| The legal articles of Eight Deliberations were incorporated into law in the Wei Dynasty and, after the development through the Jin and Tang dynasties to the Ming and Qing dynasties, had become one of the distinctive features of Chinese inherent laws. However, with the spread of Western culture to the East, the Eight Deliberations have also been subjected to severe criticism. This article argues that the Eight Deliberations etymologically originated from the Ba Pi (Eight Regulations)in the Rites of Zhou, and they might in an abstract sense reflect the spirit of etiquette in the Western and Eastern Zhou dynasties. Specifically, the Eight Regulations probably came from the etiquette between monarchs and ministers, or certain aspects of the monarch-minister etiquette, to show the monarch's compassion and special care for his ministers. An investigation into the state system, the regime as well as the monarch-minister relationship in the Western and Eastern Zhou dynasties also shows that it is possible that such a monarch-minister etiquette had existed. Moreover, this article compares the monarch-minister relation and political ethics between the Central Plains Regime and that of frontier ethnic regimes and points out that the former is a kind of superiority-inferiority relationship and the latter is a kind of master-slave relationship. The legal articles of Eight Deliberations, which originated from the Eight Regulations in the Rites of Zhou, were the unique creation of the Central Plains Regime and depended on the support of farming culture. When the frontier ethnic regimes dominated by nomadic, fishing and hunting culture came into power, all sorts of variations would inevitably take place. |
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