China – 200 BCE to 200 CE

Comparable to Roman Empire

Confucianism (Kong Fuzi 551-479 BCE) ruler as a moral model

Great Wall of China begun 3rd century BCE

Qin (Chin) Dynasty (221 to 206 BCE)

First Emperor united China and established a centralized government

Standardized written language, coinage, and weights and measures

Government control of nobility’s land, roads and trade, especially silk.

Increased wealth of China through trade.

Improved and expanded legal system

Art – terra cotta army in tomb of First Emperor

 

Han Dynasty – 206 – 220 CE

Population of 57 million

Bureaucracy included rigorous civil service exams

High point of Chinese culture

Literary achievements include

Book of Changes, Book of History, Book of Songs, Book of Rites, Spring and Autumn Annals

Court histories and poetry

Silk Road stretched from Italy to Pacific Ocean

Intellectual achievements that outstripped the West

Cartography, medicine, mathematics, astronomy

Invention of paper, block printing, seismograph, wheelbarrow, horse collar, cast iron in suspension bridge, gunpowder, stirrup

Imperial University established 124 BCE

Civil Service exams required knowledge of classics and political issues, as well as law, mathematics and calligraphy.

Chinese characters are not phonetic, allowing students to read and understand ancient texts easily.

Colleges provided preparation for civil service exams

Social class based on intellectual merit, rather than heredity or military prowess.

Civil Religion

A sense of religious identity and common moral understanding at the foundation of a society’s central institution.

Diffused Religion

Its institutions were not a separate church, but those of society, family, school, and state

Priests liturgical specialists, but parents, teachers, and officals.

Confucianism was part of the Chinese social fabric and way of life; everyday life was the arena of religion.

Aims at making not simply the man of virtue, but the man of learning and good manners.

Attempted to interpret and revive the religion of the Zhou (Chou) Dynasty.

Lifetime almost coincided with the Buddha

Ritual (li) – not sacrifices asking for blessings of the gods, but ceremonies symbolizing the cultured patterns of behavior developed developed through generations of human wisdom.

Against the legalistic views of the day.

Han Emperor Wu (140 to 87 BCE) promoted Confucian values to maintain law, order, and imperial state order.

Sincerity – man whose conduct is always based on the love of virtue.

Benevolence – What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others."

Filial Piety – will of parents supreme, even when children are grown; sons obligated to live with parents even after marriage.

Propriety – Chinese etiquette has three hundred greater rules and three thousand lesser rules.

Capping – son is honored for reaching his twentieth year

Marriage - duty to marry and have male children. Patriarchal system needed to be kept up for ancestor worship.

Mourning Rites – varied according to relationship and status. For father, son must war sack-cloth for twenty-seven months, eating little and living in a hut near father’s grave.

Sacrifices - food offering expressing reverent homage to honor spirit-guests. Ancestor worship.

Understood and practiced in many ways, each reflecting historical, social, or personal situations.

Coexisted with Confucian traditions

Offered alternatives to Confucian rules, but not mutually exclusive.

Classical Taoism formulated by Laozi (5^th century BCE?)

Reinterpretation of ancient tradition of nature worship.

wrote the Dao de jing

Healthy human life can only fourish in accord with Tao (Dao) – nature, simplicity, and free approach to life.

Utopia is a state of mind, an attitude

Major world religion with between 150 and 300 million followers

Founded in northeastern India and based on the teachings of Siddhartha Guatama, or Buddha

Originated as a monastic movement within the Hindu tradition.

Rejected significant Hindu beliefs

One of the world’s oldest religions, spanning 4000 years.

Sacred sanskrit texts called the four Vedas (1500 – 1200 BCE)

Vedas specify social classes – caste system

Dharma divine law or order

Indians believe that society naturally functions in a unified was, as do different parts of the human body.

Belief in One God called Brahman who is formless, eternal, and the origin and essence of all things.

Human soul or self, atman, is fully equivalent with Brahman

Belief in reincarnation

Karma is moral action and reaction that follows the soul through many lives

Bhagavad Gita (200 BCE) later religious text

God (as Vishnu) can be incarnated as human – Krishna, a cowherd, and King Rama (Mahabharata epic)

Siddhartha Guatama (563BCE – 480BCE?), born in northeast India, recognized at birth as a great man.

Born and raised as a prince, but realized life was empty and renounced possessions

Tried asceticism, but found the Middle Road

Meditated until he reached enlightenment – first human to reach nirvana

Preached, wandering from place to place, with a group of disciples, and organized a monastic community.

Oral teacher – never wrote anything down

Four Noble Truths

Life is suffering

All suffering is caused by ignorance

Suffering can be ended by overcoming ignorance

The path to end suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path

Eightfold path includes right views, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, fight effort, right-mindedness, and right contemplation.

Cornerstone of Buddhist faith – morality, wisdom, and concentration

Buddha rejected many aspects of Hinduism

Denied existence of a permanent soul (Atman) – when one reaches Nirvana, the soul becomes nothing. Nirvana is the extinguishing of earthly desires.

Challenged the authority of the priesthood

Denied validity of the Vedas

Rejected sacrificial cults

Opened worship to all castes, denying that spiritual worth is a matter of birth

Buddha incorporated many of the Hindu beliefs

Karma - a person’s acts or ethical consequences

Modified belief in rebirth

Nirvana – ending of earthly suffering

Gods more like Greek gods than Hindu gods to be worshipped

Buddhism spread throughout India through the efforts of Buddha’s disciples and missionaries

Spread to Central Asia during the Christian era.

Entered China through trade routes during the first century CE.

Officially opposed by the Confucian orthodoxy and subject to periods of persecution.

Buddhism adapted itself the Chinese culture.

Spread to Vietnam, Korea, and Japan, where it was proclaimed the state religion in 552 CE

Entered Tibet during 7^th century CE, where the Dali Lama ruled as a theocracy until 1950.

Three men stand around a vat of vinegar. Each has dipped his finger into the vinegar and has tasted it. The expression on each man’s face shows his individual reaction.

The tasters represent the "Three Teachings" of China, and the vinegar represents the Essence of Life.

Confucius has a sour look

Buddha has a bitter expression

Laozi is smiling