Древний Китай. Том 3: Период Чжаньго (V—III вв. до н.э.)

Shang Yang, who for his great services was granted one of the very top ranks and a landed estate with a right to use revenues for his personal needs, could not abide "parasites". He filed under that heading the scholars of rival schools (mostly Confucians) and, first and foremost, the nouveaux riches (though he had no love for the old aristocrats either, stripping them of rewards and honors whenever they failed to exhibit military valor). The owner of private property is, by his very nature, an enemy of the state, since that which was once received — and which must be received — by the state goes to his pocket. Shang Yang suggested that all the rich must buy ranks for large sums of money, and no one refused such offers. Thus the buyer was losing his wealth, but obtained prestige, which was highly prized in the rank-divided society. Shang Yang strictly controlled the government apparatus and encouraged mutual spying and informing within it. Unlike Confucians, he was not of the opinion that the state machinery needed the intelligent and the capable. It really needed the mediocre, the assiduous, the law-abiding. According to Shang Yang, the people at large were just cattle — a view he never concealed. The basically true slogan, "The weaker the people, the stronger the state," was his favorite dictum. Shang Yang was extremely cynical, but to give him his due he worked expertly. Having taken the iron rod of power in his hands, he used it unceasingly, treating the people as submissive cattle, he proved capable of quickly transforming the backward state of Ch'in into a developed, well-ordered and wealthy kingdom whose military power was perhaps unrivaled in the Under-Heaven.

Philosophy of Taoism was one of the most intriguing trends in Ancient Chinese thought. It is important to keep in mind that, up to the late 4th and early 3rd centuries, China was not familiar with mythology, heroic epos, mysticism and metaphysics proper to religious doctrine, especially in the sphere of cos-mogonic constructs. As pointed out in Volumes I and II of this three-volume publication, all the main ideologemes, ceremonial rites and reforms were equally aimed at the same goal of creating in the Under-Heaven favorable conditions for achieving purely earthly, if sometimes very diverse, objectives. However, since the above-indicated point in time, many things begin to change. The Tso-chuan, a commentary on the Ch 'unch Чи chronicle, mentions the six primary elements, liu-fu (earth, water, fire, metal, wood, grain). In the Old Iranian Avesta, in the section dealing with Zoroaster's (fl. no later than the 7th century B.C.) reforms, we find a nearly identical group of six elements: earth, water, fire, metal, wood, cattle. In the semi-nomadic Iranian society, cattle was a really important substance, whereas in the Chou China it was practically absent. There are grounds to suspect that in the commentary in question cattle was replaced with grain; subsequently, the commentator reasoned logically that wood and grain represented a single substance and these two elements became supplanted with one — plants. Thus the Ancient Chinese thought acquired the notion of wu-hsing, the five proto-elements (the first five elements of the Iranian and Chou lists). The fact that these groups of five elements are completely identical is not accidental. Furthermore, this likeness goes much deeper, beyond the obvious. Zoroastrian dualism was based on the opposition of the forces of Good and Light to those of Evil and Darkness. The Tso-chuan also refers to yin and yang, and Ancient Chinese dictionaries clearly define them, respectively, as the northern, dark and the southern, bright sides of a mountain, not as metaphysical notions.

Chapter 74 of Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Shih Chi tells of the philosopher Tsou Yan (350–270 B.C.), who was noted for his profound speeches and unusual ideas that were highly esteemed by his contemporaries, especially rulers, who treated him with much greater respect than Confucius or Meng-tzu. Tsou Yan wrote many works that amounted to 100,000 characters and that have not survived. According to Ssu-ma Ch'ien, Tsou Yan "reached the very wellspring of life, when Heaven and Earth have not yet emerged and utter darkness reigned." Tsou Yan knew of "the overseas lands that men could not behold." He maintained that, "since the time when Heaven and Earth opened up and became divided, the five te virtues are in constant circulation…" and that Chungkuo, i.e., China, represented "only one eighty-first part of the Under-Heaven." But what mattered most was that Tsou Yan "thought deeply about the waxing and waning of the yang and у in forces, penetrated into the vicissitudes of all changes."