After the death of the Second Protector in 628 B.C., there was a

continuous struggle between Tsin and Ts'in on the one hand, and

between Tsin and Ts'u on the other. Meanwhile Ts'i had all its own

work cut out in order to keep the Tartars off the right bank of

the Yellow River in its lower course, and in order to protect the

orthodox Chinese states, Lu, Sung, Wei, etc., from their attacks;

but Ts'i never again after this date put in a formal claim to be

Protector, although in 610 she led a coalition of princes against

an offending member, and thus practically acted as Protector.

In addition to the Chinese adviser at the disposal of Ts'in, in

the year 626 the King (or a king) of the Tartars supplied Duke Muh

with a very able Tartar adviser of Tsin descent; i.e. his

ancestors had in past times migrated to Tartarland, though he

himself still "spoke the Tsin dialect," and must have had

considerable literary capacity, as he was an author. Ts'in was

now, in addition to being, if only informally, a federal Chinese

state, also supreme suzerain over all the Tartar principalities

within reach; well supplied, moreover, with expert advisers for

both classes of work. All this is important in view of the pre-

eminency of Ts'in when the time came, 400 years later, to abolish

the meticulous feudal system altogether.

CHAPTER XIV

MORE ON PROTECTORS

The Five Tyrants, or Protectors, are usually considered to be the

five personages we have mentioned; to wit, in order of succession,

the Marquess of Ts'i (679-643), under whose reign the great

economist, statesman, and philosopher Kwan-tsz raised this far

eastern part of China to a hitherto unheard-of pitch of material

prosperity; the Marquess of Tsin (632-628), a romantic prince,

more Turkish than Chinese, who was the first vassal prince openly

to treat the Emperor as a puppet; the Duke of Sung (died 637),

representing the imperial Shang dynasty ejected by the Chou family

in 1122, whose ridiculous chivalry failed, however, to secure him

the effective support of the other Chinese princes; the Earl of

Ts'in (died 621) who was, as we see, quietly creating a great

Tartar dominion, and assimilating it to Chinese ways in the west;

and the King of Ts'u (died 591), who, besides taking his place

amongst the recognized federal princes, and annexing innumerable

petty Chinese principalities in the Han River and Hwai River

basins, had been for several generations quietly extending his

dominions at the expense of what we now call the provinces of Sz

Ch'wan, Kiang Si, Hu Kwang-perhaps even Yun Nan and Kwei Chou;

Certainly Kiang Su and Cheh Kiang, and possibly in a loose way the

coast regions of modern Fuh Kien and the Two Kwang; but it cannot

be too often repeated that if any thing intimate was known of the

Yang-tsz basin, it was only Ts'u (in its double character of

independent local empire as well as Chinese federal prince) that

knew, or could have known, any thing about it; just as, if any

thing specific was known of the Far West, Turkestan, the Tarim

valley, and the Desert, it was only Ts'in (in its double character

of independent Tartar empire as well as Chinese federal prince)

that knew, or could know, any thing about them. Ts'i and Tsin were

also Tartar powers, at least in the sense that they knew how to

keep off the particular Tartars known to them, and how to make

friendly alliances with them, thus availing themselves, on the one

hand, of Tartar virility, and faithful on the other to orthodox

Chinese culture. So that, with the exception of the pedantic Duke

of Sung, who was summarily snuffed out after a year or two of

brief light by the lusty King of Ts'u, all the nominal Five

Protectors of China were either half-barbarian rulers or had

passed through the crucible of barbarian ordeals. Finally, so

vague were the claims and services of Sung, Ts'u, and Ts'in, from

a protector point of view, that for the purposes of this work, we

only really recognize two, the First Protector (of Ts'i) and,

after a struggle, the Second Protector (of Tsin): at most a

third,--Ts'u.

But although the Chinese historians thus loosely confine the Five-

Protector period to less than a century of time, it is a fact that

Ts'u and Tsin went on obstinately struggling for the hegemony, or

for practical predominance, for at least another 200 years;

besides, Ts'in, Ts'u, and Sung were never formally nominated by

the Emperor as Protectors, nor were they ever accepted as such by

the Chinese federal princes in the permanent and definite way that

Ts'i and Tsin had been and were accepted. Moreover, the barbarian

states of Wu and Yüeh each in turn acted very effectively as

Protector, and are never included in the Five-Great-Power series.

The fact is, the Chinese have never grasped the idea of principles

in history: their annals are mere diaries of events; and when once

an apparently definite "period" is named by an annalist, they go

on using it, quite regardless of its inconsistency when confronted

with facts adverse to a logical acceptance of it.

The situation was this: Tsin and Ts'u were at perpetual

loggerheads about the small Chinese states that lay between them,

more especially about the state of Cheng, which, though small, was

of quite recent imperial stock, and was, moreover, well supplied

with brains. Tsin and Ts'in were at perpetual loggerheads about

the old Tsin possessions on the west bank of the Yellow River,

which, running from the north to the south, lay between them; and

about their rival claims to influence the various nomadic Tartar

tribes living along both the banks, Tsin and Ts'i were often

engaged in disputes about Lu, Wei, and other orthodox states

situated in the Lower Yellow River valley running from the west to

the east and north-east; also in questions concerning eastern

barbarian states inhabiting the whole coast region, and concerning

the petty Chinese states which had degenerated, and whose manners

savoured of barbarian ways. Thus Ts'in and Ts'u, and also to some

extent Ts'i and Ts'u, had a regular tendency to ally themselves

against Tsin's flanks, and it was therefore always Tsin's policy

as the "middle man" to obstruct communications between Ts'in and

Ts'u, and between Ts'i and Ts'u. In 580 Tsin devised a means of

playing off a similar flanking game upon Ts'u: negotiations were

opened with Wu, which completely barbarous state only begins to

appear in history at all at about this period, all the kings

having manifestly phonetic barbarian names, which mean absolutely

nothing (beyond conveying the sound) as expressed in Chinese, Wu

was taught the art of war, as we have seen, by (page 34) a Ts'u

traitor who had fled to Tsin and taken service there; and the King

of Wu soon made things so uncomfortable for Ts'u that the latter

in turn tried by every means to block the way between Tsin and Wu.

Within a single generation Wu was so civilized that one of the

royal princes was sent the rounds of the Chinese states as special

ambassador, charged, under the convenient cloak of seeking for

civilization, ritual, and music, with the duty of acquiring

political and strategical knowledge. This prince so favourably

impressed the orthodox statesmen of Ts'i, Lu, Tsin, and Wei (the

ruling family of this state, like that of Sung, was, until it

revolted in 1106 B.C. against the new Chou dynasty, of Shang

dynasty origin, and the Yellow River ran through it northwards),

that he was everywhere deferentially received _as_ an equal:

his tomb is still in existence, about ten miles from the treaty-

port of Chinkiang, and the inscription upon it, in ancient

characters, was written by Confucius himself, who, though a boy of

eight when the Wu prince visited Lu in 544, may well have seen the

prince in the flesh elsewhere, for the latter lived to prevent a

war with Ts'u in 485; i.e. he lived to within six years of

Confucius' death: he is known, too, to have visited Tsin on a

spying mission in 515 B.C. The original descent of the first

voluntarily barbarous Wu princes from the same grandfather as the

Chou emperors would afford ample basis for the full recognition of

a Wu prince by the orthodox as their equal, especially when his

manners were softened by rites and music. It was like an oriental

prince being feted and invested in Europe, so long as he should

conform to the conventional dress and mannerisms of "society."

Just as Wu had been quietly submissive to Ts'u until the

opportunity came to revolt, so did the still more barbarous state

of Yueh, lying to the south-east of and tributary to Wu as her

mesne lord, eagerly seize the opportunity of attacking Wu when the

common suzerain, Ts'u, required it. The wars of Wu and Yueh are

almost entirely naval, and, so far as the last-named state is

concerned, it is never reported as having used war-chariots at

all. Wu adopted the Chinese chariot as rapidly as it had re-

adopted the Chinese civilization, abandoned by the first colonist

princes in 1200 B.C.; but of course these chariots were only for

war in China, on the flat Chinese plains; they were totally

impracticable in mountainous countries, except along the main

routes, and useless (as Major Bruce shows) in regions cut up by

gulleys; even now no one ever sees a two-wheeled vehicle in the

Shanghai-Ningpo region. It must, therefore, always be remembered

that Wu, though barbarous in its population, was, in its origin as

an organized system of rule, a colony created by certain ancestors

of the founder of the Chou dynasty, who had voluntarily gone off

to carve out an appanage in the Jungle; i.e. in the vague unknown

dominion later called Ts'u, of which dominion all coast regions

were a part, so far as they could be reduced to submission. This

gave the Kings of Wu, though barbarian, a pretext for claiming

equality with, and even seniority over Tsin, the first Chou-born

prince of which was junior in descent to most of the other

enfeoffed vassals of the imperial clan-name. In 502 Wu armies even

threatened the northern state of Ts'i, and asserted in China

generally a brief authority akin to that of Protector. Ts'i was

obliged to buy itself off by marrying a princess of the blood to

the heir-apparent of Wu, an act which two centuries later excited

the disgust of the philosopher Mencius. The great Ts'i statesman

and writer Yen-tsz, whom we have already mentioned more than once,

died in 500, and earlier in that year Confucius had become chief

counsellor of Lu, which state, on account of Confucius' skill as a

diplomat, nearly obtained the Protectorate. It was owing to the

fear of this that the assassination of the Lu prince was attempted

that year, as narrated in Chapter IX. In order to understand how

Wu succeeded in reaching Lu and Ts'i, it must be recollected that

the river Sz, which still runs from east to west past Confucius's

birthplace, and now simply feeds the Grand Canal, then flowed

south-east along the line of the present canal and entered the

Hwai River near Sü-chou. Moreover, there was at times boat-

communication between the Sz and the Yellow River, though the

precise channel is not now known. Consequently, the Wu fleets had

no difficulty in sailing northwards first by sea and then up the

Hwai and Sz Rivers. Besides, in 485, the King of Wu began what we

now call the Grand Canal by joining as a beginning the Yang-tsz

River with the Hwai River, and then carrying the canal beyond the

Hwai to the state of Sung, which state was then disputing with Lu

the possession of territory on the east bank of the Sz, whilst

Ts'u was pushing her annexations up to the west bank of the same

river. There were in all twelve minor orthodox states between the

Sz and the Hwai. In 482 the all-powerful King of Wu held a genuine

durbar as Protector, at a place in modern Ho Nan province, north

of the Yellow River as it now runs, but at that time a good

distance to the south-east of it. This is one of the most

celebrated meetings in Chinese history, partly because Wu

successfully asserted political pre-eminence over Tsin; partly

because Confucius falsifies the true facts out of shame (as we

have seen he did when Ts'u similarly seized the first place over

Tsin); and partly owing to the shrewd diplomacy of the King of Wu,

who had learnt by express messenger that the King of Ytieh was

marching on his capital, and who had the difficult double task to

accomplish of carrying out a "bluff," and operating a retreat

without showing his weak hand to either side, or losing his army

exposed between two foes.

In 473, after long and desperate fighting, Wu was, however, at

last annihilated by Yiieh, which state was now unanimously voted

Protector, _Vae victis!_ The Yueh capital was promptly removed

from near the modern Shao-hing (west of Ningpo) far away north

to what is now practically the German colony of Kiao Chou; but,

though a maritime power of very great-strength, Yiieh never succeeded

in establishing any real land influence in the Hwai Valley. During her

short protectorate she rectified the River Sz question by forcing

Sung to make over to Lu the land on the east bank of the River Sz.

CHAPTER XV

STATE INTERCOURSE

Whatever may be the reason why details of interstate movement are

lacking up to 842 B.C., it is certain that, from the date of the

Emperor's flight eastwards in 771, the utmost activity prevailed

between state and state within the narrow area to which, as we

have seen, the federated Chinese empire was confined. Confucius'

history, covering the 250-year period subsequent to 722, consists

largely of statements that this duke visited that country, or

returned from it, or drew up a treaty with it, or negotiated a

marriage with it. "Society," in a political sense, consisted of

the four great powers, Ts'in, Tsin, Ts'i, and Ts'u, surrounding

the purely Chinese enclave; and of the innumerable petty Chinese

states, mostly of noble and ancient lineage, only half a dozen of

them of any size, which formed the enclave in question, and were

surrounded by Ts'in, Tsin, Ts'i, and Ts'u, to the west, north,

east, and south. Secondary states in extent and in military power,

like Lu, CHÊNG, and Wei, whilst having orthodox and in some cases

barbarian sub-vassals of their own, were themselves, if not

vassals to, at all events under the predominant influence of, one

or the other of the four great powers. Thus Lu was at first nearly

always a handmaid of Ts'i, but later fell under the influence of

Tsin, Ts'u, and Wu; Cheng always coquetted between Tsin and Ts'u,

not out of love for either, but in order to protect her own

independence; and so on with the rest. If we inquire what a really

small state meant in those days, the answer is that the modern

walled city, with its district of several hundred square miles

lying around it, was (and usually still is) the equivalent of the

ancient principality; and proof of that lies in the fact that one

of the literary designations of what we now term a "district

magistrate" is still "city marquess." Another proof is that in

ancient times "your state" was a recognized way of saying "your

capital town"; and "my poor town" was the polite way of saying

"our country"; both expressions still used in elegant diplomatic

composition.

This being so, and it having besides been the practice for a

visiting duke always to take along with him a "minister in

attendance," small wonder that prominent Chinese statesmen from

the orthodox states were all personal friends, or at least

correspondents and acquaintances, who had thus frequent

opportunity of comparing political notes. To this day there are no

serious dialect differences whatever in the ancient central area

described in the first chapter, nor is there any reason to suppose

that the statesmen and scholars who thus often met in conclave had

any difficulty in making themselves mutually understood. The

"dialects"' of which we hear so much in modern times (which, none

the less, are all of them pure Chinese, except that the syllables

differ, just as _coeur, cuore, and _corazon, coraçao_, differ from

_cor_), all belong to the southern coasts, which were practically

unknown to imperial China in Confucius' time. The Chinese word which

we translate "mandarin" also means "public" or "common," and

"mandarin dialect" really means "current" or "common speech,"

such as is, and was, spoken with no very serious modifications all

over the enclave; and also in those parts of Ts'in, Tsin, Ts'i, and

Ts'u, which immediately impinged upon the enclave, in the ratio

of their proximity. Finally, Shen Si, Shan Si, Shan Tung, and Hu

Kwang are still called Ts'in, Tsin, Ts'i, and Ts'u in high-class official

correspondence; and so with all other place-names. China has never

lost touch with antiquity.

There is record for nearly every thing: the only difficulty is to

separate what is relevant from what is irrelevant in the mass of

confused _data_.

Another matter must be considered. Although the Chinese never had

a caste system in the Hindoo sense, there is, as we have stated

once before, every reason to believe that the ruling classes and

the educated classes were nearly all nobles, in the sense that

they were all lineal or branch descendants, whether by first-

class wife or by concubine, of either the ruling dynastic family

or of some previous imperial dynastic family. Some families were

by custom destined for hereditary ministers, others for hereditary

envoys, others again for hereditary soldiers; not, it is true, by

strict rule, but because the ancient social idea favoured the

descent of office, or land, or trade, or craft from father to son.

This, indeed, was part of the celebrated Kwan-tsz's economic

philosophy. Thus generation after generation of statesmen and

scholars kept in steady touch with one another, exactly as our

modern scientists of the first rank, each as a link, form an

unbroken intimate chain from Newton down to Lord Kelvin, outside

which pale the ordinary layman stands a comparative stranger to

the _arcana_ within.

Kwan-tsz, the statesman-philosopher of Ts'i, and in a sense the

founder of Chinese economic science, was himself a scion of the

imperial Chou clan; every writer on political economy subsequent

to 643 B.C. quotes his writings, precisely as every European

philosophical writer cites Bacon. Quite a galaxy of brilliant

statesmen and writers, a century after Kwan-tsz, shed lustre upon

the Confucian age (550-480), and nearly all of them were personal

friends either of Confucius or of each other, or of both. Thus

Tsz-ch'an of CHÊNG, senior to Confucius, but beloved and admired

by him, was son of a reigning duke, and a prince of the ducal

CHÊNG family, which again was descended from a son of the Emperor

who fled in 842 B.C.

If Tsz-ch'an had written works on philosophy and politics, it is

possible that he might have been China's greatest man in the place

of Confucius; for he based his ideas of government, as did

Confucius, who probably copied much from him, entirely upon

"fitting conduct," or "natural propriety"; in addition to which he

was a great lawyer, entirely free from superstition and hypocrisy;

a kind, just, and considerate ruler; a consummate diplomat; and a

bold, original statesman, economist, and administrator. The

anecdotes and sayings of Tsz-ch'an are as numerous and as

practical as those about Julius Caesar or Marcus Aurelius.

Another great pillar of the state praised by Confucius was Shuh

Hiang of Tsin, whose reputation as a sort of Chinese Cicero is not

far below that of Tsz-ch'an. He belonged to one of the great

private families of Tsin, of whom it was said in Ts'u that "any of

them could bring 100 war-chariots into the field." Nothing could

be more interesting than the interviews and letters (see Appendix

No. 1) between these two friends and their colleagues of Ts'i,

Ts'u, Lu, and Sung.

Yen-tsz of Ts'i almost ranks with Kwan-tsz as an administrator,

philosopher, economist, author, and statesman. Confucius has a

good word for him too, though Yen-tsz's own opinion of Confucius'

merits was by no means so high. The two men had to "spar" with

each other behind their respective rulers like Bismarck and

Gortschakoff did. Yen-tsz's interview with Shuh Hiang, when the

pair discussed the vices of their respective dukes, is almost as

amusing as a "patter" scene in the pantomime, a sort of by-play

which takes place whilst the curtain is down in preparation for

the next formal act (see Appendix No. 2).

[Illustration: K'ung Ling-i, the hereditary _Yen-sheng 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'eng" (Father Tschepe,

S.J.), on the occasion of his visit last autumn (7th moon, 33rd

year).]

Confucius himself had descended in the direct line from the ducal

family of Sung; but Sung, like the other states, was cursed with

the "great family" nuisance, and one of his ancestors, having

incurred a grandee's hostility, had met with his death in a palace

intrigue, in consequence of which the Confucian family, despairing

of justice, had migrated to Lu. When we read of Confucius'

extensive wanderings (which are treated of more at length in a

subsequent chapter), the matter takes a very different complexion

from what is usually supposed, especially if it be recollected

what a limited area was really covered. He never got even so far

as Tsin, though part of Tsin touched the Lu frontier, and it is

doubtful if he was ever 300 miles, as the crow flies, from his own

house in Lu; true, he visited the fringe of Ts'u, but it must be

remembered that the place he visited was only in modern Ho Nan

province, and was one of the recent conquests of Ts'u, belonging

to the Hwai River system. As we explained in the last chapter,

Ts'u's policy then was to work up eastwards to the river Sz; that

is, to the Grand Canal of to-day. Confucius, it is plain, was no

mere pedant; for we have seen how, in the year 500, when he first

enjoyed high political power, he displayed conspicuously great

strategical and diplomatic ability in defeating the treacherous

schemes of the ruler of Ts'i, who had been endeavouring to filch

Lu territory, and who was dreadfully afraid lest Lu should,

through Wu's favour, acquire the hegemony or protectorship. He

could even be humorous, for when the barbarian King of Wu put in a

demand for a "handsome hat," Confucius contemptuously observed

that the gorgeousness of a hat's trimmings appealed to this

ignorant monarch more than the emblem of rank distinguishing one

hat from another.

Sung provided one distinguished statesman in Hiang Suh, whose fame

is bound up with a kind of Hague Disarmament or Peace Conference,

which he successfully engineered in 546 B.C. (see Appendix No. 3).

In the year 558 he had been sent on a marriage mission to Lu. Ki-

chah of Wu, who died at the ripe age of 90, was quite entitled to

be king of that country, but he repeatedly waived his claims in

favour of his brothers. K'ü-pêh-yüh of Wei, is mentioned in the

Book of Rites, and in many other works. With him Confucius lodged

on the two occasions of long sojourn in Wei: he is the man

mentioned in Chapter XII who gave his authoritative "ritual"

opinion about traitors. Ts'in never seems to have produced a

native literary statesman on its own soil. During this 500-year

period of isolated development, and also during the later period

of conquest in the third century B.C., all its statesmen were

borrowed from Tsin, or from some orthodox state of China proper;

in military genius, however, Ts'in was unrivalled, and a special

chapter will be devoted to her huge _battues_. The literary

reputation of Ts'u was high at a comparatively early date, and

even now the "Elegies of Ts'u" include some of the very finest of

the Chinese poems and _belles lettres_; but in Confucius'

time no Ts'u man, except possibly Lao-tsz, had any reputation at

all; and Lao-tsz, being a mere archive keeper, not entrusted with

any influential office, naturally lacked opportunity to emerge

from the chrysalis stage. Moreover, the imperial dynasty, which

Lao-tsz served, had no political influence at all: it was an

ironical saying of the times; "the best civilians are Ts'u's, but

they all serve other states," (meaning that the Ts'u rule was too

capricious to attract talent). Hence, apart from the fact that

Confucius doubted the wisdom of Lao-tsz's novel philosophy,

Confucius had no occasion whatever to mention the secluded, self-

contained old man in his political history, or, rather, in his

bald annals of royal-movements.

CHAPTER XVI

LAND AND PEOPLE

What sort of folk were the masses of China, upon whom the ruling

classes depended, then as now, for their support? In the year 594

B.C. the model state of Lu for the first time imposed a tax of ten

per cent, upon each Chinese "acre" of land, being about one-sixth

of an English acre: as the tax was one-tenth, it matters not what

size the acre was. Each cultivator under the old system had an

allotment of 100 such acres for himself, his parents, his wife,

and his children; and in the centre of this allotment were 10

acres of "public land," the produce of which, being the result of

his labour, went to the State; there was no further taxation. A

"mile," being about one-third of an English mile, and, therefore,

in square measure one-ninth of an English square mile, consisted

of 300 fathoms (taking the fathom roughly), and its superficies

contained 900 "acres" of which 80 were public under the above

arrangement, 820 remaining for the eight families owning this

"well-field"--so called because the ideograph for a "well"

represents nine squares: a four-sided square in the centre, four

three-sided squares impinging on it; and four two-sided squares at

the corners; i.e. 100 "acres" each, plus 2-1/2 "acres" each for

"homestead and onions"; or 20 of these last in all. Nine

cultivators in one "well," multiplied by four, formed a township,

and four townships formed a "cuirass" of 144 armed warriors; but

this was under a modified system introduced four years later

(590). It will be observed that the arithmetic seems confused, if

not faulty; but that does not seriously affect the genuineness of

the picture, and may be ignored as mere detail.

The ancient classification of people was into four groups. The

scholar people employed themselves in studying _tao_ and the

sciences, from which we plainly see that the doctrine of

_tao,_ or "the way," existed long before Lao-tsz, in Confucius'

time, superadded a mystic cosmogony upon it, and made of it a socialist

or radical instead of an imperialist or conservative doctrine. The second

class were the trading people, who dealt in "produce from the four

quarters"; there is evidence that this meant chiefly cattle, grain, silk,

horses, leather, and gems. The third class were the cultivators, and

in those days tea and cotton, amongst other important products of

to-day, were totally unknown. The fourth class consisted of handicraftsmen,

who naturally made all things they could sell, or knew how to make.

Another classification of men is the following, which was given to

the King of Ts'u by a sage adviser, presumably an importation from

orthodox China. He divided people into ten classes, each inferior

class owing obedience to its superior, and the highest of all

owing obedience only to the gods or spirits. First, the Emperor;

secondly, the "inner" dukes, or grandees of estates within the

imperial domain: these grandees were dukes proper, not dukes by

posthumous courtesy like the vassal princes after decease, and the

Emperor used to send them on service, when required, to the vassal

states; they were, in fact, like the "princes of the Church" or

cardinals, who surround the Pope. Thirdly, "the marquesses," that

is the semi-independent vassal states, no matter whether duke,

marquess, earl, viscount, or baron; this term seems also to

include the reigning lords of very small states which did not

possess even the rank of baron, and which were usually attached to

a larger state as clients, under protectorate; in fact, the

recognized stereotyped way of saying "the vassal rulers" was "the

marquesses." Then came what we should call the "middle classes,"

or bourgeoisie, followed by the artisans and cultivators: it will

be noticed that the artisans are here given rank over the

cultivators, which is not in accord with either very ancient or

very modern practice; this, indeed, places cultivators before both

traders and artisans. Lastly came the police, the carriers of

burdens, the eunuchs, and the slaves. By "police" are meant the

runners attached to public offices, whose work too often involves

"squeezing" and terrorizing, torturing, flogging, etc. To the

present day police, barbers, and slaves require three generations

of purifying, or living down, before their descendants can enter

for the public examinations; or, to use the official expression,

their "three generations" must be "clear"; at least so it was

until the old Confucian examination system was abolished as a test

for official capacity a few years ago. Of eunuchs we shall have

more to say shortly; but very little indeed is heard of private

slaves, who probably then, as now, were indistinguishable from the

ordinary people, and were treated kindly. The callous Greek and

still more brutal Roman system, not to mention the infinitely more

cowardly and shocking African slavery abuses of eighteenth-

century Europe and nineteenth-century America, have never been

known in China: no such thing as a slave revolt has ever been

heard of there.

In the year 548 the kingdom of Ts'u ordered a cadastral survey,

and also a general stock-taking of arms, chariots, and horses.

Records were made of the extent and value of the land in each

parish, the extent of the mountains and forests, and the resources

they might furnish. Observation was also made of lakes and marshes

suitable for sport, and it was forbidden to fill these in. Note

was taken of such hills and mounds as might be available for

tombs--a detail which shows that modern graves in China differ

little if at all from the ancient ones; in fact in Canton "my

hill," or "mountain," is synonymous with "my cemetery." In order

to fix the taxes at a just figure, stock was taken of the salt-

flats, the unproductive lands, and the tracts liable to periodical

inundation. Areas rescued from the waters were protected by dykes,

and subdivided for allotment by sloping banks, but without

introducing the rigid nine-square system. Good lands, however,

were divided according to the method introduced by the Chou

dynasty; that is to say, six feet formed a "fathom," 100 fathoms

an "acre," 100 "acres" the allotment of one family; these English

terms are, of course, only approximately correct. Nine families

still formed a hamlet or "well," and they cultivated together 1000

"acres," the central hundred going to pay the imposts. Taxes,

direct and indirect, were fixed with exactitude, and also the

number of war-chariots that each parish had to furnish; the number

of horses; their value, age, and colour; the number of armoured

troopers and foot soldiers, with a return of their cuirasses and

shields. Regarding this colour classification, of the horses, it

may be mentioned that the Tartars, in the second century B.C.,

were in the habit of equipping whole regiments of cavalry on

mounts of the same colour, and it is, therefore, possible that

this practice may have been imitated in South China; but Ts'u

never once herself engaged in warfare with the Tartars; at all

events with Tartars other than Tartars brought into Chinese

settlements.

Long before this, the philosopher-statesman Kwan-tsz of Ts'i had

so developed the agriculture, fisheries, trade, and salt gabelle,

and had governed the country in such a way that his State,

hitherto of minor importance, soon took the lead amongst the

Chinese powers for wealth and for military influence. His

classification of the people was into scholars, artisans, traders,

and agriculturalists. He is generally credited with having

introduced the "Babylonian woman" into the Ts'i metropolis, in

order that traders, having sold their goods there, might leave as

much as possible of their money behind in the houses of pleasure.

There are many accounts of the luxury of this populous city, where

"every woman possessed one long and one short needle," and where a

premium levied upon currency, fish, and salt was applied to the

relief of the poor and (!) to the rewarding of virtue. Kwan-tsz

also maintained a standing army, or perhaps a militia force, of

30,000 men; but he was careful so to husband his strength that

Ts'i should not have the external appearance of dominating; his

aim was that she should rather hold her power in reserve, and only

use it indirectly: as we have seen, his master was, in consequence

of Kwan-tsz's able administration, raised to the high position of

the first of the Five Protectors.

From this it will be plain that there was considerable commercial

activity in China even before the time of Confucius: there was

quite a string of fairs or market towns extending from the

imperial reserve eastwards along the Yellow River to Choh-thou

(still so called, south of Peking), which was then the most

northernly of them: apparently each considerable state possessed

one of these fairs. The headwaters of the River Hwai system were

served by the great mart (now called Yii Chou) belonging to the

state of Cheng. As with our own histories, Chinese annals consist

chiefly of the record of what kings and grandees did, and mention

of the people is only occasional; and, even then, only in

connection with the policy of their leaders.

As soon as the second of the Protectors, the Marquess of Tsin, was

seated on his ancestral throne (637), his first act was to reduce

the tolls and make the roads safer; to facilitate trade, and to

encourage agriculture. Also to "make friends of the eleven great

families" (already mentioned twice in preceding pages), whose

development, however, in time led to the collapse of this princely

power, and to its division between three of the "great families."

A century after this, a minister of the Ts'u state praised very

highly the efficiency of the Tsin administration. "The common

people are devoted to agriculture; the merchants, artisans, and

menials are all dutiful." For the conveyance of grain between the

Ts'in and the Tsin capitals, both carts and boats were requisitioned,

from which we must assume that there were practicable roads of some

sort for two-wheeled vehicles. In the year 546, when some important

reserves were made by Tsin at the Peace Conference, an express

messenger was sent from Sung to the Ts'u capital to take the king's

pleasure: this means an overland journey from the sources of the Hwai

to the modern treaty port of Sha-shr above Hankow.

It may be added that, five centuries before Kwan-tsz existed, the

founder of the Ts'i state, as a vassal to the new Chou dynasty,

had already distinguished himself by encouraging trade,

manufactures, fisheries, and the salt production; so that Kwan-tsz

was an improver rather than an inventor.

Thus we see that, from very early times, China was by no means a

sleepy country of ignorant husbandmen, but was a place full of

multifarious activities; and that her local rulers, at least from

the time when the patriarchal power of the Emperors decayed in

771, were often men of considerable sagacity, quite alive to the

necessity of developing their resources and encouraging their

people: this helps us to understand their restlessness under the

yoke of "ritual."

CHAPTER XVII

EDUCATION AND LITERARY

There is singularly little mention of writing or education in

ancient times, and it seems likely that written records were at

first confined to castings or engravings upon metal, and carvings

upon stone. In the days when the written character was cumbrous,

there would be no great encouragement to use it for daily

household purposes. It is a striking fact, not only that writings

upon soft clay, afterwards baked, were not only non-existent in

China, but have never once been mentioned or conceived of as being

a possibility. This fact effectually disposes of the allegation

that Persian and Babylonian literary civilization made its way to

China, for it is unreasonable to suppose that an invention so well

suited to the clayey soil (of _loess_ mud with cementing properties)

in which the Chinese princes dwelt could have been ignored by them,

if ever the slightest inkling of it had been obtained.

In 770 B.C., when the Emperor, having moved his capital to the

east, ceded his ancestral lands in the west to Ts'in on condition

that Ts'in should recover them permanently from the Tartars, the

document of cession was engraved upon a metal vase. Fifteen

hundred years before this, the Nine Tripods of the founder of the

Hia dynasty, representing tributes of metal brought to the Emperor

by outlying tribes, were inscribed with records of the various

productions of China: these tripods were ever afterwards regarded

as an attribute of imperial authority; and even Ts'u, when it

began to presume upon the Chou Emperor's weakness, put in a claim

(probably based upon his ancestors' own ancient Chinese descent,

as explained in Chapter IV.) to possess them.

In distributing the fiefs amongst relatives and friends, the first

Chou emperors "composed orders" conferring rights upon their new

vassals; but it is not stated what written form these orders took.

Written prayers for the recovery of the first Emperor's health are

mentioned, but here again we are ignorant of the material on which

the prayers were written by the precentor. Four hundred years

later, in 65, when Ts'in had assisted to the throne his neighbour

the Marquess of Tsin, the latter gave a promise in writing to

Ts'in that he would cede to her all the territory lying to the

west of the Yellow River. The next ruler of Tsin, the celebrated

wanderer who afterwards became the second Protector, is distinctly

stated to have had an adviser who taught him to read; it is added

that the same marquess also consulted this adviser about a

suitable teacher for his son and heir. About the same time one of

the Marquess's friends, objecting to take office, took to flight:

his friends, as a protest, hung up "a writing" at the palace gate.

In 584 a Ts'u refugee in Tsin sends a writing to the leading

general of Ts'u, threatening to be a thorn in his side. It is

presumed that in all these cases the writing was on wood. The text

of a declaration of war against Ts'u by Ts'in in 313 B.C., at a

time when these two powers had ceased to be allies, and were

competing for empire, refers to an agreement made three centuries

earlier between the King of Ts'u and the Earl of Ts'in; this

declaration was carved upon several stone tablets; but it does not

appear upon what material the older agreement was carved. In 538,

at a durbar held by Ts'u, Hiang Suh, the learned man of Sung, who

has already been mentioned in Chapter XV. as the inventor of Peace

Conferences in 546, and as one of the Confucian group of friends,

remarked: "What I know of the diplomatic forms to be observed is

only obtained from books." A few years later, when the population

of one of the small orthodox Chinese states was moved for

political convenience by Ts'u away to another district, they were

allowed to take with them "their maps, cadastral survey, and

census records."

There is an interesting statement in the _Kwoh Yü_, an

ancillary history of these times, but touching more upon personal

matters, usually considered to have been written by the same man

that first expanded Confucius' annals, to the effect that in 489

B.C. (when Confucius was wandering about on his travels, a

disappointed and disgusted man) the King of Wu inflicted a

crushing defeat upon Ts'i at a spot not far from the Lu frontier,

and that he captured "the national books, 800 leather chariots,

and 3000 cuirasses and shields." If this translation be perfectly

accurate, it is interesting as showing that Ts'i did possess

_Kwoh-shu_, or "a State library," or archives. But unfortunately

two other histories mention the capture of a Ts'i general named Kwoh

Hia, _alias_ Kwoh Hwei-tsz, so that there seems to be a doubt

whether, in transcribing ancient texts, one character (_shu_) may

not have been substituted for the other (_hia_). Two years later

the barbarian king in question entered Lu, and made a treaty with that

state upon equal terms.

Shortly after this date, the Chinese adviser who brought about the

conquest of Wu by the equally barbarous Yiieh, had occasion to

send a "closed letter" to a man living in Ts'u. When we come to

later times, subsequent to the death of Confucius, we find written

communications more commonly spoken of. Thus, in 313, Ts'i,

enraged at the supposed faithlessness of Ts'u, "broke in two the

Ts'u tally" and attached herself to Ts'in instead. This can only

refer to a wooden "indenture" of which each party preserved a

copy, each fitting 'in, "dog's teeth like," as the Chinese still

say, closely to the other. A few years later we find letters from

Ts'i to Ts'u, holding forth the tempting project of a joint attack

upon Ts'in; and also a letter from Ts'in to Ts'u, alluding to the

escape of a hostage and the cause of a war. In the year 227, when

Ts'in was rapidly conquering the whole empire, the northernmost

state of Yen (Peking plain), dreading annexation, conceived the

plan of assassinating the King of Ts'in; and, in order to give the

assassin a plausible ground for gaining admittance to the tyrant's

presence, sent a map of Yen, so that the roads available for

troops might be explained to the ambitious conqueror, who would

fall into the trap. He barely escaped.

All these matters put together point to the clear conclusion that

such states as Ts'in, Tsin, Ts'i, Yen, and Ts'u (none of which

belonged, so far as the bulk of their population was concerned, to

the purely Chinese group concentrated in the limited area

described in the first chapter) were able to communicate by letter

freely with each other: _á fortiori_, therefore, must the

orthodox states, whose civilization they had all borrowed or

shared, have been able to communicate with them, and with each

other. Besides, there is the question of the innumerable treaties

made at the durbars, and evidently equally legible by all the

dozen or so of representatives present; and the written prayers,

already instanced, which were probably offered to the gods at most

sacrifices. A special chapter will be devoted to treaties.

In the year 523 the following passage occurs, or rather it occurs

in one of the expanded Confucian histories having retrospective

reference to matters of 523 B.C:--"It is the father's fault if, at

the binding up of the hair (eight years of age), boys do not go to

the teacher, though it may be the mother's fault if, before that

age, they do not escape the dangers of fire and water: it is their

own fault if, having gone to the teacher, they make no progress:

it is their friends' fault if they make progress but get no repute

for it: it is the executive's fault if they obtain repute but no

recommendation to office: it is the prince's fault if they are

recommended for office but not appointed." Here we have in effect

the nucleus at least of the examination system as it was until a

year or two ago, together with an inferential statement that

education was only meant for the governing classes.

It is rather remarkable that the invention of the "greater seal"

character in 827 B.C. practically coincides with the first signs

of imperial decadence; this is only another piece of evidence in

favour of the proposition that enlightenment and patriarchal rule

could not exist comfortably together. When Ts'in conquered the

whole of modern China 600 years later, unified weights and

measures, the breadth of axles, and written script, and remedied

other irregularities that had hitherto prevailed in the rival

states, it is evident that the need of a more intelligible script

was then found quite as urgent as the need of roads suitable for

all carts, and of measures by which those carts could bring

definite quantities of metal and grain tribute to the capital.

Accordingly the First August Emperor's prime minister did at once

set to work to invent the "lesser seal" character, in which (so

late as A.D. 200) the first Chinese dictionary was written; this

"lesser seal" is still fairly readable after a little practice,

but for daily use it has long been and is impracticable and

obsolete. If we reflect how difficult it is for us to decipher the

old engrossed charters and written letters of the English kings,

we may all the more easily imagine how even a slight change in the

form of "letters," or strokes, will make easy reading of Chinese

impossible. It is a mistake to suppose that the Chinese have to

"spell their way" laboriously through the written character so

familiar to them: it is just as easy to "skim over" a Chinese

newspaper in a few minutes as it is to "take in" the leading

features of the _Times_ in the same limited time; and volumes

of Chinese history or literature in general can be "gutted" quite

easily, owing to the facility with which the so-called pictographs,

once familiar, lend themselves to "skipping."

The Bamboo Books, dug up in A.D. 281, the copies of the classics

concealed in the walls of Confucius' house, the copy of Lao-tsz's

philosophical work recorded to have been in the possession of a

Chinese empress in 150 B.C.--all these were written in the

"greater seal," and the painstaking industry of Chinese

specialists was already necessary when the Christian era began, in

order to reduce the ancient characters to more modern forms. Since

then the written character has been much clarified and simplified,

and it is just as easy to express sentiments in written Chinese as

in any other language; but, of course, when totally new ideas are

introduced, totally new characters must be invented; and

inventions, both of individual characters and of expressions, are

going on now.

CHAPTER XVIII

TREATIES AND VOWS

Treaties were always very solemn functions, invariably accompanied

by the sacrifice of a victim. A part of the victim, or of its

blood, was thrown into a ditch, in order that the Spirit of the

Earth might bear witness to the deed; the rest of the blood was

rubbed upon the lips of the parties concerned, and also scattered

upon the documents, by way of imprecation; sometimes, however, the

imprecations, instead of being uttered, were specially written at

the end of the treaty. Just as we now say "the ink was scarcely

dry before, etc., etc.," the Chinese used to say "the blood of the

victim was scarcely dry on their lips, before, etc., etc." When

the barbarian King of Wu succeeded for a short period in

"durbaring" the federal Chinese princes, a dispute took place (as

narrated in Chapter XIV.) between Tsin and Wu as to who should rub

the lips with blood first--in other words, have precedence. In

the year 541 B.C., sixty years before the above event, Tsin and

Ts'u had agreed to waive the ceremony of smearing the lips with

blood, to choose a victim in common, and to lay the text of the

treaty upon the victim after a solemn reading of its contents.

This modification was evidently made in consequence of the

disagreement between Tsin and Ts'u at the Peace Conference of 546,

when a dispute had arisen (page 47), as to which should smear the

lips first. This was the occasion on which the famous Tsin

statesman, Shuh Hiang, in the face of seventeen states'

representatives, all present, had the courage to ignore Ts'u's

treachery in concealing cuirasses under the soldiers' clothes. He

said: "Tsin holds her pre-eminent position as Protector by her

innate good qualities, which will always command the adhesion of

other states; why need we care if Ts'u smears first, or if she

injures herself by being detected in treachery?" It has already

been mentioned that Confucius glosses over or falsifies both the

above cases, and gives the victory in each instance to Tsin.

Though these little historical peccadilloes on the part of the

saint _homme_ are considered even by orthodox critics to be

objectionable, it must be remembered that it was very risky work

writing history at all in those despotic times: even in

comparatively democratic days (100 B.C.), the "father of Chinese

history" was castrated for criticizing the reigning Emperor in the

course of issuing his great work; and so late as the fifth century

A.D. an almost equally great historian was put to death "with his

three generations" for composing a "true history" of the Tartars

then ruling as Emperors of North China; i.e. for disclosing their

obscure and barbarous origin, Moreover, foreigners who fix upon

these trifling specific and admitted discrepancies, in order to

discredit the general truth of all Chinese history, must remember

that the Chinese critics, from the very beginning, have always,

even when manifestly biased, been careful to expose errors; the

very discrepancies themselves, indeed, tend to prove the

substantial truth of the events recorded; and the fact that

admittedly erroneous texts still stand unaltered proves the

reverent care of the Chinese as a nation to preserve their

defective annals, with all faults, in their original condition.

At this treaty conference of 546 B.C., held at the Sung capital,

the host alone had no vote, being held superior (as host) to all;

and, further, out of respect for his independence, the treaty had

to be signed outside his gates: the existence of the Emperor was

totally ignored.

A generation before this (579) another important treaty between

the two great rivals, Tsin and Ts'u, had been signed by the high

contracting parties outside the walls of Sung. The articles

provided for community of interest in success or failure; mutual

aid in every thing, more especially in war; free use of roads so

long as relations remained peaceful; joint action in face of

menace from other powers; punishment of those neglecting to come

to court. The imprecation ran: "Of him who breaks this, let the

armies be dispersed and the kingdom be lost; moreover, let the

spirits chastise him." Although both orthodox powers professed

their anxiety to "protect" the imperial throne, yet, seeing that

the Emperor was quietly shelved in all these conventions, the

reference to "court duty" probably refers to the duty of Cheng and

the other small orthodox states to render homage to Tsin or Ts'u

(as the case might be) as settled by this and previous treaties.

In fact, at the Peace Conference of 546, it was agreed between the

two mesne lords that the vassals of Ts'u should pay their respects

to Tsin, and _vice versa_. But, during the negotiations, a

zealous Tsin representative went on to propose that the informal

allies of the chief contracting powers should also be dragged in:

"If Ts'in will pay us a visit, I will try and induce Ts'i to visit

T'su." These two powers had _ententes_, Ts'i with Tsin, and

Ts'u with Ts'in, but recognized no one's hegemony over them. It

was this surprise sprung upon the Ts'u delegates that necessitated

an express messenger to the king, as recounted at the end of

Chapter XVI. The King of Ts'u sent word: "Let Ts'in and Ts'i

alone; let the others visit our respective capitals." Accordingly

it was understood that Tsin and Ts'u should both be Protectors,

but that neither Ts'in nor Ts'i should recognize their status to

the point of subordinating themselves to the joint hegemons. This

was Ts'u's first appearance as effective hegemon, but her official

_debut_ alone did not take place till 538. Ts'i and Ts'in had

both approved, in principle, the terms of peace, but Ts'in sent no

representative, whilst Ts'i sent two. It is very remarkable that

Sz-ma Ts'ien (the great historian of 100 B.C., who was castrated)

does not mention this important meeting in his great work, either

under the heading of Ts'i, or of Tsin, or under the headings of

Sung and Ts'u. It seems, however, really to have had good effect

for several generations; but there was some thing behind it which

shows that love for humanity was not the leading motive of the

chief parties. Two years later it was that the philosophical

brother of the King of Wu went his rounds among the Chinese

princes, and it is evident that Ts'u only desired peace with North

China whilst she tackled this formidable new enemy on the coast.

Tsin, on the other hand, was in trouble with the "six great

families" (the survivors of the "eleven great families"

conciliated by the Second Protector), who were gradually

undermining the princely authority in Tsin to their own private

aggrandisement. In 572 B.C., when the legitimate ruler of Tsin,

who had been superseded by irregular successors, was fetched back

from the Emperor's court, to which he had gone for a quiet asylum,

he drew up a treaty of conditions with his own ministers, and

immolated a chicken as sanction; this idea is still occasionally

perpetuated in British courts of justice, where Chinese, probably

without knowing it, draw upon ancient history when asked by the

court how they are accustomed to sanction an oath; cocks are often

also carried about by modern Chinese boatmen for purposes of

sacrifice. In the year 504, after Wu had captured the Ts'u

capital, one of the petty orthodox Chinese states taken by Ts'u--

the first to be so taken by barbarians--in 684, but left by Ts'u

internally independent, declined to render any assistance to Wu,

unless she could prove her competence to hold permanently the Ts'u

territory thus conquered. The King of Ts'u was so grateful for

this that he drew some blood from the breast of his own half-

brother, and on the spot made a treaty with the vassal prince. It

662, even in a love vow, the ruler of Lu cut his own arm and

exchanged drops of blood with his lady-love. In 481 the people of

Wei (the small orthodox state on the middle Yellow River between

Tsin and Lu) forced one of their politicians to swear allegiance

to the desired successor under the sanction of a sacrificial pig.

The great Kwan-tsz insisted on his prince carrying out a treaty

which had been extorted in times of stress; but, as a rule, the

most opportunistic principles were laid down, even by Confucius

himself when he was placed under personal stress: "Treaties

obtained by force are of no value, as the spirits could not then

have really been present." In 589 Ts'u invaded the state of Wei,

just mentioned, and menaced the adjoining state of Lu, compelling

the execution of a treaty. Confucius, who once broke a treaty

himself, naturally retrospectively considered this ducal treaty of

no effect, and he even goes so far as to avoid mentioning in his

annals some of the important persons who were present; he

especially "burkes" two Chinese ruling princes, who were shameless

enough to ride in the same chariot with the King of Ts'u, under

whose predominancy they were, and who were therefore themselves

under a kind of stress. In 482 one of Confucius' pupils made the

following casuistical reply to the government of Wu on their

application for renewal of a treaty with her: "It is only fidelity

that gives solidity to treaties; they are determined by mutual

consent, and it is with sacrifices that they are laid before our

ancestors; the written words give expression to them, and the

spirits guarantee them. A treaty once concluded cannot be changed:

otherwise it were vain to make a new one. Remember the proverb:

"What needs warming up more may just as well be eaten cold." The

ordinary rough-and-ready form of oath or vow between individuals

was: "If I break this, may I be as this river"; or, "may the river

god be witness." There were many other similar forms, and it was

often customary to throw something valuable into the river as a

symbol.

CHAPTER XIX

CONFUCIUS AND LITERATURE

Let us return for a moment to the history of China's development.

Confucius was born in the autumn of 551, B.C., and he died in 479.

If we survey the condition of the empire during these seventy

years, we may begin to understand better the secret of his

teachings, and of his influence in later times. When he was a boy

of seven or eight years, the presence in Lu of Ki-chah, the

learned and virtuous brother of the barbarian King of Wu, must

have opened his eyes widely to the ominous rise, of a democratic

and mixed China. Lu, like Tsin, was now beginning to suffer from

the "powerful family" plague; in other words, the story of King

John and his barons was being rehearsed in China. Tsin and Ts'u

had patched up ancient enmities at the Peace Conference; Tsin

during the next twenty years administered snub after snub to the

obsequious ruler of Lu, who was always turned back at the Yellow

River whenever he started west to pay his respects. Lu, on the

other hand, declined to attend the Ts'u durbar of 538, held by

Ts'u alone only after the approval of Tsin had been obtained. In

522 the philosopher Yen-tsz, of Ts'i, accompanied his own marquess

to Lu in order to study the rites there: this fact alone proves

that Ts'i, though orthodox and advanced, had not the same lofty

spiritual status that was the pride of Lu. In 517 the Marquess of

Lu was driven from his throne, and Ts'i took the opportunity to

invade Lu under pretext of assisting him; however, the fugitive

preferred Tsin as a refuge, and for many years was quartered at a

town near the common frontier. But the powerful families (all

branches of the same family as the duke himself) proved too strong

for him; they bribed the Tsin statesmen, and the Lu ruler died in

exile in the year 510. In the year 500 Confucius became chief

counsellor to the new marquess, and by his energetic action drove

into exile in Tsin a very formidable agitator belonging to one of

the powerful family cliques. In 488 the King of Wu, after marching

on Ts'i, summoned Lu to furnish "one hundred sets of victims" as a

mark of compliancy; the king and the marquess had an interview;

the next year the king came in person, and a treaty was made with

him under the very walls of K'üh-fu, the Lu capital (this shameful

fact is concealed by Confucius, who simply says: "Wu made war on

us"). In 486 Lu somewhat basely joined Wu in an attack upon

orthodox Ts'i. In 484-483 Confucius, who had meanwhile been

travelling abroad for some years in disgust, was urgently sent

for; four years later he died, a broken and disappointed man.

Now, it is one thing to be told in general terms that Confucius

represented conservative forces, disapproved of the quarrelsome

wars of his day, and wished in theory to restore the good old

"rules of propriety"; but quite another thing to understand in a

human, matter-of-fact sort of way what he really did in definite

sets of circumstances, and what practical objects he had in view.

The average European reader, not having specific facts and places

under his eye, can only conceive from this rough generalization,

and from the usual anecdotal tit-bits told about him, that

Confucius was an exceedingly timid, prudent, benevolent, and

obsequious old gentleman who, as indeed his rival Lao-tsz hinted

to him, was something like a superior dancing-master or court

usher, But when the disjointed apothegms of his "Analects" (put

together, not by himself, but by his disciples) are placed

alongside the real human actions baldly touched upon in his own

"Springs and Autumns," and as expanded by his three commentators,

one of them, at least, being a contemporary of his own, things

assume quite a different complexion, Moreover, this last-mentioned

or earliest in date of the expanders (see p. 91) also composed a

chatty, anecdotal, and intimately descriptive account of Lu, Ts'i,

Tsin, CHÊNG, Ts'u, Wu, and Yiieh (of no other states except quite

incidentally); and we have also the Bamboo Books dug up in 281

A.D., being the Annals of Tsin and a sketch of general history

down to 299 B.C. Finally, the "father of history," in about go

B.C., published, or issued ready for publication, a _resumé_

of all the above (except what was in the Bamboo Books, which were

then, of course, unknown to him); so that we are able to compare

dates, errors, misprints, concealments, and so on; not to mention

the advantage of reading all that the successive generations of

commentators have had to say.

The matter may be compendiously stated as follows. Without

attempting to go backward beyond the conquest by the Chou

principality and the founding of a Chou dynasty in 122 B.C.

(though there is really no reason to doubt the substantial

accuracy of the vague "history" of patriarchal times, at least so

far back beyond that as to cover the 1000 years or more of the two

previous dynasties' reigns), we may state that, whilst in general

the principles and ritual of the two previous dynasties were

maintained, a good many new ideas were introduced at this Chou

conquest, and amongst other things, a compendious and all-

pervading practical ritual government, which not only marked off

the distinctions between classes, and laid down ceremonious rules

for ancestral sacrifice, social deportment, family duties,

cultivation, finance, punishment, and so on, but endeavoured to

bring all human actions whatsoever into practical harmony with

supposed natural laws; that is to say, to make them as regular, as

comprehensible, as beneficent, and as workable, as the perfectly

manifest but totally unexplained celestial movements were; as were

the rotation of seasons, the balancing of forces, the growth and

waning of matter, male and female reproduction, light and

darkness; and, in short, to make human actions as harmonious as

were all the forces of nature, which never fail or go wrong except

under (presumed) provocation, human or other. The Emperor, as

Vicar of God, was the ultimate judge of what was _tao_, or

the "right way."

Now this simple faith, when the whole of the Chinese Empire

consisted of about 50,000 square miles of level plain, inhabited

probably by not more than 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 homogeneous

people, was admirably suited for the patriarchal rule of a central

chief (the King or Emperor), receiving simple tribute of metals,

hemp, cattle, sacrificial supplies, etc.; entertaining his

relatives and princely friends when they came to do annual homage

and to share in periodical sacrifice; declaring the penal laws

(there were no other laws) for all his vassals; compassionating

and conciliating the border tribes living beyond those vassals.

But this peaceful bucolic life, in the course of time and nature,

naturally produced a gradual increase in the population; the

Chinese cultivators spread themselves over the expanse of

_loess_ formed by the Yellow River and Desert deposits and by

aeons of decayed vegetation in the low-lying lands; no other

nation or tribe within their ken having the faintest notion of

written character, there was consequently no political cohesion of

any sort amongst the non-Chinese tribes; the position was akin to

that of the European powers grafting themselves for centuries upon

the still primitive African tribes, comparatively few of which

have seen fit to turn the art of writing to the practical purpose

of keeping records and cementing their own power. Wherever a

Chinese adventurer went, there he became founder of a state; to

this day we see enterprising Chinamen founding petty "dynasties"

in the Siamese Malay Peninsula; or, for instance, an Englishman

like Rajah Brooke founding a private dynasty in Borneo.

Some of these frontier tribes, notably the Tartars, were of

altogether too tough a material to be assimilated. They even

endeavoured to check the Chinese advance beyond the Yellow River,

and carried fire and sword themselves into the federal conclave.

Where resistance was _nil_ or slight, as, for instance, among

some of the barbarians to the east, there the Chinese adventurers,

either adopting native ways, or persuading the autochthones to

adopt their ways, by levelling up or levelling down, developed

strong cohesive power; besides (owing to the difficulties of

inter-communication) creating a feeling of independence and a

disinclination to obey the central power. The emperors who used in

the good old days to summon the vassals--a matter of a week or two

in that small area--to chastise the wicked tribes on their

frontiers, gradually found themselves unable to cope with the more

distant Tartar hordes, the eastern barbarians of the coast, the

Annamese, Shans, and other unidentified tribes south of the Yang-

tsz, as they had so easily done with nearer tribes when the

Chinese had not pushed out so far. Moreover, new-Chinese, Chinese-

veneered, and half-Chinese states, recognizing their own

responsibilities, now interposed themselves as "buffers" or

barriers between the Emperor and the unadulterated barbarians;

these hybrid states themselves were quite as formidable to the

imperial power as the displaced barbarians had formerly been.

Hence, as we have seen, the pitiful flight from his metropolis of

one Emperor after the other; the rise of great and wealthy persons

outside the former limited sacred circle; the pretence of

protecting the Emperor, advanced by these rising powers, partly in

order to gain prestige by using his imperial name in support of

their local ambitions, and partly because--as during the Middle

Ages in the case of the Papacy--no one cared to brave the moral

odium of annihilating a venerable spiritual power, even though

gradually shorn of its temporal rights and influence.

Lu was almost on a par with the imperial capital in all that

concerns learning, ritual, music, sacrifice, deportment, and

spiritual prestige. Confucius, in his zeal for the recovery of

imperial rights, was really no more of a stickler for mere form

than were Tsz-ch'an of Cheng, Ki-chah of Wu, Hiang Suh of Sung,

Shuh Hiang of Tsin, and others already enumerated; the only

distinguishing feature in his case was that he was not a high or

influential official in his earlier days; besides, he was a Sung

man by descent, and all the great families were of the Lu princely

caste. Thus, for want of better means to assert his own views, he

took to teaching and reading, to collecting historical facts, to

pointing morals and adorning tales. As a youth he was so clever,

that one of the Lu grandees, on his death-bed, foretold his

greatness. It was a great bitterness for him to see his successive

princely masters first the humble servants of Ts'i, then buffeted

between Tsin and Ts'u, finally invaded and humiliated by barbarian

Wu, only to receive the final touches of charity at the hands of

savage Yiieh. His first act, when he at last obtained high office,

was to checkmate Ts'i, the man behind the ruler of which jealous

state feared that Lu might, under Confucius' able rule, succeed in

obtaining the Protectorate, and thus defeat his own insidious

design to dethrone the legitimate Ts'i house. The wily Marquess of

Ts'i thereupon--of course at the instigation of the intriguing

"great families"--tried another tack, and succeeded at last in

corrupting the vacillating Lu prince with presents of horses,

racing chariots, and dancing women. Then it was (497) that

Confucius set out disheartened on his travels. Recalled thirteen

years later, he soon afterwards began to devote his remaining

powers to the Annals so frequently referred to above, and it was

whilst engaged in finishing this task that he had presentiments of

his coming end; he does not appear to have been able to exercise

much political or advisory power after his return to Lu.

During his thirteen years of travel (a more detailed account of

which will be given in a subsequent chapter), he found time to

revise and edit the books which appear to have formed the common

stock-in-trade for all China; one of his ideas was to eliminate

from these all sentiments of an anti-imperial nature. They were

not then called "classics," but simply "The Book" (of History),

"The Poems" (still known by heart all over China), "The Rites" (as

improved by the Chou family), "The Changes" (a sort of cosmogony

combined with soothsaying), and "Music."

CHAPTER XX

LAW

Let us now consider the notions of law as they existed in the

primitive Chinese mind. As all government was supposed to be based

on the natural laws of the universe, of which universal law or

order of things, the Emperor, as "Son of Heaven," was (subject to

his own obedience to it) the supreme mouthpiece or expression,

there lay upon him no duty to define that manifest law; when it

was broken, it was for him to say that it was broken, and to

punish the breach. Nature's bounty is the spring, and therefore

rewards are conferred in spring; nature's fall is in the autumn,

which is the time for decreeing punishments; these are carried out

in winter, when death steals over nature. A generous table

accompanies the dispensing of rewards, a frugal table and no music

accompanies the allotment of punishments; hence the imperial

feasts and fasts. Thus punishment rather than command is what was

first understood by Law, and it is interesting to observe that

"making war" and "putting to death" head the list of imperial

chastisements, war being thus regarded as the Emperor's rod in the

shape of a posse of punitory police, rather than as an expression

of statecraft, ambitious greed, or vainglorious self-assertion.

Then followed, in order of severity, castration, cutting off the

feet or the knee-cap, branding, and flogging. The Emperor, or his

vassals, or the executive officers of each in the ruler's name,

declared the law, _i.e._ they declared the punishment in each

case of breach as it occurred. Thus from the very beginning the

legislative, judicial, and executive functions have never been

clearly separated in the Chinese system of thought; new words have

had to be coined within the last two years in order to express

this distinction for purposes of law reform. Mercantile Law,

Family Law, Fishery Laws--in a word, all the mass of what we call

Commercial and Civil Jurisprudence,--no more concerned the

Government, so far as individual rights were concerned, than

Agricultural Custom, Bankers' Custom, Butchers' Weights, and such

like petty matters; whenever these, or analogous matters, were

touched by the State, it was for commonwealth purposes, and not

for the maintenance of private rights. Each paterfamilias was

absolutely master of his own family; merchants managed their own

business freely; and so on with the rest. It was only when public

safety, Government interests, or the general weal was involved

that punishment-law stepped in and said,--always with _tao_,

"propriety," or nature's law in ultimate view: "you merchants may

not wear silk clothes"; "you usurers must not ruin the agriculturalists";

"you butchers must not irritate the gods of grain by killing cattle":--

these are mere examples taken at random from much later times.

The Emperor Muh, whose energies we have already seen displayed in

Tartar conquests and exploring excursions nearly a millennium

before our era, was the first of the Chou dynasty to decide that

law reform was necessary in order to maintain order among the

"hundred families" (still one of the expressions meaning "the

Chinese people"). A full translation of this code is given in Dr.

Legge's Chinese classics, where a special chapter of The Book is

devoted to it: in charging his officer to prepare it, the Emperor

only uses the words "revise the punishments," and the code itself

is only known as the "Punishments" (of the marquess who drew it

up); although it also prescribes many judicial forms, and lays

down precepts which are by no means all castigatory. The mere fact

of its doing so is illustrative of reformed ideas in the embryo.

There is good ground to suppose that the Chinese Emperor's "laws,"

such as they were at any given time, were solemnly and periodically

proclaimed, in each vassal kingdom; but, subject to these general imperial

directions, the _themis_, _diké_ or inspired decision of the

magistrate, was the sole deciding factor; and, of course, the ruler's

arbitrary pleasure, whether that ruler were supreme or vassal, often

ran riot when he found himself strong enough to be unjust. For instance,

in 894 B.C., the Emperor boiled alive one of the Ts'i rulers, an act that

was revenged by Ts'i 200 years later, as has been mentioned in previous

chapters.

In 796 B.C. a ruler of Lu was selected, or rather recommended to

the Emperor for selection, in preference to his elder brother,

because "when he inflicted chastisement he never failed to

ascertain the exact instructions left by the ancient emperors."

This same Emperor had already, in 817, nominated one younger

brother to the throne of Lu, because he was considered the most

attractive in appearance on an occasion when the brethren did

homage at the imperial court. For this caprice the Emperor's

counsellor had censured him, saying: "If orders be not executed,

there is no government; if they be executed, but contrary to

established rule, the people begin to despise their superiors."

In 746 B.C. the state of Ts'in, which had just then recently

emerged from Tartar barbarism, and had settled down permanently in

the old imperial domain, first introduced the "three stock" law,

under which the three generations, or the three family connections

of a criminal were executed for his crime as well as himself. In

596 and 550 Tsin (which thus seems to have taken the hint from

Ts'in) exterminated the families of two political refugees who had

fled to the Tartars and to Ts'i respectively. Even in Ts'u the

relatives of the man who first taught war to Wu were massacred in

585, and any one succouring the fugitive King of Ts'u was

threatened with "three clan penalties"; this last case was in the

year 529. The laws of Ts'u seem to have been particularly harsh;

in 55 the premier was cut into four for corruption, and one

quarter was sent in each direction, as a warning to the local

districts. About 650 B.C. a distinguished Lu statesman, named

Tsang Wen-chung, seems to have drawn up a special code, for one of

Confucius' pupils (two centuries later) denounced it as being too

severe when compared with Tsz-ch'an's mild laws--to be soon

mentioned. Confucius himself also described the man as being "too

showy." This Lu statesman, about twenty years later, made some

significant and informing observations to the ruler of Lu when

report came that Tsin (the Second Protector) was endeavouring to

get the Emperor to poison a federal refugee from Wei, about whose

succession the powers were at the moment quarrelling. He said:

"There are only five recognized punishments: warlike arms, the

axe, the knife or the saw, the branding instruments, the whip or

the bastinado; there are no surreptitious ones like this now

proposed." The result was that Lu, being of the same clan as the

Emperor, easily succeeded in bribing the imperial officials to let

the refugee prince go. The grateful prince eagerly offered Tsang

W&n-chung a reward; but the statesman declined to receive it, on

the ground that "a subject's sayings are not supposed to be known

beyond his own master's frontier." About, a century later a

distinguished Tsin statesman, asking what "immortality" meant, was

told: "When a man dies, but when his words live; like the words of

this distinguished man, Tsang W&n-chung, of Lu state." This same

Tsin statesman is said to have engraved some laws on iron (513),

an act highly disapproved by Confucius. It is only by thus piecing

together fragmentary allusions that we can arrive at the

conclusion that "there were judges in those days." Mention has

been several times made in previous chapters of Tsz-ch'an, whose

consummate diplomacy maintained the independence and even the

federal influence of the otherwise obscure state of Cheng during a

whole generation. In the year 536 B.C. he decided to cast the laws

in metal for the information of the people: this course was

bitterly distasteful to his colleague, Shuh Hiang of Tsin (see

Appendix I.), and possibly the Tsin "laws on iron" just mentioned

were suggested by this experiment, for it must be remembered that

Tsin, Lu, Wei, and Cheng were all of the same imperial clan.

Confucius, who had otherwise a genuine admiration for Tsz-ch'an,

disapproved of this particular feature in his career. In a minor

degree the same question of definition and publication has also

caused differences of opinion between English lawyers, so far as

the so-called "judge-made law" is concerned; it is still

considered to be better practice to have it declared as

circumstances arise, than to have it set forth beforehand in a

code. The arguments are the same; in both cases the judges profess

to "interpret" the law as it already exists; that is, the Chinese

judge interprets the law of nature, and the English judge the

common and statute laws; but neither wishes to hamper himself by

trying to publish in advance a scheme contrived to fit all future

hypothetical cases.

About 680 B.C. the King of Ts'u is recorded to have passed a law

against harbouring criminals, under which the harbourer was liable

to the same penalty as the thief; and at the same time reference

is made by his advisers to an ancient law or command of the

imperial dynasty, made before it came to power in 1122 B.C.-"If

any of your men takes to flight, let every effort be made to find

him." Thus it would seem that other ruling classes, besides those

of the Chou clan, accepted the general imperial laws, Chou-

ordained or otherwise. Although it is thus manifest that the

vassal states, at least after imperial decadence set in, in 771

B.C., drew up and published laws of their own, yet, at the great

durbar of princes held by the First Protector in 651 B.C., it is

recorded that the "Son of Heaven's Prohibitions" were read over

the sacrificial victim. They are quite patriarchal in their

laconic style, and for that reason recall that of the Roman Twelve

Tables. They run: "Do not block springs!" "Do not hoard grain!"

"Do not displace legitimate heirs!" "Do not make wives of your

concubines!" "Do not let women meddle with State affairs!" From

the Chinese point of view, all these are merely assertions of what

is Nature's law. In the year 640, the state of Lu applied the term

"Law Gate" to the South Gate, "because both Emperor and vassal

princes face south when they rule, and because that is,

accordingly, the gate through which all commands and laws do

pass." It is always possible, however, that this "facing south" of

the ancient ruler points to the direction whence some of his

people came, and towards which, as their guide and leader, he had

to look in order to govern them.

In the year 594 there is an instance cited where two dignitaries

were killed by direct specific order of the Emperor. In explaining

this exceptional case, the commentator says: "The lord of all

below Heaven is Heaven, and Heaven's continuer or successor is the

Prince; whilst that which the Prince holds fast is the Sanction,

which no subject can resist."

Not very long after Confucius' death in 479 B.C., the powerful and

orthodox state of Tsin, which had so long held its own against

Ts'in, Ts'i, and Ts'u, tottered visibly under the disintegrating

effects of the "great family" intrigues: of the six great families

which had, as representatives of the earlier eleven, latterly

monopolized power, three only survived internecine conflicts, and

at last the surviving three split up into the independent states

of Han, Wei, and Chao, those names being eponymous, as being their

sub-fiefs, and, therefore, their "surnames," or family names. In

the year 403 the Emperor formally recognized them as separate,

independent vassaldoms. Wei is otherwise known as Liang, owing to

the capital city having borne that name, and the kings of Liang

are celebrated for their conversations with the peripatetic

philosopher, Mencius, in the fourth century B.C. In order to

distinguish this state from that of Wei (imperial clan) adjoining

Lu and Sung, we shall henceforth call it Ngwei, as, in fact, it

originally was pronounced, and as it still is in some modern

dialects. The first of the Ngwei sovereigns had in his employ a

statesman named Li K'wei, who introduced, for taxation purposes, a

new system of land laws, and also new penal laws. These last were

in six books, or main heads, and, it is said, represented all that

was best in the laws of the different feudal states, mostly in

reference to robbery: the minor offences were roguery, getting

over city walls, gambling, borrowing, dishonesty, lewdness,

extravagance, and transgressing the ruler's commands--their exact

terms are now unknown. This code was afterwards styled the "Law

Classic," and its influence can be plainly traced, dynasty by

dynasty, down to modern times; in fact, until a year or two ago,

the principles of Chinese law have never radically changed; each

successive ruling family has simply taken what it found; modifying

what existed, in its own supposed interest, according to time,

place, and circumstance. Li K'wei's land laws singularly resembled

those recommended to the Manchu Government by Sir Robert Hart four

years ago.

CHAPTER XXI

PUBLIC WORKS

It is difficult to guess how much truth there is in the ancient

traditions that the water-courses of the empire were improved

through gigantic engineering works undertaken by the ancient

Emperors of China. There is one gorge, well known to travellers,

above Ich'ang, on the River Yang-tsz, on the way to Ch'ung-k'ing,

where the precipitous rocks on each side have the appearance and

hardness of iron, and for a mile or more--perhaps several miles--

stand perpendicularly like walls on both sides of the rapid Yang-

tsz River: the most curious feature about them is that from below

the water-level, right up to the top, or as far as the eye can

reach, the stone looks as though it had been chipped away with

powerful cheese-scoops: it seems almost impossible that any

operation of nature can have fashioned rocks in this way; on the

other hand, what tools of sufficient hardness, driven by what

great force, could hollow out a passage of such length, at such a

depth, and such a height? It is certain that after Ts'in conquered

the hitherto almost unknown kingdoms of Pa and Shuh (Eastern and

Western Sz Ch'wan) a Chinese engineer named Li Ping worked wonders

in the canalization of the so-called CH'ÊNg-tu plain, or the rich

level region lying around the capital city of Sz Ch'wan province,

which was so long as Shuh endured also the metropolis of Shuh. The

consular officers of his Britannic Majesty have made a special

study of these sluices, which are still in full working order, and

they seem almost unchanged in principle from the period (280 B.C.)

when Li Ping lived. The Chinese still regard this branch of the

Great River as the source; or at least they did so until the

Jesuit surveys of two centuries ago proved otherwise; it was quite

natural that they should do so in ancient times, for the true

upper course, and also Yiin Nan and Tibet through which that

course runs, were totally unknown to them, and unheard of by name;

even now the so-called Lolo country of Sz Ch'wan and Yiin Nan is

mostly unexplored, and the mountain Lolos are quite independent of

China. The fact that they have whitish skins and a written script

of their own (manifestly inspired by the form of Chinese

characters) makes them a specially interesting people. Li Ping's

engineering feats also included the region around Ya-thou and Kia-

ting, as marked on the modern maps.

The founder of the Hia dynasty (2205 B.C.) is supposed to have

liberated the stagnant waters of the Yellow River and sent them to

the sea; as this is precisely what all succeeding dynasties have

tried to do, and have been obliged to try, and what in our own

times the late Li Hung-chang was ordered to do just before his

death, there seems no good reason for suspecting the accuracy of

the tradition; the more especially as we see that the founder of

the Chou dynasty sent his chief political adviser and his two most

distinguished relatives to settle along this troublesome river's

lower course, as rulers of Ts'i, Yen, and Lu; the other

considerable vassals were all ranged along the middle course.

The original Chinese founder of the barbarian colony of Wu

belonged, as already explained, to the same clan or family as the

founder of the Chou dynasty, and in one respect even took

ancestral or spiritual precedence of him, because the emigrant had

voluntarily retired into obscurity with his brother in order to

make way for a third and more brilliant younger brother, whose

grandson it was that afterwards, in 1122 B.C., conquered China,

and turned the Chou principality, hitherto vassal to the Shang

dynasty, into the Chou dynasty, to which the surviving Shang

princes then became vassals in the Sung state and elsewhere. Even

though the founder of Wu may have adopted barbarian ways, such as

tattooing, hair-cutting, and the like, he must have possessed

considerable administrative power, for he made a canal (running

past his capital) for a distance of thirty English miles along the

new "British" railway from Wu-sih to Ch'ang-shuh, as marked on

present maps; his idea was to facilitate boat-travelling, and to

assist cultivators with water supplies for irrigation.

In the year 485 B.C. the King of Wu, who was then in the hey-day

of his success, and by way of becoming Protector of China, erected

a wall and fortifications round the well-known modern city of

Yangchow (where Marco Polo 1700 years later acted as governor); he

next proceeded for the first time in history to establish water

communication between the Yang-tsz River and the River Hwai; this

canal was then (483-481) continued farther north, so as to give

communication with the southern and central parts of modern Shan

Tung province.

His object was to facilitate the conveyance of stores for his

armies, then engaged in bringing pressure upon Ts'i (North Shan

Tung) and Lu (South Shan Tung). He succeeded in getting his boats

to the River Tsi, running past Tsi-nan Fu, and to the River I,

running past I-thou Fu, thus dominating the whole Shan Tung

region; for these two were then the only navigable rivers in Shan

Tung besides the Sz. The River Tsi is now taken possession of by

the Yellow River, which, as we have shown, then ran a parallel

course much to the westward of it; and the River I then ran south

into the River Sz, which, as already explained, has in its lower

course, in comparatively modern times, been taken possession of

permanently by the Grand Canal; but the upper course of the Sz,

now, as then, ran past Confucius' town, the Lu metropolis, of

K'üh-fu. In 483 B.C. the same king cast his faithful adviser (of

Ts'u origin) into the canal by which the waters of lake T'ai Hu

now run to modern Soochow, and thence to Hangchow. Ever since that

date the unfortunate man in question has been a popular "god of

the waters" in those parts. It follows, therefore, that the Wu

founder's modest canal must have been from time to time extended,

at least in an easterly direction. It was only after the conquest

of China by Ts'in, 250 years later, that the First August Emperor

extended this system of canals northwards and westwards, from

Ch'ang-thou Fu to Tan-yang and Chinkiang, as marked on the modern

maps. Thus the barbarian kings of Wu have found the true alignment

of our "British", railway for us; and, so far as the northern

canal is concerned, have really achieved the task for which credit

is usually given to Kublai Khan, the Mongol patron of Marco Polo.

Kublai merely improved the old work. The ancient Wu capital was 10

English miles south-east of Wu-sih, and 17 miles north of Soochow,

to which place the capital was transferred in the year 513 B.C.,

as it was more suitable than the old capital for the arsenals and

ship-building yards then, for the first time, being built on an

extensive scale by the King of Wu.

The first bridge over the Yellow River was constructed by the

kingdom of Ts'in in 257 B.C., on what is still the high-road

between T'ung-thou Fu and P'u-chou Fu. Previous to that date

armies had to cross the Yellow River at the fords; and, as an

instance of this, it may be stated that the founder of the Chou

dynasty in 1122 B.C. summoned his vassals to meet him at the Ford

of Mêng, a place still so marked on the maps, and lying on the

high-road between the two modern cities of Ho-nan Fu and Hwai-

k'ing Fu; thus there was no excuse for the feudal princes failing

to arrive at the rendezvous. It was not far from the same place,

but on the north bank of the river, that Tsin in 632 B.C. held the

great durbar as Second Protector, on the notorious occasion when

the puppet Emperor was "sent for" by the Tsin dictator. To conceal

this outrage on "the rites," Confucius says: "The Son of Heaven

went in camp north of the river." To go on hunt, or in camp, is

still a vague historical expression for "go on fief inspection,"

and it was so used in 1858, when the Manchu Emperor Hien-fêng took

refuge from the allied troops at Jêhol in Tartary.

The first thing Ts'in did when it united the empire in 221 B.C.

was to occupy all the fords and narrow passes, and to put them in

working order for the passage of armies. As even now the lower

Yellow River is only navigable for large craft for 20 miles from

its mouth (now in Shan Tung), it is easy to imagine how many fords

there must have been in its shallow waters, and also how it came

to pass that boats were so little used to convey large bodies of

troops with their stores.

The great wall of China of 217 B.C. was by no means the first of

its kind. A century before that date Ts'in built a long wall to

keep off the Tartars; and, half a century before that again, Ngwei

(one of the three powerful families of Tsin, all made independent

princes in 403) had built a wall to keep off its western neighbour

Ts'in; both these walls seem to have been in the north part of the

modern Shen Si region, and they were possibly portions of the

later continuous great wall of the August Emperor, which occupied

the forced energies of 700,000 men. There is a statement that the

same Emperor set 700,000 eunuchs to work on the palaces and the

tomb he was constructing for himself at his new metropolis (moved

since 350 B.C. to the city of Hien-yang, north of the river Wei,

opposite the present Si-ngan Fu). This probably means, not that

eunuchs were common in those times as palace _employés_, but

that castration still was the usual punishment inflicted

throughout China for grave offences not calling for the penalty of

death, or for the more serious forms of maiming, such as foot-

chopping or knee-slicing; and that all the prisoners of that

degree were told off to do productive work: although humiliatingly

deformed, they were still available for the common purposes of

native life, and their defenceless and forlorn plight would

probably make it an easier matter to handle them in gangs than to

handle sound males; and if they died off under the rough treatment

of task-masters, they would have no families to mourn or avenge

them in accordance with family duty; for a eunuch has no name and

no family. The palaces in question were joined by a magnificent

bridge on the high-road between Hien-yang and Si-ngan. This very

year a German firm has contracted to build an iron bridge over the

Yellow River at Lan-thou Fu, where crossed by Major Bruce.

CHAPTER XXII

CITIES AND TOWNS

There are singularly few descriptions of cities in ancient Chinese

history, but here again we may safely assume that most of them

were in principle, if only on a small scale, very much what they

are now, mere inartistic, badly built collections of hovels. Sõul,

the quaint capital of Corea, as it appeared in its virgin

condition to its European discoverers twenty-five years ago,

probably then closely resembled an ancient vassal Chinese prince's

capital of the very best kind. Modern trade is responsible for the

wealthy commercial streets now to be found in all large Chinese

cities; but a small _hien_ city in the interior--and it must

be remembered that a _hien_ circuit or district corresponds

to an old marquisate or feudal principality of the vassal unit

type--is often a poor, dusty, dirty, depressing, ramshackle

agglomeration of villages or hamlets, surrounded by a disproportionately

pretentious wall, the cubic contents of which wall alone would more

than suffice to build in superior style the whole mud city within; for half

the area of the interior is apt to be waste land or stagnant puddles: it

was so even in Peking forty years ago, and possibly is so still except

in the "Legation quarter."

In 745 B.C., when the Tsin marquess foolishly divided his

patrimony with a collateral branch, the capital town of this

subdivided state is stated to have been a greater place than the

old capital. They are both of them still in existence as

insignificant towns, situated quite close together on the same

branch of the River Fên (the only navigable river) in South Shan

Si; marked with their old names, too; that is to say, K'iih-wuh

and Yih-CH'ÊNg. It was only after the younger branch annexed the

elder in 679 that Tsin became powerful and began to expand; and it

was only when a policy of "home rule" and disintegration set in,

involving the splitting up of Tsin's orthodox power into three

royal states of doubtful orthodoxy, that China fell a prey to

Ts'in ambition. _Absit_ omen to us.

In 560, when the deformed philosopher Yen-tsz visited Ts'u, and

entertained that semi-barbarous court with his witticisms, he took

the opportunity boastfully to enlarge upon the magnificence of

Lin-tsz (still so marked), the capital of Ts'i. "It is," said he,

"surrounded by a hundred villages; the parasols of the walkers

obscure the sky, whose perspiration runs in such streams as to

cause rain; their shoulders and heels touch together, so closely

are they packed." The assembled Ts'u court, with mouths open, but

inclined for sport at the cost of their visitor, said: "If it is

such a grand place, why do they select you?" Yen-tsz played a

trump card when he replied: "Because I am such a mean-looking

fellow,"--meaning, as explained in Chapter IX., that "any pitiful

rascal is good enough to send to Ts'u." Exaggerations apart,

however, there is every reason to believe that the statesman-

philosopher Kwan-tsz, a century before that date, had really

organized a magnificent city. A full description of how he

reconstructed the economic life of both city and people is given

in the _Kwoh-yü_ (see Chapter XVII.), the authenticity of

which work, though not free from question, is, after all, only

subject to the same class of criticism as Rénan lavishes upon one

or two of the Gospels, the general tenor of which, be says, must

none the less be accepted, with all faults, as the _bonâfide_

attempt of some one, more or less contemporary, to represent what

was then generally supposed to be the truth.

Ts'u itself must have had something considerable to show in the

way of public buildings, for in the year 542 B.C. after paying a

visit to that country in accordance with the provisions of the

Peace Conference of 546, the ruler of Lu built himself a palace in

imitation of one he saw there. The original capital of Wu (see

Chapter VII.) was a poor place, and is described as having

consisted of low houses in narrow streets, with a vulgar palace;

this was in 523. In 513 a new king moved to the site now occupied

by Soochow, and he seems to have made of it the magnificent city

it has remained ever since--the place, of course it will be

remembered, where General Gordon and Li Hung-chang had their

celebrated quarrel about decapitating surrendered rebels. There

were eight gates, besides eight water-gates for boats; it was

eight English miles in circuit, and contained the palace, several

towers (pagodas, being Buddhist, were then naturally unknown),

kiosks, ponds, and duck preserves. The extensive arsenal and ship-

yard was quite separate from the main town. No city in the

orthodox part of China is so closely described as this one, nor is

it likely that there were many of them so vast in extent.

Judging by the frequency with which Ts'in moved its capitals (but

always within a limited area in the Wei valley, between that river

and its tributary the K'ien), they cannot have been very important

or substantial places; in fact, there are no descriptions of early

Ts'in economic life at all; and, for all we know to the contrary,

the headquarters of Duke Muh, when he entered upon his reforms in

the seventh century B.C., may have resembled a Tartar encampment.

The _Kwoh-yü_ has no chapter devoted to Ts'in, which (as indeed

stated) for 500 years lived a quite isolated life of its own. In later

times, especially after the reforms introduced by the celebrated

Chinese princely adventurer, Wei Yang, during the period 360--340,

the land administration was reconstituted, the capital was finally moved

to Hien-yang, and every effort was made to develop all the resources

of the country. Ts'in then possessed 41 _hien,_ those with a

population of under 10,000 having a governor with a lower title than

the governors of the larger towns, Probably the total population of

Ts'in by this time reached 3,000,000. A century later, when the First

August Emperor was conquering China, armies of half a million men

on each side were not at all uncommon. When his conquests were

complete, he set about building palaces on both banks of the Wei in

most lavish style, as narrated in the last chapter. It is said of him that,

"as he conquered each vassal prince, he had a sketch made of his

palace buildings," and, with these before him as models, he lined

the river with rows of beautiful edifices,--evidently, from the

description given, much resembling those lying along the Golden

Horn at Constantinople; if not in quality, at least in general

spectacular arrangement.

As to the minor orthodox states grouped along the Yellow River,

they seem to have shifted their capitals on very slight

provocation; scarcely one of them remained from first to last in

the same place. To take one as an instance, the state of Hu, an

orthodox state belonging to the same clan name as Ts'i. The

history of this petty principality or barony is only exactly known

from the time when Confucius' history begins, and it was

continually being oppressed by Cheng and Ts'u, its more powerful

neighbours; in 576, 533, 524 and onwards from that, there were

incessant removals, so that even the native commentators say: "it

was just like shifting a village, so superficial an affair was

it." The accepted belles _lettres_ style (see p. 78) of saying

"my country" is still the ancient _pi-yih_ or "unworthy village":

the Empress of China once (about 190 B.C.) used this expression,

even after the whole of China had been united, in order to reject

politely the offer of marriage conveyed to her by a powerful Tartar

king. The expression is particularly interesting, inasmuch as it recalls,

as we have already pointed out, a time when the "country" of each

feudal chief was simply his mud village and the few square miles of

fields around it, which were naturally divided off from the next chief's

territory by hills and streams. On the Burmo-Chinese frontier there are

at this moment many Kakhyen "kings" of this kind, each of them ruling

over his mountain or valley, and supreme in his own domain.

That there were walled cities in China (apart from the Emperor's,

which, of course, would be "the city" par _excellence_) is

plain from the language used at durbars, which were always held

"outside the walls." In the _loess_ plains there could not

have been any stone whatever for building purposes, and there is

little, if any, specific mention of brick. Probably the walls were

of adobe, i.e. of mud, beaten down between two rigid planks,

removed higher as the wall dries below. This is the way most of

the houses are still built in modern Peking, and perhaps also in

most parts of China, at least where stone (or brick) is not

cheaper; the "barbarian" parts of China are still the best built;

for instance, CH'ÊNg-tu in Sz Ch'wan, Canton in the south. Hankow

(Ts'u) is a comparatively poor place; Peking the dingiest of all.

Chinkiang is a purely _loess_ country.

At the time of the unification of China, during the middle of the

third century B.C., the Ts'in armies found it necessary to flood

Ta-liang or "Great Liang," the capital of Ngwei (otherwise called

Liang), corresponding to the modern K'ai-fêng Fu, the Jewish

centre in Ho Nan province: the waters of the Yellow River were

allowed to flood the country (this was again done by the Tai-p'ing

rebels fifty years ago, when the Jews suffered like other people,

and lost their synagogue), the walls of which collapsed. It is

evident that the ancient city walls could not have been such

solid, brick-faced walls as we now see round Peking and Nanking,

but simply mud ramparts.

CHAPTER XXIII

BREAK-UP OF CHINA

We must turn to unorthodox China once more, and see how it fared

after Confucius' death. After only a short century of international

existence, the vigorous state of Wu perished once for all in the

year 473 B.C., and the remains of the ruling caste escaped

eastwards in boats. When for the first time embassies between

the Japanese and the Chinese became fairly regular, in the

second and third centuries of our era, there began to be

persistent statements made in standard Chinese history that the

then ruling powers in Japan considered themselves in some way

lineally connected with a Chinese Emperor of 2100 B.C., and with

his descendants, their ancestors, who, it was said, escaped from

Wu to China. This is the reason why, in Chapter VII., we have

suggested, not that the population of Japan came from China, but

that some of the semi-barbarous descendants of those ancient

Chinese princes who first colonized the then purely barbarous Wu,

finding their power destroyed in 473 B.C. by the neighbouring

barbarous power of Yüeh, settled in Japan, and continued their

civilizing mission in quite a new sphere. Many years ago I

endeavoured, in various papers published in China and Japan, to

show that, apart from Chinese words adopted into Japanese ever

since A.D. 1 from the two separate sources of North China by land

and Central China by sea, there is clear reason to detect, in the

supposed pure Japanese language, as it was anterior to those

importations, an admixture of Chinese words adopted much earlier

than A.D. 1, and incorporated into the current tongue at a time

when there was no means or thought of "nailing the sounds down" by

any phonetic system of writing. There is much other very sound

Chinese historical evidence in favour of the migration view, and

it has been best summarized in an excellent little work in German,

by Rev. A. Tschepe, S.J., published in the interior of Shan Tung

province only last year.

The ancient native names for Wu and Yiieh, according to the clumsy

Confucian way of writing them, were something like _Keu-ngu_

and _O-viet_ (see Chapter VII.); but it is quite hopeless to

attempt reconstruction of the exact sounds intended then to be

expressed by syllables which, in Chinese itself, have quite

changed in power. The power of Yüeh was supreme after 473; its

king was voted Protector by the federal princes, and in 472 he

held a grand durbar at the "Lang-ya Terrace," which place is no

longer exactly identifiable, but is probably nothing more than the

German settlement at Kiao Chou; in 468 he transferred his capital

thither, and it remained there for over a century, till 379: but

his power, it seems, was almost purely maritime, and he never

succeeded in obtaining a sure footing north of or even in the Hwai

valley, the greater part of which he subsequently returned to

Ts'u. It must be remembered that the Hwai then had a free course

to the sea, and of a part of it, the now extinct Sui valley, the

Yellow River took possession for several centuries up to 1851 A.D.

He also returned to Sung the territory Wu had taken from her, and

made over to Lu 100 _li_ square (30 miles) to the east of the

River Sz; to understand this it must be remembered, at the cost of

a little iteration, that Sung and Lu were the two chief powers of

the middle and lower Sz valley, which is now entirely monopolized

by the Grand Canal.

[Illustration: MAP

1. The dotted lines mark the boundaries of modern Shen Si, Shan

Si, Chih Li, Ho Nan, Shan Tung, An Hwei, and Kiang Su.

2. The names Chao, Ngwei, and Han show how Tsin was split up into

three in 403 B.C.

3. The crosses (in the line of each name) show the successive

capitals as Ts'in encroached from the west, the _last_ capital in

each case having a circle round the cross.]

The imperial dynasty went from bad to worse; in 440 there were

family intrigues, assassinations, and divisions. The imperial

metropolis, which was towards the end about all the Emperors had

left to them, was divided into two, each half ruled by an Eastern

and a Western Emperor respectively; unfortunately, no literature

has survived which might depict for us the life of the inhabitants

during those wretched days. Meanwhile, the ambitious great

families of Tsin very nearly fell under the dictatorship of one of

their number; in 452 he was himself annihilated by a combination

of the others, and the upshot of it was that next year the three

families that had crushed the dictator and, emerged victorious,

divided up the realm of Tsin into three separate and practically

independent states, called respectively Wei or Ngwei (the Shan Si

parts), Han (the Ho Nan parts), and Chao (the Chih Li parts). The

other ancient and more orthodox state of Wei, occupying the Yellow

River valley to the west of Sung and Lu, was now a mere vassal to

these three Tsin powers, which had not quite yet declared

themselves independent, and which had for the present left the old

Tsin capital to the direct administration of the legitimate

prince. It was only in the year 403 that the Emperor's administration

formally declared them to be feudal princes. This year is really the

next great turning-point in Chinese history, in order of date, after the

flight of the Emperors from their old capital in 771 B.C.; and it is, in

fact, with this year that the great modern historical work of Sz-ma

Kwang begins; it was published A.D. 1084, and brings Chinese

events down to a century previous to that date.

As to the state of Ts'i, it also had fallen into evil ways. So

early as 539 B.C., when the two philosophers Yen-tsz and Shuh

Hiang had confided to each other their mutual sorrows (see

Appendix No. 2), the former had predicted that the powerful local

family of T'ien or Ch'en was slowly but surely undermining the

legitimate princely house, and would certainly end by seizing the

throne; one of the methods adopted by the supplanting family was

to lend money to the people on very favourable terms, and so to

manipulate the grain measures that the taxes due to the prince

were made lighter to bear; in this ingenious and indirect way, all

the odium of taxation was thrown upon the extravagant princes who

habitually squandered their resources, whilst the credit for

generosity was turned towards this powerful tax-farming family,

which thus took care of its own financial interests, and at the

same time secured the affections of the people. In 481 the

ambitious T'ien Hêng, _alias_ CH'ÊN Ch'ang, then acting as

hereditary _maire du palais_ to the legitimate house, assassinated

the ruling prince, an act so shocking from the orthodox point of view that

Confucius was quite heartbroken on learning of it, notwithstanding that his

own prince had narrowly escaped assassination at the hands of the

murdered man's grandfather. It was not until the year 391, however, that

the T'ien, or CH'ÊN, family, after setting up and deposing princes at

their pleasure for nearly a century, at last openly threw off the

mask and usurped the Ts'i throne: their title was officially

recognized by the Son of Heaven in the year 378.

As to Ts'in ambitions, for a couple of centuries past there had

been no further advance of conquest, at least in China. The

hitherto almost unheard of state of Shuh (Sz Ch'wan) now begins to

come prominently forward, and to contest with Ts'in mastery of the

upper course of the Yang-tsz River. After being for 260 years in

unchallenged possession of all territory west of the Yellow River,

Ts'in once more lost this to Tsin (_i.e._ to Ngwei) in 385.

It was not until the other state of Wei, lower down the Yellow

River, lost its individuality as an independent country that the

celebrated Prince Wei Yang (see Chapter XXII.), having no career

at home, offered his services to Ts'in, and that this latter

state, availing itself to the full of his knowledge, suddenly shot

forth in the light of real progress. We have seen in Chapter XX.

that an eminent lawyer and statesman of Ngwei, Ts'in's immediate

rival on the east, had inaugurated a new legal code and an

economic land system. This man's work had fallen under the

cognizance of Wei Yang, who carried it with him to Ts'in, where it

was immediately utilized to such advantage that Ts'in a century

later was enabled to organize her resources thoroughly, and thus

conquered the whole empire,

We have now arrived at what is usually called the Six Kingdom

Period, or, if we include Ts'in, against whose menacing power the

six states were often in alliance, the period of the Seven

Kingdoms. These were the three equally powerful states of Ngwei,

Han, and Chao (this last very Tartar in spirit, owing to its

having absorbed nearly all the Turko-Tartar tribes west of the

Yellow River mouth); the northernmost state of Yen, which seems in

the same way to have absorbed or to have exercised a strong

controlling influence over the Manchu-Corean group of tribes

extending from the Liao River to the Chao frontier; Ts'u, which

now had the whole south of China entirely to itself, and managed

even to amalgamate the coast states of Yiich in 334; and finally Ts'i.

In other words, the orthodox Chinese princes, whose comparatively

petty principalities in modern Ho Nan province had for several centuries

formed a sort of cock-pit in which Ts'in, Tsin, Ts'i, and Ts'u fought out

their rivalries, had totally disappeared as independent and even as

influential powers, and had been either absorbed by those four great

powers (of which Tsin and Ts'i were in reconstituted form), or had

become mere obedient vassals to one or the other of them. In former

times Tsin had been kinsman and defender; but now Tsin, broken up

into three of strange clans, herself afforded an easy prey to Ts'in

ambition; the orthodox states were in the defenceless position of the

Greek states after Alexander had exhausted Macedon in his Persian

wars, and when their last hope, Pyrrhus, had taught the Romans the art

of war: they had only escaped Persia to fall into the jaws of

Rome.

In the middle of the fourth century B.C. all six powers began to

style themselves _wang_, or "king," which, as explained before,

was the title borne by the Emperors of the Chou dynasty. Military,

political, and literary activities were very great after this at the

different emulous royal courts, and, however much the literary

pedants of the day may have bewailed the decay of the good

old times, there can be no doubt that life was now much more

varied, more occupied, and more interesting than in the sleepy,

respectable, patriarchal days of old. The "Fighting State" Period,

as expounded in the _Chan-Kwoh Ts'eh,_ or "Fighting State

Records," is the true period of Chinese chivalry, or knight-

errantry.

CHAPTER XXIV

KINGS AND NOBLES

The emperors of the dynasty of Chou, which came formally into

power in 1122 B.C., we have seen took no other title than that of

wang, which is usually considered by Europeans to mean "king"; in

modern times it is applied to the rulers of (what until recently

were) tributary states, such as Loochoo, Annam, and Corea; to

foreign rulers (unless they insist on a higher title); and to

Manchu and Mongol princes of the blood, and mediatized princes.

Confucius in his history at first always alludes to the Emperor

whilst living as _t'ien-wang_, or "the heavenly king"; it is

not until in speaking of the year 583 that he uses the old term

_t'ien-tsz_, or "Son of Heaven," in alluding to the reigning

Emperor. After an emperor's death he is spoken of by his

posthumous name; as, for instance, Wu Wang, the "Warrior King,"

and so on: these posthumous names were only introduced (as a

regular system) by the Chou dynasty.

The monarchs of the two dynasties Hia (2205-1767) and Shang (1766-

1123) which preceded that of Chou, and also the somewhat mythical

rulers who preceded those two dynasties, were called _Ti_, a

word commonly translated by Western nations as "Emperor." For many

generations past the Japanese, in order better to assert _vis-á-

vis_ of China their international rank, have accordingly made

use of the hybrid expression "_Ti_-state," by which they seek

to convey the European idea of an "empire," or a state ruled over

by a monarch in some way superior to a mere king, which is the

highest title China has ever willingly accorded to a foreign

prince; this royal functionary in her eyes is, or was, almost

synonymous with "tributary prince." Curiously enough, this "dog-

Chinese" (Japanese) expression is now being reimported into

Chinese political literature, together with many other excruciating

combinations, a few of European, but mostly of Japanese manufacture,

intended to represent such Western ideas as "executive and legislative,"

"constitutional," "ministerial responsibility," "party," "political view,"

and so on. But we ourselves must not forget, in dealing with the particular

word "imperial," that the Romans first extended the military title of

imperator to the permanent holder of the "command," simply because

the ancient and haughty word of "king" was, after the expulsion of

the kings, viewed with such jealousy by the people of Rome that

even of Caesar it is said that he did thrice refuse the title, So

the ancient Chinese Ti, standing alone, was at first applied both

to Shang Ti or "God" and to his Vicar on Earth, the Ti or Supreme

Ruler of the Chinese world. Even Lao-tsz (sixth century B.C.), in

his revolutionary philosophy, considers the "king" or "emperor" as

one of the moral forces of nature, on a par with "heaven,"

"earth," and "Tao (or Providence)." When we reflect what petty

"worlds" the Assyrian, Egyptian, and Greek worlds were, we can

hardly blame the Chinese, who had probably been settled in Ho Nan

just as long as the Western ruling races had been in Assyria and

Egypt respectively, for imagining that they, the sole recorders of

events amongst surrounding inferiors, were the world; and that the

incoherent tribes rushing aimlessly from all sides to attack them,

were the unreclaimed fringe of the world.

It does not appear clearly why the Chou dynasty took the new title

of wang, which does not seem to occur in any titular sense

previous to their accession: the Chinese attempts to furnish

etymological explanation are too crude to be worth discussing. No

feudal Chinese prince presumed to use it during the Chou

_régime_ and if the semi-barbarous rulers of Ts'u, Wu, and

Yiieh did so in their own dominions (as the Hwang Ti, or "august

emperor," of Annam was in recent times tacitly allowed to do),

their federal title in orthodox China never went beyond that of

viscount. When in the fourth century B.C. all the powers styled

themselves _wang_, and were recognized as such by the insignificant

emperors, the situation was very much the same as that produced in

Europe when first local Caesars, who, to begin with, had been

"associates" of the Augustus (or two rival Augusti), asserted their

independence of the feeble central Augustus, and then set themselves

up as Augusti pure and simple, until at last the only "Roman Emperor"

left in Rome was the Emperor of Germany.

It is not explained precisely on what grounds, when the first Chou

emperors distributed their fiefs, some of the feudal rulers, as

explained in Chapter VII., were made dukes; others marquesses,

earls, viscounts, and barons. Of course these translated terms are

mere makeshifts, simply because the Chinese had five ranks, and so

have we. In creating their new nobility, the Japanese have again

made use of the five old Chinese titles, except that for some

reason they call Duke Ito and Duke Yamagata "Prince" in English.

The size of the fiefs had something to do with it in China; the

pedigree of the feoffees probably more; imperial clandom perhaps

most of all. The sole state ruled by a duke in his own intrinsic

right from the first was Sung, a small principality on the

northernmost head-waters of the River Hwai, corresponding to the

modern Kwei-t&h Fu: probably it was because this duke fulfilled

the sacrificial and continuity duties of the destroyed dynasty of

Shang that he received extraordinary rank; just as, in very much

later days, the Confucius family was the only non-Manchu to

possess "ducal" rank, or, as the Japanese seem to hold in German

style, "princely" rank. But it must be remembered that the Chou

emperors had imperial dukes within their own appanage, precisely

as cardinals, or "princes of the Church," are as common around

Rome as they are scarce among the spiritually "feudal" princes of

Europe; for feudal they once practically were.

Confucius' petty state of Lu was founded by the Duke of Chou,

brother of the founder posthumously called the Wu Wang, or the

"Warrior King": for many generations those Dukes of Lu seem to

have resided at or near the metropolis, and to have assisted the

Emperors with their advice as counsellors on the spot, as well as

to have visited at intervals and ruled their own distant state,

which was separated from Sung by the River Sz and by the marsh or

lakes through which that river ran. Yet Lu as a state had only the

rank of a marquisate ruled by a marquess.

Another close and influential relative of the founder or "Warrior

King" was the Duke of Shao, who was infeoffed in Yen (the Peking

plain), and whose descendants, like those of the Duke of Chou,

seem to have done double duty at the metropolis and in their own

feudal appanage. Confucius' history scarcely records anything of

an international kind about Yen, which was a petty, feeble region,

dovetailed in between Tsin and Ts'i, quite isolated, and occupied

in civilizing some of the various Tartar and Corean barbarians;

but it must have gradually increased in wealth and resources like

all the other Chinese states; for, as we have seen in the last

chapter, the Earls of Yen blossomed out into Kings at the

beginning of the fourth century B.C., and the philosopher Mencius,

when advising the King of Ts'i, even strongly recommended him to

make war on the rising Yen power. The founder of Ts'i was the

chief adviser of the Chou founder, but was not of his family name;

his ancestors--also the ancestors later on claimed by certain

Tartar rulers of China--go back to one of the ultra-mythical

Emperors of China; his descendants bore, under the Chou dynasty,

the dignity of marquess, and reigned without a break until, as

already related, the T'ien or Ch'en family, emanating from the

orthodox state of Ch'en, usurped the throne. Ts'i was always a

powerful and highly civilized state; on one occasion, in 589 B.C.,

as mentioned in Chapter VI., its capital was desecrated by Tsin;

and on another, a century later, the overbearing King of Wu

invaded the country. After the title of king was taken in 378

B.C., the court of Ts'i became quite a fashionable centre, and the

gay resort of literary men, scientists, and philosophers of all

kinds, Taoists included.

Tsin, like Ts'i, was of marquess rank, and though its ruling

family was occasionally largely impregnated with Tartar blood by

marriage, it was not much more so than the imperial family itself

had sometimes been, The Chinese have never objected to Tartars

_quâ_ Tartars, except as persons who "let their hair fly,"

"button their coats on the wrong side," and do not practise the

orthodox rites; so soon as these defects are remedied, they are

eligible for citizenship on equal terms. There has never been any

race question or colour question in China, perhaps because the

skin is yellow in whichever direction you turn; but it is

difficult to conceive of the African races being clothed with

Chinese citizenship.

Wei was a small state lying between the Yellow River as it now is

and the same river as it then was: it was given to a brother of

the founder of the Chou dynasty, and his subjects, like those of

the Sung duke, consisted largely of the remains of the Shang

dynasty; from which circumstance we may conclude that the so-

called "dynasties," including that of Chou, were simply different

ruling clans of one and the same people, very much like the

different Jewish tribes, of which the tribe of Levi was the most

"spiritual": that peculiarity may account for the universal

unreadiness to cut off sacrifices and destroy tombs, an outrage we

only hear of between barbarians, as, for instance, when Wu sacked

the capital of Ts'u. We have seen in Chapter XII. that a reigning

duke even respected at least some of the sacrificial rights of a

traitor subject.

The important state of CHÊNG, lying to the eastward of the

imperial reserve, was only founded in the ninth century B.C. by

one of the then Emperor's sons; to get across to each other, the

great states north and south of the orthodox nucleus had usually

to "beg road" of CHÊNG, which territory, therefore, became a

favourite fighting-ground; the rulers were earls. Ts'ao (earls)

and Ts'ai (marquesses) were small states to the north and south of

CHÊNG, both of the imperial family name. The state of CH'ÊN was

ruled by the descendants of the Emperor Shun, the monarch who

preceded the Hia dynasty, and who, as stated before, is supposed

to have been buried in the (modern) province of Hu Nan, south of

the Yang-tsz River: they were marquesses. These three last-named

states were always bones of contention between Tsin and Ts'u, on

the one hand, and between Ts'i and Ts'u on the other. The

remaining feudal states are scarcely worth special mention as

active participators in the story of how China fought her way from

feudalism to centralization; most of their rulers were viscounts

or barons in status, and seem to have owed, or at least been

obliged to pay, more duty to the nearest great feudatory than

direct to the Emperor.

No matter what the rank of the ruler, so soon as he had been

supplied with a posthumous name (expressing, in guarded style, his

personal character) he was known to history as "the Duke So-and-

So." Even one of the Rings of Ts'u, is courteously called "the

Duke Chwang" after his death, because as a federal prince he had

done honour to the courtesy title of viscount. Princes or rulers

not enjoying any of the five ranks were, if orthodox sovereign

princes over never so small a tract, still called posthumously,

"the Duke X."

Hence Western writers, in describing Confucius' master and the

rulers of other feudal states, often speak of "the Duke of Lu," or

"of Tsin"; but this is only an accurate form of speech when taken

subject to the above reserves.

CHAPTER XXV

VASSALS AND EMPEROR

The relations which existed between Emperor and feudal princes are

best seen and understood from specific cases involving mutual

relations. The Chou dynasty had about 1800 nominal vassals in all,

of whom 400 were already waiting at the ford of the Yellow River

for the rendezvous appointed by the conquering "Warrior King";

thus the great majority must already have existed as such before

the Chou family took power; in other words, they were the vassals

of the Shang dynasty, and perhaps, of the distant Hia dynasty too.

The new Emperor enfeoffed fifteen "brother" states, and forty more

having the same clan-name as himself: these fifty-five were

presumably all new states, enjoying mesne-lord or semi-suzerain

privileges over the host of insignificant principalities; and it

might as well be mentioned here that this imperial clan name of

_Ki_ was that of all the ultra-ancient emperors, from 2700

B.C. down to the beginning of the Hia dynasty in 2205 B.C. Fiefs

were conferred by the Chou conqueror upon all deserving ministers

and advisers as well as upon kinsmen. The more distant princes

they enfeoffed possessed, in addition to their distant satrapies,

a village in the neighbourhood of the imperial court, where they

resided, as at an hotel or town house, during court functions;

more especially in the spring, when, if the world was at peace,

they were supposed to pay their formal respects to the Emperor.

The tribute brought by the different feudal states was, perhaps

euphemistically, associated with offerings due to the gods,

apparently on the same ground that the Emperor was vaguely

associated with God. The Protectors, when the Emperors degenerated,

made a great show always of chastising or threatening the other

vassals on account of their neglect to honour the Emperor.

Thus in 656 the First Protector (Ts'i) made war upon Ts'u for not

sending the usual tribute of sedge to the Emperor, for use in

clarifying the sacrificial wine. Previously, in 663, after assisting the

state of Yen against the Tartars, Ts'i had requested Yen "to go

on paying tribute, as was done during the reigns of the two first

Chou Emperors, and to continue the wise government of the

Duke of Shao." In 581, when Wu's pretensions were rising in a

menacing degree, the King of Wu said: "The Emperor complains to me

that not a single _Ki_ (_i.e._ not a single closely-related

state) will come to his assistance or send him tribute, and thus

his Majesty has nothing to offer to the Emperor Above, or to the

Ghosts and Spirits."

Land thus received in vassalage from the Emperor could not, or

ought not to, be alienated without imperial sanction. Thus in 711

B.C. two states (both of the _Ki_ surname, and thus both such

as ought to have known better) effected an exchange of territory;

one giving away his accommodation village, or hotel, at the

capital; and the other giving in exchange a place where the

Emperor used to stop on his way to Ts'i when he visited Mount

T'ai-shan, then, as now, the sacred resort of pilgrims in Shan

Tung. Even the Emperor could not give away a fief in joke. This,

indeed, was how the second Chou Emperor conferred the (extinct or

forfeited) fief of Tsin upon a relative. But just as

_Une reine d'Espagne ne regarde pas par la fenêtre,_

so an Emperor of China cannot jest in vain. An attentive scribe

standing by said: "When the Son of Heaven speaks, the clerk takes

down his words in writing; they are sung to music, and the rites

are fulfilled." When, in 665 B.C., Ts'i had driven back the

Tartars on behalf of Yen, the Prince of Yen accompanied the Prince

of Ts'i back into Ts'i territory. The Prince of Ts'i at once ceded

to Yen the territory trodden by the Prince of Yen, on the ground

that "only the Emperor can, when accompanying a ruling prince,

advance beyond the limits of his own domain." This rule probably

refers only to war, for feudal princes frequently visited each

other. The rule was that "the Emperor can never go out," i.e. he

can never leave or quit any part of China, for all China belongs

to him. It is like our "the King can do no wrong."