All through these five centuries of struggle, between the flight of the Emperor with the transfer of the metropolis in 771 B.C., and the total destruction of the feudal system by the First August Emperor of Ts'in in 221 B.C., it is of supreme interest to note that religion in our Western sense was not only non-existent throughout China, but had not yet even been conceived of as an abstract notion; apart, that is to say, from government, public law, family law, and class ritual. No word for "religion" was known to the language; the notion of Church or Temple served by a priestly caste had not entered men's minds. Offences against "the gods" or "the spirits," in a vague sense, were often spoken of; but, on the other hand, too much belief in their power was regarded as superstition. "Sin" was only conceivable in the sense of infraction of nature's general laws, as symbolized and specialized by imperial commands; direct, or delegated to vassal princes; in both cases as representatives, supreme or local, of Heaven, or of the Emperor Above, whose Son the dynastic central ruler for the time being was figuratively supposed to be. No vassal prince ever presumed to style himself "Son of Heaven," though nearly all the barbarous vassals called themselves "King" (the only other title the Chou monarchs took) in their own dominions. "In the Heaven there can only be one Sun; on Earth there can only be one Emperor"; this was the maxim, and, ever since the Chou conquest in 1122 B.C., the word "King" had done duty for the more ancient "Emperor," which, in remote times had apparently not been sharply distinguished in men's minds from God, or the "Emperor on High."
Prayer was common enough, as we shall frequently see, and sacrifice was universal; in fact, the blood of a victim was almost inseparable from solemn function or record of any kind. But such ideas as conscience, fear of God, mortal sin, repentance, absolution, alms-giving, self-mortification, charity, sackcloth and ashes, devout piety, praise and glorification,—in a word, what the Jews, Christians, Mussulmans, and even Buddhists have each in turn conceived to be religious duty, had no well-defined existence at all. There are some traces of local or barbarous gods in the semi-Turkish nation of Ts'in, before it was raised to the status of full feudal vassal; and also in the semi-Annamese nation of Ts'u (with its dependencies Wu and Yiieh); but the orthodox Chinese proper of those times never had any religion such as we now conceive it, whatever notions their remote ancestors may have conceived.
Notwithstanding this, the minds of the governing classes at least were powerfully restrained by family and ancestral feeling, and, if there were no temples or priests for public worship, there were invariably shrines dedicated to the ancestors, with appropriate rites duly carried out by professional clerks or reciters. Whenever a ruler of any kind undertook any important expedition or possible duty, he was careful first to consult the oracles in order to ascertain the will of Heaven, and then to report the fact to the manes of his forefathers, who were likewise notified of any great victory, political change, or piece of good fortune. There is a distinction (not easy to master) between the loss of a state and the loss of a dynasty; in the latter case the population remain comparatively unaffected, and it is only the reigning family whose sacrifices to the gods of the place and of the harvest are interrupted. Thus in 567, when one of the very small vassals (of whom the ruler of Lu was mesne lord) crushed the other, it is explained that the spirits will not spiritually eat the sacrifices (i.e. accept the worship) of one who does not belong to the same family name, and that in this case the annihilating state was only a cousin through sisters: "when the country is 'lost,' it means that the strange surname succeeds to power; but, when a strange surname becomes spiritual heir, we say 'annihilated.'" We have seen in the ninth chapter how the Shang dynasty lost the empire, but was sacrificially maintained in Sung. From the remotest times there seems to have been a tender unwillingness to "cut off all sacrifices" entirely, probably out of a feeling that retribution in like form might at some future date occur to the ruthless condemner of others. There is another reason, which is, nearly all ruling families hailed from the same remote semi-mythical emperors, or from their ministers, or from their wives of inferior birth. Thus, although the body of the last tyrannical monarch of the Shang dynasty just cited was pierced through and through by the triumphant Chou monarch, that monarch's brother (acting as regent on behalf of the son and successor) conferred the principality of Sung upon the tyrant's elder half- brother by an inferior wife, "in order that the dynastic sacrifices might not be cut off"; and to the very last the Duke of Sung was the only ruling satrap under the Chou dynasty who permanently enjoyed the full title of "duke." His neighbour, the Marquess of Wei (imperial clan), was, it is true, made "duke" in 770 B.C. for services in connection with the Emperor's flight; but the title seems to have been tacitly abandoned, and at durbars he is always styled "marquess." Of the Shang tyrant himself it is recorded: "thus in 1122 B.C. he lost all in a single day, without even leaving posterity." Of course his elder brother could not possibly be his spiritual heir. In 597 B.C., when Ts'u, in its struggle with Tsin for the possession of CHÊNG, got the ruling Earl of CHÊNG in its power, the latter referred appealingly to his imperial ancestors (the first earl, in 806, was son of the Emperor who fled from his capital north in 842), and said: "Let me continue their sacrifices." There are, at least, a score of similar instances: the ancestral sacrifices seem to refer rather to posterity, whilst those to gods of the land and grain appear more connected with rights as feoffee.
Prayer is mentioned from the earliest times. For instance Shun, the active ploughman monarch (not hereditary) who preceded the three dynasties of Hia (2205-1767), Shang (1766-1123), and Chou (1122-249), prayed at a certain mountain in the centre of modern Hu Nan province, where his grave still is, (a fact which points to the possibility of the orthodox Chinese having worked their way northwards from the south-west). When the Chou conqueror, posthumously called the Martial King, fell ill, his brother, the Duke of Chou (later regent for the Martial King's son), prayed to Heaven for his brother's recovery, and offered himself as a substitute; the clerk was instructed to commit the offer to writing, and this solemn document was securely locked up. The same man, when regent, again offered himself to Heaven for his sick nephew, cutting his nails off and throwing them into the river, as a symbol of his willingness to give up his own body. The Emperor K'ang-hi of the present Manchu dynasty, perhaps in imitation of the Duke of Chou, offered himself to Heaven in place of his sick Mongol grandmother. A very curious instance of prayer occurs in connection with the succession to the Tsin throne; it will be remembered that the legitimate heir committed dutiful suicide, and two other half-brothers (and, for a few months, one of these brother's sons) reigned before the second Protector secured his ancestral rights. The suicide's ghost appears to his usurping brother, and says: "I have prayed to the Emperor (God), who will soon deliver over Tsin into Ts'in's hands, so that Ts'in will perform the sacrifices due to me." The reply to the ghost was: "But the spirits will only eat the offerings if they come from the same family stock." The ghost said: "Very good; then I will pray again. . . . God now says my half-brother will be overthrown at the battle of Han" (the pass where the philosopher Lao-tsz is supposed to have written his book 150 years later). In 645 the ruler of Tsin was in fact captured in battle by his brother-in-law of Ts'in, who was indeed about to sacrifice to the Emperor on High as successor of Tsin; but he was dissuaded by his orthodox wife (the Tsin princess, daughter of a Ts'i princess as explained on page 51).
In 575 Tsin is recorded as "invoking the spirits and requesting a victory." A little later one of the Tsin generals, after a defeat, issued a general order by way of concealing his weakness: to deceive the enemy he suggested that the army should amongst other things make a great show of praying for victory. There are many other similar analogous instances of undoubted prayer. Much later, in the year 210 B.C., when the King (as he had been) of Ts'in had conquered all China and given himself the name, for the first time in history, of August Emperor (the present title), he consulted his soothsayers about an unpleasant dream he had had. He was advised to pray, and to worship (or to sacrifice, for the two are practically one) with special ardour if he wished to bring things round to a favourable conclusion: and this is a monarch, too, who was steeped in Lao-tsz's philosophy.
CHAPTER XII
ANCESTRAL WORSHIP
We have just seen that, when a military expedition started out, the event was notified, with sacrifice, to the ancestors of the person most concerned: it was also the practice to carry to battle, on a special chariot, the tablet of the last ancestor removed from the ancestral hall, in order that, under his aegis so to speak, the tactics of the battle might be successful. Ancestral halls varied according to rank, the Emperor alone having seven shrines; vassal rulers five; and first-class ministers three; courtiers or second-class ministers had only two; that is to say, no one beyond the living subject's grandfather was in these last cases worshipped at all. From this we may assume that the ordinary folk could not pretend to any shrine, unless perhaps the house- altar, which one may see still any day in the streets of Canton. In 645 B.C. a first-class minister's temple was struck by lightning, and the commentator observes: "Thus we see that all, from the Emperor down to the courtiers, had ancestral shrines",—a statement which proves that already at the beginning of our Christian era such matters had to be explained to the general public. The shrines were disposed in the following fashion:—To the left (on entrance) was the shrine of the living subject's father; to the right his grandfather; above these two, to the left and right again, the great-grandfather and great-great- grandfather; opposite, in the centre, was that of the founder, whose tablet or effigy was never moved; but as each living individual died, his successor of course regarded him in the light of father, and, five being the maximum allowed, one tablet had to be removed at each decease, and it was placed in the more general ancestral hall belonging to the clan or gens rather than to the specific family: it was therefore the, tablet or effigy of the great-great-grandfather that was usually carried about in war. The Emperor alone had two special chapels beyond the five shrines, each chapel containing the odds (left) and evens (right) of those higher up in ascent than the great and great-great-grandfathers respectively. The King of Ts'u who died in 560 B.C. said on his death-bed: "I now take my place in the ancestral temple to receive sacrifices in the spring and autumn of each year." In the year 597, after a great victory over Tsin, the King of Ts'u had been advised to build a trophy over the collected corpses of the enemy; but, being apparently rather a high-minded man, after a little reflection, he said: "No! I will simply erect there a temple to my ancestors, thanking them for the success." After the death in 210 B.C. of the First August Emperor, a discussion arose as to what honours should be paid to his temple shrine: it was explained that "for a thousand years without any change the rule has been seven shrines for the Son of Heaven, five for vassal princes, and three for ministers." In the year 253, after the conquest of the miserable Chou Emperor's limited territory, the same Ts'in conqueror "personally laid the matter before the Emperor Above in the suburb sacrifice";—which means that he took over charge of the world as Vicar of God. The Temple of Heaven (outside the Peking South Gate), occupied in 1900 by the British troops, is practically the "suburb sacrifice" place of ancient times. It was not until the year 221 B.C. that the King of Ts'in, after that date First August Emperor, formally annexed the whole empire: "thanks to the shrines in the ancestral temple," or "thanks to the spiritual help of my ancestors' shrines the Under-Heaven (i.e. Empire) is now first settled." These expressions have been perpetuated dynasty by dynasty, and were indeed again used but yesterday in the various announcements of victory made to Heaven and his ancestors by the Japanese Tenshi, or Mikado; that is by the "Son of Heaven," or T'ien-tsz of the ancient Chinese, from whom the Japanese Shinto ritual was borrowed in whole or in part.
In the year 572 B.C., on the accession of a Tsin ruler after various irregular interruptions in the lineal succession, he says: "Thanks to the supernatural assistance of my ancestors—and to your assistance, my lords—I can now carry out the Tsin sacrifices." In the year 548 the wretched ruler of Ts'i, victim of a palace intrigue, begged the eunuch who was charged with the task of assassinating him at least "to grant me permission to commit suicide in my ancestral hall." The wooden tablet representing the ancestor is defined as being "that on which the spirit reclines"; and the temple "that place where the ancestral spiritual consciousness doth dwell." Each tablet was placed on its own altar: the tablet was square, with a hole in the centre, "in order to leave free access on all four sides." The Emperor's was twelve inches, those of vassal princes one foot (i.e. ten inches) in length, and no doubt the inscription was daubed on in varnish (before writing on silk became general, and before the hair-brush and ink came into use about 200 B.C.). The rulers of Lu, being lineal descendants of the Duke of Chou, brother of the first Emperor of the Chou dynasty (1122 B.C.) had special privileges in sacrificial matters, such as the right to use the imperial music of all past dynasties; the right to sacrifice to the father of the Duke of Chou and the founder; the right to imperial rites, to suburban sacrifice, and so on; besides the custody of certain ancient symbolic objects presented by the first Chou Emperors, and mentioned on page 22.
Of course no punishment could be spiritually greater than the destruction of ancestral temples: thus on two occasions, notably in 575 B.C. when a first-class minister traitorously fled his country, his prince, the Marquess of Lu, as a special act of grace, simply "swept his ancestral temple, but did not cut off the sacrifices." The second instance was also in Lu, in 550: the Wei friend with whom Confucius lived seventy years later, when wandering in Wei, retrospectively gave his ritual opinion on the case—a proof of the solidarity in sympathy that existed between the statesmen of the orthodox principalities. In the bloodthirsty wars between the semi-barbarous southern states of Wu and Ts'u, the capital of the latter was taken by storm in the year 506, the ancestral temple of Ts'u was totally destroyed, and the renegade Ts'u ministers who accompanied the Wu armies even flogged the corpse of the previous Ts'u king, their former master, against whom they had a grievance. This mutilation of the dead (in cases where the guilty rulers have contravened the laws of nature and heaven) was practised even in imperial China; for (see page 57) the founder of the dynasty, on taking possession of the last Shang Emperor's palace, deliberately fired several arrows into the body of the suicide Emperor. Decapitating corpses and desecrating tombs of great criminals have frequently been practised by the existing Manchu government, in criticizing whom we must not forget the treatment of Cromwell's body at the Restoration. In the year 285 B.C., when the Ts'i capital was taken possession of by the allied royal powers then united against Ts'i, the ancestral temple was burnt. In 249 B.C. Ts'u extinguished the state of Lu, "which thus witnessed the interruption of its ancestral sacrifices."