Encyclopedia of society and culture in the ancient world ( PDFDrive ) 503

452 family: Europe cius focused on devising a system of ethics that all morally upstanding persons were to live by While much of Confucianism specifies social rituals to be performed during certain times or on certain occasions (for example, the period of mourning to be observed after the death of a parent), the philosophy is rooted in broader principles, with attitudes such as righteousness and empathy highly valued While Confucianism developed into various schools, particularly after Confucius’s death, by the third century b.c.e., fi lial piety, or the child’s respect for parents, was largely seen as the foremost of all virtues During the Han Dynasty, from 202 b.c.e to 220 c.e., Confucian beliefs were incorporated into the state religion because rulers looking to maintain widespread cultural unification found Confucianism’s dictates regarding social behavior perhaps particularly appealing Related to the Confucian ideal of fi lial piety was the domestic worship of ancestors Even before the time of Confucius, the Chinese people believed that the spirits of the deceased lingered in the afterlife and determined the fates of their descendants For this reason, the Chinese people made—and in modern times still make—offerings of food, drink, and other items to their ancestors, often at shrines set up in their homes In ancient times royalty and the wealthy were particular generous toward their ancestor spirits, presenting their gifts in elaborate bronze vessels A king might ask his forebears to bestow good fortune not just on himself but on his subjects as well, such as through the provision of a good harvest or luck in battle In association with ancestor worship, fathers taught their children to respect ancestors fully and eternally; no man or woman would want to be ignored as a spirit Thus, the young universally complied in serving their parents, and even the rich performed menial tasks for their parents, such as patching articles of clothing, rather than delegate those tasks to servants Overall, the practice of ancestor worship and Confucian teachings about the primacy of family largely determined the extent to which unconditional and oft-demonstrated love has dominated the home lives of the Chinese A final prominent characteristic of Chinese domestic life in ancient times was the subservience of women While little evidence exists about precisely how peasants arranged family matters, the lives of courtly men and women were often recorded in works of art and writing, such as Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies, dating from the fourth century c.e Women were obligated to be dutiful, yielding, reverential, and humble; a precept of the time read, “A husband is Heaven, and Heaven cannot be shirked.” Further, women were often denied education and exposure to the outside world, limiting their intellectual development and ensuring their future treatment as inferior Although the historical origins of the practice are uncertain, Chinese women historically were literally given to men in arranged marriages and sent off to live with the husband’s family In India the family had similarly sacred importance, as established by the love-based doctrines of Buddhism and as solidified by the popularization of Hinduism through the reign of the Guptas (240–550 c.e.) Many of the values and traditions of Hinduism, such as dharma, karma, and the transmigration of souls, were in fact first presented and advocated by Buddhists Regardless, the Hindu caste system, which assigned people to a hierarchy of social categories, served to cement existing familial practices, for the caste system itself was maintained through indoctrination carried out within individual families While founded in love and respect, the institution of the Indian family, as in many other cultures, was a patriarchal one from as early as 1000 b.c.e Within an extended family, the words spoken by the eldest males were essentially law, and these patriarchs were treated almost as gods As in China, through arranged marriages a woman was brought to live with the extended family of her new husband Within a family, brothers and cousins alike—both referred to with the same word, bhai—supported each other in all respects, sometimes even sharing a wife Such fraternal unity was reinforced throughout Indian history by the moral teachings found in ancient texts like the Sanskrit epics Mahabharata and Ramayana In accord with the patriarchal tradition, women in ancient India were largely relegated to secondary roles The code known as the Laws of Manu, which was developed probably between 200 b.c.e and 200 c.e., legalized the notion that women were inferior to men, with fathers, husbands, and sons successively offering “protection.” If a Hindu husband was himself wholly immoral, even to the extent of committing adultery, his wife was nevertheless expected literally to worship him In fact, a woman was expected to obey her husband even if he commanded her to perform acts that would be degrading or self-destructive Whether supervised, guarded, or confined outright, women were essentially the possessions of the men in their family Further cultural expectations dealt specifically with reproduction and the bearing of children: Child rearing (along with constant attention to the husband) was specifically termed the obligation of women, and if no children were produced, the husband was within his rights to find another wife Women did retain a greater degree of power in certain isolated societies in ancient Asia In South India, in fact, families have long been arranged matrilineally, presumably as far back as ancient times Although even less is known about family structures in ancient Japan, because historical records developed much later, Chinese travelers wrote that in southwestern Japan in 238 c.e., society was arranged in matriarchal fashion States were then under the rule of sorceresses; women, in fact, maintained rulership in Japan periodically until the eighth century c.e EUROPE BY AMY HACKNEY BLACKWELL Archaeological evidence provides relatively little information on the specific details of family structure in prehistoric