Bodley on Societal Class and Power

The rulers would position themselves at the center of the universe, by illustrating the kingdom as "mandala", or the Hindu circle model of the universe and name them selves "world ruler" (Bodley, 2011, p. 298). Hindu rulers combined religious and political powers to dominate their subjects, and at the same time justify and reify their actions through the moral authority of Hinduism. Despite their religious ideals, rulers would often have standing armies in order to maintain their power and project their power on other chiefdoms by offering protection from outside forces. .
             The Chinese elite is not so different from their Indian counterparts. They too use the religion and social values of their space and time to manipulate the nearly powerless minority. Power and influence in China revolves around the heavily emphasized kinship and patrilineal system of inheritance and the religious idea of ancestor worship, of which the King is the central religious figure due to his relation to the common ancestor of all Chinese peoples. The emperor derives his power from his relationship with this common ancestor, and at times claims that he himself is the ancestor, or god. Other elites can gain power from this concept, for they too are related to the common ancestor through the emperor, by however many degrees of separation, and thus a hierarchy is created with the emperors and his family at the center. Associated with ancestor worship is the Confusionist concept of filial piety which was the center of social order through "ritual performance, beginning with household-level ancestor worship and moving up the hierarchy to the emperor," (Bodley, 2011, p. 273) Bodley argues that this was central to maintaining order throughout the state. When it came to dominating the many tribes of China, the ruling elite's method of control was to conquer and label each society they conquered into ethnic groups, after which they set permanent boundaries, assigned cultural markers, and formal identities to make it easier to control them (Bodley, 2011, p.