Verkrachting, versnijdenis & verhaaltjes van verre


~@~
Back to tell
again {?!} of two other 'great' men,
Confucius and Lao Tse,
who also lived in that wonderful century which began the 'adolescence'
of mankind, the sixth century B.C.
In our myDi-history thus far we have told very little of the early story of China?

~@~

At present
that early history is still very obscure,
and we look to Chinese explorers and archaeologists in the new China that is now still arising, to work out their past as thouroughly as the European
past has been worked out during
the last century.

~@~

Very long ago
the first primitive Chinese civilisations arose in the great river valleys
out of the primordial "Heliolithic" culture ...
THEY had, like Egypt and Sumeria,
the general characteristics of that culture,
and they centred upon temples in which priests and priest-kings offered
the seasonal blood
sacrifices ...

~@~

The life in those cities
must have been very like the Egyptian and Sumerian life of six or seven thousand years ago,
and very like the Maya life of Central America
a thousand years ago?
Human sacrifices had 'long' given away to animal sacrifices 'before'
the dawn of history?
AND a form of myDi-picture-writing was growing up long before
a thousand years
B.C.!

~@~

And just as
the primitive civilisations of Europe and western Asia
were in conflict with the nomads of the desert and the nomads of the north,
SO the primitive Chinese civilisations had a great cloud of nomadic peoples on their northern borders?
There was a number of tribes akin in language and ways of living,
who are spoken of in history in succession as the Huns,
the Mongols, the Turks and Tartars ....
They changed and divided and combined and recombined,
just as the Nordic peoples in north Europe and central Asia changed
and varied in name rather than in nature!
THESE Mongolian nomads had horses earlier than the Nordic peoples,
and it may be that in the region of the Altai mountains
they made an independent discovery of iron
somewhen after 1000 B.C.

AND just as in the western case
so ever and again these eastern nomads would achieve a sort of political unity, and become the conquerors and masters and revivers of this or that
settled and civilised region?

~@~





IT is quite possible
that the earliest civilisation of China
was not Mongolian at all,
any more than the earliest civilisation of Europe and western Asia was Nordic or Semitic?!
It IS quite possible that the earliest civilisation of China
was a brunet civilisation and of a piece with the earliest Egyptian, Sumerian,
and Dravidian civilisations,
and that when the first recorded history of China began
there already had been conquests and
intermixture ...

AT any rate we find
that by 1750 B.C. China was already a vast system of little kingdoms and city states,
all acknowledging a loose allegiance and paying more or less regularly,
more or less definite feudal dues to one great priest-emperor,
the "Son of Heaven."
The "Shang" dynasty came to an end in 1125 B.C.
A "Chow" dynasty succeeded "Shang," and maintained China in a relaxing unity until the days of Ashoka in India and of the Ptolemies in Egypt ...
GRADUALLY China went to pieces
during that long "Chow" period.
Hunnish peoples came down
and set up principalities;
local rulers discontinued their tribute and
became independent.

There were in the sixth century B.C.,
says one Chinese authority,
five or six thousand practically independent states in China .......
IT was what the Chinese call in their records
an "Age of Confusion!"

~@~

But this Age of Confusion
was compatible with much intellectual activity
and with the existence of many local centres of art and civilised living.
WHEN we know more of Chinese history we might very well find
that China also had her Miletus and her Athens,
her Pergamum and her Macedonia ...
At our myDi-present we must be vague
and brief about this period of Chinese division
simply because our knowledge is not sufficient for us
to frame a coherent and consecutive
myDi-story ...

~@~

AND
just as
in divided Greece
there were philosophers,
and in shattered and captive Jewry prophets,
SO in disordered China there were philosophers and teachers at THIS time!
In ALL these cases 'insecurity' and 'uncertainty' seemed to have
quickened the 'better sort of
mind' ...

CONFUCIUS
was a man of aristocratic origin
and some official importance in a small state called Lu.
HERE, in very parallel mood to the Greek impulse,
HE set up a sort of Academy for Discovery
and Teaching Wisdom ...

The lawlessness and disorder
of China distressed him profoundly.
HE conceived an ideal of a better government and a better life,
and travelled from state to state seeking a prince
who would carry out his legislative and
educational ideas ..........

HE never
found his prince;
he found a prince, but court intrigues undermined the influence of the teacher and finally defeated
his reforming proposals ...

IT IS interesting to note
that a century and a half later
the Greek philosopher Plato also sought a prince,
and was for a time adviser to the tyrant Dionnysius who ruled
Syracuse in Sicily .............

CONFUCIUS died
a disappointed man!
"No intelligent ruler arises to take me as his master," said he, "and my time has come to die."
But HIS TEACHING had more vitality than he imagined in his declining and
hopeless years,
and it became a great formative influence
with the Chinese people ...

IT became ONE
of what the Chinese call the THREE TEACHINGS,
the other two being those of Buddha and of
LAO TSE.

~@~

And
NOW it is
Time for Breakfast.
Blue white grey sky, quiet outside, just birds {swallows?} above the green,
flowers, fruit,
tea!
engel
06 jul 2004 - bewerkt op 11 jan 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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