Chapter 7 China 263Buddhist values and text-seeking monks and masters for centuries. Chandra-
gupta’s grandson, Ashoka, became a model of the ideal Buddhist king through-
out much of the Buddhist world, but his example carried little weight in China.
Instead it is the conflicted model of Qin Shihuang, the organizational genius,
whose governmental forms imposed on China persisted down to the overthrow
the Qing dynasty in 1911 (Dull 1990:55).
To Confucian scholars who would later write the history of the brief Qin,
its underpinning philosophy was the brutal and anti-intellectual “legalism” of
proponents like Shang Yang, Li Si, and Han Feizi. This much maligned school
of thought takes a pessimistic view of human nature and so endorses necessar-
ily strict laws and brutal punishments. Confucian scholars would come to
argue that human nature was good, and that self-cultivation and the study of
the Five Confucian Classics would provide the scholar elites with the founda-
tion to rule as paternalistic ministers and magistrates. The legalists had failed
in their effort to crush Confucian teachings during the brief Qin, and in the
Han, Confucianism would be enshrined as the dominant cultural tradition in
Chinese dynasties and would remain so for over 2,000 years to come.Emergence of the Confucian Elite (Shenshi)
Every large state struggles to keep control of its outer regions, while
regional powers want autonomy to solve their own problems. Believing that the
greatest danger comes from a powerful center, the founding fathers of the
United States created constitutional limits through the tripartite structure of
the federal government and by giving to states all powers not specifically allo-
cated to the center. Even so, there are periodic ebbs and flows of power
between Washington and the states. In China, historians have viewed the prob-
lem the other way around; periods of social chaos are identified as those when
the center is weak and the regions are strong.
After the excesses (and successes) of the Qin, the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.–
220 C.E.) had to backpedal a bit on the regional kingdoms, for regional loyalties
had been partly responsible for the successful overthrow of the Qin. Since much
of the old Zhou aristocracy had been destroyed, a new one emerged in the Han
and the Tang dynasties out of the “meritocracy” instituted by the Qin. As part
of the continuing struggle to limit the power of outlying territories, emperors
began to raise up new councilors on the basis of merit and gave them authority
over provinces. But especially in times of crisis, power regularly devolved back
to the regional rulers. Pig farmers and slaves became imperial councilors and
founded lineages, joining the new aristocracy. David Johnson (1977) writes
about several hundred great aristocratic clans that composed the top stratum of
society from the Qin to the Tang, some of whose genealogies were preserved
over a thousand years at Dunhuang. Patricia Ebrey is able to trace the fortunes
of the Cui clan of Boling for nearly a millennium from Tang times until they
disappear from the scene in the early tenth century (Ebrey 1978).