The Mandate of Heaven did not require a ruler to be of noble birth, and had no time limitations. Instead, rulers were expected to be good and just in order to keep the Mandate.
The Zhou claimed that their rule was justified by the Mandate of Heaven. In other words, the Zhou believed that the Shang kings had become immoral with their excessive drinking, luxuriant living, and cruelty, and so had lost their mandate. The need for the Zhou to create a history of a unified China is also why some scholars think the Xia Dynasty may have been an invention of the Zhou. The Zhou needed to erase the various small states of prehistoric China from history, and replace them with the monocratic Xia Dynasty in order for their Mandate of Heaven to seem valid i.
However, the Mandate of Heaven philosophy carried on throughout ancient China. Privacy Policy. The Mandate of Heaven created a justification system. The Mandate either said or implied three major things. This gave the ruler religious power. This gave the ruler secular power, or power over the people, and the right to decide what is good for the people, because the ruler must care about the people, or the gods would remove him as ruler. A dynasty can be replaced.
This justified rebellion. When a new leader leads a successful rebellion, he must have the support of the gods, or he would not be allowed to rule, because it was the gods who chose the rulers. The nobles agreed that it was true that the Shang had become selfish. Perhaps the Chou would be a better choice.
They joined the Chou in rebellion, and the Shang were deposed no longer kings. Since this rebellion was successful, the Chou obviously had the right to rule! It was a clever propaganda campaign, and it worked. The Chou ruled China for hundreds of years. The nobles were right - nothing much changed under Chou rule, not for the nobles and not for the peasants.
But the warring did stop. The notion of the Mandate of Heaven was also invoked by Mencius. The idea was different from the European notion of Divine Right of Kings in that it legitimized the overthrow of a dynasty and it also put limits on the behavior of the emperor.
If the emperor ruled unwisely or failed to perform the proper rituals, the emperor could lose the Mandate of Heaven and be overthrown. On the other hand, it also promoted "might is right" ideas, since any successful dynastic founder was considered to have the Mandate by virtue of his success, and any failed ruler was considered to have lost it, no matter how great his personal virtue.
It also encouraged both Chinese unity and a disdainful attitude towards the outside world, since there was only one Mandate, and so only one true ruler of humankind—the Emperor of China. These attitudes made it very difficult for Chinese court officials in the Qing dynasty to understand the European multi-state system. Categories : Chinese culture History of China.
Mandate of Heaven From Academic Kids.
0コメント