu-wang routed the Shang but died shortly after the conquest. Chou-kung, the brother of Wu — wang, became the regent of Wu's young son, Cheng-wang. It fell to his lot to organize the rule over the Chou people on the vast territory of the Huang-Ho basin where the defeated Shang (the Chou called them the Yin) were resettled, as well as tribes allied to the Chou lived.

Chou-kung together with his assistants, among whom must have been some literate Shang people that passed on to his service, skilfully used the historical amnesia and filled the existing vacuum with the concept of the Mandate of Heaven advantageous to the Chou. The essence of it was that the Shang ancestors, who lived in Heaven (the Chou did not have their own gods or deified ancestors), were not so much Shang ancestors as inhabitants of everyone's Heaven. That was only one step from deifying Heaven itself equal to Shangti, which began to be considered in singular person and as everyone's initial divine ancestor. It was upon Heaven (Shangti) that a decision to grant the mandate for the reign over T'ien-hsia ("Under the Heaven") to a worthy ruler and to revoke it from an unworthy ruler depended. Formerly, as it was stated in an ideologeme from the early Chou "Book of Documents" (Shu-king), there was a Hsia dynasty (the sign Hsia did not exist in the Shang inscriptions). But later the mandate of Heaven was revoken from the last and unworthy ruler of that dynasty and granted to the worthy forefather of the Shang dynasty. Later the mandate was revoken from the last unworthy ruler of the Shang and given into the hands of the most decent Wen — wang from the Chou. Thus the Chou got the power over T'ien-hsia not due to force or favourable circumstances but only due to the possession of a high sacred virtue-te (this sign did not exist in the Shang inscriptions).

Due to the ideologeme of the mandate of Heaven Chou-kung strengthened the power of Chou putting it beyond any doubt and forcing everyone to acknowledge the Chou wang as the Son of Heaven. It should be noted that since that time the Chou people began to pay deliberately extreme attention to history and secured for themselves and only for themselves the right for creating and interpreting it. Nevertheless, this did not help them much in organization of political administration on the huge territory they possessed at that time. Since there was no more or less developed infrastructure in the Huang-Ho basin and the semi-primitive Chou people were not numerous, they could not reign over the huge military and political union created under their power, even with the assistance of the educated Shang serving them. Thus they had to create feudal-type appanages. These appanages were 7–8 dozens, the majority of them were distributed to the relatives of the ruling House of Chou. We learn about granting appanages as well as symbolic items from the inscriptions on bronze vessels, which represented important documents of a type of ritual communication between a suzerain and a vassal.

One or two centuries after Chou-kung, West-Chou China with the capital in the west, in the native Chou territories, turned into an array of influential feudal appanages, virtually autonomous realms and princedoms. Although several Chou rulers-wawgy made attempts to preserve their suzerainty relying on their 14 armies (six in the western capital and eight in the new eastern capital created by the efforts of the Yin people resettled to the area of Lo-yi), they obviously did not have enough strength. Eventually the last western Chou ruler Yu-wang was killed by jung barbarians attacking his capital after a conflict with his father-in-law (a powerful vassal) over the replacement of the latter's grandson and successor by the son of a favourite concubine. Afterwards the heir, who had almost been replaced, got the name of Ping — wang and was transferred to the new capital Loi in 771

ВС. This was the start of the era of the Eastern Chou, which lasted until the 3rd century ВС.

The main part of the Eastern Chou is subdivided into two periods, Ch'un-Ch'iu and Chan-guo. The name of the Ch'un-Ch'iu period (722–479 ВС) was derived from the chronicle "Spring and Autumn Annals" (Ch'un-Ch'iu), which was compiled in the kingdom of Lu, a former appanage of Chou-kung, where all historical documents were carefully preserved. According to the tradition, the text of the chronicle was revised by the great Confucius, a native of Lu, at the end of his life and because of that the work was included into Confucian Classics. In the course of time the chronicle was complemented by precious detailed commentaries that explained its sketchy accounts of events, the most important commentaries among them are Tso-chuan and K'uo-уu. The whole second volume of our three-volume publication was built mainly on the data of these texts.

It is appropriate to say here a few words about the character of the texts. Many of them scrupulously reflect data about their time and can be accepted with complete trust. Historiographers, who compiled chronicles, treated their work very thoroughly, as a rule, and did not let themselves make any digression from the truth, if they described current events that were well-known to them. Nevertheless and despite all that, there are numerous later interpolations, i.e. fragments and even full narratives including the so-called chapters of the second layer (the 7th-6th centuries

ВС) of Shu-king, which should be treated as moralizing legends of a later period. They usually contained a clearly expressed didactic idea and were included into the context later. Most obvious in this respect are the prophecies that came true, the number of which in the texts is innumerable. There are also non-authentic texts of systematic content which reflect a tendency of a later period to see the early Chou and moreover the Ch'un-Ch'iu period as something complete and perfect, with strictly regulated interrelations, which had never been such in reality. As it is shown in the second volume, during the period of Ch'un-Ch'iu the feudal structure that emerged after the granting of appanages was in the process of its formation. Forms of interrelation and ritual practices were gradually developing as well as the code of honour of aristocracy. But it is important to take into consideration that all this, before it had fully developed or achieved perfection, was exposed to an energetic process of erosion and de-feudalization.

The second volume contains the description of both processes: the slowly developing norms and the ceremonial procedure of feudal relations and a fast de-feudalization of these norms starting at the end of the Ch'un-Ch'iu period, to which Confucius made a major contribution. The first three chapters of the second volume are very specific. They describe step by step the events of the two-and-a-half-century long Ch'un-Ch'iu period. These events are presented with sufficient details. Firstly, because there is available material abundantly year by year reflected in the commentaries on the chronicle. Secondly, because the outline of these events is very interesting and instructive. Though the text is hard to read and keep in memory (it is overloaded with names and events), it makes clear and visible those elements that are usually characteristic for feudal structure. Fathers kill their sons in struggle for the throne and vise versa, brother goes against brother and all this is happening to the accompaniment of glorification of respect for the elders and ancestors, adhering to rituals and other ceremonials. Intrigues, plots, coups, flight of losers if they managed to escape and triumph of victors, permanent feudal wars of aristocrats, whose main activity was exactly war and hunting-that is the outline of the main events. This can be expanded by love stories, adulteries and harem passions, including incest, clashes of powerful aristocratic clans, faithfulness of some and betrayal of others. In other words, the picture is surprising and almost unique in the world history (if we take into account not novels but chronicles with detailed commentaries on them).

The following chapters of the second volume aim at analysing all this rich material from various sides, be it political history, norms of feudal structure, the character of feudal aristocratic wars, the problem of religious ideas and prejudices, forms of the Heaven cult, territorial gods or dead noble ancestors, faithfulness of some and betrayal of others. It also says about rituals among the nobility and the way of life of the common people, which could be learnt, in particular, from the folk songs and poems in the "Book of Songs" (Shih-king). Considerable attention is devoted to the social structure and the scale of rank in the texts, as well as to what extent these ranks corresponded to the realia of the time. Having no aim to characterise each chapter separately, it is important to pay attention to what they all have in common. It is the question of the development of the feudal structure, peculiarities of formation of the new vassal-seigniorial system, in the framework of which the domain of the Chou suzerain-wang, i.e. the Son of Heaven who possessed sacred holiness, was only one of existing political structures far from being a big one.

During the Western Chou the 14 armies used to be the basis of the Chou wangs' force and allowed them during the first two or three centuries of domination to feel at the very least powerful rulers, whose vassals de facto depended on them. These armies had disappeared a long time before. The wang's domain was now found in a miserable situation. It could hardly support one army. And although at the beginning of the Ch'un-Ch'iu period wangs still tried traditionally to interfere from time to time in the internal wars of their vassals, it soon became clear that it was beyond their powers. Moreover, with every new decade the real power of wangs diminished and wangs in case of necessity, such, for instance, as a conspiracy of relatives competing for the throne, had to turn to those of chu-hou princes, who had real power.