Confucius - great scholar and teacher

Confucius Birth

Confucius was born in the year 551 B.C. in the state of Lu (present Quju), a little town in today’s Shandong province. He grew up during the time of war and chaos, in the eastern Zhou dynasty (770-221 B.C.) a period of intense political turmoil and civil unrest. His father, Kong Shu Lianghe, was a well known military official in the army of Lu and had a reputation of being courageous and loyal. However, it is believed that the family of Confucius, though of noble lineage, was poor and lived in poverty.
 
In the early age, Confucius loved books and learning. Some historians are of the opinion that he did not attend school but learnt everything by himself. He grew up to become an avid scholar of Chinese traditional culture, particularly of the history, literature, music and rituals of the earlier Western Zhou dynasty (1050-770 B.C), an earlier golden age when rulers where generally kind and subjects were happy and law-abiding. Based on this research into the past and his own observations of the present, he developed a philosophy that emphasized compassion and respect at all levels of society and promoted education as a means to develop the mind and cultivated the character. He hoped that the ruler would adopt this approach to social political morality and interpersonal behavior and use it to spread harmony and peace.

His teachings attracted large number of students but the rulers of the country ignored it. His principles were not applied during his life time. After the death of Confucius, his principles were kept alive and spread by his disciples. Within centuries, the Chinese rulers started adopting his principles; his philosophy became the foundation of Chinese government, education and social structure.
 
Confucius did not succeed as a political advisor during his lifetime but was highly successful as a teacher which can be understood by the loyalty of his students and their attempt to carry on his lessons after his death.
Confucius teachings spread beyond China. Part of his philosophy spread throughout East Asia, greatly influencing the cultures of Korea, Vietnam, Japan and wherever Chinese communities settled.
He changed and shaped Chinese culture. His teachings have influenced people for a long time. During his lifetime, Confucius made his way round the various kingdoms of eastern China, spreading his own theory of government. He became the most influential person in Chinese history.

Teachings of Confucius

Confucius emphasized the concept of the “Junzi” an ideal man or gentleman who was superior because of his great moral caliber. The gentleman, according to Confucius, practiced benevolence and followed rituals that included honoring his ancestors. He preserved the elements of China’s ancient religion of ancestor worship and refined the words of earlier thinkers.
Today Confucius teachings have survived for twenty five centuries and have shaped over a quarter of the world’s population. His image appears not only in the temples across China, but also above the entrance to the US Supreme Court.
confucius-US

Confucius established first schools

Confucius is often credited with establishing the first school – accepting fees from his students in return for his teachings. He taught his students the classical learning that included the things that he himself had learned as a boy and as a young man – poetry, history, literature, rituals and music.

Emperors respected him

Since his death, Confucius has widely been perceived as the quintessential gentleman scholar, a man of great learning who generously shared his knowledge with others, and a man of remarkable integrity who refused to compromise his values and become corrupted by the world around him.
By the eleventh century AD his legendary erudition and moral superiority earned him the posthumous rank of emperor. The emperors were required to show him respect, for example by dismounting from their horses to honor him when they entered Confucian temples.

Confucius was worshipped

Throughout the history there have been those who have chosen to worship Confucius as a deity, specifically a god of learning or knowledge. As early as the second century B.C., Han dynasty emperors offered animal sacrifices at the tomb of Confucius.
The Confucius Temple in Qufu, the town of his birth and death, was built on the site of Confucius home shortly after he died, and has become a place of pilgrimage for many of his followers for centuries.
Confucian temples have also been established in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia.
During the 18th century, worship of Confucius was so pervasive that in 1715 Pope Clement XI considered it a threat to the spread of Christianity in China.
In depth detail in Wikipedia
















Great teachers of ancient time

There have been certain times in the history of man when events of the same kind have taken place in quite a number of parts of the earth. One such time was about the year 500 B.C. Within a hundred years on either side of that time the greatest teachers of religion were born in China, in India and in Greece.

The Origin of Aryan-speaking tribes and their invasions

The Aryan-speaking tribes seem to have had their early development in the flat grassy country north of the Caspian and Aral Seas. They spoke an order form of Sanskrit, from which has come not only the modern Sanskrit but also all Aryan languages such as Persian, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, German, English, Sinhalese, Urdu, and most of the modern languages of India.

Why did Aryan-speaking people migrate?

Some modern historians say that Man’s intelligence has developed rapidly in parts of the world where natural conditions (climate, soil, mineral, wealth, vegetation) make it possible for men to live without too great a struggle, and yet not too easily. If the natural conditions make life too easy (as in places where food can be easily gathered, and does not have to be planted, watered and looked after carefully), men become lazy and do not develop intelligence and skill to overcome difficulties.

Early Civilization - China

As in Egypt, Mesopotamia and India, it is certain that there were very early settlers in the great river valleys of China. Even today no other people are more expert in agriculture than the Chinese farmers. They are among the most highly civilized of all nations, and their civilization has had a longer unbroken existence than any other. But so far scientists have found no ruins in China as old as those of Egypt, Mesopotamia and India

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Early Civilization - India

It is probable that civilization in India began in the great fertile valleys of the Indus and the Ganges; but the remains of such civilizations have been discovered so far only in the valley of the Indus and some other rivers of the Punjab. The cause of this may be that such remains in the Ganges valley are buried in the thick mud brought down by that river. In the Indus valley discoveries of a very old civilization were made at a place named Mohenja Daro between 1920 and 1930. Here are ruins of a great town much older than the Vedic times, with good streets, houses with drains and bath rooms, quite as well made as those of our time, and even a beautiful public bath or swimming pool. It is clear that the inhabitants had reached a high stage of development. The discovery of similar things in the ruins of Mesopotamia and of Mohenja Daro makes it probable that there was a connection between those two civilizations. In one other point, they are alike. Both these civilization ended between 2,500 BC and 2000 BC by the invasion of tribes of less civilized men who spoke Aryan languages, rather like Sanskrit and old Persian.
 
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Early Civilization - Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia (or Iraq) is the land between two rivers, Tigris and Euphrates. It does not have such great floods as Egypt because these rivers start in the mountains of Armenia, in Asia Minor, where there is less rain than in central and eastern Africa where the river Nile begins. The people who became settlers in Mesopotamia therefore found another way of watering their crops. They caused the river to flow to the fields in waterways cut in the earth, i.e., irrigation canals. This was a great invention. Some of those old irrigation canals can even now be seen in Mesopotamia. Some have been broken and in those parts the land has again become a sandy waste.
 
There was no stone in Mesopotamia, as there was in Egypt. But there was much sticky earth or clay in the river valleys, and the people soon became experts in making bricks. They made use of bricks not only for their buildings, but even for writing on it. Their books were on bricks, not on paper, and scientists interested in the history of the past (archaeologists) have come across libraries of thousands and thousands of those bricks, with writings on them, in the deserts of Mesopotamia where once there were great towns and fertile fields.
 
For thousands of years men lived in Mesopotamia and gradually became more civilized. The early civilization of Mesopotamia is noted specially for one important development. When men formed into groups living together, it was found necessary to have rules for keeping peace among them, and ways of putting those rules into force. Strong men, who made themselves leaders and kings, had armies which they used to force those under their rule to do what they were ordered to do. But it was also necessary for the people to know the ruler’s orders. Among the old books on bricks which, scientists of our times have found in Mesopotamia, are some in which the laws of those times have been written down by order of a king names Hammurabi. They are the oldest books of law in existence.
 
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Early Civilization - Egypt

The river Nile makes Egypt one of the best places for agriculture. On all sides there are great wastes of sand, the Sahara and Libyan deserts. But the river coming from the mountains of equatorial Africa where rainfall is frequent and great in amount, had made a long wide valley across the desert towards the Mediterranean Sea. There is a branch of the river, named the Blue Nile, which comes from the mountains of Abyssinia. Here there is much rain in summer, and the water coming into Egypt from the Blue Nile causes floods every year just after summer. In these floods much fertile earth, transported by the water, is spread over the fields on every side making them ready for planting crops. Fields do not become infertile even if the same crop is planted year after year; and, though there is almost no rainfall, the crops can be watered from the river. So naturally this country became one of the first places in which there was a great development of agriculture.

 

In such conditions, where it was not hard to make a good living, men had time for doing other things, i.e. spare time, or leisure as we call it. Leisure is very important for the development of civilization for only when men have time for other things besides working for their living, can there be development of arts and crafts. So the people of Egypt had leisure to become expert in many ways because they made their living by agriculture, and not simply as nomadic herdsmen. The great buildings of stone, which they made for their religion, may still be seen, though in a broken condition after so many thousands of years. Among them are the Pyramids, great masses of stones, hundreds of feet high, deep down under which they put their dead bodies of their kings, after carefully putting a covering of cloth round them, with chemical substances to keep them from decay.
 
The writing of the Egyptians was in pictures, and they did this writings on the leaves of a plant from the Nile, named ‘Papyrus’ (from which we get our word paper). They also did writing and painting on the walls of their buildings some of which can still be seen after thousands of years.
 
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