As mentioned before, one of the major theses which I am setting forth in this blog states that, the farther back we look in time, the more the civilizations which are of Indo-European and East Asian heritage begin to resemble one another, suggesting a common point of origin for those quintessential strands of thought, culture and lifestyle which were at the center of ancient Eurasian civilizations, and which today constitute the greater cultural heritage of the myriad European and Asian peoples, as well as the Eurasian hybrids. Note well, however, that I do not necessarily assert the existence of a single point of origin for the entire European and Asian races per se, but rather that in an epoch of remote prehistory, there was a great migration of people out from the Eurasian Steppe, the true cradle of civilization, one part moving into Europe, the other into Asia, and intermarrying among the various native peoples there. Now that prehistoric race was certainly war-like, and as such was able to establish dominance over the various peoples it came in contact with, spreading to them their culture, language, and social and religious institutions.
Of course, due to the extreme antiquity of that race, not much can be ascertained about it, other than what can be deduced from analyzing and comparing the cultures, languages and social and religious institutions of their descendants and the descendants of the ancient races they conquered. This brings us back to my original thesis, and highlights its importance.
In this post I will be comparing some of the most prominent features of the ancient social and political orders of Indo-European and East Asian civilizations. From this hopefully some insight might be had into the details of that ancestral race which I mentioned briefly above, and hopefully the reader might come to be aware of, and come to appreciate, these deeply-rooted affinities that exist between the European and Asian civilizations, which, on their surface, seem to be polar opposites.
First let's talk about fides. In discussing the ancient political and social orders of various Indo-European and East Asian nations, fides plays a very important role. But what actually is fides, and why do we care about it? fides in Latin means has the meaning of faith (a word which is directly descended from fides), credit, honesty, trust, loyalty, fidelity, promise, etc. It is not only useful, but also insightful, that we borrow this word straight out of the ancient Latin, because in that time, this vast array of concepts for which we have separate words for today was all called by the single word fides. From that initial array, one might get the false conception that fides is a complicated term, but nothing could be more false. Rather it is very simple: what fides is essentially is an establishment, or a contract, of mutual responsibility.
Now this concept of mutual responsibility indeed sounds very basic, but I think it can be argued that it is the very cornerstone of a true civilization, because it ensures that everybody involved benefits to the extent that they contribute. One of the most basic and immediately understandable senses of fides is the idea that what a man says he will do, he will indeed do. Imagine if we could not rely on people to do what they say they will do. If that were the case, all of the basic machinery of society would cease to function. We could not leave money in a bank and expect it to be there when we return. We could not expect our allies to join us in war. We could not even expect people to show up for work or for a meeting at the proper time. This is called the fides of words. But while this concept today is ubiquitous (or, used to be ubiquitous) in anything that even remotely resembles a functional and fair society, it is most certainly not something that is innate in all humans. Rather it most likely appeared among a few certain energetic races and later spread during periods in which such races expanded and dominated the weaker races. Analyzing into history, we find that a highly developed concept of fides, including the fides of words, existed very anciently in both Indo-European and East Asian societies.
Let us first take a look at each individually.
The migration of the Proto-Indo-Europeans
In ancient Indo-European societies, going all the way back the the premigratory period, fides and the idea of mutual responsibility defined nearly every social apparatus. There was a systematic view that every social relation between two parties of was an instance of a host-guest relationship, from the relationships between friend and friend, to father and son, ruler and subject, and so on. In such a relationship, each party involved owes something of equal value to the other party, hence the idea of reciprocity and fairness. What is important to note here, however, is the notion of equality. I do not mean that each party was of equal rank or status, but rather that each party owed the other something of equal value. What was given by one party, was expected to be returned by the other in to an equal degree. How do we know this? Well, in the ancient Proto-Indo-European language, there was, in fact, no distinct word for host and guest, rather the word *gʰóstis (whence the English 'guest') referred to both roles (gʰóstis itself is derived from *gʰes-, literally, 'to eat', suggesting that the original meaning may have been 'tablemate' or something along those lines). What this means is that between any two given social roles, there was an implicit contract, stating that each party involved had equal obligations to the other. Violation of the contract on either side would have nullified it, and the side which had been slighted was no longer obligated to adhere to it.
History abounds with examples of fides and the guest-host reciprocity in the various daughter nations of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Among the Greeks it was considered a great impropriety to refuse shelter to a traveler. However, any 'traveler' who took advantage of his host and freeloaded was held in the same contempt. There is no doubt that many of the republican experiments conducted by Greeks and Romans were evolutions of this concept within the sphere of politics, the idea being that the rulers and the ruled have equal obligations to one another, the ruler, to answer to the people and to guide them, and the ruled, to render service, taxes and loyalty to the ruler. Hence, the tyrant was a ruler who did not uphold his end of the agreement, and was liable to be overthrown by the people (a degenerated form of this idea arose during the Enlightenment, known as the 'social contract'). Another example, which I find particularly interesting, is the especial contempt the more conservative Romans had for the practice of retail trade. In that country there were days set aside when markets would be held, called the nonae, which were greatly criticized by many Roman authors. Even the attributive nundinus and abstract noun nundinatio continued to carry the meaning of 'trafficking, corruption,' etc. into the medieval period. The Romans' contempt for retail marketing can only be explained by its obvious violation of the guest-host reciprocal relationship: in dishonest and lucrative trading, it is the seller who gains more than the buyer, and deception is employed almost by necessity.
A major functional component in upholding fides was the oath. Basically, the oath was a verbal expression of one's willingness to be bound by a contract of mutual obligation. The act of swearing an oath was itself a ritual. Often various gods were invoked to serve as witnesses, and the swearing of the oath was accompanied by an animal sacrifice. Famous oaths by kings, generals and heroes have directed the very course of history and mythology, such as the oath sworn by the Greek kings to aid whoever married Helen in any contention, which eventually lead to the ten-year Trojan War. Following the rise of Christianity, the oath does not go away, nor does its ritualistic character, with many oaths even to this day ending with the formula, 'so help me God.' One of the few modern vestiges of the ancient traditions of oaths is the gesture where one holds the right hand erect, with the palm facing forward (anciently the right hand was associated with virtue). This gesture is extremely ancient, and indeed extremely symbolic. It comes from the practice of kings swearing oaths of alliance, or oaths of non-aggression. When both parties stood at a distance and showed one another their empty, open palm, they could rest assure that it was safe to approach without fear of being killed by a hidden weapon. This gesture is related to the the today ubiquitous hand-waving greeting gesture, as well as the Roman salute.
Oath of the Horatii, Jacques-Louis David
As you can see, fides is a concept rooted very deeply in Indo-European culture and its legacy is still strongly felt even in today's era of widespread decay. Next let's take a look at the concept of fides as it existed in the premodern civilizations of East Asia. Here it is indeed the case that there existed a concept of fides which greatly resembled that of the Indo-European civilizations.
The ancient Chinese language had its own word analogous to the ancient Latin fides, namely 信 (xin4). A simple graphic analysis of this character reveals that it depicts the fides of words discussed above. On the left there is the pictograph denoting 'man, person' (亻), and on the right, the pictograph denoting 'word' (言). Clearly what is depicted is a man standing beside his words. In ancient Chinese, as in the modern language, the word itself basically means trust, confidence, faith, truth etc., mirroring the ancient Latin fides. But, as with most Chinese words, it also contains a verbal dimension, meaning to trust, to believe in, to put one's confidence in, to consider truthful, etc. In the Confucian East, xin had no less important a role than fides in the West. It is one of the five Confucian virtues, also known as the Five Constants (五常), the other four being 仁 (ren2, humanity), 义 (yi4, righteousness), 礼 (li3, propriety) and 智 (zhi4, wisdom).
A word of similar meaning we find used very often alongside xin is 忠 (zhong1), which basically means 'loyalty'. Often the two words are combined to render 忠信 'loyalty and trustworthiness', which appears six times in the Confucian Analects. The character 忠 contains the radical 心 ('heart'), which is most commonly used to denote a feeling or mental state. Thus zhong can be understood best as a kind of intention which is oriented towards xin and carrying out xin. In the Japanese language, 忠 is an alternative spelling for 真心 (magokoro, まごころ), literally meaning 'true heart'. Zhong is very often used to describe the ideal conduct of a vassal towards his lord. But according to Confucius himself, much like in Indo-European culture, that relationship was a reciprocal one.
定公問：「君使臣，臣事君，如之何？」孔子對曰：「君使臣以禮，臣事君以忠。」论语3.19
Duke Ding asked, "How should a lord employ vassals, and how should vassals serve their lord?" Confucius responded, "Lords should employ vassals according to propriety (礼, li3), vassals should serve their lord according to loyalty (忠, zhong1)." -- Analects, 3.19
We find another potential parallel, this time to the Indo-European concept of deposing a political leader who has violated the lord-subject fides and abandoned virtue, elsewhere in the Confucian school. Mencius (孟子), the 亞聖 (ya4sheng4), or 'second only to the Sage (Confucius)', said that a lord who gives up the 'righteousness and benevolence' he owes his subjects has forfeited his right to even be considered a lord, and as such, if his vassals overthrow and kill him, it cannot be considered the crime of 'regicide' (弑君) (Mencius, Liang Hui Wang II, 15). Indeed Chinese history is full of instances where rulers and dynasties were overthrown according to this logic; it would be exhausting to enumerate them all. Does this qualify as a direct and significant analog to the overthrow of tyrants and despots in classical Greece and Rome, or even the American Revolution which took place millennia later (as the Founding Fathers, who were influence by early Chinese texts, may have believed)? I will let the reader decide for himself, but no one can deny that there is a strong resemblance, which in itself is nothing less than a vast pasture of common ground and interracial affinity.
A quick note before we move on. The reader might be wondering, in determining the social and cultural features of ancient races, why does Confucianism matter so much? This is explained by the historical background in which Confucianism emerged and the issues it sought to tackle. Confucius lived during the Spring and Autumn period. At this point, the centuries-old Zhou dynasty was waning in power and prestige, and smaller 'vassal' states were building huge armies and contending among themselves for preeminence. The Zhou emperor was but a figurehead. Confucius advocated for a return to the traditional culture and social structure that had existed in the early Zhou dynasty, with a particular reverence for the ancient customs which had been passed on unto the Zhou from antiquity. Thus it can only be understood that the facets of culture, religion and society that Confucius advocates belong to a strain which is immensely ancient, and which had been reduced to an embarrassingly degenerate state by his lifetime. Confucius himself explains this in Analects 2.23:
子張問：「十世可知也？」子曰：「殷因於夏禮，所損益，可知也；周因於殷禮，所損益，可知也；其或繼周者，雖百世可知也。」
Zi Zhang asked, "Can we know how things will be ten generations from now?" Confucius said, "The Yin (Shang) dynasty took the rites of the Xia dynasty as a basis, what they added and removed, we can know. The Zhou dynasty took the rites of the Yin dynasty as a basis, what they added and removed, we can know. Whatever follows the Zhou dynasty, even if it is a hundred generations from now, we can know it."
One last Chinese word worth mentioning briefly, in which we can find parallels to the Indo-European practice of oath-swearing, is 盟 (meng2). The basic meaning of meng is 'oath' or 'pledge'. It is found in words such as 联盟 (lian4meng2, 'alliance') and 盟国 (meng2guo2, 'ally'), to denote an 'alliance', which clearly has arisen from the practice of states or rulers to swear an oath to solidify the alliance. Graphically analyzing the character reveals its ritualistic nature as well. While the top element (明, ming2) is merely phonetic, the bottom element (皿, min3) is a depiction of a sacrificial vessel or other kind of cup, which would have likely been used in ancient times during rituals in which an oath of allegiance was sworn. In analyzing history and folklore, we are left with no doubt that the swearing of oaths had a ritual nature. The most famous example is the Peach Garden Oath (桃園三結義), depicted in the mythohistorical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, between Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, where a white horse and a black ox were sacrificed and the three men sworn as blood brothers.
盟 (meng2) in the seal script, note the vessel at the bottom
the Peach Garden Oath (桃園三結義)
At this point, we have gone over in considerable detail a few of the most prominent aspects of fides as they were manifested in the various ancient cultures of Europe and Asia. Of course, our conversation is not yet done; fides, along with other social and political concepts, permeates several other ancient Eurasian societies besides the selection we have looked at in this post, such as Mongolia and Japan, and in the West, Persia. In future posts, I will continue to enumerate and discuss them, and explore the Eurasian story to an even greater degree, but so as not to make this post too long, I have to end it here. To close, in analyzing the vestiges of prehistory which were transmitted to the ancients, we are left with clues into that primordial thread of potentially common origin which constitutes the cornerstone of all the great civilizations of Europe and East Asia.
