For over 300 years, the House of Zhou had ruled the known world in a time of relative peace. This period of relative harmony could not last forever, as the whispers of a court consort would percipitate an unparalleled event - the act of king-slaying by the Marquess of Shen, who allied with barbarians from beyond the borders to avenge his daughter's banishment by the Son of Heaven.
Perhaps the Marquess simply sought to honor his household's name, however this act of fatherly vengeance would forever change the world. The Son of Heaven and his family would be forced to move to a much smaller territory - one that could no longer support the the vast army units of the past that made the Zhou a ruling house.
This was the beginning of the end, although it may have not looked that way to the Marquess of Shen at the time. For although the Zhou King still maintained legal control over his empire, in practice the Zhou court often had to request help from the Great Families - the powerful rulers of the various vassal states that comprised the empire.
And so began the decay of the dynasty, for as the House of Zhou declined into further irrelevancy the empire began to split apart. The area comprising the Yellow river basin fractured into hundreds of small autonomous regions that found themselves at war with each other.
This slow rot of the dynasty would eventually lead to the much more violent period of Chinese history aptly named, the Warring States.
But for our purposes, let's just take a step back and ponder - just what kind of society was the Zhou kingdom? Why did its ancient past serve to inspire Confucius in his quest to restore the world? And what ideas were held by its people about the natural world they inhabitated and the world beyond their senses?
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Political Legitimacy and Religious Thought: On the Mandate of Heaven
Having come from the outlying regions of the Western lands lorded over by the previous Shang Dynasty, the
Zhou were responsible for the fall of the last degenerate scion of a household that ruled over much of the Yellow River basin.
And that's where the problems begin.
As I stated before in a previous blog, the major challenges faced by a society will have an effect of shaping the types of responses to different questions and problems that may arise in the future.
In the case of Chinese civilization, there has always been a massive preoccupation with the issues of political legitimacy and social order.
Although victorious on the battlefield, the Zhou ruling house faced a grave question of legitimacy. After all, even with the backing of the commoners, the Zhou king had just committed regicide. How could this act of "betrayal" be sanctioned?
The Answer was simple: The righteousness of their actions was sanctioned by Heaven.
"Heaven" is the word often used to translate the Chinese word "Tian." It is a very good approximation for the concept in certain respects, but using the word "Heaven" carries cultural baggage. For our Western readers, you might happen to associate the word with a Place or with the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic afterlife.
My suggestion? If possible, drop all those associations. And if you find that difficult, just use the Chinese word, "Tian."
So..what the heck is "Heaven/Tian?" The Sky? A Natural Force? God?
In truth, throughout Chinese history, its all of the above.
What is important for us to recognize though, is how the Zhou utilized Tian as a religious and political concept. This might best be done by contrasting the Shang and Zhou's religious inclinations.
The Shang worshipped "Shang-di," The Lord on High. Often speculated by modern histories to having been some sort of deified ancestor, Shangdi is the supreme anthropomorphic deity of the Shang culture's religion. Anthropomorphic is just a big fancy technical term that basically means "invested with human characteristics."
In other words, Shang-di can be interacted with in the manner that a person might speak to another person. Granted of course, Shang-di is a god, or rather The God but the sentiment expressed is that Shang-di is approachable. He sends blessings and calamities, granted victory in battle, gave blessings to specific undertakings, and looked after the welfare of his chosen community and in his earthly relatives in particular.
Contrast this with the way that the Zhou understand the Supreme Power. According to the Zhou, Tian = Shang-di. They made an explicit appeal to those tribes and peoples subjugated by the Shang that they, the Zhou, worshipped the same exact deity.
Except that the Shang had misunderstood the true nature of things.
Tian is not just the God of the Zhou or Shang. Tian cannot be bound to any particular royal lineage, tribe, or nation. Most importantly, Heaven's will does not coincide with the fortunes of a family or dynasty. If a ruling household cannot live up to a universal standard of morality, ethics, and proper ritual behavior - Heaven will abandon that family and pass its Mandate to some other worthy one.
It is that concept, the Mandate of Heaven, that becomes a critical religious and political concept right to the end of the last Chinese dynasty in the early twentieth century. You lose the Mandate, you Lose China. You gain the Mandate, you Gain China.
Sit back and think for a second just how revolutionary the Zhou's concept of the world is during the time they live in.
That a dead ancestor should look after his or her descendants would seem quite obvious to the ancient Chinese. These ancestral spirits may even look the other way when it comes to certain actions that the prevading culture might deem inappropriate.
But an impartial force that reacts to a ruler based on his actions which are compared against an objective standard of morality? That is quite different.
That development places Morality above the obvious particularistic interests of a group or tribe or clan. It also places Morality within the context of Nature.
In other words, Man must strive to act Moral because the Universe is Moral.
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