The Mythologies of the Far East
Laotzi, Wikimedia Commons
Chinese Mythology
The Antiquity of Chinese Civilization
Four separate prehistoric backgrounds have to be borne in mind as the particular forms of the Chinese mythological system begin to emerge:
1.The Lower Paleolithic, about 500 000 B.C., with its primal derivation from the tropics. Heavy stone choppers and fire were in use.
2.The Middle and (possibly) Upper Paleolithic, about 50 000 – 25 000 B.C., with superior chipped-stone tools in parallel to cultures in Europe such as the Mousterian (Neanderthal Man), Aurignacian and Magdalenian (Crô-Magnon Man). Here the rites, myths and customs of the northern culture world of the Great Hunt may have prevailed.
3. A cut-off, highly specialized, hypothetical community of Arctic proto-Mongoloids, who, when released from their isolated frigid hearth, somewhere northeastward of the Yenisei, drove southward on the one hand as a wedge through Mongolia and China, as far as Indonesia, and, on the other hand, into North and South America (a circumpolar, proto-Mongoloid complex).
4.The great pottery cultures of the High Neolithic. Starting with a coarse, unglazed pottery assigned to an early Neolithic period (about 2500 B.C.), more elegant painted ware (Yangshao) showed up around 2200 – 1900 B.C., followed by black polished ware (Lungshan) around 1900 – 1500 B.C., with the earliest classic dynasty (Shang) introducing white ware, 1500 B.C. – 1000 B.C.
Major dates to be borne in mind are the following:
Shang (Basic Chinese High Bronze Age), 1523 – 1027 B.C.
Early Chou (period of developed feudalism), 1027 – 772 B.C.
Middle Chou (period of disintegrating feudalism), 772 – 480 B.C.
Confucius, 551 – 478 B.C.
Late Chou (period of the warring states), 480 – 221 B.C.
Ch’in (Burning of the Books, Great Wall), 221 – 206 B.C.
Han (Confucian bureaucracy established), 206 B.C. – 220 A.D.
Six Dynasties (disunity: Buddhism established), 220 – 589 A.D.
Bodhidharma, 520 A.D. (Most likely a legendary character and a legendary date)
Sui (reunification of empire: Great Canal), 590 – 617 A.D.
T’ang (culmination of ancient Chinese civilization), 618 - 906 A.D.
Sung (Neo-Confucianism: apogee of painting), 960 – 1279 A.D.
Yüan (Mongol dynasty: Gengis Khan), 1280 – 1367 A.D.
Ming (Neo-Confucian restoration), 1368 – 1643 A.D.
Ch’ing (Manchu dynasty: disintegration), 1644 – 1911 A.D.
It has been said that in Confucius’ time there were no less than 770 contending princely states. However, Chinese thought, instead of giving up the fight and retreating to the forest when the world began to fall apart, put itself to the problem of repair. So, instead of a history of the ways of disengagement, Chinese philosophy is characterized by contending systems of orientation to the world in being.
The Mythic Past
It is surprising how little we know of the writings of the Chinese before the period of Confucius. Equally surprising is the amount of texts produced and doctored from this time onwards, to the extent that it is even difficult to reconstruct even the work of Confucius himself. Consequently, all of the myths (or, rather, as we now have them, moralizing anecdotes) of the Chinese golden age have to be recognized as the productions rather of a Confucian forest of pencils than of any “forest primeval”. If gems or jades are to be found among them from the actual mythologies of Yangshao, Lungshan, Shang, or even Chou (anything earlier than Shih Huang Ti’s burning of the books in 213 B.C.) we have to realize that they have been lifted from their primitive setting and remounted in a new setting like an old Egyptian scarab mounted as a ring for a fine lady’s hand.
In the traces of the early myths, there is no cosmogony, no world beginning. The world is already solidly under foot, and the work about to begin is the building of China.
Period of the Earliest Men
The lords of the birds’ nests: people in those days lived in birds’ nests made in trees, to avoid the dangers threatening them on the ground. The Fire drillers: eating raw food, the people were ruining their stomachs. Some sages invented the fire drill and taught them how to cook. The deluge of Kung Kung: after the time of the fire drillers, when Kung Kung was king, the waters occupied seven tenths of the earth and dry land three tenths of the earth. He availed himself of the natural conditions and in the constrained space ruled the empire.
From these short statements we can observe that we already have an empire, and we also have a deluge. And a basic Chinese theme is announced in the final sentence, where it is said that Kung Kung “availed himself of the natural conditions”. Virtue consists in respecting those conditions; competence, in making use of them. In the later Historic Classic (Shu Ching), which is one of the fundamental texts of classical Chinese thought, this period of the earliest men is completely disregarded, and all good things commence with the golden age of Yao and Shun – while Kung Kung is deliberately transferred to that time and turned into an incompetent dignitary who was banished.
Period of the Highest Virtue
The name of this period suggests that it must have been of considerable importance in the old mythology. Nothing remains of it in extant texts, however, but the names of a dozen or so of its kings. One of whom, Jung Ch’eng, is termed the creator of the calendar, and another, Chu Jung, bears the name of the god of fire. The information we have today of this shadowy period tells us little, but it indicates that in Chou-time China there must have existed a number of myths concerning primeval heroes.
Period of the Great Ten, culminating with Yao, Shun, and the great Yü.
To this important age, which terminates in a Deluge, ten emperors were assigned in the early Chou-time mythology. Hence it appears that what we are viewing here may be a local transformation of the series of the old Sumerian king list. There are indications that this could have a Mesopotamian source, even though it has its strong Chinese characteristics. These ten mythical monarchs, with a few items from their legends, are as follows.
1.Fu Hsi; 2.Shen Nung. In the legends of the Chou period these two emperors played modest parts. Both acquired great importance, however, in the later “Book of Changes” (I Ching), where Fu His is credited with the invention of the symbols on which that work is based, as well as with having taught the people how to use nets for hunting and fishing. Shen Nung, it is said, ruled the world for seventeen generations, and is supposed to have devised the plow and instituted markets.
3.Yen Ti. 4.Huang Ti. Following the long reign of Shen Nung, there came the short reign of Yen Ti, who was overcome by his glorious brother Huang Ti. This important mythic figure, the so-called Yellow Emperor, is supposed to have had twenty-five sons, from whom no less than twelve feudal families of the Chou period claimed descent. Huang Ti invented the fire drill (already invented by the Fire Drillers), burned the forests on the hills, cleared the bush, burned the marshes, and drove out the wild beasts. Thus he made cattle breeding possible. When he rode to assemble the spirits on the holy mount T’ai-shan, he drove in an ivory chariot drawn by six dragons. The wind-god ran ahead and swept; the rain-god sprinkled the road; tigers and wolves galloped before, spirits spirited behind, serpents streaked along the ground, and phoenixes flew above.
5.Shao Hao. Little more is told of this monarch than that he reigned for only seven years.
6.Chuan Hsü; also known as Kao Yang. He had eight talented sons, one of whom, Kun (“the Great Fish”), was the father of the Great Yü and his unsuccessful predecessor in dealing with the Deluge.
7.K’u. This monarch had two wives, Chiang Yüan and Chien Ti, both of whom conceived miraculously. The first became pregnant when she trod on the big toe of God’s footprint. The second pregnancy occurred when the two young ladies were in their pleasure tower of nine stories, enjoying wine, sweetmeats, and music. God sent them a swallow that sang, and the two contested in catching it. They covered it with a basket, which, after a time, they lifted. The bird flew off, leaving two eggs. Each swallowed one. Chien Ti conceived, and the child she bore became the father, centuries later, of the founder of the dynasty of Shang.
8.Yao. Ti Yao, divine Yao,, the most celebrated monarch of the Chinese Golden Age, is the model sagely man of all time. The great History Classic (Shu Ching) opens with a celebration of his character and reign: “Examining into antiquity”, it states, “we find Divine Yao, who, naturally and without effort, was referential, intelligent, accomplished, thoughtful, sincerely courteous, and obliging. Moreover, the bright influence of these qualities was felt through the four quarters and reached both above and beneath. He distinguished the able and the virtuous, thence proceeding to a loving consideration of all in the nine classes of his kindred, who thereby became harmonious. He regulated and clarified the people, who all became luminously intelligent. He united and harmonized the many states. And the black-haired people thus were transformed. The result was universal accord.”
During the reign of Yao there were many crises, due to inundations. In the search for a successor to Yao, no competent person was found in the entourage of the emperor, and they recruited the son of a poor man, Shun. Thus, the point was made that descent and worth are not genealogical, but moral – a point that is eminently Confucian. There is nothing comparable in the mythologies of India, where the emphasis is ever on birth. Shun was tested and tried by various means – amid violent wind, thunder, and rain. This was not a test of disengagement, but of competence in constructive engagement – thus showing clearly the contrast with the Indian forest sages.
9.Shun. As the vice-regent of Yao, Shun had already performed all of the great sacrifices for twenty-eight years. However, the chief problem was still the flood. Kun, the father of Yü, had been assigned the task of dealing with it, and had miserably failed. He had made the mistake of violating nature in his work, by damming up the inundating waters and thereby throwing into disorder the arrangement of the five elements. The Lord of Heaven was roused to anger and did not give him the Great Plan with its nine divisions. Kun was made prisoner, and his son Yü rose up and assumed his task.
10.Yü. “To the Great Yü,” the text goes on to say, “Heaven gave the Great Plan with its nine divisions, wherein the unchanging principles of its method were in due order set forth.” His whole life was in his work, which he performed in accord with the natural conditions. He gained control of the floods by finding passages and leading the flooding waters on to the sea. “Were it not for Yü,” said a prince of Liu in the year 541 B.C., “should we not all be fishes?”
From this we have before us three very different versions of the nature and meaning of the Deluge confronted by the tenth monarch of a mythic age. The first is of the ancient Sumerian cycle of the cosmic eon, mathematically inevitable, which ends in cosmic dissolution. The second is of the cosmic catastrophe brought about by a freely willing God, reflecting an essentially Semitic attitude of dissociation from, and guilt vis-à-vis, divinity. (Contrasted with this was the Aryan formula of the Vedic drought caused by a demon, where the gods were on the side of man.) Finally, in this Chinese version we see the catastrophe reduced from a cosmic to a local geographical event, with neither guilt nor mathematics invoked to rationalize the occurrence. Here it is a hero legend, and in the spirit of the basic Chinese view of proper action, the virtue of the hero lies in his accord with the order of nature, as a consequence of which he is supported in his task by the mandate and revealed Great Plan of heaven itself.
Period of the Legendary Hsia Dynasty
As Noah survived the Flood and therefore represents both the end of the old and beginning of the new eon, so also does the Great Yü. And as the age following the Flood approached gradually the plane of history, both in the Bible and in the old Sumerian king lists, so also does the chronicle of China, following the period of Yü. He is supposed to have been the founder of the legendary Hsia Dynasty, for which a number of serious scholars still believe some serious evidence still may be found. However, since none has yet appeared, we shall have to regard it as legendary still.
The date of its founding is supposed to have been about 2205 B.C. and the date of the death of Yü about 2197 B.C. A line of seventeen kings is supposed to have reigned for either 471 years or 600 years (depending on differing estimates). Following its fall, there rose the archaeologically well-validated dynasty of Shang. As Yao, Shun, and Yü have stood in Chinese literature as models of the character of the good king, so the last legendary monarch, Chieh, of the Hsia Dynasty has been the model of the bad.
Chieh, we are told, was a paragon of vice. In the winter he built no bridges, in the summer he made no rafts, just to watch the people freeze and drown. He let female tigers loose in the market, just to watch people run. He had thirty thousand female musicians who shouted and made music all night, so that it was heard through all the streets, and all were dressed in embroidered silk. Women, in particular, were his weakness. The myths tell how the gods united with the people, under the leadership of T’ang – founder of the dynasty of Shang – to overturn Chieh and depose him.
The Chinese Feudal Age: 1500 – 500 B.C.
Shang Dynasty: 1523 – 1027 B.C.
The royal tombs of the actual first dynasty of China, at the old capital at Anyang, tell a story of funeral rites very much like the tombs at Abydos of the first dynasty of Egypt fifteen centuries before. It may be thought that even at the times of Confucius the archaic customs documented in these tombs still existed in some form. As late as 420 B.C. the moralist Mo Tzu was complaining of the funeral rites of the royalty of his day, where – in the case of an Emperor – sometimes several hundred servants were slain to follow him in the grave, together with animals and objects of art and household in great quantities.
In the royal-tomb art of the Shang period, an interplay is to be recognized between a cultural tide stemming from the West - rooted in the bronze age and carried by an early wave of neolithic potters (Yangshao, Lungshan) and by a later, chariot driving warrior folk with Homeric-Aryan affinities – and a second, “shamanistic”, circumpolar tide flowing in waves from the north. Shamanism is an extremely prominent feature of both the Buddhism and the Shinto of Japan as well as of Chinese and Tibetan religious life. A sign of its force already in the Shang period may be seen in the demonic animal-mask motif, termed t’ao-t’ieh – which appears prominently on the bronzes.
Both in certain Shang bronzes and in the arts of Yucatàn in Mexico, there appears the shamanistic motif of a human (priestly or warrior) head capped by that of a beast. However, the Greek goddess Athene also wears a mask-like helmet high on her head, while on her shield there is the gorgon-mask of Medusa. Thus we are reminded that although shamanism was developed to a special pitch in the Mongoloid circumpolar sphere, it has actually had a long, broadly flung history from Paleolithic times. The art of divination, through use of oracle bones, was also developed, as can be seen through a considerable Shang-series of oracle-bone inscriptions. This art was also developed in Mesopotamia, where there was a strong interest in divination. Just as in the patterns of myths, so in the divination of the will of heaven by auspices, it was specifically with Sumer that the early Chinese connections appear to have been particularly close.
Early and Middle Chou: about 1027 – 480 B.C.
The legends of the fall of the Shang dynasty and rise of Chou repeat the motifs already familiar from the fall of Hsia and rise of Shang.
In the classic Book of Odes (Shih Ching) 305 pieces are preserved from the ritual lore and poetry of the feudal age. Many of these are Chinese counterparts, both in time and sense, of the Vedas. In contrast to the Vedas, they deal with agriculture, not herding; a worship directed to ancestors and not the powers or gods of the natural world; and the leadership of kings, not priests, in the conduct of rites: kings who were themselves descendants of the ancestors addressed.
Oswald Spengler has in “The Decline of the West” written of the contrast between “time thinking” in terms of developing destiny, and “space thinking”, in terms of timeless natural laws. The former is represented pre-eminently by the person of political tact, with a sense for the possible, who would himself become a destiny; the latter by a person of priestly or scientific knowledge, who would control effects through an application of eternally valid laws.
Applied to the contrast between China and India in the main statement of their modes of thought and action, it was in China the statesman and in India the priest who set his seal on the civilization. On the one hand a great stress placed on oracles investigating a changing destiny, tao, with a view to political achievement, and, on the other, a system of unchanging laws, dharma, epitomized in formulae of knowledge that are conceived to be of eternal truth. A sense of history, on the one hand, none whatsoever on the other; ancestor worship (direction in time) predominant in China; the gods of earth, air, and sky (the field of space) predominant in India. A sense, on the one hand, of significant engagement, and, on the other, of disengagement as the greatest human aim.
And yet, these two culture worlds develop through comparable periods of change almost simultaneously, from the period of the entry of the Aryans into India and of the Shang charioteers into China. The feudal Vedic Age concludes in a period of rising princely states, roughly in the neighborhood of the eighth century B.C., and in China, too, at about that time, we enter upon a period of deep change of essentially the same kind. The great Ch’in classic of the art of politics, The Book of Lord Shang (Shang Tzu), is for disillusioned ruthlessness equaled and surpassed only by its Indian counterpart, the Arthashastra. The latter (to quote the Indian statesman and philosopher K.M. Pannikar) goes “far beyond the limited imagination of Machiavelli”.
An example from the Chinese book will show the nature of the thinking: “If a country is strong and does not make war, there will be villainy within.” It goes on to list the things that will destroy the fighting spirit of the people: rites and music; poetry and history; the cultivation of goodness, filial piety and respect for elders; sincerity and truth; purity and integrity; kindness and morality; detraction of warfare and shame in taking part in it. It goes on to say that the ruler will become impoverished and his territory diminished. A country where the wicked govern the virtuous will be orderly, so that it will become strong. If things are done that the enemy would be ashamed to do, there is an advantage.
The Age of the Great Classics: about 500 B.C. – 500 A.D.
Late Chou: 480 – 221 B.C.(Period of the warring states)
The highest concern of classical Chinese thought, in contrast to the Indian of social and cosmic disengagement, was political reform. All Chinese philosophy is essentially the study of how men can best be helped to live together in harmony and good order. Every Chinese philosophy is formulated not as an abstract theory but as an art of ruling. And the model for this order, which every one of the schools accepted and interpreted as fact, was the mythic golden age of Yao, Shun, and the Great Yü.
The question was viewed under two aspects. 1.A macrocosmic order of time: the nature of the seasons, demands and possibilities of the hour, to be determined by auspices and omens; and 2.The microcosmic order of man: the recognition and use of the most effective power within the competence of the individual, for the harmonization of life on earth.
The chief document bearing on the first aspect is the Book of Changes (I Ching).
On its practical side this is an encyclopedia of oracles, based on a mythic view of the universe that is fundamental to all Chinese thought. The legend of its origin is that its basic elements were discovered by the first of the legendary Ten Emperors, Fu His.
These elements are two: an unbroken line associated with the masculine yang principle, which is heavenly (light, dry, warm, active), and a broken line associated with the feminine yin, which is earthy (dark, moist, cold, passive). Primarily the terms yang and yin refer to the sunny and shady sides of a stream, mountain or street. In all things, at all times, both yin and yang are operative, though in differing degrees; and the purpose of the Book of Changes was to provide an encyclopedia of the ways in which they may be related. In the holocaust of the Burning of the Books in the year 213 B.C. this particular book was spared as a practical work, so that it does, indeed, span the gamut of the schools of thought. By its practical methods for divination it tells of the readiness of time and the art of moving with its tides, rocking with the waves, and is the most important statement remaining to us of that aspect of ancient Chinese thought which relates the individual to the order of the outer world.
Underlying it all is the elementary principle of a dialectic of two forces, yang and yin – which in a way is analogous to the Indian of the lingam and yoni. However, whereas in India the sexual suggestions of the duad are emphasized, the tendency in China has been toward an abstract mathematical (geometrical) style of symbolization. These contrasting tendencies have colored every bit of the two mythologies: the Indian, lush, voluptuous, or in reaction, fiercely ascetic; the Chinese, either dryly practical or humorously symbolic, never extreme.
Let us now turn to the microcosmic order of man.
On the question of the most effective force within the competence of the individual for the harmonization of life on earth, three points of view are to be noted – that of Confucius, that of Mo Tzu, and that of the Taoists.
The reach of time between the dates of the actual life of Confucius (551 – 478 B.C.) and his earliest known biography (86 B.C.) is the same as that of the Buddha (563 – 483 B.C.) and the earliest reports of his teaching in the Pali Canon (80 B.C.). Confucianism regards benevolence (yen) as the most effective power for the harmonization of life on earth. A main connotation is that of relationship: benevolent, sincere, mutually respectful relationships between persons. In the Confucian texts five such relationships are announced: those between prince and minister, between father and son, between husband and wife, between elder and younger brother, and between friends. Benevolence being the first major point, the second major point of the Confucian system is what has been termed the rectification of names: “The Master said: What is needed is to rectify names….If names are not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.” Every name contains certain implications which constitute the essence of that class of things to which the name applies. Such things, therefore, should agree with this ideal essence.
In the Confucian classic known as The Doctrine of the Mean (Chung Yung) it says: “What Heaven confers (ming) is called the inborn nature (hsing). The following of this nature is called the Way (tao). The cultivation of this Way is called instruction.” And further: “Sincerity is the Way of Heaven. The attainment of sincerity is the Way of men.” Four cardinal points, then, are essential to this character-building Chinese system of thought: benevolence; regards for the order of relationships; the rectification of names, so that the relationship may be recognized; and sincerity, as a perfect to the inner nature, which has become known through the rectification. (The chief difference between India and China in this view, lies in the local identifications of the duties to which the virtuous give heed. In India, the regulations of caste; for Confucius, the proprieties of the five relationships. The metaphysics of the two systems are the same.)
Three important corollaries follow: 1.The superior man does what is proper to the station in which he is; he does not desire to go beyond this. 2. It is by poetry that the mind is aroused. It is by the rules of propriety (rituals, ceremonies, rules of proper conduct) that the character is established. It is from music that the finish is received. 3. The superior man comprehends righteousness (oughtness); the small man comprehends gain (profit).
Mo Tzu (about 480 – 400 B.C.) represents the first serious philosophical challenge to the system of Confucius. He wrote: “Even those of long life cannot exhaust the learning required for Confucian studies. Even people with the vigor of youth cannot perform all the ceremonial duties. And even those who have amassed wealth cannot afford music. The Confucianists enhance the beauty of the wicked arts and lead their sovereign astray. Their doctrine cannot meet the needs of the age, nor can their learning educate the people.” Mo Tzu represents utilitarianism, as exemplified by his attitude to music – which is considered to be of no practical value. Men’s numerous emotions are not only of no practical value, but moreover of no significance. Hence they should be eliminated, so as not to be impediments to human conduct. The Mohist school laid exclusive emphasis on “profitableness” (li) and “accomplishment” (kung).
The question of the order of society and the force by which it is to be structured, still is the question (as it was for Confucius), but faith in the power of decorum, arts, and the rites to activate and develop the inborn nature has been lost. Moreover, all faith in the inborn nature itself has been lost. For the Confucians the inborn nature had been conferred and sealed within each by heaven. Awakened by the influence of poetry, music, the rites, decorum, it flowered naturally, in harmony with the tao. For Mo Tzu, however, there was no such hope. With the faith gone in the inner nature, the sole resort, then, was despotism, sentimentalized as the mandate of heaven; and the agency of enforcement was not music but espionage, fear of punishment and desire for reward. Where, in the midst of all this, do we find the principle of universal love, for which Mo Tzu is celebrated? He says that all calamities stem from hate of others, and that those who hate are called discriminating. Mutual discrimination is the cause of all calamities, and he says: “Substitute for discrimination all-embracingness.” However, he defends wars as a means of correcting the wrongs. The Mohists considered themselves a strictly disciplined organization capable of military action.
Taoism, grew out from about 400 B.C. of this turbulent period of unrest and wars which caused even Confucius to give up. The epoch resembles, or at least suggests, that of the forest philosophers of India three or four centuries before, when the earlier feudal order there also was collapsing.
A philosopher of the so-called Legalist school, being very provoked by these forest philosophers, states: “A ruler should not listen to those who believe in people having opinions of their own and in the importance of the individual. Such teachings cause people to withdraw to quiet places and hide away in caves or on mountains, there to rail at the prevailing government, sneer at those in authority, belittle the importance of rank end emoluments, and despise all who hold official posts.” In their seclusion, practicing to various degrees disciplines of inward realization, these mavericks had hit upon something within that seemed to them to be a greater power for the benefit of mankind than either the food, clothing, and shelter which the Mohists thought were the fundament of virtue but which the mountain recluses themselves had to a degree renounced, or the main force of military and police might by which such material goods were to be assured to all; namely the power and experience in deeply wonderful realization of the Tao. According to their experience, Tao is the actual fundament of all things, all being, and of true humanity of man.
Tao tê means the latent power (tê) of the Way (tao), the order, of the universe. In the Chinese philosophy of the Tao, the classic statement is the Tao Te Ching (“the Book (ching) of the Power (tê) of the Way (tao)”). It is here maintained that contemplation of the Tao gives as the Indians say “siddhi”, as the Chinese say “tê”, a power over the outside world undreamt of by those who pit themselves against matter while still in its thralls. It can be said that Confucius and the Taoists agreed in centering the seat of the world-shaping power in man himself; they differed, however, as to its depth and the manner by which it might be awakened. The Taoist honored introverted meditation as the method, “sitting with blank mind”, “returning to the state of the uncarved block” – “non-assertion, not forcing”. Confucius had taught the extraverted way of sincere, respectful attention to the arts of music, poetry, ritual lore, and decorum as the awakeners of that sentiment of kindness, gentleness, or goodness which was acquired through – and endowed with grace – man’s intercourse with men. Both of these stood diametrically apart from both Mo Tzu and the so-called Legalists or Realists, for whom the only effective power was main force, and the goods to be desired were food, shelter, and world rule.
Ch’in Dynasty: 221 – 207 B.C.
The state of Ch’in, a barbaric state still practicing human sacrifice, had by 318 B.C. started its annexation of neighboring states. King Ching assumed the Ch’in throne in 246 B.C. and in the following years took military control of most of the Chinese states. In 221 B.C. he assumed the title Ch’in Shih Huang Ti, as the first emperor of China. He immediately started the building of the Great Wall, to protect the Empire from further inroads of barbarians such as himself, and in 213 B.C. issued his edict for the Burning of the Books. In 210 B.C. Shih Huang Ti died, however, and the dynasty collapsed in 207 B.C.
Han Dynasty:202 B.C. – 220 A.D.
The Old Silk Road to Hellenistic Bactria, Buddhist India, Zoroastrian Parthia, and Rome was opened by the year 100 B.C. From this time onwards the flow back and forth of currents of ideas between the four domains of Europe, the Levant, India, and the Far East continued increasing in force and led to a shared vocabulary of myth – applied locally according to local cultural traditions.
The point of origin of the mythological notion of the five elements is not known. The earliest known Greek system dates back to Anaximander (about 611 – 547 B.C.), in India it appears in the Taittiriya Upanishad (about 600 B.C.), and the Chinese corresponding system first appears under the Han dynasty. The five Chinese elements are water, fire, wood, metal and earth. The philosophers of the Han period made a great deal of this root system of five elements, building upon it a sort of pagoda of ideas, all associated by analogies of five. It is clear at this point that the creative period of Chinese mythic thought was past, and that the work now being done was neither of poets nor priests, but of systematizing scholars setting fragments of the past into patterns drawn by rule.
The empire, until now shaped by violence, was now to be shaped by learning and ordered in such a way that all its lineaments should be atuned to the order of the Tao. Of old, the principles of this order had been found; now, by formula, they would be applied. The rich military empire would bring to form a civilization which, in spite of reigns of force and cold brutality of incredible inhumanity, should stand as the pivot of the universe - the Middle Kingdom – for all time. The system of feudal kingdoms had broken down, and the communication between the various culture centers was opened up – both politically and economically; thus, the conditions for such an ambition were put in place. This opening up also led to a less homogeneous mythological lore in the Han era, as compared with the Chou era.
The Six Dynasties: 190/221 – 589 A.D.
Buddhism entered China in the Han period, perhaps around 67 A.D. However, its influence on mythic thought and civilization of the empire became great only in the period of disorder that followed the fall of the imperial house of Han. For nearly four hundred years, war and devastation returned the land to the condition that has been for the greater part of its long history the Chinese reality of realities. Every one of the ten Chinese Buddhist sects was founded in this period. In the world of Taoist thought as well, there was a powerful enlivenment at this time. The hold of Confucianism on the minds of the literati had relaxed with the fall to ruin of the bureaucratic system of the ordered state.
A Taoist work of this age (the Lieh Tzu, third century A.D.) states that there are four things that do not allow people to have peace: the first is long life, the second is reputation, the third is rank, and the fourth is riches. Those who have these things fear ghosts, fear men, fear power, and fear punishment. They are called fugitives. Their lives are controlled by external things. But those who follow their destiny do not desire long life. Those who are not fond of honor do not desire reputation. Those who do not want power desire no rank. And those who are not avaricious have no desire for riches. This sort of men live in accordance with their nature. The regulate their lives by internal things.
Another Taoist text spontaneity and the natural in the following way: “What the ear likes to hear is music, and prohibition of the hearing of music is called obstruction to the ear. What the eye likes to see is beauty, and prohibition of the seeing of beauty is called obstruction to sight. What the nose likes to smell is perfume, and prohibition of the smelling of perfume is called obstruction to smell. What the mouth likes to talk about is right or wrong, and prohibition of the talking about right or wrong is called obstruction to understanding. What the body likes to enjoy is rich food and fine clothing, and prohibition of the enjoying of these is called obstruction of the sensations of the body. What the mind likes to be is free, and prohibition of this freedom is called obstruction to the nature. All these obstructions are the main causes of the vexations of life. Cultivating life is to get rid of these vexations.”
At this time a system of organized religious Taoism was developing, literally a church with a patriarch, the Heavenly Teacher. The initiator of this movement was a person of the second century A.D., Chang Ling, who collected from his followers tithes of five bushels of rice, so that his teaching was called the Tao of Five Bushels of Rice. Others sought to synthesize Taoist thought. Taoism has developed one of the most thickly populated pantheons in the world, with deities representing natural objects, historical persons, professions, ideas, and even the whole and parts of the human body. It has a host of immortals and spirits, and a rich reservoir of superstitions, and systems for searching for longevity. However, its concentration on a good life on earth, its respect for both bodily and spiritual health, its doctrine of harmony with nature, its emphasis on simplicity, naturalness, peace of mind, and freedom of the spirit have continued to inspire Chinese art and enlighten Chinese thought and conduct.
K’ou Ch’ien-chih (died 432 A.D.) regulated the codes and ceremonies of the cult, fixed the names of its duties, and formulated its theology. Taoism, through his influence, was made the state religion in 440 A.D., and Buddhism was for a time suppressed. However, over time, the teaching of the Buddha, the Middle Way, was integrated into this universe of thought and subsequently understood to be precisely Tao.
The Age of the Great Beliefs: about 500 – 1500 A.D.
A systematic survey of the proliferation of schools within the Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian folds is a monumental task which cannot be handled here. A few words can be said about the question of the impact of sentiments and ideas carried from one domain to another. This period (about 300 – 500 A.D.) was one of terrible stress. No less than seventeen “dynasties” contended with each other in the north – of these four were Hunnish, four Turkic, six Mongol, and only three ruled by houses of Chinese stock. Throughout this time the “barbarians” were Sinified much more than the northern Chinese were barbarized. And in the same way, the alien religion of the Buddha, which had now been established on Chinese soil for about five centuries, brought forth two native growths. Firstly, the Taoist development which can be seen as a folk aspect of the Buddhist system. Secondly, the Far Eastern Buddhist sect known as Ch’an or Ch’an-an (Japanese: Zen), where Taoist thought and feeling were translated into imported Buddhist terms.
Sui Dynasty: 581 – 618 A.D.
The long period of Chinese political disunity was terminated by the brief but fearfully effective Sui Dynasty, whose second and last emperor, Yang Ti, is celebrated for his completion of a canal uniting the Yellow River and Yantgtze. Some 5 500 000 persons, guarded by 50 000 police carried through the work under the most cruel conditions. His iron grip on the country left a legacy of imperial power to the succeeding dynasty (when Yang Ti was captured in battle with a Turkic force). Just as the Ch’in Dynasty had been followed by the Han, so was Sui followed by T’ang. The period of the T’ang Dynasty has been regarded by most historians as China’s Golden Age.
T’ang Dynasty: 618 – 906 A.D.
The first part of this richly cosmopolitan period saw the flowering, but the second part the shattering, of the Buddhist Order in China. In the years 841 – 845 a Confucian-Taoist reaction brought about the leveling of more than 4600 monasteries, secularization of more than 260 000 monks and nuns, abolition of some 40 000 temples and shrines, confiscation of 1 000 000 acres of fertile Buddhist lands, and manumission of 150 000 monastery and temple slaves.
It had been in the peaceful mountain monastery of the Yellow Plum that the greatest of the Ch’an Buddhist teachers, Hui-neng, who became the sixth and last patriarch of his sect, had achieved the realization that represents to this day the culminating synthesis of Indian spirituality and Chinese. The line of Far Eastern patriarchs, through his time, is supposed to have been as follows: 1.Bodhidharma (520 A.D.), 2.Hui K’e (486 – 593), 3.Seng-ts’an (died 606), 4.Tao-hsin (580 – 651), 5.Hung-jen (601 – 674), 6.Hui-neng (638 – 713).
The sixth patriarch said: “Look within. Find your own true face that was antecedent to the world. The only secret is inside yourself.” The Taoists said: “Return to the state of the uncarved block.” By the eighth century Taoist thought had coalesced with the gospel of nirvana. A killing of all “thou shalts”; a killing of the dragon of the golden scales; and therewith a release of the child, the wheel rolling of itself, the Buddha-nature, tathagatha (just-so-ness). Likewise, in the teaching of the Tao, we have heard that when the arbitrary “obstructions” imposed by desirous thought are removed, the self-so (tzu-jan) becomes manifest. And these two – tathagatha and tzu-jan – now were known as one.
In the year 840 A.D., when the imperial throne of China became vacant on the death of the Emperor Wen-tsung, the deceased monarch’s brother, Wu-tsung, set about eliminating all those who had been favored in the time of the preceding emperor. The following year he began to show himself inclined to support the Taoist clergy against the Buddhist, which he considered aien. In 842 his enterprise to extinguish this alien light started.
The failure of the Great Orient to evolve any order, either of social institutions or of expressly human ethical values, by which the divine nature of a despot could be controlled – or even judged and criticized – is cruelly manifest in such a time as that of the reign of the maniac Wu-tsung. The magical notion that benevolence and compassion work of themselves upon the universe left the entire East about where Egypt stood in the period of the Narmer palette (about 2850 B.C.).
Sung Dynasty: 960 – 1279 A.D.
Buddhism in China never recovered from the blows of 841 – 845. It survived along with popular Taoism largely on the level of a crude folk religion, no longer developing. In contrast to the peasantry of India and much of Europe, the Chinese were not in the deep past people of the soil. They were nomads. In their cults we find a combination of Neolithic fertility elements and reverence for ancestors, with an emphatically shamanistic factor. In Chinese thought the idea of the ancestor is on the one hand linked to the noble terms Ti, Shang Ti, and ti’en, which have been generally translated “God”, but on the other hand to such terms as shen (“spirits”) and kuei (“ghosts”). The sphere of the shaman is properly the latter. The sphere of the pater familias centers about the family cult of his own ancestral line. And the sphere of the imperial cult is a development of the familial, with accretions from the shamanistic: the ancestral line of the emperor (the son of heaven) having been identified, practically, with “the deified being (ti) above (shang)”, Shang Ti.
In relation to the cult of birth and death, two soul-like principles are recognized: the first, p’o (written with the character for “white” and that for “daemon”, “white ghost”), is produced at the time of conception; the second, hun (written with the character for “clouds” and that for “daemon”, “cloud daemon”), is joined to the p’o at the moment of birth, when the light-world is entered from the dark. The p’o in later thought was identified with the yin, the hun with the yang. At death the p’o remains with the corpse for three years and then descends to the Yellow Springs; or, if not set at rest it may return as a kuei, a ghost. On the other hand, the hun, which partakes of the principle of light, ascends to heaven, becoming a shen, a spirit.
It is believed that the two terms Shang Ti (Lord Above) and Ti’en (Heaven) derive from the periods, respectively, of the Shang and the Chou dynasties. The former term suggests a personality. The latter tends to the impersonal. Both imply a will, the will of heaven. However, this will is conceived, in accordance with the formula of the hieratic city state, in the way of a mathematically structured cosmic order (maat, me, rta, dharma, tao). And as everthing in the history of Chinese thought and civilization shows, the realization of this order has been the chief concern of the Middle Kingdom, from the ages of its appearance. Fundamentally, the idea is that the individual (microcosm), society (mesocosm), and the universe of heaven and earth (macrocosm), form an indissoluble unit, and that the well-being of all depends upon their mutual harmonization. As in India, so in China, there is no notion of an absolute creation of the world. In contrast to India, however, where an accent is given to the dissolution-recreation motif, the main thought in China is of the present aspect of the world (in which one wants to realize Tao). And again in contrast to India, where a theoretically static system of caste represents the social aspect of the cosmic order and the individual is oriented to his duties by way of his broad caste alignment, in China the family and immediate kinship alignment dominates.
The T’ang Dynasty collapsed 906 A.D., and after five decades of war lords (the so-called Five Dynasties), the politically weak but culturally wonderful Sung Dynasty arose. Its founder sponsored the first printed edition of the Chinese Buddhist scriptures and its second monarch built a huge Buddhist stupa in the capital. Ch’an Buddhism was the chief Buddhist influence among the literati, and as a kind of synthesis of the Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian vocabularies, Neo-Confucianism came into being.
Four separate prehistoric backgrounds have to be borne in mind as the particular forms of the Chinese mythological system begin to emerge:
1.The Lower Paleolithic, about 500 000 B.C., with its primal derivation from the tropics. Heavy stone choppers and fire were in use.
2.The Middle and (possibly) Upper Paleolithic, about 50 000 – 25 000 B.C., with superior chipped-stone tools in parallel to cultures in Europe such as the Mousterian (Neanderthal Man), Aurignacian and Magdalenian (Crô-Magnon Man). Here the rites, myths and customs of the northern culture world of the Great Hunt may have prevailed.
3. A cut-off, highly specialized, hypothetical community of Arctic proto-Mongoloids, who, when released from their isolated frigid hearth, somewhere northeastward of the Yenisei, drove southward on the one hand as a wedge through Mongolia and China, as far as Indonesia, and, on the other hand, into North and South America (a circumpolar, proto-Mongoloid complex).
4.The great pottery cultures of the High Neolithic. Starting with a coarse, unglazed pottery assigned to an early Neolithic period (about 2500 B.C.), more elegant painted ware (Yangshao) showed up around 2200 – 1900 B.C., followed by black polished ware (Lungshan) around 1900 – 1500 B.C., with the earliest classic dynasty (Shang) introducing white ware, 1500 B.C. – 1000 B.C.
Major dates to be borne in mind are the following:
Shang (Basic Chinese High Bronze Age), 1523 – 1027 B.C.
Early Chou (period of developed feudalism), 1027 – 772 B.C.
Middle Chou (period of disintegrating feudalism), 772 – 480 B.C.
Confucius, 551 – 478 B.C.
Late Chou (period of the warring states), 480 – 221 B.C.
Ch’in (Burning of the Books, Great Wall), 221 – 206 B.C.
Han (Confucian bureaucracy established), 206 B.C. – 220 A.D.
Six Dynasties (disunity: Buddhism established), 220 – 589 A.D.
Bodhidharma, 520 A.D. (Most likely a legendary character and a legendary date)
Sui (reunification of empire: Great Canal), 590 – 617 A.D.
T’ang (culmination of ancient Chinese civilization), 618 - 906 A.D.
Sung (Neo-Confucianism: apogee of painting), 960 – 1279 A.D.
Yüan (Mongol dynasty: Gengis Khan), 1280 – 1367 A.D.
Ming (Neo-Confucian restoration), 1368 – 1643 A.D.
Ch’ing (Manchu dynasty: disintegration), 1644 – 1911 A.D.
It has been said that in Confucius’ time there were no less than 770 contending princely states. However, Chinese thought, instead of giving up the fight and retreating to the forest when the world began to fall apart, put itself to the problem of repair. So, instead of a history of the ways of disengagement, Chinese philosophy is characterized by contending systems of orientation to the world in being.
The Mythic Past
It is surprising how little we know of the writings of the Chinese before the period of Confucius. Equally surprising is the amount of texts produced and doctored from this time onwards, to the extent that it is even difficult to reconstruct even the work of Confucius himself. Consequently, all of the myths (or, rather, as we now have them, moralizing anecdotes) of the Chinese golden age have to be recognized as the productions rather of a Confucian forest of pencils than of any “forest primeval”. If gems or jades are to be found among them from the actual mythologies of Yangshao, Lungshan, Shang, or even Chou (anything earlier than Shih Huang Ti’s burning of the books in 213 B.C.) we have to realize that they have been lifted from their primitive setting and remounted in a new setting like an old Egyptian scarab mounted as a ring for a fine lady’s hand.
In the traces of the early myths, there is no cosmogony, no world beginning. The world is already solidly under foot, and the work about to begin is the building of China.
Period of the Earliest Men
The lords of the birds’ nests: people in those days lived in birds’ nests made in trees, to avoid the dangers threatening them on the ground. The Fire drillers: eating raw food, the people were ruining their stomachs. Some sages invented the fire drill and taught them how to cook. The deluge of Kung Kung: after the time of the fire drillers, when Kung Kung was king, the waters occupied seven tenths of the earth and dry land three tenths of the earth. He availed himself of the natural conditions and in the constrained space ruled the empire.
From these short statements we can observe that we already have an empire, and we also have a deluge. And a basic Chinese theme is announced in the final sentence, where it is said that Kung Kung “availed himself of the natural conditions”. Virtue consists in respecting those conditions; competence, in making use of them. In the later Historic Classic (Shu Ching), which is one of the fundamental texts of classical Chinese thought, this period of the earliest men is completely disregarded, and all good things commence with the golden age of Yao and Shun – while Kung Kung is deliberately transferred to that time and turned into an incompetent dignitary who was banished.
Period of the Highest Virtue
The name of this period suggests that it must have been of considerable importance in the old mythology. Nothing remains of it in extant texts, however, but the names of a dozen or so of its kings. One of whom, Jung Ch’eng, is termed the creator of the calendar, and another, Chu Jung, bears the name of the god of fire. The information we have today of this shadowy period tells us little, but it indicates that in Chou-time China there must have existed a number of myths concerning primeval heroes.
Period of the Great Ten, culminating with Yao, Shun, and the great Yü.
To this important age, which terminates in a Deluge, ten emperors were assigned in the early Chou-time mythology. Hence it appears that what we are viewing here may be a local transformation of the series of the old Sumerian king list. There are indications that this could have a Mesopotamian source, even though it has its strong Chinese characteristics. These ten mythical monarchs, with a few items from their legends, are as follows.
1.Fu Hsi; 2.Shen Nung. In the legends of the Chou period these two emperors played modest parts. Both acquired great importance, however, in the later “Book of Changes” (I Ching), where Fu His is credited with the invention of the symbols on which that work is based, as well as with having taught the people how to use nets for hunting and fishing. Shen Nung, it is said, ruled the world for seventeen generations, and is supposed to have devised the plow and instituted markets.
3.Yen Ti. 4.Huang Ti. Following the long reign of Shen Nung, there came the short reign of Yen Ti, who was overcome by his glorious brother Huang Ti. This important mythic figure, the so-called Yellow Emperor, is supposed to have had twenty-five sons, from whom no less than twelve feudal families of the Chou period claimed descent. Huang Ti invented the fire drill (already invented by the Fire Drillers), burned the forests on the hills, cleared the bush, burned the marshes, and drove out the wild beasts. Thus he made cattle breeding possible. When he rode to assemble the spirits on the holy mount T’ai-shan, he drove in an ivory chariot drawn by six dragons. The wind-god ran ahead and swept; the rain-god sprinkled the road; tigers and wolves galloped before, spirits spirited behind, serpents streaked along the ground, and phoenixes flew above.
5.Shao Hao. Little more is told of this monarch than that he reigned for only seven years.
6.Chuan Hsü; also known as Kao Yang. He had eight talented sons, one of whom, Kun (“the Great Fish”), was the father of the Great Yü and his unsuccessful predecessor in dealing with the Deluge.
7.K’u. This monarch had two wives, Chiang Yüan and Chien Ti, both of whom conceived miraculously. The first became pregnant when she trod on the big toe of God’s footprint. The second pregnancy occurred when the two young ladies were in their pleasure tower of nine stories, enjoying wine, sweetmeats, and music. God sent them a swallow that sang, and the two contested in catching it. They covered it with a basket, which, after a time, they lifted. The bird flew off, leaving two eggs. Each swallowed one. Chien Ti conceived, and the child she bore became the father, centuries later, of the founder of the dynasty of Shang.
8.Yao. Ti Yao, divine Yao,, the most celebrated monarch of the Chinese Golden Age, is the model sagely man of all time. The great History Classic (Shu Ching) opens with a celebration of his character and reign: “Examining into antiquity”, it states, “we find Divine Yao, who, naturally and without effort, was referential, intelligent, accomplished, thoughtful, sincerely courteous, and obliging. Moreover, the bright influence of these qualities was felt through the four quarters and reached both above and beneath. He distinguished the able and the virtuous, thence proceeding to a loving consideration of all in the nine classes of his kindred, who thereby became harmonious. He regulated and clarified the people, who all became luminously intelligent. He united and harmonized the many states. And the black-haired people thus were transformed. The result was universal accord.”
During the reign of Yao there were many crises, due to inundations. In the search for a successor to Yao, no competent person was found in the entourage of the emperor, and they recruited the son of a poor man, Shun. Thus, the point was made that descent and worth are not genealogical, but moral – a point that is eminently Confucian. There is nothing comparable in the mythologies of India, where the emphasis is ever on birth. Shun was tested and tried by various means – amid violent wind, thunder, and rain. This was not a test of disengagement, but of competence in constructive engagement – thus showing clearly the contrast with the Indian forest sages.
9.Shun. As the vice-regent of Yao, Shun had already performed all of the great sacrifices for twenty-eight years. However, the chief problem was still the flood. Kun, the father of Yü, had been assigned the task of dealing with it, and had miserably failed. He had made the mistake of violating nature in his work, by damming up the inundating waters and thereby throwing into disorder the arrangement of the five elements. The Lord of Heaven was roused to anger and did not give him the Great Plan with its nine divisions. Kun was made prisoner, and his son Yü rose up and assumed his task.
10.Yü. “To the Great Yü,” the text goes on to say, “Heaven gave the Great Plan with its nine divisions, wherein the unchanging principles of its method were in due order set forth.” His whole life was in his work, which he performed in accord with the natural conditions. He gained control of the floods by finding passages and leading the flooding waters on to the sea. “Were it not for Yü,” said a prince of Liu in the year 541 B.C., “should we not all be fishes?”
From this we have before us three very different versions of the nature and meaning of the Deluge confronted by the tenth monarch of a mythic age. The first is of the ancient Sumerian cycle of the cosmic eon, mathematically inevitable, which ends in cosmic dissolution. The second is of the cosmic catastrophe brought about by a freely willing God, reflecting an essentially Semitic attitude of dissociation from, and guilt vis-à-vis, divinity. (Contrasted with this was the Aryan formula of the Vedic drought caused by a demon, where the gods were on the side of man.) Finally, in this Chinese version we see the catastrophe reduced from a cosmic to a local geographical event, with neither guilt nor mathematics invoked to rationalize the occurrence. Here it is a hero legend, and in the spirit of the basic Chinese view of proper action, the virtue of the hero lies in his accord with the order of nature, as a consequence of which he is supported in his task by the mandate and revealed Great Plan of heaven itself.
Period of the Legendary Hsia Dynasty
As Noah survived the Flood and therefore represents both the end of the old and beginning of the new eon, so also does the Great Yü. And as the age following the Flood approached gradually the plane of history, both in the Bible and in the old Sumerian king lists, so also does the chronicle of China, following the period of Yü. He is supposed to have been the founder of the legendary Hsia Dynasty, for which a number of serious scholars still believe some serious evidence still may be found. However, since none has yet appeared, we shall have to regard it as legendary still.
The date of its founding is supposed to have been about 2205 B.C. and the date of the death of Yü about 2197 B.C. A line of seventeen kings is supposed to have reigned for either 471 years or 600 years (depending on differing estimates). Following its fall, there rose the archaeologically well-validated dynasty of Shang. As Yao, Shun, and Yü have stood in Chinese literature as models of the character of the good king, so the last legendary monarch, Chieh, of the Hsia Dynasty has been the model of the bad.
Chieh, we are told, was a paragon of vice. In the winter he built no bridges, in the summer he made no rafts, just to watch the people freeze and drown. He let female tigers loose in the market, just to watch people run. He had thirty thousand female musicians who shouted and made music all night, so that it was heard through all the streets, and all were dressed in embroidered silk. Women, in particular, were his weakness. The myths tell how the gods united with the people, under the leadership of T’ang – founder of the dynasty of Shang – to overturn Chieh and depose him.
The Chinese Feudal Age: 1500 – 500 B.C.
Shang Dynasty: 1523 – 1027 B.C.
The royal tombs of the actual first dynasty of China, at the old capital at Anyang, tell a story of funeral rites very much like the tombs at Abydos of the first dynasty of Egypt fifteen centuries before. It may be thought that even at the times of Confucius the archaic customs documented in these tombs still existed in some form. As late as 420 B.C. the moralist Mo Tzu was complaining of the funeral rites of the royalty of his day, where – in the case of an Emperor – sometimes several hundred servants were slain to follow him in the grave, together with animals and objects of art and household in great quantities.
In the royal-tomb art of the Shang period, an interplay is to be recognized between a cultural tide stemming from the West - rooted in the bronze age and carried by an early wave of neolithic potters (Yangshao, Lungshan) and by a later, chariot driving warrior folk with Homeric-Aryan affinities – and a second, “shamanistic”, circumpolar tide flowing in waves from the north. Shamanism is an extremely prominent feature of both the Buddhism and the Shinto of Japan as well as of Chinese and Tibetan religious life. A sign of its force already in the Shang period may be seen in the demonic animal-mask motif, termed t’ao-t’ieh – which appears prominently on the bronzes.
Both in certain Shang bronzes and in the arts of Yucatàn in Mexico, there appears the shamanistic motif of a human (priestly or warrior) head capped by that of a beast. However, the Greek goddess Athene also wears a mask-like helmet high on her head, while on her shield there is the gorgon-mask of Medusa. Thus we are reminded that although shamanism was developed to a special pitch in the Mongoloid circumpolar sphere, it has actually had a long, broadly flung history from Paleolithic times. The art of divination, through use of oracle bones, was also developed, as can be seen through a considerable Shang-series of oracle-bone inscriptions. This art was also developed in Mesopotamia, where there was a strong interest in divination. Just as in the patterns of myths, so in the divination of the will of heaven by auspices, it was specifically with Sumer that the early Chinese connections appear to have been particularly close.
Early and Middle Chou: about 1027 – 480 B.C.
The legends of the fall of the Shang dynasty and rise of Chou repeat the motifs already familiar from the fall of Hsia and rise of Shang.
In the classic Book of Odes (Shih Ching) 305 pieces are preserved from the ritual lore and poetry of the feudal age. Many of these are Chinese counterparts, both in time and sense, of the Vedas. In contrast to the Vedas, they deal with agriculture, not herding; a worship directed to ancestors and not the powers or gods of the natural world; and the leadership of kings, not priests, in the conduct of rites: kings who were themselves descendants of the ancestors addressed.
Oswald Spengler has in “The Decline of the West” written of the contrast between “time thinking” in terms of developing destiny, and “space thinking”, in terms of timeless natural laws. The former is represented pre-eminently by the person of political tact, with a sense for the possible, who would himself become a destiny; the latter by a person of priestly or scientific knowledge, who would control effects through an application of eternally valid laws.
Applied to the contrast between China and India in the main statement of their modes of thought and action, it was in China the statesman and in India the priest who set his seal on the civilization. On the one hand a great stress placed on oracles investigating a changing destiny, tao, with a view to political achievement, and, on the other, a system of unchanging laws, dharma, epitomized in formulae of knowledge that are conceived to be of eternal truth. A sense of history, on the one hand, none whatsoever on the other; ancestor worship (direction in time) predominant in China; the gods of earth, air, and sky (the field of space) predominant in India. A sense, on the one hand, of significant engagement, and, on the other, of disengagement as the greatest human aim.
And yet, these two culture worlds develop through comparable periods of change almost simultaneously, from the period of the entry of the Aryans into India and of the Shang charioteers into China. The feudal Vedic Age concludes in a period of rising princely states, roughly in the neighborhood of the eighth century B.C., and in China, too, at about that time, we enter upon a period of deep change of essentially the same kind. The great Ch’in classic of the art of politics, The Book of Lord Shang (Shang Tzu), is for disillusioned ruthlessness equaled and surpassed only by its Indian counterpart, the Arthashastra. The latter (to quote the Indian statesman and philosopher K.M. Pannikar) goes “far beyond the limited imagination of Machiavelli”.
An example from the Chinese book will show the nature of the thinking: “If a country is strong and does not make war, there will be villainy within.” It goes on to list the things that will destroy the fighting spirit of the people: rites and music; poetry and history; the cultivation of goodness, filial piety and respect for elders; sincerity and truth; purity and integrity; kindness and morality; detraction of warfare and shame in taking part in it. It goes on to say that the ruler will become impoverished and his territory diminished. A country where the wicked govern the virtuous will be orderly, so that it will become strong. If things are done that the enemy would be ashamed to do, there is an advantage.
The Age of the Great Classics: about 500 B.C. – 500 A.D.
Late Chou: 480 – 221 B.C.(Period of the warring states)
The highest concern of classical Chinese thought, in contrast to the Indian of social and cosmic disengagement, was political reform. All Chinese philosophy is essentially the study of how men can best be helped to live together in harmony and good order. Every Chinese philosophy is formulated not as an abstract theory but as an art of ruling. And the model for this order, which every one of the schools accepted and interpreted as fact, was the mythic golden age of Yao, Shun, and the Great Yü.
The question was viewed under two aspects. 1.A macrocosmic order of time: the nature of the seasons, demands and possibilities of the hour, to be determined by auspices and omens; and 2.The microcosmic order of man: the recognition and use of the most effective power within the competence of the individual, for the harmonization of life on earth.
The chief document bearing on the first aspect is the Book of Changes (I Ching).
On its practical side this is an encyclopedia of oracles, based on a mythic view of the universe that is fundamental to all Chinese thought. The legend of its origin is that its basic elements were discovered by the first of the legendary Ten Emperors, Fu His.
These elements are two: an unbroken line associated with the masculine yang principle, which is heavenly (light, dry, warm, active), and a broken line associated with the feminine yin, which is earthy (dark, moist, cold, passive). Primarily the terms yang and yin refer to the sunny and shady sides of a stream, mountain or street. In all things, at all times, both yin and yang are operative, though in differing degrees; and the purpose of the Book of Changes was to provide an encyclopedia of the ways in which they may be related. In the holocaust of the Burning of the Books in the year 213 B.C. this particular book was spared as a practical work, so that it does, indeed, span the gamut of the schools of thought. By its practical methods for divination it tells of the readiness of time and the art of moving with its tides, rocking with the waves, and is the most important statement remaining to us of that aspect of ancient Chinese thought which relates the individual to the order of the outer world.
Underlying it all is the elementary principle of a dialectic of two forces, yang and yin – which in a way is analogous to the Indian of the lingam and yoni. However, whereas in India the sexual suggestions of the duad are emphasized, the tendency in China has been toward an abstract mathematical (geometrical) style of symbolization. These contrasting tendencies have colored every bit of the two mythologies: the Indian, lush, voluptuous, or in reaction, fiercely ascetic; the Chinese, either dryly practical or humorously symbolic, never extreme.
Let us now turn to the microcosmic order of man.
On the question of the most effective force within the competence of the individual for the harmonization of life on earth, three points of view are to be noted – that of Confucius, that of Mo Tzu, and that of the Taoists.
The reach of time between the dates of the actual life of Confucius (551 – 478 B.C.) and his earliest known biography (86 B.C.) is the same as that of the Buddha (563 – 483 B.C.) and the earliest reports of his teaching in the Pali Canon (80 B.C.). Confucianism regards benevolence (yen) as the most effective power for the harmonization of life on earth. A main connotation is that of relationship: benevolent, sincere, mutually respectful relationships between persons. In the Confucian texts five such relationships are announced: those between prince and minister, between father and son, between husband and wife, between elder and younger brother, and between friends. Benevolence being the first major point, the second major point of the Confucian system is what has been termed the rectification of names: “The Master said: What is needed is to rectify names….If names are not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.” Every name contains certain implications which constitute the essence of that class of things to which the name applies. Such things, therefore, should agree with this ideal essence.
In the Confucian classic known as The Doctrine of the Mean (Chung Yung) it says: “What Heaven confers (ming) is called the inborn nature (hsing). The following of this nature is called the Way (tao). The cultivation of this Way is called instruction.” And further: “Sincerity is the Way of Heaven. The attainment of sincerity is the Way of men.” Four cardinal points, then, are essential to this character-building Chinese system of thought: benevolence; regards for the order of relationships; the rectification of names, so that the relationship may be recognized; and sincerity, as a perfect to the inner nature, which has become known through the rectification. (The chief difference between India and China in this view, lies in the local identifications of the duties to which the virtuous give heed. In India, the regulations of caste; for Confucius, the proprieties of the five relationships. The metaphysics of the two systems are the same.)
Three important corollaries follow: 1.The superior man does what is proper to the station in which he is; he does not desire to go beyond this. 2. It is by poetry that the mind is aroused. It is by the rules of propriety (rituals, ceremonies, rules of proper conduct) that the character is established. It is from music that the finish is received. 3. The superior man comprehends righteousness (oughtness); the small man comprehends gain (profit).
Mo Tzu (about 480 – 400 B.C.) represents the first serious philosophical challenge to the system of Confucius. He wrote: “Even those of long life cannot exhaust the learning required for Confucian studies. Even people with the vigor of youth cannot perform all the ceremonial duties. And even those who have amassed wealth cannot afford music. The Confucianists enhance the beauty of the wicked arts and lead their sovereign astray. Their doctrine cannot meet the needs of the age, nor can their learning educate the people.” Mo Tzu represents utilitarianism, as exemplified by his attitude to music – which is considered to be of no practical value. Men’s numerous emotions are not only of no practical value, but moreover of no significance. Hence they should be eliminated, so as not to be impediments to human conduct. The Mohist school laid exclusive emphasis on “profitableness” (li) and “accomplishment” (kung).
The question of the order of society and the force by which it is to be structured, still is the question (as it was for Confucius), but faith in the power of decorum, arts, and the rites to activate and develop the inborn nature has been lost. Moreover, all faith in the inborn nature itself has been lost. For the Confucians the inborn nature had been conferred and sealed within each by heaven. Awakened by the influence of poetry, music, the rites, decorum, it flowered naturally, in harmony with the tao. For Mo Tzu, however, there was no such hope. With the faith gone in the inner nature, the sole resort, then, was despotism, sentimentalized as the mandate of heaven; and the agency of enforcement was not music but espionage, fear of punishment and desire for reward. Where, in the midst of all this, do we find the principle of universal love, for which Mo Tzu is celebrated? He says that all calamities stem from hate of others, and that those who hate are called discriminating. Mutual discrimination is the cause of all calamities, and he says: “Substitute for discrimination all-embracingness.” However, he defends wars as a means of correcting the wrongs. The Mohists considered themselves a strictly disciplined organization capable of military action.
Taoism, grew out from about 400 B.C. of this turbulent period of unrest and wars which caused even Confucius to give up. The epoch resembles, or at least suggests, that of the forest philosophers of India three or four centuries before, when the earlier feudal order there also was collapsing.
A philosopher of the so-called Legalist school, being very provoked by these forest philosophers, states: “A ruler should not listen to those who believe in people having opinions of their own and in the importance of the individual. Such teachings cause people to withdraw to quiet places and hide away in caves or on mountains, there to rail at the prevailing government, sneer at those in authority, belittle the importance of rank end emoluments, and despise all who hold official posts.” In their seclusion, practicing to various degrees disciplines of inward realization, these mavericks had hit upon something within that seemed to them to be a greater power for the benefit of mankind than either the food, clothing, and shelter which the Mohists thought were the fundament of virtue but which the mountain recluses themselves had to a degree renounced, or the main force of military and police might by which such material goods were to be assured to all; namely the power and experience in deeply wonderful realization of the Tao. According to their experience, Tao is the actual fundament of all things, all being, and of true humanity of man.
Tao tê means the latent power (tê) of the Way (tao), the order, of the universe. In the Chinese philosophy of the Tao, the classic statement is the Tao Te Ching (“the Book (ching) of the Power (tê) of the Way (tao)”). It is here maintained that contemplation of the Tao gives as the Indians say “siddhi”, as the Chinese say “tê”, a power over the outside world undreamt of by those who pit themselves against matter while still in its thralls. It can be said that Confucius and the Taoists agreed in centering the seat of the world-shaping power in man himself; they differed, however, as to its depth and the manner by which it might be awakened. The Taoist honored introverted meditation as the method, “sitting with blank mind”, “returning to the state of the uncarved block” – “non-assertion, not forcing”. Confucius had taught the extraverted way of sincere, respectful attention to the arts of music, poetry, ritual lore, and decorum as the awakeners of that sentiment of kindness, gentleness, or goodness which was acquired through – and endowed with grace – man’s intercourse with men. Both of these stood diametrically apart from both Mo Tzu and the so-called Legalists or Realists, for whom the only effective power was main force, and the goods to be desired were food, shelter, and world rule.
Ch’in Dynasty: 221 – 207 B.C.
The state of Ch’in, a barbaric state still practicing human sacrifice, had by 318 B.C. started its annexation of neighboring states. King Ching assumed the Ch’in throne in 246 B.C. and in the following years took military control of most of the Chinese states. In 221 B.C. he assumed the title Ch’in Shih Huang Ti, as the first emperor of China. He immediately started the building of the Great Wall, to protect the Empire from further inroads of barbarians such as himself, and in 213 B.C. issued his edict for the Burning of the Books. In 210 B.C. Shih Huang Ti died, however, and the dynasty collapsed in 207 B.C.
Han Dynasty:202 B.C. – 220 A.D.
The Old Silk Road to Hellenistic Bactria, Buddhist India, Zoroastrian Parthia, and Rome was opened by the year 100 B.C. From this time onwards the flow back and forth of currents of ideas between the four domains of Europe, the Levant, India, and the Far East continued increasing in force and led to a shared vocabulary of myth – applied locally according to local cultural traditions.
The point of origin of the mythological notion of the five elements is not known. The earliest known Greek system dates back to Anaximander (about 611 – 547 B.C.), in India it appears in the Taittiriya Upanishad (about 600 B.C.), and the Chinese corresponding system first appears under the Han dynasty. The five Chinese elements are water, fire, wood, metal and earth. The philosophers of the Han period made a great deal of this root system of five elements, building upon it a sort of pagoda of ideas, all associated by analogies of five. It is clear at this point that the creative period of Chinese mythic thought was past, and that the work now being done was neither of poets nor priests, but of systematizing scholars setting fragments of the past into patterns drawn by rule.
The empire, until now shaped by violence, was now to be shaped by learning and ordered in such a way that all its lineaments should be atuned to the order of the Tao. Of old, the principles of this order had been found; now, by formula, they would be applied. The rich military empire would bring to form a civilization which, in spite of reigns of force and cold brutality of incredible inhumanity, should stand as the pivot of the universe - the Middle Kingdom – for all time. The system of feudal kingdoms had broken down, and the communication between the various culture centers was opened up – both politically and economically; thus, the conditions for such an ambition were put in place. This opening up also led to a less homogeneous mythological lore in the Han era, as compared with the Chou era.
The Six Dynasties: 190/221 – 589 A.D.
Buddhism entered China in the Han period, perhaps around 67 A.D. However, its influence on mythic thought and civilization of the empire became great only in the period of disorder that followed the fall of the imperial house of Han. For nearly four hundred years, war and devastation returned the land to the condition that has been for the greater part of its long history the Chinese reality of realities. Every one of the ten Chinese Buddhist sects was founded in this period. In the world of Taoist thought as well, there was a powerful enlivenment at this time. The hold of Confucianism on the minds of the literati had relaxed with the fall to ruin of the bureaucratic system of the ordered state.
A Taoist work of this age (the Lieh Tzu, third century A.D.) states that there are four things that do not allow people to have peace: the first is long life, the second is reputation, the third is rank, and the fourth is riches. Those who have these things fear ghosts, fear men, fear power, and fear punishment. They are called fugitives. Their lives are controlled by external things. But those who follow their destiny do not desire long life. Those who are not fond of honor do not desire reputation. Those who do not want power desire no rank. And those who are not avaricious have no desire for riches. This sort of men live in accordance with their nature. The regulate their lives by internal things.
Another Taoist text spontaneity and the natural in the following way: “What the ear likes to hear is music, and prohibition of the hearing of music is called obstruction to the ear. What the eye likes to see is beauty, and prohibition of the seeing of beauty is called obstruction to sight. What the nose likes to smell is perfume, and prohibition of the smelling of perfume is called obstruction to smell. What the mouth likes to talk about is right or wrong, and prohibition of the talking about right or wrong is called obstruction to understanding. What the body likes to enjoy is rich food and fine clothing, and prohibition of the enjoying of these is called obstruction of the sensations of the body. What the mind likes to be is free, and prohibition of this freedom is called obstruction to the nature. All these obstructions are the main causes of the vexations of life. Cultivating life is to get rid of these vexations.”
At this time a system of organized religious Taoism was developing, literally a church with a patriarch, the Heavenly Teacher. The initiator of this movement was a person of the second century A.D., Chang Ling, who collected from his followers tithes of five bushels of rice, so that his teaching was called the Tao of Five Bushels of Rice. Others sought to synthesize Taoist thought. Taoism has developed one of the most thickly populated pantheons in the world, with deities representing natural objects, historical persons, professions, ideas, and even the whole and parts of the human body. It has a host of immortals and spirits, and a rich reservoir of superstitions, and systems for searching for longevity. However, its concentration on a good life on earth, its respect for both bodily and spiritual health, its doctrine of harmony with nature, its emphasis on simplicity, naturalness, peace of mind, and freedom of the spirit have continued to inspire Chinese art and enlighten Chinese thought and conduct.
K’ou Ch’ien-chih (died 432 A.D.) regulated the codes and ceremonies of the cult, fixed the names of its duties, and formulated its theology. Taoism, through his influence, was made the state religion in 440 A.D., and Buddhism was for a time suppressed. However, over time, the teaching of the Buddha, the Middle Way, was integrated into this universe of thought and subsequently understood to be precisely Tao.
The Age of the Great Beliefs: about 500 – 1500 A.D.
A systematic survey of the proliferation of schools within the Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian folds is a monumental task which cannot be handled here. A few words can be said about the question of the impact of sentiments and ideas carried from one domain to another. This period (about 300 – 500 A.D.) was one of terrible stress. No less than seventeen “dynasties” contended with each other in the north – of these four were Hunnish, four Turkic, six Mongol, and only three ruled by houses of Chinese stock. Throughout this time the “barbarians” were Sinified much more than the northern Chinese were barbarized. And in the same way, the alien religion of the Buddha, which had now been established on Chinese soil for about five centuries, brought forth two native growths. Firstly, the Taoist development which can be seen as a folk aspect of the Buddhist system. Secondly, the Far Eastern Buddhist sect known as Ch’an or Ch’an-an (Japanese: Zen), where Taoist thought and feeling were translated into imported Buddhist terms.
Sui Dynasty: 581 – 618 A.D.
The long period of Chinese political disunity was terminated by the brief but fearfully effective Sui Dynasty, whose second and last emperor, Yang Ti, is celebrated for his completion of a canal uniting the Yellow River and Yantgtze. Some 5 500 000 persons, guarded by 50 000 police carried through the work under the most cruel conditions. His iron grip on the country left a legacy of imperial power to the succeeding dynasty (when Yang Ti was captured in battle with a Turkic force). Just as the Ch’in Dynasty had been followed by the Han, so was Sui followed by T’ang. The period of the T’ang Dynasty has been regarded by most historians as China’s Golden Age.
T’ang Dynasty: 618 – 906 A.D.
The first part of this richly cosmopolitan period saw the flowering, but the second part the shattering, of the Buddhist Order in China. In the years 841 – 845 a Confucian-Taoist reaction brought about the leveling of more than 4600 monasteries, secularization of more than 260 000 monks and nuns, abolition of some 40 000 temples and shrines, confiscation of 1 000 000 acres of fertile Buddhist lands, and manumission of 150 000 monastery and temple slaves.
It had been in the peaceful mountain monastery of the Yellow Plum that the greatest of the Ch’an Buddhist teachers, Hui-neng, who became the sixth and last patriarch of his sect, had achieved the realization that represents to this day the culminating synthesis of Indian spirituality and Chinese. The line of Far Eastern patriarchs, through his time, is supposed to have been as follows: 1.Bodhidharma (520 A.D.), 2.Hui K’e (486 – 593), 3.Seng-ts’an (died 606), 4.Tao-hsin (580 – 651), 5.Hung-jen (601 – 674), 6.Hui-neng (638 – 713).
The sixth patriarch said: “Look within. Find your own true face that was antecedent to the world. The only secret is inside yourself.” The Taoists said: “Return to the state of the uncarved block.” By the eighth century Taoist thought had coalesced with the gospel of nirvana. A killing of all “thou shalts”; a killing of the dragon of the golden scales; and therewith a release of the child, the wheel rolling of itself, the Buddha-nature, tathagatha (just-so-ness). Likewise, in the teaching of the Tao, we have heard that when the arbitrary “obstructions” imposed by desirous thought are removed, the self-so (tzu-jan) becomes manifest. And these two – tathagatha and tzu-jan – now were known as one.
In the year 840 A.D., when the imperial throne of China became vacant on the death of the Emperor Wen-tsung, the deceased monarch’s brother, Wu-tsung, set about eliminating all those who had been favored in the time of the preceding emperor. The following year he began to show himself inclined to support the Taoist clergy against the Buddhist, which he considered aien. In 842 his enterprise to extinguish this alien light started.
The failure of the Great Orient to evolve any order, either of social institutions or of expressly human ethical values, by which the divine nature of a despot could be controlled – or even judged and criticized – is cruelly manifest in such a time as that of the reign of the maniac Wu-tsung. The magical notion that benevolence and compassion work of themselves upon the universe left the entire East about where Egypt stood in the period of the Narmer palette (about 2850 B.C.).
Sung Dynasty: 960 – 1279 A.D.
Buddhism in China never recovered from the blows of 841 – 845. It survived along with popular Taoism largely on the level of a crude folk religion, no longer developing. In contrast to the peasantry of India and much of Europe, the Chinese were not in the deep past people of the soil. They were nomads. In their cults we find a combination of Neolithic fertility elements and reverence for ancestors, with an emphatically shamanistic factor. In Chinese thought the idea of the ancestor is on the one hand linked to the noble terms Ti, Shang Ti, and ti’en, which have been generally translated “God”, but on the other hand to such terms as shen (“spirits”) and kuei (“ghosts”). The sphere of the shaman is properly the latter. The sphere of the pater familias centers about the family cult of his own ancestral line. And the sphere of the imperial cult is a development of the familial, with accretions from the shamanistic: the ancestral line of the emperor (the son of heaven) having been identified, practically, with “the deified being (ti) above (shang)”, Shang Ti.
In relation to the cult of birth and death, two soul-like principles are recognized: the first, p’o (written with the character for “white” and that for “daemon”, “white ghost”), is produced at the time of conception; the second, hun (written with the character for “clouds” and that for “daemon”, “cloud daemon”), is joined to the p’o at the moment of birth, when the light-world is entered from the dark. The p’o in later thought was identified with the yin, the hun with the yang. At death the p’o remains with the corpse for three years and then descends to the Yellow Springs; or, if not set at rest it may return as a kuei, a ghost. On the other hand, the hun, which partakes of the principle of light, ascends to heaven, becoming a shen, a spirit.
It is believed that the two terms Shang Ti (Lord Above) and Ti’en (Heaven) derive from the periods, respectively, of the Shang and the Chou dynasties. The former term suggests a personality. The latter tends to the impersonal. Both imply a will, the will of heaven. However, this will is conceived, in accordance with the formula of the hieratic city state, in the way of a mathematically structured cosmic order (maat, me, rta, dharma, tao). And as everthing in the history of Chinese thought and civilization shows, the realization of this order has been the chief concern of the Middle Kingdom, from the ages of its appearance. Fundamentally, the idea is that the individual (microcosm), society (mesocosm), and the universe of heaven and earth (macrocosm), form an indissoluble unit, and that the well-being of all depends upon their mutual harmonization. As in India, so in China, there is no notion of an absolute creation of the world. In contrast to India, however, where an accent is given to the dissolution-recreation motif, the main thought in China is of the present aspect of the world (in which one wants to realize Tao). And again in contrast to India, where a theoretically static system of caste represents the social aspect of the cosmic order and the individual is oriented to his duties by way of his broad caste alignment, in China the family and immediate kinship alignment dominates.
The T’ang Dynasty collapsed 906 A.D., and after five decades of war lords (the so-called Five Dynasties), the politically weak but culturally wonderful Sung Dynasty arose. Its founder sponsored the first printed edition of the Chinese Buddhist scriptures and its second monarch built a huge Buddhist stupa in the capital. Ch’an Buddhism was the chief Buddhist influence among the literati, and as a kind of synthesis of the Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian vocabularies, Neo-Confucianism came into being.