The Four Corners, All Under Heaven, Commanderies and Kingdoms: Transformation and Development of Views of Tianxia in Ancient China
Date Issued
2009
Date
2009
Author(s)
You, Yi-Fei
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to bring to light the transformation and development of a uniquely Chinese weltanschauung, ‘tian-xia view’ (often translated as ‘all-under-heaven view’), during the Zhou, Qin, and Han Dynasties.he first chapter begins by defining some specialized terms to be discussed later in the paper, such as ‘tian-xia view,’ ‘tian-xia order,’ and ‘tian-xia form of government.’ The definition of ‘tia-xia view’ used in this paper is not equivalent to a ‘universal’ or ‘world’ outlook, but is instead a political philosophy based on the concept of ‘tian-xia,’ understood to be the world of men as conceived by people of the period. Adherents understood tian-xia form of government to be a political system for governing all-under-heaven; tian-xia order was thought of as the balance between pacification and disorder, the waxing and waning of power on the political stage that was all-under-heaven. This chapter then summarizes previous scholarship regarding the concept of tian-xia from China, Japan, and the West. I will argue that we should no longer limit the scope of research to the question of whether tian-xia denoted “China” or “the world,” nor should we carelessly assume that the accepted interpretation of tian-xia view during any one period is representative of the entire history of its use. It is preferable to view the meaning of the term tian-xia as shifting. In order to understand why it was employed, we should begin by reconstructing the lingual context in which the term has been used throughout the ages.he second chapter focuses on the use of the term si-fang (‘the four regions,’ East, South, West, and North) in the Shu-Jing, Shi-Jing, oracle bone scripts, and bronze inscriptions. The term was at the height of its use during the Western Zhou Dynasty, a time when tian-xia rarely appeared. Although its meaning is comparable to tian-xia, terminology associated with tian-xia should be avoided when discussing the period of the Western Zhou; ‘si-fang view’ should be used instead. The term si-fang connotes a delimiting of the inner sphere from the outer, clarifying the boundary between the king, seated in a central region, and his feudal lords, occupying the surrounding four regions of the north, south, east, and west, thus establishing a ‘si-fang system of government’ and a ‘si-fang order’. Si-fang view was not, however, limited to concepts of classification and demarcation; combined with a mature system of government, it can be considered a mature worldview. The kingdom of Zhou, having been enfeoffed by the Shang, were able to establish themselves in the western region as part of the si-fang order constructed by the Shang. There, the Zhou could bide their time until Da-Yi-Shang, the Shang capital city, could be replaced by Luo-Yi, the Zhou capital, as the center of si-fang. After the Zhou succeeded in overcoming the Shang, the feudal lords subordinate to the Zhou had no choice but to concede that the Zhou now occupied the center of si-fang, whereas they in fact dwelt in si-fang. Descriptions of the Zhou as a people from the western region are absent from the bronze inscriptions of the middle to late Western Zhou period; by gradually ceasing to portray their ancestors as westerns, a structural realignment of geography was achieved. n the third chapter, I examine the search results of electronic databases of both the received canon and archaeological materials, concluding that in writings from the Warring States period, the Qin, and the Han, the term tian-xia appears far more frequently than the term si-fang. The reason for tian-xia’s newfound popularity lies in, I believe, the political and societal transformation of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. The feudal lords and kings of the Warring States period became aware of the term’s suitability for re-establishing political order from the chaos of their time; tian-xia did not connote a demarcation of the inner sphere from the outer, and could be employed to incorporate the various states into a new polity. A couplet from the Bei-Shan (Xiao-Ya) chapter of the Shi-Jing is often quoted in the writings of the pre-Qin schools of thought: “Under the wide heaven [tian-xia], all is the king''s land. Within the sea-boundaries of the land, all are the king''s servants.” This couplet, which also appears in the story of “Wen Ren Zhi Zhou,” reflects the term’s ability to help establish a new “all-under-heaven order.” During the Qin and Han, the term tian-xia was not only common at court and amongst the political class, but was familiar to every literate person, penetrating deep into the consciousness of the people and having great influence on their lives. Thus, tian-xia became the most accepted denotation for the emperor’s domain, and tian-xia view became the most influential worldview in China for two thousand years.he fourth chapter continues the discussion of how the all-encompassing nature of the term tian-xia helped to establish an all-under-heaven order during the Qin and Han. Qin-Shi-Huang and the officials of his court often used the term in carrying out the policies of imperial mandates in an effort to include the only recently pacified six eastern states within the emperor’s domain. At this stage, the meaning of tian-xia was limited to “China,” but in the engraved commemorative stelae commissioned by the Qin emperors and officials, a broader meaning was implied, i.e. “all-under-heaven” including the si-yi (four barbarian peoples). Although they were aware of the discrepancy between “all-under-heaven” and the actual extent of their territory, employing phrases like “extending north of Da-Xia” to conceal the contradiction, the Qin emperors and officials were unlikely to have felt any shame in using the term. In the beginning, the Han’s strength was far weaker than the Qin’s, leaving them with no choice but to adjust their view of foreign relations. Thus, the meaning of tian-xia became more flexible, allowing for the inclusion of Nan-Yue into the tian-xia order of China and the four barbarian peoples on the one hand, as well as the co-existence of the Han and Xiong-Nu kingdoms in tian-xia on the other. ributary visits from the barbarians of the southwest were even seen as coming in response to the virtue of the emperor. But the connotations of the term tian-xia could not be molded and re-molded at will, and the ‘family of tian-xia’ during the Qin and Han seems to have only been used in reference to internal unity, never as justification for invading the lands of the four barbarian peoples. The early Han court accepted the independence of its feudal kingdoms. In their adoption of the term tian-xia, a polycentric tian-xia form of government was established and the feudal kingdoms were incorporated into the tian-xia order. However, a polycentric tian-xia order is, in the end, unstable; the term tian-xia erased the demarcation between the inner and the outer realms, as well as the scrupulousness of the un-egalitarian bureaucracy. The Han Dynasty tian-xia view, order, and form of government could yet be further improved.he fifth chapter discusses how the Han court reconstructed the feudal system and consolidated the power of the central government, in order to further perfect the tian-xia order and tian-xia form of government. The key measure of their strategy was to reform the ‘kingdom system,’ establishing a ‘parallel commandery system’ wherein kingdoms were demoted to the status of commanderies and the administrative institutions of the Han were able to achieve a deconcentration of power through the division of labor. By adopting the feudal system, they were able to standardize a hierarchy of position between the emperor, the feudal kings, and so on, as well as make distinctions between the kingdoms’ administrative officials and domestic officials. From this time on, the polycentric tian-xia order vanished and a tian-xia form of government in which the Han emperor occupied the center was progressively established. This improvement of the tian-xia form of government influenced the changing of the contemporary tian-xia view. Through a close comparison of the texts, we discover that certain denotative conventions of the period (using the term tian-xia to refer to the territory of the Han, or the purposeful collocation of ‘commandery’ and ‘feudal kingdom’ in terms such as ‘jun-guo’ and ‘jun zhu-hou’) did not accurately reflect reality of the early Han’s circumstances. While this kind of sophisticated naming of territory was neither consistent nor common during the early Han, by the middle of the Western Han, the parallel commandery system was in place and the term jun-guo (commanderies and kingdoms) began to be popularized. The term jun-guo was beneficial to the development of the bureaucracy in several ways. It increased the efficacy of Han court decrees in terms of their transmission and execution throughout the empire. It also clearly demarcated the territory of the Han Dynasty. Finally, it helped make clear the distinction between the central and the local regions.he conclusion in chapter six is that the inner versus the outer has always been a crucial element in Chinese politics. The term tian-xia became popularized because si-fang was not able to incorporate the outer. Because of tian-xia’s inability to delimit the inner from the outer, it must be divided into broad and narrow meanings, the narrow meaning referring to the ‘inner’ pacification of China and the broad meaning referring to the ‘outer’ subjugation of the four barbarian peoples. But the narrow and broad meanings of tian-xia go further in separating the inner from the outer. The broad meaning relies on the opposition between China and the four barbarian peoples. The narrow meaning relies on the polarity between wang-ji (the lands under direct control of the king) on the one hand and the commanderies and kingdoms on the other. The ways in which tian-xia views of the various historical periods differentiate the inner from the outer is a direction of research worth pursuing.
Subjects
Tian-Xia View
Tian-Xia Form of Government
Tian-Xia Order
Pu-Tian-Zhi-Xia
Bei-Shan (Xiao-Ya)
Feudalism
Feudal Kingdom
Type
thesis
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