Thus, the name of the famous Chou (or Zhou in
pinyin
) dynasty is pronounced as if written “jou” and sounds just like the English name “Joe.”
1.
PRELIMINARY ORIENTATIONS AND LEGENDARY CONFLICTS
When warriors battle over territory, slaughtering each other until they fill the fields or fight over a city until the battlements are filled with the dead, it should be termed devouring human flesh for the sake of terrain. Death is an inadequate punishment for such crimes. Those who excel in warfare should suffer the most extreme punishment, those who entangle states in combative alliances the next greatest. If the ruler of a state loves benevolence, he will be without enemies everywhere under Heaven.
—MENCIUS
F
OR TWENTY-FIVE HUNDRED YEARS China has viewed the late prehistoric era as an ideal age marked by commonality of interest within clans and external harmony among peoples. This vision of a golden era, nurtured by the sagacious legendary rulers known as the Yellow Emperor, Yao, Shun, and Yü, was fervently embraced by the intellectual persuasions that came to be known as Taoist and Confucian, although from radically different perspectives and with rather contradictory objectives. Confucian literati-officials in Imperial China did not merely believe that Virtue alone had subjugated the recalcitrant, but also vociferously promoted its efficacy to thwart military solutions to external threats. An essentially pacifistic yearning, it would shape much of China’s military heritage and frequently preclude aggressive action and adequate preparation, however dire the need.
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Yet it was a severely distorted image that conveniently ignored the Yellow Emperor’s storied military activity and
the great feats wrought by Kings T’ang of the Shang and Wu of the Chou, unquestioned paragons of righteousness who still had to strive mightily to suppress the wicked.
The numerous viewpoints and diverse conceptions formulated over the centuries included a less optimistic, more realistic understanding that posited warfare as innate and deemed turmoil and conflict inescapable, although it would never dominate the intellectual terrain or prevail in court discussions.
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Despite encompassing highly disparate materials and a few contradictions, the classic military writings compiled in the Warring States period perceive the “golden age of antiquity” rather differently. The recently recovered
Sun Pin Ping-fa
characterizes the legendary era as a time when warfare, not virtue, wrought peace:
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At the time when Yao possessed All under Heaven there were seven tribes who dishonored the king’s edicts and did not put them into effect. There were the two Yi (in the east) and four others in the central states. It was not possible for Yao to be at ease and realize the advantages of governing All under Heaven. Only after he was victorious in battle and his strength was established did All under Heaven submit.
In antiquity Shen Nung did battle with the Fu and Sui; the Yellow Emperor did battle with Ch’ih Yu at Shu-lü; Yao attacked Kung Kung; Shun attacked Ch’e and drove off the Three Miao; T’ang of the Shang deposed Chieh of the Hsia; King Wu of the Chou attacked Emperor Hsin of the Shang; and the Duke of Chou obliterated the remnant state of Shang-yen when it rebelled.
Immersed in an age of unremitting warfare that saw untold combatants slain and numerous states extinguished, Sun Pin concluded that virtue had not only proven insufficient in the past, but also remained fundamentally unattainable:
If someone’s virtue is not like that of the Five Emperors, his ability does not reach that of the Three Kings, nor his wisdom match that of the Duke of Chou, yet he says, “I want to accumulate benevolence and righteousness, practice the rites and music, and wear flowing robes and thereby prevent conflict and seizure,” it is not that Yao and
Shun did not want this, but that they could not attain it. Therefore, they mobilized the military to constrain the evil.
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Sun Pin deemed conflict to be innate and warfare inescapable: “Now being endowed with teeth and mounting horns, having claws in front and spurs in back, coming together when happy, fighting when angry, this is the Tao of Heaven, it cannot be stopped.”
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Despite its ostensibly Taoist perspective, the eclectic
Huai-nan Tzu
essentially seconded his belief:
Now as for the beasts of blood and
ch’i
, who have teeth and mount horns, or have claws in front and spurs in back: those with horns butt, those with teeth bite, those with poison sting, and those with hooves kick. When happy, they play with each other; when angry, they harm each other. This is Heavenly nature.
Men have a desire for food and clothes, but things are insufficient to supply them. Thus they group together in diverse places. When the division of things is not equitable, they fervently seek them and conflict arises. When there is conflict, the strong will coerce the weak and the courageous will encroach upon the fearful. Since men do not have the strength of sinews and bone, the sharpness of claws and teeth, they cut leather to make armor, and smelt iron to make blades.
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Hsün-tzu, a late Warring States period philosopher simplistically remembered for his assertion that human nature is inherently evil, identified human desire as the root cause of conflict: “Men are born with desires. When their desires are unsatisfied they cannot but seek to fulfill them. When they seek without measure or bound, they cannot but be in conflict. When conflict arises, there is chaos; with chaos, there is poverty.”
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Conversely, the authors of another late Warring States eclectic work believed that individual weakness in the face of natural and human threats constituted the very basis for social order:
Human nature is such that nails and teeth are inadequate for protection, flesh and skin inadequate to ward off the cold and heat, sinews and bones inadequate to pursue profit and avoid harm, courage and
daring inadequate to repulse the fierce and stop the violent. Yet men still regulate the myriad things, control the birds and beasts, and overcome the wild cats while cold and heat, dryness and dampness cannot harm them. Isn’t it only because they first make preparations and group together?
When groups assemble they can profit each other. When profit (advantage) derives from the group, the Tao of the ruler has been established. Thus when the Tao of the ruler has been established, advantage proceeds from groups and all human preparations can be completed.
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Social order is thus envisioned as having been forcefully imposed by conscientious men of wisdom, the legendary Sage emperors, rather than engendered by radiant Virtue. As Hsün-tzu notes, constraints had to be formulated:
The former kings hated their chaos, so they regulated the
li
(rites and forms of social behavior) and music in order to divide them, nourish the people’s desires, supply what the people seek, and ensure that desire does not become exhausted in things, nor things bent under desire.
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Even the somewhat esoteric
Huai-nan Tzu
conceded that the existence of evil compelled the primal leaders to resort to harsh measures:
In antiquity, men who were greedy, obtuse, and avaricious destroyed and pillaged all under Heaven. The myriad people were disturbed and moved, none could be at peace in their place. Sages suddenly arose to punish the strong and brutal and pacify the chaotic age. They eliminated danger and got rid of the corrupt, turning the muddy into the clear and danger into peace.
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Their actions assumed an outwardly directed martial form but were not undertaken for personal profit:
When the ancients employed the military it was not to profit from broadening their lands or coveting the acquisition of gold and jade.
It was to preserve those about to perish, continue the severed, pacify the chaotic under Heaven, and eliminate the harm affecting the myriad people.
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With slight variation, most of the classic military writings justify undertaking military campaigns solely for the purpose of protecting the state from aggression and rescuing the people from any suffering that might be inflicted by brutal oppressors:
Taking benevolence as the foundation and employing righteousness to govern constituted uprightness in antiquity. However, when uprightness failed to attain the desired objectives, they resorted to authority. Authority comes from warfare, not from harmony among men.
For this reason, if one must kill people to give peace to the people, then killing is permissible. If one must attack a state out of love for their people, then attacking it is permissible. If one must stop war with war, although it is war, it is permissible.
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The ancient sages did not just rectify the disorder about them, but also created the very means for waging war:
Those who lacked Heavenly weapons provided them themselves. This was an affair of extraordinary men. The Yellow Emperor created swords and imagized military formations upon them. Yi created bows and crossbows and imagized strategic power on them. Yü created boats and carts and imagized tactical changes on them. T’ang and Wu made long weapons and imagized the strategic imbalance of power on them.
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The legendary cultural heroes had thus been compelled to decisively thwart chaos and quell disorder to preserve the populace. However, as the military writings emphasize, their approach equally entailed the pursuit of righteousness, cultivation of virtue, and implementation of measures intended to mitigate the people’s suffering and improve their welfare. This devolution from a tranquil, ideal age prompted the authors of
Huang-shih Kung’s Three Strategies
to assert: “The Sage King does not
take any pleasure in using the army. He mobilizes it to execute the violently perverse and to rectify the rebellious. The army is an inauspicious implement and the Tao of Heaven abhors it. However, when its use is unavoidable it accords with the Tao of Heaven.”
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This is a highly complex, essentially contradictory situation, because “the Tao of Heaven abhors it,” yet conflict similarly expresses “the Tao of Heaven” and “cannot be stopped.” Warfare is thus paradoxically inescapable and, in many views including that of Confucius himself, a crucial human endeavor for which training and preparation are required.
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Archaeological discoveries over the past several decades have suddenly infused life into previously shadowy remnants of ancient Chinese civilization, validating many early assertions about the Shang and nominally substantiating, with appropriate allowance for interpretative frameworks and the effects of millennia, vague images of the Hsia and the legendary period. In addition, many traditional battle tales that attained a life of their own within popular culture deserve recounting irrespective of their historical inaccuracy. Scholarly audiences apart, countless generations across the ages, even emperors and generals, accepted their historicity, as does much of the Chinese populace today.
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Moreover, despite the concept and portraits of the Five Emperors being generally acknowledged as having been radically shaped, if not actually created, in the Warring States period, it has still been argued that mythical tales embody events and reflect significant developments in the course of Chinese civilization, including warfare, and can be parsed and scrutinized for clues and insights. Texts considered to be late fabrications, such as the
Shang Shu’s
“Canon of Yao,” are similarly seen as valuable repositories of vestigial memory and therefore well worth detailed—synonymous with “imaginative”—pondering.
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According to early writings and traditional belief, the most famous legendary battles arose between the great progenitor known as the Yellow Emperor and two powerful opponents: first Yen Ti, the Red Emperor, and then Ch’ih Yu, a tribal leader thought to have served as one of the Red Emperor’s officials before he rebelled. As depicted in the
monumental
Shih Chi
, China’s first synthetic history, the Yellow Emperor was a judicious commander as well as a cultural paragon:
The Yellow Emperor, a descendant of the Shao-tien clan, was surnamed Kung-sun and named Hsüan-yüan. When he was born his spirit was already penetrating; while an infant he could speak; as a child he could reply intelligently; and when growing up he was substantial and acute, as brilliant as an adult.
Shen Nung’s clan was in decline in Hsüan-yüan’s time. The various lords encroached upon each other and acted brutally and perversely toward the hundred surnames.
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Shen Nung’s clan was unable to chastise them. Thereupon Hsüan-yüan practiced employing shields and halberds in order to conduct punitive expeditions against those who would not offer their fealty. The various lords all came to submit, as if they were his guests. However, no one was able to attack Ch’ih Yu, the most brutal of all.
The Red Emperor encroached upon the various clan leaders, so they all gave their allegiance to Hsüan-yüan. Accordingly, Hsüan-yüan cultivated his Virtue and put his weapons in order; regulated the five
ch’i
;
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cultivated the five grains; was solicitous toward the myriad peoples; took the measure of the four quarters; and trained the bears, leopards, and tigers
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in order to engage in battle with the Red Emperor in the wastes of Pan-ch’üan. Only after three engagements did he realize his objective.
Ch’ih Yu revolted and did not follow the Yellow Emperor’s edicts. The Yellow Emperor summoned the armies of the clan chiefs and engaged Ch’ih Yu in battle in the wilds of Chuo-li, capturing and slaying him. The clan chiefs all honored Hsüan-yüan as the Son of Heaven, and he replaced Shen Nung, becoming the Yellow Emperor. The Yellow Emperor then pursued and rectified all those under Heaven who failed to submit, but left the tranquil alone.
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