THE WORLD CIVILIZATIONS AND INDIA , PART -13

THE ANCIENT CHINESE CIVILIZATION

The four Ancient Civilizations of the world are considered as the most earliest inhabitants of the civilized people . They are : 1. The Civilization of EGYPT ; 2. The Civilization of SUMER & BABUL ; 3. The INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION ; and 4. The Civilization of CHINA . Out of these four Civilizations , only two Civilizations exist even today . That is : The Civilization of the INDUS VALLEY i.e. INDIA and The Civilization of CHINA . There appears to be some especialities in these two Civilizations which have kept them intact even today despite many odds coming on their ways . And they are inspiring instances for the world communities of the today , that’s why we must have a look on these Civilizations as such . We will study the Ancient Civilization of CHINA first , and its interaction with that of INDIA later . The EUROPEAN historians consider The Civilizations of EGYPT & BABUL as the most ancient Civilizations of the world , but The Civilization of CHINA is the most ancient and the most alive in all respects existing even today .

The three features of the ancient CHINESE people that have helped this Civilization to grow and be alive even today are as follows : 1. Tolerance , 2. Changing oneself according to the situations , and 3. Attitude to find unity and consistency in even differences . Moreover , the CHINESE people have three especial attributes : 1. Peace Loving , 2. Etiquette and Sweetness in get together , and 3. Truthfulness . Despite all these virtues the CHINESE people also have some defects arising out of the present day world , as they are forgetting those ancient values and turning towards the values of the west , which would be detrimental in the long run for the people of that ancient Civilization . In the ancient period , the country had no determined boundaries as such for more than thousand of years . In the initial stages they used to annex most of the neighbouring provinces and in this way the populations and the territories of CHINA increased considerably. In the ancient period , the country was called ‘ CHUNG KUO ‘ where CHUNG means ‘ in the centre ‘ and KUO means ‘ the country ‘ . And in this way the CHINESE people believed that they were in the centre of the world . About in the 1000 BC , there emerged a Dynasty named as CHIN . The Kings of this Dynasty were ruling only on a smaller parts of North-West CHINA which now-a-days are called KANSU and SHEN-SI . On the name of these kings , that part of the country was called ‘ CHIN KUO ‘ meaning by ‘ the country of the King of CHIN .‘ Slowly and gradually the strength of these Kings increased and so was their territories also . Those days there existed many small countries in the middle of ASIA and collectively they were called ‘ the west country ‘ . And the people of CHIN KUO used to visit to ‘ the west country ‘ and the people of the latter to the former . Due to this cordial interactions between the countries , the former started calling the latter as CHINA . And in this way the people of ‘ the west country ‘ started calling it as CHINA as such . Since then the modern day CHINA emerged . Even we have instances of this name called CHINA in the MAHABHARATA , an ancient epic of INDIA .

According to the CHINESE history YOUTSAO was the first who built house in the ancient CHINA and taught others to live in the houses . SUEIJEN was the first who learnt how to lit fire . And taught people how to cook food by igniting woods . And these two inventions historically dated back to more ten thousand years ago . Then came FUHISI who taught people how to fish . Credits go to him that the people of CHINA learnt how to marry and how to play on SITAR . He also framed rules for families and in this way established the concept of relationships . This was the way through which the concept of society developed in CHINA . He is also credited to develop eight figures that , later on , culminated into the CHINESE scripts as such . He also taught the CHINESE people how to measure times in the form of days , months and years . Another CHINESE called SHEN NUNG invented PLOUGH and taught the CHINESE people how to plough field’s and cultivate crops . He also started barter system of exchanging things in the market . He found out many herbs for curing diseases . He also brought out the CHINESE calenders . During the rules of the ‘ YELLOW EMPEROR ‘ HUANG-TI/HUANGDI ( 2697 – 2598 BC ) , the first Emperor of CHINA , that the following things came into existence among the CHINESE PEOPLE : 1. Coffins for dead body ; 2. Carts and Boats ; 3. Caps and Stiched Clothes ; 4. Bows and Arrows ; 5. Coins of Metals ; 6. Mortar and Pestle ; and 7. Compass . When the world was sleeping , the CHINESE people invented all these tools about 4000 years back giving the CHINESE CIVILIZATION stability and the world Civilizations a boost as such . By the time of HIYA , SHANG and CHAO Dynasty , between 2000 BC to 1000 BC , that the concept of religion , philosophy and Ethics had already come into existence in the CHINESE society .

It is said that writing History was first started in CHINA . Generally , we , the historians , believe that HERODOTUS as the father of history who wrote his magnum opus like THE HISTORIES , which accounted for the rise of the PERSIAN EMPIRE and the causes of the GRECO-PERSIAN WARS in about 5th century BC . But during the HUANG-TI Dynasty TYANG-TI was a minister who was called the MINISTER OF HISTORY . He is also considered as the the improver of the CHINESE scripts developed by FUHISI . This was the script which helped CHINA establishing its civilization for so long . These scripts kept the people of CHINA united till today . These scripts remained unchanged for more than thousand and thousands of years which helped the CHINESE people to write books especially of history . And the first CHINESE book is called YI-CHIN which literary means ‘ the law of change .’ Similarly , SHIH-CHIN is a collection of poems which is said to have been written between 1500 BC to 500 BC and compiled by CONFUCIUS . No other book than the RIG-VEDA was so old in this entire world as the book called YA-CHIN as such .

NOTE : THE SOURCES OF THIS BLOG IS TEXT BOOKS AND OTHER WRITTEN MATERIALS ON THE SUBJECT .

TO BE CONTINUED ……………..

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