The worldview of Chinese dynasties: cultural continuity and rupture in the reign names of emperors

Abstract

This paper continues the research of the symbolic aspect of Chinese history through study of the reign names (nianhao) of the monarchs. The current part of the research is focused mainly on the question of the cultural continuity of the worldview in different epochs of Chinese state development. This also implicates questioning the consistency of Chinese history and its self-perception over the course of two millennia. The proposed solution of the problem in question consists in classifying reign names into a small set of groups and analyzing the historical change in proportions of these groups. The research shows that, despite the fact, that different regional models of the reign names systems arose through the history of China, still the tradition itself retained consistency even in the eras of nomadic conquest. It is also shown, that the discontinuity of the said tradition was caused by no external force, but arose through its own evolution in the deep layers of Chinese culture.