Early China: A Social and Cultural History

by Li Feng

  Certainly the way war was fought also changed. The infantry was a more thoroughly destructive force compared to the chariotry of any time. The use of iron weapons not only enabled the massive participation of the farmers in war, but also improved killing efficiency. Furthermore, the killing capacity of Warring States armies was even elevated by the introduction of crossbows, a bow fixed on a central stock with a metal launching mechanism that enabled the archer to aim well, shoot farther, and launch multiple arrows each time (Fig. 9.4). The crossbow was invented in the south and first used by the armies of Chu, Wu, and Yue in the late Spring and Autumn period. By the mid Warring States period, it was commonly used in the northern armies. Another military “invention” was the cavalry, attributed to King Wuling of Zhao during the late fourth century BC who had actually introduced this nomadic style of horseback warfare during Zhao’s expansion onto the northern steppe. The horsemen, although their role was auxiliary compared to the infantry, certainly provided a powerful mobile force that could effectively break enemy defense and cut enemy supply lines. By the middle of the third century BC, cavalry had been introduced even to the southern state Chu which is said to have had some 10,000 horse-riders among its soldiers; the same figure was recorded for Qin and Zhao.

  Fig. 9.4 A crossbow.

  As the size of the armies had increased and efficiency improved, the objective of war had also changed. During the Spring and Autumn period, the main objective of the wars fought from the chariots was to subjugate the enemy. In fact, many well-known engagements by the major states in the seventh to sixth centuries BC had their sole purpose of winning more allies among the smaller states. During the Warring States period, however, war was fought to conquer new territories, and in cases where the conquered land could not be permanently occupied, the elimination of the fighting capacity, that is, the killing of enemy soldiers, was the goal of war. Therefore, war had become more deadly during the Warring States period, and the fear inspired by such destructive power was evidently in the calculation by the kings and strategists of their political advantage.

  This had also led to significant changes in commandership. The old aristocrats were trained to direct themselves in battle, but the peasant–soldiers, many conscripted on short terms, were not. Many of them might not even know how to act as soldiers if they were left out by the army. Therefore, the Warring States armies were carefully constructed organizations with strictly defined ranks and the hierarchy of authority, commanded by professional military strategists who might not have been themselves physically competent in combat. The famous example was Sun Bin, a handicapped commander who led the Qi army to great victories in the late fourth century BC. The age of war certainly also gave rise to the composition of a long list of military texts in Early China, most famously the Art of War by Sun Wu, a commander in the southern state Wu during the late Spring and Autumn period (Box 9.1). The latter text has inspired generations of military commanders over the past 2,000 years and is taught in many military academies throughout the world today including West Point in the United States.

  * * *

  Box 9.1 The Story of Sun Wu and the Discovery of Military Texts at Yinqueshan

  Sima Qian, the Grand Scribe of the Western Han dynasty, tells the story of Sun Wu (also known as Sunzi or Suntzu):

  Sun Wu was a native of the northern state Qi, who had come to meet with the king of Wu and offered the king his Art of War in thirteen chapters. The king after reviewing the text challenged him: “I have carefully read your chapters, but can you put your theory to a little test?”

  Sun Wu replied: “Yes!”

  The king pursued: “Can you try it on women?”

  Sun Wu replied again: “Sure!”

  Thus, the king sent out 180 beautiful ladies from his palace and Sun Wu divided them into two teams with one of the king’s most beloved consorts to be the captain of each.

  Once at the start, Sun Wu asked the ladies: “Do you all know the difference between front and back, your right hand and left hand?”

  “Yes!” The ladies responded.

  Sun Wu continued: “When I say ‘Eyes front,’ you must look straight ahead. When I say ‘Turn left,’ you must face your left hand. When I say ‘Turn right,’ you must face your right hand. When I say ‘Turn back,’ you must turn round towards your back. Understood?”

  “Understood.” The ladies replied.

  When the drums were thundered, Sun Wu gave his first order: “Turn right!”

  The ladies burst out laughing. Sun Wu announced: “If the order was not sufficiently clarified, that is the fault of the commander.”

  The drill continued as Sun Wu gave his second order: “Turn left!”

  The ladies burst out laughing again. Sun Wu said: “When the order was clarified, but it is not followed by the soldiers, this is the fault of the officers!”

  Thus Sun Wu ordered the execution of the two captains. Stunned by Sun Wu’s order, the king of Wu, watching from a high platform, hurriedly sent down his words: “I already know you are capable of commanding troops, but please spare the two concubines! Without them I won’t be able to know the taste of my food.”

  Sun Wu replied, solidly: “Once commissioned by your majesty to command this army, I am now in the field, and I have no leisure to take your order!”

  A text called Audience with the King of Wu, written on bamboo strips that parallels very closely the above narrative by Sima Qian, was excavated in 1972 in tomb no. 1 at Yinqueshan in southern Shandong, dating by the typological features of the ceramics and coins from the tomb to the early phase of the Western Han. From the same tomb, as many as 4,942 bamboo strips were excavated. Astonishingly, included among the texts on these strips are also two different texts both bearing the title Art of War. One is the Art of War of Sun Wu which parallels very closely the received version of the text, although the strips from the tomb offer only eight of the supposed thirteen chapter titles. The other Art of War is identified with Sun Bin, the handicapped general of the state of Qi who led the Qi army into great victories over the hegemonic state Wei. This text not only elaborates on the principles laid out by Sun Wu in the earlier Art of War, but also records the career of Sun Bin and his struggle with Wei. Other texts included in the corpus are the Wei Liaozi, Yanzi, Six Secret Strategies, Shoufa shouling, all texts of military nature known previously to have been produced in the Warring States period. These texts were published together in 1981.

  When the second volume on the Yinqueshan tomb was published in January 2010, it offered an additional group of some fifty previously unknown essays on government and military affairs, together with other texts related to natural philosophy and divination. The nature of the texts from the tomb suggests that the person buried in the tomb might have been a professional military commander who died in an early year of Emperor Wu (r. 141–87 BC). Incidentally on the bottoms of two wine lacquer cups from his tomb is written the term “Supervisor of Horses” (sima), which was a well-known military title. Although these texts are written in Han clerical style and are Han Dynasty texts, many of them were doubtless transmitted from the Warring States period if not earlier.

  The Art of War by Sun Wu, the Wei Liaozi, and the Six Secret Strategies are counted among the famous “Seven Military Classics” for which full-length English translations are available.16

  * * *

  Transition in Bronze Culture

  Despite the introduction of iron which was used to make agricultural tools and weapons, bronze remained the desired medium of expression of the elite social order. The Spring and Autumn period began with the continuation of the elite bronze culture of the royal Western Zhou marked by the use of standard sets of vessels in elite tombs. As the use of such standard sets decorated with bold geometric patterns spread from the Wei River valley to the distant eastern states during the early Spring and Autumn period, for the first time the statuses of the elites in every corner of the Zhou realm can be compared through the material culture. Thus, despite the
political fragmentation and the increasing chances of military conflict, a Zhou realm was preserved through the adoption of and adherence to the tradition of the Zhou bronze culture.17

  The introduction of the lost-wax technology in the sixth century BC suddenly changed the image of the bronze culture in China. The new technology which simplified the casting process to produce more intricate shapes and patterns seems to have first appeared in South China, possibly in the Chu region. Since the same technology had been in use in Mesopotamia and South Asia since the fourth millennium BC, it is very likely that it came into the Yangzi region from the south. The earliest examples of bronzes produced by lost-wax casting have been found in the Chu tombs in Xichuan, dated around 552 BC, and the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng in northern Hubei, dated around 422 BC, contains multiple pieces of such bronzes. Some of these bronzes, for instance, the bronze table from Xichuan and the set of zun-container and pan-basin cast for Marquis Yi (Fig. 9.5), are technically very sophisticated, but judging from their general design and the inscriptions they bear, they were clearly locally produced. By the fourth century BC, the technology was clearly known also to the north as indicated by a hu-vessel, currently in the Nanjing Museum, which bears an inscription engraved by a Qi general who actually captured the bronze as a war booty from the northern state Yan during the Qi army’s invasion of Yan in 314 BC, mentioned above.18

  Fig. 9.5 Bronze zun-container (h. 30.0 cm, diam. 25.0 cm) and pan-basin (h. 23.5 cm, diam. 58.0 cm) from the tomb of Marquis Yi.

  Further technological inventions were made to improve the surface look of the bronzes, usually cast by piece-mold technology. Before the end of the Western Zhou some sort of very hard metal had already been discovered and enabled the craftsman to incise inscriptions onto the surface of the bronze. Incision then became the mainstream technology to produce bronze inscriptions during the Spring and Autumn period. On the other hand, the content of the inscriptions in most cases had become simpler due to the disappearance of the Western Zhou royal institutions that once supported the creation of content-rich inscriptions. Gradually, the use of the method of incision was shifted from inscription onto the decorative patterns of the bronzes. When this transition happened, it was not the traditional geometric patterns, but the more realistic depictions of social life, usually scenes of battle or elite banquet, that tested the creative power of the free hand of the craftsman (Fig. 9.3). Furthermore, when the technique of inlaying gold or silver was introduced, this had completely changed the image of bronzes from monochromic to polychromic. Besides the traditional types of bronze vessels inherited from the royal Western Zhou, the craftsmen in the late Spring and Autumn period and Warring States period took great interest in transferring images that they saw in the real world onto bronzes, creating an ingeniously dynamic and colorful new realm of bronze art as livelily exhibited by the masterpieces from the tombs of the king of Zhongshan, once conquered by Zhao in 296 BC (Fig. 9.6).

  Fig. 9.6 Bronze tiger (l.51.0 cm, h. 21.9 cm) from the tomb of the king of Zhongshan.

  Selected Reading

  Lewis, Mark Edward, “Warring States Political History,” in Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy (eds.), The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 587–650.

  Lewis, Mark Edward, Sanctioned Violence in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990).

  Hui, Victoria, War and State Formation in Ancient China, and Early Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

  Cook, Constance A., and John S. Major (eds.), Defining Chu: Image and Reality in Ancient China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999).

  Falkenhausen, Lothar von, Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius (1000–250 BC) (Los Angeles: Costen Institute of Archaeology, 2006). Chapters 7–8, pp. 293–369.

  1 These were Zhou (further divided into Eastern and Western Zhou in 367 BC), Song, Lu, Teng, and Zhu.

  2 In the well-known anthropological studies of early states by Bruce Trigger, the “territorial state” was one of the two models of social–political organization (the other being “city–state”) which developed out of the pre-existing chiefdom society. See Bruce Trigger, Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 94–113; Early Civilization (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1993), pp. 10–12.

  3 See Li Feng, Bureaucracy and the State in Early China: Governing the Western Zhou (1045–771 BC) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 284–287.

  4 The title of “King” (Wang) was adopted in 336 BC first by the territorial ruler of Wei; by 323 BC, all major states had adopted the royal title. The royal title was originally monopolized by the Zhou king who had by now descended to the status of only one among equals.

  5 See Chiang Chi Lu, “The Scale of War in the Warring States Period” (Ph.D. dissertation: Columbia University, 2005), pp. 74–75.

  6 Victoria Hui, War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 54–108.

  7 Some scholars speculated that the Confucian imagination of such rigid land squares might have been inspired by the Warring States practice of the new state granting standard land units to free farmers in the counties, but this was anachronistically projected back onto the Western Zhou. See Mark Edward Lewis, “Warring States Political History,” in Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy (eds.), The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p.609.

  8 Derk Bodde, “The State and Empire of Ch’in,” in Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe (eds.), Cambridge History of China, vol. 1, The Chi’in and Han Empires, 221 BC – AD 220 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 37.

  9 Susan Roosevelt Weld, “Chu Law in Action,” in Constance A. Cook and John S. Major (eds.), Defining Chu: Image and Reality in Ancient China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999), pp. 87–95.

  10 This is the text named “Questions by the King of Wu,” one of the two lost texts with relation to Sun Wu that were discovered in 1972 together with the Art of War traditionally attributed to him in a tomb at Yinqueshan in Shandong Province, dating to the Western Han period (206 BC – AD 8).

  11 See Barry B. Blakeley, “Chu Society and State,” in Defining Chu, p. 56.

  12 On this point, it is worth noting that the Warring States kings often preferred the appointment of “foreigners” to the top level of the state bureaucracy. Without social roots in their host states, these officials were overwhelmingly loyal to the kings who employed them and could be easily removed by the latter.

  13 Mark Edward Lewis, Sanctioned Violence in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), pp. 54–61.

  14 Lewis, “Warring States Political History,” pp. 626–627.

  15 Chiang Chi Lu, “The Scale of War in the Warring States Period,” 107–110.

  16 See Ralph D. Sawyer (trans.), The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993).

  17 On this point, see Lothar von Falkenhausen, “The Waning of Bronze Age,” in The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC, p. 543.

  18 This is the Chen (Tian) Zhang hu-vessel.

  10 Philosophers as statesmen: in the light of recently discovered texts

  The period from the birth of Confucius (551–479 BC) in the middle of the sixth century BC to the closing of the Warring States period in 221 BC is usually designated as the “Age of Philosophers.” Despite the ceaseless military conflicts staged by the large territorial states (analyzed in Chapter 9), China had at the same time also seen unprecedented intellectual developments with the Shi (discussed in Chapter 8) at the center of the stage. Those Shi who were able to systematically develop their theses, usually represented by a core group of texts, and in turn had them passed on to their disciples through the mediu
m of private education were then remembered in history as the philosophers. The fundamental philosophical ideas developed by these late Spring and Autumn and Warring States period masters have since dominated the skyline of the Chinese intellectual life, and became the defining features of Chinese civilization over the next two millennia.

  The phenomenon is interesting within the context of Chinese history and is also important for understanding the early development of the humanities in a global context. For this reason perhaps, the subject of early Chinese philosophy has always been at the heart of Western sinology. And this trend has only been increased with the discovery of critically important new philosophical texts from Warring States tombs, mainly in South China, over the past thirty years. It is obviously impossible to offer here a full discussion of the various propositions endorsed by the numerous philosophers and to trace the lines of their discourses across the extremely rich literature of the Warring States period, for which purpose good introductions have already been written.1 Instead, as a unit of a concise survey of early Chinese civilization the present chapter will focus on the process of formation of a few main philosophical traditions as a social and cultural phenomenon, along with the introduction of some fundamental concepts as their responses to the problems of their time and society. In this way, the chapter will also discuss some recent discoveries of philosophical texts and the significant new light they shed on the development of the early Chinese intellectual traditions.