The Five Elements and Politics in Qin and Han Dynasty

In ancient times,Five Virtues theory was taken as the main theoretical tool to attest whether a regime was legitimate or not by the natural law.Zou Yan,a scholar in the late Warring States,was the initiator of this theory.Based on the theory of Five Elements Conquering One Another,he created the Five Virtues Cycle theory and established a pedigree of emperor’s virtue which starts from the Yellow Emperor(earth) and ends at Zhou Dynasty(fire).Emperor Qin Shihuang accepted Zou Yan’s Five Virtues theory and identified his dynasty’s attribute as water.In this way,Zou Yan’s pedigree of emperor’s virtue completed a cycle.During Western Han Dynasty,Emperor Gao Zhu defined Han as water,and it was proved by Zhang Cang.But it was changed into earth virtue at the early reign of Emperor Wudi,making the reform of emperor virtue which had been brewing in the era of Emperor Wendi became a reality.In the late Western Han Dynasty,the previous Five Virtues theory was replaced by the new one.Based on the theory of Five Elements Producing One Another,Liu Xiang created a new Five Virtues theory and deduced Han Dynasty’s attribute fire in a pedigree cycle of emperor’s virtue beginning with Fuxi(wood).But his pedigree of emperor virtue failed to prove Han Dynasty was of the same virtue with that of Yao who was considered to be the emperors of Han Dynasty’s ancestor.This deficiency was offseted by his son Liu Xin.In the Book of Generation,Liu Xin put a Intercalary generation between wood and fire,and created a White Emperor to succeed Yellow Emperor.he finally proved that the Yao reign and Han Dynasty were both of fire.But his motivation was not a support for Liu’s ruling of Han Dynasty,but an anticipatory action for Wang Mang’s usurping of the Han.During the transition from Western Han to Eastern Han Dynasty,divination experts created the third pedigree of emperor virtue through the arrangement of Gods based on the framework of Five Elements Producing One Another.This pedigree of emperor virtue used the so called Black Saint Confucius to replace the Intercalary water of Qin Dynasty.