Nature worship in Early China

This bachelor's thesis focuses on the cult of mountains and rivers in early China as reflected in the selected classical texts. The aim of the thesis is to analyse how mountains and rivers are conceptualized in selected passages of these texts and what functions they fulfil, particularly in relation to ideas of cosmological order, political legitimacy, and proper state governance. The thesis does not seek to reconstruct the historical reality of ritual practice, but rather examines how natural supernatural forces are understood within the intellectual context of individual textual sources. Selected passages from the Zuozhuan, Shiji, Guoyu, and Zhouli are analyzed in order to demonstrate different modes of interpretation and employment of the cult of natural supernatural forces in early Chinese thought. The aim is to capture how this cult is articulated within individual texts, how it functions at the level of textual representation, without necessarily relating it to the historical reality of the period. The results show that rituals associated with mountains and rivers were perceived not only as instruments for establishing political legitimacy and stabilizing the state, but also as a means of communication between Heaven and the human world. Keywords China, Antiquity, ritual, mountains, rivers,...