The head was cast in sections, and such was the skill of the sculptors, despite the size and a weight of over 45 kilos, it is hollow and the metal itself is only three millimetres thick. The sections are so thin and fine that details like the lips and eyes can be traced in hollow relief inside.
The bronze mixture used is a most unusual alloy of copper, iron, tin and lead. The painted surface over the top of the bronze would originally have been much brighter. Banners, China, The pair of silk banners right are an example of another way that followers of the Buddhist faith demonstrated their piety.
Such banners would be offered at temples or shrines in honour of the Buddha. They could be hooked on to a staff either left fluttering outside or hung from the eaves inside. The painted wooden board across the bottom stopped the streamers from getting tangled. These precious banners were made between and AD and come Dunhuang, a great Buddhist temple site on the Silk Route.
Buddhist believers also paid for stone columns, or stele, to be put up by the side of the road as a sign of their faith. We offer a wide range of tours to meet your group requirements. Whether a group has a special area of interest, wishes to explore a particular gallery or just get an overview of the Museum's collection the Groups Team can help. We have launched a new website and are reviewing this page. Find out more. Victoria and Albert Museum The world's leading museum of art and design.
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This natural course of human development, rather than a static essence, is what constitutes human nature for Mencius. In cultivating our moral capacities we become fully human and actualize the moral potential of the cosmos. But this process requires a supportive, nourishing environment: a loving and supportive family, opportunities for education, and a humane government.
As had Confucius, Mengzi assumed that ancestor veneration was a basic requirement of civilized life, but neither thinker emphasized such veneration as much as did later texts like the Xiaojing , the Scripture of Filiality third century B.
And while Confucius had relied largely upon the power of the cultural tradition - in particular the words and examples of the ancient sages preserved in the Five Scriptures - to serve as agents of individual and social transformation, Mencius's theory could be characterized as a developmental moral psychology. Mengzi represents both a further humanization and a further spiritualization of the Confucian tradition, and his emphasis on the powers of human nature did much to shape the religious sensibilities of Chinese philosophy.
In a third century B. Only that one in the world who is most perfectly authentic is able to give full development to his nature. Being able to give full development to his nature, he is able to give full development to the nature of other human beings and, being able to give full development to the nature of other human beings, he is able to give full development to the natures of other living things.
Being able to give full development to the natures of other living things, he can assist in the transforming and nourishing powers of Heaven and Earth; being able to assist in the transforming and nourishing powers of Heaven and Earth, he can form a triad with Heaven and Earth. The third most important Confucian philosopher before the Han dynasty B. Xunzi's thought was influenced by several of the traditions that had developed before his time, including those of the Logicians, Daoists, and Legalists.
Xunzi agreed with the Legalist emphasis on the need for strong centralized rule and a strict penal code. He also shared their low estimate of human nature, which in his view tended toward selfishness and competition. Nonetheless, Xunzi believed that human attitudes and behavior are perfectible by dint of much discipline and effort, so his differences with Mencius on this point are those of degree.
Both thinkers claimed that the ordinary person can become a "sage" shengren , one who fully exemplifies the virtue of humanity ren. But for Mencius this was a developmental process, while for Xunzi it was a transformation hua requiring the external leverage, so to speak, of past sages. Xunzi's chief contribution was his reinterpretation of Tian as the order of nature, an order that has no consciousness and is not directly related to human concerns.
This interpretation is parallel to the views of the Laozi Daodejing and Zhuangzi texts concerning the cosmic "Way" Dao. Xunzi was concerned to separate the roles of heaven, earth, and man, with human attention directed toward ethics, administration, and culture. In this context rituals such as funeral rites are valuable channels for emotions, but have no objective referent; their role is social and psychological, not theological.
Ignorant "petty people" who literally believe in the efficacy of rain dances and divination are to be pitied; for the gentleman such activities are "cultural adornment.
Xunzi thus gave impetus to the skeptical tradition in Chinese thought that began before Confucius and was reinforced by later thinkers such as Wang Chong c. Xunzi's teachings at this point provided a theoretical basis for a rough bifurcation between elite and popular attitudes toward religion and for sporadic attempts to suppress "excessive cults. These themes had important implications for the remainder of Chinese history, including official attitudes toward religion today.
Early Daoist thought. The earliest extant writings focused on the mysterious cosmic "Way" dao that underlies all things are the first seven chapters of the extant Zhuangzi , a text attributed to a philosopher named Zhuang Zhou of the fourth century B.
Zhuang Zhou, or Zhuangzi Master Zhuang , was convinced that the world in its natural state is peaceful and harmonious, a state exemplified by the growth of plants and the activities of animals. Disorder is due to human aggression and manipulation, a tendency that finds as much expression in Confucian and Moist moralizing as in cruel punishments and warfare. Such moralizing in turn is rooted in a false confidence in words, words that debators use to express their own limited points of view and thus to dichotomize our understanding of the world.
Indeed, all perspectives are limited and relative, conditioned by the interests and anxieties of species, social positions, and individuals. The answer to this problem is to understand and affirm the relativity of views, and thus harmonize them all. This the sage does by perceiving the constant rhythms of change within all life and identifying with them. In his view all dichotomies are unified; hence there is no need for struggle and competition. The sage intuits the Dao within and behind all things, and takes its all-embracing perspective as his own.
This perspective allows him to achieve a state of emotional equanimity, which even a serious illness or the death of a loved-one cannot disturb. Indeed, such events illustrate the ultimate truth of the Way - change and transformation - and can therefore provide opportunities to rejoice in one's participation in what is fundamentally real. The Guanzi is a long, composite text attributed to a famous statesman of the seventh century B.
Its earliest sections focuses on the cosmological and physiological bases of self-transformation according to the Way, using such concepts as qi the psycho-physical substance of all things , jing life-giving essence , and shen spirit , all of which remained central to the Daoist religion in its later development.
The best-known book devoted to discussing the Dao behind all things is the early third-century B. Daodejing The Way and Its Power , also known as the Laozi , after its reputed author, a mythical sage known simply as the "Old Master," said to have been an older contemporary of Confucius.
The Laozi discusses the Way in more direct, metaphysical terms than does the Zhuangzi, all the while protesting that such discussion is ultimately futile.
Here we are told that the Dao is the source of all things, "the mother of the universe," the ineffable cosmic womb out of which all emerges.
The Dao also "works in the world," guiding all things in harmonious development and interaction. As both source and order of the world the Dao serves as a model for enlightened rulers who gain power by staying in the background and letting their people live spontaneously in response to their own needs. The Dao is the vital force of life perceived at its utmost depth; it works mysteriously and imperceptibly and yet there is nothing it does not accomplish. Its symbols are water rather than rock, valleys rather than hills, the female rather than the male.
Although its perspective is profound, its author intended this book to be a handbook of wise and successful living, living characterized by a natural, spontaneous action that does not prematurely wear itself out.
These texts were the sources of a persistent tradition of naturalistic mysticism in the history of Chinese religions. They were the inspiration for much poetry, romantic philosophy, and meditation, all intended as a corrective for the bustle and competition of life, a means to peace of mind, and a clarification and broadening of perspective.
They describe the enlightened person as living peacefully and long because he does not waste his vital powers on needless contention and aggression. In the Laozi , for example, we are told that "He who knows when to stop is free from danger; therefore he can long endure" chap.
Although in some passages of the Zhuangzi an enlightened perspective leads to acceptance of death, a few others provide poetic visions of immortals, those who have transcended death by merging with the Dao. One of the terms Zhuangzi uses for these individuals is zhenren , "perfected people," a term that later became important in the fully-developed Daoist religion that took shape after the second century C.
These indications of immortality in the earliest Daoist texts provided the chief point of contact between the classical tradition and those who sought immortality by more direct means, including later practitioners of Daoist religion.
The quest for immortality. An explicit concern for long life shou had already appeared on early Zhou bronzes and in poems in the Scripture of Odes. Beginning in the eighth century B. It was in this context that Chinese alchemy began. The alchemical quest became the most dramatic form of the quest to transcend death, growing in popularity during the Qin B. The goal of all these practices was to return the body to its original state of purity and power with its yin and yang forces vital and in proper balance.
The po , associated with the gross physical body, would ideally remain with the body after death, or would descend to a murky underworld, the Yellow Springs.
The hun , associated with the more intelligent and spiritual aspect of the person, would rise up to heaven and would retain its integrity only as long as it was ritually acknowledged and "nourished" through ancestor worship.
There was no doctrine of an eternal, immaterial soul to fall back on as in India or the Hellenistic world, so the only alternative was physical immortality. As such, it became one of the major sources of the Daoist religion that emerged in the second century C.
Spirit mediums. The other important expression of Chinese religious consciousness before the Han dynasty was shamanism, which most commonly took the form of deities and spirits possessing receptive human beings. Spirit mediums both female and male are mentioned in discussions of early Zhou religion as participants in court rituals, responsible for invoking the descent of the gods, praying and dancing for rain, and for ceremonial sweeping to exorcise harmful forces.
They were a subordinate level of officially accepted ritual performers, mostly women, who spoke on behalf of the gods to arrange for sacrifices. In conditions of extreme drought they could be exposed to the sun as an inducement to rain. Female mediums were called wu , a word etymologically related to that for dancing; male mediums were called xi. In the state of Chu, south of the center of Zhou culture, there were shamans believed able to practice "magic flight," that is, to send their souls on journeys to distant realms of deities and immortals.
Han historical sources indicate that by the third century B. This was done in part to consolidate imperial control, but also to make available fresh sources of sacred power to support the state and heal illness. Sporadic attempts were also made by officials to suppress shamanism.
These began as early as 99 B. However, it is clear that shamanism was well established among the people and continued to have formal influence at court until the fifth century C. Shamans were occasionally employed by rulers to call up the spirits of royal ancestors and consorts and incidents of court support continued into the eleventh century. Owing in part to the revival of Confucianism in that period, in a sweeping edict was issued that all shamans be returned to agricultural life and their shrines be destroyed.
Thus, the gradual Confucianization of the Chinese elite led to the suppression of shamanism at that level, but it continued to flourish among the people, where its activities can still be observed in China, Taiwan, and other Chinese communities. In the fifth century B. The larger states formed alliances and maneuvered for power, seeking hegemony over the others, aiming to reunify the area of Zhou culture by force alone.
In B. Finally, in the state of Qin became the empire of Qin B. With this step China as a semicontinental state was born. There were many periods of division and strife later, but the new level of unification achieved by the Qin was never forgotten, and became the goal of all later dynasties. The Qin emperors attempted to rule all of China by the standards long developed in their own area; laws, measurements, written characters, wheel tracks, thought, and so forth were all to be unified.
Local traditions and loyalties were still strong, however, and Qin rule remained precarious. After the emperor died in he was replaced by a son who proved unequal to the task. Rebellions that broke out in that year severely undermined Qin authority and by one of the rebel leaders, a village head named Liu Bang, had assumed de facto control of state administration.
In Liu Bang was proclaimed emperor of a new dynasty, the Han B. The Qin. The Qin was noteworthy both for its suppression of philosophy and its encouragement of religion. The Legalist tradition dominant in the state of Qin had long been hostile to the Confucians and Moists, with their emphasis on ethical sanctions for rule.
For the Legalists the only proper standard of conduct was the law, applied by officials concerned with nothing else, whose personal views were irrelevant as long as they performed their task. The only sanctions the state needed were power and effective organization. Not long after Qin became an empire it attempted to silence all criticism based on the assumption of inner standards of righteousness that were deemed to transcend political power and circumstance. In this campaign, several scores of scholars were executed, and a number of philosophical schools were eliminated as coherent traditions, including the Moists and the Dialecticians.
In the early Han dynasty both Daoist philosophy and Confucianism revived, and Legalism continued to be in evidence in practice if not in theory, but the golden age of Chinese philosophy was over. A unified empire demanded unified thought, a dominant orthodoxy enforced by the state.
From this perspective variety was a threat, and furthermore, there were no independent states left to serve as sanctuaries for different schools. To be sure, China continued to produce excellent scholars and philosophers, and Buddhism contributed an important body of new material, but most of the issues debated in later Chinese philosophy had already been articulated before the Han.
The task of philosophy was now understood to be the refinement and application of old teachings, not the development of new ones. Qin policy toward religion, by contrast, encouraged a variety of practices to support the state. To pay homage to the sacred powers of the realm and to consolidate his control, the First Emperor included worship at local shrines in his extensive tours. Representatives of regional cults, many of them spirit mediums, were brought to the court, there to perform rituals at altars set up for their respective deities.
The Qin expanded the late Zhou tendency to exalt deities of natural forces; over one hundred temples to such nature deities were established in the capital alone, devoted to the sun, moon, planets, several constellations, and stars associated with wind, rain, and long life.
The nation was divided into sacred regions presided over by twelve mountains and four major rivers, with many lesser holy places to be worshiped both by the people and the emperor.
Elaborate sacrifices of horses, rams, bulls, and a variety of foodstuffs were regularly offered at the major sites, presided over by officials with titles such as Grand Sacrificer and Grand Diviner. Important deities were correlated with the Five Phases wuxing , the modes of interaction of natural forces, the better to personify and control these powers.
A distinctive feature of Qin religion was sacrifices to four "Supreme Emperors" responsible for natural powers in each of the four quarters. Only the Emperor could worship these deities, a limitation true as well for two new rites he developed in , the feng and shan sacrifices. These were performed on sacred Mount Tai, in modern Shandong province, to symbolize that the ruler had been invested with power by Heaven itself.
Another driving force behind Qin encouragement of religious activities was the first Emperor's personal quest for immortality. We are told that in this quest he sent groups of young people across the China Sea to look for such islands of the immortals as Penglai. The Han.
The defeat of Qin forces in the civil wars leading up to the founding of the Han dynasty deposed Legalist political thought along with the second and last Qin emperor. It took several decades for the new Han dynasty to consolidate its power. Since the Legalists had developed the most detailed policies for administering an empire, many of these policies were followed in practice in modified form.
Some early Han scholars and emperors attempted to ameliorate royal power with a revival of Confucian concern for the people and Daoist principles of noninterference wuwei. For example, a palace counselor named Jia Yi B.
A similar point of view is presented in more Daoist form in the Huainanzi , a book presented to the throne in B. This book discusses the world as a fundamentally harmonious system of resonating roles and influences. The ruler's job is to guide it, as an experienced charioteer guides his team. Both Jia Yi and the Huainanzi assume that the rhythms that order society and government emanate from the cosmic Dao. The ruler's task is to discover and reinforce these rhythms for the benefit of all.
This understanding of a Daoist "art of rulership" is rooted in the teachings of the early Daoist texts discussed above Zhuangzi, Guanzi , and Laozi , which in the early Han were called the Huang-Lao school, the tradition of the Yellow Emperor and Laozi. Four other Huang-Lao texts were rediscovered in at Mawangdui, in a tomb sealed in B. This early form of Daoism, which was adopted by the early Han emperors, is concerned with the Dao as the creative source of both nature and man, their patterns of order, and the ontological basis of law and administration.
Here we see an attempt to apply Daoist philosophical principles to the ordering of society by blending them with Legalist ideas. Some Confucian books had escaped the flames of B. By this time scholars such as Xunzi had already incorporated the best thought of their day into fundamentally Confucian expositions that advocated a strong centralized state and an ethical teaching enforced by law.
This expanded interpretation of Confucius's teachings served his followers well in the early Han. They occupied the middle ground between Legalism and Daoist laissez-faire.
There was room in their perspective for political power, criminal law, advocacy of benevolent rule, moral suasion, religious rituals, and personal ethical development, all supported by a three-century tradition of training disciples to study sacred texts and emulate the models they provided.
In addition, the philosopher Dong Zhongshu c. In the hands of Dong Zhongshu this understanding became an elaborate statement of the relationship of society and nature, with an emphasis on natural justification for hierarchical social roles, focused on that of the ruler. Dong Zhongshu provided a more detailed cosmological basis for Confucian ethical and social teachings and made it clear that only a unified state could serve as a channel for cosmic forces and sanctions.
Dong was recognized as the leading scholar of the realm, and became spokesman for the official class. At his urging, the sixth Han emperor, Wudi r. Texts of other schools including the Daoist theories of administration noted above, were excluded. This meant in effect that Dong Zhongshu's version of Confucianism became the official state teaching, a status it retained throughout the Han dynasty. So it was that the humble scholar of Lu, dead for over three hundred years, was exalted as patron saint of the imperial system, a position he retained until State-supported temples were established in Confucius's name in cities all over the land, and his home at Qufu became a national shrine.
In these temples, spirit tablets of the master and his disciples replaced by images from to were venerated in elaborate and formal rituals. As the generations passed, the tablets of the most influential scholars of the age came to be placed in these temples as well, by imperial decree, and so the cult of Confucius became the ritual focus of the scholar-official class. Dong Zhongshu's incorporation of yin-yang thought into Confucian philosophy had the unfortunate effect of legitimating and accentuating what was already a patriarchal social system.
The root meanings of yin dark and yang light were not gendered, but neither did they necessarily imply a complementarity of equals. The predominant interpretation of the yin-yang polarity throughout Chinese history with a few texts like the Laozi as prominent exceptions understood the relationship as a hierarchical complementarity, with yin as quiescent and sinking and yang as active and rising. The general preference for yang over yin , combined with the patriarchal association of women with yin and men with yang, provided philosophical justification for the subservience of women to men.
Educated women as well as men accepted this as a fact of nature. Ban Zhao C. In general, Confucians believed that women could become Sages, but only by perfecting the virtues of the "woman's Way" as wives and mothers. Han state rituals were based upon those of Qin, but were greatly expanded and more elaborate. The first emperor, Gaozu, instituted the worship of a star god believed to be associated with Houji, the legendary founder of the Zhou royal line.
Temples for this deity were built in administrative centers around the realm, where officials were also instructed to worship gods of local mountains and rivers. Gaozu brought shamans to the palace and set up shrines for sacrifices to their regional deities. He also promoted the worship of his own ancestors; at his death temples in his honor were built in commanderies throughout the empire.
These efforts to institute an imperial religious system supported by officials at all levels were energetically continued by Emperor Wu, during whose fifty-four-year reign the foundations of imperial state religion were established for Chinese history into the twentieth century. The emperor's religious activities were in turn supported by the philosophy of Dong Zhongshu, with its emphasis on the central cosmic role of the ruler.
Emperor Wu revived the jiao or suburban sacrifice at the winter solstice to express imperial support for the revival of life forces. Taiyi was coequal with Heaven and earth, a symbol of both cosmic power and the emperor's status. In the period B. Emperor Wu renewed the feng and shan sacrifices at Mount Tai, the sacred mountain of the east, a key place of direct communication with Heaven for the sake of the whole realm.
Emperor Wu also toured the realm, sacrificing at important shrines along the way, all to express his religious convictions and assert his authority. Detailed instructions for these Han rituals were provided by handbooks of ritual and etiquette such as the Liji Record of Ritual , the present version of which was compiled in the second century B.
Here we find descriptions of royal rituals to be performed at the solstices and the equinoxes, as well as instructions for such matters as the initiation "capping" of young men and the veneration of ancestors. The emphasis throughout is on the intimate correlations of nature and society, so that social custom is given cosmic justification.
The Liji complements Dong Zhongshu's philosophy by extending similar understandings to the social life of the literate elite. In this context periodic rituals served as concentrated reminders of the cosmic basis of the whole cultural and political order. Thus did the imperial ruling class express its piety and solidify its position. It should be noted, however, that the old Zhou concept of the "mandate of Heaven" continued to influence Han political thought in a form elaborated and attenuated at the same time.
Particularly in the writings of Dong Zhongshu, evidence for divine approval or disapproval of the ruler was discerned in natural phenomena, such as comets or earthquakes, interpreted as portents and omens.
In accord with this belief, officials were appointed to record and interpret portents and to suggest appropriate responses, such as changes in ritual procedure and the proclamation of amnesties. The developing tradition of political portents recognized the importance of divine sanctions but provided a range of calibrated responses that enabled rulers to adjust their policies rather than face the prospect of rejection by Heaven.
The "mandate of Heaven" in its earlier and starker form was evoked chiefly as justification for rebellion in periods of dynastic decay. Nonetheless, portent theory in the hands of a conscientious official could be used in attempts to check or ameliorate royal despotism, and hence was an aspect of the state religious system that could challenge political power as well as support it.
The Han emperor Wu devoted much effort to attaining immortality, as had his Qin predecessor. As before, shamans and specialists in immortality potions were brought to court, and expeditions were sent off to look for the dwelling places of those who had defeated death.
The search for immortality became quite popular among those who had the money and literacy to engage in it. In part this was due to the transformation of the Yellow Emperor Huangdi into the patron deity of immortality, the earliest popular saving deity of this type in China.
This transformation, fostered by magicians or "technique specialists" fangshi at Emperor Wu's court, included stories that the Yellow Emperor had ascended to Heaven with his whole retinue, including a harem of over seventy.
A more common expression of hope for some sort of continuity after death may be seen in tombs of Han aristocrats and officials, many of which were built as sturdy brick replicas of houses or offices, complete with wooden and ceramic utensils, attendants, and animals, as well as food, drugs, clothing, jade, bamboo books, and other precious objects.
To a large extent this was a modification of Shang and Zhou traditions. However, in a few Han tombs there were tightly sealed coffins filled with an embalming fluid in which even the skin and flesh of the bodies have been preserved.
An elaborate silk banner has been found on top of one of these coffins, from the southern state of Chu, painted with a design evidently intended to guide the occupant to a paradise of the immortals, perhaps that of the Queen Mother of the West, Xi Wang Mu. Another destination for the dead was an underworld that was a Han elaboration of the old myth of the Yellow Springs, a shadowy place beneath the earth referred to as early as the eighth century B.
From the Han period, there are tomb documents by which living officials transferred the dead in their jurisdiction to those of their counterparts in the underworld. There are also references to a realm of the dead inside Mount Tai. The god of this mountain keeps registers of the lifespans of all, and death may be referred to as "to return to the Eastern Peak. These alternative beliefs represent the state of Chinese understandings of afterlife before Buddhist impact.
What came to be called the Former Han dynasty ended in 8 C. Wang's chief contribution to the history of Chinese religions was his active promotion of prognostication as a way of understanding the intimate relationship between Heaven and the court.
In 25 C. Liu Xiu r. Like Wang Mang, he actively supported prognostication at court, despite the criticism of rationalist scholars such as Huan Tan 43 B. A related development was controversy between two movements within Confucian scholarly circles, the so-called New Text school of the Former Han, and a later rationalistic reaction against it, the Old Text school. The New Text school developed out of Dong Zhongshu's concern with portents. Its followers wrote new commentaries on the classics that praised Confucius as a superhuman being who predicted the future hundreds of years beyond his time.
By the end of the first century B. These two traditions coexisted throughout the remainder of the Han dynasty, with the New Text scholars receiving the most imperial support through the first century C.
After Huan Tan the best known rationalist was Wang Chong, whose Lunheng Balanced Essays fiercely criticizes religious opinions of his day, including prognostication and belief in spirits of the dead. Although Wang Chong was not well known by his contemporaries, his thought was rediscovered in the third century and established as a key contribution to the skeptical tradition in Chinese philosophy. Its concern with portents and numerology also influenced Daoism.
We have noted the appearance of the Yellow Emperor as a divine patron of immortality, and as a representative of a new type of personified saving deity with power over a whole area of activity. In the latter half of the Han dynasty the number and popularity of such deities increased, beginning with the cult of the Queen Mother of the West Xi Wang Mu. She was associated with the Kunlun mountains in the northwest where she presided over a palace and received a royal visitor, King Mu of the Zhou dynasty, whom she predicted would be able to avoid death.
Hsi Wang Mu's promise of immortality to all became the central belief of an ecstatic popular cult in her name that swept across North China. Although this movement abated in a few months, the Queen Mother herself is commonly portrayed in Latter Han iconography. Kunlun is described as the center pillar of the world, from where she controls cosmic powers and the gift of immortality. This goddess has continued to have an important role in Chinese religion until the present day.
Mountain-dwelling immortals constituted another source of personal deities in this period. These beings were believed to descend to aid the ruler in times of crisis, sometimes with instructions from the Celestial Emperor Tiandi , sometimes themselves identified with the "perfect ruler" who would restore peace to the world.
By the second century C. We have seen that the book in his name contains passages that could be interpreted as support for the immortality cult, and by the first century he was referred to as an immortal himself. In an inscription of C. Laozi is described as a creator deity, equal in status to the sun, moon, and stars. A contemporary text assures his devotees that he has manifested himself many times in order to save mankind, that he will select those who believe in him to escape the troubles of the age, and that he will "shake the Han reign.
In this revelation Zhang was designated as the first "Celestial Master" and was empowered to perform rituals and write talismans that distributed this new manifestation of the Dao for the salvation of humankind.
Salvation was available to those who repented of their sins, believed in the Dao, and pledged allegiance to their Daoist master. The master in turn established an alliance between the gods and the devotee, who then wore at the waist a list or "register" of the names of the gods to be called on for protection. His teachings gave guidance on all levels of ancient Chinese life, from interactions between family members and in the public sphere, to educational standards and how states should be governed.
Confucius saw every aspect of life as being made up of obligations between people and entities, and rituals to convey the mutual dependency between them.
His teachings focused on humanism, including treating others the way you would want to be treated. He taught that if everyone fulfilled their roles and obligations with respect and kindness towards others, it would build a stronger state. While religious rituals were mentioned alongside all of the other rituals a person was expected to perform, Confucius did not focus on spiritual concerns like the afterlife, gods and goddesses, or mysticism.
This is why Confucianism is considered a philosophy rather than a religion, even though it is often lumped in with other major religions.
Confucianism became the dominant political philosophy during the Han Dynasty from B. Because Confucian teachings were conservative and told people to maintain their role in social order, the philosophy was used by the state to keep the status quo from that time forward.
The structure of Chinese society and its focus on rituals, familial respect and obligation, worship of ancestors, and self-discipline, remains greatly influenced by Confucius and his teachings. Taoism also called Daoism is a Chinese religion that developed a bit after Confucianism, around two thousand years ago. In contrast to Confucianism, Taoism is mainly concerned with the spiritual elements of life, including the nature of the universe.
In the Taoist structure of the universe, humans are meant to accept and yield to the Tao and only do things that are natural and in keeping with the Tao.
This puts Taoism in opposition to Confucianism in another way: it is not concerned about with humanistic morality, government, and society, all of which Taoists see as inventions of humans and not necessarily part of the Tao. At the same time, Taoists were interested in longevity, both of the human body and the soul. Achieving spiritual immortality through becoming one with nature is an important part of the Taoist religion.
Despite their differences, Taoist and Confucian ideas are not completely at odds with each other, so Chinese society was able to absorb concepts from both traditions. Taoism had influence on literature and the arts, but the biggest area of Taoist influence was in science. The Taoist focus on natural elements and observing how the natural world works helped to create Chinese medicine. Similar to the modern scientific method, Taoists observed how different medicines affected people and animals through experimentation.
Their collective knowledge gained through trying to improve human longevity made a huge contribution to health sciences. Buddhism was the third major belief system of ancient China. It was founded by Siddhartha Gautama, also called the Buddha, who lived in India around the sixth century B.
Buddhism is a philosophy that focuses on personal development and attainment of deep knowledge. Buddhists seek to achieve enlightenment through meditation, spiritual learning, and practice. They believe in reincarnation and that life is impermanent and full of suffering and uncertainty; the way to find peace is through reaching nirvana , a joyful state beyond human suffering.
There are many different sects that place different emphasis on various aspects of Buddhism. The two largest sects are Theravada Buddhism, which is found primarily in southern Asia, and Mahayana Buddhism, which is found in east Asia, including China. After its founding in India, Buddhism spread to and became popular in China in the first century C. Part of the reason Buddhism became popular in China was because of Taoism.
Some Buddhist practices were similar to Taoist ones, and Buddhist monks would use Taoist concepts to explain Buddhism to the Chinese, overcoming the cultural and language barrier between Indian and the Chinese people.
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