Friday, November 4, 2016

Understanding Early Chinese History

This article shows how Taoist text helps deepen the understanding of Early Chinese History. I think this because this article shows how the amount of Taoist's have changed. In Early Chinese history the only Taoist's were Taoist preists. Now like it says in the story you can walk into a temple and say I want to be a Taoist. The exact text from the story says, "There are ordinary people who join temples and call themselves lay Buddhists or Taoists." For all of time China has always had an emperor but now with Taoism they have a theocracy based around a celestial master or  Tianshi who was supposed to create a new political structure.  The structure that was going to be used was gonna treat every person fairly and with the same respect. This was the opposite of confucianism because Taosim was going with the flow but Confucionism is that you need to put in the effort to succeed.  Unfortunately the political structure in China did not last. Taosim is an important religion in China, Thailnd, Laos, Vietnam. The Taoist's left behind no physical evidence so it was hard for historians to learn about the dynasty. That was how Taoist texts help deepen the understanding of Early Chinese History.