In our last lesson we covered the Shang about as well as anybody
can reasonably expect without expanding into a whole lecture on legends. Unfortunately,
the Zhou dynasty is absolutely CRAWLING with legends. They take up most of
the historical space available. I'm going to do what I can with the basic
outline in this lesson. I'd rather stick to straight history, but there are
two problems with that. One is that a lot of the history that comes after
is shaped by legend and belief to a tremendous degree. Another is that there's
not much to be had in the way of concrete history, thanks to a ruler who will
get REAMED when I get up to his entry.
But for now - the Zhou Dynasty.
The last Shang ruler was a dissolute wastrel who made a lot of mistakes. One
of them had to do with a fellow he wrongfully imprisoned. Larry
Gonick refers to him as the Chief of the West. Tradition has it that he
was one of the Shang king's vassals and that he'd had responsibility for protecting
the western frontier. He passed his time in prison with study and composition,
and eventually got released thanks to mass protests. Thus did Jie demonstrate
himself to be a wholly inefficient Evil
Overlord; had he been serious about maintaining his power, he would have
executed this man at the first opportunity. Guess who came back to bite him
in the bum? Riiiight. Jie went down in a big way and the imprisoned chap got
into the history books as a decent guy. Nyar.
The Zhou were a western tribe that may or may not have had some kind of Turkic-based
language - I don't know enough to say for sure. They were a fairly powerful
bunch, although they didn't have the kind of bronze skill that the Shang did.
Best explanation I can offer for why they managed to take over is that the
ruler had managed to dissipated a big chunk of the empire's strength. Funny
how often that happens. And funny how the Zhou generally felt the same way.
In fact, this feeling of theirs resulted in a concept being introduced into
Chinese philosophy that has stayed with us ever since: the concept of tianming,
or the Mandate of Heaven. (If someone can tell me how to make Dreamweaver
let me insert the actual Chinese characters, please, let
me know.) As far as the Zhou were concerned (or at least as far as they
wanted the public to feel they felt), they were able to take over because
the Shang had become a buncha moral degenerates. Heaven had obviously withdrawn
its favour from the masters of bronze and granted its favour to the Zhou in
the hopes that more morally appropriate leaders would take command of the
empire. Otherwise, how could they have succeeded? Heaven must have been with
them, and not the Shang rulers. The Zhou had a mandate from Heaven to rule
because they were morally worthy of the responsibility. Future generations
would seize on this, since it included a neat little escape clause: a rebellion
against the throne was not wrong if it ultimately succeeded. Successful rebellions
would be signs that the Mandate had passed from the rulers and into the hands
of the rebels.
This goes well beyond the 'divine right of kings' idea that the West
came up with. I don't remember any escape clauses about knowing when
the king was no longer under God's favour happening this side of the Middle
Kingdom. The story of Saul and David doesn't count, because once you got out
of that sector of the Bible, you didn't really see any more contentions between
a former king whom God no longer liked and a new king who said God liked him.
Not that I remember, anyway. Remember, as I said, I'm not a historian.
This isn't to say that the Zhou thought everything about the Shang
was corrupt. They liked their bronze techniques. A lot. They liked their writing,
too. They liked a whole bunch of things about the Shang, although not
enough to live with 'em properly. If they built new villages in the west they'd
often import Shang families wholesale in order to integrate the artisans'
skills, They'd house 'em in separate quarters of the new community, though.
Lots of Zhou cities discovered by archaeologists were segregated - Shang families
and such on one side, Zhou families on the other. Even the imperial capital,
a city called Hao in what's now the vicinity of Chang'an, was divided like
this. Exactly what the point was, I don't know, given that they adapted as
many of the Shang rituals and administration techniques as they could get
their hands on.
Maybe it was that the Zhou didn't like Shang religion. WOW did they come down
like a bag full of hammers on the practice of human sacrifice. Nope. Nuh-uh,
not gonna happen. The Zhou worshipped the sun, the stars, and the supreme
God of Heaven - I think you get the idea. Some of the more popular gods already
in place got incorporated into the pantheon and made vassal deities under
the God of Heaven's rule. This rather neatly mirrored Zhou governmental patterns;
they had something like to the much, much later European idea of feudalism.
Empire's divided up into a certain number of squares based on a map grid that
puts a big chunk in the middle for the emperor to rule directly. Emperor hands
out parcels of land to his rulers as rewards, and they run things wherever
they might wind up. Landowners had to support the ruler, etc. etc. Pretty
straightforward. More focused on family ties rather than legal bonds, and
eventually it turned into rule of city-states more than lord-vassal stuff,
but even so people insist on calling it feudal. It was a bit different from
the way the Shang ran things, but given that the Zhou had gone all patriarchal
on them and declared inheritance to be from father to son rather than brother
to brother, what was one more difference?
The Zhou dynasty lasted longer than ANYBODY, although for a significant part
of their reign the kings were kings in name only. This first period we've
just covered is called the Western Zhou, and that covers the time between
1040 or so BCE until, um, some incidents in 771 BCE. We'll talk about those
in another lesson.