| From the condition of the development of the laws in the West Zhou Dynasty and the Chunqiu Period which The Book of Odes had reflected, we can find out that the Zhou people were provided with clear legal conceptions and strong legal consciousness. The majority of those various appellations to the laws of that time had gradually become the various appellations to the forms of the written laws in the later ages. The dominant legal thought of holy and centralized monarchical power took shape from the development of the theory of Tianming and Tianfa in the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties and had profound and lasting influence on the later ages. The ruler of the Zhou Dynasty put forward the theory of “advocating morals and applying penalty cautiously” and put the doctrine of “regarding the people as the basic of the country” into the legal system of the Zhou Dynasty, which at once affected the point of views of the legal system of the Confucian school and the Fajia school, and also became the source of the legal thought of “morals be chief and penalty be supplement” since the Han Dynasty. Depending on the guidance of the theory of comprehensive governance by Li, Yue, Politics and penal law, the West Zhou Dynasty realized the effective governance over the whole society. The Book of Odes also reflected the legal systems in the West Zhou Dynasty from many angles and aspects. The West Zhou Dynasty had established a complete set of legal systems in compliance with the rule of Li. The abundant materials and examples in The Book of Odes had written footnotes for the developing history of the laws in the Zhou Dynasty. |
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