King Wen of Zhou

King Wen of Zhou a ruler of the Zhou people of ancient China, honoured by tradition as the founder of the Zhou dynasty and as a sage king whose virtue prepared the way for the overthrow of the Shang. He is remembered for his wisdom, his cultivation of the rituals and his association with the arrangement of the hexagrams of the classic of changes.

The Rise of the Zhou

King Wen, whose personal name was Ji Chang, was the leader of the Zhou, a people who lived in the western part of the central plain in the twelfth century before the common era. The Zhou were at first subject to the Shang dynasty, and King Wen served the Shang court, but their power grew until they were able to challenge the ruling house.

The traditional accounts describe King Wen as a ruler of exceptional virtue and ability who won the loyalty of neighbouring states and gathered able men about him. He is said to have cultivated the arts of peace, to have developed the agriculture of his land and to have governed his people with justice, so that men of talent were drawn to his court from far away.

His wisdom and moderation made him in retrospect the pattern of the wise ruler who lays the foundations of a dynasty without himself seizing the throne. Confucian writers especially admired him as the king who governed by moral example, who ruled his own domain so well that the whole world looked to him for leadership.

Virtue, Captivity and the Mandate

The growing power of the Zhou aroused the suspicion of the last Shang king, Di Xin, and King Wen was for a time imprisoned. According to the tradition he endured his captivity with patience, and his followers offered gifts to secure his release. The story presents him as one who suffered unjustly and who won his freedom through wisdom rather than rebellion.

King Wen is said to have refrained from open war against the Shang, devoted instead to strengthening his own house and to winning the confidence of the other lords. He extended the influence of the Zhou through diplomacy and through his reputation for virtue, and he is credited with the creation of a network of alliances that made the Zhou the leading power in the west.

The doctrine of the mandate of heaven was invoked to explain the coming change of dynasty. The Shang king, it was argued, had become a tyrant and had forfeited the mandate, while the virtue of the Zhou had earned it. King Wen embodied that virtue, and he is said to have received the recognition of other lords, so that two thirds of the realm was said to look to him.

The Classic of Changes and the Hexagrams

King Wen is traditionally credited with the arrangement of the sixty-four hexagrams of the classic of changes, the Yijing. The eight trigrams attributed to Fu Xi were paired to form the hexagrams, and King Wen is said to have set them in their present order and to have attached the judgements, the short texts that interpret each figure. The classic thus carries the authority of both the legendary sovereign and the founder of the Zhou.

The Yijing became one of the most influential books in Chinese culture, a manual of divination and a profound work of philosophy. Its doctrine of change, of the alternation of yin and yang and of the cyclical movement of conditions, shaped Chinese thought about nature, history and the conduct of life. Later commentaries, the Ten Wings attributed to Confucius, developed its ideas into a system of cosmology.

Whether King Wen really composed the judgements or the tradition merely attributed them to him, the association gave the classic a prestige that ensured its survival and study. The image of the sage king meditating upon the patterns of change became a favourite theme of Chinese art and thought, and the Yijing remains one of the founding texts of East Asian civilisation.

The Passing of the Work to King Wu

King Wen did not live to see the fall of the Shang. The work of overthrowing the dynasty fell to his son, King Wu, who led the Zhou armies against the last Shang king and defeated him in a great battle. The tradition presents King Wen as the founder in spirit, the king whose virtue made the conquest possible, and King Wu as the one who completed it.

After his death King Wen was honoured as the ancestral founder of the Zhou royal house, and he was worshipped with the sacrifices due to the ancestors of the dynasty. His son King Wu, and later the regent the Duke of Zhou, are said to have looked to his example in establishing the institutions of the new dynasty. The Zhou kings traced their authority to the virtue of King Wen.

The classical accounts emphasise that King Wen refrained from rebellion against his lord and left the deed to another. In this the tradition found a subtle lesson: that virtue, not violence, is the true source of legitimate power, and that the wise ruler prepares the way for change without himself breaking the bonds of loyalty.

Influence and Legacy

King Wen became one of the most admired figures of Chinese history and one of the models of the sage king. Confucian writers held him up as the pattern of the ruler who governs by virtue, and the phrase the virtue of Wen became a byword for the moral authority that wins allegiance without force. The poet and the historian returned to him again and again.

The Zhou dynasty that his work made possible ruled China for centuries and gave it many of its lasting institutions, including the doctrine of the mandate of heaven, the ritual order of the court and the classical texts that later ages regarded as fundamental. The Duke of Zhou, his son, was honoured as the great statesman who consolidated the new realm.

King Wen is remembered in legend by the title King Wen, the cultured or refined king, the name given him in recognition of his wisdom. His association with the classic of changes, his fame as a just ruler and his place as the ancestral founder of the Zhou have made him one of the enduring names of Chinese tradition, a symbol of virtue that prepares the way for great events.

See also

• Zhou dynasty
• Mandate of Heaven
• Yijing
• King Wu of Zhou