Rishabh Sharda
Prof. Walser
REL-0053-01
Intro to Religions of China
Midterm Paper
The religions of China bear testament to “Power” over “Territory.” The Chinese
throughout their traditional history believed that territory without power meant nothing and
the biggest problem lied in establishing the legitimacy of “The State.” Power can be enforced
in two manners- Hard and Soft Power. Hard Power can be enforced by unnatural/forceful
elements like military or the penal system; however, Soft Power uses “The Court” as a Political
Technology to establish a natural, unquestionable force. A force that is hard to question and
can be naturally believed through of the power of legitimacy.
Legitimacy was beheld in the eyes of the common people; however, Soft Power was
seen differently by other elements of the State. The throne of the Soft Power was looked
upon as trust in the face of limited knowledge. People trusted what was natural and
unquestionable, even if they had limited knowledge about it. The ideologies of Soft Power
were so far-fetched that they were felt within the boundaries of personal behavior. It required
“the negation of self-interest and structures of predictable behavior. These structures were
built on pillars of predictable rituals, characters/virtues, and morality. When combined, these
elements proved the legitimacy of the rule. The Shang Dynasty (ca. 1300 BCE-1045 BCE) is
one of the oldest dynasties that we have writing for and serves as one of the strongest
examples of the value of legitimacy of political power.
Political authority in the Shang Dynasty resided in the principle that a ruler was only
powerful if a significant number of people recognized that they were powerful. The rulers of
the Shang Dynasty followed a Feudal System and had conquered a number of villages and
kingdoms around their Dynasty. As part of the system the kings of these kingdoms had to bow
to the power of the Shang Emperor and pay tribute in the form of royalties. But what was the
mechanism that forced these Tribute Kingdoms to bow down to the power of the great
Shang? It was the legitimacy bestowed through various rituals.
The Shang invaded various kingdoms and villages to expand their rule and would take
thousands of war prisoners back to their capital, Anyang. In their capital, they had huge
sacrificial pits which were used to sacrifice humans (the respective war prisoners), animals
(commonly pigs), grain and alcohol. The idea behind these sacrifices was that they wanted to
make a loud presentation of their strength and performing these rituals in the capital
cemented the legitimacy of their strength. Not only that, but the Shang would also translocate
the bodies of the saints of these tribute kingdoms to the capital and looked at this endeavor
as another way of attracting everybody’s attention towards the capital and who their actual
ruler was. All of these loud acts were simply performed prove that their strength was
unquestionable.
But why were these sacrifices being made? The Shang worshipped the heaven and
they believed that the heaven was a kingdom too, which was modeled just like the courts on
earth and its ruler was Dì. They believed that this kingdom had some other forces in the form
of natural phenomena, which were also controlled by Dì. However, the most interesting
element of this court was that the Shang believed that the Direct Ancestors to King, or the Zū
were courtiers in the court of Dì. Each of these ancestors required a certain number of
sacrifices to be offered to them, which made them a Zū. The Shang King also had some
Adopted Ancestors- ancestors from the kingdoms that he had conquered; however, the king
would take their sacrificial vessels and bring them to his capital, Anyang; therefore, the people
of the respective tribute kingdom were forced to travel to the capital in order to worship their
ancestors. The Shang Kings would make a large of number of sacrifices to please their Direct
Ancestors in the court of Dì. It was believed that none of the kings praised Dì because he did
not care about humans one way or the other. For example, he could the Shang King one day
but, could just as easily kill them on another day. Therefore, these sacrifices were aimed at
pleasing their Direct Ancestors who would entertain other ancestors in the court, who could
then help in convincing Dì to be generous towards the respective Shang King.
The extent of these sacrifices was tremendous. In a book “Early China: A Social and
Cultural China”, the author Li Feng quotes that,” Offering to Da Ding, Da Jia, Zu Yi (three
deceased kings) hundred cups of wine, (three deceased kings) hundred cups of wine, hundred
Qiang prisoners, and three hundred hundred Qiang prisoners, and three hundred cattle, three
hundred sheep, and three hundred cattle, three hundred sheep, and three hundred pigs (102
Feng)1.” Hundreds of prisoners, cattle, sheep, and pigs were slaughtered in order to entertain
their ancestors and gain the blessings of Dì. The kings feared that if the Dì was not pleased,
with his power over the other significant forces he could wreck their kingdom through a
natural disaster. The ideology behind this act was to try and stack the court in the favor of the
current Shang King so that, he could rule for a longer period of time.
The end of the Shang Dynasty was followed by the rise of the Zhōu Dynasty (1045 BCE256 BCE). The Zhōu States were Vassals (Tribute Kingdoms) of the Shang Dynasty and they
came into power through a prolonged war from 1059BCE till 1045BCE. The war was initiated
by King Wen who identified the harmonic convergence in 1059 BCE as a signal of the heaven
receding its mandate. He believed that this sign meant that it was time for the change of
power; therefore, he declared wat against the Shang Dynasty. It was a prolonged battle and
King Wen died during the course of the war; however, King Wu, attacked and gathered control
over the Shang Dynasty. He claimed that the heaven had given up its mandate because the
Shang were not truly benefiting the interest of the people; whereas the Zhōu were highly
moral and were going to be the rulers for the people.
One would imagine that after claiming themselves to be more moral than the Shang,
King Wu would stop the sacrificial rituals. However, he made a statement that he was a very
loyal and obedient son to his dead father and he was going to continuing making sacrifices to
him, who would then ensure the safety and prosperity of the Zhōu dynasty. Interestingly, he
continued the same rituals, but with a slight twist of morality. The Zhōu basically gave greater
importance to family relations and used loyalty as the highest measure of morality.
The end of the Zhōu Dynasty was initiated with the onset of the Warring States Period
of 480 BCE – 256 BCE, when a number of tribute kingdoms declared independence from the
Zhōu rule and declared war against other tribute kingdoms and the Zhōu Dynasty. It was
during this period of warring states, that a number of religious notions came into presence,
which would have a lasting effect on the Chinese traditions. The first of these was
Confucianism. Confucius was a low-aristocrat who lived in the Zhōu Dynasty and preached
the importance of moral uprightness and social order as the two measures of power. During
his time, Confucius implemented major social changes as he questioned the social class of the
leaders that had been ruling during the Zhōu Dynasty. He was concerned about the ethics and
intellectuality of these rulers as he had his own beliefs of what morality actually stood for. By
putting greater emphasis on virtue he recommended that people must bypass the ritual
specialists and generals because these rites were of no use. This preaching signified that if a
king was virtuous, he could accomplish his mandates without issuing official orders. Thus,
through these social changes and doctrines, Confucius wanted kings to find power in virtue
rather than the penal system.
Confucianism was closely followed by the next prevalent religion called Daoism. It
aimed to bridge the gap between legitimation and the natural, which would allow institutions
and kingdoms to function on a natural philosophy of universal harmony without any kind of
intervention from the leaders. The Dao claimed that a kingdom must be governed according
to the preaching of the Dao, as he assumed that legitimation had to be natural and
unquestionable. He preached that it is assumed that all established institutions and kingdoms,
if ever challenged must be able to justify their claims to their legitimacy with the “nature of
the universe.” He exclaimed that if the legitimacy and methods of an institution were ever
questioned, the answer must be framed in terms of the mutual convenience of every single
individual in the institution. Additionally, on further questioning, the answer must refer to the
way the nature of the universe functions. This nature of the universe relied on the way the
planets are fixed in the sky and the way plants and humans behave naturally on earth.
Dao believed that before the inception of an institution, it needed stabilizing principles
to save it from a premature decline. These principles could be found by bridging Legitimation
and the Natural. A stabilizing principle could be found in the naturalization of social
classifications. What this meant was the there was a need for an analogy through which we
could connect the structure of an important group of social classifications with the analogy
as found in the eternity, which could then prove that this crucial set of social classifications
was recurring in nature, easily recognizable and endowed itself as a self-validating truth.
The third of the most of prominent ancient religions of China was Legalism. Legalism
was embedded in the ideologies of the respective legalists. There were three prominent
legalists who were impactful in shaping legalism in China. The first one was Xunzi (ca. 312-230
BCE) who claimed that people were evil, and culture made them good. He was also recorded
stating that sacrifices were meaningless, and Shen were only for those who were ignorant.
The second one was Hanfeizi (280-233 BCE), followed by Li Si (ca. 280 BCE-208 BCE), who
claimed that the purpose of an Emperor was to enjoy himself. He destroyed the old
enforcement system and beheaded scholars.
Legalism basically rested on the claim that state was strong; however, the people of
the state were weak. The “law” vouched for war and agriculture, instead of mercantilism
because legalists believed that numbers provided the true method for directing people in the
right way. Legalists imposed the law very brutally and has certain number of absolute rewards
and punishments. They killed the guilty individual along with 3 generations of their family.
They felt strongly about their law and were highly anti-democratic because they felt like the
people were children.
Bibliography
1. Early China: A social and Cultural History, Li Feng