【正文】 es in distant provinces,as servants of the imperial exchange for their loyalty,Song rulers rewarded these officials vastly expanded the bureaucracy based on merit by creating more opportunities for individuals to seek a Confucian education and take civil service accepted many more candidates into the bureaucracy than their Sui and Tang predecessors,and they provided generous salaries for thos who qualified for government even placed civil bureaucrats in charge of military forces. The song approach to administration resulted in a more centralized imperial government than earlier Chinese dynasties had it caused two mig problems that weakened the dynasty and eventually brought about its first prolem was financial:the enormous Song bureaucracy devoured China’s surplus the number of bureaucrats and the size of their rewards grew,the imperial treasury came under tremendous to raise taxes aggravated the peasants,who mounted two major rebellions in the early twelfth that time,however, bureaucrats dominated the Song administration to the point that it was impossible to reform the system. The second problem was bureaucrats generally had little military education and little talent for military affairs,yet they led Song armies in the field and made military and make military was no coincidence that nomadic people flourished along China’s northern border throughout the Song the early tenth through the early twelfth century,the Khitan,a seminomadic people from Manchuria,ruled a vast empire stretching from northern Korea to the first half of a the Song dynasty,the Khitan demanded and received large tribute payments of silk and silver from the Song state to the the early twelfly century,the nomadic Jurchen conquered the Khitan,overran northern China,and captured the Song the Song dynasty survived only in southern China,sharing a border with the Jurchen state about midway between the Yellow River and the Yangzi River until 1279,when Mongol forces incorporated all of China in their empire and ended the dynasty. NeoconfucianismThe Song emperors did not persecute Buddhists,but they actively supported native Chinese cultural tradition in hopes of limiting the influence of foreign contributed particularly to the sponsored the studies of Confucian scholars,for example,and subsidized the printing ang dissemination of Confucian writings. Yet the Confucian tradition of the Song dynasty differed from that of earlier earliest Confucians had concentrated resolutely on practical issuses of politics and morality,since they took the anization of a stable order as their principal concern . Confucians of the Song dynasty studied the classic works of their tradition,but they also became familiar with the writings of found much to admire in Buddhist not only offered a tradition of logical thought and argumentation but also dealt with issues,such as the nature of the soul and the individual’s relationship with the cosmos,not systematically explored by Confucian Confucians of the Song dynasty drew a deal of inspiration from their thought reflected the influence of Buddhism as well as original Confucian values,it has e to known as neoConfucianism. The most important representative of Song neoConfucianism was the philosopher Zhu xi (.).A prolific writer,Zhu Xi maintained a depp mitment to Confucian values emphasizing proper personal behavior and social writings was an influential treatise entitled Family Rituals that provided detailed instructions for weddings,funerals,v eneration of ancestors,and otheir family a good Xi considered it a matter of the highest importance that individuals play their proper roles both in their family and in the larger society. Yet Zhu Xi became fascinated with the philosophical and speculative features of Buuddhist argued in good Confucian fashion for the observance of high moral standards,and he believed that academic and philosophical investigations were important for practical he concentrated his own efforts on abstract and abstruse issues of more theoretical than practical wrote extensively on metaphysical themes such as the nature of argued in a manner reminiscent of Plato that two elements accounted for all physical being:li,a principle somewhat similar to