This is the essay for the 2nd week of the 7th Grade Ron Paul Curriculum. It’s about the diffrences and similarities between ancient India and ancient China.

 

The differences and similarities between ancient India and ancient China:

I shall be looking at the differences and similarities between India and China during 3300 BC – 618 AD.

The most obvious similarity between the two is that both of the country’s are in Asia. The geographies of the countries are also very similar. India has mountains in the north, while China has the Himalayas in the west and south-west. Both countries also have large coastlines, rocky areas, flat plains, deserts.

During our set time period India had four dynasties, while China had six. The first civilization in India(the Indus valley civilization ) and the first civilization in China(the Xia dynasty) both didn’t leave any written records behind.

During India’s Golden Age and China’s Qin dynasty both countries had a highly centralized government, lot’s of regulations and a lot of bloodshed and cruelty. India ended its cruelty earlier than China, because they converted their official religion to buddhism, which promoted nonviolence. Another difference was that China had way more violence than India, because China’s ruler forced labor, brutal slavery, burning books and killing scholars.

After the period of violence India and China both had a period of nonviolence. In India it came in the form of the ruler adopting Buddhism as the official religion and in China it came as the Han dynasty. In the Han dynasty the rulers of China tried to replace the burn books from the Qin dynasty. They also made the rule less harsh, which made China flourish in power. India also started a new dynasty called the Gupta dynasty. They changed the official religion from Buddhism to Hinduism. Similar to the Han dynasty the Gupta dynasty made India flourish in power. In the countries respective dynasties they made several important technological inventions.  

Both countries have had Buddhism as their religion at one point or another, but China had two other religions before they had Buddhism, while India had one after Buddhism. India had a caste system, while China didn’t. What is so strange about this is that Hinduism teaches nonviolence, but the caste system uses violence, by making certain people less important than others.

Lastly the India was very different from western civilization, because they dwelt on self-meditation and a search for the truth much more heavily than western civilization. China on the other hand was very similar to western civilization for their military, agriculture, technology and central government.