Feudalism

Small territories are doled out to relatives and allies who share marital, sacrificial, family, and other ceremonial or real bonds. These rulers share the same authority as the king, albeit on a smaller scale, possibly leading to conflict of authority in the future. Because authority spreads with fiefdoms, power is diluted out away from the center towards individual fringes. Eventually the Zhou are invaded by raiders from the North, and the false impression of Zhou power fades away, even though their culture has spread everywhere. Later, even their culture will differentiate across various regions.

Because of the desire to have many offspring from which to select the best heir, and the limited potential for expansion, the social structure becomes top-heavy with noblemen, while the potential use for nobility is limited. By late in the Western Zhou period, you see even in bronze inscriptions legal cases about land tenure–remember, bronze inscriptions are almost always positive. So, inter and intra-state war begins to help differentiate conflicts.

Book of Documents (11th – 2nd Century BCE, compiled by multiple authors)

• “Metal Bound Box”
• “The Tribute of Yu” – From a later period of the Eastern Zhou period, talking about Yu’s creation of order from the chaos of the floods, and how he divides China into 9 major provinces and a single political center. Tribute is given by the provinces to the central system.

There are five classics of ancient Zhou China: the spring and autumn annals, the book of changes, the book of poetry, and the book of documents. While there are some documents that claim to be Shang, most if not all are from the Zhou. We thought the story of the tribute of Yu came from 4th century Zhou, but then we found a 9th century Zhou bronze with an inscription which reads, “heaven ordered you to divide up the lands and to follow the course of the mountains and to follow the course of the rivers”, the same as the opening lines of the tribute of Yu in the book of documents. The story of Yu, therefore, is an old myth, but rewritten in a political context in the book of documents. Even to up to 150 years ago, maps of China were forced into the grid of 9 provinces as established by Yu.

Yu, founder of Xia, Tamer of floods and the creation of order, civilization, and empire

One may identify Yu by the two-pronged forky tool he uses to dig things. The original myth started with floods and chaos, which Yu the great renders habitable for civilization. However, there is a state-sponsored myth in which there was a great age invaded by a flood, which Yu then restored.

• Book of Odes, poems, songs
• Book of Changes
• The Spring and Autumn Annals (722 – 479 BCE, State of Lu)

A history of the years kept in local courts, but only one of these annals survives, and only for 722 – 479 BCE. It is an annal of the State of Lu, Confucius’s home state, preserved by his personal copying for personal didactic use. The spring and autumn annals is a boring record of the interactions between states, but since Confucius used it to teach, it has been slowly reinterpreted by commentators (Zuo, for example, in the Zuo Chuan). However, it is not an objective history. It is heavily edited to make a moral point–the gradual decline of morality.