Mencius^ answer is that human nature is good but mal- leable. People can easily be led astray; hence the emphasis Mencius, like ali Confucianists, placed on education, and par- ticularly on moral education—an emphasis still honored throughout East Asia today. Beyond that, Mencius stressed the importance of virtuous leadership in creating a just society. The ancient Chinese political theory of the "Mandate of Heaven" held that the benevolent moral force of the cosmos itself would resonate so strongly with the moral character of a supremely virtuous man as to make him not only a natural ruler, but also one invulnerable to challenge. The founder of a dynasty would hand this tradition of virtuous rule down to his descendants, and with it the protection of Heaven that virtue conferred. But if the ruler ceased to be virtuous, Heaven would withdraw its Mandate, and a virtuous rebel would rise to found a new ruling house.
How, asks Mencius, does one know if a ruler has the Mandate? Like responds to like, he points out; if a ruler is virtuous, his goodness shining throughout the world will resonate with the goodness of human nature itself. People will flock from everywhere to live under the rule of such a monarch. Or, conversely, they will flee by night to escape the rule of a bad king, or, in extreme circumstances, rise in rebellion against a tyrant. Is it regicide to execute an evil king? No, answers Mencius, because he has already lost the Mandate; he ceased to be a king before he was deposed.
This explains Mencius^ answer to King Hui of Liang: Only by basing his reign on benevolence and righteousness can the king show that he possesses Heaven's Mandate. If he perfects benevolent rule, people everywhere will long to be his subjects. That would surely benefit the king and his domain; but, as Mencius emphasizes, to concentrate on that outcome, rather than on the way to achieve it, would be to accomplish nothing.
The teachings of Mencius helped shape the ethical basis of monarchy in China for two millennia. Of course, no emperor ever felt able to rely only on Mencian "benevolence and right- eousness" to the exclusion of armies and law codes, tax-collec- tors and constables, but the principie that people, being basi- cally good, respond positively to virtuous rule was deeply embedded in Chinese political theory.
I should also note that the intensely social and communitar- ian views of the Confucian school did not go unchallenged; in addition to the Analects and the Book of Mencius you might also want to read the basic texts of Taoism, namely the Tao Te Ching [Daodejing] and the Chuang-tsu [Zhuangzi]. The first
posits a monarchical absolutism based on the rulers attune- ment to the Tao, or universal force; the second takes a stance of radical relativism, and argues for self-preservation through nonentanglement in the affairs of the world.
The Book of Mencius, like most other early Chinese philo- sophical works, was compiled by several hands rather than written personally by its nominal author. But it is accessible and coherent, and worth reading in its entirety. There is, moreover, an important reason for modern Americans to read Mencius: He is a distant ancestor of our own Revolution. In the seventeenth century, European Jesuit missionaries in China sent back glowing reports of the virtue and moderation of Chinese imperial rule, hoping to show that the Chinese were highly civilized and therefore presumably amenable to Christian conversion. The Jesuit letters were read avidly by Leibniz, Voltaire [53], and other leaders of the Enlightenment; Voltaire especially used an idealized vision of China as a plat- form from which to criticize the European rulers of his day. From his writings, and other sources, the Mencian idea that people have the right to rebel against a wicked monarch entered the political climate of the late eighteenth century. In the Declaration of Independence [60] Thomas Jefferson does not quite say that King George III has lost the Mandate of Heaven; but the resemblances between our founding political documents and the collected sayings of an ancient Chinese philosopher are nevertheless not accidental.
J.S.M.
15
Attributed to VALMIKI
ca. 300 B.C.E. The Ramayana
Like almost ali ancient Indian literature, The Ramayana is shrouded in mystery. We have the poem itself, a masterpiece of narrative verse on an epic scale; we know of its enormous influence, through translations into dozens of languages, on the literature, dance, and art of South and Southeast Asia. But when, where and by whom this brilliant work was written are questions that will never be answered satisfactorily. Of Valmiki, its nominal author, nothing whatsoever is known. At most one can surmise that the poem was composed over a long period of time by storytellers and wandering bards who shaped historical events and legends from the early centuries of the Aryan invasion of northern нndia (around 1200 B.c.E.) into what gradually became a single narrative. The Ramayana seems to have been written down in Sanskrit around 300 B.C.E. The text acquired some stability in written form, though it con- tinued to evolve as it was translated into other languages and literary forms. It is one of the earliest works of Indian literature to be written in the sloka form, which consists of four lines of eight syllables each (or, more precisely, two double lines of sixteen syllables each) and admits of a variety of rhyme schemes and metric patterns. The sloka became the principal stanza form for classical Sanskrit verse; see, for example, Kгlidгsa [23].
The Ramayana is a long narrative that combines a romantic tale of love and loyalty with warfare, adventure, and miracu- lous powers of good and evil. At the beginning of the tale, the noble King Rama wins the hand of Sita by being the only con- testant in an archery match able to bend the bow of the god Siva (this motif recalls the archery contest in the Odyssey [3] in which Odysseus defeats the suitors of Penelope; the motif is found in very similar form in the Mahabharata [16]). Soon Rama is treacherously deprived of his kingdom and forced to live in the wilderness with Queen Sita and his loyal friend Laksmana. In Rama's absence, Laksmana is distracted from his task of guarding Sita by a mesmerizing golden deer that leads him into the forest. The deer, it transpires, has been conjured up by the evil monster Ravanna, king of the enslaved land of Lanka, precisely to get Sita alone. Ravanna tries to seduce her, but is repulsed; finally he simply kidnaps her and carnes her off to Lanka. Much of the tale is devoted to the efforts of Rama and Laksmana to rescue Sita, which they finally do with the aid of the Monkey King Hanuman and an army of monkey warriors; Rama then reclaims his own throne. The story ends on a tragic note. When Rama brings Sita home to his royal city, the people reject her, because they doubt she preserved her chastity in captivity. She is forced to live once again in the for- est, where she gives birth to Rama's heirs; when at last Rama comes to find her, she vanishes into the earth. The tale is Homeric in scope but utterly un-Homeric in mood, though the enchanted lands and grotesque monsters of the Ramayana have something in common with those of the Odyssey.