Based on archaeological data and written sources, the article provides a broad overview of the processes and events that accompanied the emergence and formation of the state in Ancient China in comparison with similar processes in other regions of the world.

Keywords: China, state, antiquity, archeology.

STATE FORMATION AND CENTRIPETAL TENDENCIES IN ANCIENT CHINA

Based on archeological data and writing sources the article give a wide panorama of processes and events which accompanied state formation in Ancient China, in a comparison with similar processes in other regions of the world.

Keywords. China, state, antiquity, archeology.

In China's past, the beginning of metalworking, the development of regular monumental construction, and the emergence of written culture were relatively close in time. These indicators mark a significant and rapid complication of the social structure of society. All of them have a differentiating effect on newly emerging independent population groups. Moreover, stratification does not actively extend to the rural environment, but manifests itself in the creation of a new type of settlement, where the work of the farmer is replaced by a gradually expanding number of industrial professions that are not related to meeting the food and everyday household needs of the population. Here, the subject of labor is the manufacture of various types of inventory, production tools, agricultural and craft tools, weapons. And against the background of the rapid growth in the production of products that have a ritual and cult purpose, the mass character of "artistically designed products for the emerging elite" is increasing. Actually, this branch of production is only partially isolated within the production of ritual and cult entourage. This is the part of this product that goes to the disposal of people who are invested with certain" God-given " cult-political prerogatives. The rest of the "public wealth" is associated with the maintenance of places of worship, ritual centers, the design of permanent interiors of sanctuaries, the decoration of" deities " and ritual actions dedicated to them. Examples found in other regions of the Old World allow us to interpret such a situation as an indicator of the emerging state power, and the territory where scientific archaeological research reveals such processes is usually considered as the territory of an ancient state. In China, these phenomena become more active by the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC (Kozhin, 2011: 36-73).

I believe that it is incongruous to formulate a generalized description of the ancient state here due to two circumstances. First, the historical data at our disposal on the formation of the oldest states are more likely to be based on the fact that the most ancient states were formed.

Pavel KOZHIN-Doctor of Historical Sciences, Chief Researcher, Institute of the Far East of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Pavel KOZHIN - Doctor of Historical Science, Principal Research Fellow, Institute of Far Eastern Studies, RAS, Moscow.

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mythological rather than historical, and they are extremely fragmentary in the chronicle tradition. Secondly, the possibility of tracing the material foundations of the state formation process from archaeological data, although it seems more realistic, is still relatively systematic only in the territory of the ancient Near East. In this regard, it becomes necessary to consider this process as a unique phenomenon wherever it is possible to identify and justify it in one way or another.

In principle, the concept of an ancient (even the oldest) state implies certain forms of management of a certain terrestrial space, where a certain human population lives stably and mobile, organized into a single social structure of varying complexity or divided into fragments according to the places of settlement; social, ethnic, family-related specifics; functional production and technical features, etc. Such indicators are typical of human collectives, strata, and groups that are structured according to their way of life in such a way as to most successfully provide themselves with food resources, tolerable and safe living conditions, means of living, self-defense and mutual assistance, opportunities for self-organization (family, interest groups, occupations, beliefs), and upbringing of younger generations.

Management was carried out in the form of appeals-instructions to the population, contrasting permitted and prohibited forms and norms of social behavior; punishments (physical, moral, material) for their violation; organization of certain types of public works necessary for the benefit of the population and the country; collection, storage and distribution of a legally defined (or extraordinarily defined) norm, part of which was determined by law. products produced by the population collectively or individually that are necessary to meet public needs, maintain a strictly defined collective of government representatives with their families; recruit, train and maintain a collective of performers of the will of the rulers and "benevolent" deities to them. The performers included groups of various numbers. These were army units, clerics (priests, astrologers, temple servants, suppliers of ritual and sacrificial goods), "officials", i.e. the entire staff of employees of palace departments (administrators, scribes, archivists, couriers, cleaners). Special significant groups consisted of artisans working in state workshops, food suppliers and service personnel of the courtyard and palace.

This brief description is of very limited significance, because it refers to the situation of autochthonous formation of the state, whereas in most cases, when it was possible to capture the early stages of the formation of state structures, their formation could occur in conditions of increasing migration, mixing of population groups of different ethnic and linguistic genesis, as well as under the influence (and even pressure) of the population of neighboring regions where the state structure was established earlier.

Here it is necessary to formulate several postulates, on the basis of which I present these problems.

1. I deliberately omit such expressions as "oppression", "coercion", etc. Their exaggerated significance in the characterization of the state (especially the oldest) arose in the societies of the XIX century in connection with the endless fluctuations of the state system in the states of Europe (first of all!) under the influence of" left-wing " ideologies, including Marxism, and the growth of anarchist trends and sectarian sentiments. They tried to "instill" the idea that a person has an a priori "innate knowledge" that allows him to "solve problems of any complexity in an original, just and immutable way" concerning the concepts of justice (including the "highest" one, which means that he has a certain level of knowledge).

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contrary to the "doctrine of God" itself), the priority of reason, self-importance in the universe, etc. And therefore many state regulations, prohibitions and regulations began to be evaluated as " forcibly imposed actions that suppress individual freedoms."

2. Each point of the proposed review has already been repeatedly included in the theoretical, explanatory and illustrative constructions of its predecessors. Virtually every significant word on these issues requires extensive commentary, both historiographical and conceptual. Moreover, the number of names and essays related to this topic can far exceed the volume of this issue of the journal. At the same time, each "iconic name" evokes an incredible confusion of associations in the reader's mind and memory, distracting him from the essence of the issue in the direction of historiographical problems with a bias towards the problems of "ratings" of researchers. However, now, thanks to the pragmatic and paradigmatic orientation of our" Americanized " research, which rarely reaches such sources of the subject as the research experiments of F. P. Blavatsky. Bacon, T. Hobbes, and even the French Encyclopedia and its collaborators, the chronological depth of historiographical observations fluctuates somewhere on the verge of the mid-nineteenth century, but the texts are filled with the latest " secrets and exposures of lies of the past about the past." Therefore, I don't offer any personal comments.

3. The approach presented here, in the absence of already meaningful archaeological material obtained in scientific excavations of the last century, and strictly systematized ethnographic data, 1 would look like a nonsense unfounded fantasy, devoid of any rational justification, like, say, the thoughts of J.-J. Rousseau on the "social contract" or S.-L. de Montesquieu on the" prosperity "of the French monarchy of his time and "geographical determinism" in connection with the spread of "tyranny" and the use of torture and flogging in certain "climates" (naturally, a generalized development of the ideas of geographical determinism and its significance for the organization of state power is serious the merit of this outstanding legal and scientific luminary of his era).

4. I do not refuse to admit that during the last two millennia there has been a marked and growing "impoverishment of human faith", due, in particular, to the fragmentation of beliefs, their constant "comparative examination".

5. During the same period, the inhabitants of the Old World increasingly realized that the recognition of monotheism, with an incredible increase in the number of religious movements, each of which was headed by its own "unique and omniscient god", could weaken the responsibility of the adept to such "one of many deities" and could practically lead to the idea of non-punishability for my sins against him. This sharply began to detract from the" authority " of religious faith. And few modern people can imagine the level of" fear of God's punishment " that a medieval Catholic experienced when declaring an interdict in the country where he lived. All the more so is the pagan's horror at the numerous deities he has inadvertently offended. 2
1 I do not consider acceptable the artificial scheme in which J. R. R. Tolkien has introduced himself. Fraser incorporated most of the spiritual culture of mankind, guided by early ethnological developments, which, in addition to random observations and frequent arbitrary conclusions, were not able to clearly distinguish the universal properties of spirituality from the manifestations of the specifics of regional and ethnic cultures. Unfortunately, this dead-end research path remains fashionable, because it allows you to freely compare data on archaeological sites of the cultures that the researcher loves with the literary heritage of Indo-European peoples: the Vedas, Avesta, etc.

2 The Greek tragedy, which is now perceived as a set of samples of moral and ethical precepts, was in reality a materialization and visualization of the same fear of deities, a reminder to the next generations of the previous periods of their collective life, an inventory

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6. At present, we are too far removed from the direct perception of the sensations that ancient man experienced when thinking about the world around him, filled with sacred symbols and a mass of opposing elements that reflect the struggle of good and evil (in nature and outer space, in the relations of collectives and their members).

7. I deliberately do not use the highly specialized terminology of certain scientific fields, since the growing divergence of opinions requires the presentation of any problems within the framework of a lively, commonly used literary speech in order to achieve mutual understanding.

The production, ritual and cult center is thoroughly sacralized due to the creation of conditions for organizing the veneration of higher deities, "recognized as the arbiters of the destinies and deeds of the corresponding collectives", whose cult is also beginning to be accompanied by the practice of various kinds of divination and predictions. In them, adepts, from private individuals to representatives of the governing stratum, are given answers to questions about the " will, precepts and wishes of the deities." In fact, they are offered futurological forecasts correlated with divine expressions of will, which could relate to any problems of public and political life of humanity and often individual interests and requests of the ruling elite. As a result, such a center turns to the administrative center with extraordinary speed. In fact, the entire population of the rural district begins to flock to these centers, for which there are no intensive and "profitable" production activities in the agricultural and food sector, in the surrounding fields. In addition, the growth of managerial functions in such centers requires both strengthening the personnel structure of the managers themselves, and, most importantly, increasing the variety of groups of auxiliary, security and maintenance personnel attached to them.

Naturally, the growth of material allowances in the agricultural sector provides an intensive increase in the growth of the rural population, which very quickly becomes redundant, but the expansion of ritual centers with a successful growth of agricultural production can safely absorb the excess population for some time. This security is relative: the uncertainty of employment, separation from a stable team, lack of profession and knowledge involve the individual in obviously conflict situations. And it is they who can ultimately help a person find his place in the ranks of equals. The armed guards of the rulers are transformed into a regular army, and this is already the inclusion of each participant in the system of stable social relations. Such a transformation, in order to be sustainable, has always had to rely on two rational elements inherent in human social relations.3 These were: the obvious public utility of the plan and the opportunity to implement, implement the plan by the forces of the team in which it was realized and developed. Here it is necessary to shift the focus from the direct individual relationships of people in society, i.e. living full-fledged and full-fledged individuals, to the beginning abstr-

mistakes made in the past, a warning against violations of traditional rules and regulations. Of course, in addition to the general memorial, instructive, cautionary teachings, warnings and reminders that are the essence of such literature, in theatrical actions, descendants were also reminded of the positive experience of their ancestors, awakening patriotic feelings in them. In general, literature and theatrical performances of a historical nature helped the team to establish in its historical memory a certain persistent image of its people and its ancestors and to preserve for the future the main milestones of the past path.

3 Specific biological relationships already contain their beginnings, but, guided only by instinct, they cannot evolve, responding not only to deforming changes in the environment, but also to rational collective plans developed in human society. Seemingly uncomplicated discussions of spiritual "discoveries" are heard not only in the speeches of Homeric heroes, but also in the dialogues of Plato, especially concerning the explanatory logical constructions of Socrates, and in the later argumentative arguments of ancient philosophers.

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forms of intra-collective and inter-collective interactions may differ from them 4. In such situations, the presence of both conditions was obvious.

Managerial activity regulated and rationalized human relations in the sphere of collective production, and the armed force (we should not forget about the impact of the already mentioned fear of higher forces) guaranteed strict compliance with instructions and at the same time protected the collective from external interference in its social life, economic activities, and the implementation of plans for the future. The material expression of the stability of these new type of settlements (cities) and the general principles of relations between the center and the periphery was the enclosure of "sacred" centers with high protective walls [Li Liu and Xingcan Chen, 2003, p. 90, 94, 88 (map)]. These walls were not necessarily originally designed to protect against the enemy. The wall materialized the possibilities of sacral protection of those collective assets that this center possessed.

The very set of those types of sacred forces to which prayers, sacrifices, and even simple appeals were devoted since ancient times shows that a person felt his direct connection with the surrounding world, nature, and the cosmos.5 First of all, this concerned earth, fire and water, the deities of which were highlighted. Their "purpose" was to protect their own local population, which was part of a large single community that united the ritual and economic center and the periphery, i.e., the agricultural space that provided the basic food (and often raw materials) needs of the entire collective. 6 This situation eventually became complete when the center, with all its deities, all its administrative functions and organized leadership, was enclosed in the space of "sacred" walls. In fact, since the appearance of these walls, we can talk about the final addition of state power. The simplest structure of the state, implemented in a limited space and having complete autarky, is the classical Greek polis 7, vol.f. a powerful settlement (a city, a designated fenced area) in the center of a rural district, where all administrative and administrative functions that go beyond the needs and interests of each specific agricultural village surrounding this center are concentrated. However, the appearance of polis is associated with certain spatial, landscape and climatic conditions.8 In the areas of their education-

4 We must not forget that we are not talking about decisions made by our contemporaries, but about those first realized laws of human society that were beginning to enter the "transcendent" sphere. Comprehension of them and the ability to apply them quickly come to a person not from his fellow member of the team, but as if from the team itself. They are only transmitted by persons authorized to store in memory or in ritual mnemonic signs the normative forms of the collective's will. They were given in the broadest sense the meaning of the divine will.

5 This may be a consequence of my lack of education, but I do not see the possibility of distinguishing the cosmos from the general characteristics of nature (in Chinese traditional science) through certain beings who embodied certain properties, virtues or contradictions of the external world. All this was not material, but it was completely emotionally formed. The team needed to constantly feel its direct connection with the place of its habitation. The only question was to determine the extent of this habitat, its boundaries and its divisions into the center and periphery. All this is recorded in sufficient detail in the initial texts of Shu Jing. A local resident in the surrounding nature could feel the good action of those deities who animated this nature (they could also be perceived as demiurges - the creators of this environment).

6 A nomadic pastoral society requires other fundamental approaches, especially in the development of criteria for selecting sacred centers, their localization, and, most importantly, the possibility of their reliable documentation with the help of archaeological evidence.

7 Further, this term is applied to large settlements only in general terms, since the polis structure is a very peculiar form of existence described by ancient authors, very far from the conditions and way of life of the population of East Asian cities; the similarity here is reduced to the presence of an urban center with a rural district and autarky.

8 Virtually every polis is the result of the evolution of the original settlement of a dual kindred group into a single, cramped union of such kindred collectives into a single community.

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In the past, there was a relief of either foothills, small closed depressions, or not very large plateaus, 9 etc.

Extensive plains, even very fertile ones, where there was no natural demarcation of large territorial massifs, required a completely different form of organization of state associations. These were precisely associations in which, on the one hand, polycentricity was formed, and on the other, a hierarchy of centers, which, as it turns out, could not exist without interaction with each other and without this inclusion in a common "infinite" space.

China is a country that has just such a structure-forming giant space [Dikarev, 2011, pp. 173-184]. More precisely, these are several large, initially isolated spaces. These are the basins of the two largest rivers - the Yellow River and the Yangtze. The river flows themselves, running from west to east, serve as the unifying base of the structure. The presence of an abundant water environment (its insufficiency in the north began to be revealed only in the Middle Ages, when relative overpopulation began to exert increasing pressure on fertile land and water massifs) made it possible to settle down fairly evenly in giant continuous, continuous spaces. It was this unprotected continuity (boundless expanse) that led to the possibility (and necessity) of combining these unusually significant land masses.

This pattern in the Old World is typical for a number of large regions.10 The organization of state power within the general limits of such regions became a necessity, otherwise, with even a small excess of population, the life of the regions could turn into chaos. The more organized and perfect the economy became, the more sophisticated the political power itself was organized, the more centripetal forces manifested themselves in demographic and social processes in such territories. In China, it is already possible to trace these centripetal trends in many areas of economic life, political organization, and social institutions since ancient times [Kozhin, 2012, p.63-69; Kozhin, 2013, p. 184-191].

So, the question of ancient mining of metal ores is being studied more and more actively. Publications on the development of methods for obtaining table salt and on the centers where it was produced are becoming more and more extensive [Flad, 2011]. In the metalworking industry, more and more industries work according to uniform standards (size, technological, prescription, etc.). Due to unification, internal production interdependence in large industries is increasing, which positively affects the unifying trends of regions. Of particular importance is the expansion of access to mining sites for rare raw materials, especially metal ores. The experience of studying the history of metalworking shows that the closer to the sources of raw materials

a hierarchically constructed complex environment. The formation of such an environment is the result of purposeful settlement of significant groups of settlers from overpopulated rural settlements over a large land area. The withdrawal of overseas colonies from large coastal settlements located in different parts of the Mediterranean in the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC demonstrates the formation and development of such a system; the conditions of land colonization can be summarized by the features of the distribution and expansion of agricultural communities of the Ancient East in the zones of their greatest initial activity in the The Euphrates River, as well as in the Syro-Palestinian space in the 5th-3rd millennium BC.The 3rd millennium BC demonstrates an increase in the number of unions of poleis, where hierarchical relations are formed between neighboring centers and various managerial functions are steadily distributed between their centers.

9 As ethnographic observations of modern cultures that have maintained a direct connection with and dependence on the environment at the collective level show, the choice of location for stable long-term rather than seasonal settlements was determined by the availability of sufficient and permanent sources of water, fuel, and building materials that provide reliable shelters.

10 Literally on the edge of modernity, this kind of natural expansion of the subject space could be observed in the Urals and Siberia. And maybe in more vivid and violent forms on the American mainland, on the territory of the modern United States.

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the location of the respective processing centers makes their products more diverse and technically advanced. The abundance of raw materials gives craftsmen the right to experiment, to search for new ways and techniques of work, than in areas and cultures where the shortage of raw materials forces specialists to adhere to proven techniques in order to exclude the possibility of obtaining defects. The consequence of this pattern was the population's typical attraction to the places of production of the highest-quality types of products in traditional China.

Traders were usually actively involved in its spread to the largest possible territories of the country, which was facilitated by the rather intensive development of the road network since the Neolithic era, for the tracing and equipment of which, like all socially significant works, the state from the beginning sent large contingents of able-bodied residents as labor service (and criminal penalties). Moreover, it cannot be excluded that the active construction of" fortress "walls surrounding the" appanage "possessions in the Zhanguo era (V-III centuries BC) not only had a utilitarian meaning - protection from nomads, but also marked the sacred border of the agricultural space, the territory of"Huaxia" 11.

Trends of centralization of production are felt in the handicraft products12 themselves, especially those that were made from scarce raw materials or raw material reserves that had a narrowly localized origin13. It could be delivered to any points of "their own state". The state has been taking control of the metalworking industry since the Yin era. Military equipment and ritual utensils are also at his disposal. In the Zhou era, this order is further strengthened. This is logically quite understandable. Social processes associated with various changes in the structure of settlement collectives increase the mobility of the population and various types of its migration, which leads to the spread of related and neighboring collectives to ever-expanding spaces. At the same time, personal contact between members of suburban collectives and residents of the centers is naturally weakened and even excluded. This situation is resolved in many ways. This is the movement of "capitals". Performing regular ritual detours of the subject territory by the ruler. Sima Qian, in particular, describes in detail such detours made by the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huang, emphasizing their ritual and legislative significance through visits to national cult centers associated with sacred mountain peaks, and the construction of stelae with various legislative requirements. Detours were practiced in both nomadic and sedentary environments.

The need for stable unambiguous information increases dramatically when a traditional society that lives according to a certain traditional schedule comes under the rule of conquerors, "oppressors" who profess a different system of traditional values. This was the case, as emphasized in the texts of Shu Jing, during the transition of power

11 After all, in the steep bend of the Yellow River that marked out the Ordos, the Great Wall runs literally along the climatic and lithological boundary that separated the dry sandy "nomadic" steppe from the agricultural territories of China. If the wave of widespread archaeological discoveries had begun half a century earlier, and not in the middle of the 19th century, T. R. Malthus (Malthus, 2001, pp. 486-487) would have been justified in including the early epochs of prehistoric megalithic construction and giant public buildings of the Romans among the traditional means of combating overpopulation.

12 I consider all classifications that define the early production of specialized workshops as "protoremesla"to be illegal. As soon as the production of certain types of products passes into the hands of people specially trained for the relevant production activities, even if their associations do not yet become narrowly industrial corporations controlled by the state through licensing, taxes, and legal advantages, which begins to take shape within the Ancient East, and then in the ancient world, this is already professional craft production.

13 In 1974, for the first time since the Cultural Revolution, a text supplement to the maps of the Atlas of the People's Republic of China was published, which provided brief data on the nature, population and industry of the People's Republic of China. Large craft traditional industries were indicated there. So, porcelain production in the Lake region, Sichuan brocade, stone inkwells from Guangdong, etc. are mentioned.

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over the Country from Yin to Zhou. Apparently, the active codification of the Yin spiritual heritage was a consequence of the ethnic change of the ruling stratum, when the legacy of the ethnic past had to be brought closer to the new legislation, new rules that were introduced by new rulers, without destroying the very system of everyday government of the country.

An even more difficult task arose in the second half of the third century BC, when the process of the final merger of the appanage principalities into a single structure of the empire under the leadership of the northwestern principality of Qin was outlined and implemented [Kozhin, 2014, pp. 323-344]. Although its power and enormous potential had begun to manifest much earlier, so that the authorities and the population of other shires were familiar with the peculiarities of the Qin system of government, the transition to the direct authority of Qin Wang, who had already risen to the unattainable top of the ruling hierarchy, was a threatening stressful situation for the population of other shires. However, this first experience of unification definitely had a positive impact on the events of the next period of the unification movement in the country, when the top leaders of the Han Empire administration directly asked the supreme ruler, Vyan Liu Bang, that they also needed his legitimation as emperor, since only this "sacred act" would give legislative completeness to their own titles positions and titles [Kozhin, 2012(1), p. 165, ed. 4]14. In all social upheavals, dynastic collapses, and nomadic conquests, the centripetal forces eventually prevailed, ushering in a new imperial cycle.

So the Empire took place. It has gone from the construction of the first "sacred" cities, the formation of a large-scale social craft, the establishment of early fundamental legal institutions, the beginning of written culture and an organized military system to the approval of a comprehensive bureaucratic regulation, which, separating power from man, contrasted the human mass with its hourly private problems, everyday vanity, and inexorable life needs with an impassive code There were no legal regulations that left only the minimum of individual rights and opportunities averaged by statistical processing to the individual, individual, or small family group. The confrontation between man and mechanism that reached its peak destroyed imperial society, directing humanistic thought to search for new forms of justification for a life-affirming social structure, but this is beyond the scope of this article.

Returning to the moments of the formation of the bureaucratic imperial system, in which a person acts, although not always significant and significant, but quite an independent recognized subject, it is easy to establish that in Shu Jing, in the Hongfan chapter, the highest level of abstraction of the entire Zhou power system is represented. This conclusion is drawn from the very structure of this chapter, brilliantly translated by S. R. Kucera (Velikiy Zakon, 1972, pp. 104-111). The title of the chapter, "The Great Law", given to it in translation (even J. Legg picked up this interpretation of the title from Chinese commentators), emphasizes its significance for the country, government and people. But its original title," The Law(s) of the Flood", with sufficient familiarity with traditional Chinese culture, clarifies its didactic instructive essence. Wang The conqueror of the kingdom (Wu-wang), who has established his ancestral dynasty in it, asks the Yin sage, a representative of the former dynasty, a keeper of centuries-old traditional knowledge, about

14 Despite the brilliant literary treatment of this historical moment by Sima Qian in his "Historical Notes", much here"remained behind the scene". Was Liu Bang really indifferent to this act, or were the renunciations of the title just a ritual formality? He was a very determined ruler and fought his way to his supremacy with great effort, and later very severely defended his power rights against any encroachments on them by his own nobles. It is difficult to unconditionally refuse him the initiative to organize his own ascension to the throne. In any case, this event for two millennia determined the trends in the development of the country's state structure and its extraordinary stability.

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how the ethical norms and relationships of people should develop in order for Heaven to help them re-harmonize their everyday life after the political changes that have taken place in the country. The sage Chi-tzu told him that he had heard (wen) an ancient story about the flood, when Gong blocked the flow of the flood waters and thereby upset the order of the five primary elements. Therefore, Emperor 15 did not pass on the "Flood Law in nine sections" to him, as a result of which virtues (Coachman has "ethical norms") and the rules of the dorm were violated. Gong was executed, and Yu, after coping with the flood, received this Law from Heaven.16
In the "epigraphic" presentation, it looks like a review of the political, economic, economic, administrative and bureaucratic mechanism of governing the country in the light of the oldest natural philosophical views that have firmly developed in the public culture of China.

1, 2. From a brief description of the natural principles (the five primary elements, in ins), there is a transition to a complex of human properties and operational capabilities.

3. Next, we consider the functional characteristics of eight areas of activity of the state apparatus, which provides all the basic needs of the population and organizes their satisfaction (I transfer in the terminology of Coachmen: food (food), goods, sacrifices, orders of public works, orders of worship and education, orders of court and punishments, reception of state guests ("international relations"), military cases).

4, 5. After considering the astronomical annual cycle and the work on ordering the calendar, the activities of the sovereign (huang) are described as a model for subjects and a bearer of the highest justice.

6. Three types of de are particularly distinguished [Kobzev, 2006, p. 257-258; From magic power..., 1998], the highest organic and moral virtues, and the perfections of the ruler.

7. "Resolving doubts". This section is dedicated to divination practice. And in contrast to the kingdom of Shang-Yin, where divination was conducted about making a decision about any important action for the team and some representatives of the elite, and they were performed exclusively on tortoiseshells and bull's shoulder blades, here divination is recommended in cases of serious divergence of opinions about a particular event in the future. They arose between the ruler, the state apparatus, and the "people" (I would like to know the exact composition of this undoubtedly large group: whether it includes the heads of regions, urban centers, rural settlements, etc.). It was necessary to take into account the opinion of the ruler and representatives of groups as equivalent, adding to them also the conclusions of fortune tellers based on the results of divination on "turtle" and yarrow (initially it was supposed to be purely Zhou divination), and make a decision that agrees with the majority opinion. This looks like a very democratic procedure in the description. A detailed description of the composition of the groups of fortune-tellers and the procedure itself indirectly indicates that these events have not yet become traditional.

8. The last section is devoted to natural signs that were believed to have an impact on the course of events in the life of the country, on the features of these events and their consequences for the collective.

Di 15 (emperor, what?); Legg - God, Karlgren-sovereign (God), Coachman-heavenly lord. We can assume that this problem remains unclear and requires special research within the framework of "sociological theology". This scientific field itself requires the development of fundamental approaches to understanding the concept of the" supreme deity " both within the framework of Chinese culture and in comparative religious studies. A vulgarized version of such problems is considered in [Armstrong, 2014].

16 Here an analogy is involuntarily suggested-a juxtaposition with the modus operandi of the deities of the Western world: they unconditionally prevented the introduction of innovations in the culture of mankind [Kozhin, 2011, p. 51, note A]. For example, the titan Prometheus was punished for transmitting fire to people. Among the Chinese, the Sky acts more "humanely": the hero who has fulfilled the " heavenly order "(Tian ming), as if as a reward, as a reward, is given a document that organizes and structures all aspects of the life of the state.

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Most of the above-mentioned functions of state power have a specific, quite realistic meaning. Moreover, if you carefully analyze them, it turns out that they are present as necessary components at all levels of management activities related to the management of human collectives of different sizes and composition, both family-related and functionally specialized by the type of economic, industrial or military activities. It is easy to see that the set of managers identified here was necessarily present in the leadership of primitive communities (for small collectives, it was permissible for one person to perform two or more of these functions). But their full complement was necessary to lead a self-governing collective that occupies a certain territory and has material opportunities for full-fledged life. It is clear that the structure (composition, functions, hierarchy) of management groups at different levels was unchanged from the council of elders of a rural family or neighborhood community to the crowded staff of the imperial court [Kozhin, 2014(1), pp. 44-50; Kozhin, 2015]. Moreover, this unambiguous stability was maintained throughout the entire period of imperial China's existence. Only the names of departments, some features of their interaction, and the personal relations of the emperors to them changed.

However, among these clearly defined functions, there is a type of activity that goes far beyond our understanding of the work of the state apparatus. This is a feature related to futurological forecasts. This sphere of state activity was developed in almost all known Eurasian state formations, and in Europe, during the Renaissance and at the beginning of Modern times, it sometimes acquired extraordinary significance. And Sima Qian's statement that rulers necessarily use predictive practice was true [Sima Qian, 1975, vol. 10, ch. 128, p. 3223]. In China, it was generally accepted that all questions related to futurological forecasts were confined to the "will of Heaven" and, naturally, in order to understand this will and explain it in the circles of the administration, it was necessary to find certain forms that were recognized as an objective expression of the will of Heaven, independent of human opinions. In China, this technique was developed in connection with the use of divination about the "will of Heaven" (it should be added that in addition to the issues that were in the competence of Heaven, there were many other, more specific issues that needed clarification in connection with alleged future events).

Not only does the Chinese chronicle system derive from the design of divinatory actions, but, apparently, a very responsible area of work in the Chinese state machine, which in European studies bears the name of the censor. This practice, which has been widely known in scientific circles since the Han era, consists in the fact that a special staff of censor officials constantly monitored all cases of incomprehensible, unexpected "unnatural" events throughout the empire, and this was not an academic interest, meaning only the recording and systematization of facts. This was directly related to the reactions of the population to such incongruous manifestations, which in one way or another could be linked to the "will of Heaven", first of all with their possible dissatisfaction with the activities of the ruler and the dynasty, which he personified at a certain stage. It should be emphasized that the presence of well-known (or well-publicized) oracles often served as an incentive to unite independent domains. However, the most powerful centripetal impulses go back to the two all-encompassing forces of the Chinese people and their culture. These are the rural agricultural population of the country and the hieroglyphic script-a monumental basis for the spiritual culture of the people, their artistic culture and aesthetic perception, as well as a solid foundation for scientific and literary speech in the vast region of East Asia.

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17 I thank M. V. Korolkov and S. A. Komissarov for giving me the opportunity to review the last two editions.

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