The fixity of urban centers has been deeply implicated in models of political development from chiefdom to the state and early empire. For this reason, both Western and Chinese scholars have neglected the importance of non-permanent or shifting ceremonial centers or capitals like China's in the evolution of complex society. A brief examination of the touchstone cultures of early Mespotamia and Classical Greece, to which China is compared, demonstrates how narrowly conceived and exclusive the Euro-American view of complex society constructed by archeologists and historians has been on the issue of mobility and the relation of ruler and polity to territory. The Chinese case, like those of India and South Asia, suggests that the moving center should be recognized as a common variant in the process of socio-political development and change. The integration of the Asian state and early empires into the comparatist project seeks to analyze the formative relations between religious and cosmological conceptions and social, political and economic development.

都邑中心固定不遷移已深深地含括在從部落制發展到邦國與早期帝國的政治發展理論模式中.正是由于這個原因, 東西方學者一向忽略了像古代中國之非永久性的, 或曰移動性的都城在向複雜社會發展過渡過程中所起到的重要作用.中國 (或其他文明) 的這種״獨特性״暗含著從一種更爲標準的型態中離異出來的意味.然而, 如把中國與一些所謂的״典型״文化,諸如早期美索不達米亞以及古希臘文明作一些簡略的比較,即可看出在對都邑遷移問題和對統治者、政體與領土關係上,一般考古學家和歷史學家所持的是何種狹隘而又淸一色的歐美複雜社會觀觀念.更確切地說,所謂中國的׳'特例״以及印度與東南亞等地的一些實例提醒我們; 不斷遷徒的都邑中心在社會政治的發展與變遷中應被視爲一種常見的變例.本文將亞洲的邦國與帝國早期放在一起,以綜合比較的方法,試圖能從更廣的角度來對宗敎與宇宙觀: 社會、政治、經濟的發展與變遷等問題加以分析研究.