Series on the History of Chinese Philosophy, Pt. 3
Agriculture, Legend, and Harmony in Chinese Thought
The Importance of Place in the Mythological Past
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Welcome to Part 3 in this series on the history of Chinese philosophy! If you missed Part 1 & Part 2, be sure to give them a read. The whole series can be viewed here:
In this installment we’ll take a look at some of the legends and ideas that arose during Chinese high antiquity. Just as it is with other traditions, the further back one goes the harder it becomes to know where history ends and legend begins. Nonetheless, some important philosophical ideas were developed during this period that would lay the groundwork for the classical period of Chinese philosophy centuries later.
This origin story begins the same as all human stories… with agriculture — or what the Pulitzer Prize winning geographer Jared Diamond has called “humanity’s worst mistake.”
In fairness, agriculture DID provide early peoples with greater food security, more leisure time, and technological innovation, but, paradoxically, it carried with it the seeds of its own demise, as well. The rise and fall of EVERY human civilization, EVER, can be traced along the same pernicious cycle — increased food production, which yields increased population, which requires ever greater food production.
Civilizations that survived this paradox are the ones which discovered ways to stave off these effects… either through conquest, through trade, or through the conservation of resources. China’s history is so long that, at various times, it has relied on all three.
Archeological evidence has revealed the existence of agriculture settlements in the valleys of the Yellow River and its tributaries as far back as 5000 BCE. Remnants of a neo-lithic people known as the Yangshao — after the archeological site of their first discovery in 1921 — have been found in the area surrounding modern day Xi’an, in central China. The earliest finds indicate they started out practicing slash and burn agriculture and slowly developed more permanent techniques as their technologies improved. It’s also believed they may have been the first ones to farm silk worms, which goes to show just how ancient that practice might be. But, early agriculture was a precarious enterprise in the valleys surrounding the Yellow River… which earned its name from the amber color of its extremely high silt content.
With so much silt, violent and sudden floods were common. This was both a boon and a bane for early farmers. On the one hand, when the floodwaters retreated they left behind and extremely fertile soil (called loess) perfect for growing cereal grains. On the other hand, the communities surrounding those farms were stuck directly in the path of those destructive waters. To complicate matters, the silt also regularly gummed-up the works in irrigation ditches and other man-made structures, which required constant attention to keep running smoothly. That meant moving operations out of the flood zone wasn’t really an option.
That’s how the Yellow River earned the nickname, “China’s Sorrow.”
The soft, arable loess soil made the fields incredibly easy to till, so early Chinese plows didn’t require large draft animals. The grain that might’ve gone to feed those plow animals went to the people instead, which meant a greater carrying capacity for each community. The ensuing population boom meant that, by the bronze age, one of the most plentiful resources in China was cheap labor.
Frequent disasters, large pools of unskilled workers, and plenty of surplus grain set the conditions for the consolidation and centralization of power into what would become the first Chinese dynasties. As Steven Wallech has written:
“…colossal disasters reminded the Chinese people time and again that they needed a strong centralized political system, one that could marshal the resources of capital and labor necessary to build projects to manage the water supply of the great Yellow River and try to keep its murderous waters at bay. These reminders led to the central theses of Chinese history: political unity, highly organized divisions of labor, specialized tasks, and numerous large-scale enterprises worked best to produce food.” [Ch. 1]
Legendary Names in the Classical Account of History
Tales about the earliest leaders can be found scattered throughout classical Chinese texts like The Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shan Hai Jing), The Bamboo Annals (Zhushu Jinian), and The Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji). These books are at once geographies, bestiaries of mythical creatures, and histories of early Chinese civilization.
According to the stories, the first sovereigns were known as the Three August Ones. Fuxi — the lord of the heavens — was said to have ruled for 18,000 years and rumored to have had 12 heads (though he’s shown above, on the the top-right, with only one) and maybe the body of a snake. He is credited with inventing farming, hunting, and cooking. His sister (and wife) was Nuwa, lord of the earth, and she reigned just as long. She is said to have created fire, repaired a pillar which held up the heavens, and was the creator of humanity itself.
Their reign was followed by that of Shennong, the lord of humanity. He is said to have ruled for 45,000 years and to have had the head of an ox. He was the supposed father of the Yellow Emperor and believed to have invented the plow, the well, and Chinese medicine. In fact, a classical guidebook to herbal remedies, the Shennong Ben Cai, bears his name and is attributed to him.
After these three came the Five Sage Emperors, whose accomplishments are as follows:
Yellow Emperor — Traditionally his reign is dated c. 2700 -2600.
His legendary role includes bringing order by defeating great villains.Zhuanxu — A grandson of the Yellow Emperor who led the Shi clan
in an eastward migration.Emperor Ku — Descendant of the Yellow Emperor said to have traveled
seasonally by riding a dragon in spring and summer, and a horse in
autumn and winter.Emperor Yao — The first sage ruler in the most prominent Confucian account of the distant past (the Book of Documents). He fixed the calendar by appointing astronomers and ceded his throne to a commoner-sage.
Emperor Shun — Received the throne from Yao on the basis of his filiality. During his long service as Yao’s chief minister, he defeated evil threats in battle. As emperor, he was humane and ceded his throne to the sage Yu.
You’ll see MANY references to the Yellow Emperor in the Daoist texts and references to Yao and Shun in both Confucian and Daoist writings, so it might be useful to remember who’s who.
Legend holds that the last of the 5 Sage Rulers was Shun, whose virtue made him worthy to succeed Yao. When a catastrophic flood destroyed the kingdom, he turned to others for help. Yu — later known as Yu the Great — successfully brought the floodwaters under control when all others failed. Just as Yao relinquished rule to Shun based on merit, so too did Shun relinquish his reign to Yu — thus beginning the 450-year rule of the Xia dynasty.
For centuries, this story was believed to be more folklore than fact, but archeological evidence found in 1959 indicated a dynasty called Xia did exist. One prominent discovery was just how focused on divination the Xia rulers had been. Flooding was taken to be a sign that rulers had lost favor with the gods/nature, so being worthy of rule was extremely important (as the Yu origin-story suggests). So, it appears the Xia established complex rituals to reaffirm regularly their right to rule. We might think of it as the spiritual equivalent of taking the cosmic temperature of one’s reign.
The Shang and Oracle Bones
Wicked deeds among the last rulers indicated to the people that the Xia had lost its right to rule. The dynasty which supplanted them, known as the Shang, is considered by many to be the first true dynasty of China.
But, for a long time, the Shang was also considered to be a mythological ruling family. Its existence was finally confirmed when the artifacts some local pharmacists were selling as “dragon bones” were discovered to be the remnants of Shang divination rituals.
The bones, which came from tortoise shells and ox scapulae (and NOT dragons) were first noticed in 1899 and by the 1920’s had been traced to Anyang, where the last Shang capital was uncovered. In the 1950’s an earlier Shang capital was excavated near present day Zhengzhou.
These oracle bone inscriptions were one of the most important technological developments of the Shang — as they provided evidence of a robust written language. Here’s how they were used:
A question would be written on the bone, which was then fired until a T-shaped crack appeared. The position and shape of the crack was then interpreted, and that interpretation would be written on the bone. After a predicted event occurred, the date of the occurrence was also transcribed. You can click on the video to the right to see a fuller description of the oracle bone inscriptions.
We can glean several philosophical insights from the oracle bones. First, the Shang divination practices blended religion, history, and political action with a careful attention to situatedness within time and place. They thought about how their lives were connected, not only to the land around them, but to the past, present, and future, as well. They developed two calendars, one solar and one lunar, and catalogued the events of their lives accordingly. In this way, they laid the groundwork for written histories that came later.
Second, the way the Shang attempted to understand the dynamics of their cosmos is unique insofar as they searched for attunement and harmony rather than first principles or causes, as the ancient philosophers of Greece or India did.
Third, the oracle bone inscriptions suggest a worldview of cosmic intentionality. To be clear, the Shang DID embrace a form of animism and — like the ancient Greeks — associated spirits with the sun, the moon, and the various rivers and mountains of their world, but they also posited a kind of deliberateness to the cosmos as a whole.
We can’t fully understand the oracle bone inscriptions without mentioning Shangdi — the entity toward which the Shang entreaties were directed. Shangdi was believed to rule over the gods of nature and the spirits of the dead. The Shang kings claimed direct descendancy from him and therefore retained the sole right to treat with him on behalf of the kingdom. The common folk were only able to ask the spirits of their ancestors to plead with Shangdi on their behalf.
As a consequence, sacrifice to gods and ancestors was a major part of the Shang religion. When a king died, hundreds of slaves and prisoners might be sacrificed and buried with him. People were also sacrificed in lower numbers when important events, such as the founding of a palace or temple, occurred.
But, we should take care not to read too much of our own monotheistic tradition into this notion. Shangdi was less of a creator god, than he was an ancestral progenitor used to legitimize rule. After the Shang dynasty collapsed, the term was stripped of its religious content and became a placeholder for referencing any “supreme ruler.” When early Christian missionaries arrived over two millennia later, they conflated Shangdi with their conception of god the father and saw it as a justification in their attempts at converting the Chinese to Catholicism.
Legendary Zhou Dynasty Founders
It’s commonly held that the roots of Chinese philosophy developed during the Zhou Dynasty, which began in 1046 BCE with the overthrow of the Shang. The last king of the Shang line, Di Xin, was a notoriously cruel and corrupt leader. The legends say he was consumed by his lust for debauchery and he overtaxed the kingdom to pay for his courtesans, banquets, and lavish gardens, which came complete with a wine pond and meat forest where courtly revelers were said to cavort naked. He would imprison, torture, or kill anyone who dared counsel against his bacchanal lifestyle. One especially heinous punishment he invented was called the burning pillar, in which victims would be made to walk along a beam, doused in burning oil from end to end.
Shang Di Xin was so notoriously horrible that, to this day, he is called “Zhòu” [紂] Xin, which means “horse crupper.” For those unfamiliar with horse tack, that’s the part which fastens below the tail to keep a saddle from sliding forward and, therefore, is the most likely to be covered in feces… In other words, this guy is known to history as King Horsesh*t!
Eventually, Wen, who was one of his top vassals and Count of the West, gained enough of a political following and sufficient military strength to plot a coup. His success was built upon convincing the people that Di Xin’s actions were so out of step with the rhythms of the universe that he had lost his mandate to rule. The idea to which he appealed was not Shangdi, but rather something he called tiānmìng, or the “mandate of the heavens.”
It was Wen’s son, Wu, who finally vanquished the Shang forces and established the dynasty (with a different character and pronunciation from “crupper”) known as the Zhōu [周]. Wu’s victory was seen as the vindication of the claims about tiānmìng made by his father, Wen. Yet, probably the most respected figure among these early leaders was the Duke of Zhou, who was the brother of Wu and the steward of the kingdom for seven years after Wu’s death, until his son could come of age. He would be celebrated for centuries to come by philosophers like Confucius for his example of virtuous stewardship.
The Zhou marked an advance in Chinese culture insofar as it witnessed the rise of written record-keeping and a political system built around feudal farming. The latter especially helped shape the way the Chinese would come to philosophize, insofar as it lent a sort of kinship with the land to their ruminations. As Feng Youlan once put it,
To the ancient Chinese their land was their world. There are two expressions in the Chinese language which can both be translated as the world. One is “all beneath the sky” [天下] and the other is “all within the four seas.” [四海] To the people of a maritime country such as the Greeks, it would be inconceivable that expressions such as these could be synonymous. [p. 16]
Zhou feudalism differed from western serfdom in that it was based on a land grant system, or fēngjiàn [封建]. Under the fēngjiàn, a landlord would allot a small plot of land to a single family in exchange for their labor on a community field. The most common arrangement in this system was the well-field, or jǐngtián [井田]. In this arrangement, an area of land (usually equivalent to 1000 square paces) would be divided into nine equal sections among eight families. From a bird’s eye view, this arrangement would resemble the Chinese character for well [井], or a modern tic-tac-toe board — and is how it earned its name. The central “square” of the well-field would be worked by all of the families together and its yield would belong solely to the landlord. In a stable, well-fortified state, one family could work a single farm for many generations. This became a common occurrence, even after the collapse of well-field feudalism. For example, in 2012, I visited a tea plantation outside of Hangzhou that had a history of over 600 years. The host explained how the operation had hundreds of employees and that about ¾ of them were all descendants of the same family.
Not only did these agrarian practices lend a strong sense of connection to the land, they also helped shape society… giving rise to a leisure class of landowners who had time to devote to study. Of the four traditional classes in ancient Chinese society (scholars, farmers, artisans and merchants), the two most revered were the scholars and the farmers, as they were the ones who dealt with the roots of society — i.e. the land and its cycles — while the other classes were concerned with the branches of commerce. Thus, it could be said, quite literally, that the seeds of philosophical reflection were sowed during this era.
The philosophical views which sprang from this agrarian situatedness and close connection to the land might best be encapsulated by the notion of harmony, or hé 和. The character depicts a stalk of grain next to an open mouth, which mirrors how harmony for the early Chinese probably consisted in having enough grain to keep the mouths fed. But, this ideal also carries the associated meanings of balance and order, duty and diligence, respect and appreciation, and a peaceful coexistence and cooperation with both one’s neighbors and the cosmos, as a whole.
The editors of a recent collection of scholarly essays on Harmony in Chinese Thought sum it up nicely:
The ancient Greeks approached harmony primarily as a (meta)physical concept, and only secondarily as a practical one. In addition, they considered harmony — because of its embeddedness in and accessibility through reason — as something that is, in a certain regard, pregiven or fixed rather than open to development. Consequently, it is unsurprising that the ancient Greek philosophers generally did not develop the strong focus on harmony as an open-ended practical concept that characterized the thinking of their Chinese contemporaries. [p. xi]
Put simply, where the ancient Greeks searched for an ultimate principle, or archē, behind the turbulence of their world, the ancient Chinese attuned their ears to natural rhythms and sought harmony in theirs.
The series continues in Part 4, where we’ll explore the poetic elements of Chinese thought.
