Everything started from the appearance of new ideas. The matter concerns an ideologeme about the wise ancient rulers. As it was mentioned before, the Shang people knew or reported nothing in their numerous inscriptions on bones and turtle plastrons (they are called "fortune-telling inscriptions") about their past, even the recent one. Specialists know from authentic sources only the names of predecessors of the ruling wang, to whom sacrifices were made, including human sacrifices (from the captives of barbarian tribes that surrounded Shang). These are the only names to be found in fortune-telling inscriptions. But it is worth repeating that as far as events or legends are concerned, especially the epos glorified by the descendants or the mythology preserved in their memory, no names of gods, etc., or any information of that sort can be found in Shang inscriptions. At the same time in the reign of Chou-kung, who should be considered the founder of historical thinking and the corresponding tradition in China, an ideologeme about the Three Dynasties was created. These dynasties interchanged cyclically according to the principle of an ethic determinant, i.e. presence or absence of the sacral grace te. But at that time this was only a bare scheme. It was high time to fill it with live historic material borrowed from legends of different tribes that once had joined the Chou T'ien-hsia. That was done exactly in the chapters of the second layer of Shou-king, which was most probably created by historiographers who lived at wang's court in the 7th-6th centuries ВС. They were more than others concerned-together with their master-about glorifying the Son of Heaven and his role as the real ruler over T'ien-hsia.
The essence of the content of the newly written chapters was that once there lived the great and wise Emperor Yao, who possessed the sacred te and brought harmony first to his close relatives, then his countrymen, and later on the whole world which resulted in an epoch of prosperity. Yao did not give the power to his son, whom he did not consider suitable for that but chose the worthiest among the worthy, Shun, who became famous for the ability to observe the norms of family way of life in unfavourable conditions (a weak father, a quarrelsome stepmother, a nasty stepbrother). Yao gave two of his daughters as wives to Shun in order to check him once again. Shun stood this test honorably: his family was according to the norms. Then Yao, while he was still alive, gave Shun reins of government in T'ien-hsia. Shun managed to become a worthy successor of Yao. He divided T'ien-hsia into 12 parts and appointed governors to rule them, ordering that wise and capable should be promoted. Shun improved his relationships with vassals by formulating the Code of punishment and personally controlled the activity of administrators by rewarding or punishing them according to the results of their work. After Shun, who also did not dare to pass over the power to his son, whom he did not consider worthy and wise enough for that, the power was granted to one of his best assistants, Yu. It was from him, who passed the throne over to his son at the request of the people, that a faceless dynasty Hsia obviously invented by Chou-kung long before that, began.
The ideologeme about the three great leaders, thus absorbed not only the names borrowed from other tribes but also some vague ideas of the past that not always had the throne been passed over from the father to the son. The main thing put forward was the idea of a wise centralized governing, obviously opposed to the destructive feudal disunity of the Ch'un-Ch'iu period. The whole prehistory of T'ien-hsia was described in a few pages of the chapters in question that now start the canonic text of Shou-king. The prehistory was presented in the way Chou historiographers understood it and, what is most important, the way it should have looked like taking into consideration the spirit of the general cyclic scheme of dynasties and the didactic purposes of the composition. The scheme of Chou-kung although ingenious but still bare, nameless and eventless, was finally replaced by an elaborate and detailed history, full of names and events. The way a history should be. This history had an enormous influence on next generations.
Confucius (551–479 ВС), a real genius among the Chinese, admired the deeds of the great wise men Yao, Shun, and Yti and had no doubt about their greatness or reality. The rest of his contemporaries and especially people from further generations treated the ancient wise rulers in approximately the same way. There is no wonder about that. An idea that seized masses possesses extreme strength. This aphorism of Marx helps understand why the idea of creating a centralized empire has already become since Confucian times (the last third of the Ch'un-Ch'iu period) a sort of a focused impulse. That was the challenge of the epoch, and everyone, who could and managed to formulate the answer, tried to respond. One of the best responses belongs to Confucius. Like all his predecessors and contemporaries, Confucius was not religious for the simple reason that there was no developed religion in ancient Chinese society by that time and superstitions were mainly typical for common people. But Confucius was a great thinker who took a sober and pragmatic view of things surrounding him.
His ideas succeeded to develop the best from the ancient traditions-the ancestor cult, filial piety, feelings of humanity (benevolence), righteousness and responsibility for those whom you lead, the principle of mutuality, constant acquisition of new knowledge and self-perfection, competitive spirit and strife for the best. These ideas were later written down by his disciples and compiled in the famous treatise Lun-yu. Confucius educated his disciples to work for the rulers with the purpose of reforming the system of administration and facilitating its — in contemporary terms-defeodalization. Confucius deliberately desacralized many ancient concepts, in particular, the sacred virtue te, turning it into a normal quality of a decent person. The Confucian social ideals of a noble man tsun-tzu and its antipode hsiao-jen determinated those who were ready to dedicate themselves to the good of the people and those who only thought about the mean personal benefit. Confucius most probably included in the last rank those nouveaux riches, who began to rise and distinguish themselves by their wealth at the end of his life, when the social and economic changes in the ancient Chinese society became already visible.
The second volume ends with a chapter devoted to the transition from the old norms of social life to the new ones, which started shortly before Confucius' death. Actually, that was the de-feudalization that accompanied the iron age and the process of privatization in the feudal structure of the Ch'un-Ch'iu period. It led T'ien-hsia to new forms of life before this structure had developed completely or was transformed. In other words, a non-finalized feudalism (here we do not mean formation in Marxist terms!) was replaced by an epoch, in which there was no room any more for a feudal-knight structure with its internal wars, intrigues and permanent clashes in the struggle for the throne. One cannot say that all this happened because chapters about the wise Yao, Shun and Yti included in Shou-king were incompatible with the feudal structure (although formally its existence was accepted in them; remember how Shun improved relations with his vassals). But this great ideologeme with its profound meaning appeared in historically necessary time. It coincided with objective economic, administrative and political processes that began taking place shortly after its appearance. And what is most important-it found its ardent supporter in Confucius, whose activity in the sphere of transformation of old traditions multiplied its force and efficiency many times.
Formally the chronicle Ch'un-Ch'iu ends in the year of the death of Confucius. This could also be considered as the end of the Ch'un-Ch'iu period. There is a deep internal sense in that because China became different after Confucius. However, the border between the Ch'un-Ch'iu and Chan-guo periods is usually dated taking into account the gradual disintegration of Chin kingdom.
Карта. Китай в период Чунцю
Примечания
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1 О хроникальных записях есть упоминания в различных источниках. Попытавшийся собрать все эти данные воедино К.В.Васильев со ссылкой на «Цзо-чжуань» [114, 15-й год Чжуан-гуна; 23-й и 28-й годы Си-гуна] упоминает о том, что архивные записи документального характера имелись в Цзинь по меньшей мере с VIII в. до н. э. Хроникальные и сходные по типу записи, как он пишет, велись в VII в. до н. э. в царствах Чу, Чжэн и в некоторых других [14, с. 26–38]. Согласно данным Ю. Л. Кроля [46, с. 205, 218], летопись «Цинь цзи», нечто вроде анналов с астрологическим уклоном, имелась и в царстве Цинь.
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2 Основными до сих пор считаются 1122 и 1027 гг. до н. э. (см., в частности, [15, прил.]. Однако буквально каждое десятилетие специалисты предлагают новые варианты, рассчитанные с немалыми сложностями. Д.Нивисон, например, предложил цифру 1040 г. до н. э. [223].
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3 Недавно Д.Нивисон опубликовал специальную статью, в которой попытался с помощью упоминаний года и дня правления в некоторых текстах на западночжоуских бронзовых сосудах предложить свой вариант датировки правления ранних чжоуских ванов [224].
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4 Этот текст был очень высоко оценен крупнейшим из конфуцианцев древности Мэн-цзы, который приписал Конфуцию следующие слова: «Благодаря „Чуньцю" люди будут знать обо мне и судить меня». Мэн-цзы заметил далее: «Конфуций написал „Чуньцю" — и все мятежные чиновники и скверные сыновья стали трепетать» [101, ШБ, IX, 8 и 11; 212, т. II, с. 157–158 и 159–160] (см. также [60]).
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5 К.В.Васильев [14, с. 39–40] со ссылкой на О.Франке [187, с. 16] и Д.Кеннеди [210, с. 40–48] приводит как наиболее типичные аргументы в пользу этой длительное время бытовавшей среди специалистов версии, так и свидетельства ее несостоятельности.
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6 Обычно его считают всевластным регентом при малолетнем Чэн-ване, сыне У-вана, но Масааки Мацумото [98] пытался доказать, что Чжоу-гун, судя по данным «Шуцзина», был истинным правителем (царем, ваном). Мне кажется, что попытка такого рода имеет мало смысла и может рассматриваться лишь как некий казус. Чжоу-гун, хотя он и был по сути правителем страны, всегда сохранял за собой лишь статус регента. Таковым он и вошел в историю.
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7 Интересно заметить, что вскоре после появления капитальной монографии Г.Крила [174], в заголовок которой было включено слово «империя», в центральном китайском историческом журнале «Лиши яньцзю» стали появляться работы, смысл которых сводился к тому, что доциньский Китай не был империей.
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8 Распространению этой свойственной феодальным структурам практики посвящена статья Ци Сы-хэ [117], где рассказано и о самом обряде, и о многочисленных упоминаниях о нем, особенно в надписях на раннечжоуской бронзе. Исследуя вопрос об инвеституре, Чэнь Ши-цай [159, с. 648] указывает на некоторые связанные с ней особенности: наименование «Ле-го» (рядовые государства), иногда употреблявшееся для обозначения царств и княжеств периода Чуньцю, касалось лишь тех государств, которые имели право на получение инвеституры от сына Неба. Те, кто не имел этого права (а это могло быть и могущественное Чу в самом начале периода Чуньцю, и бесчисленные варварские и полуварварские мелкие государственные образования), в число Ле-го не входили. Достаточно сложно обстояло дело и с теми государствами, которые оказывались под протекторатом более сильных. Они не считались равными Ле-го, хотя и сохраняли формальное право на получение инвеституры от сына Неба.
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9 Известно, что термин «феодализм» в современном Китае вплоть до наших дней используют в марксистском смысле, имея в виду некую формацию, которой будто бы в древности предшествовала рабовладельческая и которая должна была в позднем средневековье передать эстафету буржуазной. Такая постановка вопроса вынуждает многих китайских исследователей искать выход из противоречия между историческими фактами и марксизмом. Отсюда — огромные проблемы и неясности в трактовке понятия «феодализм» (подробнее см. [3]). Но показательно, что при всем разнообразии мнений и оценок никто не осмеливается даже поставить проблему дефеодализации. Ее в истмате просто не может быть, бывает лишь смена феодальной формации буржуазной.
