ABSTRACT
The title of Son of Heayen was preserved in the royal house of the Chou almost up to the founding of the Empire. But between the eighth and the third centuries b.c. spreads a period characterized by struggles for prestige between some of the feudal states (kuo). The history of these times is based on seigniorial annals. The chief source from the eighth to the fifth century b.c. is the Ch'un Ch'iu (Annals) of the country of Lu, the fatherland of Confucius. The Ch'un Ch'iu furnishes only a dry list of facts. It is completed with the assistance of its three commentaries, the principal one of which, the Tso Chuan (which rests also, no doubt, on one or several local chronicles), contains anecdotes referring to the whole of Chinese territory ; and with the assistance also of Kuo yu, which is a collection of “ contiones,” of discourses (yu), classified according to countries (kuo). The following period is scarcely known except by a work resembling rather the Kuo yu than a book of annals :—the “ Discourse on the Combatant Kingdoms.” Ssu-ma Ch'ien writes the history of this age, in the form of monographs on the overlordships, adding them to the principal Annals, which he consecrates to the last Chou sovereigns. The historian does not introduce any division into this long period. An ancient custom tempts one to distinguish (according to the sources) the period Ch'un Ch'iu from that of the “ Combatant Kingdoms.” It should be written “ Combatant Overlordships ” but “ Kingdoms ” is used because at this time several leading nobles took the title of king. Some amongst them are qualified as Leaders. Tradition, however, ordinarily reserves this title for five persons who lived in the seventh century b.c. It sets the period of the Five Sovereigns and the Three Dynasties over against that of the Five Leaders. The first Leaders were princes ruling over wide lands who attempted to give China a new royal dynasty, and who played an important part in the epoch of the Combatant Kingdoms. These princes, their successors, and their imitators sought to take the place of the declining dynasty of the Chou, but history represents the first of them as half-respectful protectors of the royal house, and the rest as its declared rivals. 1
