China
Page 13
QIN’S CULTURAL REVOLUTION
On his accession a ruler’s first responsibility was to his lineage – past, present and to come. In honouring his ancestors he anticipated his becoming one of them and so demonstrated the legitimacy of his succession and that of his heirs. To this end, plans for a suitably imposing tomb for the then teenage Zheng had been drawn up as soon as his father’s funerary rites were consummated. The plans were probably revised and extended as he advanced to manhood, kingship and august emperorship, by when a truly spectacular funerary work was in prospect. Meanwhile his parents were exalted, with his father being given the accolade of ‘Grand Supreme August [One]’, despite the ban on posthumous titles. His mother, who was still very much alive, posed a different problem. She had first to be rehabilitated, in fact rescued from an infamous affair that threatened the very legitimacy that the young emperor was so determined to emphasise.
It so happened that during Zheng’s minority the state had been run by a group of veteran statesmen and generals under the direction of the able Lu Buwei, chancellor to Zheng’s father. Unusually, indeed scandalously by the standards of Confucian ‘gentlemen’ accustomed to regard influence as their own prerogative, Lu Buwei owed his position not to scholarship but to trade. Though a highly successful businessman, he still ranked as a merchant, one of the most despised professions throughout the Xia states and a heavily penalised one under Qin’s ‘legalist’ regulations.
Contempt for such an upstart may account for the Shiji’s decidedly racy biographical note on Lu Buwei. Like most of Qin’s ministers, he was not a native of that state, and before arriving there in c. 251 BC had enjoyed the favours of a celebrated concubine. Her name is not mentioned, only her ‘matchless beauty and great skill in dancing’, which attracted other admirers, including the then crown prince of Qin. The crown prince prevailed on Lu Buwei to part with her, ‘she concealed the fact that she was already pregnant’, and her baby, a son born in the fullness of time, had therefore been assumed to be the offspring of the Qin crown prince. Meanwhile the crown prince had succeeded as king of Qin; the matchless concubine had been recognised as his official consort; and her infant had been declared heir apparent. This was the young Zheng. If the story was true, the future First Emperor was an impostor. Illegitimacy could, and had been, rectified by making his mother a royal consort; but there could be no redemption for the issue of a barely mentionable relationship between a common concubine and a market trader.
Nor was that the end of the affair. When the thirteen-year-old Zheng succeeded on the death of his father, his mother, now Dowager Queen and soon to be Dowager Empress, resumed her relationship with Lu Buwei. He, though, seems to have tired of her attentions and grown anxious lest the affair become public.
He therefore searched about in secret until he found a man named Lao Ai who had an unusually large penis, and made him a servant in his household. Then, when an occasion arose, he had suggestive music performed and, instructing Lao Ai to stick his penis through the centre of a wheel made of paulownia wood, had him walk about with it, making certain that the report of this reached the ears of the Queen Dowager so as to excite her interest.8
It did. Her Majesty’s interest was royally excited and Lao Ai, the stud, found himself the unwitting beneficiary of this none-too-subtle ploy. Accused of some misdemeanour, he was sentenced to a mock castration (only his whiskers and eyebrows were removed) and then consigned to the Queen Dowager’s apartments as a certified eunuch. ‘She grew to love him greatly,’ says the Shiji, as well she might considering he was not a eunuch at all. Ever by her side, Lao Ai was showered with gifts, acquired an entourage of several thousand and became a power in the land. When the Queen Dowager found herself pregnant again, the couple discreetly retired to the country. Their chances of living happily ever after received a setback, however, when in 238 BC their sons (there were two) were identified as a threat to the succession. The just-enthroned King Zheng ordered an investigation and ‘all the facts were brought to light, including those that implicated the [now] prime minister Lu Buwei’.9
Lu Buwei found others to plead his cause. But the unfortunate Lao Ai raised the standard of revolt. His forces were easily defeated, his family annihilated, ‘several hundred heads were cut off in Xianyang’, and the rest of his supporters – some 4,000 families – were transported to Sichuan. Lao Ai himself was torn apart by carriages, their wheels no doubt of paulownia wood. The Queen Dowager and Lu Buwei were merely banished from court. But in 235 BC a pardon saw Her Majesty’s return to Xianyang, while Lu Buwei was consigned to exile, also in Sichuan. Fearing this was the prelude to a death sentence, the merchant prince ‘drank poison and died’.
The Shiji spares no detail in the telling of the affair. There is, though, some doubt about the extent to which Sima Qian, the Shiji’s main author, was responsible. Throughout his text, the ‘Grand Historian’ paints a somewhat ambiguous picture of the First Emperor. Writing under the Han dynasty just over a century later, he had every reason to denigrate Qin; the Han founder had overthrown the house of Qin, whose one credible emperor must therefore be shown as lacking in the legitimacy and virtue on which Heaven’s Mandate depended. Sima Qian accordingly quoted with approval a long diatribe against the First Emperor. He was ‘greedy and short-sighted’, dismissive of advice and precedent, ignorant of the masses, and ‘led the whole world in violence and cruelty’; his laws were harsh and his conduct deceitful – all of which, though excusable in the context of Qin’s seizure of power, was not conducive to the establishment of a just and permanent empire. The First Emperor’s main fault, therefore, was that of ‘not changing with the times’.10
On the other hand, as will be seen, Sima Qian had excellent reasons of a delicate nature for not gratifying his Han patron. He may therefore have been reluctant to demonise the preceding dynasty. In fact he gives it as his own opinion that, though ‘Qin’s seizure of power was accompanied by much violence, yet [the Qin dynasty] did manage to change with the times and its accomplishments were great’.11 Taken in conjunction with certain linguistic incongruities in the relevant section of his text, this has led scholars to suppose that the story of Lu Buwei being the father of Zheng was added later by others keen to ingratiate themselves with the Han. Yet the account of the rise and fall of the wretched Lao Ai appears genuine enough. Like later emperors, the first emperor found that he could best demonstrate his legitimacy by disposing of all who might question it.
Another telling preliminary to the First Emperor’s personal reign was his announcement, immediately after assuming the imperial title, that Qin ‘ruled by the power of water’. This was a reference not to the success of Li Bing’s Sichuan sluices but to the ‘Five Phases’ (or sometimes ‘Five Powers’ or ‘Five Elements’), whose sequential ascendancy supposedly controlled the course of history. While Confucians attributed a dynasty’s power to Heaven’s Mandate, others of a less orthodox (or more Daoist) persuasion attributed it to one of the five elemental Phases/Elements – earth, wood, metal, fire and water. Lending potency to successive dynasties, these phases rotated in an endless cycle based on the idea that each overcame its predecessor; thus wood floated on water, metal felled wood, fire melted metal, water quenched fire, earth dammed water, and so on. Since the Zhou had apparently espoused fire, the Qin must adopt that which overcame it; thus ‘the power of water now began its period of dominance’, says the Shiji; and since, to the credulous ruler, a whole school of ‘Five Phases’ philosophy was now available, Qin’s adoption of the new element had significant ramifications.
For to each of the Five Phases/Elements was awarded an auspicious correlate from among the colours, the numbers, the seasons (an extra one was added) and much else besides. In the case of water, the appropriate colour was black, the number was six, and the season was winter. Winter was also the cruellest season, a time of darkness, death and executions (which were held over until then). Through no fault of his own other than that of endorsing a widespread tradition,
the First Emperor’s destiny was tied to watery associations that, especially for those living in the Yellow River’s flood-prone ‘central plain’, were of the grimmest. Even if he had been the most indulgent and fun-loving of princes – which he was not – the First Emperor’s reign could scarcely have engendered either fond feelings or lustrous associations.
He nevertheless embraced his watery lot with typical thoroughness. He himself wore black, while his troops in black armour issued from black-flagged fortifications beneath black-emblazoned standards. Obviously the Yellow River had to be renamed. But as Sima Qian explains, because it was credited with being the source and embodiment of all water, merely calling it the ‘Black River’ was not good enough. Rather did it become te shui, ‘the Water of Power’. The number six posed no problem. The inter-locking tally-sticks that signified an imperial commission (the emperor kept one half, the commissioned official the other) were ordered to be six ‘inches’ long. Likewise official caps became six ‘inches’ wide; and the length of a ‘pace’ was calculated as exactly six ‘feet’ (it was a double pace, or two strides). Six ‘feet’ was also the prescribed width for official carriages, which were to be drawn by six horses, presumably black ones. When similar specifications were extended to chariots and carts, six ‘feet’ became the standard gauge for Chinese wheel ruts, so ensuring a tram-like ride on the empire’s deeply scored highways. The calendar was also realigned and recalibrated. This was a ritual responsibility for every new ruler but one that, in this case, saw the New Year and its celebrations being put back to the tenth month so that they coincided not with the solstice or the beginning of spring but with the onset of winter.
Such meticulous attention to detail, to quantification, standardisation and regulation, advertised dynastic regard for the ‘Five Phases/Elements’ while according neatly with what was the most obvious feature of the legalist state. It was once supposed that oppressive laws, accompanied by their tariff of graded rewards and draconian punishments, were what distinguished legalism. But the 1970s recovery of a cache of bamboo documents from a tomb outside Wuhan deep in what had been Chu territory (Hubei province) prompted qualification. In part constituting a local official’s handbook of Qin statutes and legal practice, the documents did not exactly dispel the idea of a ferocious justice. Under some circumstances the theft of a single coin could result in the amputation of a foot, plus tattooing of the torso (a particularly degrading form of disfigurement) and hard labour. But straight fines or short spells of unpaid corvée service appear to have been the more usual punishments; and whatever the case, justice was anything but arbitrary. The nature of the offence, the degree of intent, any extenuating circumstances, and the bureaucratic procedures to be observed throughout the legal process, were minutely addressed even for misdemeanours of little apparent consequence. Likewise statutes dealing with agriculture clearly listed not only the different types of cereal crop to be sown but the quantity of seed required to sow a given area with each. Reports on the state of the fields were to be submitted whenever there was anything to report – when it rained, when it didn’t rain, when pests were detected and so on. There were also annual prizes for the overseer, stockman and labourer responsible for the district’s best ox, plus of course penalties for the worst (typically two months corvée).12
As originally in the state of Qin, then in Sichuan, in conquered parts of Chu, Wei and Zhao, and now throughout the empire, the emphasis was on ‘efficiency, precision, and fixed routine in administrative procedure . . . [plus] exact quantification of data, and attention to the improvement of agricultural production and conserving of natural resources’.13 Households were registered for taxation purposes, and the population organised into grouped families for military and civil conscription. All newly acquired territories were reconstituted as directly administered ‘commanderies’, of which there were thirty-six in 221 BC, each of them further divided into ‘counties’. Lest the former ruling families of the no longer ‘warring states’ cause trouble in the commanderies, their scions were summoned to the Qin capital at Xianyang and installed in replicas of their erstwhile palaces under the watchful eye of the emperor. Meanwhile their armies were disbanded and all surplus weapons melted down; the metal was recast not into ploughshares but into twelve colossal pieces of statuary, all of them later rendered down for other uses. Qin’s copper coins fared better. They became standard tender throughout the empire, and their design – flat and circular with a square hole in the middle so that they could be easily strung together – would last more than two thousand years. The standardisation of weights and measures was also extended throughout the empire, heavy penalties being prescribed for any variation beyond an acceptable factor that was carefully specified in the case of each measurement.
To ensure universal implementation of these orders and to promote bureaucratic efficiency, it remained only to standardise the script in which they were written and read. In the course of the first millennium BC the so-called ‘Large Seal’ script of the Shang and Zhou had acquired local characteristics in the various ‘warring states’. Moreover, in states outside the ‘central plain’, such as Shu and Chu, some still-undeciphered fragments of pictography suggest a regional challenge from quite unrelated writing systems. The First Emperor’s introduction of what came to be known as the ‘Small Seal’ script was designed to counter all such diversity. It involved eradicating obsolete or offensive characters, simplifying and rationalising others, and standardising each and every one. Although destined for an early and more lasting revision by Han scholars, ‘Small Seal’ script established the principle of a written language that was common to the literate elite throughout the empire regardless of spoken dialects, and which was recognised as the medium of both government and scholarship. It was a principle of incalculable significance. Regional distinctions were thereby subsumed, although social distinctions, particularly as between the lettered classes and the unlettered, were engrained. Without this standardisation China’s bureaucrats would today need as many interpreters as the European Union; and that claim to several thousand years as a single ‘continuous civilisation’ would scarcely be sustainable, or even enunciable.
Such measures, accompanied by a programme of gargantuan public works that would dwarf ‘Stone Cattle Road’ and Li Bing’s waterworks, secured the cause of integration more effectively than mere conquest and ensured its survival beyond the fall of Qin. There was no precedent for such a vast and substantially non-Xia empire comprising not only the Yellow River basin but Sichuan, the Yangzi and much of southern China and Inner Mongolia. In applying to all of it without distinction the same standards of administrative control and mass mobilisation, the First Emperor seems to have been aware that he was breaking new ground. In a series of inscriptions, whose texts were faithfully recorded by the historian Sima Qian, the emperor dwelt more on his administrative than his military achievements.
In his twenty-eighth year [219 BC] the August Emperor made a new beginning.
He adjusted the laws and the regulations [and set] standards for the ten thousand things . . .
The merit of the August Emperor lies in diligently fostering basic concerns, exalting agriculture, abolishing lesser occupations, so the black-headed people may be rich.
All under Heaven are of one mind, single in purpose.
Weights and measures have a single standard, words are written in a uniform way.
Wherever sun and moon shine, where boats and wheeled vehicles bear cargo, all fulfil their allotted years, [and] none do not attain their goal.
To initiate projects in season – such is the August Emperor’s way.
Empire, a product of surplus resources, new technologies (metallurgical, agricultural and military) and individual initiative, had already swept through other parts of Asia. Darius and Xerxes of the Persian Achaemenid dynasty had created a territorial colossus stretching from the Aegean to the Indus in the late sixth century BC; Alexander of Macedon had briefly exceeded it in the fourth centur
y BC; and in the early third century BC, while Qin was flexing its muscles in Sichuan prior to China’s first ‘unification’, the Maurya dynasty of Pataliputra was effecting a first ‘unification’ of India.
Ashoka, the third of the Maurya emperors and a near-contemporary of Qin Shi Huangdi, also favoured stone-cut inscriptions. Gouged into India’s bedrock or neatly engraved on monolithic stone columns, they have lasted better than the First Emperor’s stelae, of which only one remaining fragment is reckoned authentic. On the other hand the Indian empire they memorialised would vanish within a decade of Ashoka’s demise, while the Chinese empire of Qin Shi Huangdi would be reconstituted as the long-lasting Han empire and would survive, in principle when not in practice, for over 2,000 years.
Similarly, history’s verdict on the two emperors could not be more different. Ashoka is revered as a benevolent reformer who renounced violence, championed monasticism, proclaimed a universal dharma and dispatched evangelists instead of armies. By contrast, Qin Shi Huangdi is seen as the worst of tyrants, an ‘oriental despot’ at the helm of a totalitarian state, by nature violent, superstitious and prone to megalomania. Yet his inscriptions claim that he too ‘brought peace to the world’, ‘implemented good government’, ‘showed compassion to the black-headed people’ and ‘worked tirelessly for the common good’, not to mention decommissioning weapons and administering justice without favour or remorse. They in fact contain sentiments from which Ashoka would not have shrunk plus phrases which in translation seem to mimic those of the Maurya.