Ancient China Simplified
by
Edward Harper Parker

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ANCIENT CHINA SIMPLIFIED




[Illustration: Tripod of the Chou dynasty, date 812 B.C. In 1565
A.D. it was placed by the owner for safety in a temple on Silver
Island (near Chinkiang), where it may be seen now. Taken (by kind
permission of the author) from Dr. S. W. Bushell's "Chinese Art,"
vol. i. p. 82.]




ANCIENT CHINA SIMPLIFIED

BY EDWARD HARPER PARKER, M.A., (Manc.)

PROFESSOR OF CHINESE AT THE VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
LONDON




PREFACE

Boswell once remarked to Dr. Johnson that "the history of England
is so strange that, if it were not well vouched as it is, it would
be hardly credible." To which Johnson replied in his usual style:
"Sir, if it were told as shortly, and with as little preparation
for introducing the different events, as the history of the Jewish
kings, it would be equally liable to objections of improbability."
Dr. Johnson went on to illustrate what he meant, by specific
allusion to the concessions to Parliament made by Charles I. "If,"
he said, "these had been related nakedly, without any detail of
the circumstances which generally led to them, they would not have
been believed."

This is exactly the position of ancient Chinese history, which may
be roughly said to coincide in time with the history of the Jewish
kings. The Chinese Annals are mere diaries of events, isolated
facts being tumbled together in order of date, without any regard
for proportion. Epoch-making invasions, defeats, and cessions of
territory are laconically noted down on a level with the prince's
indiscretion in weeping for a concubine as he would weep for a
wife; or the Emperor's bounty in sending a dish of sacrificial
meat to a vassal power by express messenger. In one way there is a
distinct advantage in this method, for, the historian being seldom
tempted to obtrude his own opinion or comments, we are left a
clear course for the formation of our own judgments upon the facts
given. On the other hand, it is unfortunate that what may be
called the philosophy of history has never been seized by the
Chinese mind: the annalists do not trouble themselves with the
rights and aspirations of the masses; the results to general
policy that naturally follow upon increase of population,
perfecting of arms and munitions of war, admixture of foreign
blood with the body politic, and such like matters. The heads of
events being noted, it seems to be left to the reader to fill in
the details from his imagination, and from his knowledge of
contemporary affairs. For instance, suppose the reign of Queen
Victoria were to begin after this fashion:--"1837, 5th moon,
Kalends, Victoria succeeded: 9th moon, Ides, Napoleon paid a
visit: 28th day, London flooded; 10th moon, 29th day, eclipse of
the sun"; and so on. At the time, and for many years--possibly
centuries--afterwards, there would be accurate general traditional,
or even written, information as to who Victoria was; why Napoleon
paid a visit; in what particular way the flood affected England generally;
from what parts the eclipse was best visible, etc. These details would
fade in distinctness with each successive generation; commentators
would come to the rescue; then commentators upon commentators;
and discussions as to which man was the most trustworthy of them all.

Under these circumstances it is difficult enough for the Chinese
themselves to construct a series of historical lessons, adequate
to guide them in the conduct of modern affairs, out of so
heterogeneous a mass of material. This difficulty is, in the case
of Westerners, more than doubled by the strange, and to us
inharmonious, sounds of Chinese proper names: moreover, as they
are monosyllabical, and many of them exactly similar when
expressed in our letters, it is almost impossible to remember
them, and to distinguish one from the other. Thus most persons who
make an honest endeavour by means of translations to master the
leading events in ancient Chinese history soon throw down the book
in despair; while even specialists, who may wish to shorten their
labours by availing themselves of others' work, can only get a
firm grip of translations by comparing them with the originals: it
is thus really impossible to acquire anything at all approaching
an accurate understanding of Chinese antiquity without possessing
in some degree the controlling power of a knowledge of the
pictographs.

It is in view of all these difficulties that an attempt has been
made in this book to extract principles from isolated facts; to
avoid, so far as is possible, the use of Chinese proper names; to
introduce these as sparingly and gradually as is practicable when
they must be used at all; to describe the general trend of events
and life of the people rather than the personal acts of rulers and
great officers; and, generally, to put it into the power of any
one who can only read English, to gain an intelligible notion of
what Chinese antiquity really was; and what principles and
motives, declared or tacit, underlay it. It is with this object
before me that I have ventured to call my humble work "Ancient
China Simplified," and I can only express a hope that it will
really be found intelligible.

EDWARD HARPER PARKER.

18, GAMBIER TERRACE, LIVERPOOL, May 18, 1908.




AIDS TO MEMORY

There is much repetition in the book, the same facts being
presented, for instance, under the heads of Army, Religion,
Confucius, and Marriages. This is intentional, and the object is
to keep in the mind impressions which in a strange, ancient, and
obscure subject are apt to disappear after perusal of only one or
two casual statements.

The Index has been carefully prepared so that any allusion or
statement vaguely retained in the mind may at once be confirmed.
The chapter headings, or contents list, which itself contains
nearly five per cent of the whole letterpress, is so arranged that
it omits no feature treated of in the main text.

In the earlier chapters uncouth proper names are reduced to a
minimum, but the Index refers by name to specific places and
persons only generally mentioned in the earlier pages. For
instance, the states of Lu and CHÊNG on pages 22 and 29: it is
hard enough to differentiate Ts'i, Tsin, Ts'in, and Ts'u at the
outstart, without crowding the memory with fresh names until the
necessity for it absolutely arises.

The nine maps are inserted where they are most likely to be
useful: it is a good plan to refer to a map each time a place is
mentioned, unless the memory suffices to suggest exactly where
that place is. After two or three patient references, situations
of places will take better root in the mind.

The chapters are split up into short discussions and descriptions,
because longer divisions are apt to be tedious where ancient
history is concerned. And the narrative of political movement is
frequently interrupted by the introduction of new matter, in order
to provide novelty and stimulate the imagination. Moreover, all
chapters and all subjects converge on one general focus.

On page 15 of "China, her Diplomacy, etc." (John Murray, 1901), I
have confessed how tedious I myself had found ancient Chinese
history, and how its human interest only begins with foreign
relations. I have, however, gone systematically through the mill
once more, and my present object is to present general results
only obtainable at the cost of laboriously picking out and
resetting isolated and often apparently unconnected records of
fact.




NAMES OF CHIEF LOCALITIES

CHOU: at first a principality in South Shen Si and part of Kan
Suh, subject to Shang dynasty; afterwards the imperial dynasty
itself.

TS'lN: principality west of the above. When the Chou dynasty moved
its capital east into Ho Nan, Ts'in took possession of the old
Chou principality.

TSIN: principality (same family as Chou) in South Shan Si (and in
part of Shen Si at times).

TS'I: principality, separated by the Yellow River from Tsin and
Yen; it lay in North Shan Tung, and in the coast part of Chih Li.

TS'U: semi-barbarous principality alone preponderant on the Yang-
tsz River.

WU: still more barbarous principality (ruling caste of the same
family as Chou, but senior to Chou) on the Yang-tsz _embouchure_
and Shanghai coasts.

YÜEH: equally barbarous principality commanding another
_embouchure_ in the Hangchow-Ningpo region. Wu and Yüeh were
at first subordinate to Ts'u.

YEN: principality (same family as Chou) in the Peking plain, north
of the Yellow River mouth,

SHUH and PA: in no way Chinese or federal; equivalent to Central
and Eastern Sz Ch'wan province.

CHÊNG: principality in Ho Nan (same family as Chou).

SUNG: principality taking in the four corners of Ho Nan, Shan
Tung, An Hwei, and Kiang Su (Shang dynasty family).

CH'ÊN: principality in Ho Nan, south of Sung (family of the
Ploughman Emperor, 2250 B.C., preceding even the Hia dynasty).

WEI: principality taking in corners of Ho Nan, Chih Li, and Shan
Tung (family of the Chou emperors).

TS'AO: principality in South-west Shan Tung; neighbour of Lu, Wei,
and Sung (same family as Chou).

TS'AI: principality in Ho Nan, south of CH'ÊN (same family as
Chou).

LU: principality in South-west Shan Tung, between Ts'ao and Ts'i
(its founder was the brother of the Chou founder).

HÜ: very small principality in Ho Nan, south of Cheng (same
obscure eastern ancestry as Ts'i),

K'I: Shan Tung promontory and German sphere (of Hia dynasty
descent); it is often confused with, or is quite the same as,
another principality called _Ki_ (without the aspirate).

The above are practically all the states whose participation in
Chinese development has been historically of importance,




NAMES OF CHIEF PERSONAGES

CONFUCIUS: after 500 B.C. premier of Lu; traced his descent back
through the Chou dynasty vassal ruling family of Sung to the Shang
dynasty family.

TSZ-CH'AN: elder contemporary of Confucius; premier of Cheng;
traced his descent through the vassal ruling family of Cheng to
the Chou dynasty family: date of death variously stated.

KWAN-TSE: died between 648 and 643 B.C., variously stated; premier
of Ts'i; traced his descent to the same clan as the ruling dynasty
of Chou.

YEN-TSZ: died 500 B.C.; premier of Ts'i; traced his descent to a
local clan, apparently eastern barbarian by origin.

WEI YANG: died 338 B.C.; premier of Ts'in; was a concubine-born
prince of the vassal state of Wei, and was thus of the imperial
Chou dynasty clan.

SHUH HIANG: lawyer and minister of Tsin; belonged to one of the
"great families" of Tsin; was contemporary with Tsz-ch'an. HIANG
SÜH: diplomat of the state of Sung; pedigree not ascertained,

KI-CHAH: son, brother, and uncle of successive barbarian kings of
Wu, whose ancestors, however, were the same ancestors as the
orthodox imperial rulers of the Chou dynasty; contemporary of Tsz-
ch'an.

NAMES OF THE SO-CALLED "FIVE PROTECTORS"

(ONLY THE TWO FIRST OF THE FIVE WERE SO OFFICIALLY; THE TWO LAST
WERE SO, EVEN OFFICIALLY, THOUGH NEVER COUNTED AMONGST THE FIVE.)

1. MARQUESS OF Ts'i (not of imperial Chou clan, perhaps of
"Eastern Barbarian" origin).

2. MARQUESS OF TSIN (imperial Chou clan).

3. DUKE OF SUNG (imperial Shang dynasty descent),

4. "KING" OF T'SU (semi-barbarian, but with remote imperial
Chinese legendary descent).

5. EARL OF TS'IN (semi-Tartar, with legendary descent from remote
imperial Chinese).

6. "KING" OF Wu (semi-barbarian, but of imperial Chou family
descent).

7. "KING" OF YÜEH (barbarian, but with legendary descent from
ultra-remote imperial Chinese).



CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

_OPENING SCENES_

Beginning of dated history--Size of ancient China--Parcelled out
into fiefs--Fiefs correspond to modern _hien_ districts--
Mesne lords and sub-vassals--Method of migration and colonizing--
Course of the Yellow River in 842 B.C.--Distant fiefs in Shan Tung
and Chih Li provinces of to-day--A river which subsequently became
part of the Grand Canal--The Hwai River system of waters--
Europeans always regard China from the sea inwards--Corea, Japan,
and Liao Tung unknown in 842 B.C. except, perhaps, to the vassal
state in Peking plain--Orthodox Chinese adopting barbarian usages
in Shan Tung--Eastern barbarians on the coast to Shanghai--No
knowledge of South or West Asia--Left bank of Yellow River was
mostly Tartar, except in South Shan Si--Ancient capital in Shan
Si--Ancient colonization of the Wei River valleys in Shen Si--
Possibilities of Western ideas having been carried by Tartar
horsemen from Persia and Turkestan--Traditions of western,
eastern, and southern intercourse previous to 842 B.C.--Early
knowledge of the River Yang-tsz and its three mouths--Explorations
by ancient emperors--Development of China followed much the same
normal course as that of Greece or England.

CHAPTER II

_SHIFTING SCENES_

Character of the early colonizing Chinese satraps--Revolt of the
western satrap and flight of the Emperor in 842 B.C.--Daughter of
a later satrap marries the Emperor--Tartars mix up with questions
of imperial succession and kill the Emperor--Transfer of the
imperial metropolis from Shen Si to Ho Nan--The Chou dynasty,
dating from 1122 B.C.--Before its conquest, the vassal house of
Chou occupied the same relation to the imperial dynasty of Shang
that the Wardens of the Western Marches, or Princes of Ts'in, did
in turn to the imperial dynasty of Chou--The Shang dynasty had in
1766 B.C., for like reasons, supplanted the Hia dynasty-No events
of great interest recorded in limited area of China before 771
B.C.--Decline of the imperial power until its extinction in 250
B.C.--The Five Tyrant or Protector period--Natural movement to
keep pace with political development--Easier system of writing--
Development of trade and industry--Living interests clash with
extinct aspirations--From 722 B.C. to 480 B.C. is the period of
change covered by Confucius' history

CHAPTER III

_THE NORTHERN POWERS_

The state of Tsin in Shan Si--In 771 B.C.: its ruler escorts the
Emperor to his new capital--Only in 671 B.C. does Confucius
mention Tsin--Divided from Ts'in by the Yellow River--Important
difference between the sounds Tsin and Ts'in--Importance of the
whole Yellow River as a natural boundary--The state of Ts'i also
engaged in buffer work against Tartar inroads--Remote origin of
Ts'i-Ts'in, Tsin, and Ts'i grow powerful as the Emperor grows
weaker--The state of Yen in the Peking plain--The founder of Yen
immortalized in song--Complete absence of tradition concerning
Yen's origin--Its possible relations with Corea and Japan--Centre
of political gravity transferred for ever to the north--Tartar
movements in Asia generally 800-600 B.C.--Never was a Tarter
empire--Reason for using the loose word "Tartars"--Race divisions
then probably very much as now--Attempt to classify the Tartars in
definite groups--Ch'wan unknown by any name--Nothing at all was
known in China of the north and west: _á fortiori_ of Central
Asia

CHAPTER IV

_THE SOUTHERN POWER_

The collapse of the Emperor led to restlessness in the south too--
The Jungle country south of the River Han--Ancient origin of its
kings--Claim to equality--Buffer state to the south--Ruling caste
consisted of educated Chinese--Extension of the Ts'u empire--
Annamese connections--Claims repeated 704 B.C.--Capital moved to
King-thou Fu near Sha-shï--First Ts'u conquests of China--Five
hundred years of struggle with Ts'in for the possession of all
China

CHAPTER V

_EVIDENCE OF ECLIPSES_

How far is history true?--Confucius and eclipses--Evidence
notwithstanding the destruction of literature in 213 B.C.--
Retrospective calculations of eclipses and complications of
calendars--Eclipse of 776 B.C.--Errors in Confucian history owing
to rival calendars

CHAPTER VI

_THE ARMY_

Paraphernalia of warfare--Ten thousand and one thousand chariot
states--Use of war-chariots, leather or wood--Chariots allotted
according to rank--Seventy-five men to one cart--War-chariots date
back to 1800 B.C.--Tartar house-carts--Rivers mostly unnavigable
in north--Introduction of canals and boat traffic--Population and
armies--Vague descriptions--Early armies never exceeded 75,000
men--The use of flags--Used in hunting as well as in war--Victims
sacrificed to drums--A modern instance of this in 1900 A.D.

CHAPTER VII

_THE COAST STATES_

The coast states in possession of the Yang-tsz delta--The state of
Wu really of the same origin as the imperial dynasty of Chou--
Comparison with Phoenician colonists--Wu induced by Tsin to attack
Ts'a-Ancient name was _Keugu_--Wu falls into the whirl of
Chinese politics--Confucius and his contemptuous treatment of
barbarians-Lu, in South Shan Tung, the place where Confucius held
official posts--Great Britain and Duke Confucius--Five ranks for
rulers of vassal states--Sacking of the Ts'u capital by Wu in 506
B.C.--Wu's vassal Yüeh turns against Wu--_Uviet_ the native
name of Yüeh--Bloody wars between Wu and Yiieh--Extinction of Wu
in 483 B.C.--Yüeh was always a coast power--Reasons for
Confucius' endeavours to re-establish the old feudal system

CHAPTER VIII

_FIRST PROTECTOR OF CHINA_

The first Hegemon or Protector of China and his own vassal kingdom
of Ts'i--Limits of Ts'i and ancient course of the Yellow River--
Absence of ancient records--Shiftings of capital in the ninth
century B.C.--Emperor's collapse of 842 and its effect upon Ts'i--
Aid rendered by Ts'i in suppressing the Tartars--Inconsiderable
size of Ts'i--Revenges a judicial murder two centuries old--Rapid
rise of Ts'i and services of the statesman--philosopher Kwan-tsz--
The governing caste in China--Declares self Protector of China 679
B.C.--Tartar raids down to the Yellow River in Ho Nan-Chinese
durbars and the duties of a Protector--Ts'in and Ts'u too far off
or too busy for orthodox durbars--Little is now known of the
puppet Emperor's dominions--Effeminate character of all the
Central Chinese orthodox stales--Fighting instincts all with semi-
Chinese states--Struggle for life becoming keener throughout China

CHAPTER IX

_POSITION OF ENVOYS_

Sanctity of envoys--Rivalry of Tsin north and Ts'u south for
influence over orthodox centre--The state of CHÊNG (imperial
clan)--The state of Sung (Shang dynasty clan)--Family sacrifices--
Instances of envoy treatment--The philosopher Yen-tsz: his irony--
The statesman Tsz-ch'an of CHÊNG--Ts'u's barbarous and callous
conduct to envoys--Greed for valuables among high officers--
squabble for precedence at Peace Conference--Confucius manipulates
history--Yen-& and Confucius together at attempted assassination

CHAPTER X

_THE SECOND PROTECTOR_

Death of First Protector and his henchman Kwan-tsz, 648-643 B.C.--
Ts'i succession and Sung's claim to Protectorate--Tartar influence
in Ts'i--Ts'u's claim to the hegemony--Ridiculous orthodox
chivalry--Great development of Tsin--A much-married ruler--
Marriage complications--Interesting story of the political
wanderings of the Second Protector--Tries to replace Kwan-tsz
deceased--Pleasures of Ts'i life--Mean behaviour of orthodox
princes to the Wanderer--Frank attitude of Ts'u--Successive
Tartar-born rulers of Tsin, and war with T&n--Second Protector
gains his own Tsin throne--Puppet Emperor at a durbar--Tsin
obtains cession of territory--Triangular war between the Powers--
Description of the political situation--China 2500 years ago
beginning to move as she is now doing again

CHAPTER XI

_RELIGION_

I'Jo religion except natural religion--Religion not separate from
administrative ritual--The titles of "King" and "Emperor"--Prayer
common, but most other of our own religious notions absent--Local
religion in barbarous states--Distinction between loss and
annihilation of power--Ducal rank and marquesses--Distinction
between grantee sacrifices and personal sacrifices--Prayer and the
ancient Emperor Shun, whose grave is in Hu Nan--Chou Emperor's
sickness and brother's written prayer--Offers to sacrifice self--
Messages from the dead--Lao-tsz's book--Ts'in and conquered Tsin
Sacrifices--Further instances of prayer

CHAPTER XII

_ANCESTRAL WORSHIP_

Ancestral tablets carried in war-Shrines graduated according to
rank--Description of shrines--Specific case of the King of Ts'u--
Instance of the First August Emperor much later--Temple of Heaven,
Peking, and the British occupation of it--Modern Japanese instance
of reporting to Heaven and ancestors--Tsin and Ts'i instances of
it--Sacrificial tablets--Writing materials--Lu's special spiritual
status--Desecration of tombs and flogging of corpses--Destruction
of ancestral temples--Imperial presents of sacrificial meat--
Fasting and purification--Intricate mourning rules. So-65

CHAPTER XIII

_ANCIENT DOCUMENTS FOUND_

History of Tsin and the Bamboo Annals discovered after 600 years'
burial--Confirmatory of Confucius' history--Obsolete and modern
script--Ancient calendars--Their evidence in rendering dates
precise--The Ts'in calendar imposed on China--Rise of the Ts'in
power--Position as Protector--Vast Tartar annexations by Ts'in--
Duke Muh of Ts'in and Emperor Muh of China--Posthumous names--
Discovery of ancient books--Supposed travels of Emperor Muh to
Tartary--Possibility of the Duke Muh having made the journeys--
Ts'in and Tsin force Tartars to migrate--Surreptitious vassal
"emperors"--Instances of Annam and Japan--Tsin against Ts'in and
Ts'u after Second Protector's death--Ts'i never again Protector--
Ts'in's Chinese and Tartar advisers--Foundations for Ts'in's
future empire.

CHAPTER XIV

_MORE ON PROTECTORS_

The Five Protectors of China more exactly defined--No such period
as the "Five Tyrant period" can be logically accepted as accurate--
Chinese never understand the principles of history as distinct
from the detailed facts--International situation defined--Flank
movements--Appearance of barbarous Wu in the Chinese arena--
Phonetic barbarian names--The State of Wei--Enlightened prince
envoy to China from Wu--Wu rapidly acquires the status of
Protector--Confucius tampers with history--Risky position of the
King of Wu--Yüeh conquers Wu, and poses as Protector--The River Sz
(Grand Canal).

CHAPTER XV

_STATE INTERCOURSE_

Further explanations regarding the grouping of states, and the
size of the smallest states--Statesmen of all orthodox states
acquainted with one another--No dialect difficulties in ancient
times--Records exist for everything--Absence of caste, but
persistence of the hereditary idea--The great political economist
Kwan-tsz--Tsz-ch'an, the prince-statesman of Cheng--Shuh Hiang,
statesman of Tsin--Reference to Appendix No. r--The statesman Yen-
tsz of Ts'i--Confucius' origin as a member of the royal Sung
family--Confucius' wanderings not so very extensive--Confucius no
mere pedant, but a statesman and a humorist--Hiang Suh of Sung,
inventor of "Hague" Conferences--Ki-chah, prince-envoy of Wu--K'u-
peh-yuh, an authority in Wei--Ts'in had no literary men--Lao-% of
Ts'u--Reasons why Confucius does not mention him

CHAPTER XVI

_LAND AND PEOPLE_

Ancient land and land-tax-Combination of military service with
land cultivation--Studious class had to study _tao_ (in its
pre-Lao-tsz sense)--Next the trading classes--Next the cultivators--
Last the handicraftsmen--Another division of the people--Responsibility
of rulers to God--Classification of rulers and ruling ranks--Eunuchs
and slaves--Cadastral survey in Ts'u state--Reserves for sporting--
Cemeteries--Salt-flats Another land and military service system in
Ts'u--Kwan-tsz's system in Ts'i--Poor relief--Shrewd diplomacy--His
master becomes First Protector--commerce and fairs--"The people"
ignored in history--Tsin reforms and administration--The "great family"
nuisance--Roads, supplies, post-stages--Ts'i had developed even
before Kwan-tsz--Restlessness of active minds under the yoke of ritual.

CHAPTER XVII

_EDUCATION AND LITERARY_

Very little mention of ancient writing or education--Baked
inscribed bricks unknown to the _loess_ region--Cession of
land inscribed upon metal--The Nine Tripods--Ts'u claims them--
Instances of written grants and prayers--Proof of teaching--A
written public notice--Probable use of wood--Conventions upon
stone--Books in sixth century B.C.--Maps, cadastre, and census
records--A doubtful instance--A closed letter--Indentures--A
military map--Treaties--Ancient theory _of_ juvenile education
for office--Invention of new-written script 827 B.C.--Patriarchal rule
inconsistent with enlightenment--Unification of script, weights, measures,
and axle-breadths by the First August Emperor Further invention of script
and first dictionary--Facility of Chinese writing for reading purposes--
Chinese now in a state of flux.

CHAPTER XVIII

_TREATIES AND VOWS_

Treaties and imprecations--Smearing with blood of victims--
Squabble _re_ precedence in the treaty-making--Shuh Niang's
philosophy--Confucius' tampering with history condoned--Care of
Chinese in preserving first-hand evidence--Emperor ignored by
treaty-makers--Form of a treaty, with imprecation--Mesne lords and
their vassals--Negotiations and references for instructions--
Ts'u's first protectorate in 538--Ts'u's difficulty with Wu--The
Six Families of Tsin--Sacrificing cocks as sanction to vows--
Drawing human blood as sanction--Pigs for the same purpose--Kwan-
tsz's honourable behaviour in keeping treaty--Confucius not so
honourable: instances given--Casuistry backed up by a proverb.

CHAPTER XIX

_CONFUCIUS AND LITERATURE_

Life-time of Confucius--Secret of his influence--Visit of the Wu
prince to Confucius' state--Lu's "powerful" family plague--Lu's
position between Tsin and Ts'u influences--Ts'i studies the ritual
in Lu: Yen-tsz goes thither--Sketch of Lu history in its
connection with Confucius--What were his practical objects?--
Authorities in support of what Confucius' Annals tell us--Original
conception of natural religion--Spread of the earliest patriarchal
Chinese state--No other people near them possessed letters--The
way in which the Chinese spread--Lines of least resistance--The
spiritual emperor compared with some of the Popes--Lu's spiritual
position--Confucius of Sung descent, and at first not an
influential official in Lu--Lu's humiliation--Ts'i's intrigues to
counteract Confucius' genius--Travels of Confucius and his
history--His edited works.

CHAPTER XX

_LAW_

Original notion of law--War and punishment on a level--Secondary
punishments--Judgment given as each breach occurs--No distinction
between legislative and judicial--Private rights ignored by the
State--Public weal is Nature's law--First law reform for the
Hundred Families--Dr. Legge's translation of the Code--
Proclamation of the Emperor's laws--Themistes or decisions--
Capricious instances: boiling alive by Emperor--Interference of
Emperor in Lu succession--Tsang Wen-chung's coat--Barbarity of
the Ts'u laws--Lu's influence with the Emperor--Tsin's engraved
laws--Tsz-ch'an's laws on metal in Cheng--Confucius disapproves of
published law--English judge-made law--All rulers accepted Chou
law--Reading law over sacrificial victim--Laconic ancient laws--
Command emanates from the north--Definition of imperial power--The
laws of Li K'wei in Ngwei state (part of old Tsin)--Direct
influence on modern law.

CHAPTER XXI

_PUBLIC WORKS_

Engineering works of old Emperors--Marvellous chiselled gorge
above Tch'ang--Pa and Shuh kingdoms (= Sz Ch'wan)--The engineer Li
Ping in Sz Ch'wan: his sluices still in working order after 2200
years of use--Chinese ideas about the sources of the Yang-tsz--The
Lolo country and its independence--The Yellow River and its
vagaries--Substitution of the Chou dynasty for the Shang dynasty--
First rulers of Wu make a canal--Origin of the Grand Canal--
Explanation of the old riverine system of Shan Tung--Extension of
the Canal by the First August Emperor--Kublai Khan's share in it--
The old Wu capital--Soochow and its ancient arsenals--No bridges
in old clays: fords used--Instances--Limited navigability of
northern rivers--Various Great Walls--Enormous waste of human
life--New Ts'in metropolis--Forced labour and eunuchs.

CHAPTER XXII

_CITIES AND TOWNS_

Ancient cities mere hovels--Soul, the capital of modern Corea--
Modern cities still poor affairs--Want of unity causes downfall of
Ts'in and China--Magnificence of Ts'i capital--Ts'u's palaces
imitated in Lu--The capital of Wu--Modern Soochow--Nothing known
of early Ts'in towns--Reforms of Wei Yang in Ts'in--Probable
population--Magnificent buildings at new Ts'in metropolis--
Facility with which vassal states shifted their capitals--
Insignificant size of ancient principalities--Walled cities.

CHAPTER XXIII

_BREAK-UP OF CHINA_

Collapse of Wu, flight in boats to Japan--Ground to believe that
the ruling caste of Japan was influenced by Chinese colonists in
the fifth century B.C.--Rise of Yueh, and action in China as
Protector--Changes in the Hwai River system--Last days of the Chou
dynasty--The year 403 B.C. is the second great pivot point in
history--Undermining of Ts'i state by the T'ien or Ch'en family--
Confucius shocked at the murder of a Ts'i prince--Sudden rise of
Ts'in after two centuries of stagnation--The reforms of Wei Yang
lead to the conquest of China--Orthodox China compared with
Greece--The "Fighting State" Period.

CHAPTER XXIV

_KINGS AND NOBLES_

Titles of the Emperors of the Chou dynasty--The word "King" in
modern times--Posthumous names--The title "Emperor" and the word
"Imperial"--"God" confused with "Emperor"--Lao-tsz's view--
Comparison with Babylonia, Egypt, etc.--No feudal prince was
recognized by the Emperor as possessing the same title as the
Emperor--The Roman Emperors--The five ranks of nobles--The
Emperor's private "dukes" compared with cardinals--The state of
Lu--The state of Ts'i--The state of Tsin--No race hatreds in
China--The state of Wei--Clanship between dynasties--Sacrificial
rights--The state of Cheng: a fighting ground for all--The state
of Ch'en--Explanation of the term "duke" as applied to all
sovereign princes.

CHAPTER XXV

_VASSALS AND EMPEROR_

The vassal princes of the Chou and previous dynasties--Vassal
princes and their relations with the Emperors--Protectors make
great show of defending the Emperors rights--The Emperor's
sacrifices to God--Rules and rights concerning fees--All China
belongs to the Emperor--Peculiar notions about the Emperor's
territory--Respect due to imperial envoys--Direct and indirect
vassals--Ts'u's group of vassals--Ts'u compared with Macedon--
Never subject to the Emperors--Right of passage for armies--
Special complimentary use of the term "viscount"--Titles not
inherited during mourning--Forms of address--Rival Protectors and
their respective subordinate states--Tribute from the states to
the Emperor, and presents from the Emperor to the vassal states--
The Emperor accepts _faits accomplis_, and takes what he can
get.

CHAPTER XXVI

_FIGHTING STATE PERIOD_

Period of fighting states--Tsin divided into Han, Ngwei, and Chao-
Ts'in developing herself in Tartary and in Sz Ch'wan--Want of
orderly method in Chinese history--How the statesmen of each
vassal state developed resources--Ts'in's military development
compared with that of Prussia from 1815 to 1870--"Perpendicular
and Horizontal" period--Object to crush Ts'in--Rival claimants for
universal empire--First appearance of the Huns or Turks-Helpless
position of Old China--Bloody battles in Ts'in's final career of
conquest--A million men decapitated--Immense cavalry fights-
Ts'in's supreme effort for conquest of China.

CHAPTER XXVII

_FOREIGN BLOOD_

_Resume_ of Chinese historical development--General lines of
Chinese advance--Methods of Chinese colonization--Equal pedigree
claims of half-Chinese states--Tsin and Ts'i were even more
ancient than orthodox China--Degree of foreignness in Ts'u-Ts'u
native words and music--Ts'u peculiarities-Succession laws in Ts'u
and Lu compared--Further evidence of Ts'u's foreign ways--Beards--
Titles, posthumous and other--Ts'u admits her own savagery--Ts'u's
claim to the Nine Tripods--Ts'u and the Chou rites--Ts'u's gradual
civilization--Confucius' admiration of Ts'u--Confucius' style in
speaking of barbarians--Distinction between "beat" and "battle"--
German distinctions of rank compared with Chinese--The historical
honour of "naming"--Vagueness of testimony and the way to test
evidence.

CHAPTER XXVIII

_BARBARIANS_

The state of Wu--First Chinese princely emigrants adopted
barbarian usages--The Jungle country and Wu--Wu's way of doing the
hair and Wu's confession of barbarism--Federal China uses Wu
against Ts'u--Wu the same language and manners as Yueh--Native Wu
words--Wu's ignorance of war--Wu's early isolation--Ts'i enters
into marriage relations with Wu--Mencius objects retrospectively--
Wu ruling caste--The Wu language--Succession laws of Wu--A Wu
prince's views on the soul--Confucius' views on ghosts--Ki-chah's
intimacy with orthodox statesmen--Rumours of Early Japan--Japan
and Wu tattooing customs alike--Japanese traditions of a
connection with Wu--Dangers of etymological guess-work--Doubts
about racial matters in Wu--Small value of Japanese history and
tradition--General conclusions.

CHAPTER XXIX

_CURIOUS CUSTOMS_

Small size of ancient China--Description of ancient nucleus and
surrounding barbarians--Amount of foreign element in each vassal
state--Policy of the Ts'i and Lu administrations--The savage
tribes of the eastern coasts--Persistency of some down to 970
A.D.--Ts'in's unliterary quality--Her human sacrifices--Her
Turkish blood--Late influence of the Emperors over Ts'in--Ts'in's
gradual civilization--Ki-chah on Ts'in music--Ts'u treats Ts'in as
barbarian still in 361 B.C.--Ts'in's isolation previous to 326
B.C.--Tartar rule of succession at one time in Ts'in--Yiieh's
barbarism--Its able king--Native name--Mushroom existence as a
power--The various branches of the Yiieh race in Foochow, W&chow,
and Tonquin--Wu and Yiieh spoke the same language--Ruling caste of
Wu--Stern military discipline in Wu and Yiieh--Neither state
proved to have had human sacrifices--Crawling customs--Ancient
Chinese descent of rulers--Yiieh's later capital in the German
sphere--Her power always marine.

CHAPTER XXX

_LITERARY RELATIONS_

Literary relations between vassal states--Confucius set the ball
of philosophy a-rolling--The fourfold "Bible" of China--Odes were
generally known by heart--Comparison with President Kruger and his
texts--Quotations from Odes and Book enable us to fix dates--Books
were heavy weights in those days--People trusted to memory--The
Rites more exclusively understood by the ruling classes--
Comparison with Johnsonian wits--Instances cited, with side
proofs--History and Classics corroborate each other-Evidences--
Confucius' ancestor composes odes--Political song by the children
of Tsin--Another still-existing ode in reference to the Second
Protector--Ts'u's early literary knowledge--General knowledge of
Odes and History--Ignorance of Ts'in-Ts'in ancient documents the
only ones now remaining--First definite notion of abolishing the
feudal system--The pivot point 403 B.C.--Ts'in's conquests in
north, south, east, and west--The First August Emperor's travels--
Lao-tsz's Taoist philosophy becomes fashionable--Ts'in's hatred of
orthodox literature, and of the Odes and Book in particular--The
Book of Changes escapes his hatred--Revolutionary decree of the
First August Emperor-Lost annals of all feudal states but Ts'in--
Learned Tartars of Tsin-Confucius used Tsin annals too--Origin of
the name _Shi-ki,_ or "Historical Annals"--Further evidence
of lost histories--Curious name for Ts'u Annals--Ts'u poetry-
Ts'u's knowledge of past history--The term "Springs and Autumns"--
Baldness of early Chinese annals.

CHAPTER XXXI

_ORIGIN OF THE CHINESE_

Whence did the Chinese come?--All men of equal age and ancestry--
Records make civilization and nobility--Evidences of antiquity--
China and the West totally unknown to each other in ancient times--
Tartars the connecting link--Though tamed by religion they are
not much changed now--Traders then, as now, but no through
travellers--Chinese probably in China for myriads of years before
their records began--Tonic peculiarities of all tribes near China
except the Tartars--Chinese followed lines of least resistance--
Tartars driven back, but difficult to absorb--So with Coreans and
Japanese-Indo-China not so favourable for Chinese absorption--
Records decided the direction taken by culture--Southern half-
Chinese have equal claims with orthodox Chinese--Traditions of
ancient emperors in north, coast, and south parts--Suggestions as
to how the most ancient Chinese spread themselves--No hint of
immigration from anywhere--The old suggestion of immigration from
the Tarim Valley and Babylonia--Suggested compromise with Western
religious views--Creation and Nature--Compromise with the
supernatural and imaginative--Summing up.

CHAPTER XXXII

_THE CALENDAR_

The Chinese calendar--Confucius and eclipses--Proclaiming the new
moon--Celestial observations in different states--Chinese year is
luni-Solar--Difficulty with the exact length of a moon--Ingenious
devices for bringing the solar and lunar years, the seasons,
solstices, and equinoxes into harmony with agricultural needs--The
sixty-year cycle--Various reforms of the calendar, and various
changes in the month beginning the year--Effect of calendar
changes on Confucius' birthday--All is evidence in favour of
accuracy of the Chinese records.

CHAPTER XXXIII

_NAMES_

The difficulty of proper names--Instances-Clans and detached
families--Surnames and personal names--Strange personal
appellations--Interchange of names by all states--Eunuchs and
priests-Minute rules about "naming" individuals--Confucius conveys
praise or censure by "naming" persons--The principles upon which
several names are applied to one person--Tabu-Instances, and Roman
parallel--The Duke of Chou virtual founder of posthumous name
system--Dying king and posthumous choice of name--Incestuous
marriages in own clan--Hushing up incest in high places--
Complication of names connected--Bearing of names upon the
political events connected therewith.

CHAPTER XXXIV

_EUNUCHS, HUMAN SACRIFICES, FOOD_

Eunuchs and their origin--criminals with feet chopped off as
keepers--Noseless criminals for isolated picket duty--The branded
were gate-keepers--Eunuchs for the harem--"Purified men"--
Comparative antiquity of Persia and China--Eunuchs in Tsin--Ts'i
eunuchs and Confucius--Eunuchs in Wu--Ts'u's uses for eunuchs--
Eunuch intrigues in connection with the First August Emperor--The
First Emperor's putative father--His works--Eunuch witnesses
assassination of Second August Emperor--General employ of eunuchs
in China--Human sacrifices in Ts'in and Ts'u: also in Ts'i--Doubts
as to its existence in orthodox China--Han Emperor's prohibition--
No fruit wine in ancient China--Spirits universal--Vice around
ancient China rather than in it--Instances of heavy drinking in
Ts'i and Ts'u--Tsin drinking--Confucius and liquor--Drinking in
Ts'in--Ancient Chinese were meat-eaters--Horse-flesh and Tartars--
Horse-liver in Prussia--Anecdote of Duke Muh and the hippophagi--
Bears' paws as food--Elephants in Ts'u--Dogs as food.

CHAPTER XXXV

_KNOWLEDGE OF THE WEST_

The Emperor Muh's voyages to the West in 984 B.C.--The question of
destroyed state annals-Exaggerated importance of the expedition,
even if facts true--King Muh's father was killed in a similar
expedition--Discovery of the Bamboo Books of 299 B.C. in 281 A.D.--
Imaginary interpretations put upon King Muh's expedition by
European critics--The Queen of Sheba--Professor Chavannes
attributes the travels of Duke Muh of Ts'in 650 B.C.--Description
of first journey--Along the great road to Lob Nor-Modern evidence
that he got as far as Urumtsi--Six hundred days, or 12,000 miles--
Specific evidence as to distance travelled each day--Various
Tartar incidents of the journey--The Emperor's infatuation on the
second journey--Lieh-tsz, the Taoist philosopher, on the Emperor
Muh's travels--Arguments qualifying M. Chavannes' view that Duke
Muh, and not the Emperor Muh, undertook the journeys.

CHAPTER XXXVI

_ANCIENT JAPAN_

Wu kingdom--Name begins 585 B.C.--This is the year Japanese
"history" begins--The first king and his four sons--Prince Ki-
chah--War with Ts'u and sacking of its capital--King Fu-ch'ai and
his wars against Yiieh--Offered an asylum in Chusan--Suicide of
Fu-ch'ai--Escape of his family across the seas to Japan--China
knew nothing of Japan, even if Wu did--Story reduced to its true
proportions--Traces of prehistoric men in Japan--Possible
movements of original inhabitants--Existing evidence better than
none at all--East from Ningpo must be Japan--Like early Greeks and
Egyptian colonists--Natural impulses to emigration--Refugees from
China compared to Will Adams--Natural desire to improve pedigrees--
No shame to Japan's ruling caste to hail from China--European
comparisons--How the Japanese manufactured their past history--
Imagination must be kept separate from evidence.

CHAPTER XXXVII

_ETHICS_

Peculiar customs--Formalities of surrender--A number of instances
of succession rules--Status of wives-Cases where the Emperor
himself breaks the rules--Instances of irregular succession in
various states--Customs of war--Cutting off the left ear as
trophy--Rewards for heads--Principles of facing north and south--
Turning towards Mecca--Left and Right princes--Modern instances of
official seating--North and south facing houses--Chivalrous rules
about mourning--Funeral missions--The feudal yearnings of
Confucius explained--Respect even of barbarians for mourning--Many
other quaint instances of funeral and mourning rules--Promises
made to a dying _non compos_ of no avail--Mencius and the
diplomatists.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

_WOMEN AND MORALS_

Rights of women in ancient China--The legal rule and the actual
fact--Instances of irregularity in female status, both in ancient
and modern China--Instances of incest and irregular marriage even
in orthodox states-Women, once married, not to come back--The
much-married Second Protector--Hun and Turk customs about taking
over Wives--Clan marriages of doubtful legality--Succession rules--
Ts'u irregularities and caprice--Elder brothers by inferior
wives--Paranymphs, or under-studies of the wife--Women always
under some man's power--Incestuous fathers--_Lex Julia_ introduced
into Yiieh by its vengeful King--The evil morals of the Shanghai-Ningpo
region of ancient Yiieh--No prostitution in ancient China, except perhaps
in Ts'i--No infanticide--Incest and names.

CHAPTER XXXIX

_GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE_

Orthodox China compared with orthodox Greece--Our persistent
"traditions" about the Tower of Babel and the Tarim Valley-Wu,
Yiieh, and ancient traditions--The "Tribute of Yii" says nothing
of Western origin of Chinese--No ancient knowledge of the West,
nor of South China--The Blackwater River and the Emperor Muh--The
"Tribute of Yii" says nothing of the supposed Western emigration
of the Chinese--Some traditions of Chinese migrations from the
south--Traditions of enfeoffment of vassals in Corea, about 1122
B.C.--Knowledge of China as defined by the First Protector, and as
visited by the Second in the seventh century B.C.--Evidence of the
Emperor's limited knowledge of China in 670 B.C.--Yiieh first
appears in 536 B.C.--Tsin never saw the sea till 589 B.C.--Ts'i's
ignorance of the south-u, Yiieh, and Ts'u all purely Yang-tsz
riverine states--Ts'u alone knew the south--CHÊNG's ignorance of
the south--Ts'u and orthodox China of the same ancient stock--
Tsin's ignorance of Central China--Tsin defines Chinese limits for
Ts'u--Ancient orthodox nucleus was the "Central State," a name
still employed to mean "China" as a whole.

CHAPTER XL

_TOMBS AND REMAINS._

Evidences still remaining in the shape of the tombs of great
historical personages--Elephants used to work at the Wu tombs--
Royal Ts'u tomb desecrated--Relics of 1122 B.C. found in Lu--Ts'in
destitute of relics--Confucius and the Duke of Chou's relics--Each
generation of Chinese sees and doubts not of its own antiquities--
No reason for European scepticism--Native critics know much more
than we do.

CHAPTER XLI

_THE TARTARS_

From ancient times Tartars intimately connected with the Chinese--
How the Chou state had to migrate to avoid the Tartars--Chou
ancestors had originally fled from China to the Tartars--Chou
family's subsequent dealings with the Tartars--How Ts'in replaced
Chou as the semi-Tartar or westernmost state of China--Tartars for
many centuries in possession of Yellow River north bank--Once
extended to Kiang Su province--Confucius' knowledge of the
Tartars--Tartar attacks in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.--
Causes of the Protector system--Incompetence of Emperors to stave
off Tartar attacks--Ts'i's extensive relations with the Tartars--
The Second Protector and his adviser--Rude treatment of the Second
Protector by the orthodox Chinese states--Ts'u's bluff hospitality--
Second Protector had to check Chinese instead of Tartar ambitions--
Tsin's Tartar admixture--Comparison with Roman adventurers--How
Tartars have in modern times ruled China and Asia.

CHAPTER XLII

_MUSIC_

Music in Chinese life--Confucius' present dwelling and the ancient
instruments therein--Comparison with Wagner's Ring--Musicians as
corrupters of simplicity--Tsin and Ts'in dialects--Music as an
adjunct to government--Confucius' views on music--Ts'u music--The
effect of music on the mind--Rewards in the shape of right to play
certain tunes--The Emperor Muh's music--Music coupled with
soothsaying--Lao-tsz on benevolence and justice-Playing the banjo--
Music at sacrifice or worship--Modern abstinence from music--
First August Emperor compared with Saul and his music.

CHAPTER XLIII

_WEALTH, SPORTS, ETC._

Ancient and modern ideas of wealth--Ts'in and Ts'u valuables--
Furniture--Mats and divans--Tea and wine--Tartar couches--Inlaid
ivory sofas--State treasure--Wealth in horses-Silks and furs in
Tsin and Ts'u--Women as property--Pearls and jade as portable
property--A Chinese Crocesus--Escape by sea to Shan Tung--Gold as
money--Bribery with "metal"--Iron and gold mines in Wu--Fine Wu
swords--"Cash" as coins--Ts'u money--Weight of a gold piece--Cooks
important personages--"Meat-eaters" meant the ruling classes--
Silk universal--Poor wore hemp--No cotton--Ts'in custom of wearing
swords--Jade marks of rank--Sports--Egret fights-war hunts--Horses
in Peking plain--Hunting chariots and "shaft-gates"--_Yamen,
ya_, and Turkish encampments--Cockfighting-Lifting heavy
weights--Ball games--Women at looms--Little said of family life--
No homely pastimes--No squeezed feet--Helplessness of the people
under their taskmasters.

CHAPTER XLIV

_CONFUCIUS_

Confucius--His merits--His imperial and ducal origin--Migration of
his family from Sung to Lu--His warrior father--His quaint
childish fancies--Lu officer foretells his greatness--His first
pupils--His appointment as steward--His visit to Laos--No reason
for mentioning this visit in history--Neither philosopher yet
"great"--Lu in a quandary--Helplessness of the Emperor under Tsin,
Ts'i, and Ts'u pressure--Yen-tsz sees Confucius, and discusses
Ts'in's greatness--Studying the Rites at Lu-Date of Confucius'
visit to Lao-tsz--Struggle of great families for popular rights--
Confucius offers services to Ts'i--Examines Rites of Hia--Yen-
tsz's jealousy of Confucius--Confucius back in Lu--His literary
labours--His official posts and his views on law--Ts'i overborne
by Wu--Ts'i's attempt at assassination defeated by Confucius'
diplomacy--Treaty between Lu and Ts'i--Civil war in Lu--Confucius
Premier--Successful administration--Confucius leaves Lu in
disgust--His treatment in Wei state--Leaves Wei, but returns to
old friend there--Confucius' suspicious visit to a lady--Leaves
disgusted _via_ Sung for Ts'ao--Visits to Cheng (mistaken for
Tsz-ch'an) and Ch'en--A prey to rival ambitions--Episode of the
Manchurian bustard--Revisits Wei--Arrested; solemn promise broken--
Base behaviour--Starts to visit Tsin--Confucius' enemy repents--
Arrangements to get Confucius back to Lu--He first visits Ts'ai-
Excursion to Ts'u--Three years more in Ts'ai--T-s'u's literary
status--Competition amongst princes for Confucius' services--
Confucius and war--Reaches Lu after fourteen years of wandering--
Confucius' travels the same as the Second Protector's--Consoles
himself with literature--Popularizes history-Edits the Changes and
the Odes--His history--The Tso Chwan.

CHAPTER XLV

_CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TSZ_

Historians had to be careful--Reverence for rulers--Confucius'
feelings--His failings--All on the surface--His concealments--His
artful censures--Sanctity of the classes--Confucius' meannesses
and indiscretions--Allowances must be made for time and place--
Tsz-ch'an quite as good a man--Reasons for permanency of Confucian
system--Reasons for Lao-tsz not being mentioned--All Chinese
statesman-philosophers were, or tried to be, practical--First
mention of Lao-tsz's new Taoism--Lao-tsz well known 400 B.C.--
State intercourse before Confucius' time--Philosophy taught by
word of mouth--Cheapening of books accounts for spread of
knowledge--Description of ancient books--Confucius was young when
he visited Lao-tsz--Lao-t&s book in ancient character--Meagreness
of details evidence of rigid truth--Obscurity of the Emperor--
Difficult questions of fact answered--How Lao-tsz was visited--
Proofs of genuineness--Originals must be studied by foreign
critics.

CHAPTER XLVI

_ORACLES AND OMENS_

Consulting the oracles--The Changes, or Book of Diagrams--Ts'u and
Ts'i as instructors of Chou--Tortoise augury--Consulting
ancestors--Heaven's decree--Heaven's spontaneous, manifestations
of favour--Astrology--Prognostication--Text of the Changes
survives unmutilated--Ts'in consults oracles about moving capital--
Ts'in's greatness foretold--Omens--_Dies_ n&s--Oracles in
the battlefield--Prophecy in Tsin, Ts'u, and Lu--Shuh Hiang's
scepticism--Tsz-ch'an and the omen of fighting snakes--Children
sing prophetic songs--"Passing on" threatened evil--Tortoise
oracles in Ts'o and Wu--High status of diviners-"-Transferring"
evil in Ts'u--Rivers as gods--Our own prophecies--Good faith and
truth.

CHAPTER XLVII

_RULERS AND PEOPLE_

Personal character of wars--People's interests ignored--Instances--
Comparisons with the Golden Fleece and Naboth's vineyard--Second
Protector avenges scurvy treatment--The halt, the maim, and the
blind--Jephthah's rash vow-Divinity of kings--Ts'u more tyrannical
than China--Responsibility of Chinese before Heaven--The King can
do no wrong--Emperors reign under Heaven--Heaven in the confidence
of rulers--Sacred person of kings--Distinction between official
and private death--Double chivalry of a Tsin general--The gods and
Tsz-ch'an's scepticism.

APPENDICES

INDEX



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[For the illustration of the Wuchuan vase, and the inscription
thereon, I am indebted to Dr. S. W. Bushell M.D., from whose work
on "Chinese Art" (vol. i. p. 82) the plates (kindly lent by H.M.
Stationery Office) are taken. For the photograph of the Duke of
"Propagating Holiness" (i.e. Confucius) I am indebted to the
Jesuit Fathers of Shanghai, and to Father Tschepe, who obtained it
from his Grace.]

1. Tripod of the Chou dynasty, date 8l2 B.C. In 1565 A.D. it was
placed by the owner for safety in a temple on Silver Island (near
Chinkiang), where it may be seen now.

Taken (by kind permission of the author) from Dr. S. W. Bushell's
"Chinese Art," vol. i. p. 82. _Frontispiece_

2. K'ung Ling-i, the hereditary Yen-shêng Kung, or "Propagating
Holiness Duke"; 76th in descent from K'ung K'iu, alias K'ung
Chung-ni, the original philosopher, 551-479 B.C.

This portrait was presented to "the priest P'êng" (Father Tschepe,
S.J.), on the occasion of his visit last autumn (7th moon, 33rd
year). To _face page 81_

3. Original inscription on the Sacrificial Tripod, together with
(1) transcription in modern Chinese character (to the right), and
(2) an account of its history (to the left). Taken from Dr.
Bushell's "Chinese Art".

[Illustration: MAP]

LIST OF MAPS

1. The other small maps will explain each section more in detail.

2. This map is intended to give a general idea of the extremely
limited area of the empire in the sixth century B.C.

3. Like the modern Sultan, the Chow Emperor was gradually driven
into a corner, surrounded by Bulgarias, Servias, Egypts, and other
countries once under his effective rule; and, like the Sultan, the
Chou Emperor remained spiritual head for many centuries after the
practical dismemberment of his empire.

4. Until quite recent times, the true source of the Yang-tsz had
been unknown to the Chinese, and the River Min has been, and even
still is, considered to be the chief head-water. It flows through
the rich country of ancient Shuh, now the administrative centre of
Sz Ch'wan province.

5. Even now the Yang-tsz River is practically the only great route
from China into Sz Ch'wan, and in ancient times the rapids were
probably not negotiable by large craft.

6. The land routes into Sz Ch'wan from the head-waters of the Wei
and Ilan Rivers are all extremely precipitous. It was not until
200 B.C. that any military road was attempted.

7. Ancient China meant the Yellow River. Then the Han and the
Hwai. Next the Yang-tsz. Last the Sz Ch'wan tributaries of the
Yang-tsz. It was through the lakes and rivers south of the Yang-
tsz that China at last colonized the south.




CHAPTER I

OPENING SCENES

The year 842 B.C. may be considered the first accurate date in
Chinese history, and in this year the Emperor had to flee from his
capital on account of popular dissatisfaction with his tyrannical
ways: he betook himself northward to an outlying settlement on the
Tartar frontier, and the charge of imperial affairs was taken over
by a regency or duumvirate.

At this time the confederation of cultured princes called China--
or, to use their own term, the Central Kingdom--was a very
different region from the huge mass of territory familiar to us
under those names at the present day. It is hardly an exaggeration
to say that civilized China, even at that comparatively advanced
period, consisted of little more than the modern province of Ho
Nan. All outside this flat and comparatively riverless region
inhabited by the "orthodox" was more or less barbaric, and such
civilization as it possessed was entirely the work of Chinese
colonists, adventurers, or grantees of fiefs _in partibus
infidelium_ (so to speak). Into matters of still earlier
ancient history we may enter more deeply in another chapter, but
for the present we simply take China as it was when definite
chronology begins.

The third of the great dynasties which had ruled over this limited
China had, in 842 B.C., already been on the imperial throne for
practically three hundred years, and, following the custom of its
predecessors, it had parcelled out all the land under its sway to
vassal princes who were, subject to the general imperial law and
custom, or ritual, together with the homage and tribute duty
prescribed thereunder, all practically absolute in their own
domains. Roughly speaking, those smaller fiefs may be said to have
corresponded in size with the walled-city and surrounding district
of our own times, so well known under the name of _hien_.
About a dozen of the larger fiefs had been originally granted to
the blood relations of the dynastic founder in or after 1122 B.C.;
but not exclusively so, for it seems to have been a point of
honour, or of religious scruple, not to "cut off the sacrifices"
from ruined or disgraced reigning families, unless the attendant
circumstances were very gross; and so it came to pass that
successive dynasties would strain a point in order to keep up the
spiritual memory of decayed or rival houses.

Thus, at the time of which we speak (842 B.C.), about ten of the
dozen or so of larger vassal princes were either of the same clan
as the Emperor himself, or were descended from remoter branches of
that clan before it secured the imperial throne; or, again, were
descended from ministers and statesmen who had assisted the
founder to obtain empire; whilst the two or three remaining great
vassals were lineal representatives of previous dynasties, or of
their great ministers, keeping up the honour and the sacrifices of
bygone historical personages. As for the minor fiefs, numbering
somewhere between a thousand and fifteen hundred, these play no
part in political history, except as this or that one of them may
have been thrust prominently forward for a moment as a pawn in the
game of ambition played by the greater vassals. Nominally the
Emperor was direct suzerain lord of all vassals, great or small;
but in practice the greater vassal princes seem to have been what
in the Norman feudal system were called "mesne lords"; that is,
each one was surrounded by his own group of minor ruling lords,
who, in turn, naturally clung for protection to that powerful
magnate who was most immediately accessible in case of need; thus
vassal rulers might be indefinitely multiplied, and there is some
vagueness as to their numbers.

Just as the oldest civilizations of the West concentrated
themselves along the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile, so the
most ancient Chinese civilization is found concentrated along the
south bank of the Yellow River. The configuration of the land as
shown on a modern map assists us to understand how the industrious
cultivators and weavers, finding the flat and so-called
_loess_ territory too confined for their ever-increasing
numbers, threw out colonies wherever attraction offered, and
wherever the riverine systems gave them easy access; whether by
boat and raft; or whether--as seems more probable, owing to the
scanty mention of boat-travel--by simply following the low levels
sought by the streams, and tilling on their way such pasturages as
they found by the river-sides. When it is said that the earliest
Chinese we know of clung to the Yellow River bed, it must be
remembered that "the River" (as they call it simply) turned sharp
to the north at a point in Ho Nan province very far to the west of
its present northerly course, near a city marked in the modern
maps as Jung-t&h, in lat. 35 degrees N., long, 114 degrees E., or
thereabouts; moreover, its course further north lay considerably to the
westward of the present Grand Canal, taking possession now of the
bed of the Wei River, now of that of the Chang River, according to
whether we regard it before or after the year 602 B.C.; but always
entering the Gulf near modern Tientsin. Hence we need not be
surprised to find that the Conqueror or Assertor of the dynasty
had conferred upon a staunch adviser, of alien origin, and upon
two of his most trusty relatives, the three distant fiefs which
commanded both sides of the Yellow River mouth, at that time near
the modern Tientsin. There was no Canal in those days, and the
river which runs past Confucius' birth-place, and now goes towards
feeding the Grand Canal, had then a free course south-east towards
the lakes in Kiang Su province to the north of Nanking. It will be
noticed that quite a network of tributary rivers take their rise
in Ho Nan province, and trend in an easterly direction towards the
intricate Hwai River system. The River Hwai, which has a great
history in the course of Chinese development, was in quite recent
times taken possession of by the Yellow River for some years, and
since then the Grand Canal and the lakes between them have so
impeded its natural course that it may be said to have no natural
delta at all; to be dissipated in a dedalus of salt flats,
irrigation channels, and marshes: hence it is not so obvious to us
now why the whole coast-line was at the period we are now
describing, when there was no Grand Canal, quite beyond the reach
of Chinese colonization from the Yellow River valley: this was
only possible in two directions--firstly to the south, by way of
the numerous ramifications of the Han River, which now, as then,
joins the Yang-tsz Kiang at Hankow; and secondly to the south-
east, by way of the equally numerous ramifications of the Hwai
River, which entered the sea in lat. 34ø N. No easy emigration to
the westward or south-westward was possible in those comparatively
roadless days, for not a single river pointed out the obvious way to
would-be colonists.

Accustomed as we now are to regard China as one vast homogeneous
whole, approachable to us easily from the sea, it is not easy for
us to understand the historical lines of expansion without these
preliminary explanations. Corea and Japan were totally unknown
even by name, and even Liao Tung, or "East of the River Liao,"
which was then inhabited by Corean tribes, was, if known by
tradition at all, certainly only in communication with the remote
Chinese colony, or vassal state, in possession of the Peking
plain: on the other hand, this vassal state itself (if it had
records of its own at all), for the three centuries previous to
842 B.C., had no political relations with the federated Chinese
princes, and nothing is known of its internal doings, or of its
immediate relations (if any) with Manchus and Coreans. The whole
coast-line of Shan Tung was in the hands of various tribes of
"Eastern Barbarians." True, a number of Chinese vassal rulers held
petty fiefs to the south and the east of the two highly civilized
principalities already described as being in possession of the
Lower Yellow River; but the originally orthodox rulers of these
petty colonies are distinctly stated to have partly followed
barbarian usage, even despite their own imperial clan origin, and
to have paid court to these two greater vassals as mesne lords,
instead of direct to the Emperor. South of these, again, came the
Hwai group of Eastern barbarians in possession of the Lower Hwai
valley, and the various quite unknown tribes of Eastern barbarians
occupying the marshy salt flats and shore accretions on the Kiang
Su coast right down to the River Yang-tsz mouth.

As we shall see, a century or two later than 842 B.C. powerful
semi-Chinese states began to assert themselves against the
federated orthodox Chinese princes lying to their north; but, when
dated history first opens, Central China knew nothing whatever of
any part of the vast region lying to the south of the Yang-tsz;
nothing whatever of what we now call Yiin Nan and Sz Ch'wan, not
to say of the Indian and Tibetan dominions lying beyond them; _
fortiori_ nothing of Formosa, Hainan, Cochin-China, Tonquin,
Burma, Siam, or the various Hindoo trading colonies advancing from
the South Sea Islands northwards along the Indo-Chinese coasts;
nothing whatever of Tsaidam, the Tarim Valley, the Desert, the
Persian civilization, Turkestan, Kashgaria, Tartary, or Siberia.

It is, and will here be made, quite clear that the whole of the
left bank of the Yellow River was in possession of various Turkish
and Tartar-Tibetan tribes. The only exception is that the south-
west corner of Shan Si province, notably the territory enclosed
between the Yellow River and the River F&n (which, running from
the north, bisects Shan Si province and enters the Yellow River
about lat. 35" 30' N., long. 110 degrees 30' E.) was colonized by a branch
of the imperial family quite capable of holding its own against
the Tartars; in fact, the valley of this river as far north as
P'ing-yang Fu had been in semi-mythical times (2300 B.C.) the
imperial residence. It will be noticed that the River Wei joins
the Yellow River on its right bank, just opposite the point where
this latter, flowing from the north, bends eastwards, the Wei
itself flowing from the west. This Wei Valley (including the sub-
valleys of its north-bank tributaries) was also in 842 B.C.
colonized by an ancient Chinese family--not of imperial extraction
so far as the reigning house was concerned--which, by adopting
Tartar, or perhaps Tartar--Tibetan, manners, had for many
generations succeeded in acquiring a predominant influence in that
region. Assuming that--which is not at all improbable--the nomad
horsemen in unchallenged possession of the whole desert and Tartar
expanse had at any time, as a consequence of their raids in
directions away from China westward, brought to China any new
ideas, new commercial objects, or new religious notions, these
novelties must almost necessarily have filtered through this semi-
Chinese half-barbarous state in possession of the Wei Valley, or
through other of their Tartar kinsmen periodically engaged in
raiding the settled Chinese cultivators farther east, along the
line of what is now the Great Wall, and the northern parts of Shan
Si and Chih Li provinces.

We shall allude in a more convenient place and chapter to specific
traditions touching the supposed journeys about 990 B.C. of a
Chinese Emperor to Turkestan; the alleged missions from Tonquin to
a still earlier Chinese Emperor or Regent; and the pretended
colonization of Corea by an aggrieved Chinese noble-all three
events some centuries earlier than the opening period of dated
history of which we now specially speak. For the present we ignore
them, as, even if true, these events have had, and have now, no
specific or definite influence whatever on the question of Chinese
political development as expounded here. It seems certain that for
many centuries previous to 842 B.C. the ruling and the literary
Chinese had known of the existence of at least the Lower Yang-tsz
and its three mouths (the Shanghai mouth and the Hangchow mouth
have ceased long ago to exist at all): they also seem to have
heard in a vague way of "moving sands" beyond the great northerly
bend of the Yellow River in Tartarland. It is not even impossible
that the persistent traditions of two of their very ancient
Emperors having been buried south of the Yang-tsz--one near the
modern coast treaty-port of Ningpo, the other near the modern
riverine treaty-port of Ch'ang-sha--may be true; for nothing is
more likely than that they both met their death whilst exploring
the tributaries of the mysterious Yang-tsz Kiang lying to their
south; because the father of the adventurous Emperor who is
supposed to have explored Tartary in ggo B.C. certainly lost his
life in attempting to explore the region of Hankow, as will be
explained in due course.

All this, however, is matter of side issue. The main point we wish
to insist upon, by way of introduction, in endeavouring to give
our readers an intelligible notion of early Chinese development,
is that Chinese beginnings were like any other great nation's
beginnings--like, for instance, the Greek beginnings; these were
centred at first round an extremely petty area, which, gradually
expanding, threw out its tentacles and branches, and led to the
final inclusion of the mysterious Danube, the gloomy Russian
plain, the Tin Islands, Ultima Thule, and the Atlantic coasts into
one fairly harmonious Graeco-Roman civilization. Or it may be
compared to the development of the petty Anglo-Saxon settlements
and kingdoms and sub-kingdoms, and their gradual political
absorption of the surrounding Celts. In any case it may be said
that there is nothing startlingly new about it; it followed a
normal course.




CHAPTER II

SHIFTING SCENES

Having now seen how the Chinese people, taking advantage of the
material and moral growth naturally following upon a settled
industrial existence, and above all upon the exclusive possession
of a written character, gradually imposed themselves as rulers
upon the ignorant tribes around them, let us see to what families
these Chinese emigrant adventurers or colonial satraps belonged.
To begin with the semi-Tartar power in the River Wei Valley--
destined six hundred years later to conquer the whole of China as
we know it to-day--the ruling caste claimed descent from the most
ancient (and of course partly mythological) Emperors of China; but
for over a thousand years previous to 842 B.C. this remote branch
of the Chinese race had become scattered and almost lost amongst
the Tartars. However, a generation or two before our opening
period, one of these princes had served the then ruling imperial
dynasty as a sort of guardian to the western frontier, as a rearer
of horses for the metropolitan stud, and perhaps even as a guide
on the occasion of imperial expeditions into Tartarland. The
successor of the Emperor who was driven from his capital in 842
B.C. about twenty years later employed this western satrap to
chastise the Tartar nomads whose revolt had in part led to the
imperial flight. After suffering some disasters, the conductors of
this series of expeditions were at last successful, and in 815
B.C. the title of "Warden of the Western Marches" was officially
conferred on the ruler for the time being of this western state,
who in 777 B.C. had the further honour of seeing one of his
daughters married to the Emperor himself. This political move on
the part of the Emperor was unwise, for it led indirectly to the
Tartars, who were frequently engaged in war with the Warden,
interfering in the quarrels about the imperial succession, in
which question the Tartars naturally thought they had a right to
interfere in the interests of their own people. The upshot of it
was that in 771 B.C. the Emperor was killed by the Tartars in
battle, and it was only by securing the military assistance of the
semi-Tartar Warden of the Marches that the imperial dynasty was
saved. As it was, the Emperor's capital was permanently moved east
from the immediate neighbourhood of what we call Si-ngan Fu in
Shen Si province to the immediate neighbourhood of Ho-nan Fu in
the modern Ho Nan province; and as a reward for his services the
Warden was granted nearly the whole of the original imperial
patrimony west of the Yellow River bend and on both sides of the
Wei Valley. This was also in the year 771 B.C., and this is really
one of the great pivot-points in Chinese history, of equal weight
with the almost contemporaneous founding of Rome, and the gradual
substitution of a Roman centre for a Greek centre in the
development and civilization of the Far West. The new capital was
not, however, a new city. Shortly after the imperial dynasty
gained the possession of China in 1122 B.C., it had been surveyed,
and some of the regalia had been taken thither; this, with a view
of making it one of the capitals at least, if not the sole
capital.

As Chinese names sound uncouth to our Western ears, and will,
therefore, in these introductory chapters only be used sparingly
and gradually, it becomes correspondingly difficult to explain
historical phenomena adequately whilst endeavouring to avoid as
far as possible the use of such unintelligible names: it will be
well, then, to sum up the situation, and even repeat a little, so
that the reader may assimilate the main points without fatigue or
repulsion. The reigning dynasty of Chou had secured the adhesion
of the thousand or more of Chinese vassal princes in 1122 B.C.,
and had in other words "conquered" China by invitation, much in
the same way, and for very much the same general reasons, that
William III. had' accepted the conquest of the British Isles; that
is to say, because the people were dissatisfied with their
legitimate ruler and his house. But, before this conquest, the
vassal princes of Chou had occupied practically the same
territory, and had stood in the same relation to the imperial
dynasty subsequently ousted by them in 1122, that the Wardens of
the Marches occupied and stood in when the imperial house of Chou
in turn fled east in 771 B.C. The Shang dynasty thus ousted by the
Chou princes in 1122, had for like misgovernment driven out the
Hia dynasty in 1766 B.C. Thus, at the time when the Wardens of the
Marches (whose real territorial title was Princes of Ts'in)
practically put the imperial power into commission in 771 B.C.,
the two old-fashioned dynasties of Shang and Chou had already
ruled patriarchally for almost exactly one thousand years, and
nothing of either a very startling, or a very definite, character
had taken place at all within the comparatively narrow area
described in our first chapter.

From this date of 771 B.C., and for five hundred years more down
to 250 B.C., when the Chou dynasty was extinguished, the rule of
the feudal Emperors of China was almost purely nominal, and except
in so far as this or that powerful vassal made use of the moral,
and even occasionally of the military power of the metropolitan
district when it suited his purpose, the imperial ruler was
chiefly exercised in matters of form and ritual; for under all
three patriarchal dynasties it was on form and ritual that the
idea of government had always been based. Of course the other
powerful satraps--especially the more distant ones, those not
bearing the imperial clan-name, and those more or less tinged with
barbarian usages--learning by degrees what a helpless and
powerless personage the Emperor had now become, lost no time in
turning the novel situation to their own advantage: it is
consequently now that begins the "tyrant period," or the period of
the "Five Dictators," as the Chinese historians loosely term it:
that is to say, the period during which each satrap who had the
power to do so took the lead of the satrap body in general, and
gave out that he was restoring the imperial prestige, representing
the Emperor's majesty, carrying out the behests of reason,
compelling the other vassals to do their duty, keeping up the
legitimist sacrifices, and so on. In other words, the population
of China had grown so enormously, both by peaceful in-breeding and
by imperceptible absorption of kindred races, that more elbow-room
was needed; more freedom from the shackles of ritual, rank, and
feudal caste; more independence, and more liberty to take
advantage of local or changed traditions. Besides all this, the
art of writing, though still clumsy, expensive, and confined in
its higher and literary aspects to the governing classes, had
recently become simplified and improved; the salt trade, iron
trade, fish industry, silk industry, grain trade, and art of usury
had spread from one state to the other, and had developed: though
the land roads were bad or non-existent, there were great numbers
of itinerant dealers in cattle and army provisions. In a word,
material civilization had made great strides during the thousand
years of patriarchal rule immediately preceding the critical
period comprised between the year 842 B.C. and the year 771 B.C.
The voices of the advocates and the preachers of ancient
patriarchal virtues were as of men crying in a wilderness of
substantial prosperity and manly ambition. Thus political and
natural forces combined with each other to prepare the way for a
radical change, and this period of incipient revolution is
precisely the period (722-480) treated of in Confucius' history,
the first history of China--meagre though it be--which deals with
definite human facts, instead of "beating the air" (as the Chinese
say) with sermons and ritualistic exhortations.




CHAPTER III

THE NORTHERN POWERS

We have already alluded to a princely family, of the same clan-
name as the Chou Emperor, which had settled in the southern part
of modern Shan Si province, and had thus acted as a sort of buffer
state to the imperial domain by keeping off from it the Tartar-
Turk tribes in the north. This family was enfeoffed by the new
Chou dynasty in 1106 B.C. to replace the extremely ancient
princely house which had reigned there ever since the earliest
Emperors ruled from that region (2300 B.C.), but which had
resisted the Chou conquest, and had been exterminated. Nothing
definite is known of what transpired in this principality
subsequently to the infeoffment of 1106 B.C., and prior to the
events of 771 B.C., at which latter date the ruling prince,
hearing of the disaster to his kinsman the Emperor, went to meet
that monarch's fugitive successor, and escorted him eastwards to
his new capital. This metropolis had, as we have explained
already, been marked out some 340 years before this, and had
continued to be one of the chief spiritual and political centres
in the imperial domain; but for some reason it had never before
771 B.C. been officially declared a capital, or at all events
_the_ capital. Confucius, in his history, does not mention at
all the petty semi-Tartar state of which we are now speaking
before 671 B.C., and all that we know of its doings during this
century of time is that rival factions, family intrigues, and
petty annexations at the cost of various Tartar tribes, and of
small, but ancient, Chinese principalities, occupied most of its
time. It must be repeated here, however, that, notwithstanding
Tartar neighbours, the valley of the River Fen had been the seat
of several of China's oldest semi-mythical emperors-possibly even
of dynasties,-and at no time do the Tartars seem to have ever
succeeded in ousting the Chinese from South Shan Si. The official
name of the region after the Chou infeoffment of 1106 B.C. was the
State of Tsin, and it was roughly divided off to the west from its
less civilized colleague Ts'in by the Yellow River, on the right
bank of which Tsin still possessed a number of towns. It is
particularly difficult for Europeans to realize the sharp
distinction in sound between these two names, the more especially
because we have in the West no conception whatever of the effect
of tone upon a syllable It may be explained, however, that the
sonant initial and even-voiced tone in the one case, contrasted
with the surd initial and the scaled tone in the other, involves
to the Chinese mind a distinction quite as clear in all dialects
as the European distinction in all languages between the two
states of Prussia and Russia, or between the two peoples Swedes
and Swiss: it is entirely the imperfection of our Western
alphabet, not at all that of the spoken sounds or the ideographs,
that is at fault.

The Yellow River, running from north to south, not only roughly
separated from each other these two Tartar-Chinese buffer states
in the north-west, but the same Yellow River, flowing east, and
its tributary, the River Wei, also formed a rough boundary between
the two states of Tsin and Ts'in (together) to the north, and the
innumerable petty but ancient Chinese principalities surrounding
the imperial domain to the south. These principalities or
settlements were scattered about among the head-waters of the Han
River and the Hwai River systems, and their manifest destiny, if
they needed expansion, clearly drove them further southwards,
following the courses of all these head-waters, towards the Yang-
tsz Kiang. But, more than that, the Yellow River, after thus
flowing east for several hundred miles, turned sharp north in
long. 114ø E., as already explained, and thence to the north-east
formed a second rough boundary between Tsin and nearly all the
remaining orthodox Chinese states. Tsin's chief task was thus to
absorb into its administrative system all the Tartar raiders that
ventured south to the Yellow River.

But there was a third northern state engaged in the task of
keeping back the Tartar tribes, and in developing a civilization
of its own-based largely, of course, upon Chinese principles, but
modified so as to meet local exigencies. This was the state of
Ts'i, enclosed between the Yellow River to the west and the sea to
the east, but extending much farther north than the boundaries of
modern Shan Tung province, if, indeed, the embouchure of the
Yellow River, near modern Tientsin, did not form its northern
boundary; but the promontory or peninsula, as well as all the
coast, was still in the hands of "barbarian" tribes (now long
since civilized and assimilated), of which for many centuries past
no separate trace has remained. We have no means of judging now
whether these "barbarians" were uncultured, close kinsmen of the
orthodox Chinese; or remote kinsmen; or quite foreign. When the
Chou principality received an invitation by acclamation to conquer
and administer China in 1122, an obscure political worthy from
these eastern parts placed his services as adviser and organizer
at the command of the new Chou Emperor, in return for which
important help he received the fief of Ts'i. Although obscure,
this man traced his descent back to the times when (2300 B.C.) his
ancestors received fiefs from the most ancient Emperors. From that
time down to the year 1122 B.C., and onwards to the events of 771
B.C., nothing much beyond the fact of the Chou infeoffment is
recorded; but after the Emperor had been killed by the Tartar-
Tibetans, this state of Ts'i also began to grow restive; and the
seventh century before Christ opens with the significant statement
that "Ts'in, Tsin, and Ts'i, now begin to be powerful states." Of
the three, Tsin alone bore the imperial Chou clan-name of
_Ki_.

[Illustration: Map.

1. In 2200 B.C. the Yellow River was divided at the point where
our map begins, and the main waters were conducted to the River
Chang, which thus formed one river with it. But a secondary branch
was conducted eastwards to the Rivers T'ah and Tsi (now, 1908, the
Yellow River).

2. In 602 B.C. this secondary branch suddenly turned north,
followed the line of the present (1908) Grand Canal, and joined
the main branch, i.e. the River Chang.

3. The capitals of Ts'i and Lu are shown. The Yellow River divided
Tsin from Ts'i, but Tartars harried the whole dividing line.]

North of the Yellow River, where it then entered the sea near the
modern treaty-port of Tientsin, there was yet another great
vassal state, called Yen, which had been given by the founders of
the Chou dynasty to a very distinguished blood relative and
faithful supporter: this noble prince has been immortalized in
beautiful language on account of the rigid justice of his
decisions given under the shade of an apple-tree: it was the
practice in those days to render into popular song the chief
events of the times, and it is not improbable, indeed, that this
Saga literature was the only popular record of the past, until, as
already hinted, after 827 B.C., writing became simplified and thus
more diffused, instead of being confined to solemn manifestoes and
commandments cast or carved on bronze or stone.

"Oh! woodman, spare that tree,
Touch not a single bough,
His wisdom lingers now."

The words, singularly like those of our own well-known song, are
known to every Chinese school-boy, and with hundreds, even
thousands, of other similar songs, which used to be daily quoted
as precedents by the statesmen of that primitive period in their
political intercourse with each other, were later pruned,
purified, and collated by Confucius, until at last they received
classical rank in the "Book of Odes" or the "Classic of Poetry,"
containing a mere tenth part of the old "Odes" as they used to be
passed from mouth to ear.

Even less is known of the early days of Yen than is known of
Ts'in, Tsin, and Ts'i; there is not even a vague tradition to
suggest who ruled it, or what sort of a place it was, before the
Chou prince was sent there; all that is anywhere recorded is that
it was a very small, poor, and feeble region, dovetailed in
between Tsin and Ts'i, and exposed north to the harassing attacks
of savages and Coreans (_i.e._ tribes afterwards enumerated
as forming part of Corea when the name of Corea became known). The
mysterious region is only mentioned here at all on account of its
distinguished origin, in order to show that the Chinese
cultivators had from the very earliest times apparently succeeded
in keeping the bulk of the Tartars to the left bank of the Yellow
River all the way from the Desert to the sea; because later on
(350 B.C.) Yen actually did become a powerful state; and finally,
because if any very early notions concerning Corea and Japanese
islands had ever crept vaguely into China at all, it must have
been through this state of Yen, which was coterminous with Liao
Tung and Manchuria. The great point to remember is, the extensive
territory between the Great Wall and the Yellow River then lay
almost entirely beyond the pale of ancient China, and it was only
when Ts'in, Tsin, Ts'i, and Yen had to look elsewhere than to the
Emperor for protection from Tartar inroads that the centre of
political gravity was changed once and for ever from the centre of
China to the north.

We know nothing of the precise causes which conduced to unusual
Tartar activity at the dawn of Chinese true history: in the
absence of any Tartar knowledge of writing, it seems impossible
now that we ever can know it. Still less are we in a position to
speculate profitably how far the movements on the Chinese
frontier, in 800-600 B.C., may be connected with similar
restlessness on the Persian and Greek frontiers, of which, again,
we know nothing very illuminating or specific. It is certain that
the Chinese had no conception of a Tartar empire, or of a coherent
monarchy, under the vigorous dominion of a great military genius,
until at least five centuries after the Tartars, killed a Chinese
Emperor in battle as related (771 B.C.). It is even uncertain what
were the main race distinctions of the nomad aggregations, loosely
styled by us "Tartars," for the simple reason that the ambiguous
Chinese terminology does not enable us to select a more specific
word. Nevertheless, the Chinese do make certain distinctions; and,
as what remains of aboriginal populations in the north, south,
east, and west of China points strongly to the probability of
populations in the main occupying the same sites that they did
3000 years ago (unless where specific facts point to a contrary
conclusion), we may fairly assume that the distribution was then
very much as now-beginning from the east, (1) Japanese, (2)
Corean, (3) Tungusic, (4) Mongol-Turkish, (5) Turkish, (6)
Turkish-Tibetan, and Mongol-Tibetan (or Mongol-Turkoid Tibetan),
(7) Tibetan. The Chinese use four terms to express these relative
quantities, which may be called X, Y, Z, and A. The term "X," pure
and simple, never under any circumstances refers to any but
Tibetans (of whom at this time the Chinese had no recorded
knowledge whatever except by name); but "X + Y" also refers to
tribes in Tibetan regions. The term "West Y" seems to mean
Tibetan-Tartars, and the term "North Y" seems to mean Mongoloid-
Tunguses. There is a third Y term, "Dog Y," evidently meaning
Tartars of some kind, and not Tibetans of any sort. The term "Z"
never refers to Tibetans, pure or mixed, but "Y + Z" loosely
refers to Turks, Mongols, and Tunguses. The terms "Red Z", "White
Z," and "North Z" seem to indicate Turks; and what is more, these
colour distinctions--probably of clothing or head-gear-continue to
quite modern times, and always in connection with Turks or Mongol-
Turks. The fourth term "A" never occurs before the third century
before Christ, and refers to all Tartars, Coreans, etc.; but not
to Tibetans: it need not, therefore, be discussed at present. The
modern province of Sz Ch'wan was absolutely unknown even by name;
but several centuries later, as we shall shortly see, it turned
out to be a state of considerable magnitude, with quite a little
imperial history of its own: probably it was with this unknown
state that the bulk of the Tibetans tried conclusions, if they
tried them with China at all.

Be that as it may, the present wish is to make clear that at the
first great turning-point in genuine Chinese history the whole of
north and west China was in the hands of totally unknown powers,
who completely shut in the Middle Kingdom; who only manifested
themselves at all in the shape of occasional bodies of raiders;
and who, if they had any knowledge, direct or indirect, of India,
Tibet, Turkestan, Siberia, Persia, etc., kept it strictly to
themselves, and in any case were incapable of communicating it in
writing to the frontier Chinese populations of the four buffer
states above enumerated.




CHAPTER IV

THE SOUTHERN POWER

But the collapse of the imperial power in 771 B.C. led to
restlessness in the south as well as in the north, north-western,
and north-eastern regions: except for a few Chinese adventurers
and colonists, these were exclusively inhabited by nomad Tartars,
and perhaps some Tibetans, destitute of fixed residences, cities,
and towns; ignorant of cultivation, agriculture, and letters; and
roving about from pasture to pasture with their flocks and herds,
finding excitement and diversion chiefly in periodical raids upon
their more settled southern and western neighbours.

The only country south of the federated Chinese princes in Ho Nan
province (as we now call it) was the "Jungle" or "Thicket," a term
which vaguely designated the lower waters of the Han River system,
much as, with ourselves, the "Lowlands" or the "Netherlands" did,
and still does, designate the outlying marches of the English and
German communities. "Jungle" is still the elegant literary name
for Hu Peh, just as Ts'in, Tsin, and Ts'i are for Shen Si, Shan
Si, and Shan Tung. The King of the Jungle, like the Warden of the
Western Marches, traced his descent far back to the same ancient
monarchs whose blood ran also in the veins of the imperial house
of Chou; and moreover this Jungle King's ancestors had served the
founders of the Chou dynasty in 1150 B.C., whilst they were still
hesitating whether to accept the call to empire: hence in later
times (530 B.C.) the King made it a grievance that his family had
not received from the founder of the Chou dynasty presents
symbolical of equality of birth, as had the Tsin and Lu (South
Shan Tung) houses. If any tribes, south, south-east, or south-west
of this vague Jungle, whose administrative centre at first lay
within a hundred miles' radius of the modern treaty-port of
Ich'ang, were in any way known to Central China, or were affected
by orthodox Chinese civilization, it was and must have been
entirely through this kingdom of the Jungle, and in a second-hand
or indirect way. The Jungle was as much a buffer to the south as
Ts'in was to the north-west, Tsin to the north, and Ts'i to the
north-east. The bulk of the population was in one sense non-
Chinese; that is, it was probably a mixture of the many
uncivilized mountain tribes (all speaking monosyllabic and tonic
dialects like the Chinese) who still survive in every one of the
provinces south of the Yang-tsz Kiang; but the ruling caste, whose
administrative centre lay to the north of these tribes, though
affected by the grossness of their barbarous surroundings, were
manifestly more or less orthodox Chinese in origin and sympathy,
and, even at this early period (771 B.C.), possessed a considerable
culture, a knowledge of Chinese script, and a general capacity
to live a settled economical existence. As far back as 880 B.C.
the King of the Jungle is recorded to have governed or conciliated
the populations between the Han and the Yang-tsz Rivers; but,
though he arrogated to himself for a time the title of "Emperor" or
"King" in his own dominions, he confessed himself to be a barbarian,
and disclaimed any share in the honorific system of titles, living or
posthumous, having vogue in China, reserving it for his successors
to assert higher rights when they should feel strong enough. Like
an eastern Charlemagne, he divided his empire between his three
sons; and this empire, which gradually extended all along the
Yang-tsz down to its mouths, may have included in one of its
three subdivisions a part at least of the Annamese race, as will be
suggested more in detail anon.

The first really historical king, who once more arrogated the
supreme title in 704 B.C., took advantage of imperial weakness to
extend his conquests not only to the south but to the north of the
River Han, attacking petty Chinese principalities, and boldly
claiming recognition by the Emperor of equality in title. "I am a
barbarian," said he, "and I will avail myself of the dissensions
among the federal princes to inspect Chinese ways for myself." The
Emperor displayed some irritation at this claim of equal rank, but
the King retorted by referring to the services rendered by his
(the King's) ancestor, some five hundred years earlier, to the
Emperor's ancestor, virtual founder of the Chou dynasty. In 689
B.C. the next king moved his capital from its old site above the
Ich'ang gorges to the commanding central situation now known as
King-thou Fu, just above the treaty-port of Sha-shi': this place
historically continues the use of the old word Jungle (_King_),
and has been all through the present Manchu dynasty (1644-1908)
the military residence of a Tartar-General with a Banner garrison;
that is, a garrison of privileged Tartar soldiers living in cantonments,
and exempt from the ordinary laws, or, at least, the application of
them. It is only in 684 B.C. that the Jungle state is first honoured
with mention in Confucius' history: it was, indeed, impossible then
to ignore its existence, because, for the first time in the annals
of China, Chinese federal princes between the Han River and the
westernmost head-waters of the Hwai River had been deliberately
annexed by these Jungle "barbarians." History for the next 450 years
from this date consists mainly of the intricate narration how Ts'in, Tsin,
Ts'i, and the Jungle struggled, first for hegemony, and finally for the
possession of all China, The Jungle was now called Ts'u.




CHAPTER V

EVIDENCE OF ECLIPSES

Having now shown, as shortly and as intelligibly as we can, how
the germs of Chinese development were sown at the dawn of true
history, let us proceed to examine how far that history, as it has
come down to us, contains within it testimony to its own truth. We
shall revert to the description of wars and ambitions in due
course; but, as so obscure a subject as early Chinese civilization
is only palatable to most Western readers in small, varied, and
sugared doses, we shall for the moment vary the nourishment
offered, and say a few words upon eclipses.

Confucius, whose bald "Spring and Autumn" annals, as expanded by
three separate commentators (one a junior contemporary of
himself), is really the chief authority for the period 722-468
B.C., was born on the 20th day after the eclipse of the sun which
took place in the 10th month of 552 B.C., or the 27th of the 8th
moon as worked out to-day (for 1908 this means the 22nd
September). Confucius himself records thirty-seven eclipses of the
sun between 720 and 481, those of 709, 601, and 549 being total.
Of course, as Confucius primarily recorded the eclipses as seen
from his own petty vassal state of Lu in Shan Tung province (lat.
35" 40' N., long, 117" E.), any one endeavouring to identify these
eclipses, and to compare them with Julian or Gregorian dates,
must, in making the necessary calculations, bear this important
fact in mind. It so happens that nearly one-third of Confucius'
thirty-seven eclipses are recorded as having taken place between
the two total eclipses of 601 and 549. This being so, I referred
the list to an obliging officer attached to the Royal Observatory,
who has kindly furnished me with the following comparative list:-

CONFUCIUS' DATE. OPPOLZER'S JULIAN DATE.
B.C. 601, 7th moon.---600, September 20.
" 599, 4th " ---598, March 5.
" 592, 6th " ---591, April 17.
" 575, 6th " ---574, May 9.
" 574, 12th " ---573, October 22.
" 559, 2nd " ---558, January 14.
" 558, 8th " ---557, June 29.
" 553, 10th " ---552, August 31.
" 552, 9th "
" 552, 10th " ---551, August 20.
" 550, 2nd " ---549, January 5.
" 549, 7th " ---548, April 19.

It will be observed that there is no Oppolzer's date to compare
with the first of the two eclipses of 552; this is because I
omitted to notice that there had been recorded in the "Springs and
Autumns" two so close together, and therefore I did not include it
in the list sent to the Observatory; but with the exception of the
total eclipse of 601, all the other eclipses, so far as days of
the moon and month go, are as consistent with each other as are
modern Chinese dates with European (Julian) dates. As regards the
year, Oppolzer's dates are the "astronomical" dates, that is, the
astronomical year--x is the same as the year (x + 1) B.C.; or, in
other words, the year _of_ Christ's birth is, for certain
astronomical exactitude purposes, interpolated between the years 1
B.C. and A.D. 1, as we vulgarly compute them: that is to say, the
eclipses of the sun recorded 2,400 years ago by Confucius, from
notes and annals preserved in his native state's archives as far
back as 700 B.C., are found to be almost without exception fairly
correct, with a uniform "error" of about one month, despite the
fact that attempts were made by the First August Emperor to
destroy all historical literature in 213 B.C. This being so in the
matter of a dozen eclipses, there still remain two dozen for
specialists to experiment upon, not to mention comets and other
celestial phenomena. From this collateral evidence, imperfect
though it be, we are reasonably entitled to assume that the three
expanded versions of Confucius' history are trustworthy, or at the
very least written in the best of faith.

Just as our mathematicians find no difficulty either in
foretelling or retrospecting eclipses to a minute, so does the
ancient "sixty" cycle, which the Chinese have from time immemorial
used for computing or noting days and years, enable them, or for
the matter of that ourselves, to calculate back unerringly any
desired day. Thus, suppose the 1st January, 1908, is the 37th day
of the perpetual cycle of sixty days; then, if the Chinese
historians say that an eclipse took place on the first day of the
new moon, which began the 9th Chinese month of the year
corresponding in the main to our 800 B.C., and that the 1st day of
the moon was also the 37th day of the sixty-day perpetual cycle,
all we have to do is to take roughly six cycles for each year, six
thousand cycles for each thousand years, allowing at the same time
two extra cycles every third year for intercalary moons, and then
dealing with the fractions or balance of days. If our calculation
does not bring the two 37th cyclic days together accurately, we
must of course go into the question of how and when the Chinese
calendars were altered, a subject that will be treated of in a


 


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