Quote:
Originally Posted by xunil
Westerners may not understand Han Chinese's attitude towards religion. Before Han dynasty, there is no religion in China. Most of Chinese worship their ancient, imaginative creatures like Loong(龙) or originators of their professions. Then Confucianist create an ideology: The highest level of deity is "Heaven". Every deities people worship were under guideness of "Heaven". So no matter what kinds of deities poeple worship, they should always obey the guideness of "Heaven". And the King is the "Son of Heaven", he is the agent of "Heaven" on the earth. The King is only one on the earth can communicate with the "Heaven", report and receive message from the "Heaven". So poeple on the earth should abey the King, otherwise they disobey the "Heaven", and will be punished by the "Heaven".
This don't change after Buddhism, Christianity and Islam were brought in. So for two thousand of years, religions were always in the second place. Han Chinese are not that serious about religions like westerners. That's why Chinese never fought war like the Crusades. No matter it's right or not, Most of Han Chinese accept it.
|
The theory of Confucianist caused another consequence. Since there was only one person -- the King, can communicate with the "Heaven", thus there was only one rightful "Son of Heaven" on the earth. So the King would not tolerate another "Son of Heaven". Because of this, China always fought war of unification.
Talking about ancient Chinese's conception of the world. Chinese called the world "under Heaven". And China was in the center of "under Heaven". "under Heaven" should be ruled by the only "Son of Heaven". The "Middle Kingdom" was the actually territory the King ruled, because the other area of "under Heaven" was land of barbarian and didn't have the lucky to be governed by the "Son of Heaven".