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enhance their own status, the Chou kings created the concept of the Mandate of Heaven (t’ien
ming), while continuing to observe the sacrifices and rites of ancestor worship. The Mandate of
Heaven claimed that the all-encompassing, impersonal divinity of Heaven conferred the
authority to rule over the four quarters of the world to the family that it currently judges most
worthy of such responsibility. Importantly, Heaven’s transcendent judgment is ethical and the
ruling family’s worthiness consists of its virtues and consequent ability to observe li, the
traditional ways, customs, rites, manners, and cultural accomplishments of Chinese civilization,
and to induce the lesser lineages to do so as well, in order for human beings to form a
harmonious community in accord with tao, the heavenly way and order. War was now justified
only as punishment of those who rejected or rebelled against the authority of the Son of Heaven.
Moreover, the conduct of war governed by a code of honor, which, for instance, forbade taking
advantage of an adversary’s difficulties. Awareness of these ethical advances, as well as progress
in the arts, gave the Chou nobility a clear sense of superiority over the barbarians outside their
civilization.
Over the centuries, the authority of the Chou kings was usurped first by the lords and then by
the ministers, each entrenched with his lineage in a walled town that commanded the
surrounding countryside, until there were about one-hundred-seventy centers of power by the
beginning of the Spring-and-Autumn period (722-481 B.C.). While maintaining a nominal
allegiance to the Chou, for instance, by proclaiming their wars of conquest to be punitive
expeditions on behalf of the Son of Heaven against errant subjects, they really acted as
independent states. As usurpation and war broke down the traditional order, the struggle for
dominance became increasingly unconstrained by the code of noble conduct (li) and ancestral
cults were replaced by blood covenants among non-kin as the primary constituent of social and
Convention