Ancient China’s Cultural Constitution

Abstract

This chapter examines the role and significance of a unified script and Mandarin Chinese for the political and cultural formation of ancient China. From the Qin dynasty on, the bureaucracy was staffed by intellectual elites selected from their localities but sharing a unified script system and approximately similar pronunciation. The forms of writing and pronunciation, therefore, became a crucial part of China's “cultural constitution.” The chapter shows how the script and its two aspects, reading and speaking, were unified. It considers the Qin dynasty's unification of the script system, based on the judgment that the standardization of Chinese characters became the basis of China's bureaucratic governance. It also discusses the constitutional significance of a unified speech, how Mandarin Chinese was maintained and spread, and how a unified script integrated the scholar-officials in different geographical locations in a transgenerational cultural community.