Society and culture of the Han Dynasty
Encyclopedia
The Han Dynasty
(206 BCE – 220 CE) was a period of ancient China
divided by the Western Han (206 BCE – 9 CE) and Eastern Han (25–220 CE) periods, when the capital cities were located at Chang'an
and Luoyang
, respectively. It was founded by Emperor Gaozu of Han and briefly interrupted by the regime
of Wang Mang
(r. 9–23 CE) who usurped the throne from a child Han emperor.
The Han Dynasty was an age of great economic
, technological
, cultural, and social progress in China. Its society was governed by an emperor
who shared power with an official bureaucracy and semi-feudal nobility
. Its laws
, customs
, literature
, and education
were largely guided by the philosophy and ethical system of Confucianism
, yet the influence of Legalism
and Daoism
(from the previous Zhou Dynasty
) could still be seen. Members of the scholarly-gentry class
who aspired to hold public office
were required to receive a Confucian-based education. A new synthetic ideology of Han Confucianism was created when the scholar Dong Zhongshu
(179–104 BCE) united the Confucian canon allegedly edited by Kongzi, or Confucius
(551–479 BCE), with cosmological cycles of yin and yang
and the Chinese five elements.
Although the social status of nobles, officials, farmers, and artisan-craftsmen
were considered above the station of the lowly registered merchant
, wealthy and successful businessmen acquired huge fortunes which allowed them to rival the social prestige of even the most powerful nobles and highest officials. Slaves were at the bottom of the social order, yet they represented only a tiny portion of the overall population. Retainers attached themselves to the estates of wealthy landowners, while medical physicians
and state-employed religious occultists could make a decent living. People of all social classes believed in various deities, spirits, immortals, and demons
. While Han Daoists were organized into small groups chiefly concerned with achieving immortality through various means, by the mid 2nd century CE they formed large hierarchical religious societies that challenged imperial authority and viewed Laozi
(fl. 6th century BCE) as a holy prophet
.
The typical Han-era Chinese household contained a nuclear family
with an average of four to five members, unlike in later dynasties when multiple generations and extended family
members commonly lived in the same household. Families were patrilineal, which made the father the supreme head of the house. Arranged marriage
s were the norm, while a new wife was expected to join the clan of her husband. Having sons over daughters was considered extremely important for the sake of carrying on ancestor worship. Although girls and women were expected by custom and Confucian tradition to behave passively towards their male relatives, mothers were given a familial status above that of their sons. Women also engaged in various professions in and outside of the home and were given protection under the law. The empress was superior in status to the male relatives of her consort clan
, while the mother of the emperor—the empress dowager
—had the authority to override his decisions and choose his successor
(if one had not been appointed before his death).
At the apex of Han society was the emperor
, a member of the Liu
family and thus a descendant of the founder Emperor Gaozu (r. 202 –195 BCE). His subjects were not allowed to address him by name; instead they used indirect references such as "under the steps to the throne" (bixia 陛下) or "superior one" (shang 上). If a commoner, government minister, or noble entered the palace
without official permission, the punishment was execution. Although the Commandant of Justice—one of the central government's Nine Ministers
—was in charge of meting out sentences in court cases, the emperor not only had the ability to override the Commandant's decision, but also had the sole ability to draft new laws or repeal old ones. An emperor could pardon anyone and grant general amnesties
. Although the emperor often obeyed the majority consensus
of his ministers in court conferences (tingyi 廷議), his approval was still needed for any state policy decision and he sometimes even rejected the majority opinion.
The emperor's most powerful relative was the empress dowager
, widow to the previous emperor and usually the natural mother of the emperor. If the grandmother of an emperor—the grand empress dowager
—was still alive during his reign, she enjoyed a superior position over the empress dowager. Emperors often sought the approval of the empress dowager for their decisions. If an emperor was only a child, he acted merely as a figurehead
while the empress dowager dominated court politics. She not only had the right to issue edicts and pardons, but if the emperor died without a designated heir, she had the sole right to appoint a new emperor. Below the empress dowager were the empress and imperial concubines. Although she was the wife of the emperor, the empress's position at court was not secure and she could be removed by the emperor. However, the empress did enjoy the submission of concubines as her subordinates, who advocated the elevation of their sons over the empress's at their own peril.
In the early Western Han, imperial relatives and some military officers who had served Emperor Gaozu were made kings who ruled over large semi-autonomous fiefs, but once the non-related kings had died off, an imperial edict outlawed all non-Liu family members from becoming kings. The emperor's brothers, paternal cousins, brother's sons, and emperor's sons—excluding the heir apparent
—were made kings. The emperor's sisters and daughters were made princess
es with fiefs. Although the central government eventually stripped away the political power of the kings and appointed their administrative staffs, kings still had a right to collect a portion of the taxes in their territory as personal income and enjoyed a social status that ranked just below the emperor. Each king had a son designated to be heir apparent, while his other sons and brothers were given the rank of marquess
and ruled over small marquessates where a portion of the taxes went to their private purse. Although kings and marquesses
enjoyed many privileges, the imperial court was at times aggressive towards them to check their power. Starting with Emperor Gaozu's reign, thousands of noble families, including those from the royal houses of Qi
, Chu
, Yan
, Zhao
, Han
, and Wei
from the Warring States Period
, were forcibly moved to the vicinity of the capital Chang'an
. In the first half of Western Han, resettlement could also be imposed on powerful and wealthy officials as well as individuals who owned property worth more than a million cash.
The position of regent
(officially known as General-in-Chief 大將軍) was created during Emperor Wu's
reign (r. 141–87 BCE) when he appointed three officials to form a triumvirate
regency over the central government while the child Emperor Zhao
(r. 87–74 BCE) sat on the throne. Regents were often relatives-in-law to the emperor through his empress's family, but they could also be men of lowly means who depended on the emperor's favor to advance their position at court. Eunuchs who maintained the harem
of the palace could also gain a similar level of power. They often came from the middle class and had links to trade. In the Western Han, there are only a handful of examples where eunuchs rose to power since the official bureaucracy was strong enough to suppress them. After the eunuch Shi Xian (石顯) became the Prefect of the Palace Masters of Writing (中尚書), Emperor Yuan
(r. 48–33 BCE) relinquished much of his authority to him, so that he was allowed to make vital policy decisions and was respected by officials. However, Shi Xian was expelled from office once Emperor Cheng
(33–7 BCE) took the throne. No palace eunuch would obtain comparable authority again until after 92 CE, when the eunuchs led by Zheng Zhong
(d. 107 CE) sided with Emperor He
(r. 88–105 CE) in a coup to overthrow the Dou 竇 clan of the empress dowager. Officials complained when eunuchs like Sun Cheng
(d. 132 CE) were awarded by Emperor Shun
(r. 125–144 CE) with marquessates, yet after the year 135 CE the eunuchs were given legal authority to pass on fiefs to adopted sons. Although Emperor Ling
(r. 168–189 CE) relinquished a great deal of authority to eunuchs Zhao Zhong
(d. 189 CE) and Zhang Rang
(d. 189 CE), the eunuchs were slaughtered in 189 CE when Yuan Shao
(d. 202 CE) besieged and stormed the palaces of Luoyang.
like commoners. Their punishments in court also had to gain the approval of the emperor. Officials were not exempt from execution, yet they were often given a chance to commit suicide as a dignified alternative. The most senior posts were the Three Excellencies
—excluding the Grand Tutor, a post that was irregularly occupied. The individual titles and functions of the Three Excellencies changed from Western to Eastern Han. However, their annual salaries remained at 10,000 bushel
s (shi 石) of grain, largely commuted to payments in coin cash and luxury items like silk
. Below them were the Nine Ministers
, each of whom headed a major government bureau and earned 2,000 bushels a year. The lowest-paid government employees made Equivalent to 100 bushels annually. It was thought that wealthy officials would be less tempted by bribes. Therefore, in the beginning of the dynasty, having a total assessed taxable wealth of one hundred thousand coins was a prerequisite for holding office. This was reduced to forty thousand coins in 142 BCE, yet from Emperor Wu's reign onwards this policy was no longer enforced.
Starting in Western Han was a system of recommendation
where local officials submitted proposals to the capital on which of their subordinates were worthy candidates for holding office; this created a patron-client relationship
between former superiors and successful nominees to higher office. With the enhanced prestige of the consort clan under Empress Dowager Dou
(d. 97 CE), a succession of regents from her clan and others amassed a large amount of clients whose chances of promotion hinged on the political survival of the empress dowager's clan, which was often short-lived. Aside from patron-client relationships, one could use family connections to secure office. Patricia Ebrey writes that in the Western Han, access to public office
and promotion through social mobility
were open to a larger segment of the populace than in Eastern Han. A third of the two hundred and fifty-two Eastern Han government officials who had biographies in the Book of Later Han
were sons or grandsons of officials, while a fifth came from prominent provincial families or had ancestors who had served as officials. For forty-six of the one hundred and ten years between 86 to 196 CE, at least one post of the Three Excellencies was occupied by a member of either the Yuan or Yang clan.
Many central government officials also began their careers as subordinate officers for commandery-level administrations. There are only rare cases (i.e. involving military merit during rebellions of late Eastern Han
) when subordinate officers of county-level administrations advanced to the level of central government. Even if one secured an office by these means, an official was still expected to be competent, thus a formal education became the hallmark of those aspiring to fill public office. In addition to private tutoring, the Imperial University
was established in 124 BCE which then accommodated only fifty pupils, but by the 2nd century CE the student body had reached about thirty thousand. These students could be appointed by the emperor to various government posts according to their examination grades.
Despite a decline in social mobility for those of less prominent clans, the local elites became far more integrated into a nationwide upper class social structure during the Eastern Han period, thus expanding the classification of who belonged to the upper class. The emerging gentry class
—which became fully consolidated during the Eastern Han—consisted of unemployed scholars, teachers, students, and government officials. These men, although geographically separated and mired in local activities, started to view themselves as participants in wider national affairs of politics and scholarship. They recognized shared values of filial piety
, deference, and emphasizing study in the Five Classics over holding public office. Emperors Yuan and Cheng were forced to abandon their resettlement schemes for officials and their families around the royal tombs settlement in 40 BCE and 15 BCE, respectively; unlike the days of Emperor Wu, Cho-Yun Shu—a Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh
—asserts that at this point officials and scholars had so much influence in both local and national-level politics that to forcibly relocate them became unthinkable.
In a show of solidarity against the eunuchs' interference in court politics with the coup against the regent Liang Ji
(d. 159 CE), a widespread student protest
broke out where Imperial University students took to the streets and chanted the names of the eunuchs they opposed. At the instigation of the eunuchs, Emperor Huan
(r. 146–168 CE) initiated the Partisan Prohibitions
in 166 CE, a wide-scale proscription against Li Ying (李膺) and his associates in the Imperial University and in the provinces from holding office (branded as partisan
s: 黨人). With the suicide of regent Dou Wu
(d. 168 CE) in his confrontation with the eunuchs shortly after Emperor Ling
(r. 168–189 CE) was placed on the throne, the eunuchs banned hundreds more from holding office while selling offices at the highest bidder. Repulsed by what they viewed as a corrupted government, many gentrymen considered a moral, scholarly life superior to holding office, and thus rejected nominations to serve at court. Until they were repealed in 184 CE (to garner gentry support against the Yellow Turban Rebellion
), the partisant prohibitions created a large independent, disaffected portion of the gentry who did not simply return to a reclusive life in their hometowns, but maintained contacts with other gentry throughout China and actively engaged in the protest movement. Acknowledging that the gentry class was able to recruit and certify itself, the Chancellor Cao Cao
(155–220 CE) established the nine-rank system
where a distinguished gentry figure in each county and commandery would assign local gentlemen a rank that the government would use to evaluate nominees for office.
s while living in the city. They mostly relied on poor tenant farmer
s (diannong 佃農) who paid rent in the form of roughly fifty percent of their produce in exchange for land, tools, draft animals, and a small house. Wage laborers
(gunong 雇農) and slaves were also employed on the estates of the wealthy, although they were not as numerous as tenants. During Western Han, the small independent owner-cultivator represented the majority of farming peasants
, yet their economic struggle to remain independent during times of war, natural disaster and crisis drove many into debt, banditry, slavery, and dramatically increased the number of landless tenants by late Eastern Han. The social status of poor independent owner-cultivators was above tenants and wage laborers, yet below that of wealthy landowners. While wealthy landowners employed tenants and wage laborers, landowners who managed small to medium-sized estates often acted as managers over their sons who tilled the fields and daughters who weaved clothes and engaged in sericulture
to produce silk for the home or sale at market.
During the Western Han, farming peasants formed the majority of those who were conscripted
by the government to perform corvée
labor or military duties. For the labor service (gengzu 更卒), males aged fifteen to fifty-six would be drafted for one month out of the year to work on construction projects and perform other duties in their commanderies and counties. For the military obligation (zhengzu 正卒), all males aged twenty-three were to train for one year in one of three branches of the military: infantry, cavalry, or navy. Until they reached age fifty-six, they were liable to perform one year of active service as troops sent to guard the frontiers from hostile nomads or to act as guards in the capital city. Significant changes were made to this system during Eastern Han; a commuting tax could be paid by peasants if they wanted to avoid the one-month labor obligation, since hired labor became more popular in construction and other projects. The military service obligation could even be avoided if a peasant paid a commuting tax, since the Eastern Han military became largely a volunteer force
. Other commoners such as merchants were also able to join the army.
during the Han had a socio-economic status between that of farmers and merchants. Yet some were able to obtain a valuable income, such as one craftsman who made knives and swords and was able to eat food fit for nobles and officials. Artisans and craftsmen also enjoyed a legal status that was superior to merchants. Unlike lowly merchants, artisans were allowed by law to wear fancy silks, ride on horseback, and ride in carriages. There were also no laws which barred artisans from becoming officials. An artisan painter who worked at the Imperial Academy turned down many offers to become nominated for public office. In contrast, a bureaucrat who appointed a merchant as an official could suffer impeachment from office, while some even avoided nominations by claiming they were merchants.
Despite their legal privileges over that of merchants, the work of artisans was considered by Han Confucian scholars to be of secondary importance to that of farmers. This is perhaps largely because scholars and officials could not survive without the farmer's product and taxes paid in grain. The government relied on taxed grain to fund its military campaigns and stored surplus grain to mitigate widespread famine during times of poor harvest. Despite the prominence given to farmers, Confucian scholars did accept that artisans performed a vital economic role. This view was only rejected by a small minority of Legalists
, who advocated a society of only soldiers and farmers, and certain Daoists who wanted everyone to live in self-sufficient villages and without commercial interests.
Artisans could be privately employed or they could work for the government. While government workshops employed convicts, corvée laborers, and state-owned slaves to perform menial tasks, the master craftsman
was paid a significant income for his work in producing luxury items such as bronze mirrors
and lacquerware
s.
With the exception of the bookseller
and apothecary
, the scholarly gentry class did not engage in trade professions, since scholars and government officials viewed the merchant class
as lowly and contemptible. Sympathetic to the plight of farming peasants who had lost their land, a court edict of 94 CE stipulated that farming peasants who had been reduced to selling wares as street peddler
s were not to be taxed as registered merchants, since the latter were heavily taxed by the state. Registered merchants, the majority being small urban shopkeeper
s, were obligated to pay commercial taxes in addition to the poll tax
. Registered merchants were also forced by law to wear white-colored clothes, an indication of their low status. Registered merchants could be singled out for conscription into the armed forces and forced to resettle in lands to the deep south where malaria
was known to be prevalent. In contrast, itinerant merchants were often richer due to their trade between a network of towns and cities and their ability to avoid registering as merchants. Starting with Emperor Gaozu's reign, registered merchants were banned from wearing silk clothes, riding on horseback, or holding public office. This is in stark contrast to unregistered itinerant merchants who Chao Cuo
(d. 154 BCE) states wore fine silks, rode in carriages pulled by fat horses, and whose wealth allowed them to associate with government officials.
Although these laws were relaxed over time, Emperor Wu renewed the state's persecution of merchants when in 119 BCE he made it illegal for registered merchants to purchase land. If they violated this law, their land and slaves would be confiscated by the state. The effectiveness of this law is questionable, since contemporary Han writers mention merchants owning huge tracts of land. A merchant who owned property worth a thousand catties
of gold—equivalent to ten million cash coins—was considered a great merchant. Such a fortune was one hundred times larger than the average income of a middle class landowner-cultivator and dwarfed the annual 200,000 cash-coin income of a marquess who collected taxes from a thousand households. Some merchant families made fortunes worth over a hundred million cash, which was equivalent to the wealth acquired by the highest officials in government.
Merchants engaged in a multitude of private trades and industries. A single merchant often combined several trades to make greater profits, such as animal breeding
, farming, manufacturing, trade, and money-lending
. Some of the most profitable commodities sold during the Han were salt and iron, since a wealthy salt or iron distributor could own properties worth as much as ten million cash. In the early Western Han period, powerful merchants could muster a workforce of over a thousand peasants to work in salt mine
s and marshes to evaporate brine
to make salt, or at ironworks
sites where they operated bellows
and casted iron implements
. To curb the influence of such wealthy industrialists, Emperor Wu nationalized
these industries by 117 BCE and for the first time drafted former merchants with technical know-how such as Sang Hongyang
(d. 80 BCE) to head these government monopolies. However, by the Eastern Han period the central government abolished the state monopolies on salt and iron. Even before this, the state must have halted its employment of former merchants in the government salt and iron agencies, since an edict of 7 BCE restated the ban on merchants entering the bureaucracy. However, the usurper Wang Mang
(r. 9–23 CE) did employ some merchants as low-level officials with a salary-rank of 600 bushels. Another profitable industry was brewing wine and liquor, which the state briefly monopolized from 98 to 81 BCE, yet relinquished its production to private merchants once again (with alcohol taxes reinstalled). The official Cui Shi (催寔) (d. 170 CE) started a brewery
business to help pay for his father's costly funeral, an act which was heavily criticized by his fellow gentrymen who considered this sideline occupation a shameful one for any scholar. Cinnabar
mining was also a very lucrative industry.
Commoners known as guests and retainers (binke 賓客) who lived on the property of a host in exchange for services had existed since the Warring States Period. Retainers often originally belonged to other social groups, and sometimes they were fugitives seeking shelter from authorities. Hosts were often wealthy nobles and officials, yet they were sometimes wealthy commoners. In a typical relationship, a host provided lodging, food, clothing, and carriage transport for his retainers in return for occasional and non-routine work or services such as an advisory role, a post as bodyguard, menial physical labor around the house, and sometimes more dangerous missions such as committing assassinations, fighting off roving bandits, or riding into battle to defend the host. Others could work as spies, scholarly protégés, or astrologers
.
A host treated his retainers very well and showered them with luxury gifts if he wanted to boast his wealth and status. One retainer even received a sword scabbard decorated with jade and pearls, while others were given items like shoes decorated with pearls. However, not all retainers shared the same status, as those showered with gifts often provided highly skilled work or greater services; retainers who were not as skilled were given lesser gifts and seated in less honorable positions when meeting the host. Regardless of status, any retainer was allowed to come and go from his host's residence as he or she pleased, unlike a slave who was the property of his master and permanently attached to the estate. There was no official government policy on how to deal with retainers, but when they broke laws they were arrested, and when their master broke the law, sometimes the retainers were detained alongside him.
Retainers formed a large portion of the fighting forces amassed by the future Emperor Guangwu
(r. 25–57 CE) during the civil war against Wang Mang's failing regime. The military role of retainers became much more pronounced by the late 2nd century CE during the political turmoil that would eventually split the empire into three competing states
. By then, hosts began to treat retainers as their personal troops (buqu 部曲), which undercut the freedoms of mobility and independence that earlier retainers had enjoyed. Whereas individual retainers had earlier joined a host by their own personal decision, by the late 2nd century CE the lives of the retainers' entire families became heavily controlled by the host.
(nuli 奴隸) comprised roughly 1% of the population, a proportion far less than the contemporary Greco-Roman world
which relied on the labor of a large slave population. Slaves were classified into two categories: those who were privately owned, and those who were owned by the state. Privately owned slaves were often former peasants who fell into debt and sold themselves into slavery, while others were former government slaves bestowed to nobles and high officials as rewards for their services. State-owned slaves were sometimes prisoners of war (yet not all were made slaves). However, most slaves were tributary gifts given to the court by foreign states, families of criminals who committed treason against the state, and former private slaves who were either donated to authorities (since this would exempt the former slaveholder from labor obligations) or confiscated by the state if their master had broken a law. In both Western and Eastern Han, arrested criminals became convict
s and it was only during the reign of Wang Mang that counterfeit
ing criminals were made into slaves.
State-owned slaves were put to work in palaces, offices, workshops, stables, and sometimes state-owned agricultural fields, while privately owned slaves were employed in domestic services and sometimes farming. However, the vast majority of non-independent farmers working for wealthy landowners were not hired laborers or slaves, but were landless peasants who paid rent as tenants. It might have been more economically feasible to maintain tenants instead of slaves, since slave masters were obligated to pay an annual poll tax
of 240 coins for each slave they owned (the same rate merchants had to pay for their poll tax). Government slaves were not assigned to work in the government's monopolized industries over iron and salt (which lasted from Emperor Wu's reign until the beginning of Eastern Han). Privately owned slaves were usually assigned to kitchen duty while others fulfilled roles as armed bodyguards, mounted escorts, acrobats, jugglers, dancers, singers, and musicians.
The children of both government and private slaves were born slaves. Government slaves could be granted freedom by the emperor if they were deemed too elderly, if the emperor pitied them, or if they committed a meritous act worthy of a manumission
. In one exceptional case, the former slave Jin Midi
(d. 86 BCE) became one of the regents over the government. Private slaves could buy their freedom from their master, while some masters chose to free their slaves. Although slaves were subject to beatings if they did not obey their masters, it was against the law to murder a slave; kings were stripped of their kingdoms after it was found that they had murdered slaves, while Wang Mang even forced one of his sons to commit suicide for murdering a slave. An edict of 35 CE repealed the death penalty for any slave who killed a commoner.
Not all slaves had the same social status. Some slaves of wealthy families lived better than commoners since they were allowed to wear luxurious clothes and consume quality food and wine. Slaves of high officials could even be feared and respected. The slaves of regent Huo Guang
(d. 68 BCE) sometimes came armed to the marketplace and fought commoners, forced the Imperial Secretary to kowtow
and apologize (after a scuffle with his slaves over the right-of-way on the street), and were provided services by some officials who sought a promotion through Huo Guang's influence.
In addition to officials, teachers, merchants, farmers, artisans, and retainers, there were many other occupations. The pig-breeder
was not seen as a lowly profession if it was merely utilized by a poor scholar to pay for a formal education. For example, the first chancellor
in Han to lack either a military background or a title as marquess was the pig-breeder Gongsun Hong (公孫弘) of Emperor Wu's reign. Physician
s who practiced medicine
and studied medical classics
could not only make a decent income, but were also able to gain an education and become officials. The physician Hua Tuo
(d. 208 CE) was nominated for office while another became Prefect of the Gentlemen of the Palace (郎中令). Those who practiced occult arts of Chinese alchemy
and mediumship
were often employed by the government to conduct religious sacrifices, while on rare occasions—such as with Luan Da
(d. 112 BCE)—an occultist might marry a princesses or be enfeoffed as a marquess. While it was socially acceptable for gentry scholars to engage in the occult arts of divination
and Chinese astrology
, career diviners were of a lower status and earned only a modest income. Other humble occultist professions included sorcery
and physiognomy
; like merchants, those who practiced sorcery were banned from holding public office. Being a butcher
was another lowly occupation, yet there is one case where a butcher became an official during Emperor Gaozu's reign, while Empress He
(d. 189 CE) and her brother, the regent He Jin
(d. 189 CE), came from a family of butchers. Runners and messengers who worked for the government were also considered to have a lowly status, yet some later became government officials.
(d. 338 BCE) of the State of Qin
. All males above the age of 15 (excluding slaves) could be promoted in rank up to level eight. When a commoner was promoted in rank, he was granted a more honorable place in the seating arrangements of hamlet banquets, was given a greater portion of hunted game at the table, was punished less severely for certain crimes, and could become exempt from labor obligations to the state. Moreover, he was exempted from labor service obligations. This system favored the elderly, since a longer lifespan meant more opportunities to become promoted. In addition to an increase in salary (see table to the right), newly promoted men were granted wine and ox-meat for a celebratory banquet. The 19th and 20th ranks were both marquess ranks, yet only a 20th rank allowed one to have a marquessate fief.
Promotions in rank were decided by the emperor and could occur on special occasions, such as installation of a new emperor, inauguration of a new reign title
, the wedding of a new empress, or the selection of a royal heir apparent
. The central government sometimes sold ranks to collect more revenues for the state. The official Chao Cuo
(d. 154 BCE) once wrote that anyone who presented a substantial amount of agricultural grain to the government would also be promoted in rank.
that contained at least several hamlets
. An average hamlet contained about a hundred families and usually was enclosed by a wall with two gates. At the center of social life in the hamlet was the religious altar (built in honor of a local deity
) where festivities could be staged. Each district and county also had an official religious altar. The official reach of government extended no further than the district level, where county-appointed officials included the chief of police
who maintained law and order and the district tax collector. However, the government was able to control local society at the hamlet level with their bestowal of twenty ranks.
The government funded flood control
projects involving the building of new canals, thus aiding the speed of waterborne transport and allowing undeveloped areas to become irrigated farmlands
. These conscription labor projects allowed for the building of new hamlets which were dependent on the government for their livelihoods. When the authority of the central government declined in the late Eastern Han period, many commoners living in such hamlets were forced to flee their lands and work as tenants on large estates of wealthy landowners. The people of older hamlets which never had to rely on central government projects for their wellbeing or existence often sought support from powerful local families.
The Western Han capital at Chang'an
was divided into one hundred and sixty walled residential wards. Affairs of each ward were overseen by a low-ranking official. Influential families within the wards usually maintained social order. Historians are still unsure as to how many government-controlled marketplaces existed in Chang'an. Although there are claims of nine markets, it is possible that seven of them were actually divisible parts of two main markets: the East Market and West Market. Both the East Market and West Market had a two-story government office with a flag and drum placed on the roof. A market chief and deputy were headquartered in each of these buildings, yet not much is known about their involvement in the marketplace. In the Eastern Han capital of Luoyang
, the market chief's office employed thirty-six sub-officers who ventured into the marketplace daily to maintain law and order. They also collected taxes on commercial goods, assigned standard prices for specific commodities on the basis of monthly reviews, and authorized contract
s between merchants and their customers or clients. Besides merchants engaging in marketplace violations, other crimes were committed by adolescent street gangs who often wore clothes distinguishing their gang. The maintenance of law and order outside the market and in slum areas was conducted by constable
s; Han officials sometimes argued for increasing their salaries which they assumed would encourage them to reject bribes from criminals.
There were many amusements in the cities which could attract audiences rich and poor, such as trained animals performing tricks, cockfight
ing and caged animal fights between tigers, horse racing
, puppet shows
, musical performances
with dancing, acrobatic feats
, and juggling
. Wealthy families could afford their own house choirs and five-piece orchestras with bells, drums, flutes, and stringed instruments. Gambling
and board game
s such as liubo
also provided entertainment.
Chinese kinship relations during the Han were influenced by Confucian
mores and involved both immediate nuclear family
and extended family
members. The Chinese family was patrilineal, since a father's sons did not consider a mother's kin to be part of their clan; instead, they were considered 'outside relatives'. The Han Dynasty law code inherited the Qin Dynasty
(221–206 BCE) law that any family with more than two sons had to pay extra taxes. This was not repealed until the Cao Wei
period (220–265 CE). The average Han family under one household typically had about four or five immediate family members, which was unlike the large extended families under one household in later dynasties. It was common during Han to send adult married sons away with a portion of the family fortune and visit them occasionally, yet in all dynasties during and after the Tang Dynasty
(618–907 CE), a son who moved away and lived separately from his living parents would be considered a criminal. Larger families appeared during the Eastern Han when some married brothers chose to live with each other's families. However, a household with three generations living under its roof was incredibly rare. This is in contrast to the Jin Dynasty (265–420 CE), when having three or more generations under one roof was commonplace.
or lineage involved men who shared a common patrilineal ancestor, yet were divided into subgroups whose behavior towards each other was regulated according to Confucian mores which dictated what relative should be closer and more intimate. The four different subgroups were: (1) brother, brother's sons, and brother's grandsons; (2) father's brothers, father's brother's sons and grandsons; (3) paternal grandfather's brothers, their sons, and grandsons; and (4) paternal great-grandfather's brothers, their sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons. While one was expected to mourn for an entire year over the death of any relative in the first subgroup, one was expected to mourn for only five months when a relative in the second subgroup had died. No ritual mourning was expected at all for relatives in the third and fourth subgroups. While a son mourned three years for a father's death, he only mourned one year for his mother's. Since carrying on the patrilineal line meant the continuation of ancestor worship, it was important to have at least one son, even if he was adopted
from another family (although it was considered imperative that he share the same surname
, otherwise his ancestral sacrifices could be considered null and void).
The majority of clan or lineage groups were not very influential in local society. However, prominent kinship groups could enjoy a great deal of ad hoc influence, especially if a member served as a government official. Wealthy scholars or officials often shared the same kinship group with poor commoners. Since clan members were expected to defend fellow members (even to the point of murder), government authorities constantly struggled to suppress powerful kinship groups. Local lineage groups formed the backbone of rebel forces in the popular uprising against Wang Mang in the early 1st century CE. When central government authority broke down in the late Eastern Han, less-developed areas of the country remained relatively stable due to entrenched kinship groups, while in heavily developed areas (where kinship groups had been effectively broken down by the state) there were many more peasants willing to turn to rebel movements for protection and survival.
as agreements and bonds formed between two clans (with property as the chief concern), not necessarily two individuals. A father's input on who his sons and daughters should marry carried more weight than the mother, although a grandfather could override a father's decision. Once a couple had married, the new wife was obligated to visit the family temple so she could become part of the husband's clan and be properly worshipped by her descendants after death. However, she retained her natal surname. The vast majority of people during Han practiced monogamy
, although wealthy officials and nobles could afford to support one or many concubines in addition to their legal wife.
Although the ideal ages for marriage were thirty for a man and twenty for a woman, it was common for a male to marry at age sixteen and a female at age fourteen. To encourage families to marry off their daughters, a law was introduced in 189 BCE that increased the poll tax rate fivefold for unmarried women between the ages of fifteen and thirty. People of the Han practiced a strict form of exogamy
where one could not marry a person who had the same surname, even if both partners could not be traced back to a common ancestor (however, this excluded the royal family, who sometimes married distant relatives for political reasons). Officials often married into families with officials of equal status and sometimes married royal princesses or had their daughters marry kings and even the emperor.
By custom there were seven conditions where a man could divorce his wife. These were: (1) disobedience to parents-in-law, (2) barrenness (unable to continue family line), (3) adultery (mixing another clan's blood into the family), (4) jealousy (of concubines), (5) incurable disease (unable to continue family line), (6) loquacity (not getting along with brothers-in-law or sisters-in-law), and (7) theft. However, a husband was not allowed to divorce his wife if she had completed three years of mourning for one of his deceased parents, if there were no living relatives in her father's family to return to, or if the husband's family was originally poor but became rich after marriage. Sometimes women were also able to initiate the divorce and remarry if the husband's family was in poverty, he was diseased, or his in-laws were too abusive. Although remarriage was frowned upon (especially since divorce meant a wife took away her dowry wealth from her ex-husband's family), it was nonetheless common amongst divorcees and widowers in all social groups.
, which were sometimes equal to a brother's share of wealth in the will. The second type of inheritance involved the practice of primogeniture
, where the official title was inherited by only one son. This was as true of the emperor as it was for any king, marquess, or commoner of the twenty ranks. However, to limit the power of the kings while still upholding primogeniture, an imperial edict of 127 BCE stated that kings had to divide the territories of their kingdoms between the chosen successor (i.e. heir apparent) and the kings' brothers, who were made marquesses, thus establishing new marquessates and effectively reducing the size of every kingdom with each generation.
The lady historian Ban Zhao
(45–116 CE) wrote in her Lessons for Women
that, like the opposite and complementary forces of yin and yang
, men's great virtues were strength and rigidity, while a woman's great virtues were respect and compliance. Throughout her life, a Han woman was to bend to the will of first her father, then her husband, and then her adult son (三從四德). However, there are many recorded deviations from this rule, as some Han women are written to have engaged in heated arguments with their husbands over concubines (sometimes beating concubines out of jealousy and to punish the husband), wrote essays and letters for husbands serving as government officials, and sometimes husbands turned to their wives for advice on political affairs of the court. When a father died, the eldest son was theoretically the senior member of the family, yet as hinted in various works of Han literature, they still had to obey the will of their mother and she could even force them to kowtow to her when apologizing for an offense. Deviations from common customs regarding gender were especially pronounced in the imperial family. The empress was able to give orders to her male relatives (even her father) and if they disobeyed her, she could publicly reprimand and humiliate them.
Certain occupations were traditionally reserved for women, while they were also exempted from corvée labor duties. Women were expected to rear children, weave clothes for the family, and perform domestic duties such as cooking; although farming was considered men's work, sometimes women tilled fields alongside their husbands and brothers. Some women formed communal spinning and weaving groups to pool resources together to pay for candles, lamp oil, and heat during night and winter. A successful textile business could employ hundreds of women. Singing and dancing to entertain wealthy patrons were other common professions open for women. When a husband died, sometimes the widow became the sole supporter of her children, and thus had to make a living weaving silk cloths or making straw sandles to sell in the market. Some women also turned to the humble profession of sorcery for income. Other more fortunate women could become renowned medical physicians who provided services to the families of high officials and nobility. Some wealthy women engaged in luxury trade, such as one who frequently sold pearls to a princess. Some even aided in their husband's business decisions. Female merchants donned in silk clothes which rivaled even female nobles' attire were considered immoral compared to the ideal woman weaver.
The historian Sima Tan
(d. 110 BCE) wrote that the Legalist tradition
inherited by Han from the previous Qin Dynasty taught that imposing severe man-made laws which were short of kindness would produce a well-ordered society, given that human nature was innately immoral and had to be checked. 'Legalism' was the label created by Han scholars to describe the socio-political philosophy formulated largely by Shen Buhai
(d. 340 BCE), Shang Yang
(d. 338 BCE), and Han Fei
(c. 280 – c. 233 BCE), a philosophy which stressed that government had to rely on a strict system of punishments and rewards to maintain law and order. Some early Western Han officials were influenced by the tenet of 'nonaction'
apparent in Han Fei's work and the Daoist Laozi
. By utilizing this concept, they argued that once laws and administrative systems were set in place, the government functioned smoothly and intervention on behalf of the ruler became unnecessary. This school of thought was known as 'Yellow Emperor and Laozi'
(Huang-Lao 黃老), which gained full acceptance at court under the patronage of Empress Dowager Dou
(d. 135 BCE). Its followers believed that the originator of ordered civilization was the mythical Yellow Emperor
, a view that contradicted later Confucian scholars' views that the mythological Yao
and Shun were responsible for bringing man out of a state of anarchy. Works such as the Huainanzi
(presented in 139 BCE) introduced new systematic ideas about the cosmos which undercut the message of Huang-Lao thought. Scholars such as Shusun Tong
(叔孫通) began to express greater emphasis for ethical ideas espoused in 'Classicist' philosophical works such as those of Kongzi
(i.e. Confucius, 551–479 BCE), an ideology anachronistically known as Confucianism
. Emperor Gaozu found Shusun Tong's Confucian reforms of court rituals useful so long as they further exalted his status, yet it was not until Emperor Wu's reign that Confucianism gained exclusive patronage at court.
, harmonious relationships
, ritual
, and righteousness. The amalgamation of these ideas into a theological
system involving earlier cosmological theories of yin and yang
as well as the five phases (i.e. natural cycles which governed Heaven, Earth, and Man) was first pioneered by the official Dong Zhongshu
(179–104 BCE). Although full authenticity of Dong's authorship of the Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals
comes into question with hints that parts were rewritten around the time of Liu Xiang (79–8 BCE) or Liu Xin
(d. 23 CE), three of his original memorials sent to the throne discussing his syncretic version of Confucianism were preserved in the 1st-century-CE Book of Han
.
Since his model incorporated and justified the imperial government into the natural order of the universe, it appealed to Emperor Wu, who in 136 BCE abolished non-Confucian academic chairs or erudites (博士) not dealing with the Confucian Five Classics: the Classic of Poetry
, the Classic of Changes
, the Classic of Rites
, the Classic of History
, and the Spring and Autumn Annals
. Expanding on the position of Mengzi
(c. 372 – 289 BCE) that human nature was innately good, Dong wrote that people needed external nourishment of education to become 'awakened' and develop morality. To produce morally sound officials, Emperor Wu further sponsored Confucian education when he established the Imperial University in 124 BCE. Despite mainstream acceptance of Confucianism for the rest of Han (and until the end of the Qing Dynasty
in 1911 CE), philosophers still defended some Legalist ideas while the state's laws and policies reflect a compromise reached between Legalism and Han Confucianism.
There were varying regional traditions or 'schools' within Confucianism assigned to certain texts. The two which caused most debate were New Texts
and Old Texts
traditions. The former represented works transmitted orally after the Qin book burning
of 213 BCE, and the latter was newly discovered texts alleged by Kong Anguo (孔安國), Liu Xin, and others to have been excavated from the walls of Kongzi's home, displayed archaic written characters
, and thus were more authentic versions. Although initially rejected, the Old Texts found acceptance at the courts of Emperor Ping
(r. 1 BCE – 5 CE) and Wang Mang, were rejected by Emperor Guangwu, and accepted once more by Emperor Zhang only to be rejected a third time by the following rulers.
In contrast to Dong's certainty about innate goodness, the contemporary writer Jia Yi
(201–169 BCE) synthesized the opposing perspectives of Mengzi and Xunzi (c. 312 – c. 230 BCE) in the chapter "Protecting and Tutoring" (Baofu 保傅) of his book New Recommendations (Xinshu 新書) to argue that human nature was malleable and thus neither originally good or evil. Han Confucianism was transformed in the Eastern Han period when scholars struggled to understand how Wang Mang's regime had failed despite its great sponsorship of Confucian reform
. The transition from Western Han idealism to Eastern Han skepticism can be represented in part by the Model Sayings (Fayan 法言) of Yang Xiong (53 BCE – 18 CE), who argued that human nature was indeterminate, that one could cultivate good and escape negative situations by learning the valuable precepts of many schools of thought (not just Confucianism), yet man had no control over his ultimate fate (命) decided by Heaven. In his New Discussions (Xinlun 新論), Huan Tan
(43 BCE –28 CE) argued that although the Han court sponsored Confucian education, the government had become corrupt and thus undermined Dong Zhongshu's cosmically ordained belief that Confucian education went hand-in-hand with political success. In his Balanced Discourse
(Lunheng), Wang Chong
(27–100 CE) argued that human life was not a coherent whole dictated by a unitary will of Heaven as in Dong's synthesis, but rather was broken down into three planes: biological (mental and physical), sociopolitical, and moral, elements which interacted with each other to produce different results and random fate. Eastern Han Confucians incorporated ideas of Legalism and Daoism to explain how society could be salvaged, such as Wang Fu
(78–163 CE) in his Comments of a Recluse
(Qian fu lun) who argued that the evils accumulated by mankind over time could be rectified by direct engagement of the body-politic (the Legalist approach), but that the individual had to cultivate personal virtue in the meantime as a long-term solution (the Daoist approach).
in a small town or village could sometimes gather a following of several hundred to over a thousand students. Students were expected to pay tuition
, thus a teacher enjoyed a significant salary. His standing in the local community was usually paramount, and was even sought as an arbiter in disputes. Although the size of the Imperial Academy was greatly expanded in Eastern Han, private schools grew in importance as the imperial government lost authority and its academy's persecution of Old Text tradition drove many to pursue Old Text studies in private institutions.
Before the Records of the Grand Historian
(Shiji) by Sima Qian
(145–86 BCE), there existed terse chronicle
s of events such as the Spring and Autumn Annals and the chronicle found at Shuihudi
covering events in the State of Qin and Qin Dynasty from 306 to 217 BCE. There was also the Classic of History—part of the Confucian canon—which recorded the deeds of past rulers and political events (sometimes mythological instead of historical). However, Sima's work is considered the first of China's Standard Histories
, laid the groundwork for Chinese historiography
by creating the first universal history
of China. He divided his work of one hundred and thirty chapters into basic annals, chronological tables in grid format (with year-by-year accounts since 841 BCE, the start of the Gonghe
regency), treatises on general subjects (such as the economy
and the calendar
), histories of hereditary houses and states, biographies
on individuals arranged in roughly chronological order, and his own autobiography
as the last chapter. Being a court archivist allowed Sima to utilize eighty textual sources in addition to memorials, edicts, and stone inscriptions. These sources enhanced the enormous scope of his work, which mentions roughly four thousand people by name. He also traveled extensively to interview witnesses for more recent accounts.
Unlike the Western historiographical tradition
established by the Greek Herodotus
(c. 484 c. – 425 BCE), University of North Carolina
associate professor Dr. Grant Hardy asserts that Sima's work was intended to be a textual microcosm
representing every aspect of the Universe, Earth, and Man in model form, in much the same way that the raised-relief map
in the tomb of Qin Shi Huang
(r. 221–210 BCE) represented his empire. Hardy explains that this was not unique to Sima's work, as Han scholars believed encoded secrets existed in the Spring and Autumn Annals, which was deemed "a microcosm incorporating all the essential moral and historical principles by which the world operated" and future events could be prognosticated. However, Hardy's microcosm thesis as an explanation for the Shijis inconsistencies in ideological approach, organization, and literary characteristics has been criticized by Michael Loewe
and David Schaberg. They express doubt about Hardy's view that Sima intended his work to be a well-planned, homogeneous model of reality, rather than a loosely connected collection of narratives which retains the original ideological biases of the various sources used.
The next Standard History was the Book of Han
, compiled by Ban Biao
(3–54 CE), his son Ban Gu
(32–92 CE), and his daughter Ban Zhao
(45–116 CE). Unlike Sima's private and independent work, this history text was commissioned and sponsored by the Han court under Emperor Ming
(r. 57–75 CE), who let Ban Gu use the imperial archives. This set a significant precedent for the rest of the Standard Histories, since the historian was now virtually unable to criticize his ruling patron. The Book of Han covered the history of China left off from Sima's work during Emperor Wu's reign up until the middle Eastern Han. Although the Records of Three Kingdoms
included events in late Eastern Han, no history work focused exclusively on the Eastern Han period until the Book of Later Han
was compiled by Fan Ye
(398–445 CE).
The Ready Guide
(Erya) is the oldest known Chinese dictionary
and was compiled sometime in the 3rd century BCE before the Han. Dictionaries written during the Han Dynasty include Yang Xiong's Regional Speech
(Fangyan) of 15 BCE and Xu Shen
's (c. 58 – c. 147 CE) Explaining Unitary Characters and Analyzing Compound Characters
(Shuowen Jiezi) of 121 CE. Yang Xiong's Fangyan was the first Chinese dialect vocabulary
work; the modern Chinese phrase for 'dialect' is derived from the title of this book. In the Shuowen Jiezi, Xu Shen divided written characters
between wen (文) and zi (字), where the former were original pictographs and the latter were characters derived from them. Listing 9,353 characters with 1,163 variant forms, Xu arranged these into 540 section headers
according to their written radicals
. This convenient and systematic approach of arranging characters by their radicals became the standard for all Chinese dictionaries to follow.
Handbooks, guides, manuals, and treatises for various subjects were written in the Han. The Western Han Book of Fan Shengzhi (Fan Shengzhi shu 氾勝之書) written during Emperor Cheng's reign is one of two manuals on agricultural techniques and processes that have survived from the Han. The other is the Eastern Han Monthly Instructions for the Four Classes of People (Simin yueling 四民月令) written by Cui Shi (催寔) (d. 170 CE). Mathematical treatises
included the Book on Numbers and Computation (Suan shu shu) The Arithmetical Classic of the Gnomon and the Circular Paths of Heaven (Zhoubi suanjing), and the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art (Jiuzhang Suanshu). There were also works on astronomy
, such as the Miscellaneous Readings of Cosmic Patterns and Pneuma Images (Tianwen qixiang zazhan 天文氣象雜占) from the 2nd-century-BCE Mawangdui Silk Texts
and Zhang Heng
's (78–139 CE) Spiritual Constitution of the Universe (Lingxian 靈憲) published in 120 CE.
Aside from the biographies found in the Standard Histories, it became popular amongst gentrymen to write stylistic essays and commission private biographies on other gentlemen. These privately published biographies focused either on gentrymen from one's locality or more well known figures who held national prominence.
, known as fu in Chinese
, was a new literary genre. The poet and official Sima Xiangru
(179–117 BCE) wrote several rhapsodies, yet his largest and most influential was the "Rhapsody on the Son of Heaven on a Leisurely Hunt" (Tianzi Youlie Fu 天子遊獵賦) written in debate form. Sima's rhapsodies incorporated literary elements found in the Songs of Chu—an anthology of poems attributed to Qu Yuan
(340–278 BCE) and Song Yu
(fl. 3rd century BCE)—such as flying with heavenly immortals. Yang Xiong was the other prominent fu writer of Western Han, and although he at first praised Sima's work, he later criticized it as an example of the genre's shortcomings. In Eastern Han, Ban Gu wrote a rhapsody comparing the capital cities Chang'an and Luoyang, in which he concluded that Luoyang was the better of the two (which was a subtle praise of the current emperor, hinting that his virtue surpassed the rulers of Western Han). The court astronomer and inventor Zhang Heng
(78–139 CE) also wrote rhapsodies on the capital cities which were inspired by those of Ban Gu. Zhang also penned the rhapsody "Returning to the Fields
", which fused Daoist and Confucian ideals as well as laid the groundwork for later metaphysical nature poetry.
Zhang Heng also wrote "Lyric Poems on Four Sorrows" (四愁詩), which represent the earliest heptasyllabic shi
poems in Chinese literature. The government's Music Bureau
also produced folk songs and a lyrical form of verse that became a standard sub-genre of shi poetry. These poems focused largely on issues of morality that Confucian scholars found acceptable and in-line with Zhou Dynasty traditions. Poets of the Jian'an (建安) period (196–220 CE) usually attended the same social events to compose poems on a given topic in one another's company.
By the Han Dynasty, written law had matured from its archaic form based largely on natural law
and social customs into a rational corpus influenced by politics and based on positive law
. However, the Han Dynasty law code
established by Chancellor Xiao He
(d. 193 BCE) was largely an extension of an existing Qin Dynasty law code. Evidence for this includes archaeological finds at Qin-era Shuihudi
and Han-era Zhangjiashan
. The nine chapters of the law code consisted of statute
s which dealt with criminality, while two of these chapters dealt with court procedure. Although it survives only in small fragments, it was allegedly a massive written work on 960 written scrolls. The code had 26,272 articles written in 7,732,200 words that outlined punishments. There were 490 articles on the death penalty alone which contained 1,882 offenses and 3,472 analogies or pieces of case law
.
The county magistrate and commandery administrator were the official court judges of the county and commandery, respectively. Their jurisdictions overlapped, yet the commandery administrator only interfered in county court cases when necessary; it was generally agreed that whoever arrested a criminal first would be the first to judge him or her. If a commandery-level court case could not be resolved, the central government's Commandant of Justice was the final authority of appeal before the emperor. Yet he most often dealt with cases of political rebels and regicide
in regards to kings, marquesses, and high officials. Above the Commandant was the emperor, the supreme judge and lawgiver.
As with previous codes, Han law distinguished what should be considered murderous killings (with malice and foresight), wittingly killing, killing by mistake, and killing by accident. Although a father was the undisputed head of the family, he was not allowed to mutilate or kill any of its members as punishment; if he did, he would be tried for physical assault or murder, respectively. Yet not all murders were given the same sentence, since relation and circumstance were considered in the sentencing. For example, A father would be given a much less severe sentence for murdering a son than if a son murdered his father. Women had certain rights under Han law. It was against the law for husbands to physically abuse their wives
. Rape
cases were also commonly filed in court and were punished by Han law. Women could level charges against men in court, while it was commonly accepted in Han jurisprudence that women were capable of telling the truth in court.
Sometimes criminals were beaten with the bastinado to gain confessions, but Han scholars argued that torture was not the best means of gaining confession, while court conferences were called into session to decide how many strokes should be given and what size the stick should be so as not to cause permanent injury. Imprisonment was an unheard of form of punishment during Han; common punishments were the death penalty by beheading, periods of forced hard labor for convicts, exile, or monetary fines. Mutilating punishments also existed in early Han, borrowed from previous practice in Qin. This included tattooing the face, cutting off the nose, castration, and amputation of one or both feet, yet by 167 BCE these were abolished in favor of lengthy floggings with the bastinado. Further reforms were implemented by the first year of Emperor Jing's
(r. 154–141 BCE) reign which decreased the amount of strokes a prisoner could receive from the bastinado. Starting in 195 BCE, those aged seventy and older were exempt from mutilating punishments. Further reforms exempted those aged seventy and older from harsh interrogation methods in cases other than false accusation and murder.
Although modern scholars know of some surviving cases where Han law dealt with commerce and domestic affairs, the spheres of trade (outside the monopolies) and the family were still largely governed by age-old social customs. Many ways in which family relations were conducted during the Han were already stipulated in the ancient Confucian canon, especially in the Book of Rites. This became accepted as the mainstream guide to ethics and custom. In terms of private commercial contract
s, they usually entailed information on the goods transferred, the amount paid, the names of the buyer and seller, the date of transfer and the signatures of witnesses.
Artists were classified as artisans since they were nonagricultural laborers who manufactured and decorated objects. The philosopher Wang Fu argued that urban society exploited the contributions of food-producing farmers while able-bodied men in the cities wasted their time (among other listed pursuits) crafting miniature plaster carts, earthenware statues of dogs, horses, and human figures of singers and actors, and children's toys. However, during Eastern Han some scholar-officials began engaging in crafts originally reserved for artisans, such as mechanical engineering. Emperor Ling commissioned the official Cai Yong
(132–192 CE) to paint portraits
and produce eulogies
for five generations of the prominent Yang clan of officials and military officers. This is the first recorded instance in China where a scholar-official was commissioned to write eulogies and paint portraits in conjunction, instead of relying on skilled artisans to do the painting.
Han luxury items furnished the homes of wealthy merchants, officials, nobles, and royalty. Such goods were often highly decorated by skilled artisans. These include red-and-black lacquerware
s in various shapes and sizes, bronze items such as raised-relief decorated mirrors
, oil lamp
s in the shape of human figures, and gilded bronzewares
, glazed ceramic wares with various incised designs, and ornaments and jewelry made of jade
, opal, amber, quartz, gold, and silver.
Besides domestic decoration, Han artwork also served an important funerary function. Han artists and craftsmen decorated the wall bricks lining underground tombs of the deceased
with mural paintings
and carved relief
s; the purpose of this artwork was to aid the deceased in traveling through their afterlife journey. Stamping artistic designs into tile and brick was also common. Human figurine sculptures found in Han tombs were placed there to perform various functions for the deceased in the afterlife, such as dancing and playing music for entertainment, as well as serving food. A common type of ceramic figurine found in Han tombs is a female entertainer sporting long, flowing silk sleeves that are flung about while dancing. Some ceramic human figures—both male and female—have been found naked, all with clearly distinguished genitalia and missing arms. This is because they once had wooden or cloth arms which were attached to holes in the shoulders by pegs, as well as miniature clothes made of perishable materials such as silk.
During the Western Han, grave goods were usually wares and pieces of art that were used by the tomb occupant when he or she was alive. By the Eastern Han, new stylistic goods, wares, and artwork found in tombs were usually made exclusively for burial and were not produced for previous use by the deceased when they were alive. These include miniature ceramic towers—usually watchtowers and urban residential towers—which provide historians clues about lost wooden architecture. In addition to towers, there are also miniature models of querns, water wells, pigsties, pestling shops
, and farm fields with pottery pigs, dogs, sheep, chickens, ducks. Although many items placed in tombs were commonly used wares and utensils, it was considered taboo to bring objects specified for burial into living quarters or the imperial palace. They could only be brought into living quarters once they were properly announced at funerary ceremonies, and were known as mingqi
(明器/冥器) ("fearsome artifacts," "objects for the dead," or "brilliant artifacts") according to Cary Y. Liu (Ph.D. from Princeton University
, licensed architect and museum curator).
The most common agricultural food staples during Han were wheat, barley, rice, foxtail millet
, proso millet
, and beans. People of the Han also consumed sorghum
, Job's Tears
, taro
, mallow
, mustard green
, melon
, bottle gourd
, bamboo shoot
, the roots of lotus plants
, and ginger
. Some of the fruits the Han ate included the chestnut
, jujube
, pear
, peach
, plum
(including the plum of prunus salicina
and Prunus mume), melon
, apricot
, red bayberry
, and strawberry
. The Han Chinese domesticated and ate chicken
s, Mandarin duck
s, and geese
, camel
s, cows, sheep, pig
s, and dog
s. The type of game animals hunted during the Han included rabbit
, sika deer
, turtle dove
, goose
, owl
, Chinese Bamboo Partridge
, magpie
, common pheasant
, and crane
s, while fish and turtles were taken from streams and lakes. Beer—which could be an unfermented malt drink with low alcohol content or a stronger brew fermented with yeast
—was commonly consumed alongside meat, but virtually never consumed alongside grains such as rice. Wine
was also regularly consumed.
The 2nd-century-BCE tomb of the Lady Dai contained not only decayed remnants of actual food, such as rice, wheat, barley, two varieties of millet, and soybeans, but also a grave inventory with recipes on it. This included vegetable and meat stews cooked in pots, which had combinations such as beef and rice stew, dog meat and celery stew, and even deer, fish, and bamboo shoot stew. Seasonings mentioned in the recipes include sugar, honey, soy sauce
, and salt. Recipes in the Han usually called for meat stuffed in cereals, cakes, and other wrappings.
Like their modern counterparts, the Han-era Chinese used chopsticks
as eating utensils. For drinking beverages, wealthy people during Han often used cups with golden handles and inlaid with silver.
For the poor, hemp was the common item used to make clothing, while the rich could afford silk clothes. Silk clothes found in Han tombs include padded robes, double-layered robes, single-layered robes, single-layered skirts, shoes, socks, and mittens. The wealthy also wore fox and badger furs
, wild duck plumes, and slippers with inlaid leather or silk lining; those of more modest means could wear wool
and ferret
skins. Large bamboo-matted suitcase
s found in Han tombs contained clothes and luxury items such as patterned fabric and embroidery, common silk, damask and brocade, and the leno (or gauze) weave, all with rich colors and designs. The Han also had tools for ironing clothes
.
. Wealthy families who could afford to bury their dead in large tombs
often placed the food items at the entrances of such complexes.
Han-era Chinese believed that a person had two souls, the hun and po
. The spirit-soul (hun 魂) was believed to travel to the paradise of the immortals
(xian 仙) while the body-soul (po 魄) remained on earth in its proper resting place so long as measures were taken to prevent it from wandering to the netherworld. The body-soul could allegedly utilize items placed in the tomb of the deceased, such as domestic wares, clothes, food and utensils, and even money in the form of clay replicas. It was believed that the bipartite souls could also be temporarily reunited in a ceremony called "summoning the hun to return to the po" (zhao hun fu po 招魂復魄).
However, Han beliefs in the afterlife were not uniform across the empire and changed over time. Not only were there many different burial customs and views on how one journeyed through the afterlife, but even the names hun and po for spirit-soul and body-soul could be substituted with demon (gui 鬼) and spirit (shen 神). Demons, or gui, were thought to be partial manifestations of the deceased which lacked their essential vital energy
(qi 氣) that had to be exorcised
when they maliciously caused the living to become ill; however, a demon could also be considered a neutral 'ghost'. Spirits, or shen, were usually associated with the animalistic spirits embodying certain places, such as the Earl of the Yellow River (He Bo 河伯). If proper sacrifices were made to these spirits, it was believed to bring good fortune; if ritual sacrifices were neglected, the spirit could inflict bad fortune on individuals and local communities. In the Western Han, texts left behind in tombs illustrate that the living took a more sympathetic view towards the dead than in the Eastern Han, when spirits were generally more feared as dangers to the living. The Western Han 'letters informing the underground' (gaodishu 告地書) were written to 'inform the Ruler of the Underground' 告地下王 about the deceased's wants and needs for clothing, vessels, and implements. However, 'tomb-quelling texts' (zhenmuwen 鎮墓文) that appeared during the 1st century CE acted as passports for the dead so that they did not disturb or bring danger to the living. Both Western Han and Eastern Han tombs contained 'land contracts' (diquan 地券) which stated that the deceased owned the land they were buried in.
Since the emperor fulfilled the role of the highest priest in the land, he was obligated to offer ritual sacrifices to Heaven, the supreme deities, and spirits of the mountains and rivers. The Qin court had made sacrifices to and worshipped four main deities, to which Emperor Gaozu added one in 205 BCE to make Five Powers (Wudi 五帝). However, Emperor Cheng
(r. 33–7 BCE) cancelled state worship of the Five Powers in favor of ceremonies dedicated to Heaven
(Tian 天) and the supreme god
(Shangdi 上帝), who the kings of the Zhou Dynasty
(c. 1050 – 256 BCE) had worshipped and traced their legitimacy to. One of the underlying reasons for this shift in state policy was Emperor Cheng's desire to gain Heaven's direct favor and thus become blessed with a male heir. The court's exclusive worship of Heaven continued throughout the rest of Han.
and yang
, which corresponded to yielding and hard, shade and sunlight, feminine and masculine, and the Moon and Sun, respectively, while it was thought to govern the three realms and changing of seasons. The five phases was another important cycle where the elements of wood (mu 木), fire (huo 火), earth (tu 土), metal (jin 金), and water (shui 水) succeeded each other in rotation and each corresponded with certain traits of the three realms. For example, the five phases corresponded with other sets of five like the five organs (i.e. liver, heart, spleen, lungs and kidneys) and five tastes (i.e. sour, bitter, sweet, spicy, and salty), or even things like feelings, musical notes, colors, planets, calendars and time periods.
It was accepted during the Qin Dynasty that whoever defeated his rivals in battle would have legitimacy to rule the land. Yet by the time of Wang Mang's usurpation it was commonly believed that Heaven, which was now given greater prominence in state worship, designated which individual and hereditary house had the right to rule, a concept known as the Mandate of Heaven
. Michael Loewe
(retired professor from the University of Cambridge
) writes that this is consistent with the gradually higher level of emphasis given to the cosmic elements of Five Phases, which were linked with the future destiny of the dynasty and its protection. Dong Zhongshu stressed that a ruler who behaved immorally and did not adhere to proper conduct created a disruption in the natural cycles governing the three realms, which resulted in natural calamities such as earthquakes, floods, droughts, epidemics, and swarms of locusts. This idea became fully accepted at court (and in later dynasties), as emperors often implemented reforms to the legal system or granted amnesties to restore nature's balance.
At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, the Liu family associated its dynasty with the water phase as the previous Qin Dynasty had done. By 104 BCE, to accompany the installment of the new Taichu Calendar
(太初历), the Han court aligned itself with the earth phase to legitimately supplant the Qin Dynasty's element. Yet by 26 CE (shortly after the downfall of Wang Mang
) the new Eastern Han court made a retrospective argument that Han's element had always been fire.
After Huang-Lao thought became eclipsed by other ideologies explaining the cosmos during the 2nd century BCE, the sage philosopher Laozi replaced the Yellow Emperor as the ancestor and originator of the teachings of Daoism. As written by Wang Chong in the 1st century CE, Daoists were chiefly concerned with obtaining immortality
. Valerie Hansen writes that Han-era Daoists were organized into small groups of people who believed that individual immortality could be obtained through "breathing exercises, sexual techniques, and medical potions
." However, these were the same practices of Daoists who followed Zhuangzi
(fl. 4th century BCE) centuries before. The Han-era Chinese believed that the Queen Mother of the West ruled over a mountainous realm of immortal semi-human creatures who possessed elixirs of immortality
that man could utilize to prolong his life. Besides the Queen Mother's mountain to the west, Mount Penglai in the east was another mythological location where the Han-era Chinese believed one could achieve immortality. Wang Chong stated that Daoists, organized into small groups of hermits largely unconcerned with the wider laity, believed they could attempt to fly to the lands of the immortals and become invincible pure men. His criticism of such groups is the best known source of his century to describe Daoist beliefs. However, a major transformation in Daoist beliefs occurred in the 2nd century CE, when large hierarchical religious societies formed and viewed Laozi as a deity and prophet
who would usher in salvation
for his followers.
The first mentioning of Buddhism in China occurred in 65 CE. This was in regards to Liu Ying
(d. 71 CE), a half-brother of Emperor Ming, who allegedly paid homage to the Buddha
. At this point, the Chinese heavily associated Buddhism with Huang-Lao Daoism. Emperor Ming also had the first known Buddhist temple constructed in China, the White Horse Temple
of Luoyang
. It was allegedly built in honor of the foreign monks Jiashemoteng (迦葉摩騰) (Kāśyapa Mātanga) and Zhu Falan (竺法蘭) (Dharmaratna the Indian). A popular myth asserted that these two monks were the first to translate the Sutra of Forty-two Chapters
into Chinese, although it is now known that this work was not translated into Chinese until the 2nd century CE. The Parthia
n monk An Shigao from the Parthian Empire
came to Han China in 148 CE. He translated Buddhist works on the Hinayana
into Chinese, as well as works on yoga
that Han-era Chinese associated with Daoist exercises. Another foreign monk, Lokaksema
from Kushan
-era Gandhara
, India
, traveled and stayed in Han China from around 178–198 CE. He translated the Perfection of Wisdom, Shurangama Sutra
, and Pratyutpanna Sutra
, and introduced to China the concepts of Akshobhya
Buddha, Amitābha
Buddha (of Pure Land Buddhism
), and teachings about Manjusri
.
was initiated by Zhang Daoling
in 142 CE. Zhang was raised in what is now Jiangsu
where he studied Daoist beliefs in immortality. He moved to what is now Sichuan
province and claimed to have a revelation where the deified Laozi appointed him as his earthly representative and Celestial Master. The movement spread rapidly, particularly under Zhang's sons, Zhang Heng
and Zhang Lu. Instead of money, followers were asked to contribute five peck
s of rice to the religious society and banned the worship of 'unclean' gods who accepted sacrificial offerings of meat. Initiated members of the group were called 'libationers', a title associated with village elders who took the first drink at feasts. The laity were told that if they obeyed the rules of the religious society, they would be rewarded with good health. Illness was thus seen as the result of violating religious rules and committing personal sin
s, which required confession
to libationers charged with overseeing the recovery of sinners. They believed that chanting parts of the Daodejing would bring about cures for illnesses. Zhang Daoling's second successor Zhang Lu initiated a rebellion in 184 CE that allowed him to retain complete control over Ba and Hanzhong
commanderies (of modern Sichuan and southern Shanxi
) for three decades. He even modelled his 'charity houses' after Han postal stations, yet his establishments offered grain and meat to followers. Although Zhang Lu surrendered to Chancellor Cao Cao
(155–220 CE) in 215 CE, Cao was still wary of his influence over the people, so he granted Zhang and his sons fiefs to placate them.
The widespread Yellow Turban Rebellion
also occurred in 184 CE, its leaders claiming that they were destined to bring about a utopian era of peace. Like the Five Pecks of Rice society, the Yellow Turbans of the Huai
and Yellow River
valleys also believed that illness was a sign of wrong-doing that necessitated confession to church leaders and faith healer
s. However, the Yellow Turbans typically utilized holy water
as a ramification for sickness; if this did not cure the sick, the latter's sins were deemed too great to be exculpated. Since the year 184 CE was the first (and very auspicious) year of a new sexagenary cycle
, the Yellow Turban's supreme leader Zhang Jue (d. 184 CE) chose the third month of that year as the time to rebel; when this was leaked to the Han court, Zhang was forced to initiate the rebellion prematurely. Although the Yellow Turbans were able to muster hundreds of thousands of troops, they were overpowered by the combined force of imperial troops and independent generals. By the end of the year their leadership—including Zhang Jue—had been killed and only scattered groups remained until they were amalgamated into the forces of Cao Cao in 192 CE.
Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms . It was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han. It was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang...
(206 BCE – 220 CE) was a period of ancient China
History of China
Chinese civilization originated in various regional centers along both the Yellow River and the Yangtze River valleys in the Neolithic era, but the Yellow River is said to be the Cradle of Chinese Civilization. With thousands of years of continuous history, China is one of the world's oldest...
divided by the Western Han (206 BCE – 9 CE) and Eastern Han (25–220 CE) periods, when the capital cities were located at Chang'an
Chang'an
Chang'an is an ancient capital of more than ten dynasties in Chinese history, today known as Xi'an. Chang'an literally means "Perpetual Peace" in Classical Chinese. During the short-lived Xin Dynasty, the city was renamed "Constant Peace" ; yet after its fall in AD 23, the old name was restored...
and Luoyang
Luoyang
Luoyang is a prefecture-level city in western Henan province of Central China. It borders the provincial capital of Zhengzhou to the east, Pingdingshan to the southeast, Nanyang to the south, Sanmenxia to the west, Jiyuan to the north, and Jiaozuo to the northeast.Situated on the central plain of...
, respectively. It was founded by Emperor Gaozu of Han and briefly interrupted by the regime
Xin Dynasty
The Xin Dynasty was a Chinese dynasty which lasted from AD 9 to 23. It followed the Western Han Dynasty and preceded the Eastern Han Dynasty....
of Wang Mang
Wang Mang
Wang Mang , courtesy name Jujun , was a Han Dynasty official who seized the throne from the Liu family and founded the Xin Dynasty , ruling AD 9–23. The Han dynasty was restored after his overthrow and his rule marks the separation between the Western Han Dynasty and Eastern Han Dynasty...
(r. 9–23 CE) who usurped the throne from a child Han emperor.
The Han Dynasty was an age of great economic
Economy of the Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty of ancient China experienced contrasting periods of economic prosperity and decline. It is normally divided into three periods: Western Han , the Xin Dynasty , and Eastern Han . The Xin Dynasty, established by the former regent Wang Mang, formed a brief interregnum between lengthy...
, technological
Science and technology of the Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty of ancient China, divided between the eras of Western Han , Xin Dynasty of Wang Mang The Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) of ancient China, divided between the eras of Western Han (206 BCE – 9 CE, when the capital was at Chang'an), Xin Dynasty of Wang Mang The Han Dynasty...
, cultural, and social progress in China. Its society was governed by an emperor
Emperor of China
The Emperor of China refers to any sovereign of Imperial China reigning between the founding of Qin Dynasty of China, united by the King of Qin in 221 BCE, and the fall of Yuan Shikai's Empire of China in 1916. When referred to as the Son of Heaven , a title that predates the Qin unification, the...
who shared power with an official bureaucracy and semi-feudal nobility
Chinese nobility
Chinese sovereignty and peerage, the nobility of China, were an important feature of traditional social and political organization of Imperial China. While the concepts of hereditary sovereign and peerage titles and noble families were featured as early as the semi-mythical, early historical...
. Its laws
Traditional Chinese law
Traditional Chinese law refers to the laws, regulations and rules used in China up to 1911, when the last imperial dynasty fell. It has undergone continuous development since at least the 11th century BC...
, customs
Culture of China
Chinese culture is one of the world's oldest and most complex. The area in which the culture is dominant covers a large geographical region in eastern Asia with customs and traditions varying greatly between towns, cities and provinces...
, literature
Chinese literature
Chinese literature extends thousands of years, from the earliest recorded dynastic court archives to the mature fictional novels that arose during the Ming Dynasty to entertain the masses of literate Chinese...
, and education
History of education in China
The history of education in China began with the birth of Chinese civilization. The nobles often set up the educational establishments for their offspring...
were largely guided by the philosophy and ethical system of Confucianism
Confucianism
Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius . Confucianism originated as an "ethical-sociopolitical teaching" during the Spring and Autumn Period, but later developed metaphysical and cosmological elements in the Han...
, yet the influence of Legalism
Legalism (Chinese philosophy)
In Chinese history, Legalism was one of the main philosophic currents during the Warring States Period, although the term itself was invented in the Han Dynasty and thus does not refer to an organized 'school' of thought....
and Daoism
Taoism
Taoism refers to a philosophical or religious tradition in which the basic concept is to establish harmony with the Tao , which is the mechanism of everything that exists...
(from the previous Zhou Dynasty
Zhou Dynasty
The Zhou Dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang Dynasty and preceded the Qin Dynasty. Although the Zhou Dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history, the actual political and military control of China by the Ji family lasted only until 771 BC, a period known as...
) could still be seen. Members of the scholarly-gentry class
Gentry (China)
As used for imperial China, landed gentry does not correspond to any term in Chinese. One standard work remarks that under the Ming dynasty, called shenshi or shenjin, meaning variously degree-holders, literati, scholar-bureaucrats or officials, they are loosely known in English as the Chinese...
who aspired to hold public office
Civil service
The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....
were required to receive a Confucian-based education. A new synthetic ideology of Han Confucianism was created when the scholar Dong Zhongshu
Dong Zhongshu
Dong Zhongshu was a Han Dynasty Chinese scholar. He is traditionally associated with the promotion of Confucianism as the official ideology of the Chinese imperial state.-History:...
(179–104 BCE) united the Confucian canon allegedly edited by Kongzi, or Confucius
Confucius
Confucius , literally "Master Kong", was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period....
(551–479 BCE), with cosmological cycles of yin and yang
Yin and yang
In Asian philosophy, the concept of yin yang , which is often referred to in the West as "yin and yang", is used to describe how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. Opposites thus only...
and the Chinese five elements.
Although the social status of nobles, officials, farmers, and artisan-craftsmen
Four occupations
The four occupations or "four categories of the people" was a hierarchic social class structure developed in ancient China by either Confucian or Legalist scholars as far back as the late Zhou Dynasty and is considered a central part of the Fengjian social structure...
were considered above the station of the lowly registered merchant
Four occupations
The four occupations or "four categories of the people" was a hierarchic social class structure developed in ancient China by either Confucian or Legalist scholars as far back as the late Zhou Dynasty and is considered a central part of the Fengjian social structure...
, wealthy and successful businessmen acquired huge fortunes which allowed them to rival the social prestige of even the most powerful nobles and highest officials. Slaves were at the bottom of the social order, yet they represented only a tiny portion of the overall population. Retainers attached themselves to the estates of wealthy landowners, while medical physicians
Traditional Chinese medicine
Traditional Chinese Medicine refers to a broad range of medicine practices sharing common theoretical concepts which have been developed in China and are based on a tradition of more than 2,000 years, including various forms of herbal medicine, acupuncture, massage , exercise , and dietary therapy...
and state-employed religious occultists could make a decent living. People of all social classes believed in various deities, spirits, immortals, and demons
Chinese folk religion
Chinese folk religion or Shenism , which is a term of considerable debate, are labels used to describe the collection of ethnic religious traditions which have been a main belief system in China and among Han Chinese ethnic groups for most of the civilization's history until today...
. While Han Daoists were organized into small groups chiefly concerned with achieving immortality through various means, by the mid 2nd century CE they formed large hierarchical religious societies that challenged imperial authority and viewed Laozi
Laozi
Laozi was a mystic philosopher of ancient China, best known as the author of the Tao Te Ching . His association with the Tao Te Ching has led him to be traditionally considered the founder of Taoism...
(fl. 6th century BCE) as a holy prophet
Prophet
In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...
.
The typical Han-era Chinese household contained a nuclear family
Nuclear family
Nuclear family is a term used to define a family group consisting of a father and mother and their children. This is in contrast to the smaller single-parent family, and to the larger extended family. Nuclear families typically center on a married couple, but not always; the nuclear family may have...
with an average of four to five members, unlike in later dynasties when multiple generations and extended family
Extended family
The term extended family has several distinct meanings. In modern Western cultures dominated by nuclear family constructs, it has come to be used generically to refer to grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, whether they live together within the same household or not. However, it may also refer...
members commonly lived in the same household. Families were patrilineal, which made the father the supreme head of the house. Arranged marriage
Arranged marriage
An arranged marriage is a practice in which someone other than the couple getting married makes the selection of the persons to be wed, meanwhile curtailing or avoiding the process of courtship. Such marriages had deep roots in royal and aristocratic families around the world...
s were the norm, while a new wife was expected to join the clan of her husband. Having sons over daughters was considered extremely important for the sake of carrying on ancestor worship. Although girls and women were expected by custom and Confucian tradition to behave passively towards their male relatives, mothers were given a familial status above that of their sons. Women also engaged in various professions in and outside of the home and were given protection under the law. The empress was superior in status to the male relatives of her consort clan
Consort clan
The consort clan is the family, clan of or group related to an empress dowager or a spouse of a Chinese dynastic ruler or a warlord. The leading figure of the clan was either a sibling, cousin, or parent of the empress or consort.- Han Dynasty :...
, while the mother of the emperor—the empress dowager
Empress Dowager
Empress Dowager was the title given to the mother of a Chinese, Korean, Japanese or Vietnamese emperor.The title was also given occasionally to another woman of the same generation, while a woman from the previous generation was sometimes given the title of Grand empress dowager. Numerous empress...
—had the authority to override his decisions and choose his successor
Heir apparent
An heir apparent or heiress apparent is a person who is first in line of succession and cannot be displaced from inheriting, except by a change in the rules of succession....
(if one had not been appointed before his death).
Royal family, regents, nobles, and eunuchs
Emperor of China
The Emperor of China refers to any sovereign of Imperial China reigning between the founding of Qin Dynasty of China, united by the King of Qin in 221 BCE, and the fall of Yuan Shikai's Empire of China in 1916. When referred to as the Son of Heaven , a title that predates the Qin unification, the...
, a member of the Liu
Liu
劉 is a common Chinese family name. The transliteration Liu can represent several different surnames written in different Chinese characters:*劉 / 刘, pinyin: Liú...
family and thus a descendant of the founder Emperor Gaozu (r. 202 –195 BCE). His subjects were not allowed to address him by name; instead they used indirect references such as "under the steps to the throne" (bixia 陛下) or "superior one" (shang 上). If a commoner, government minister, or noble entered the palace
Chinese Palaces
Chinese Palaces are elaborate structures. There is a long history of imperial rule in China, and the palaces were the sites where the royal court resided, as well as many government bureaucrats and functionaries....
without official permission, the punishment was execution. Although the Commandant of Justice—one of the central government's Nine Ministers
Nine Ministers
The Nine Ministers was the collective name for nine high officials in the imperial government of the Han Dynasty , who each headed a specialized ministry and were subordinates to the Three Councillors of State...
—was in charge of meting out sentences in court cases, the emperor not only had the ability to override the Commandant's decision, but also had the sole ability to draft new laws or repeal old ones. An emperor could pardon anyone and grant general amnesties
Amnesty
Amnesty is a legislative or executive act by which a state restores those who may have been guilty of an offense against it to the positions of innocent people, without changing the laws defining the offense. It includes more than pardon, in as much as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the...
. Although the emperor often obeyed the majority consensus
Consensus decision-making
Consensus decision-making is a group decision making process that seeks the consent, not necessarily the agreement, of participants and the resolution of objections. Consensus is defined by Merriam-Webster as, first, general agreement, and second, group solidarity of belief or sentiment. It has its...
of his ministers in court conferences (tingyi 廷議), his approval was still needed for any state policy decision and he sometimes even rejected the majority opinion.
The emperor's most powerful relative was the empress dowager
Empress Dowager
Empress Dowager was the title given to the mother of a Chinese, Korean, Japanese or Vietnamese emperor.The title was also given occasionally to another woman of the same generation, while a woman from the previous generation was sometimes given the title of Grand empress dowager. Numerous empress...
, widow to the previous emperor and usually the natural mother of the emperor. If the grandmother of an emperor—the grand empress dowager
Grand Empress Dowager
The title Grand Empress Dowager was given to the grandmother or a woman from the grandmother generation of the Chinese, Korean. Japanese dynastic ruler. Some grand empress dowagers held regency within the beginning years of reign of an underage or young emperor...
—was still alive during his reign, she enjoyed a superior position over the empress dowager. Emperors often sought the approval of the empress dowager for their decisions. If an emperor was only a child, he acted merely as a figurehead
Figurehead
A figurehead is a carved wooden decoration found at the prow of ships largely made between the 16th and 19th century.-History:Although earlier ships had often had some form of bow ornamentation A figurehead is a carved wooden decoration found at the prow of ships largely made between the 16th and...
while the empress dowager dominated court politics. She not only had the right to issue edicts and pardons, but if the emperor died without a designated heir, she had the sole right to appoint a new emperor. Below the empress dowager were the empress and imperial concubines. Although she was the wife of the emperor, the empress's position at court was not secure and she could be removed by the emperor. However, the empress did enjoy the submission of concubines as her subordinates, who advocated the elevation of their sons over the empress's at their own peril.
In the early Western Han, imperial relatives and some military officers who had served Emperor Gaozu were made kings who ruled over large semi-autonomous fiefs, but once the non-related kings had died off, an imperial edict outlawed all non-Liu family members from becoming kings. The emperor's brothers, paternal cousins, brother's sons, and emperor's sons—excluding the heir apparent
Heir apparent
An heir apparent or heiress apparent is a person who is first in line of succession and cannot be displaced from inheriting, except by a change in the rules of succession....
—were made kings. The emperor's sisters and daughters were made princess
Princess
Princess is the feminine form of prince . Most often, the term has been used for the consort of a prince, or his daughters....
es with fiefs. Although the central government eventually stripped away the political power of the kings and appointed their administrative staffs, kings still had a right to collect a portion of the taxes in their territory as personal income and enjoyed a social status that ranked just below the emperor. Each king had a son designated to be heir apparent, while his other sons and brothers were given the rank of marquess
Marquess
A marquess or marquis is a nobleman of hereditary rank in various European peerages and in those of some of their former colonies. The term is also used to translate equivalent oriental styles, as in imperial China, Japan, and Vietnam...
and ruled over small marquessates where a portion of the taxes went to their private purse. Although kings and marquesses
Chinese nobility
Chinese sovereignty and peerage, the nobility of China, were an important feature of traditional social and political organization of Imperial China. While the concepts of hereditary sovereign and peerage titles and noble families were featured as early as the semi-mythical, early historical...
enjoyed many privileges, the imperial court was at times aggressive towards them to check their power. Starting with Emperor Gaozu's reign, thousands of noble families, including those from the royal houses of Qi
Qi (state)
Qi was a powerful state during the Spring and Autumn Period and Period of the Warring States in ancient China. Its capital was Linzi, now part of the modern day city of Zibo in Shandong Province....
, Chu
Chu (state)
The State of Chu was a Zhou Dynasty vassal state in present-day central and southern China during the Spring and Autumn period and Warring States Period . Its ruling house had the surname Nai , and clan name Yan , later evolved to surname Mi , and clan name Xiong...
, Yan
Yan (state)
Yān was a state during the Western Zhou, Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods of Chinese history. Its capital was Ji...
, Zhao
Zhao (state)
Zhao was a significant Chinese state during the Warring States Period, along with six others...
, Han
Han (state)
Han was a kingdom during the Warring States Period in China, located in modern-day Shanxi and Henan. Not to be confused with South Korea which shares the same character....
, and Wei
Wei (state)
The State of Wei was a Zhou Dynasty vassal state during the Warring States Period of Chinese history. Its territory lay between the states of Qin and Qi and included parts of modern day Henan, Hebei, Shanxi and Shandong...
from the Warring States Period
Warring States Period
The Warring States Period , also known as the Era of Warring States, or the Warring Kingdoms period, covers the Iron Age period from about 475 BC to the reunification of China under the Qin Dynasty in 221 BC...
, were forcibly moved to the vicinity of the capital Chang'an
Chang'an
Chang'an is an ancient capital of more than ten dynasties in Chinese history, today known as Xi'an. Chang'an literally means "Perpetual Peace" in Classical Chinese. During the short-lived Xin Dynasty, the city was renamed "Constant Peace" ; yet after its fall in AD 23, the old name was restored...
. In the first half of Western Han, resettlement could also be imposed on powerful and wealthy officials as well as individuals who owned property worth more than a million cash.
The position of regent
Regent
A regent, from the Latin regens "one who reigns", is a person selected to act as head of state because the ruler is a minor, not present, or debilitated. Currently there are only two ruling Regencies in the world, sovereign Liechtenstein and the Malaysian constitutive state of Terengganu...
(officially known as General-in-Chief 大將軍) was created during Emperor Wu's
Emperor Wu of Han
Emperor Wu of Han , , personal name Liu Che , was the seventh emperor of the Han Dynasty of China, ruling from 141 BC to 87 BC. Emperor Wu is best remembered for the vast territorial expansion that occurred under his reign, as well as the strong and centralized Confucian state he organized...
reign (r. 141–87 BCE) when he appointed three officials to form a triumvirate
Triumvirate
A triumvirate is a political regime dominated by three powerful individuals, each a triumvir . The arrangement can be formal or informal, and though the three are usually equal on paper, in reality this is rarely the case...
regency over the central government while the child Emperor Zhao
Emperor Zhao of Han
Emperor Zhao of Han was an emperor of the Chinese Han Dynasty from 87 BC to 74 BC.Emperor Zhao was the youngest son of Emperor Wu of Han. By the time Zhao was born, Emperor Wu was already 62. Zhao ascended the throne after the death of Emperor Wu in 87 BC. He was only 8 years old...
(r. 87–74 BCE) sat on the throne. Regents were often relatives-in-law to the emperor through his empress's family, but they could also be men of lowly means who depended on the emperor's favor to advance their position at court. Eunuchs who maintained the harem
Harem
Harem refers to the sphere of women in what is usually a polygynous household and their enclosed quarters which are forbidden to men...
of the palace could also gain a similar level of power. They often came from the middle class and had links to trade. In the Western Han, there are only a handful of examples where eunuchs rose to power since the official bureaucracy was strong enough to suppress them. After the eunuch Shi Xian (石顯) became the Prefect of the Palace Masters of Writing (中尚書), Emperor Yuan
Emperor Yuan of Han
Emperor Yuan of Han was an emperor of the Chinese Han Dynasty. He reigned from 48 BC to 33 BC. Emperor Yuan was remembered for the promotion of Confucianism as the official creed of Chinese government. He appointed Confucius adherents to important government posts...
(r. 48–33 BCE) relinquished much of his authority to him, so that he was allowed to make vital policy decisions and was respected by officials. However, Shi Xian was expelled from office once Emperor Cheng
Emperor Cheng of Han
Emperor Cheng of Han was an emperor of the Chinese Han Dynasty ruling from 33 BC until 7 BC.Under Emperor Cheng, the Han dynasty continued its slide into disintegration while the Wang clan continued its slow grip on power and on governmental affairs as promoted by the previous emperor...
(33–7 BCE) took the throne. No palace eunuch would obtain comparable authority again until after 92 CE, when the eunuchs led by Zheng Zhong
Zheng Zhong
Zheng Zhong , courtesy name Jichan , was the first Han Dynasty eunuch with true power in government, thanks to the trust that Emperor He had in him for his contributions in overthrowing the clan of Empress Dowager Dou, particularly her autocratic brother Dou Xian...
(d. 107 CE) sided with Emperor He
Emperor He of Han
Emperor He of Han, ch. 漢和帝, py. hàn hé dì, wg. Han Ho-ti, was an emperor of the Chinese Han Dynasty who ruled from 88 to 105. He was the 4th emperor of the Eastern Han dynasty....
(r. 88–105 CE) in a coup to overthrow the Dou 竇 clan of the empress dowager. Officials complained when eunuchs like Sun Cheng
Sun Cheng
Sun Cheng was an eunuch during Han Dynasty who, contrary to the stereotypes of Han eunuchs being corrupt and power-hungry, was loyal to the imperial family and tried to counter the culture of corruption....
(d. 132 CE) were awarded by Emperor Shun
Emperor Shun of Han
Emperor Shun of Han, trad. ch. 漢順帝;, sim. ch. 漢顺帝, py. hàn shùn dì, wg. Han Shun-ti, was an emperor of the Chinese Han Dynasty and the seventh emperor of the Eastern Han period...
(r. 125–144 CE) with marquessates, yet after the year 135 CE the eunuchs were given legal authority to pass on fiefs to adopted sons. Although Emperor Ling
Emperor Ling of Han
Emperor Ling of Han, trad. ch. 漢靈帝;, sim. ch. 汉灵帝, py. hàn líng dì, wg. Han Ling-ti, was an emperor of the Chinese Han Dynasty. He was a great-great-grandson of Emperor Zhang. The Yellow Turban Rebellion broke out during Emperor Ling's reign.Emperor Ling's reign saw yet another repetition of...
(r. 168–189 CE) relinquished a great deal of authority to eunuchs Zhao Zhong
Zhao Zhong
Zhào Zhōng was a eunuch of the late Han Dynasty, who served Emperor Ling of Han the Ten regular attendants . The eunuchs who had gained considerable power in the Han imperial court...
(d. 189 CE) and Zhang Rang
Zhang Rang
Zhang Rang was a eunuch of the late Han Dynasty, who served Emperor Ling of Han; he was also the leader of the Ten regular attendants , a group of court eunuchs who held great influence in the Han imperial court...
(d. 189 CE), the eunuchs were slaughtered in 189 CE when Yuan Shao
Yuan Shao
Yuan Shao was a warlord during the late Han Dynasty period of Chinese history. He occupied the northern territories of China during the civil war that occurred towards the end of the Han Dynasty and the beginning of the Three Kingdoms era...
(d. 202 CE) besieged and stormed the palaces of Luoyang.
Gentry scholars and officials
Those who served in government had a privileged position in Han society that was just one tier below the nobles (yet some high officials were also ennobled and had fiefs). They could not be arrested for crimes unless permission was granted by the emperor. However, when officials were arrested, they were imprisoned and fetteredFetters
Legcuffs, shackles, footcuffs, fetters or leg irons are a kind of physical restraint used on the feet or ankles to allow walking but prevent running and kicking. The term "fetter" shares a root with the word "foot"....
like commoners. Their punishments in court also had to gain the approval of the emperor. Officials were not exempt from execution, yet they were often given a chance to commit suicide as a dignified alternative. The most senior posts were the Three Excellencies
Three Excellencies
The Three Ducal Ministers , also translated as the Three Dukes, Three Excellencies, or the Three Lords, was the collective name for the three highest officials in ancient China...
—excluding the Grand Tutor, a post that was irregularly occupied. The individual titles and functions of the Three Excellencies changed from Western to Eastern Han. However, their annual salaries remained at 10,000 bushel
Bushel
A bushel is an imperial and U.S. customary unit of dry volume, equivalent in each of these systems to 4 pecks or 8 gallons. It is used for volumes of dry commodities , most often in agriculture...
s (shi 石) of grain, largely commuted to payments in coin cash and luxury items like silk
Silk
Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity...
. Below them were the Nine Ministers
Nine Ministers
The Nine Ministers was the collective name for nine high officials in the imperial government of the Han Dynasty , who each headed a specialized ministry and were subordinates to the Three Councillors of State...
, each of whom headed a major government bureau and earned 2,000 bushels a year. The lowest-paid government employees made Equivalent to 100 bushels annually. It was thought that wealthy officials would be less tempted by bribes. Therefore, in the beginning of the dynasty, having a total assessed taxable wealth of one hundred thousand coins was a prerequisite for holding office. This was reduced to forty thousand coins in 142 BCE, yet from Emperor Wu's reign onwards this policy was no longer enforced.
Starting in Western Han was a system of recommendation
Xiaolian
Xiaolian , was the standard of nominating civil officers started by Emperor Wu of Han in 134 BC. It lasted until its replacement by the imperial examination system during the Sui Dynasty....
where local officials submitted proposals to the capital on which of their subordinates were worthy candidates for holding office; this created a patron-client relationship
Patronage
Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows to another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings or popes have provided to musicians, painters, and sculptors...
between former superiors and successful nominees to higher office. With the enhanced prestige of the consort clan under Empress Dowager Dou
Empress Dou (Zhang)
Empress Dou , formally Empress Zhangde , was an empress during Han Dynasty. Her husband was Emperor Zhang. She was already influential during her husband's reign, but became particularly powerful as empress dowager regent for her adoptive son Emperor He after Emperor Zhang's death...
(d. 97 CE), a succession of regents from her clan and others amassed a large amount of clients whose chances of promotion hinged on the political survival of the empress dowager's clan, which was often short-lived. Aside from patron-client relationships, one could use family connections to secure office. Patricia Ebrey writes that in the Western Han, access to public office
Civil service
The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....
and promotion through social mobility
Social mobility
Social mobility refers to the movement of people in a population from one social class or economic level to another. It typically refers to vertical mobility -- movement of individuals or groups up from one socio-economic level to another, often by changing jobs or marrying; but can also refer to...
were open to a larger segment of the populace than in Eastern Han. A third of the two hundred and fifty-two Eastern Han government officials who had biographies in the Book of Later Han
Book of Later Han
The Book of the Later Han or the History of the Later Han is one of the official Chinese historical works which was compiled by Fan Ye in the 5th century, using a number of earlier histories and documents as sources...
were sons or grandsons of officials, while a fifth came from prominent provincial families or had ancestors who had served as officials. For forty-six of the one hundred and ten years between 86 to 196 CE, at least one post of the Three Excellencies was occupied by a member of either the Yuan or Yang clan.
History of the Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty , founded by the peasant rebel leader Liu Bang ,From the Shang to the Sui dynasties, Chinese rulers were referred to in later records by their posthumous names, while emperors of the Tang to Yuan dynasties were referred to by their temple names, and emperors of the Ming and Qing...
) when subordinate officers of county-level administrations advanced to the level of central government. Even if one secured an office by these means, an official was still expected to be competent, thus a formal education became the hallmark of those aspiring to fill public office. In addition to private tutoring, the Imperial University
Taixue
Taixue , or sometimes called the "Imperial Academy", "Imperial School" , "Imperial University" or "Imperial Central University", was the highest rank of educational establishment in Ancient China between the Han Dynasty and Sui Dynasty. It was replaced by the Guozijian...
was established in 124 BCE which then accommodated only fifty pupils, but by the 2nd century CE the student body had reached about thirty thousand. These students could be appointed by the emperor to various government posts according to their examination grades.
Despite a decline in social mobility for those of less prominent clans, the local elites became far more integrated into a nationwide upper class social structure during the Eastern Han period, thus expanding the classification of who belonged to the upper class. The emerging gentry class
Four occupations
The four occupations or "four categories of the people" was a hierarchic social class structure developed in ancient China by either Confucian or Legalist scholars as far back as the late Zhou Dynasty and is considered a central part of the Fengjian social structure...
—which became fully consolidated during the Eastern Han—consisted of unemployed scholars, teachers, students, and government officials. These men, although geographically separated and mired in local activities, started to view themselves as participants in wider national affairs of politics and scholarship. They recognized shared values of filial piety
Filial piety
In Confucian ideals, filial piety is one of the virtues to be held above all else: a respect for the parents and ancestors. The Confucian classic Xiao Jing or Classic of Xiào, thought to be written around 470 BCE, has historically been the authoritative source on the Confucian tenet of xiào /...
, deference, and emphasizing study in the Five Classics over holding public office. Emperors Yuan and Cheng were forced to abandon their resettlement schemes for officials and their families around the royal tombs settlement in 40 BCE and 15 BCE, respectively; unlike the days of Emperor Wu, Cho-Yun Shu—a Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...
—asserts that at this point officials and scholars had so much influence in both local and national-level politics that to forcibly relocate them became unthinkable.
Liang Ji
Liang Ji , courtesy name Bozhuo , was a politician and military commander of Han Dynasty China. He dominated government in the 150s together with his sister, Empress Liang Na. After his sister's death, Liang Ji was overthrown in a coup d'etat by Emperor Huan, with the support of the eunuch...
(d. 159 CE), a widespread student protest
Student protest
Student protest encompasses a wide range of activities that indicate student dissatisfaction with a given political or academic issue and mobilization to communicate this dissatisfaction to the authorities and society in general and hopefully remedy the problem...
broke out where Imperial University students took to the streets and chanted the names of the eunuchs they opposed. At the instigation of the eunuchs, Emperor Huan
Emperor Huan of Han
Emperor Huan of Han, ch. 漢桓帝, py. hàn húan dì, wg. Han Huan-ti, was an emperor of the Chinese Han Dynasty. He was a great-grandson of Emperor Zhang....
(r. 146–168 CE) initiated the Partisan Prohibitions
Disasters of Partisan Prohibitions
The Disasters of Partisan Prohibitions refers to two incidents in which a number of Confucian scholars who served as officials in the Han imperial government and opposed to powerful eunuchs, and the university students in the capital Luoyang who supported them The Disasters of Partisan...
in 166 CE, a wide-scale proscription against Li Ying (李膺) and his associates in the Imperial University and in the provinces from holding office (branded as partisan
Partisan (political)
In politics, a partisan is a committed member of a political party. In multi-party systems, the term is widely understood to carry a negative connotation - referring to those who wholly support their party's policies and are perhaps even reluctant to acknowledge correctness on the part of their...
s: 黨人). With the suicide of regent Dou Wu
Dou Wu
Dou Wu , courtesy name Youping , was a Han Dynasty politician who was known as a Confucian scholar and served as a low-level official during the reign of Emperor Huan until his daughter Dou Miao was elevated from imperial consort to empress, which caused him to be promoted, eventually to become...
(d. 168 CE) in his confrontation with the eunuchs shortly after Emperor Ling
Emperor Ling of Han
Emperor Ling of Han, trad. ch. 漢靈帝;, sim. ch. 汉灵帝, py. hàn líng dì, wg. Han Ling-ti, was an emperor of the Chinese Han Dynasty. He was a great-great-grandson of Emperor Zhang. The Yellow Turban Rebellion broke out during Emperor Ling's reign.Emperor Ling's reign saw yet another repetition of...
(r. 168–189 CE) was placed on the throne, the eunuchs banned hundreds more from holding office while selling offices at the highest bidder. Repulsed by what they viewed as a corrupted government, many gentrymen considered a moral, scholarly life superior to holding office, and thus rejected nominations to serve at court. Until they were repealed in 184 CE (to garner gentry support against the Yellow Turban Rebellion
Yellow Turban Rebellion
The Yellow Turban Rebellion, also translated as Yellow Scarves Rebellion, was a peasant revolt that broke out in 184 AD in China during the reign of Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty...
), the partisant prohibitions created a large independent, disaffected portion of the gentry who did not simply return to a reclusive life in their hometowns, but maintained contacts with other gentry throughout China and actively engaged in the protest movement. Acknowledging that the gentry class was able to recruit and certify itself, the Chancellor Cao Cao
Cao Cao
Cao Cao was a warlord and the penultimate chancellor of the Eastern Han Dynasty who rose to great power during the dynasty's final years. As one of the central figures of the Three Kingdoms period, he laid the foundations for what was to become the state of Cao Wei and was posthumously titled...
(155–220 CE) established the nine-rank system
Nine-rank system
The nine rank system , or much less commonly nine grade controller system, was a civil service nomination system during the Three Kingdoms and the Southern and Northern Dynasties in China...
where a distinguished gentry figure in each county and commandery would assign local gentlemen a rank that the government would use to evaluate nominees for office.
Farmers and landowners
Many scholars who needed additional funds for education or vied for political office found farming as a decent profession which, although humble, was not looked down upon by fellow gentrymen. Wealthy nobles, officials, and merchants could own land, but they often did not cultivate it themselves and merely acted as absentee landlordLandlord
A landlord is the owner of a house, apartment, condominium, or real estate which is rented or leased to an individual or business, who is called a tenant . When a juristic person is in this position, the term landlord is used. Other terms include lessor and owner...
s while living in the city. They mostly relied on poor tenant farmer
Tenant farmer
A tenant farmer is one who resides on and farms land owned by a landlord. Tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and management; while tenant farmers contribute their labor along with at times varying...
s (diannong 佃農) who paid rent in the form of roughly fifty percent of their produce in exchange for land, tools, draft animals, and a small house. Wage laborers
Day labor
Day labor is work done where the worker is hired and paid one day at a time, with no promise that more work will be available in the future. It is a form of contingent work.-Types:Day laborers find work through three common routes....
(gunong 雇農) and slaves were also employed on the estates of the wealthy, although they were not as numerous as tenants. During Western Han, the small independent owner-cultivator represented the majority of farming peasants
Four occupations
The four occupations or "four categories of the people" was a hierarchic social class structure developed in ancient China by either Confucian or Legalist scholars as far back as the late Zhou Dynasty and is considered a central part of the Fengjian social structure...
, yet their economic struggle to remain independent during times of war, natural disaster and crisis drove many into debt, banditry, slavery, and dramatically increased the number of landless tenants by late Eastern Han. The social status of poor independent owner-cultivators was above tenants and wage laborers, yet below that of wealthy landowners. While wealthy landowners employed tenants and wage laborers, landowners who managed small to medium-sized estates often acted as managers over their sons who tilled the fields and daughters who weaved clothes and engaged in sericulture
Sericulture
Sericulture, or silk farming, is the rearing of silkworms for the production of raw silk.Although there are several commercial species of silkworms, Bombyx mori is the most widely used and intensively studied. According to Confucian texts, the discovery of silk production by B...
to produce silk for the home or sale at market.
During the Western Han, farming peasants formed the majority of those who were conscripted
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
by the government to perform corvée
Corvée
Corvée is unfree labour, often unpaid, that is required of people of lower social standing and imposed on them by the state or a superior . The corvée was the earliest and most widespread form of taxation, which can be traced back to the beginning of civilization...
labor or military duties. For the labor service (gengzu 更卒), males aged fifteen to fifty-six would be drafted for one month out of the year to work on construction projects and perform other duties in their commanderies and counties. For the military obligation (zhengzu 正卒), all males aged twenty-three were to train for one year in one of three branches of the military: infantry, cavalry, or navy. Until they reached age fifty-six, they were liable to perform one year of active service as troops sent to guard the frontiers from hostile nomads or to act as guards in the capital city. Significant changes were made to this system during Eastern Han; a commuting tax could be paid by peasants if they wanted to avoid the one-month labor obligation, since hired labor became more popular in construction and other projects. The military service obligation could even be avoided if a peasant paid a commuting tax, since the Eastern Han military became largely a volunteer force
Volunteer military
A volunteer military or all-volunteer military is one which derives its manpower from volunteers rather than conscription or mandatory service. A country may offer attractive pay and benefits through military recruitment to attract volunteers...
. Other commoners such as merchants were also able to join the army.
Artisans and craftsmen
Artisans and craftsmenFour occupations
The four occupations or "four categories of the people" was a hierarchic social class structure developed in ancient China by either Confucian or Legalist scholars as far back as the late Zhou Dynasty and is considered a central part of the Fengjian social structure...
during the Han had a socio-economic status between that of farmers and merchants. Yet some were able to obtain a valuable income, such as one craftsman who made knives and swords and was able to eat food fit for nobles and officials. Artisans and craftsmen also enjoyed a legal status that was superior to merchants. Unlike lowly merchants, artisans were allowed by law to wear fancy silks, ride on horseback, and ride in carriages. There were also no laws which barred artisans from becoming officials. An artisan painter who worked at the Imperial Academy turned down many offers to become nominated for public office. In contrast, a bureaucrat who appointed a merchant as an official could suffer impeachment from office, while some even avoided nominations by claiming they were merchants.
Despite their legal privileges over that of merchants, the work of artisans was considered by Han Confucian scholars to be of secondary importance to that of farmers. This is perhaps largely because scholars and officials could not survive without the farmer's product and taxes paid in grain. The government relied on taxed grain to fund its military campaigns and stored surplus grain to mitigate widespread famine during times of poor harvest. Despite the prominence given to farmers, Confucian scholars did accept that artisans performed a vital economic role. This view was only rejected by a small minority of Legalists
Legalism (Chinese philosophy)
In Chinese history, Legalism was one of the main philosophic currents during the Warring States Period, although the term itself was invented in the Han Dynasty and thus does not refer to an organized 'school' of thought....
, who advocated a society of only soldiers and farmers, and certain Daoists who wanted everyone to live in self-sufficient villages and without commercial interests.
Artisans could be privately employed or they could work for the government. While government workshops employed convicts, corvée laborers, and state-owned slaves to perform menial tasks, the master craftsman
Master craftsman
A master craftsman or master tradesman was a member of a guild. In the European guild system, only masters were allowed to be members of the guild....
was paid a significant income for his work in producing luxury items such as bronze mirrors
TLV mirror
A TLV mirror is a type of bronze mirror that was popular during the Han Dynasty in China. They are called TLV mirrors because symbols resembling the letters T, L, and V are engraved into them...
and lacquerware
Lacquerware
Lacquerware are objects decoratively covered with lacquer. The lacquer is sometimes inlaid or carved. Lacquerware includes boxes, tableware, buttons and even coffins painted with lacquer in cultures mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere.-History:...
s.
Merchants and industrialists
Bookselling
Bookselling is the commercial trading of books, the retail and distribution end of the publishing process. People who engage in bookselling are called booksellers or bookmen.-Bookstores today:...
and apothecary
Apothecary
Apothecary is a historical name for a medical professional who formulates and dispenses materia medica to physicians, surgeons and patients — a role now served by a pharmacist and some caregivers....
, the scholarly gentry class did not engage in trade professions, since scholars and government officials viewed the merchant class
Four occupations
The four occupations or "four categories of the people" was a hierarchic social class structure developed in ancient China by either Confucian or Legalist scholars as far back as the late Zhou Dynasty and is considered a central part of the Fengjian social structure...
as lowly and contemptible. Sympathetic to the plight of farming peasants who had lost their land, a court edict of 94 CE stipulated that farming peasants who had been reduced to selling wares as street peddler
Peddler
A peddler, in British English pedlar, also known as a canvasser, cheapjack, monger, or solicitor , is a travelling vendor of goods. In England, the term was mostly used for travellers hawking goods in the countryside to small towns and villages; they might also be called tinkers or gypsies...
s were not to be taxed as registered merchants, since the latter were heavily taxed by the state. Registered merchants, the majority being small urban shopkeeper
Shopkeeper
A shopkeeper is an individual who owns a shop. Generally, shop employees are not shopkeepers, but are often incorrectly referred to as shopkeepers. Today, a shopkeeper is usually referred to as a manager, though this term could apply to larger firms .*In many south asian languages like Hindi, Urdu,...
s, were obligated to pay commercial taxes in addition to the poll tax
Poll tax
A poll tax is a tax of a portioned, fixed amount per individual in accordance with the census . When a corvée is commuted for cash payment, in effect it becomes a poll tax...
. Registered merchants were also forced by law to wear white-colored clothes, an indication of their low status. Registered merchants could be singled out for conscription into the armed forces and forced to resettle in lands to the deep south where malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
was known to be prevalent. In contrast, itinerant merchants were often richer due to their trade between a network of towns and cities and their ability to avoid registering as merchants. Starting with Emperor Gaozu's reign, registered merchants were banned from wearing silk clothes, riding on horseback, or holding public office. This is in stark contrast to unregistered itinerant merchants who Chao Cuo
Chao Cuo
Cháo Cuò was a Chinese political advisor and official of the Han Dynasty , renowned for his intellectual capabilities and foresight in martial and political matters. Although not against the philosophy of Confucius , he was described by later Eastern Han scholars as a Legalist...
(d. 154 BCE) states wore fine silks, rode in carriages pulled by fat horses, and whose wealth allowed them to associate with government officials.
Although these laws were relaxed over time, Emperor Wu renewed the state's persecution of merchants when in 119 BCE he made it illegal for registered merchants to purchase land. If they violated this law, their land and slaves would be confiscated by the state. The effectiveness of this law is questionable, since contemporary Han writers mention merchants owning huge tracts of land. A merchant who owned property worth a thousand catties
Catty
The catty , symbol 斤, is a traditional Chinese unit of mass used across East and Southeast Asia, notably for weighing food and other groceries in some wet markets, street markets, and shops. Related units include the picul, equal to 100 catties, and the tael, which is of a catty. A stone is a...
of gold—equivalent to ten million cash coins—was considered a great merchant. Such a fortune was one hundred times larger than the average income of a middle class landowner-cultivator and dwarfed the annual 200,000 cash-coin income of a marquess who collected taxes from a thousand households. Some merchant families made fortunes worth over a hundred million cash, which was equivalent to the wealth acquired by the highest officials in government.
Merchants engaged in a multitude of private trades and industries. A single merchant often combined several trades to make greater profits, such as animal breeding
Animal breeding
Animal breeding is a branch of animal science that addresses the evaluation of the genetic value of domestic livestock...
, farming, manufacturing, trade, and money-lending
Loan
A loan is a type of debt. Like all debt instruments, a loan entails the redistribution of financial assets over time, between the lender and the borrower....
. Some of the most profitable commodities sold during the Han were salt and iron, since a wealthy salt or iron distributor could own properties worth as much as ten million cash. In the early Western Han period, powerful merchants could muster a workforce of over a thousand peasants to work in salt mine
Salt mine
A salt mine is a mining operation involved in the extraction of rock salt or halite from evaporite deposits.-Occurrence:Areas known for their salt mines include Kilroot near Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland ; Khewra and Warcha in Pakistan; Tuzla in Bosnia; Wieliczka and Bochnia in Poland A salt mine...
s and marshes to evaporate brine
Brine
Brine is water, saturated or nearly saturated with salt .Brine is used to preserve vegetables, fruit, fish, and meat, in a process known as brining . Brine is also commonly used to age Halloumi and Feta cheeses, or for pickling foodstuffs, as a means of preserving them...
to make salt, or at ironworks
Ironworks
An ironworks or iron works is a building or site where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and/or steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e...
sites where they operated bellows
Bellows
A bellows is a device for delivering pressurized air in a controlled quantity to a controlled location.Basically, a bellows is a deformable container which has an outlet nozzle. When the volume of the bellows is decreased, the air escapes through the outlet...
and casted iron implements
Science and technology of the Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty of ancient China, divided between the eras of Western Han , Xin Dynasty of Wang Mang The Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) of ancient China, divided between the eras of Western Han (206 BCE – 9 CE, when the capital was at Chang'an), Xin Dynasty of Wang Mang The Han Dynasty...
. To curb the influence of such wealthy industrialists, Emperor Wu nationalized
Nationalization
Nationalisation, also spelled nationalization, is the process of taking an industry or assets into government ownership by a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being...
these industries by 117 BCE and for the first time drafted former merchants with technical know-how such as Sang Hongyang
Sang Hongyang
Sang Hongyang was a prominent official of the Former Han Dynasty, who served Emperor Wu of Han and his successor Emperor Zhao. He is most famed for his economic policies during the reign of Emperor Wu, the best known of which include the state monopolies over iron and salt - systems which would...
(d. 80 BCE) to head these government monopolies. However, by the Eastern Han period the central government abolished the state monopolies on salt and iron. Even before this, the state must have halted its employment of former merchants in the government salt and iron agencies, since an edict of 7 BCE restated the ban on merchants entering the bureaucracy. However, the usurper Wang Mang
Wang Mang
Wang Mang , courtesy name Jujun , was a Han Dynasty official who seized the throne from the Liu family and founded the Xin Dynasty , ruling AD 9–23. The Han dynasty was restored after his overthrow and his rule marks the separation between the Western Han Dynasty and Eastern Han Dynasty...
(r. 9–23 CE) did employ some merchants as low-level officials with a salary-rank of 600 bushels. Another profitable industry was brewing wine and liquor, which the state briefly monopolized from 98 to 81 BCE, yet relinquished its production to private merchants once again (with alcohol taxes reinstalled). The official Cui Shi (催寔) (d. 170 CE) started a brewery
Brewery
A brewery is a dedicated building for the making of beer, though beer can be made at home, and has been for much of beer's history. A company which makes beer is called either a brewery or a brewing company....
business to help pay for his father's costly funeral, an act which was heavily criticized by his fellow gentrymen who considered this sideline occupation a shameful one for any scholar. Cinnabar
Cinnabar
Cinnabar or cinnabarite , is the common ore of mercury.-Word origin:The name comes from κινναβαρι , a Greek word most likely applied by Theophrastus to several distinct substances...
mining was also a very lucrative industry.
Guests and retainers
Chinese astrology
Chinese astrology is based on the traditional astronomy and calendars. The development of Chinese astrology is tied to that of astronomy, which came to flourish during the Han Dynasty ....
.
A host treated his retainers very well and showered them with luxury gifts if he wanted to boast his wealth and status. One retainer even received a sword scabbard decorated with jade and pearls, while others were given items like shoes decorated with pearls. However, not all retainers shared the same status, as those showered with gifts often provided highly skilled work or greater services; retainers who were not as skilled were given lesser gifts and seated in less honorable positions when meeting the host. Regardless of status, any retainer was allowed to come and go from his host's residence as he or she pleased, unlike a slave who was the property of his master and permanently attached to the estate. There was no official government policy on how to deal with retainers, but when they broke laws they were arrested, and when their master broke the law, sometimes the retainers were detained alongside him.
Retainers formed a large portion of the fighting forces amassed by the future Emperor Guangwu
Emperor Guangwu of Han
Emperor Guangwu , born Liu Xiu, was an emperor of the Chinese Han Dynasty, restorer of the dynasty in AD 25 and thus founder of the Later Han or Eastern Han...
(r. 25–57 CE) during the civil war against Wang Mang's failing regime. The military role of retainers became much more pronounced by the late 2nd century CE during the political turmoil that would eventually split the empire into three competing states
Three Kingdoms
The Three Kingdoms period was a period in Chinese history, part of an era of disunity called the "Six Dynasties" following immediately the loss of de facto power of the Han Dynasty rulers. In a strict academic sense it refers to the period between the foundation of the state of Wei in 220 and the...
. By then, hosts began to treat retainers as their personal troops (buqu 部曲), which undercut the freedoms of mobility and independence that earlier retainers had enjoyed. Whereas individual retainers had earlier joined a host by their own personal decision, by the late 2nd century CE the lives of the retainers' entire families became heavily controlled by the host.
Slaves
SlavesHistory of slavery
The history of slavery covers slave systems in historical perspective in which one human being is legally the property of another, can be bought or sold, is not allowed to escape and must work for the owner without any choice involved...
(nuli 奴隸) comprised roughly 1% of the population, a proportion far less than the contemporary Greco-Roman world
Greco-Roman world
The Greco-Roman world, Greco-Roman culture, or the term Greco-Roman , when used as an adjective, as understood by modern scholars and writers, refers to those geographical regions and countries that culturally were directly, protractedly and intimately influenced by the language, culture,...
which relied on the labor of a large slave population. Slaves were classified into two categories: those who were privately owned, and those who were owned by the state. Privately owned slaves were often former peasants who fell into debt and sold themselves into slavery, while others were former government slaves bestowed to nobles and high officials as rewards for their services. State-owned slaves were sometimes prisoners of war (yet not all were made slaves). However, most slaves were tributary gifts given to the court by foreign states, families of criminals who committed treason against the state, and former private slaves who were either donated to authorities (since this would exempt the former slaveholder from labor obligations) or confiscated by the state if their master had broken a law. In both Western and Eastern Han, arrested criminals became convict
Convict
A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison", sometimes referred to in slang as simply a "con". Convicts are often called prisoners or inmates. Persons convicted and sentenced to non-custodial sentences often are not termed...
s and it was only during the reign of Wang Mang that counterfeit
Counterfeit
To counterfeit means to illegally imitate something. Counterfeit products are often produced with the intent to take advantage of the superior value of the imitated product...
ing criminals were made into slaves.
Poll tax
A poll tax is a tax of a portioned, fixed amount per individual in accordance with the census . When a corvée is commuted for cash payment, in effect it becomes a poll tax...
of 240 coins for each slave they owned (the same rate merchants had to pay for their poll tax). Government slaves were not assigned to work in the government's monopolized industries over iron and salt (which lasted from Emperor Wu's reign until the beginning of Eastern Han). Privately owned slaves were usually assigned to kitchen duty while others fulfilled roles as armed bodyguards, mounted escorts, acrobats, jugglers, dancers, singers, and musicians.
The children of both government and private slaves were born slaves. Government slaves could be granted freedom by the emperor if they were deemed too elderly, if the emperor pitied them, or if they committed a meritous act worthy of a manumission
Manumission
Manumission is the act of a slave owner freeing his or her slaves. In the United States before the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished most slavery, this often happened upon the death of the owner, under conditions in his will.-Motivations:The...
. In one exceptional case, the former slave Jin Midi
Jin Midi
Jin Midi , formally Marquess Jing of Du , was a prominent official of the Chinese dynasty Han Dynasty of Xiongnu ethnicity. He served as coregent early in the reign of Emperor Zhao of Han.- Background :...
(d. 86 BCE) became one of the regents over the government. Private slaves could buy their freedom from their master, while some masters chose to free their slaves. Although slaves were subject to beatings if they did not obey their masters, it was against the law to murder a slave; kings were stripped of their kingdoms after it was found that they had murdered slaves, while Wang Mang even forced one of his sons to commit suicide for murdering a slave. An edict of 35 CE repealed the death penalty for any slave who killed a commoner.
Not all slaves had the same social status. Some slaves of wealthy families lived better than commoners since they were allowed to wear luxurious clothes and consume quality food and wine. Slaves of high officials could even be feared and respected. The slaves of regent Huo Guang
Huo Guang
Huo Guang , courtesy name Zimeng was a Western Han statesman who was a rare example in Chinese history of a powerful official who deposed an emperor for the good of the state rather than to usurp the throne...
(d. 68 BCE) sometimes came armed to the marketplace and fought commoners, forced the Imperial Secretary to kowtow
Kowtow
Kowtow is the act of deep respect shown by kneeling and bowing so low as to have one's head touching the ground. An alternative Chinese term is ketou, however the meaning is somewhat altered: kòu originally meant "knock with reverence", whereas kē has the general meaning of "touch upon ".In Han...
and apologize (after a scuffle with his slaves over the right-of-way on the street), and were provided services by some officials who sought a promotion through Huo Guang's influence.
Other occupations
Domestic pig
The domestic pig is a domesticated animal that traces its ancestry to the wild boar, and is considered a subspecies of the wild boar or a distinct species in its own right. It is likely the wild boar was domesticated as early as 13,000 BC in the Tigris River basin...
was not seen as a lowly profession if it was merely utilized by a poor scholar to pay for a formal education. For example, the first chancellor
Chancellor of China
The Chancellor , variously translated as Prime Minister, Chancellor of State, Premier or Chief Councillor, was a generic name given to the highest-ranking official in the imperial government in ancient China...
in Han to lack either a military background or a title as marquess was the pig-breeder Gongsun Hong (公孫弘) of Emperor Wu's reign. Physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
s who practiced medicine
Traditional Chinese medicine
Traditional Chinese Medicine refers to a broad range of medicine practices sharing common theoretical concepts which have been developed in China and are based on a tradition of more than 2,000 years, including various forms of herbal medicine, acupuncture, massage , exercise , and dietary therapy...
and studied medical classics
Science and technology of the Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty of ancient China, divided between the eras of Western Han , Xin Dynasty of Wang Mang The Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) of ancient China, divided between the eras of Western Han (206 BCE – 9 CE, when the capital was at Chang'an), Xin Dynasty of Wang Mang The Han Dynasty...
could not only make a decent income, but were also able to gain an education and become officials. The physician Hua Tuo
Hua Tuo
Hua Tuo was an ancient Chinese physician who lived during the late Han Dynasty and Three Kingdoms era of Chinese history. The Records of Three Kingdoms and Book of Later Han record Hua as the first person in China to use anesthesia during surgery. He used a general anesthetic combining wine with a...
(d. 208 CE) was nominated for office while another became Prefect of the Gentlemen of the Palace (郎中令). Those who practiced occult arts of Chinese alchemy
Chinese alchemy
Chinese alchemy, a part of the larger tradition of Taoism, centers on the tradition of body-spirit cultivation that developed through the Chinese understandings of medicine and the body. These Chinese traditions were developed into a system of energy practices...
and mediumship
Mediumship
Mediumship is described as a form of communication with spirits. It is a practice in religious beliefs such as Spiritualism, Spiritism, Espiritismo, Candomblé, Voodoo and Umbanda.- Concept :...
were often employed by the government to conduct religious sacrifices, while on rare occasions—such as with Luan Da
Luan Da
Luan Da was a religious figure during the early Han Dynasty from the state of Yue. He professed to know the secret to immortality and be able to communicate with spiritual beings. Possessing the gift of gab and adept at confidence tricks, Luan Da gained the favour of Emperor Wu of Han, also known...
(d. 112 BCE)—an occultist might marry a princesses or be enfeoffed as a marquess. While it was socially acceptable for gentry scholars to engage in the occult arts of divination
Divination
Divination is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic standardized process or ritual...
and Chinese astrology
Chinese astrology
Chinese astrology is based on the traditional astronomy and calendars. The development of Chinese astrology is tied to that of astronomy, which came to flourish during the Han Dynasty ....
, career diviners were of a lower status and earned only a modest income. Other humble occultist professions included sorcery
Magic (paranormal)
Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
and physiognomy
Physiognomy
Physiognomy is the assessment of a person's character or personality from their outer appearance, especially the face...
; like merchants, those who practiced sorcery were banned from holding public office. Being a butcher
Butcher
A butcher is a person who may slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat or any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat, poultry, fish and shellfish for sale in retail or wholesale food establishments...
was another lowly occupation, yet there is one case where a butcher became an official during Emperor Gaozu's reign, while Empress He
Empress He (Ling)
Empress He , personal name unknown, formally known as Empress Lingsi was an empress of the Han Dynasty period of Chinese history. She was Emperor Ling's second wife...
(d. 189 CE) and her brother, the regent He Jin
He Jin
He Jin was the elder half-brother of Empress He, consort to Emperor Ling of the late Eastern Han Dynasty in China. He shared power with his sister as regents in 189, following the death of Emperor Ling. In the ensuing struggle with the influential eunuch faction for power, He Jin was assassinated...
(d. 189 CE), came from a family of butchers. Runners and messengers who worked for the government were also considered to have a lowly status, yet some later became government officials.
Twenty ranks
The Han court upheld a socio-economic ranking system for commoners and nobles, which was based on the twenty-ranks system installed by the statesman Shang YangShang Yang
Shang Yang was an important statesman of the State of Qin during the Warring States Period of Chinese history. Born Wei Yang in the State of Wei, with the support of Duke Xiao of Qin Yang enacted numerous reforms in Qin...
(d. 338 BCE) of the State of Qin
Qin (state)
The State of Qin was a Chinese feudal state that existed during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods of Chinese history...
. All males above the age of 15 (excluding slaves) could be promoted in rank up to level eight. When a commoner was promoted in rank, he was granted a more honorable place in the seating arrangements of hamlet banquets, was given a greater portion of hunted game at the table, was punished less severely for certain crimes, and could become exempt from labor obligations to the state. Moreover, he was exempted from labor service obligations. This system favored the elderly, since a longer lifespan meant more opportunities to become promoted. In addition to an increase in salary (see table to the right), newly promoted men were granted wine and ox-meat for a celebratory banquet. The 19th and 20th ranks were both marquess ranks, yet only a 20th rank allowed one to have a marquessate fief.
Promotions in rank were decided by the emperor and could occur on special occasions, such as installation of a new emperor, inauguration of a new reign title
Chinese era name
A Chinese era name is the regnal year, reign period, or regnal title used when traditionally numbering years in an emperor's reign and naming certain Chinese rulers . Some emperors have several era names, one after another, where each beginning of a new era resets the numbering of the year back...
, the wedding of a new empress, or the selection of a royal heir apparent
Heir apparent
An heir apparent or heiress apparent is a person who is first in line of succession and cannot be displaced from inheriting, except by a change in the rules of succession....
. The central government sometimes sold ranks to collect more revenues for the state. The official Chao Cuo
Chao Cuo
Cháo Cuò was a Chinese political advisor and official of the Han Dynasty , renowned for his intellectual capabilities and foresight in martial and political matters. Although not against the philosophy of Confucius , he was described by later Eastern Han scholars as a Legalist...
(d. 154 BCE) once wrote that anyone who presented a substantial amount of agricultural grain to the government would also be promoted in rank.
| The twenty-ranks system (二十公乘) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Rank level and Chinese name |
English translation | Annual salary measured in bushel Bushel A bushel is an imperial and U.S. customary unit of dry volume, equivalent in each of these systems to 4 pecks or 8 gallons. It is used for volumes of dry commodities , most often in agriculture... s or shi (石) of millet Millet The millets are a group of small-seeded species of cereal crops or grains, widely grown around the world for food and fodder. They do not form a taxonomic group, but rather a functional or agronomic one. Their essential similarities are that they are small-seeded grasses grown in difficult... |
| 1. 公士 Gongshi | Gentleman | 50 |
| 2. 上造 Shangzao | Distinguished Accomplishment | 100 |
| 3. 簪袅 Zanniao | Ornamented Horses | 150 |
| 4. 不更 Bugeng | No Conscript Service | 200 |
| 5. 大夫 Dafu | Grandee | 250 |
| 6. 官大夫 Guan Dafu | Government Grandee | 300 |
| 7. 公大夫 Gong Dafu | Gentleman Grandee | 350 |
| 8. 公乘 Gongcheng | Gentleman Chariot | 400 |
| 9. 五大夫 Wu Dafu | Grandee | 450 |
| 10. 左庶长 Zuo Shuzhang | Chief of the Multitude on the Left | 500 |
| 11. 右庶长 You Shuzhang | Chief of the Multitude on the Right | 550 |
| 12. 左更 Zuo Geng | Chieftain of Conscripts on the Left | 600 |
| 13. 中更 Zhong Geng | Chieftain of Conscripts in the Center | 650 |
| 14. 右更 You Shuzhang | Chieftain of Conscripts on the Right | 700 |
| 15. 少上造 Shao Shangzao | Second-Order Distinguished Accomplishment | 750 |
| 16. 大上造 Da Shangzao | Most Distinguished Accomplishment | 800 |
| 17. 驷车庶长 Siju Shuzhang | Chieftain of the Multitude Riding a Four-Horse Chariot | 850 |
| 18. 大庶长 Da Shuzhang | Grand Chieftain of the Multitude | 900 |
| 19. 关内候 Guannei Hou | Marquis of the Imperial Domain | 950 |
| 20. 彻候 Che Hou | Full Marquis | 1,000 |
Urban and rural life
During the Han, the empire was divided into large administrative units of kingdoms and commanderies; within a commandery there were counties, and within counties there were districtsDistrict (China)
The term district, in the context of China, is used to refer to several unrelated political divisions in both ancient and modern China....
that contained at least several hamlets
Hamlet (place)
A hamlet is usually a rural settlement which is too small to be considered a village, though sometimes the word is used for a different sort of community. Historically, when a hamlet became large enough to justify building a church, it was then classified as a village...
. An average hamlet contained about a hundred families and usually was enclosed by a wall with two gates. At the center of social life in the hamlet was the religious altar (built in honor of a local deity
Chinese folk religion
Chinese folk religion or Shenism , which is a term of considerable debate, are labels used to describe the collection of ethnic religious traditions which have been a main belief system in China and among Han Chinese ethnic groups for most of the civilization's history until today...
) where festivities could be staged. Each district and county also had an official religious altar. The official reach of government extended no further than the district level, where county-appointed officials included the chief of police
Chief of police
A Chief of Police is the title typically given to the top official in the chain of command of a police department, particularly in North America. Alternate titles for this position include Commissioner, Superintendent, and Chief constable...
who maintained law and order and the district tax collector. However, the government was able to control local society at the hamlet level with their bestowal of twenty ranks.
The government funded flood control
Flood control
In communications, flood control is a feature of many communication protocols designed to prevent overwhelming of a destination receiver. Such controls can be implemented either in software or in hardware, and will often request that the message be resent after the receiver has finished...
projects involving the building of new canals, thus aiding the speed of waterborne transport and allowing undeveloped areas to become irrigated farmlands
Irrigation
Irrigation may be defined as the science of artificial application of water to the land or soil. It is used to assist in the growing of agricultural crops, maintenance of landscapes, and revegetation of disturbed soils in dry areas and during periods of inadequate rainfall...
. These conscription labor projects allowed for the building of new hamlets which were dependent on the government for their livelihoods. When the authority of the central government declined in the late Eastern Han period, many commoners living in such hamlets were forced to flee their lands and work as tenants on large estates of wealthy landowners. The people of older hamlets which never had to rely on central government projects for their wellbeing or existence often sought support from powerful local families.
The Western Han capital at Chang'an
Chang'an
Chang'an is an ancient capital of more than ten dynasties in Chinese history, today known as Xi'an. Chang'an literally means "Perpetual Peace" in Classical Chinese. During the short-lived Xin Dynasty, the city was renamed "Constant Peace" ; yet after its fall in AD 23, the old name was restored...
was divided into one hundred and sixty walled residential wards. Affairs of each ward were overseen by a low-ranking official. Influential families within the wards usually maintained social order. Historians are still unsure as to how many government-controlled marketplaces existed in Chang'an. Although there are claims of nine markets, it is possible that seven of them were actually divisible parts of two main markets: the East Market and West Market. Both the East Market and West Market had a two-story government office with a flag and drum placed on the roof. A market chief and deputy were headquartered in each of these buildings, yet not much is known about their involvement in the marketplace. In the Eastern Han capital of Luoyang
Luoyang
Luoyang is a prefecture-level city in western Henan province of Central China. It borders the provincial capital of Zhengzhou to the east, Pingdingshan to the southeast, Nanyang to the south, Sanmenxia to the west, Jiyuan to the north, and Jiaozuo to the northeast.Situated on the central plain of...
, the market chief's office employed thirty-six sub-officers who ventured into the marketplace daily to maintain law and order. They also collected taxes on commercial goods, assigned standard prices for specific commodities on the basis of monthly reviews, and authorized contract
Contract
A contract is an agreement entered into by two parties or more with the intention of creating a legal obligation, which may have elements in writing. Contracts can be made orally. The remedy for breach of contract can be "damages" or compensation of money. In equity, the remedy can be specific...
s between merchants and their customers or clients. Besides merchants engaging in marketplace violations, other crimes were committed by adolescent street gangs who often wore clothes distinguishing their gang. The maintenance of law and order outside the market and in slum areas was conducted by constable
Constable
A constable is a person holding a particular office, most commonly in law enforcement. The office of constable can vary significantly in different jurisdictions.-Etymology:...
s; Han officials sometimes argued for increasing their salaries which they assumed would encourage them to reject bribes from criminals.
There were many amusements in the cities which could attract audiences rich and poor, such as trained animals performing tricks, cockfight
Cockfight
A cockfight is a blood sport between two roosters , held in a ring called a cockpit. Cockfighting is now illegal throughout all states in the United States, Brazil, Australia and in most of Europe. It is still legal in several U.S. territories....
ing and caged animal fights between tigers, horse racing
Horse racing
Horse racing is an equestrian sport that has a long history. Archaeological records indicate that horse racing occurred in ancient Babylon, Syria, and Egypt. Both chariot and mounted horse racing were events in the ancient Greek Olympics by 648 BC...
, puppet shows
Puppetry
Puppetry is a form of theatre or performance which involves the manipulation of puppets. It is very ancient, and is believed to have originated 30,000 years BC. Puppetry takes many forms but they all share the process of animating inanimate performing objects...
, musical performances
Music of China
Chinese Music has been made since the dawn of Chinese civilization with documents and artifacts providing evidence of a well-developed musical culture as early as the Zhou Dynasty...
with dancing, acrobatic feats
Acrobatics
Acrobatics is the performance of extraordinary feats of balance, agility and motor coordination. It can be found in many of the performing arts, as well as many sports...
, and juggling
Juggling
Juggling is a skill involving moving objects for entertainment or sport. The most recognizable form of juggling is toss juggling, in which the juggler throws objects up to catch and toss up again. This may be one object or many objects, at the same time with one or many hands. Jugglers often refer...
. Wealthy families could afford their own house choirs and five-piece orchestras with bells, drums, flutes, and stringed instruments. Gambling
Gambling
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods...
and board game
Board game
A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...
s such as liubo
Liubo
Liubo is an ancient Chinese board game played by two players. For the rules, it is believed that each player had six game pieces that were moved around the points of a square game board that had a distinctive, symmetrical pattern...
also provided entertainment.
Patrilineal, nuclear family
Confucianism
Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius . Confucianism originated as an "ethical-sociopolitical teaching" during the Spring and Autumn Period, but later developed metaphysical and cosmological elements in the Han...
mores and involved both immediate nuclear family
Nuclear family
Nuclear family is a term used to define a family group consisting of a father and mother and their children. This is in contrast to the smaller single-parent family, and to the larger extended family. Nuclear families typically center on a married couple, but not always; the nuclear family may have...
and extended family
Extended family
The term extended family has several distinct meanings. In modern Western cultures dominated by nuclear family constructs, it has come to be used generically to refer to grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, whether they live together within the same household or not. However, it may also refer...
members. The Chinese family was patrilineal, since a father's sons did not consider a mother's kin to be part of their clan; instead, they were considered 'outside relatives'. The Han Dynasty law code inherited the Qin Dynasty
Qin Dynasty
The Qin Dynasty was the first imperial dynasty of China, lasting from 221 to 207 BC. The Qin state derived its name from its heartland of Qin, in modern-day Shaanxi. The strength of the Qin state was greatly increased by the legalist reforms of Shang Yang in the 4th century BC, during the Warring...
(221–206 BCE) law that any family with more than two sons had to pay extra taxes. This was not repealed until the Cao Wei
Cao Wei
Cao Wei was one of the states that competed for control of China during the Three Kingdoms period. With the capital at Luoyang, the state was established by Cao Pi in 220, based upon the foundations that his father Cao Cao laid...
period (220–265 CE). The average Han family under one household typically had about four or five immediate family members, which was unlike the large extended families under one household in later dynasties. It was common during Han to send adult married sons away with a portion of the family fortune and visit them occasionally, yet in all dynasties during and after the Tang Dynasty
Tang Dynasty
The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...
(618–907 CE), a son who moved away and lived separately from his living parents would be considered a criminal. Larger families appeared during the Eastern Han when some married brothers chose to live with each other's families. However, a household with three generations living under its roof was incredibly rare. This is in contrast to the Jin Dynasty (265–420 CE), when having three or more generations under one roof was commonplace.
Clan and lineage
The Chinese clanChinese clan
A Chinese clan is a patrilineal and patrilocal group of related Chinese people with a common surname sharing a common ancestor and, in many cases, an ancestral home.-Description:...
or lineage involved men who shared a common patrilineal ancestor, yet were divided into subgroups whose behavior towards each other was regulated according to Confucian mores which dictated what relative should be closer and more intimate. The four different subgroups were: (1) brother, brother's sons, and brother's grandsons; (2) father's brothers, father's brother's sons and grandsons; (3) paternal grandfather's brothers, their sons, and grandsons; and (4) paternal great-grandfather's brothers, their sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons. While one was expected to mourn for an entire year over the death of any relative in the first subgroup, one was expected to mourn for only five months when a relative in the second subgroup had died. No ritual mourning was expected at all for relatives in the third and fourth subgroups. While a son mourned three years for a father's death, he only mourned one year for his mother's. Since carrying on the patrilineal line meant the continuation of ancestor worship, it was important to have at least one son, even if he was adopted
Adoption
Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents...
from another family (although it was considered imperative that he share the same surname
Chinese surname
Chinese family names have been historically used by Han Chinese and Sinicized Chinese ethnic groups in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and among overseas Chinese communities. In ancient times two types of surnames, family names and clan names , existed.The colloquial expressions laobaixing...
, otherwise his ancestral sacrifices could be considered null and void).
Marriage and divorce
Although romantic love was not discouraged, marriages were arrangedArranged marriage
An arranged marriage is a practice in which someone other than the couple getting married makes the selection of the persons to be wed, meanwhile curtailing or avoiding the process of courtship. Such marriages had deep roots in royal and aristocratic families around the world...
as agreements and bonds formed between two clans (with property as the chief concern), not necessarily two individuals. A father's input on who his sons and daughters should marry carried more weight than the mother, although a grandfather could override a father's decision. Once a couple had married, the new wife was obligated to visit the family temple so she could become part of the husband's clan and be properly worshipped by her descendants after death. However, she retained her natal surname. The vast majority of people during Han practiced monogamy
Monogamy
Monogamy /Gr. μονός+γάμος - one+marriage/ a form of marriage in which an individual has only one spouse at any one time. In current usage monogamy often refers to having one sexual partner irrespective of marriage or reproduction...
, although wealthy officials and nobles could afford to support one or many concubines in addition to their legal wife.
Although the ideal ages for marriage were thirty for a man and twenty for a woman, it was common for a male to marry at age sixteen and a female at age fourteen. To encourage families to marry off their daughters, a law was introduced in 189 BCE that increased the poll tax rate fivefold for unmarried women between the ages of fifteen and thirty. People of the Han practiced a strict form of exogamy
Exogamy
Exogamy is a social arrangement where marriage is allowed only outside of a social group. The social groups define the scope and extent of exogamy, and the rules and enforcement mechanisms that ensure its continuity. In social studies, exogamy is viewed as a combination of two related aspects:...
where one could not marry a person who had the same surname, even if both partners could not be traced back to a common ancestor (however, this excluded the royal family, who sometimes married distant relatives for political reasons). Officials often married into families with officials of equal status and sometimes married royal princesses or had their daughters marry kings and even the emperor.
By custom there were seven conditions where a man could divorce his wife. These were: (1) disobedience to parents-in-law, (2) barrenness (unable to continue family line), (3) adultery (mixing another clan's blood into the family), (4) jealousy (of concubines), (5) incurable disease (unable to continue family line), (6) loquacity (not getting along with brothers-in-law or sisters-in-law), and (7) theft. However, a husband was not allowed to divorce his wife if she had completed three years of mourning for one of his deceased parents, if there were no living relatives in her father's family to return to, or if the husband's family was originally poor but became rich after marriage. Sometimes women were also able to initiate the divorce and remarry if the husband's family was in poverty, he was diseased, or his in-laws were too abusive. Although remarriage was frowned upon (especially since divorce meant a wife took away her dowry wealth from her ex-husband's family), it was nonetheless common amongst divorcees and widowers in all social groups.
Inheritance
The two types of inheritance during Han included the common inheritance of property from the deceased, which all social groups (except for slaves) participated in, and the inheritance of titles, which only the people of twenty ranks, nobility, and royalty could enjoy. In the first form, officials and commoners bequeathed an equal share of property to each of their sons in their will. This excluded daughters, who married into other families and thus did not carry on the family name. However, daughters did receive a portion of the family property in the form of their marriage dowriesDowry
A dowry is the money, goods, or estate that a woman brings forth to the marriage. It contrasts with bride price, which is paid to the bride's parents, and dower, which is property settled on the bride herself by the groom at the time of marriage. The same culture may simultaneously practice both...
, which were sometimes equal to a brother's share of wealth in the will. The second type of inheritance involved the practice of primogeniture
Primogeniture
Primogeniture is the right, by law or custom, of the firstborn to inherit the entire estate, to the exclusion of younger siblings . Historically, the term implied male primogeniture, to the exclusion of females...
, where the official title was inherited by only one son. This was as true of the emperor as it was for any king, marquess, or commoner of the twenty ranks. However, to limit the power of the kings while still upholding primogeniture, an imperial edict of 127 BCE stated that kings had to divide the territories of their kingdoms between the chosen successor (i.e. heir apparent) and the kings' brothers, who were made marquesses, thus establishing new marquessates and effectively reducing the size of every kingdom with each generation.
Status and position of women
Ban Zhao
Bān Zhāo , courtesy name Huiban , was the first known female Chinese historian. She completed her brother Ban Gu's work as he was imprisoned and executed in the year 92 BCE. because of his association with the family of Empress Dowager Dou. It was said her works could have filled eight volumes...
(45–116 CE) wrote in her Lessons for Women
Lessons for Women
Lessons for Women , also translated as Admonitions for Women, is a work by the Han Dynasty female intellectual Ban Zhao.-Outline:Lessons for Women outlines the four virtues a woman must abide by, proper virtue, proper speech, proper countenance, and proper conduct. The book itself describes the...
that, like the opposite and complementary forces of yin and yang
Yin and yang
In Asian philosophy, the concept of yin yang , which is often referred to in the West as "yin and yang", is used to describe how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. Opposites thus only...
, men's great virtues were strength and rigidity, while a woman's great virtues were respect and compliance. Throughout her life, a Han woman was to bend to the will of first her father, then her husband, and then her adult son (三從四德). However, there are many recorded deviations from this rule, as some Han women are written to have engaged in heated arguments with their husbands over concubines (sometimes beating concubines out of jealousy and to punish the husband), wrote essays and letters for husbands serving as government officials, and sometimes husbands turned to their wives for advice on political affairs of the court. When a father died, the eldest son was theoretically the senior member of the family, yet as hinted in various works of Han literature, they still had to obey the will of their mother and she could even force them to kowtow to her when apologizing for an offense. Deviations from common customs regarding gender were especially pronounced in the imperial family. The empress was able to give orders to her male relatives (even her father) and if they disobeyed her, she could publicly reprimand and humiliate them.
Certain occupations were traditionally reserved for women, while they were also exempted from corvée labor duties. Women were expected to rear children, weave clothes for the family, and perform domestic duties such as cooking; although farming was considered men's work, sometimes women tilled fields alongside their husbands and brothers. Some women formed communal spinning and weaving groups to pool resources together to pay for candles, lamp oil, and heat during night and winter. A successful textile business could employ hundreds of women. Singing and dancing to entertain wealthy patrons were other common professions open for women. When a husband died, sometimes the widow became the sole supporter of her children, and thus had to make a living weaving silk cloths or making straw sandles to sell in the market. Some women also turned to the humble profession of sorcery for income. Other more fortunate women could become renowned medical physicians who provided services to the families of high officials and nobility. Some wealthy women engaged in luxury trade, such as one who frequently sold pearls to a princess. Some even aided in their husband's business decisions. Female merchants donned in silk clothes which rivaled even female nobles' attire were considered immoral compared to the ideal woman weaver.
Education, literature, and philosophy
Competing ideologies
Sima Tan
Sima Tan was an early Chinese historian who worked under the Western Han. He studied astronomy with Tang Du, the I Ching under Yang He and Daoism under Master Huang. He held the position of Grand Historian between 140-110 BC. While Sima Tan had begun the Records of the Grand Historian , he died...
(d. 110 BCE) wrote that the Legalist tradition
Legalism (Chinese philosophy)
In Chinese history, Legalism was one of the main philosophic currents during the Warring States Period, although the term itself was invented in the Han Dynasty and thus does not refer to an organized 'school' of thought....
inherited by Han from the previous Qin Dynasty taught that imposing severe man-made laws which were short of kindness would produce a well-ordered society, given that human nature was innately immoral and had to be checked. 'Legalism' was the label created by Han scholars to describe the socio-political philosophy formulated largely by Shen Buhai
Shen Buhai
Shen Buhai was a Chinese bureaucrat who was the Chancellor of Han under Marquis Zhao of Han from 351 BC to 337 BC. Shen was born in the State of Zheng; he was likely to have been a minor official for the State of Zheng. After Han conquered Zheng in 375 BC, he rose up in the ranks of the Han...
(d. 340 BCE), Shang Yang
Shang Yang
Shang Yang was an important statesman of the State of Qin during the Warring States Period of Chinese history. Born Wei Yang in the State of Wei, with the support of Duke Xiao of Qin Yang enacted numerous reforms in Qin...
(d. 338 BCE), and Han Fei
Han Fei
Han Fei was a Chinese philosopher who, along with Li Si, Gongsun Yang, Shen Dao and Shen Buhai, developed the doctrine of the School of Law or Legalism...
(c. 280 – c. 233 BCE), a philosophy which stressed that government had to rely on a strict system of punishments and rewards to maintain law and order. Some early Western Han officials were influenced by the tenet of 'nonaction'
Wu wei
Wu wei is an important concept of Taoism , that involves knowing when to act and when not to act. Another perspective to this is that "Wu Wei" means...
apparent in Han Fei's work and the Daoist Laozi
Laozi
Laozi was a mystic philosopher of ancient China, best known as the author of the Tao Te Ching . His association with the Tao Te Ching has led him to be traditionally considered the founder of Taoism...
. By utilizing this concept, they argued that once laws and administrative systems were set in place, the government functioned smoothly and intervention on behalf of the ruler became unnecessary. This school of thought was known as 'Yellow Emperor and Laozi'
Huang-Lao
Huang-Lao or Huanglao was the most influential Chinese school of thought in the early 2nd-century BCE Han Dynasty, and is generally interpreted as encompassing Daoism and Legalism...
(Huang-Lao 黃老), which gained full acceptance at court under the patronage of Empress Dowager Dou
Empress Dou (Wen)
Empress Dou , formally Empress Xiaowen , was a Chinese empress during the Han Dynasty who greatly influenced the reigns of her husband Emperor Wen and her son Emperor Jing with her adherence of Taoist philosophy...
(d. 135 BCE). Its followers believed that the originator of ordered civilization was the mythical Yellow Emperor
Yellow Emperor
The Yellow Emperor or Huangdi1 is a legendary Chinese sovereign and culture hero, included among the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. Tradition holds that he reigned from 2697–2597 or 2696–2598 BC...
, a view that contradicted later Confucian scholars' views that the mythological Yao
Yao (ruler)
Yao , was a legendary Chinese ruler, one of the Three Sovereigns and the Five Emperors. His ancestral name （姓）is Yi Qi （伊祁） or Qi（祁）,clan name （氏）is Taotang , given name is Fangxun , as the second son to Emperor Ku and Qingdu...
and Shun were responsible for bringing man out of a state of anarchy. Works such as the Huainanzi
Huainanzi
The Huáinánzǐ is a 2nd century BCE Chinese philosophical classic from the Han dynasty that blends Daoist, Confucianist, and Legalist concepts, including theories such as Yin-Yang and the Five Phases. It was written under the patronage of Liu An, Prince of Huainan, a legendarily prodigious author...
(presented in 139 BCE) introduced new systematic ideas about the cosmos which undercut the message of Huang-Lao thought. Scholars such as Shusun Tong
Shusun Tong
Shusun Tong - official and ritual specialist at Qin and W.Han courts. He is known for organization of the first court worship for the Emperor Gaozu of Han, as well as for the custody over the young prince Ying, the future Emperor Hui. His biography is presented in the Chapter 99 of the Records of...
(叔孫通) began to express greater emphasis for ethical ideas espoused in 'Classicist' philosophical works such as those of Kongzi
Confucius
Confucius , literally "Master Kong", was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period....
(i.e. Confucius, 551–479 BCE), an ideology anachronistically known as Confucianism
Confucianism
Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius . Confucianism originated as an "ethical-sociopolitical teaching" during the Spring and Autumn Period, but later developed metaphysical and cosmological elements in the Han...
. Emperor Gaozu found Shusun Tong's Confucian reforms of court rituals useful so long as they further exalted his status, yet it was not until Emperor Wu's reign that Confucianism gained exclusive patronage at court.
Confucianism becomes paramount
At the core of Confucian ethics were the selected virtues of filial pietyFilial piety
In Confucian ideals, filial piety is one of the virtues to be held above all else: a respect for the parents and ancestors. The Confucian classic Xiao Jing or Classic of Xiào, thought to be written around 470 BCE, has historically been the authoritative source on the Confucian tenet of xiào /...
, harmonious relationships
Ren (Confucianism)
Ren is a Confucian notion denoting, as rough approximation, the good feeling a virtuous human experiences when behaving rightly, especially toward others...
, ritual
Li (Confucian)
Li is a classical Chinese word which finds its most extensive use in Confucian and post-Confucian Chinese philosophy. Li encompasses not a definitive object but rather a somewhat abstract idea; as such, it is translated in a number of different ways...
, and righteousness. The amalgamation of these ideas into a theological
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
system involving earlier cosmological theories of yin and yang
Yin and yang
In Asian philosophy, the concept of yin yang , which is often referred to in the West as "yin and yang", is used to describe how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. Opposites thus only...
as well as the five phases (i.e. natural cycles which governed Heaven, Earth, and Man) was first pioneered by the official Dong Zhongshu
Dong Zhongshu
Dong Zhongshu was a Han Dynasty Chinese scholar. He is traditionally associated with the promotion of Confucianism as the official ideology of the Chinese imperial state.-History:...
(179–104 BCE). Although full authenticity of Dong's authorship of the Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals
Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals
The Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals is one of the work that has survived to the present that was attributed to Dong Zhongshu, but compilation might had lasted until 4th century. It is 82 chapters long and about 72,000 words, although 3 of the chapters within the present text have...
comes into question with hints that parts were rewritten around the time of Liu Xiang (79–8 BCE) or Liu Xin
Liu Xin
Liu Xin , later changed name to Liu Xiu , courtesy name Zijun , was a Chinese astronomer, historian, and editor during the Xin Dynasty . He was the son of Confucian scholar Liu Xiang and an associate of other prominent thinkers such as the philosopher Huan Tan...
(d. 23 CE), three of his original memorials sent to the throne discussing his syncretic version of Confucianism were preserved in the 1st-century-CE Book of Han
Book of Han
The Book of Han, Hanshu or History of the Former Han Dynasty |Fan Ye]] . Various scholars have estimated that the earliest material covered in the book dates back to between 206 and 202 BCE...
.
Since his model incorporated and justified the imperial government into the natural order of the universe, it appealed to Emperor Wu, who in 136 BCE abolished non-Confucian academic chairs or erudites (博士) not dealing with the Confucian Five Classics: the Classic of Poetry
Shi Jing
The Classic of Poetry , translated variously as the Book of Songs, the Book of Odes, and often known simply as its original name The Odes, is the earliest existing collection of Chinese poems and songs. It comprises 305 poems and songs, with many range from the 10th to the 7th centuries BC...
, the Classic of Changes
I Ching
The I Ching or "Yì Jīng" , also known as the Classic of Changes, Book of Changes and Zhouyi, is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts...
, the Classic of Rites
Classic of Rites
The Classic of Rites , also known as the Book of Rites, Book of Customs, the Record of Rites, was one of the Chinese Five Classics of the Confucian canon. It described the social forms, governmental system, and ancient/ceremonial rites of the Zhou Dynasty...
, the Classic of History
Classic of History
The Classic of History is a compilation of documentary records related to events in ancient history of China. It is also commonly known as the Shàngshū , or simply Shū...
, and the Spring and Autumn Annals
Spring and Autumn Annals
The Spring and Autumn Annals is the official chronicle of the State of Lu covering the period from 722 BCE to 481 BCE. It is the earliest surviving Chinese historical text to be arranged on annalistic principles. The text is extremely concise and, if all the commentaries are excluded, about 16,000...
. Expanding on the position of Mengzi
Mencius
Mencius was a Chinese philosopher who was arguably the most famous Confucian after Confucius himself.-Life:Mencius, also known by his birth name Meng Ke or Ko, was born in the State of Zou, now forming the territory of the county-level city of Zoucheng , Shandong province, only thirty kilometres ...
(c. 372 – 289 BCE) that human nature was innately good, Dong wrote that people needed external nourishment of education to become 'awakened' and develop morality. To produce morally sound officials, Emperor Wu further sponsored Confucian education when he established the Imperial University in 124 BCE. Despite mainstream acceptance of Confucianism for the rest of Han (and until the end of the Qing Dynasty
Qing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....
in 1911 CE), philosophers still defended some Legalist ideas while the state's laws and policies reflect a compromise reached between Legalism and Han Confucianism.
There were varying regional traditions or 'schools' within Confucianism assigned to certain texts. The two which caused most debate were New Texts
Old Texts
In Chinese philology, the Old Texts refer to some versions of the Five Classics discovered during the Han Dynasty, written in archaic characters and supposedly produced before the burning of the books, as opposed to the Modern Texts or New Texts in the new orthography.The last half of the 2nd...
and Old Texts
Old Texts
In Chinese philology, the Old Texts refer to some versions of the Five Classics discovered during the Han Dynasty, written in archaic characters and supposedly produced before the burning of the books, as opposed to the Modern Texts or New Texts in the new orthography.The last half of the 2nd...
traditions. The former represented works transmitted orally after the Qin book burning
Burning of books and burying of scholars
Burning of the books and burying of the scholars is a phrase that refers to a policy and a sequence of events in the Qin Dynasty of Ancient China, between the period of 213 and 206 BC. During these events, the Hundred Schools of Thought were pruned; legalism survived...
of 213 BCE, and the latter was newly discovered texts alleged by Kong Anguo (孔安國), Liu Xin, and others to have been excavated from the walls of Kongzi's home, displayed archaic written characters
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
, and thus were more authentic versions. Although initially rejected, the Old Texts found acceptance at the courts of Emperor Ping
Emperor Ping of Han
Emperor Ping was an emperor of the Chinese Han Dynasty from 1 BC to AD 5. After Emperor Ai died childless, the throne was passed to his cousin Emperor Ping—then a child of nine years old. Wang Mang was appointed regent by the Grand Empress Dowager Wang...
(r. 1 BCE – 5 CE) and Wang Mang, were rejected by Emperor Guangwu, and accepted once more by Emperor Zhang only to be rejected a third time by the following rulers.
Further philosophical synthesis
Jia Yi
Jia Yi was a Chinese poet and statesman of the Han Dynasty.- Life:Jia Yi was born in 201 BCE in Luoyang....
(201–169 BCE) synthesized the opposing perspectives of Mengzi and Xunzi (c. 312 – c. 230 BCE) in the chapter "Protecting and Tutoring" (Baofu 保傅) of his book New Recommendations (Xinshu 新書) to argue that human nature was malleable and thus neither originally good or evil. Han Confucianism was transformed in the Eastern Han period when scholars struggled to understand how Wang Mang's regime had failed despite its great sponsorship of Confucian reform
History of the Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty , founded by the peasant rebel leader Liu Bang ,From the Shang to the Sui dynasties, Chinese rulers were referred to in later records by their posthumous names, while emperors of the Tang to Yuan dynasties were referred to by their temple names, and emperors of the Ming and Qing...
. The transition from Western Han idealism to Eastern Han skepticism can be represented in part by the Model Sayings (Fayan 法言) of Yang Xiong (53 BCE – 18 CE), who argued that human nature was indeterminate, that one could cultivate good and escape negative situations by learning the valuable precepts of many schools of thought (not just Confucianism), yet man had no control over his ultimate fate (命) decided by Heaven. In his New Discussions (Xinlun 新論), Huan Tan
Huan Tan
Huan Tan 桓譚 was a Chinese philosopher of the Han Dynasty and short-lived interregnum of the Xin Dynasty . Huan's mode of philosophical thought belonged to an Old Text realist tradition supported by other contemporaries such as the naturalist and mechanistic philosopher Wang Chong Huan Tan 桓譚 (c....
(43 BCE –28 CE) argued that although the Han court sponsored Confucian education, the government had become corrupt and thus undermined Dong Zhongshu's cosmically ordained belief that Confucian education went hand-in-hand with political success. In his Balanced Discourse
Lunheng
The Lunheng is a wide-ranging Chinese classic text containing critical essays by Wang Chong on natural science, Chinese mythology, philosophy, and literature.-Title:...
(Lunheng), Wang Chong
Wang Chong
Wang Chong , courtesy name Zhongren , was a Chinese philosopher active during the Han Dynasty. He developed a rational, secular, naturalistic and mechanistic account of the world and of human beings and gave a materialistic explanation of the origin of the universe. His main work was the Lùnhéng...
(27–100 CE) argued that human life was not a coherent whole dictated by a unitary will of Heaven as in Dong's synthesis, but rather was broken down into three planes: biological (mental and physical), sociopolitical, and moral, elements which interacted with each other to produce different results and random fate. Eastern Han Confucians incorporated ideas of Legalism and Daoism to explain how society could be salvaged, such as Wang Fu
Wang Fu (philosopher)
Wang Fu , which endorsed the Confucian model of government.-Further reading:* Ann Behnke Kinney. The Art of the Han Essay: Wang Fu's Ch'ien-Fu Lun. Phoenix: Arizona State University Center for Asian Research, 1990. ISBN 0-939252-23-6...
(78–163 CE) in his Comments of a Recluse
Qian fu lun
Qian fu lun is a political-metaphysical text by the Later Han philosopher Wang Fu. It contains criticisms of contemporary societies, especially the power of consort clans and the growing regionalism. Wang Fu strongly supports the Confucian model of good government and humanism.-Further reading:*...
(Qian fu lun) who argued that the evils accumulated by mankind over time could be rectified by direct engagement of the body-politic (the Legalist approach), but that the individual had to cultivate personal virtue in the meantime as a long-term solution (the Daoist approach).
Public and private education
In order to secure a position as a teacher, erudite in the capital, or government official, a student could choose one of several paths to become well educated. Perhaps the most prestigious path was enrollment in the Imperial University. Students had to be above the age of eighteen to enroll, and were selected by the Minister of Ceremonies from those recommended by local authorities. Other students could choose to enroll in a school sponsored by the local commandery government. A professional teacher who opened a private schoolPrivate school
Private schools, also known as independent schools or nonstate schools, are not administered by local, state or national governments; thus, they retain the right to select their students and are funded in whole or in part by charging their students' tuition, rather than relying on mandatory...
in a small town or village could sometimes gather a following of several hundred to over a thousand students. Students were expected to pay tuition
Tuition
Tuition payments, known primarily as tuition in American English and as tuition fees in British English, Canadian English, Australian English, New Zealand English and Indian English, refers to a fee charged for educational instruction during higher education.Tuition payments are charged by...
, thus a teacher enjoyed a significant salary. His standing in the local community was usually paramount, and was even sought as an arbiter in disputes. Although the size of the Imperial Academy was greatly expanded in Eastern Han, private schools grew in importance as the imperial government lost authority and its academy's persecution of Old Text tradition drove many to pursue Old Text studies in private institutions.
The Standard Histories
Records of the Grand Historian
The Records of the Grand Historian, also known in English by the Chinese name Shiji , written from 109 BC to 91 BC, was the Magnum opus of Sima Qian, in which he recounted Chinese history from the time of the Yellow Emperor until his own time...
(Shiji) by Sima Qian
Sima Qian
Sima Qian was a Prefect of the Grand Scribes of the Han Dynasty. He is regarded as the father of Chinese historiography for his highly praised work, Records of the Grand Historian , a "Jizhuanti"-style general history of China, covering more than two thousand years from the Yellow Emperor to...
(145–86 BCE), there existed terse chronicle
Chronicle
Generally a chronicle is a historical account of facts and events ranged in chronological order, as in a time line. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events, the purpose being the recording of events that occurred, seen from the perspective of the...
s of events such as the Spring and Autumn Annals and the chronicle found at Shuihudi
Shuihudi Qin bamboo texts
The Shuihudi Qin bamboo texts are early Chinese texts written on bamboo slips, and are also sometimes called the Yúnmèng Qin bamboo texts. They were excavated in December 1975 from Tomb #11 at Chéngguān Shuìhǔdì , Yunmeng County, Hubei Province, China. The tomb belonged to a Qin administrator....
covering events in the State of Qin and Qin Dynasty from 306 to 217 BCE. There was also the Classic of History—part of the Confucian canon—which recorded the deeds of past rulers and political events (sometimes mythological instead of historical). However, Sima's work is considered the first of China's Standard Histories
Twenty-Four Histories
The Twenty-Four Histories is a collection of Chinese historical books covering a period from 3000 BC to the Ming Dynasty in the 17th century. The whole set contains 3213 volumes and about 40 million words...
, laid the groundwork for Chinese historiography
Chinese historiography
Chinese historiography refers to the study of methods and assumptions made in studying Chinese history.-History of Chinese Historians:Record of Chinese history dated back to the Shang Dynasty. The Classic of History, one of the Five Classics of Chinese classic texts is one of the earliest...
by creating the first universal history
Universal history
Universal history is basic to the Western tradition of historiography, especially the Abrahamic wellspring of that tradition. Simply stated, universal history is the presentation of the history of humankind as a whole, as a coherent unit.-Ancient authors:...
of China. He divided his work of one hundred and thirty chapters into basic annals, chronological tables in grid format (with year-by-year accounts since 841 BCE, the start of the Gonghe
Gonghe
The Gonghe Regency ruled China from 841 BC to 828 BC after King Li of Zhou was exiled by his nobles....
regency), treatises on general subjects (such as the economy
Economy of the Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty of ancient China experienced contrasting periods of economic prosperity and decline. It is normally divided into three periods: Western Han , the Xin Dynasty , and Eastern Han . The Xin Dynasty, established by the former regent Wang Mang, formed a brief interregnum between lengthy...
and the calendar
Science and technology of the Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty of ancient China, divided between the eras of Western Han , Xin Dynasty of Wang Mang The Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) of ancient China, divided between the eras of Western Han (206 BCE – 9 CE, when the capital was at Chang'an), Xin Dynasty of Wang Mang The Han Dynasty...
), histories of hereditary houses and states, biographies
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
on individuals arranged in roughly chronological order, and his own autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
as the last chapter. Being a court archivist allowed Sima to utilize eighty textual sources in addition to memorials, edicts, and stone inscriptions. These sources enhanced the enormous scope of his work, which mentions roughly four thousand people by name. He also traveled extensively to interview witnesses for more recent accounts.
Unlike the Western historiographical tradition
Greek historiography
The historical period of Ancient Greece is unique in world history as the first period attested directly in proper historiography, while earlier ancient history or proto-history is known by much more circumstantial evidence, such as annals, chronicles, king lists, and pragmatic epigraphy.Herodotus...
established by the Greek Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
(c. 484 c. – 425 BCE), University of North Carolina
University of North Carolina
Chartered in 1789, the University of North Carolina was one of the first public universities in the United States and the only one to graduate students in the eighteenth century...
associate professor Dr. Grant Hardy asserts that Sima's work was intended to be a textual microcosm
Macrocosm and microcosm
Macrocosm and microcosm is an ancient Greek Neo-Platonic schema of seeing the same patterns reproduced in all levels of the cosmos, from the largest scale all the way down to the smallest scale...
representing every aspect of the Universe, Earth, and Man in model form, in much the same way that the raised-relief map
Raised-relief map
A raised-relief map or terrain model is a three-dimensional representation, usually of terrain. When representing terrain, the elevation dimension is usually exaggerated by a factor between five and ten; this facilitates the visual recognition of terrain features.-History:In his 1665 paper for the...
in the tomb of Qin Shi Huang
Qin Shi Huang
Qin Shi Huang , personal name Ying Zheng , was king of the Chinese State of Qin from 246 BC to 221 BC during the Warring States Period. He became the first emperor of a unified China in 221 BC...
(r. 221–210 BCE) represented his empire. Hardy explains that this was not unique to Sima's work, as Han scholars believed encoded secrets existed in the Spring and Autumn Annals, which was deemed "a microcosm incorporating all the essential moral and historical principles by which the world operated" and future events could be prognosticated. However, Hardy's microcosm thesis as an explanation for the Shijis inconsistencies in ideological approach, organization, and literary characteristics has been criticized by Michael Loewe
Michael Loewe
Michael Loewe , also known as M. A. N. Loewe, is a British academic and renowned sinologist who has authored dozens of books, articles, and other publications in the fields of Classical Chinese and ancient Chinese history....
and David Schaberg. They express doubt about Hardy's view that Sima intended his work to be a well-planned, homogeneous model of reality, rather than a loosely connected collection of narratives which retains the original ideological biases of the various sources used.
The next Standard History was the Book of Han
Book of Han
The Book of Han, Hanshu or History of the Former Han Dynasty |Fan Ye]] . Various scholars have estimated that the earliest material covered in the book dates back to between 206 and 202 BCE...
, compiled by Ban Biao
Ban Biao
Ban Biao , courtesy name , was a Chinese historian, and an official born in what is now Xianyang, Shaanxi during the Han Dynasty. He was the nephew of Consort Ban, a famous poet and concubine to Emperor Cheng....
(3–54 CE), his son Ban Gu
Ban Gu
Ban Gu , courtesy name Mengjian , was a 1st century Chinese historian and poet best known for his part in compiling the Book of Han. He also wrote in the main poetic genre of the Han era, a kind of poetry interspersed with prose called fu. Some are anthologized by Xiao Tong in his Selections of...
(32–92 CE), and his daughter Ban Zhao
Ban Zhao
Bān Zhāo , courtesy name Huiban , was the first known female Chinese historian. She completed her brother Ban Gu's work as he was imprisoned and executed in the year 92 BCE. because of his association with the family of Empress Dowager Dou. It was said her works could have filled eight volumes...
(45–116 CE). Unlike Sima's private and independent work, this history text was commissioned and sponsored by the Han court under Emperor Ming
Emperor Ming of Han
Emperor Ming of Han, , was second emperor of the Chinese Eastern Han Dynasty.He was the second son of Emperor Guangwu. It was during Emperor Ming's reign that Buddhism began to spread into China. One night, he is said to have dreamed of a golden man or golden men...
(r. 57–75 CE), who let Ban Gu use the imperial archives. This set a significant precedent for the rest of the Standard Histories, since the historian was now virtually unable to criticize his ruling patron. The Book of Han covered the history of China left off from Sima's work during Emperor Wu's reign up until the middle Eastern Han. Although the Records of Three Kingdoms
Records of Three Kingdoms
Records of Three Kingdoms , is regarded as the official and authoritative historical text on the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history covering the years 184-280 CE. Written by Chen Shou in the 3rd century, the work combines the smaller histories of the rival states of Cao Wei , Shu Han and...
included events in late Eastern Han, no history work focused exclusively on the Eastern Han period until the Book of Later Han
Book of Later Han
The Book of the Later Han or the History of the Later Han is one of the official Chinese historical works which was compiled by Fan Ye in the 5th century, using a number of earlier histories and documents as sources...
was compiled by Fan Ye
Fan Ye (historian)
Fan Ye , courtesy name Weizong , was a Chinese historian and the compiler of Book of Later Han of Liu Song. Fan came from an official family background, he was born in present-day Shaoxing, Zhejiang, his ancestry was from Nanyang, Henan. His father was Fan Tai .-References:*Tan, Jiajian, ....
(398–445 CE).
Treatises, dictionaries, manuals, and biographies
Erya
The Erya is the oldest extant Chinese dictionary or Chinese encyclopedia. Bernhard Karlgren concluded that "the major part of its glosses must reasonably date from" the 3rd century BC....
(Erya) is the oldest known Chinese dictionary
Chinese dictionary
Chinese dictionaries date back over two millennia to the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, which is a significantly longer lexicographical history than any other language. There are hundreds of dictionaries for Chinese, and this article will introduce some of the most important...
and was compiled sometime in the 3rd century BCE before the Han. Dictionaries written during the Han Dynasty include Yang Xiong's Regional Speech
Fangyan
The Fāngyán , edited by Yang Xiong, was the first Chinese dictionary of dialectal terms. The full title is Yóuxuān shǐzhĕ juédài yǔ shì biéguó fāngyán "Local speeches of other countries in times immemorial explained by the Light-Carriage Messenger," which alludes to a Zhou Dynasty tradition of...
(Fangyan) of 15 BCE and Xu Shen
Xu Shen
Xǔ Shèn was a Chinese philologist of the Han Dynasty. He was the author of Shuowen Jiezi, the first Chinese dictionary with character analysis, as well as the first to organize the characters by shared components. It contains over 9,000 character entries under 540 radicals, explaining the origins...
's (c. 58 – c. 147 CE) Explaining Unitary Characters and Analyzing Compound Characters
Shuowen Jiezi
The Shuōwén Jiězì was an early 2nd century CE Chinese dictionary from the Han Dynasty. Although not the first comprehensive Chinese character dictionary , it was still the first to analyze the structure of the characters and to give the rationale behind them , as well as the first to use the...
(Shuowen Jiezi) of 121 CE. Yang Xiong's Fangyan was the first Chinese dialect vocabulary
Spoken Chinese
Chinese comprises many regional language varieties sometimes grouped together as the Chinese dialects, the primary ones being Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, and Min. These are not mutually intelligible, and even many of the regional varieties are themselves composed of a number of...
work; the modern Chinese phrase for 'dialect' is derived from the title of this book. In the Shuowen Jiezi, Xu Shen divided written characters
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
between wen (文) and zi (字), where the former were original pictographs and the latter were characters derived from them. Listing 9,353 characters with 1,163 variant forms, Xu arranged these into 540 section headers
Section headers of a Chinese dictionary
Section headers , also known as index keys or classifiers, are graphic portions of Chinese characters which are used for organizing entries in Chinese dictionaries into sections which all share the same graphic part...
according to their written radicals
Radical (Chinese character)
A Chinese radical is a component of a Chinese character. The term may variously refer to the original semantic element of a character, or to any semantic element, or, loosely, to any element whatever its origin or purpose...
. This convenient and systematic approach of arranging characters by their radicals became the standard for all Chinese dictionaries to follow.
Handbooks, guides, manuals, and treatises for various subjects were written in the Han. The Western Han Book of Fan Shengzhi (Fan Shengzhi shu 氾勝之書) written during Emperor Cheng's reign is one of two manuals on agricultural techniques and processes that have survived from the Han. The other is the Eastern Han Monthly Instructions for the Four Classes of People (Simin yueling 四民月令) written by Cui Shi (催寔) (d. 170 CE). Mathematical treatises
Chinese mathematics
Mathematics in China emerged independently by the 11th century BC. The Chinese independently developed very large and negative numbers, decimals, a place value decimal system, a binary system, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry....
included the Book on Numbers and Computation (Suan shu shu) The Arithmetical Classic of the Gnomon and the Circular Paths of Heaven (Zhoubi suanjing), and the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art (Jiuzhang Suanshu). There were also works on astronomy
Chinese astronomy
Astronomy in China has a very long history, with historians considering that "they [the Chinese] were the most persistent and accurate observers of celestial phenomena anywhere in the world before the Arabs."...
, such as the Miscellaneous Readings of Cosmic Patterns and Pneuma Images (Tianwen qixiang zazhan 天文氣象雜占) from the 2nd-century-BCE Mawangdui Silk Texts
Mawangdui Silk Texts
The Mawangdui Silk Texts are texts of Chinese philosophical and medical works written on silk and found at Mawangdui in China in 1973. They include some of the earliest attested manuscripts of existing texts such as the I Ching, two copies of the Tao Te Ching, one similar copy of Strategies of the...
and Zhang Heng
Zhang Heng
Zhang Heng was a Chinese astronomer, mathematician, inventor, geographer, cartographer, artist, poet, statesman, and literary scholar from Nanyang, Henan. He lived during the Eastern Han Dynasty of China. He was educated in the capital cities of Luoyang and Chang'an, and began his career as a...
's (78–139 CE) Spiritual Constitution of the Universe (Lingxian 靈憲) published in 120 CE.
Aside from the biographies found in the Standard Histories, it became popular amongst gentrymen to write stylistic essays and commission private biographies on other gentlemen. These privately published biographies focused either on gentrymen from one's locality or more well known figures who held national prominence.
Poetry and rhapsodies
The rhapsodyRhapsody (music)
A rhapsody in music is a one-movement work that is episodic yet integrated, free-flowing in structure, featuring a range of highly contrasted moods, colour and tonality. An air of spontaneous inspiration and a sense of improvisation make it freer in form than a set of variations...
, known as fu in Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, was a new literary genre. The poet and official Sima Xiangru
Sima Xiangru
Sima Xiangru, also known as Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju was a Chinese writer. He was a minor official of the Western Han Dynasty, but was better known for his poetic skills, jiu business, and controversial marriage to the widow Zhuo Wenjun after both eloped...
(179–117 BCE) wrote several rhapsodies, yet his largest and most influential was the "Rhapsody on the Son of Heaven on a Leisurely Hunt" (Tianzi Youlie Fu 天子遊獵賦) written in debate form. Sima's rhapsodies incorporated literary elements found in the Songs of Chu—an anthology of poems attributed to Qu Yuan
Qu Yuan
Qu Yuan was a Chinese poet who lived during the Warring States Period in ancient China. He is famous for his contributions to the poetry collection known as the Chu-ci...
(340–278 BCE) and Song Yu
Song Yu
Song Yu was a well-known Chinese poet in the State of Chu. He is commonly said to have been a nephew of Qu Yuan, but no reliable biographical information is available...
(fl. 3rd century BCE)—such as flying with heavenly immortals. Yang Xiong was the other prominent fu writer of Western Han, and although he at first praised Sima's work, he later criticized it as an example of the genre's shortcomings. In Eastern Han, Ban Gu wrote a rhapsody comparing the capital cities Chang'an and Luoyang, in which he concluded that Luoyang was the better of the two (which was a subtle praise of the current emperor, hinting that his virtue surpassed the rulers of Western Han). The court astronomer and inventor Zhang Heng
Zhang Heng
Zhang Heng was a Chinese astronomer, mathematician, inventor, geographer, cartographer, artist, poet, statesman, and literary scholar from Nanyang, Henan. He lived during the Eastern Han Dynasty of China. He was educated in the capital cities of Luoyang and Chang'an, and began his career as a...
(78–139 CE) also wrote rhapsodies on the capital cities which were inspired by those of Ban Gu. Zhang also penned the rhapsody "Returning to the Fields
Return to the Field (rhapsody)
Return to the Field is a Chinese rhapsody written in the fu style by Zhang Heng , an official, inventor, mathematician, and astronomer of the Han Dynasty in China.-Background:...
", which fused Daoist and Confucian ideals as well as laid the groundwork for later metaphysical nature poetry.
Zhang Heng also wrote "Lyric Poems on Four Sorrows" (四愁詩), which represent the earliest heptasyllabic shi
Shi (poetry)
Shi is the Chinese word for "poetry" or "poem", anciently associated with Chinese poetry. In modern times, shi can and has been used as an umbrella term to mean poetry in any form or language, whether or not Chinese; but, it may imply or be used to refer certain classical forms of poetry, for...
poems in Chinese literature. The government's Music Bureau
Yue fu
Yue fu are Chinese poems composed in a folk song style. The term literally means "Music Bureau", a reference to the government organisation originally charged with collecting or writing the lyrics....
also produced folk songs and a lyrical form of verse that became a standard sub-genre of shi poetry. These poems focused largely on issues of morality that Confucian scholars found acceptable and in-line with Zhou Dynasty traditions. Poets of the Jian'an (建安) period (196–220 CE) usually attended the same social events to compose poems on a given topic in one another's company.
Laws and customs
Natural law
Natural law, or the law of nature , is any system of law which is purportedly determined by nature, and thus universal. Classically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature and deduce binding rules of moral behavior. Natural law is contrasted with the positive law Natural...
and social customs into a rational corpus influenced by politics and based on positive law
Positive law
Positive law is the term generally used to describe man-made laws which bestow specific privileges upon, or remove them from, an individual or group...
. However, the Han Dynasty law code
Code (law)
A code is a type of legislation that purports to exhaustively cover a complete system of laws or a particular area of law as it existed at the time the code was enacted, by a process of codification. Though the process and motivations for codification are similar in common law and civil law...
established by Chancellor Xiao He
Xiao He
Xiao He was a Chinese statesman who lived during the early Han Dynasty. He served Liu Bang during the insurrection against the Qin Dynasty, and fought on Liu's side in the Chu–Han contention against Xiang Yu. After the founding of the Han Dynasty, Xiao He became chancellor and held office until...
(d. 193 BCE) was largely an extension of an existing Qin Dynasty law code. Evidence for this includes archaeological finds at Qin-era Shuihudi
Shuihudi Qin bamboo texts
The Shuihudi Qin bamboo texts are early Chinese texts written on bamboo slips, and are also sometimes called the Yúnmèng Qin bamboo texts. They were excavated in December 1975 from Tomb #11 at Chéngguān Shuìhǔdì , Yunmeng County, Hubei Province, China. The tomb belonged to a Qin administrator....
and Han-era Zhangjiashan
Zhangjiashan Han bamboo texts
The Zhangjiashan Han bamboo texts are ancient Han Dynasty Chinese written works dated 196–186 BCE. They were discovered in 1983 by archaeologists excavating tomb no. 247 at Mount Zhangjia of Jiangling County, Hubei Province . The tomb was built for an early Western Han era official who had...
. The nine chapters of the law code consisted of statute
Statute
A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs a state, city, or county. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. The word is often used to distinguish law made by legislative bodies from case law, decided by courts, and regulations...
s which dealt with criminality, while two of these chapters dealt with court procedure. Although it survives only in small fragments, it was allegedly a massive written work on 960 written scrolls. The code had 26,272 articles written in 7,732,200 words that outlined punishments. There were 490 articles on the death penalty alone which contained 1,882 offenses and 3,472 analogies or pieces of case law
Case law
In law, case law is the set of reported judicial decisions of selected appellate courts and other courts of first instance which make new interpretations of the law and, therefore, can be cited as precedents in a process known as stare decisis...
.
The county magistrate and commandery administrator were the official court judges of the county and commandery, respectively. Their jurisdictions overlapped, yet the commandery administrator only interfered in county court cases when necessary; it was generally agreed that whoever arrested a criminal first would be the first to judge him or her. If a commandery-level court case could not be resolved, the central government's Commandant of Justice was the final authority of appeal before the emperor. Yet he most often dealt with cases of political rebels and regicide
Regicide
The broad definition of regicide is the deliberate killing of a monarch, or the person responsible for the killing of a monarch. In a narrower sense, in the British tradition, it refers to the judicial execution of a king after a trial...
in regards to kings, marquesses, and high officials. Above the Commandant was the emperor, the supreme judge and lawgiver.
Domestic violence
Domestic violence, also known as domestic abuse, spousal abuse, battering, family violence, and intimate partner violence , is broadly defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship such as marriage, dating, family, or cohabitation...
. Rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
cases were also commonly filed in court and were punished by Han law. Women could level charges against men in court, while it was commonly accepted in Han jurisprudence that women were capable of telling the truth in court.
Sometimes criminals were beaten with the bastinado to gain confessions, but Han scholars argued that torture was not the best means of gaining confession, while court conferences were called into session to decide how many strokes should be given and what size the stick should be so as not to cause permanent injury. Imprisonment was an unheard of form of punishment during Han; common punishments were the death penalty by beheading, periods of forced hard labor for convicts, exile, or monetary fines. Mutilating punishments also existed in early Han, borrowed from previous practice in Qin. This included tattooing the face, cutting off the nose, castration, and amputation of one or both feet, yet by 167 BCE these were abolished in favor of lengthy floggings with the bastinado. Further reforms were implemented by the first year of Emperor Jing's
Emperor Jing of Han
Emperor Jing of Han was an emperor of China in the Han Dynasty from 156 BC to 141 BC. His reign saw the limit and curtailment of power of feudal princes which resulted in the Rebellion of the Seven States in 154 BC. Emperor Jing managed to crush the revolt and princes were thereafter denied rights...
(r. 154–141 BCE) reign which decreased the amount of strokes a prisoner could receive from the bastinado. Starting in 195 BCE, those aged seventy and older were exempt from mutilating punishments. Further reforms exempted those aged seventy and older from harsh interrogation methods in cases other than false accusation and murder.
Although modern scholars know of some surviving cases where Han law dealt with commerce and domestic affairs, the spheres of trade (outside the monopolies) and the family were still largely governed by age-old social customs. Many ways in which family relations were conducted during the Han were already stipulated in the ancient Confucian canon, especially in the Book of Rites. This became accepted as the mainstream guide to ethics and custom. In terms of private commercial contract
Contract
A contract is an agreement entered into by two parties or more with the intention of creating a legal obligation, which may have elements in writing. Contracts can be made orally. The remedy for breach of contract can be "damages" or compensation of money. In equity, the remedy can be specific...
s, they usually entailed information on the goods transferred, the amount paid, the names of the buyer and seller, the date of transfer and the signatures of witnesses.
Arts and crafts
Cai Yong
Cai Yong was a Chinese scholar of the Eastern Han Dynasty. He was well-versed in calligraphy, music, mathematics and astronomy. One of his daughters is the famous Cai Wenji.-Early life:...
(132–192 CE) to paint portraits
Portrait painting
Portrait painting is a genre in painting, where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject. Beside human beings, animals, pets and even inanimate objects can be chosen as the subject for a portrait...
and produce eulogies
Eulogy
A eulogy is a speech or writing in praise of a person or thing, especially one recently deceased or retired. Eulogies may be given as part of funeral services. However, some denominations either discourage or do not permit eulogies at services to maintain respect for traditions...
for five generations of the prominent Yang clan of officials and military officers. This is the first recorded instance in China where a scholar-official was commissioned to write eulogies and paint portraits in conjunction, instead of relying on skilled artisans to do the painting.
Han luxury items furnished the homes of wealthy merchants, officials, nobles, and royalty. Such goods were often highly decorated by skilled artisans. These include red-and-black lacquerware
Lacquerware
Lacquerware are objects decoratively covered with lacquer. The lacquer is sometimes inlaid or carved. Lacquerware includes boxes, tableware, buttons and even coffins painted with lacquer in cultures mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere.-History:...
s in various shapes and sizes, bronze items such as raised-relief decorated mirrors
TLV mirror
A TLV mirror is a type of bronze mirror that was popular during the Han Dynasty in China. They are called TLV mirrors because symbols resembling the letters T, L, and V are engraved into them...
, oil lamp
Oil lamp
An oil lamp is an object used to produce light continuously for a period of time using an oil-based fuel source. The use of oil lamps began thousands of years ago and is continued to this day....
s in the shape of human figures, and gilded bronzewares
Gilding
The term gilding covers a number of decorative techniques for applying fine gold leaf or powder to solid surfaces such as wood, stone, or metal to give a thin coating of gold. A gilded object is described as "gilt"...
, glazed ceramic wares with various incised designs, and ornaments and jewelry made of jade
Chinese jade
Chinese jade is any of the carved-jade objects produced in China from the Neolithic Period onward. The Chinese regarded carved-jade objects as intrinsically valuable...
, opal, amber, quartz, gold, and silver.
Besides domestic decoration, Han artwork also served an important funerary function. Han artists and craftsmen decorated the wall bricks lining underground tombs of the deceased
Science and technology of the Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty of ancient China, divided between the eras of Western Han , Xin Dynasty of Wang Mang The Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) of ancient China, divided between the eras of Western Han (206 BCE – 9 CE, when the capital was at Chang'an), Xin Dynasty of Wang Mang The Han Dynasty...
with mural paintings
History of painting
The history of painting reaches back in time to artifacts from pre-historic humans, and spans all cultures. It represents a continuous, though periodically disrupted tradition from Antiquity. Across cultures, and spanning continents and millennia, the history of painting is an ongoing river of...
and carved relief
Relief
Relief is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb levo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is thus to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane...
s; the purpose of this artwork was to aid the deceased in traveling through their afterlife journey. Stamping artistic designs into tile and brick was also common. Human figurine sculptures found in Han tombs were placed there to perform various functions for the deceased in the afterlife, such as dancing and playing music for entertainment, as well as serving food. A common type of ceramic figurine found in Han tombs is a female entertainer sporting long, flowing silk sleeves that are flung about while dancing. Some ceramic human figures—both male and female—have been found naked, all with clearly distinguished genitalia and missing arms. This is because they once had wooden or cloth arms which were attached to holes in the shoulders by pegs, as well as miniature clothes made of perishable materials such as silk.
During the Western Han, grave goods were usually wares and pieces of art that were used by the tomb occupant when he or she was alive. By the Eastern Han, new stylistic goods, wares, and artwork found in tombs were usually made exclusively for burial and were not produced for previous use by the deceased when they were alive. These include miniature ceramic towers—usually watchtowers and urban residential towers—which provide historians clues about lost wooden architecture. In addition to towers, there are also miniature models of querns, water wells, pigsties, pestling shops
Mortar and pestle
A mortar and pestle is a tool used to crush, grind, and mix solid substances . The pestle is a heavy bat-shaped object, the end of which is used for crushing and grinding. The mortar is a bowl, typically made of hard wood, ceramic or stone...
, and farm fields with pottery pigs, dogs, sheep, chickens, ducks. Although many items placed in tombs were commonly used wares and utensils, it was considered taboo to bring objects specified for burial into living quarters or the imperial palace. They could only be brought into living quarters once they were properly announced at funerary ceremonies, and were known as mingqi
Mingqi
Mingqi , sometimes referred to as "spirit objects" or "vessels for ghosts", are Chinese burial goods. They included daily utensils, musical instruments, weapons, armor, and intimate objects such as the deceased's cap, can and bamboo mat. Mingqi also could include figurines, spiritual...
(明器/冥器) ("fearsome artifacts," "objects for the dead," or "brilliant artifacts") according to Cary Y. Liu (Ph.D. from Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, licensed architect and museum curator).
Clothing and cuisine
Foxtail millet
Foxtail millet is the second most widely planted species of millet, and the most important in East Asia. It has the longest history of cultivation among the millets, having been grown in China since sometime in the sixth millennium BC...
, proso millet
Proso millet
Proso millet is also known as common millet, hog millet or white millet. Both the wild ancestor and the location of domestication of proso millet are unknown, but it first appears as a crop in both Transcaucasia and China about 7,000 years ago, suggesting that it may have been domesticated...
, and beans. People of the Han also consumed sorghum
Sorghum
Sorghum is a genus of numerous species of grasses, one of which is raised for grain and many of which are used as fodder plants either cultivated or as part of pasture. The plants are cultivated in warmer climates worldwide. Species are native to tropical and subtropical regions of all continents...
, Job's Tears
Job's Tears
Job's Tears , Coixseed, Tear Grass, adlay, or adlai, is a tall grain-bearing tropical plant of the family Poaceae native to Southeast Asia but elsewhere cultivated in gardens as an annual. It has been naturalized in the southern United States and the New World tropics...
, taro
Taro
Taro is a common name for the corms and tubers of several plants in the family Araceae . Of these, Colocasia esculenta is the most widely cultivated, and is the subject of this article. More specifically, this article describes the 'dasheen' form of taro; another variety is called eddoe.Taro is...
, mallow
Malvaceae
Malvaceae, or the mallow family, is a family of flowering plants containing over 200 genera with close to 2,300 species. Judd & al. Well known members of this family include okra, jute and cacao...
, mustard green
Mustard plant
Mustards are several plant species in the genera Brassica and Sinapis whose small mustard seeds are used as a spice and, by grinding and mixing them with water, vinegar or other liquids, are turned into the condiment known as mustard or prepared mustard...
, melon
Melon
thumb|200px|Various types of melonsThis list of melons includes members of the plant family Cucurbitaceae with edible, fleshy fruit e.g. gourds or cucurbits. The word "melon" can refer to either the plant or specifically to the fruit...
, bottle gourd
Calabash
Lagenaria siceraria , bottle gourd, opo squash or long melon is a vine grown for its fruit, which can either be harvested young and used as a vegetable, or harvested mature, dried, and used as a bottle, utensil, or pipe. For this reason, the calabash is widely known as the bottle gourd...
, bamboo shoot
Bamboo shoot
Bamboo shoots or bamboo sprouts are the edible shoots of many bamboo species including Bambusa vulgaris and Phyllostachys edulis. They are used in numerous Asian dishes and broths...
, the roots of lotus plants
Nelumbo
Nelumbo is a genus of aquatic plants with large, showy flowers resembling water lilies, commonly known as lotus. The generic name is derived from the Sinhalese word Nelum. There are only two known living species in the genus. The sacred lotus is native to Asia, and is the better known of the two...
, and ginger
Ginger
Ginger is the rhizome of the plant Zingiber officinale, consumed as a delicacy, medicine, or spice. It lends its name to its genus and family . Other notable members of this plant family are turmeric, cardamom, and galangal....
. Some of the fruits the Han ate included the chestnut
Chestnut
Chestnut , some species called chinkapin or chinquapin, is a genus of eight or nine species of deciduous trees and shrubs in the beech family Fagaceae, native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The name also refers to the edible nuts they produce.-Species:The chestnut belongs to the...
, jujube
Jujube
Ziziphus zizyphus , commonly called jujube , red date, Chinese date, Korean date, or Indian date is a species of Ziziphus in the buckthorn family Rhamnaceae, used primarily as a fruiting shade tree.-Distribution:Its precise natural distribution is uncertain due to extensive cultivation,...
, pear
Pear
The pear is any of several tree species of genus Pyrus and also the name of the pomaceous fruit of these trees. Several species of pear are valued by humans for their edible fruit, but the fruit of other species is small, hard, and astringent....
, peach
Peach
The peach tree is a deciduous tree growing to tall and 6 in. in diameter, belonging to the subfamily Prunoideae of the family Rosaceae. It bears an edible juicy fruit called a peach...
, plum
Plum
A plum or gage is a stone fruit tree in the genus Prunus, subgenus Prunus. The subgenus is distinguished from other subgenera in the shoots having a terminal bud and solitary side buds , the flowers in groups of one to five together on short stems, and the fruit having a groove running down one...
(including the plum of prunus salicina
Prunus salicina
Prunus salicina , commonly called the Chinese plum or Japanese plum, is a small deciduous tree native to China...
and Prunus mume), melon
Melon
thumb|200px|Various types of melonsThis list of melons includes members of the plant family Cucurbitaceae with edible, fleshy fruit e.g. gourds or cucurbits. The word "melon" can refer to either the plant or specifically to the fruit...
, apricot
Apricot
The apricot, Prunus armeniaca, is a species of Prunus, classified with the plum in the subgenus Prunus. The native range is somewhat uncertain due to its extensive prehistoric cultivation.- Description :...
, red bayberry
Myrica
Myrica is a genus of about 35–50 species of small trees and shrubs in the family Myricaceae, order Fagales. The genus has a wide distribution, including Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America, and missing only from Australasia...
, and strawberry
Strawberry
Fragaria is a genus of flowering plants in the rose family, Rosaceae, commonly known as strawberries for their edible fruits. Although it is commonly thought that strawberries get their name from straw being used as a mulch in cultivating the plants, the etymology of the word is uncertain. There...
. The Han Chinese domesticated and ate chicken
Chicken
The chicken is a domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the Red Junglefowl. As one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, and with a population of more than 24 billion in 2003, there are more chickens in the world than any other species of bird...
s, Mandarin duck
Mandarin Duck
The Mandarin Duck , or just Mandarin, is a medium-sized perching duck, closely related to the North American Wood Duck. It is 41–49 cm long with a 65–75 cm wingspan.-Description:...
s, and geese
Goose
The word goose is the English name for a group of waterfowl, belonging to the family Anatidae. This family also includes swans, most of which are larger than true geese, and ducks, which are smaller....
, camel
Camel
A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as humps on its back. There are two species of camels: the dromedary or Arabian camel has a single hump, and the bactrian has two humps. Dromedaries are native to the dry desert areas of West Asia,...
s, cows, sheep, pig
Pig
A pig is any of the animals in the genus Sus, within the Suidae family of even-toed ungulates. Pigs include the domestic pig, its ancestor the wild boar, and several other wild relatives...
s, and dog
Dog
The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...
s. The type of game animals hunted during the Han included rabbit
Rabbit
Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae of the order Lagomorpha, found in several parts of the world...
, sika deer
Sika Deer
The Sika Deer, Cervus nippon, also known as the Spotted Deer or the Japanese Deer, is a species of deer native to much of East Asia and introduced to various other parts of the world...
, turtle dove
Turtle Dove
The European Turtle Dove , also known as Turtle Dove, is a member of the bird family Columbidae, which includes the doves and pigeons.-Distribution & Status:...
, goose
Goose
The word goose is the English name for a group of waterfowl, belonging to the family Anatidae. This family also includes swans, most of which are larger than true geese, and ducks, which are smaller....
, owl
Owl
Owls are a group of birds that belong to the order Strigiformes, constituting 200 bird of prey species. Most are solitary and nocturnal, with some exceptions . Owls hunt mostly small mammals, insects, and other birds, although a few species specialize in hunting fish...
, Chinese Bamboo Partridge
Chinese Bamboo Partridge
The Chinese Bamboo Partridge is a small partridge native to eastern mainland China and Taiwan, and introduced successfully to Japan...
, magpie
Magpie
Magpies are passerine birds of the crow family, Corvidae.In Europe, "magpie" is often used by English speakers as a synonym for the European Magpie, as there are no other magpies in Europe outside Iberia...
, common pheasant
Common Pheasant
The Common Pheasant , is a bird in the pheasant family . It is native to Georgia and has been widely introduced elsewhere as a game bird. In parts of its range, namely in places where none of its relatives occur such as in Europe , it is simply known as the "pheasant"...
, and crane
Crane (bird)
Cranes are a family, Gruidae, of large, long-legged and long-necked birds in the order Gruiformes. There are fifteen species of crane in four genera. Unlike the similar-looking but unrelated herons, cranes fly with necks outstretched, not pulled back...
s, while fish and turtles were taken from streams and lakes. Beer—which could be an unfermented malt drink with low alcohol content or a stronger brew fermented with yeast
Yeast
Yeasts are eukaryotic micro-organisms classified in the kingdom Fungi, with 1,500 species currently described estimated to be only 1% of all fungal species. Most reproduce asexually by mitosis, and many do so by an asymmetric division process called budding...
—was commonly consumed alongside meat, but virtually never consumed alongside grains such as rice. Wine
Wine in China
Wine in China refers to grape wines that are produced in China. Grape wine has a long history in China, along with other Chinese alcoholic beverages....
was also regularly consumed.
The 2nd-century-BCE tomb of the Lady Dai contained not only decayed remnants of actual food, such as rice, wheat, barley, two varieties of millet, and soybeans, but also a grave inventory with recipes on it. This included vegetable and meat stews cooked in pots, which had combinations such as beef and rice stew, dog meat and celery stew, and even deer, fish, and bamboo shoot stew. Seasonings mentioned in the recipes include sugar, honey, soy sauce
Soy sauce
Soy sauce is a condiment produced by fermenting soybeans with Aspergillus oryzae or Aspergillus sojae molds, along with water and salt...
, and salt. Recipes in the Han usually called for meat stuffed in cereals, cakes, and other wrappings.
Like their modern counterparts, the Han-era Chinese used chopsticks
Chopsticks
Chopsticks are small, often tapered, sticks used in pairs of equal length as the traditional eating utensils of China and its diaspora, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Northern provinces of Laos, Thailand and Burma. Generally believed to have originated in ancient China, they can also be found in some...
as eating utensils. For drinking beverages, wealthy people during Han often used cups with golden handles and inlaid with silver.
For the poor, hemp was the common item used to make clothing, while the rich could afford silk clothes. Silk clothes found in Han tombs include padded robes, double-layered robes, single-layered robes, single-layered skirts, shoes, socks, and mittens. The wealthy also wore fox and badger furs
Fur clothing
Fur clothing is clothing made of the fur of animals. Fur is one of the oldest forms of clothing; thought to have been widely used as hominids first expanded outside of Africa. Some view fur as luxurious and warm; others reject it due to moral beliefs...
, wild duck plumes, and slippers with inlaid leather or silk lining; those of more modest means could wear wool
Wool
Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....
and ferret
Ferret
The ferret is a domesticated mammal of the type Mustela putorius furo. Ferrets are sexually dimorphic predators with males being substantially larger than females. They typically have brown, black, white, or mixed fur...
skins. Large bamboo-matted suitcase
Suitcase
A suitcase is a general term for a distinguishable form of luggage. It is often a somewhat flat, rectangular-shaped bag with rounded/square corners, either metal, hard plastic or made of cloth, vinyl or leather that more or less keeps its shape. It has a carrying handle on one side and is used...
s found in Han tombs contained clothes and luxury items such as patterned fabric and embroidery, common silk, damask and brocade, and the leno (or gauze) weave, all with rich colors and designs. The Han also had tools for ironing clothes
Iron (appliance)
A clothes iron, also referred to as simply an iron, is a small appliance used in ironing to remove wrinkles from fabric.Ironing works by loosening the ties between the long chains of molecules that exist in polymer fiber materials. With the heat and the weight of the ironing plate, the fibers are...
.
Religion, cosmology, and metaphysics
Ancestor worship, deities, and the afterlife
Families throughout Han China made ritual sacrifices (usually involving animals and foodstuffs) to various deities, spirits, and ancestors. Deceased ancestors were thought to require food and drink in the afterlife, so living family members were routinely obligated to offer food and wine to the ancestors in a family shrine or templeTemple (Chinese)
A Chinese temple can refer to any temple which is used for the practice of Chinese folk religion, a conglomeration of China's three main religions: Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism...
. Wealthy families who could afford to bury their dead in large tombs
Science and technology of the Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty of ancient China, divided between the eras of Western Han , Xin Dynasty of Wang Mang The Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) of ancient China, divided between the eras of Western Han (206 BCE – 9 CE, when the capital was at Chang'an), Xin Dynasty of Wang Mang The Han Dynasty...
often placed the food items at the entrances of such complexes.
Han-era Chinese believed that a person had two souls, the hun and po
Hun and po
Hun and po are types of souls in Chinese philosophy and religion. Within this ancient soul dualism tradition, every living human has both a hun spiritual, ethereal, and yang soul that leaves the body after death and a po corporeal, substantive, and yin soul that remains with the corpse...
. The spirit-soul (hun 魂) was believed to travel to the paradise of the immortals
Xian (Taoism)
Xian is a Chinese word for an enlightened person, translatable in English as:*"spiritually immortal; transcendent; super-human; celestial being"...
(xian 仙) while the body-soul (po 魄) remained on earth in its proper resting place so long as measures were taken to prevent it from wandering to the netherworld. The body-soul could allegedly utilize items placed in the tomb of the deceased, such as domestic wares, clothes, food and utensils, and even money in the form of clay replicas. It was believed that the bipartite souls could also be temporarily reunited in a ceremony called "summoning the hun to return to the po" (zhao hun fu po 招魂復魄).
However, Han beliefs in the afterlife were not uniform across the empire and changed over time. Not only were there many different burial customs and views on how one journeyed through the afterlife, but even the names hun and po for spirit-soul and body-soul could be substituted with demon (gui 鬼) and spirit (shen 神). Demons, or gui, were thought to be partial manifestations of the deceased which lacked their essential vital energy
Qi
In traditional Chinese culture, qì is an active principle forming part of any living thing. Qi is frequently translated as life energy, lifeforce, or energy flow. Qi is the central underlying principle in traditional Chinese medicine and martial arts...
(qi 氣) that had to be exorcised
Exorcism
Exorcism is the religious practice of evicting demons or other spiritual entities from a person or place which they are believed to have possessed...
when they maliciously caused the living to become ill; however, a demon could also be considered a neutral 'ghost'. Spirits, or shen, were usually associated with the animalistic spirits embodying certain places, such as the Earl of the Yellow River (He Bo 河伯). If proper sacrifices were made to these spirits, it was believed to bring good fortune; if ritual sacrifices were neglected, the spirit could inflict bad fortune on individuals and local communities. In the Western Han, texts left behind in tombs illustrate that the living took a more sympathetic view towards the dead than in the Eastern Han, when spirits were generally more feared as dangers to the living. The Western Han 'letters informing the underground' (gaodishu 告地書) were written to 'inform the Ruler of the Underground' 告地下王 about the deceased's wants and needs for clothing, vessels, and implements. However, 'tomb-quelling texts' (zhenmuwen 鎮墓文) that appeared during the 1st century CE acted as passports for the dead so that they did not disturb or bring danger to the living. Both Western Han and Eastern Han tombs contained 'land contracts' (diquan 地券) which stated that the deceased owned the land they were buried in.
Since the emperor fulfilled the role of the highest priest in the land, he was obligated to offer ritual sacrifices to Heaven, the supreme deities, and spirits of the mountains and rivers. The Qin court had made sacrifices to and worshipped four main deities, to which Emperor Gaozu added one in 205 BCE to make Five Powers (Wudi 五帝). However, Emperor Cheng
Emperor Cheng of Han
Emperor Cheng of Han was an emperor of the Chinese Han Dynasty ruling from 33 BC until 7 BC.Under Emperor Cheng, the Han dynasty continued its slide into disintegration while the Wang clan continued its slow grip on power and on governmental affairs as promoted by the previous emperor...
(r. 33–7 BCE) cancelled state worship of the Five Powers in favor of ceremonies dedicated to Heaven
Tian
Tian is one of the oldest Chinese terms for the cosmos and a key concept in Chinese mythology, philosophy, and religion. During the Shang Dynasty the Chinese called god Shangdi or Di , and during the Zhou Dynasty Tian "heaven; god" became synonymous with Shangdi...
(Tian 天) and the supreme god
Shangdi
Shangdi , also known as Di in Oracle Bone Inscription and Thirteen Classics, refers to the supreme god or a divine power regarded as the spiritual ultimate by the Chinese people from the Shang Dynasty. He controlled victory in battle, harvest, the fate of the kingdom, and the weather...
(Shangdi 上帝), who the kings of the Zhou Dynasty
Zhou Dynasty
The Zhou Dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang Dynasty and preceded the Qin Dynasty. Although the Zhou Dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history, the actual political and military control of China by the Ji family lasted only until 771 BC, a period known as...
(c. 1050 – 256 BCE) had worshipped and traced their legitimacy to. One of the underlying reasons for this shift in state policy was Emperor Cheng's desire to gain Heaven's direct favor and thus become blessed with a male heir. The court's exclusive worship of Heaven continued throughout the rest of Han.
Yin-yang and five phases
The Han Chinese believed that three realms of Heaven, Earth, and Mankind were inextricably linked and subject to natural cycles; if man could understand these cycles, they could understand the hidden secrets of the three realms. One cycle was yinYin and yang
In Asian philosophy, the concept of yin yang , which is often referred to in the West as "yin and yang", is used to describe how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. Opposites thus only...
and yang
Yin and yang
In Asian philosophy, the concept of yin yang , which is often referred to in the West as "yin and yang", is used to describe how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. Opposites thus only...
, which corresponded to yielding and hard, shade and sunlight, feminine and masculine, and the Moon and Sun, respectively, while it was thought to govern the three realms and changing of seasons. The five phases was another important cycle where the elements of wood (mu 木), fire (huo 火), earth (tu 土), metal (jin 金), and water (shui 水) succeeded each other in rotation and each corresponded with certain traits of the three realms. For example, the five phases corresponded with other sets of five like the five organs (i.e. liver, heart, spleen, lungs and kidneys) and five tastes (i.e. sour, bitter, sweet, spicy, and salty), or even things like feelings, musical notes, colors, planets, calendars and time periods.
It was accepted during the Qin Dynasty that whoever defeated his rivals in battle would have legitimacy to rule the land. Yet by the time of Wang Mang's usurpation it was commonly believed that Heaven, which was now given greater prominence in state worship, designated which individual and hereditary house had the right to rule, a concept known as the Mandate of Heaven
Mandate of Heaven
The Mandate of Heaven is a traditional Chinese philosophical concept concerning the legitimacy of rulers. It is similar to the European concept of the divine right of kings, in that both sought to legitimaze rule from divine approval; however, unlike the divine right of kings, the Mandate of...
. Michael Loewe
Michael Loewe
Michael Loewe , also known as M. A. N. Loewe, is a British academic and renowned sinologist who has authored dozens of books, articles, and other publications in the fields of Classical Chinese and ancient Chinese history....
(retired professor from the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
) writes that this is consistent with the gradually higher level of emphasis given to the cosmic elements of Five Phases, which were linked with the future destiny of the dynasty and its protection. Dong Zhongshu stressed that a ruler who behaved immorally and did not adhere to proper conduct created a disruption in the natural cycles governing the three realms, which resulted in natural calamities such as earthquakes, floods, droughts, epidemics, and swarms of locusts. This idea became fully accepted at court (and in later dynasties), as emperors often implemented reforms to the legal system or granted amnesties to restore nature's balance.
At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, the Liu family associated its dynasty with the water phase as the previous Qin Dynasty had done. By 104 BCE, to accompany the installment of the new Taichu Calendar
Science and technology of the Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty of ancient China, divided between the eras of Western Han , Xin Dynasty of Wang Mang The Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) of ancient China, divided between the eras of Western Han (206 BCE – 9 CE, when the capital was at Chang'an), Xin Dynasty of Wang Mang The Han Dynasty...
(太初历), the Han court aligned itself with the earth phase to legitimately supplant the Qin Dynasty's element. Yet by 26 CE (shortly after the downfall of Wang Mang
History of the Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty , founded by the peasant rebel leader Liu Bang ,From the Shang to the Sui dynasties, Chinese rulers were referred to in later records by their posthumous names, while emperors of the Tang to Yuan dynasties were referred to by their temple names, and emperors of the Ming and Qing...
) the new Eastern Han court made a retrospective argument that Han's element had always been fire.
Daoism and Buddhism
Immortality
Immortality is the ability to live forever. It is unknown whether human physical immortality is an achievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering...
. Valerie Hansen writes that Han-era Daoists were organized into small groups of people who believed that individual immortality could be obtained through "breathing exercises, sexual techniques, and medical potions
Science and technology of the Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty of ancient China, divided between the eras of Western Han , Xin Dynasty of Wang Mang The Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) of ancient China, divided between the eras of Western Han (206 BCE – 9 CE, when the capital was at Chang'an), Xin Dynasty of Wang Mang The Han Dynasty...
." However, these were the same practices of Daoists who followed Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi was an influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BCE during the Warring States Period, a period corresponding to the philosophical summit of Chinese thought — the Hundred Schools of Thought, and is credited with writing—in part or in whole—a work known by his name,...
(fl. 4th century BCE) centuries before. The Han-era Chinese believed that the Queen Mother of the West ruled over a mountainous realm of immortal semi-human creatures who possessed elixirs of immortality
Elixir of life
The elixir of life, also known as the elixir of immortality and sometimes equated with the philosopher's stone, is a legendary potion, or drink, that grants the drinker eternal life and or eternal youth. Many practitioners of alchemy pursued it. The elixir of life was also said to be able to create...
that man could utilize to prolong his life. Besides the Queen Mother's mountain to the west, Mount Penglai in the east was another mythological location where the Han-era Chinese believed one could achieve immortality. Wang Chong stated that Daoists, organized into small groups of hermits largely unconcerned with the wider laity, believed they could attempt to fly to the lands of the immortals and become invincible pure men. His criticism of such groups is the best known source of his century to describe Daoist beliefs. However, a major transformation in Daoist beliefs occurred in the 2nd century CE, when large hierarchical religious societies formed and viewed Laozi as a deity and prophet
Prophet
In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...
who would usher in salvation
Salvation
Within religion salvation is the phenomenon of being saved from the undesirable condition of bondage or suffering experienced by the psyche or soul that has arisen as a result of unskillful or immoral actions generically referred to as sins. Salvation may also be called "deliverance" or...
for his followers.
The first mentioning of Buddhism in China occurred in 65 CE. This was in regards to Liu Ying
Liu Ying
Liu Ying was a son of Emperor Guangwu of Han, and half-brother of Emperor Ming. After becoming Prince of Chu, he was a known supporter of many religions...
(d. 71 CE), a half-brother of Emperor Ming, who allegedly paid homage to the Buddha
Gautama Buddha
Siddhārtha Gautama was a spiritual teacher from the Indian subcontinent, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. In most Buddhist traditions, he is regarded as the Supreme Buddha Siddhārtha Gautama (Sanskrit: सिद्धार्थ गौतम; Pali: Siddhattha Gotama) was a spiritual teacher from the Indian...
. At this point, the Chinese heavily associated Buddhism with Huang-Lao Daoism. Emperor Ming also had the first known Buddhist temple constructed in China, the White Horse Temple
White Horse Temple
White Horse Temple is, according to tradition, the first Buddhist temple in China, established in 68 AD under the patronage of Emperor Ming in the Eastern Han capital Luoyang. Today the site is located just outside the walls of the ancient Eastern Han capital, some east of Luoyang in Henan...
of Luoyang
Luoyang
Luoyang is a prefecture-level city in western Henan province of Central China. It borders the provincial capital of Zhengzhou to the east, Pingdingshan to the southeast, Nanyang to the south, Sanmenxia to the west, Jiyuan to the north, and Jiaozuo to the northeast.Situated on the central plain of...
. It was allegedly built in honor of the foreign monks Jiashemoteng (迦葉摩騰) (Kāśyapa Mātanga) and Zhu Falan (竺法蘭) (Dharmaratna the Indian). A popular myth asserted that these two monks were the first to translate the Sutra of Forty-two Chapters
Sutra of Forty-two Chapters
The Sutra of Forty-two Chapters is the earliest surviving Buddhist sutra translated into Chinese. It was translated by two ordained Yuezhi monks, Kasyapa-Matanga and Dharmaraksha , in 67 CE...
into Chinese, although it is now known that this work was not translated into Chinese until the 2nd century CE. The Parthia
Parthia
Parthia is a region of north-eastern Iran, best known for having been the political and cultural base of the Arsacid dynasty, rulers of the Parthian Empire....
n monk An Shigao from the Parthian Empire
Parthian Empire
The Parthian Empire , also known as the Arsacid Empire , was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Persia...
came to Han China in 148 CE. He translated Buddhist works on the Hinayana
Hinayana
Hīnayāna is a Sanskrit and Pāli term literally meaning: the "Inferior Vehicle", "Deficient Vehicle", the "Abandoned Vehicle", or the "Defective Vehicle". The term appeared around the 1st or 2nd century....
into Chinese, as well as works on yoga
Yoga
Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India. The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on Supersoul...
that Han-era Chinese associated with Daoist exercises. Another foreign monk, Lokaksema
Lokaksema
Lokakṣema , born around 147 CE, was the earliest known Buddhist monk to have translated Mahayana sutras into the Chinese language and as such was an important figure in Buddhism in China. The name Lokakṣema means 'welfare of the world' in Sanskrit.-Origins:Lokaksema was a Kushan of Yuezhi ethnicity...
from Kushan
Kushan Empire
The Kushan Empire originally formed in the early 1st century AD under Kujula Kadphises in the territories of ancient Bactria on either side of the middle course of the Oxus in what is now northern Afghanistan, Pakistan, and southern Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.During the 1st and early 2nd centuries...
-era Gandhara
Gandhara
Gandhāra , is the name of an ancient kingdom , located in northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. Gandhara was located mainly in the vale of Peshawar, the Potohar plateau and on the Kabul River...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, traveled and stayed in Han China from around 178–198 CE. He translated the Perfection of Wisdom, Shurangama Sutra
Shurangama Sutra
The ' is a Mahāyāna Buddhist sūtra, and has been especially influential in the Chán school of Chinese Buddhism.- Etymology :According to Ron Epstein, roughly means "indestructible." The word is composed of Śūraṅ , with Gama...
, and Pratyutpanna Sutra
Pratyutpanna Sutra
The Pratyutpanna Sutra is an early Mahayana Buddhist scripture, which probably originated around the 1st century BCE in the Gandhara area of northwestern India.The Pratyutpanna Sutra was first translated into Chinese by the Kushan Buddhist monk Lokaksema...
, and introduced to China the concepts of Akshobhya
Akshobhya
In Vajrayana Buddhism, Akṣobhya is one of the Five Wisdom Buddhas, a product of the Adibuddha, who represents consciousness as an aspect of reality...
Buddha, Amitābha
Amitabha
Amitābha is a celestial buddha described in the scriptures of the Mahāyāna school of Buddhism...
Buddha (of Pure Land Buddhism
Pure Land Buddhism
Pure Land Buddhism , also referred to as Amidism in English, is a broad branch of Mahāyāna Buddhism and currently one of the most popular traditions of Buddhism in East Asia. Pure Land is a branch of Buddhism focused on Amitābha Buddha...
), and teachings about Manjusri
Manjusri
Mañjuśrī is a bodhisattva associated with transcendent wisdom in Mahāyāna Buddhism. In Esoteric Buddhism he is also taken as a meditational deity. The Sanskrit name Mañjuśrī can be translated as "Gentle Glory"...
.
Religious societies and rebel movements
The Daoist religious society of the Five Pecks of RiceWay of the Five Pecks of Rice
Way of the Five Pecks of Rice or the Way of the Celestial Master, commonly abbreviated to simply The Celestial Masters, is a Chinese Taoist movement that was founded by the first Celestial Master Zhang Daoling in 142 CE. At its height, the movement controlled a theocratic state in the Hanzhong...
was initiated by Zhang Daoling
Zhang Daoling
Zhang Ling , style name Fuhan , was an Eastern Han Dynasty Taoist hermit who founded the Way of the Celestial Masters sect of Taoism, which is also known as the Way of the Five Pecks of Rice....
in 142 CE. Zhang was raised in what is now Jiangsu
Jiangsu
' is a province of the People's Republic of China, located along the east coast of the country. The name comes from jiang, short for the city of Jiangning , and su, for the city of Suzhou. The abbreviation for this province is "苏" , the second character of its name...
where he studied Daoist beliefs in immortality. He moved to what is now Sichuan
Sichuan
' , known formerly in the West by its postal map spellings of Szechwan or Szechuan is a province in Southwest China with its capital in Chengdu...
province and claimed to have a revelation where the deified Laozi appointed him as his earthly representative and Celestial Master. The movement spread rapidly, particularly under Zhang's sons, Zhang Heng
Zhang Heng (disambiguation)
Zhang Heng was an ancient astronomer and mathematician.Zhang Heng may also refer to:*Zhang Heng , one of the 108 heroes in the Water Margin*Zhang Heng , military officer serving under Han Sui in the later Han Dynasty...
and Zhang Lu. Instead of money, followers were asked to contribute five peck
Peck
A peck is an imperial and U.S. customary unit of dry volume, equivalent to 2 gallons or 8 dry quarts or 16 dry pints. Two pecks make a kenning , and four pecks make a bushel....
s of rice to the religious society and banned the worship of 'unclean' gods who accepted sacrificial offerings of meat. Initiated members of the group were called 'libationers', a title associated with village elders who took the first drink at feasts. The laity were told that if they obeyed the rules of the religious society, they would be rewarded with good health. Illness was thus seen as the result of violating religious rules and committing personal sin
Sin
In religion, sin is the violation or deviation of an eternal divine law or standard. The term sin may also refer to the state of having committed such a violation. Christians believe the moral code of conduct is decreed by God In religion, sin (also called peccancy) is the violation or deviation...
s, which required confession
Confession
This article is for the religious practice of confessing one's sins.Confession is the acknowledgment of sin or wrongs...
to libationers charged with overseeing the recovery of sinners. They believed that chanting parts of the Daodejing would bring about cures for illnesses. Zhang Daoling's second successor Zhang Lu initiated a rebellion in 184 CE that allowed him to retain complete control over Ba and Hanzhong
Hanzhong
Hanzhong is a municipality in southwest Shaanxi Province, China, occupying a historically significant valley in the mountains between the Xi'an area, home to many Chinese capitals, and the fertile but isolated Sichuan Basin...
commanderies (of modern Sichuan and southern Shanxi
Shanxi
' is a province in Northern China. Its one-character abbreviation is "晋" , after the state of Jin that existed here during the Spring and Autumn Period....
) for three decades. He even modelled his 'charity houses' after Han postal stations, yet his establishments offered grain and meat to followers. Although Zhang Lu surrendered to Chancellor Cao Cao
Cao Cao
Cao Cao was a warlord and the penultimate chancellor of the Eastern Han Dynasty who rose to great power during the dynasty's final years. As one of the central figures of the Three Kingdoms period, he laid the foundations for what was to become the state of Cao Wei and was posthumously titled...
(155–220 CE) in 215 CE, Cao was still wary of his influence over the people, so he granted Zhang and his sons fiefs to placate them.
The widespread Yellow Turban Rebellion
Yellow Turban Rebellion
The Yellow Turban Rebellion, also translated as Yellow Scarves Rebellion, was a peasant revolt that broke out in 184 AD in China during the reign of Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty...
also occurred in 184 CE, its leaders claiming that they were destined to bring about a utopian era of peace. Like the Five Pecks of Rice society, the Yellow Turbans of the Huai
Huai River
The Huai River is a major river in China. The Huai River is located about mid-way between the Yellow River and Yangtze River, the two largest rivers in China, and like them runs from west to east...
and Yellow River
Yellow River
The Yellow River or Huang He, formerly known as the Hwang Ho, is the second-longest river in China and the sixth-longest in the world at the estimated length of . Originating in the Bayan Har Mountains in Qinghai Province in western China, it flows through nine provinces of China and empties into...
valleys also believed that illness was a sign of wrong-doing that necessitated confession to church leaders and faith healer
Faith Healer
Faith Healer is a play by Brian Friel about the life of faith healer Francis Hardy as monologued through the shifting memories of Hardy, his wife, Grace, and stage manager, Teddy.-Synopsis:...
s. However, the Yellow Turbans typically utilized holy water
Holy water
Holy water is water that, in Catholicism, Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, Oriental Orthodoxy, and some other churches, has been sanctified by a priest for the purpose of baptism, the blessing of persons, places, and objects; or as a means of repelling evil.The use for baptism and...
as a ramification for sickness; if this did not cure the sick, the latter's sins were deemed too great to be exculpated. Since the year 184 CE was the first (and very auspicious) year of a new sexagenary cycle
Sexagenary cycle
The Chinese sexagenary cycle , also known as the Stems-and-Branches , is a cycle of sixty terms used for recording days or years. It appears, as a means of recording days, in the first Chinese written texts, the Shang dynasty oracle bones from the late second millennium BC. Its use to record years...
, the Yellow Turban's supreme leader Zhang Jue (d. 184 CE) chose the third month of that year as the time to rebel; when this was leaked to the Han court, Zhang was forced to initiate the rebellion prematurely. Although the Yellow Turbans were able to muster hundreds of thousands of troops, they were overpowered by the combined force of imperial troops and independent generals. By the end of the year their leadership—including Zhang Jue—had been killed and only scattered groups remained until they were amalgamated into the forces of Cao Cao in 192 CE.