Гуманитарный вектор (Dec 2019)
Ruling Clans of the Eastern Jin Era (317–420 AD) and Early Chinese Buddhism
Abstract
The urgency of the problems raised in the article is due to the fact that it is impossible to reconstruct the most important, crisis and decisive stage of early medieval Chinese statehood and culture without identifying and analyzing specific historical factors for the successful restoration of the former All- Chinese Jin Dynasty in the form of the Southern Chinese Eastern Jin Dynasty. This dynasty had a profound impact on the development of management methods for all subsequent regional and national empires. The originality lies in the author’s translations of the biographical data of the highest dignitaries from the biographies of the “Jin shu” chronicle (“The History of the Jin Dynasty”), which was not translated into European languages. To complete the presentation of historical data, the author drew on methods of historical geography and ethnopsychology. The goal is to identify little-known concrete historical facts by translating and analyzing primary sources, as well as domestic, Western and Chinese articles and monographs. The author briefly reviewed and analyzed three complex, important and poorly studied problems associated with the historical and political process and the history of early Chinese Buddhism of the troubled era of East Jin. First, the problem of classifying the court clans and groups of the East Jin era. Second, the problem of determining the real subject of the highest state political power. Third, the problem of religious, ideological and philosophical preferences of the Eastern Jin monarchs, as well as representatives of the court elite of this era. Particular attention is paid to the place and role of the so-called external court clans (clans of the mother, wife or son-in-law of the reigning emperor) in the political history of the East Jin era. It is concluded that during the period of Eastern Jin there was an important shift in the religious and ideological preferences of the South Chinese elite ‒ from Taoism to Chinese Buddhism.
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