Four occupations - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The four occupations or "four categories of the people" was a hierarchic social class structure developed in ancient China

History of China

Chinese civilization originated in various regional centers along both the Yellow River and the Yangtze River valleys in the Neolithic era, but the Yellow River is said to be the Cradle of Chinese Civilization. With thousands of years of continuous history, China is one of the world's oldest...

by either Confucian

Confucianism

Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius . Confucianism originated as an "ethical-sociopolitical teaching" during the Spring and Autumn Period, but later developed metaphysical and cosmological elements in the Han...

or Legalist

Legalism (Chinese philosophy)

In Chinese history, Legalism was one of the main philosophic currents during the Warring States Period, although the term itself was invented in the Han Dynasty and thus does not refer to an organized 'school' of thought....

scholars as far back as the late Zhou Dynasty

Zhou Dynasty

The Zhou Dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang Dynasty and preceded the Qin Dynasty. Although the Zhou Dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history, the actual political and military control of China by the Ji family lasted only until 771 BC, a period known as...

and is considered a central part of the Fengjian

Fengjian

Fēngjiàn is the political ideology of the Zhou Dynasty of ancient China. Fengjian is a "decentralized system of government," comparable to European feudalism, though recent scholarship has suggested that fengjian lacks some of the fundamental aspects of feudalism.-Ranks:The sizes of troops and...

social structure (c. 1046–256 BCE). In descending order, these were the shi (gentry

Gentry (China)

As used for imperial China, landed gentry does not correspond to any term in Chinese. One standard work remarks that under the Ming dynasty, called shenshi or shenjin, meaning variously degree-holders, literati, scholar-bureaucrats or officials, they are loosely known in English as the Chinese...

scholars), the nong (peasant farmers), the gong (artisans and craftsmen), and the shang (merchants and traders). These broad categories were more an idealization than a practical reality. This was due to commercialization

Commercialism

Commercialism, in its original meaning, is the practices, methods, aims, and spirit of commerce or business. Today, however, it primarily refers to the tendency within open-market capitalism to turn everything into objects, images, and services sold for the purpose of generating profit...

of Chinese society in the Song

Song Dynasty

The Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...

and Ming

Ming Dynasty

The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...

periods, blurring the lines between these four hierarchic social distinctions. The system also did not figure in all other social groups present in premodern Chinese society. The definition of the identity of the shi class changed over time as well, from an ancient warrior caste, to an aristocratic scholarly elite, and finally to a bureaucratic scholarly elite with less emphasis on archaic noble lineage. There was also a gradual fusion of the wealthy merchant and landholding gentry classes, culminating in the late Ming Dynasty.

This system of social order was adopted throughout the Sinosphere

Sinosphere

In areal linguistics, Sinosphere refers to a grouping of countries and regions that are currently inhabited with a majority of Chinese population or were historically under Chinese cultural influence...

. In Japanese it is called "Shi, nō, kō, shō" (士農工商, shinōkōshō?), in Korean as "Sa, nong, gong, sang" (사농공상), and in Vietnamese as "Sĩ, nông, công, thương (士農工商). The main difference in adaptation was the definition of the shi (士).

History

From existing literary evidence, commoner rankings in China were employed for the first time during the Warring States Period

Warring States Period

The Warring States Period , also known as the Era of Warring States, or the Warring Kingdoms period, covers the Iron Age period from about 475 BC to the reunification of China under the Qin Dynasty in 221 BC...

(403–221 BCE). Despite this, Eastern-Han

Han Dynasty

The Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms . It was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han. It was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang...

(25–220 CE) historian Ban Gu

Ban Gu

Ban Gu , courtesy name Mengjian , was a 1st century Chinese historian and poet best known for his part in compiling the Book of Han. He also wrote in the main poetic genre of the Han era, a kind of poetry interspersed with prose called fu. Some are anthologized by Xiao Tong in his Selections of...

(32–92 CE) asserted in his Book of Han
Book of Han
The Book of Han, Hanshu or History of the Former Han Dynasty |Fan Ye]] . Various scholars have estimated that the earliest material covered in the book dates back to between 206 and 202 BCE...

that the four occupations for commoners had existed in the Western Zhou

Zhou Dynasty

(c. 1050 BCE – 771 BCE) era, which he considered a golden age

Golden Age

The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend and refers to the first in a sequence of four or five Ages of Man, in which the Golden Age is first, followed in sequence, by the Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, and then the present, a period of decline...

. However, it is now known that the classification of four occupations as Ban Gu understood it did not exist until the 2nd century BCE. Ban explained the social hierarchy of each group in descending order:

Scholars, farmers, artisans, and merchants; each of the four peoples had their respective profession. Those who studied in order to occupy positions of rank were called the shi (scholars). Those who cultivated the soil and propagated grains were called nong (farmers). Those who manifested skill (qiao) and made utensils were called gong (artisans). Those who transported valuable articles and sold commodities were called shang (merchants).

Anthony J. Barbieri-Low, Professor of Early Chinese History at the University of California, Santa Barbara

University of California, Santa Barbara

The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...

, writes that the classification of "four occupations" can be viewed as a mere rhetorical device that had no affect on government policy. However, he notes that although no statute in the Qin or Han law codes specifically mentions the four occupations, some laws did treat these broadly-classified social groups as separate units with different levels of legal privilege.

The shi (士)

During the ancient Shang

Shang Dynasty

The Shang Dynasty or Yin Dynasty was, according to traditional sources, the second Chinese dynasty, after the Xia. They ruled in the northeastern regions of the area known as "China proper" in the Yellow River valley...

and Zhou dynasties, the shi were regarded as a knightly social order of low-level aristocratic lineage compared to dukes and marquises

Chinese nobility

Chinese sovereignty and peerage, the nobility of China, were an important feature of traditional social and political organization of Imperial China. While the concepts of hereditary sovereign and peerage titles and noble families were featured as early as the semi-mythical, early historical...

. This social class was distinguished by their right to ride in chariots and command battles from mobile chariots, while they also served civil functions. They were also distinguished by the weaponry they used, the double-edged sword, or jian
Jian
The jian is a double-edged straight sword used during the last 2,500 years in China. The first Chinese sources that mention the jian date to the 7th century BCE during the Spring and Autumn Period; one of the earliest specimens being the Sword of Goujian.Historical one-handed versions have blades...

. The type of clothing worn by the shi class also distinguished them from others; the shi wore long flowing silken robes

Han Chinese clothing

Hanfu or Han Chinese Clothing, also sometimes known as Hanzhuang , Huafu , and sometimes referred in English sources simply as Silk Robe or Chinese Silk Robe refers to the historical dress of the Han Chinese people, which was worn for millennia before the conquest by the Manchus and the...

, while all other men wore trousers. As chariot warfare became eclipsed by mounted cavalry and infantry units with effective crossbowmen in the Warring States Period

Warring States Period

(403–221 BCE), the participation of the shi in battle dwindled as rulers sought men with actual military training, not just aristocratic background. This was also a period where philosophical schools flourished in China

Hundred Schools of Thought

The Hundred Schools of Thought were philosophers and schools that flourished from 770 to 221 BC during the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period , an era of great cultural and intellectual expansion in China...

, while intellectual pursuits became highly valued amongst statesmen. Thus, the shi eventually became renowned not for their warrior's skills, but for their scholarship, abilities in administration, and sound ethics and morality supported by competing philosophical schools.

Under Duke Xiao of Qin and the chief minister and reformer Shang Yang

Shang Yang

Shang Yang was an important statesman of the State of Qin during the Warring States Period of Chinese history. Born Wei Yang in the State of Wei, with the support of Duke Xiao of Qin Yang enacted numerous reforms in Qin...

(d. 338 BCE), the ancient State of Qin was transformed by a new meritocratic

Meritocracy

Meritocracy, in the first, most administrative sense, is a system of government or other administration wherein appointments and responsibilities are objectively assigned to individuals based upon their "merits", namely intelligence, credentials, and education, determined through evaluations or...

yet harsh philosophy of Legalism. This philosophy stressed stern punishments for those who disobeyed the publicly-known laws while rewarding those who labored for the state and strove diligently to obey the laws. It was a means to diminish the power of the nobility, and was another force behind the transformation of the shi class from warrior-aristocrats into merit-driven officials. The Qin Dynasty

Qin Dynasty

The Qin Dynasty was the first imperial dynasty of China, lasting from 221 to 207 BC. The Qin state derived its name from its heartland of Qin, in modern-day Shaanxi. The strength of the Qin state was greatly increased by the legalist reforms of Shang Yang in the 4th century BC, during the Warring...

(221–206 BCE) unified China under the Legalist system, but became infamous for its oppressive measures, and so collapsed into a state of civil war

Chu-Han contention

The Chu–Han Contention was a post-Qin Dynasty interregnum period in Chinese history. Following the collapse of the Qin Dynasty, Xiang Yu split the former Qin Empire into the Eighteen Kingdoms. Two prominent contending powers, Western Chu and Han, emerged from these principalities and engaged in a...

.

The victor of this war was Liu Bang, who initiated four centuries of unification of China proper

China proper

China proper or Eighteen Provinces was a term used by Western writers on the Qing Dynasty to express a distinction between the core and frontier regions of China. There is no fixed extent for China proper, as many administrative, cultural, and linguistic shifts have occurred in Chinese history...

under the Han Dynasty

Han Dynasty

(202 BCE–220 CE). One of his later successors was Emperor Wu

Emperor Wu of Han

Emperor Wu of Han , , personal name Liu Che , was the seventh emperor of the Han Dynasty of China, ruling from 141 BC to 87 BC. Emperor Wu is best remembered for the vast territorial expansion that occurred under his reign, as well as the strong and centralized Confucian state he organized...

(r. 141–87 BCE), who not only cemented the ideology of Confucius

Confucius

Confucius , literally "Master Kong", was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period....

into mainstream Chinese thought, governance, and social order, but also installed a system of recommendation and nomination in government service known as xiaolian
Xiaolian
Xiaolian , was the standard of nominating civil officers started by Emperor Wu of Han in 134 BC. It lasted until its replacement by the imperial examination system during the Sui Dynasty....

. After the Han period, this system was replaced by the nine-rank system

Nine-rank system

The nine rank system , or much less commonly nine grade controller system, was a civil service nomination system during the Three Kingdoms and the Southern and Northern Dynasties in China...

, a similar means of recruiting officials through recommendation. Both systems favored the wealthy, those of noble background, and the well-connected. It was not until the Sui Dynasty

Sui Dynasty

The Sui Dynasty was a powerful, but short-lived Imperial Chinese dynasty. Preceded by the Southern and Northern Dynasties, it ended nearly four centuries of division between rival regimes. It was followed by the Tang Dynasty....

(581–618 CE) that a new beginning of change in the shi class would present itself by means of the civil service examination system.

The civil service

Civil service

The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....

recruitment system during the subsequent Tang Dynasty

Tang Dynasty

The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...

(618–907) followed the Sui model of partial recruitment of those who passed standard exams

Standardized test

A standardized test is a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions, conditions for administering, scoring procedures, and interpretations are consistent and are administered and scored in a...

and earned an official degree. Yet recruitment by recommendations to office was still prominent in both dynasties. It was not until the Song Dynasty

Song Dynasty

(960–1279) that the recruitment of those who passed the exams and earned degrees was given greater emphasis and significantly expanded. The shi class also became less aristocratic and more bureaucratic due to the highly competitive nature of the exams during the Song period. From the 11th to 13th centuries, the number of exam candidates participating in taking the exams increased dramatically from merely 30,000 to 400,000 by the dynasty's end. Widespread printing

History of typography in East Asia

The history of printing in East Asia refers to the use of woodblock printing and movable type printing by East Asian artisans. The former existed in Tang China as early as the 7th century, and the latter in Song China by the 11th century. Use of woodblock printing quickly spread to other East Asian...

through woodblock

Woodblock printing

Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper....

and movable type

Movable type

Movable type is the system of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document ....

enhanced the spread of knowledge amongst the literate in society, enabling more people to become candidates and competitors vying for a prestigious degree. With a dramatically expanding population matching a growing amount of gentry, scholar-officials needed the gentry to perform local services such as funding public works, prefectural and county schools, or aiding in tax collection.

Outside of China

In Korea

Korea

Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...

, the noble yangban

Yangban

The yangban were part of the traditional ruling class or nobles of dynastic Korea during the Joseon Dynasty. The yangban were either landed or unlanded aristocracy who comprised the Korean Confucian idea of a "scholarly official." In reality, they were basically administrators and bureaucrats who...

class prevented the lower classes from taking the advanced gwageo
Gwageo
The gwageo were the national civil service examinations under the Goryeo and Joseon dynasties of Korea. Typically quite demanding, these tests measured candidates' knowledge of the Chinese classics, and sometimes also of technical subjects...

exams so they can dominate the bureaucracy. Below the yangban were the chungin

Chungin

The chungin also jungin, were the petite bourgeoisie of the Joseon Dynasty of Korea. The name "chungin" literally means "middle people". This privileged class of commoners consisted of a small group of petty bureaucrats and other skilled workers whose technical and administrative skills enabled the...

, a class of privileged commoners who were petty bureaucrats, scribes, and specialists. The chungin were actually the least populous class, even smaller than the yangban.

A similar situation occurred in the Ryūkyū Kingdom

Ryukyu Kingdom

The Ryūkyū Kingdom was an independent kingdom which ruled most of the Ryukyu Islands from the 15th century to the 19th century. The Kings of Ryūkyū unified Okinawa Island and extended the kingdom to the Amami Islands in modern-day Kagoshima Prefecture, and the Sakishima Islands near Taiwan...

with the hereditary yukatchu

Yukatchu

Yukatchu were the aristocracy of the Ryūkyū Kingdom; the scholar-bureaucrats of classical Chinese studies living in Kumemura, they held the majority of government positions.-History:...

but yukatchu status can be bought from the government as the kingdom's finances were frequently deficient. Due to the growth of this class and the lack of government positions open for them, Sai On

Sai On

', also known as ' was a scholar-bureaucrat official of the Ryūkyū Kingdom, serving as regent, instructor, and advisor to King Shō Kei...

allowed yukatchu to become merchants and artisans while keeping their high status.

In Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, this role was taken by the hereditary samurai

Samurai

is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...

class. Originally a martial class, the samurai became civil administrators to their daimyo

Daimyo

is a generic term referring to the powerful territorial lords in pre-modern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings...

during the Tokugawa shogunate

Tokugawa shogunate

The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the and the , was a feudal regime of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. This period is known as the Edo period and gets its name from the capital city, Edo, which is now called Tokyo, after the name was...

. No exams were needed as the positions were inherited. They constituted about 5% of the population and were allowed to have proper surnames.

The nong (农/農)

Since Neolithic times in China, agriculture has a key element to the rise of China's civilization and every other civilization. The food that farmers produced sustained the whole of society, while the land tax exacted on farmers' lots and landholders' property produced much of the state revenue for China's pre-modern ruling dynasties. Therefore, the farmer was a valuable member of society, and even though he was not considered one with the shi class, the families of the shi were still landholders that often produced crops and foodstuffs. Although soldiers were not highly respected members of society, soldiers traditionally came from farming families, while some were simply debtors who fled their land (whether owned or rented) to escape lawsuits by creditors or imprisonment for failing to pay taxes. Soldiers along China's frontiers were also encouraged by the state to settle down on their own farm lots in order for the food supply of the military to become self-sufficient. Farmers were also encouraged to join peasant militia

Militia

The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...

s to act as supporting units to the official standing army.

By the Ming Dynasty

Ming Dynasty

(1368–1644), the socioeconomic class of farmers grew more and more indistinct from another social class in the four occupations: the artisan. Artisans began working on farms in peak periods and farmers often traveled into the city to find work during times of dearth. The distinction between what was town and country was blurred in Ming China, since suburban areas with farms were located just outside and in some cases within the walls of a city.

The gong (工)

Artisan

An artisan is a skilled manual worker who makes items that may be functional or strictly decorative, including furniture, clothing, jewellery, household items, and tools...

s and craftsmen — their class identified with the Chinese character meaning labor — were much like farmers in the respect that they produced essential goods needed by themselves and the rest of society. Although they could not provide the state with much of its revenues since they often had no land of their own to be taxed, artisans and craftsmen were still given a higher place than merchants. Since ancient times, the skilled work of artisans and craftsmen was handed down orally from father to son, although the work of architects and structural builders were sometimes codified, illustrated, and categorized in Chinese written works. One example of this would be the Yingzao Fashi
Yingzao Fashi
The Yingzao Fashi is a technical treatise on architecture and craftsmanship written by the Chinese author Li Jie , the Directorate of Buildings and Construction during the mid Song Dynasty of China. A promising architect, he revised many older treatises on architecture from 1097 to 1100...

printed in 1103, an architectural building manual written by an official put in charge of government agencies for construction. Artisans and craftsmen were either government-employed or worked privately. A successful and highly skilled artisan could often gain enough capital in order to hire others as apprentices or additional laborers that could be overseen by the chief artisan as a manager. Hence, artisans could create their own small enterprises in selling their work and that of others, and like the merchants, they formed their own guild

Guild

A guild is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade. The earliest types of guild were formed as confraternities of workers. They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel, and a secret society...

The shang (商)

The merchants, traders, and peddlers of goods were viewed by the scholarly elite as essential members of society, yet were placed on the lowest of the four grades in the official Chinese social hierarchy, due to the view that they do not produce anything, only profit from others' creations. This was in spite the fact throughout Chinese history, the merchant class were often wealthy and held considerable influence above and beyond their supposed social standing. The scholars' attitudes towards commerce and business was almost universally apparent in their writings which denounced the merchant class as greedy and lacking moral character. It was also unacceptable for scholar-officials to engage in personal profiteering outside their official salary, even though by the Song period they were using intermediary agents to handle their anonymous business affairs for them. Merchants were seen as somewhat parasitic to the needs of all other groups in society, since it was acknowledged that they used the goods that others produced and made their own profits from them. In essence, they were seen as business savvy, but not morally cultivated enough to be leading members of society or highly venerated representatives of Chinese culture.

Despite this disdain for the merchants, by the mid Ming Dynasty

Ming Dynasty

(1368–1644), many families who produced scholar-officials had members who were merchants or had a merchant as a descendant of some kind. Even more significant was the fact that scholar-officials who had familial ties with merchants from the past or in the present became unabashed about these ties and made it publicly known in the writing of their official family histories. During the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, scholar-officials could derive enough of their own revenues to fund vital public works. By the late Ming Dynasty, they often needed to solicit funds from powerful merchants to build new roads, schools, bridges, pagodas, or engage in essential industries, such as book-making, which aided the gentry class in education for the imperial examinations. Merchants began to imitate the highly cultivated nature and manners of scholar-officials in order to appear more cultured and gain higher prestige and acceptance by the scholarly elite. They even purchased printed books that served as guides to proper conduct and behavior and which promoted merchant morality and business ethics.

Analysis

There were many social groups that were precariously excluded from the four broad categories in the social hierarchy. These included soldiers and guards, religious clergy and diviners, eunuchs and concubines, entertainers and courtiers, domestic servants and slaves, prostitutes, and low class laborers other than farmers and artisans. The emperor

Emperor of China

The Emperor of China refers to any sovereign of Imperial China reigning between the founding of Qin Dynasty of China, united by the King of Qin in 221 BCE, and the fall of Yuan Shikai's Empire of China in 1916. When referred to as the Son of Heaven , a title that predates the Qin unification, the...

— embodying a heavenly mandate

Mandate of Heaven

The Mandate of Heaven is a traditional Chinese philosophical concept concerning the legitimacy of rulers. It is similar to the European concept of the divine right of kings, in that both sought to legitimaze rule from divine approval; however, unlike the divine right of kings, the Mandate of...

to judicial and executive authority — was on a social and legal tier above the gentry

Gentry (China)

and the exam-drafted scholar-officials

Scholar-bureaucrats

Scholar-officials or Scholar-bureaucrats were civil servants appointed by the emperor of China to perform day-to-day governance from the Sui Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, China's last imperial dynasty. These officials mostly came from the well-educated men known as the...

. Although his royal family and noble extended family were also highly respected, they did not command the same level of authority.

There were motives behind the aristocratic officials and later scholar-officials' classifying of certain groups in the hierarchy and leaving others out. The scholar-officials placed farmers as the second most prestigious group because the aristocratic officials and scholar-officials were landholders themselves, much like farmers (the ones who weren't tenant farmer

Tenant farmer

A tenant farmer is one who resides on and farms land owned by a landlord. Tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and management; while tenant farmers contribute their labor along with at times varying...

s or serf

SERF

A spin exchange relaxation-free magnetometer is a type of magnetometer developed at Princeton University in the early 2000s. SERF magnetometers measure magnetic fields by using lasers to detect the interaction between alkali metal atoms in a vapor and the magnetic field.The name for the technique...

s). Both farmers and artisans were placed on a higher tier than merchants because the two former groups produced crops and manufactured goods, essential things needed by the whole of society. The merchants were seen as merely talented at business and trading, and were often seen as greedy and even parasitic to the needs of all other groups.

The social category of the soldier was left out of the social hierarchy due to the gentry scholars' embracing of intellectual cultivation (wen) and detest for violence (wu). The scholars did not want to legitimize those whose professions centered chiefly around violence, so to leave them out of the social hierarchy altogether was a means to keep them in an unrecognized and undistinguished social tier. Entertainers and courtiers were often dependents upon the wealthy or were associated with the often-perceived immoral pleasure grounds of urban entertainment districts. To give them official recognition would have given them more prestige. Although shamans and diviners in Bronze Age

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...

China had some authority as religious leaders in society, the scholars did not want religious leaders amassing too much power and influence like military strongmen (one example of this would be Zhang Jiao

Zhang Jiao

Zhang Jue was the leader of the Yellow Turban rebels during the late Han Dynasty period of Chinese history. He was said to be a follower of Taoism and a sorcerer. His name is sometimes read as Zhang Jiao, since the Chinese character of Zhang's given name can be read as either "Jiao" or "Jue"...

, who led a Taoist sect into open rebellion

Yellow Turban Rebellion

The Yellow Turban Rebellion, also translated as Yellow Scarves Rebellion, was a peasant revolt that broke out in 184 AD in China during the reign of Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty...

against the Han government's authority). There were also multiple persecutions of Buddhism in China

Four Buddhist Persecutions in China

The Four Buddhist Persecutions in China was the wholesale suppression of Buddhism carried out on four occasions from the fifth through the tenth century by four Chinese emperors.-First and Second:...

, a lot of the contention being over Buddhist monasteries' exemption from government taxation, but also because later Neo-Confucian

Neo-Confucianism

Neo-Confucianism is an ethical and metaphysical Chinese philosophy influenced by Confucianism, that was primarily developed during the Song Dynasty and Ming Dynasty, but which can be traced back to Han Yu and Li Ao in the Tang Dynasty....

scholars saw Buddhism

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

as an alien ideology and threat to the moral order of society. The court eunuchs were also viewed with some suspicion by the scholar-officials, since there were several instances in Chinese history where influential eunuchs came to dominate the emperor, his imperial court, and the whole of the central government. In an extreme example, the eunuch Wei Zhongxian

Wei Zhongxian

Wei Zhongxian is considered by most historians as the most powerful and notorious eunuch in Chinese history. Originally a hoodlum and gambler, his initial name was Wei Si . He took the step of becoming a eunuch and entering palace service to escape from his creditors, taking the name Li Jinzhong...

(1568–1627) had his critics from the orthodox Confucian 'Donglin Society

Donglin Academy

The Donglin Academy , also known as the Guishan Academy , was originally built in AD 1111 during the Northern Song dynasty at present-day Wuxi in China...

' tortured and killed while dominating the court of the Tianqi Emperor

Tianqi Emperor

The Tianqi Emperor was the 15th emperor of the Ming dynasty from 1620 to 1627. Born Zhu Youxiao, he was the Taichang Emperor's eldest son. His era name means "Heavenly opening".-Biography:...

—Wei was dismissed by the next ruler

Chongzhen Emperor

The Chongzhen Emperor was the 16th and last emperor of the Ming Dynasty in China. He reigned from 1627 to 1644, under an era name that means "honorable and auspicious".- Early years :...

and committed suicide.

History

The shi (士)

Outside of China

The nong (农/農)

The gong (工)

The shang (商)

Analysis

See also