Древний Китай. Том 2: Период Чуньцю (VIII-V вв. до н.э.) - [274]

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.