File - Mrs. Lorish`s Social Studies
... The Mandate of Heaven is what the Chinese people believed gave their rulers the right to be king or emperor. It meant that the gods had
blessed that person with the right to rule. A ruler had to be a good and just ruler to keep the Mandate of Heaven. When a ruler or dynasty lost
power, this meant th ...
Mandate of Heaven
The Mandate of Heaven (Chinese: 天命; pinyin: tiānmìng; literally: ""heaven decree"") is an ancient Chinese belief and philosophical idea that tiān (heaven) granted emperors the right to rule based on their ability to govern well and fairly. According to this belief, heaven bestows its mandate to a just ruler, the Son of Heaven. The Mandate of Heaven determines whether an emperor of China is sufficiently virtuous to rule; if he does not fulfill his obligations as emperor, then he loses the Mandate and thus the right to be emperor. The Mandate of Heaven would then transfer to those who would rule best. The fact that a ruler was overthrown was taken by itself as an indication that the ruler had lost the Mandate of Heaven. In addition, it was also common belief that natural disasters such as famine and flood were other signs of heaven’s displeasure with the current ruler, so there would often be revolts following major environmental events as citizens saw these as signs of heaven's displeasure.The Mandate of Heaven does not require that a legitimate ruler be of noble birth, and dynasties were often founded by people of common birth (such as the Han dynasty and Ming dynasty). The Mandate of Heaven had no time limitations, depending instead on the just and able performance of the ruler and his heirs. Throughout the history of China, times of poverty and natural disasters were often taken as signs that heaven considered the incumbent ruler unjust and thus in need of replacement.The concept of the Mandate of Heaven was first used to support the rule of the kings of the Zhou dynasty, and their overthrow of the earlier Shang dynasty. It was used throughout the history of China to support the rule of the emperors of China, including non-Han ethnic monarch such as the Qing dynasty. This concept was also applied to nearby countries like Korea.The Mandate of Heaven was a well-accepted and popular idea among the people of China, since it argues for the removal of incompetent or despotic rulers, and provided an incentive for rulers to rule well and justly. The concept was often invoked by philosophers and scholars in ancient China as a way to curtail the abuse of power by the ruler, in a system that otherwise offered few checks to this power.