China and Eurasian ?

[Guest guest]

Before Alexander of Macedon (356-323 BCE) in response to his

expansion of the Persian empire, there was Darius the Great (558?-

486 BCE), all of this stimulated the eastward spread of ideas and

the mixing of Greek, Mesopotamian, Persian, and Indian systems of

thought. And although Persian and Greek armies did not reach to

what is now called China, the effects of their movements were felt

also there.

 

Iron and advanced metallic alloy weapons were-perhaps the chief

reason for the radical rearrangements of power and consequent shifts

of culture and technology in Eurasia between the mid-sixth and mid-

third centuries BCE. And these new weapons made their impact felt

for example in China, when the armies of the state of Qin - who

were well equipped with them - subdued all of the other contending

states and established the Chinese (Qin, i.e., Ch'in - China) empire

in 221 BCE.

 

With the establishment of a unified empire in East Asia and its

subsequent expansion under the Western Han (206 BCE-23 CE), the

opportunities for increased contact with Indian, Persian, Roman, and

other cultures increased dramatically. Following are two

examples of the evidence showing that the tempo and transparency

of Sino-Indian cultural interaction were heightened in the two to

three centuries reading up to the formal importation of Buddhism to

China.

 

In fact those who posit a lack of cultural exchange between India

and China before the first century CE have never made a systematic

attempt to prove an absence of Sino-Indian contact, but have simply

asserted that this was the case, if we are able to provide specific

examples of close cultural parallels between India and China, or

even outright borrowings, in pre-CE times, it will be necessary for

scholars to take a fresh, new look at early Sino-Indian cultural

relationships.

 

 

For example there is the case of the cosmic man, Pangu, who comes to

promince in China just before and during the Han Dynasty. There is

no mistaking the close parallels between the Pangu myth and the myth

about the cosmic man first mentioned in the celebrated ancient

Indian

hymn known as "Purusa-sukta" (Rgveda X.90) and described as

pervading or equivalent to the universe in ancient China. And there

might also be verbal echoes of the Mahâ-parmirvâna-sûtra and the

Apasthamba-sûtra in the layers of the Analects dating to between 450

and 380 BCE.

 

 

But also technical terms from India surface in China around this

time: Sanskrit panca-tattva or panca mahâbhûta ("five elements")

correspond to Chinese wu de or wu zing ("five elements / phases");

siddha ("perfected, accomplished") corresponds to xian

("transcendent"); samâdhi ("profound concentration through

meditation") corresponds to zuowang ("sitting in forgetfulness");

and so on. (See Early Civilizations of the Old World: The Formative

Histories of Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, India and China

by Charles Keith Maisels, 2001)

 

The Chinese name for this age is the Warring States period where all

of the seminal schools of thought (Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism,

Mohism, and so forth) were established. The intellectual brilliance

of the Warring States is often somehow attributed to the social and

political disarray that was current. It is conceivable, however,

that the real cause is almost exactly the opposite: the intense

intellectual ferment led (or contributed) to socio-political

dislocation. As for what caused these profound changes in Chinese

systems of thought, we should not rule out the possibility that they

were partially or largely fueled by inputs from abroad.

 

 

So how, one may ask, do we account for the surge of new ideas that

appear to have flooded into China from India (as well as from Greece

and Persia) during the Warring States period?