Who can give a more comprehensive answer to the cultural comparison between China and India is urgently needed! !

China Library Classification Number: G03 Document Identification Number: A Document Number:1008-9004 (2000) 03-0057-04.

India is one of the countries with the earliest development of human civilization, with a long history and splendid culture, and has long had cultural exchanges with China. As early as the Han Dynasty, Buddhism, as a representative of Indian culture, was introduced to China and became an important part of our national culture, with far-reaching influence. Studying Indian culture and making a comparative analysis of Chinese and Indian traditional cultures is of great significance for us to reflect on national culture, critically inherit China's cultural traditions and promote the development of China's new culture. This paper attempts to compare and analyze Chinese and Indian cultures from the following three aspects.

Comparison between Indian Cultural Diversity and China Cultural Uniqueness

Some people think that Indian culture has two opposite aspects: diversity and unity. "(Kosambi's Outline of Ancient Indian Civilization and Civilization History). In fact, the diversity of Indian culture is particularly prominent, and the differences reflected by this diversity itself are often extremely uncoordinated and even contradictory. For example, in India, modern big cities in some areas are booming, while many tribes exist in large numbers, and people still live a primitive social life of hunting and gathering. Even in modern big cities, old cows are released when they are useless. It can leisurely stroll on the modern streets, lie anywhere, and even bypass the traffic. India has 177 buzzwords and 544 local dialects, so a ten-rupee note is printed with 12 characters. This is a vivid portrayal of Indian cultural diversity.

There are many reasons for India's cultural diversity. In India, except for a short period of time, in the long historical era, there have been many local states, and there have been separatist disputes, which have been unable to be unified for a long time. Until independence in 1948, there were hundreds of kingdoms in China. India has a vast territory, complex terrain, different climates in the north and south, and many ethnic groups. The cultural forms of different ethnic groups in different regions are very different, with inconsistent development and long-term political disunity, so it is difficult to form a unified culture.

The Han culture in China is also diverse. For example, during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the society changed rapidly, and the vassal States became independent, so it was impossible for the vassal States to implement unified cultural absolutism, thus forming the academic prosperity of "a hundred schools of thought contend" and the cultural diversity in the Spring and Autumn Period. However, since the Qin Dynasty, a unified centralized feudal autocratic country has been rapidly formed, consolidated and developed. Unity is long-term, and division is short-lived. Closely related to this relatively long-term stable and unified political situation, the cultures of various regions and ethnic groups in China have continuously evolved from small areas to large areas, and finally formed a unified feudal autocratic culture in China in Han Dynasty, which is geographically unified and has the same content and form, namely "self-denial and courtesy" and "three cardinal guides and five permanents". In other words, the integration of China culture in China was completed as early as the Qin and Han Dynasties. Of course, the development of Indian culture has also gone through this process, but this process has never been completed in India. This also determines the diversity comparison between Indian culture and Indian culture, which not only clearly shows its own unity, cohesion and integrity, but also has its strong and distinctive feudal autocratic unified cultural characteristics, which we must first grasp when comparing Chinese and Indian traditional cultures.

In addition, regarding the diversity of Indian culture, from the external factors, although the invasion of Aryan culture has greatly changed the face of India's original indigenous culture, the Indus indigenous culture still has a great and far-reaching impact on the future development of Indian culture. In fact, under the great influence of Indus culture, ancient Indian culture was also impacted and transformed by Aryan culture as another mainstream. They develop into two curves in communication and integration, forming the complexity and diversity of their own development.

The Han culture in China is also formed by the fusion and melting of multi-ethnic cultures, and it also has the differences, complexity and diversity of regional and national cultures, as well as their integration and exchange. For example, the integration of Central Plains culture and Chu culture in the Spring and Autumn Period, the integration of northern national culture in the Western Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties, the integration of Mongolian culture in the Yuan Dynasty and Han culture in the Song Dynasty, and so on. However, it must be pointed out that, first of all, this cultural fusion is not the fusion of foreign national culture and China national culture, but the cultural fusion between regions within the Chinese nation, which has the important characteristics of the same national culture. Secondly, in the process of cultural integration of China, due to the long-term unified political situation in China, the differences and diversities between national cultures have been continuously integrated, thus showing some strong unity, cohesion and integrity. Moreover, in this process, both the Xianbei culture in the Northern Wei Dynasty and the Mongolian culture in the Yuan Dynasty are far behind the Han culture in the Central Plains, and it is impossible to form an impact transformation on the Han culture in the Central Plains at all, just to varying degrees. For example, Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty carried out the policy of "Sinicization", and ordered the prohibition of using Xianbei language, wearing Xianbei clothes instead of Han surname, and wearing Hanfu, as did Temujin in the Yuan Dynasty. This shows that in the course of its development, China's ancient culture has always been associated with and adapted to the "great unity" political pattern of centralized feudal absolutism system, and has always been centered on the advanced Han culture in the Central Plains, maintaining and developing the basic characteristics of great unity in geography, content and form. At this point, it is also obviously different from traditional Indian culture.

A comparison between the religious nature of localization and the ethical nature of China culture

An Indian said, "Indian culture has only three elements: (1) plows, (2) hand-made looms and (3) Indian philosophy." Among them, as the representative of Indian culture, Indian philosophy, especially religious philosophy, has penetrated into all fields and aspects of Indian culture and even the whole Indian society. This is not to say that there are no secular cultural elements in Indian culture. In fact, Indian culture can be divided into religious culture and secular culture to some extent. Indians hold that the four purposes of life are law, desire, benefit and liberation, among which "desire" and "benefit" belong to secular life. There are two Indian books, one is Pragmatism, and the other is Desire Sutra, which are devoted to the pursuit of love and material desires, and even include many things that China's ethics can't tolerate. Even so, it is still full of strong religious color, and claims that the highest ideal of life is liberation, and that life must be liberated from newspapers, away from reality and secular things, and achieve eternal immortality of the soul. It can be seen that Indian self-awareness is realized in religion, which determines that Indian culture has strong religious characteristics, and it is a religious culture centered on "people's own life", which is obviously different from China's traditional culture.

As we all know, in the history of more than 2,000 years, China society practiced a unified feudal centralization of authority, with the feudal patriarchal clan system as its social foundation, and the so-called "country" and "home" were integrated. Therefore, China's traditional feudal culture focuses on "loyalty to the monarch" and "filial piety to the father", that is, the so-called "monarch, minister and son" and "three cardinal principles and five permanents", and pays attention to feudal ethics and social interpersonal relationships with loyalty and filial piety as the main content. Throughout the history of China, ancient thinkers appeared as ethical thinkers in essence. Confucianism, as the core and representative of China's traditional culture, advocates attaching importance to family, ethics and interpersonal relationships, extending family morality to social and political life, governing the country and safeguarding the country, and advocating joining the WTO. It can be said that Confucius founded the Confucian school and advocated "self-denial and courtesy" in order to establish the ethical and moral standards of "benevolence" and "courtesy" as opposites, establish the political and legal discipline of establishing the country and leveling the world, and restore slavery in the Western Zhou Dynasty. Compared with Laozi and Zhuangzi's "inaction" thought of "emphasizing health" and "ruling without power", Confucius' thought has a strong color of joining the WTO; Compared with the religious liberation of Indian culture, its WTO entry thought and ethical standard are very distinct.

Since modern times, with the rise of the Renaissance in Europe, a humanistic trend of thought has emerged, which is based on individual rights, pays attention to independent personality and natural human rights, and emphasizes individual liberation. Even before that, in Italy, the birthplace of the Renaissance, people could find the development of free personality everywhere. /kloc-at the end of 0/3, a large number of personalities began to appear in Italy, and the spell on human personality was lifted. Thus, Dante's great poems came into being. In contrast, although China's traditional culture's thought of joining the WTO is obviously different from Indian religious culture, it shows its concern for secular life and concrete social practice to some extent with its obvious ethical color and secular characteristics, which has certain positive social practical significance; Although China's traditional ethical culture attaches importance to people's secular life, emphasizes people's dominant position and role in the universe, and gives certain secular affirmation to people's value, it shows a humanistic tendency; However, people are always placed in a social relationship of mutual opposition, domination and obedience. They pay attention to how people should shoulder their social responsibilities and historical missions, but seldom emphasize their independent personality and rights, which obviously lacks the color of western individualism and has the characteristics of strong oriental absolutism. This has become the key for us to further understand the essential characteristics of China's secular ethics after comparing the cultural characteristics between China and India. No wonder Mr. Liang Shuming divided his attitude towards life into three types. He thinks that the characteristics of western culture are "man to nature", Indian culture is "man to his own life" and China culture is "man to man".

A comparison between the "middle view" of Indian culture and the "golden mean" of China culture.

The mode of thinking is the most concentrated embodiment of the characteristics of human cultural types. Indian culture, as a pluralistic and highly religious cultural type, cannot but be reflected in its way of thinking.

In Indian culture, there are many factions and sects, regardless of religion or philosophy. However, due to the distinctive religious unity of Indian culture, except for unorthodox philosophical factions such as opposing God's intervention in secular life and advocating the pursuit of secular happiness, other philosophies are related to religion and permeated with religious idealism. So as far as their way of thinking is concerned, they all divide the world into material secular world and spiritual religious world, that is, this world and another world, and advocate that Brahma is the source of the world and everything is the embodiment of Brahma.

Moreover, in their attitude towards this world, they generally deny its value, thinking that it pollutes the "unrestrained life" in another world as an absolute spirit and turns it into a "life bound by characteristics", which should be suppressed, excluded and destroyed. This is actually an acknowledgement of contradiction and opposition, so it has obvious dualism tendency. For example, the "middle view" of Mahayana Buddhism in India embodies this point, that is, the so-called "constant side, broken side, two sides of the middle road, for Prajna paramita." (Long Cun's Great Wisdom Volume 43) This is obviously different from the way of thinking in China's traditional culture and the "golden mean" of Confucius and Mencius.

We know that the traditional way of thinking in China culture is rich in dialectical thoughts, which not only puts forward the opposition between Yin and Yang, but also puts forward the mutual transformation between "being" and "being", which is beyond the reach of Indian culture and western traditional culture. The problem is that as a scientific national culture, westerners pay more attention to and emphasize the conflicts and struggles between opposites, and do not avoid contradictions; However, as an ethical national culture, China people tend to seek unity of opposites and overemphasize balance and harmony because of the long-term "unified" pattern of feudal absolutism and the high concentration and unity of social, political and cultural ideological systems. This is the "golden mean" mode of thinking formed in the development of China traditional culture from Confucius in the pre-Qin period.

Confucius' doctrine of the mean and Indian Buddhism's doctrine of the mean are also completely different concepts. The core of Confucius' "golden mean" is "too much of a good thing", which not only opposes "too much of a good thing" but also does not advocate "too much of a good thing", negates the two extremes, completely denies the two opposing aspects of contradiction, denies the mutual opposition between the two sides of contradiction and advocates taking the middle route. "Neutral and impartial", "Hold its two ends, serve the people and think it is smooth". Under certain conditions, this is a kind of eclecticism that compromises and reconciles, eliminates and excludes contradictions and conflicts. The "middle view" in Indian culture requires people to "leave both sides and walk in the middle". It does not advocate rejecting the two aspects of contradiction and taking an impartial middle course, but requires people to legally understand and treat the two opposing aspects of contradiction at a lower level, and then at the highest level, stand on the height of religious Buddhism to transcend contradictions and achieve liberation. It can be seen that the doctrine of the mean and the doctrine of the mean are completely different in essence, reflecting two completely different ways of thinking.

From this perspective, it can be said that the thinking mode of westerners is to emphasize and attach importance to contradictions and conflicts, pursue outward and forge ahead, while the thinking characteristics of Indians are to transcend contradictions and conflicts, pursue inward, "Brahma and I are the same", pursue eternity and attach importance to ideas; China people's thinking habit is to reconcile contradictions, pursue interpersonal relationships, be harmonious and balanced, and live and work in peace and contentment. Because of this, China people seek stability, contentment and conservatism, thus forming a great psychological buffer. Even in the face of severe hunger, cold, poverty, where are you going, they can precipitate it into their own psychological structure, instead of venting it and exploding outward, and finally realize it in a balanced and calm way in psychological adjustment and emotional changes such as satisfaction and contentment.

Of course, China's traditional way of thinking with the "golden mean" as the core is conducive to social stability and development under certain conditions because it emphasizes balance and unity and rejects and denies contradictions and conflicts. However, in the long-term development of China culture, it has to form the psychological accumulation of national culture, which is passed down from generation to generation in the form of "inheritance", thus causing the static characteristics of closed stagnation of China traditional culture, which melts everything in ethics and morality and has a negative impact on China's national consciousness and culture. For example, in China's feudal society for more than two thousand years, an absolute egalitarianism of "not suffering from few but suffering from inequality" appeared and prevailed, and its ideological understanding was all due to this.

To sum up, compared with Indian culture, China's traditional culture has formed a stable trinity pattern of unity, ethics and moderation in the historical process of feudal society for more than 2,000 years. If the unification of China's traditional culture just reflects the essential characteristics of the highly centralized absolutism of China's feudal state political system, then its ethics and moderation undoubtedly clearly reflect the profound imprint of this feudal autocratic state system on China's traditional cultural thought from social ethics to way of thinking. Moreover, they often interact with each other in an unprecedented way, which greatly hinders the development and perfection of China's national spirit and personality in all aspects of social life. Because of this, the reform of our socialist economic and political system today is bound to involve all aspects of social life, involving the transformation of the whole national consciousness, national spirit and traditional way of thinking. From this point of view, it is undoubtedly necessary for us to reflect on and clean up our national traditional culture in accordance with the principles of Marxist dialectical materialism and historical materialism, instead of blindly worshipping foreign things and obsessing foreign things.

Date of receipt: 2000-0 1-05.