Results
Periodization

The task of arriving at a periodization for the Warring States is complex, but not theoretically difficult.

In addition to collecting and correlating examples of development, we need to detect technical or conceptual turning points within that larger developmental picture. We find that there are three points at which significant changes seem to cluster. These points divide the Warring States from the preceding Spring and Autumn and from the following Empire, and divide the Warring States period itself into two subperiods. They are:

• (1) A beginning in the late 06th and early 05th centuries, which is marked by a number of concurrent style changes, some of them visible archaeologically. At this time there began a reorganization of the state and a redefinition of its relation to the larger population. These open social tendencies culminated in the middle and late 04c, with the onset of the "Hundred Schools" philosophical debate and with the first successes of the new infantry army.
• (2) A centrist reaction or "right turn" which begins sometime in the late 04c and overtakes other tendencies by the first half of the 03c. It is characterized by a dehumanizing tendency, exemplified among other things by reliance on the cosmological rather than social validation of rulers.
• (3) An agreed end, brought about by the Imperial unification conquest process which was completed in 0221. There was also a consolidation process, extending over the whole of the Chin dynasty and into early Han, which adjusted previous theories and tendencies to the needs of the new unified state. What is now conventionally believed about Warring States thought is much affected by this process of retrospective adjustment to Imperial needs.

We here list some suggestive data for each of these defining points

 Beginning (c0510/c0490)

• Burial Mounds in Non-Coastal Areas
• Coins
• Fewer Inscribed Bronzes
• Flying (vs Serpentine) Dragons
• Halberds (ji)
• Human Representations
• Land Tenure
• Preposed Pronoun Object Rule
• Private Wealth
• Silver
• Swords
• Taxation

Culmination and Turning Point (c0340/c0320)

• Antiquity Arguments
• Cavalry
• Cosmological Heaven
• Crossbow (in the north; having diffused from the south)
• Greek (Alexandrian) Echoes in Warring States Texts (at the Publications page)
• Hundred Schools Dialogue (first beginnings c0360)
• Indica (implying contact through Bactria and Taxila)
• Kingship (beginning with Chi in c0342)
• Mass Army
• National Feeling (a shift in the locus of personal loyalty)
• Numbered Sets
• Popular Political Rights (c0326); see also Waseda Lecture 5 (at the Conferences page)
• Steppe Tensions (reaching a crisis level by c0320)
• Vocabulary Doublets Implying Vertical Dialect Mixing
• Written vs Oral Elite Culture
• Wu-sying Cosmology
• Yin/Yang Dualism

Imperial Transition (c0220/c0200)

• Hwang/Lau Cosmology
• Loss of Preposed Pronoun Object Rule
• New Rhyme Group Change
• Schematizing Redefinition of Schools of Warring States Thought

We give on a separate page our working conclusion about the beginning of the WS: 

• Warring States Periodization

   

  

13 Feb 2001 / Contact The Project / Exit to Results Page