Леонид Васильев - Древний Китай. Том 2 - Период Чуньцю (VIII-V вв. до н.э.)

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.

1О хроникальных записях есть упоминания в различных источниках. Попытавшийся собрать все эти данные воедино К.В.Васильев со ссылкой на «Цзо-чжуань» [114, 15-й год Чжуан-гуна; 23-й и 28-й годы Си-гуна] упоминает о том, что архивные записи документального характера имелись в Цзинь по меньшей мере с VIII в. до н. э. Хроникальные и сходные по типу записи, как он пишет, велись в VII в. до н. э. в царствах Чу, Чжэн и в некоторых других [14, с. 26–38]. Согласно данным Ю. Л. Кроля [46, с. 205, 218], летопись «Цинь цзи», нечто вроде анналов с астрологическим уклоном, имелась и в царстве Цинь.

2Основными до сих пор считаются 1122 и 1027 гг. до н. э. (см., в частности, [15, прил.]. Однако буквально каждое десятилетие специалисты предлагают новые варианты, рассчитанные с немалыми сложностями. Д.Нивисон, например, предложил цифру 1040 г. до н. э. [223].

3Недавно Д.Нивисон опубликовал специальную статью, в которой попытался с помощью упоминаний года и дня правления в некоторых текстах на западночжоуских бронзовых сосудах предложить свой вариант датировки правления ранних чжоуских ванов [224].

4Этот текст был очень высоко оценен крупнейшим из конфуцианцев древности Мэн-цзы, который приписал Конфуцию следующие слова: «Благодаря „Чуньцю" люди будут знать обо мне и судить меня». Мэн-цзы заметил далее: «Конфуций написал „Чуньцю" — и все мятежные чиновники и скверные сыновья стали трепетать» [101, ШБ, IX, 8 и 11; 212, т. II, с. 157–158 и 159–160] (см. также [60]).

5К.В.Васильев [14, с. 39–40] со ссылкой на О.Франке [187, с. 16] и Д.Кеннеди [210, с. 40–48] приводит как наиболее типичные аргументы в пользу этой длительное время бытовавшей среди специалистов версии, так и свидетельства ее несостоятельности.

6Обычно его считают всевластным регентом при малолетнем Чэн-ване, сыне У-вана, но Масааки Мацумото [98] пытался доказать, что Чжоу-гун, судя по данным «Шуцзина», был истинным правителем (царем, ваном). Мне кажется, что попытка такого рода имеет мало смысла и может рассматриваться лишь как некий казус. Чжоу-гун, хотя он и был по сути правителем страны, всегда сохранял за собой лишь статус регента. Таковым он и вошел в историю.