Archaeology And Qin Religious Thought Outline

Primitive religion was the source of Chinese thoughts. Although Paleolithic and Mesolithic people had already had a system of religious ideas, the early and middle Neolithic totemism was the earliest religious form in China. The birth of totemism was based on the background in which people did not distinguish "I" and "It", Nature and Society. In short, totemism was a kind of worship towards the obscure power carried within every matter. After the entrance to the agricultural society, primitive people related "female reproduction" to "land prosperity "and thus produced the religious idea - Goddess Worship. The birth of this religious idea indicated that human thinking had stepped into the abstract field. Goddess Worship developed into Landgod Worship in the late period of primitive society. During the patriarchal society, repeated wars promoted the birth of Ancestry Worship, which could strengthen the cohesion of clans, and later became the headslream of "Li" in the civilized society. In exploring the universe, primitive people began to worship the sun, the moon, and the stars, and therefore, during the late primitive period, Ancestry Worship and Nature Worship experienced a further development and finally Celestial God Worship came into being. In brief, during the long primitive society, primitive religion ruled people's spiritual world, having a deep influence on ancient China's religion and philosophy.In the Xia and Shang Periods, ancient Patriarch Religion came into being. The Yin theocracy was characterized with the appearance of the gods who functioned in cross ?fields, the gradation of gods in each system, and the absence of subordinate relationship and more important, the absence of a unified "Supreme God".In the Western Zhou period, the rulers, to make overthrowing the Yin Dynasty justified, pushed Celestial God onto the highest position and made it featured by ethical sense. Moreover, the Western Zhou rulers made Celestial God the only supreme gcxi and thus there existed a subordinate relationship between it, Nature God, andAncestry God. The religion's being characterized with ethical sense was the production of the Western Zhou patriarch system, which made the whole state become a ruling net supported by blood lineage. With blood lineage being the political link, maintaining the patriarch relationship meant maintaining political order. The ethical religion was practical and it met the social need of that period. In terms of thought development, it exerted great influences not only on the Zhou Dynasty, but also on the later historical periods.Since the late Western Zhou Period, Celestial God that had been worshiped was cursed. People came to complain of its indifference to their misfortune and doubt its justice. In terms of the relationship between God and Human, there appeared the thought that valued Human over God, and the doubt of God's supremacy was not socially emotional but rational. With the shake of Celestial Supremacy, the thinking trend that distinguished "the Celestial Way" and "the Human Way "appeared in the Spring and Autumn Period, which indicated that the thinkers had stepped out of ancient religion.The shake of Celestial Theology caused the ruling thought of "De" and" Xiao" to be doubted. How to govern became a problem each statesman and thinker" had to face. "The philosophers", with Confucius and Laozi as two representatives, bravely shouldered the historical task and tried to provide sound solutions to this social problem. Confucius, centered on political ethics, established "Ren" system, which broke the old thought of governing by religion. Laozi explored the whole universe by means of "Dao", which totally negated religious world view. However, neither Confucian ethical thought nor Taoist philosophy made religious thought absolutely removed.