heyo heyo what's up?
The first dynasty in China, the Shang dynasty, was a dynasty made up of the descendants of Shang. Shang was a manifestation of all good attributes in a leader, and was thought to be one of many ancestors controlling the fate of the Chinese. Without the blood of Shang, an emperor's rule could not be justified. The emperor's court at this time had shamans who would communicate with these ancestral spirits and keep them appeased. In their model, all misfortunes were caused by angry ancestors, and all things fortunate occured by the grace of the almighty ancestors. One technique commonly used to divine and seek guidance from these spirits was reading the cracks in the skull of cattle. The shaman would drill at the bone with a bronze knife until a depression was made and then would heat the knife until it was red-hot and then press it into the bone. The bone would crack, and the shaman would use proto-pictograms to write down the result and decide on the best source of action.
Things were going well for this new empire, but eventually a string of emperors dying consistenly before manhood led to instability in the rule and a war of succession began. The point about the Shang dynasty all being descended from Shang is important, because that is how rule was justified. Without the inherited blood of Shang nobody could justify ruling China, so when the dust from the civil war settled with all the descendants of Shang dead, there was a little confusion over what to do.
The Zhous (or Chous) were a people existing on the sidelines of the empire, but were drawn into the conflict. They were a feudal group, or maybe they were nomadic, or a combination of both, it's hard to say. What we do know is that they were led by a man named Wen, who's title was the duke of Zhou. At the end of the conflict the Zhous were the dominant force in China, and in the best position to once again unify it and rule. But they had to justify their position, and to do so they came up with the concept of the mandate of heaven. According to them, it wasn't Shang who granted the right to rule, but heaven itself. For the length of the Shang dynasty heaven had approved the Shang's to rule, but eventually abandoned them in favour of the Zhous. How else to explain the Zhous' position? So, the duke of Zhou became king Wen, the first leader of the Zhou dynasty.
How the I Ching emerged as 64 changes recorded in a book isn't exactly certain, but it is certainly connected to the shaman's divination techniques. Archeologists from an Ontario university (can't remember which one) took all the cattle skulls which had been used to divine, and ran them through some kind of mathematical machine. What they discovered is .. get ready.. there are eight basic ways a cow skull cracks. These correspond to the original eight triagrams. The triagrams are made of three stacked lines. Each line is either broken or solid, yin, or yang, and there are eight possible combinations.
Another piece of the I Ching puzzle is king Wen's biography. The story of his life was recorded for others to learn from. His victories, defeats, rises, falls, ebbs, and flows were written down as his life was considered to be the epitome of success. Basically, he's the country boy prince who becomes the emperor of the known world. To the people at the time, the I Ching was the biography of king Wen. It details all the fundamental tendencies of change in the universe, and king Wen's life was a perfect microcosm for people to examine the greater patterns of life. That's an interesting way of reading the I Ching, eh, as a biography?
So what happened next? Well, king Wen established an efficient feudalism in China and went down in history as one of the nation's greatest thinkers. Whatever happened for sure, we'll never know, but king Wen is generally accepted as the first to lay down the sequence of the I Ching as a book. He didn't invent it, however, as the examination of the divination bones proves, the I Ching has its roots in the shamanic traditions of ancient China. And what happened to these shamans? Well they eventually left the court to live in the mountains where they became the taoists. Today taoism seems to take a back seat to buddhism and other perhaps more accessible religions and spiritual practices, but to me it's what China, the world's oldest civilization, has contributed to the world. Around 1990, an anthropologist seeking taoist hermits in the wilderness of asia found a Chinese man, who, when asked of his opinion on the communists said "Communists? Who are the communists?" This has some interesting implications. I wonder what these taoist hermits are cooking up, way out there in the mountains.
Some more interesting things: I don't remember his name, maybe some of you might know, but the inventor of binary mathematics was reading the I Ching, and then had a dream that night. The next morning, he invented binary code (10010100101010) which of course, bears an uncanny resemblance to the sequences of broken and unbroken lines of the I Ching. So here we all are, communicating using devices based on taoist philosophy. Overlooked, these taoists, but their contributions to mankind are... almost spooky.
Another interesting thing about China and the mandate of heaven: when you think about it, China still, after all these years, hasn't fundamentally changed their system for selecting leaders. Tieneman square (sp) was very misinterpreted by us westerners. To us it was a protest against communists where the people wanted to usher in a new era of democracy and freedom, but that's not exactly it. It was a protest because a Chinese official didn't recieve a proper funeral. The official (who's name I can't remember) was a kind of people's hero, because he suggested that there was corruption rampant among the leaders of the communist government. Because he was so highly ranked and loved by the people, the government couldn't simply imprison him because it would cause a revolution, so instead the government opted to try and forget about him by putting his body in a hole with a "good riddance". The tienemant square protests occured because the people were suggesting, as their hero had, that the Chinese rulers had lost credibility, or the mandate of heaven, so it was time for them to go. The Chinese government disagreed, however, and so we have a massacre. Did they want democracy? Some maybe, but that's not really the point, simply what we'd like to believe and what makes sense to us. So, China hasn't fundamentally changed. Since ancient times, the mandate of heaven has followed chinese history and has always been there. I wonder if China will ever end?
well, I think that's it. I find it really interesting how everything ties together.. the eight cracks in the skull, the eight triagrams, using the principles of the I Ching to tell you this information.. neat-o. If people want sources and the like, I'll see what I can dig up. I just wrote this as though I was telling it orrally so it's a bit of a word-of-mouth historical thing, but I can back it up if you'd like, and I think I will over the next few days..
Edit: Once again I'll reccomend to you the translation of the I Ching by Alfred Huang The Complete I Ching. It's the best translation (trust me).
Edited by Dogomush (04/09/03 03:52 PM)
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