territory, as all his vassals' territory is equally his. Hence his
"mere motion" or pleasure makes an Empress, who needs no formal
reception into his separate appanage by him. If the Emperor gives
a daughter or a sister in marriage, he deputes a ruling prince of
the Ki surname to "manage" the affair; hence to this day the only
name for an imperial princess is "a publicly managed one." A
feudal prince must go and welcome his wife, but the Emperor simply
deputes one of his appanage dukes to do it for him. In the same
way, these dukes are sent on mission to convey the Emperor's
pleasure to vassals. Thus, in 651 B.C., a duke was sent by the
Emperor to assist Ts'in and Ts'i in setting one of the four
Tartar-begotten brethren on the Tsin throne (see Chapter X.). In
649 two dukes (one being the hereditary Duke of Shao, supposed to
be descended from the same ancestor as the Earl reigning in the
distant state of Yen) were sent to confer the formal patent and
sceptre of investiture on Tsin. The rule was that imperial envoys
passing through the vassal territory should be welcomed on the
frontier, fed, and housed; but in 716 the fact that Wei attacked
an imperial envoy on his way to Lu proves how low the imperial
power had already sunk.
The greater powers undoubtedly had, nearly all of them, clusters
of vassals and clients, and it is presumed that the total of 1800,
belonging, at least nominally, to the Emperor, covered all these
indirect vassals. Possibly, before the dawn of truly historical
times, they all went in person to the imperial court; but after
the _débâcle_ of 771 B.C., the Emperor seems to have been
left severely alone by all the vassals who dared do so. So early
as 704 B.C. a reunion of princelets vassal to Ts'u is mentioned;
and in the year 622 Ts'u annexed a region styled "the six states,"
admittedly descended from the most ancient ministerial stock,
because they had presumed to ally themselves with the eastern
barbarians; this was when Ts'u was working her way eastwards, down
from the southernmost headwaters of the Hwai River, in the extreme
south of Ho Nan. It was in 684 that Ts'u first began to annex the
petty orthodox states in (modern) Hu Pêh province, and very soon
nearly all those lying between the River Han and the River Yang-
tsz were swallowed up by the semi-barbarian power. Ts'u's relation
to China was very much like that of Macedon to Greece. Both of the
latter were more or less equally descended from the ancient and
somewhat nebulous Pelasgi; but Macedon, though imbued with a
portion of Greek civilization, was more rude and warlike, with a
strong barbarian strain in addition. Ts'u was never in any way
"subject" to the Chou dynasty, except in so far as it may have
suited her to be so for some interested purpose of her own. In the
year 595 Ts'u even treated Sung and Cheng (two federal states of
the highest possible orthodox imperial rank) as her own vassals,
by marching armies through without asking their permission. As an
illustration of what was the correct course to follow may be taken
the case of Tsin in 632, when a Tsin army was marching on a
punitory expedition against the imperial clan state of Ts'ao; the
most direct way ran through Wei, but this latter state declined to
allow the Tsin army to pass; it was therefore obliged to cross the
Yellow River at a point south of Wei-hwei Fu (as marked on modern
maps), near the capital of Wei, past which the Yellow River then
ran.
Lu, though itself a small state, had, in 697, and again in 615,
quite a large number of vassals of its own; several are plainly
styled "subordinate countries," with viscounts and even earls to
rule them. Some of these sub-vassals to the feudal states seem
from the first never to have had the right of direct communication
with the Emperor at all; in such cases they were called fu-yung,
or "adjunct-functions," like the client colonies attached to the
colonial _municipia_ of the Romans. A fu-yung was only about
fifteen English miles in extent (according to Mencius); and from
850 B.C. to 771 BC. even the great future state of Ts'in had only
been a _fu-yung_,--it is not said to what mesne lord. Sung is
distinctly stated to have had a number of these _fu-yung_.
CH'ÊN is also credited with suzerainty over at least two sub-
vassal states. In 661 Tsin annexed a number of orthodox petty
states, evidently with the view of ultimately seizing that part of
the Emperor's appanage which lay north of the Yellow River (west
Ho Nan); it was afterwards obtained by "voluntary cession." The
word "viscount," besides being applied complimentarily to
barbarian "kings" when they showed themselves in China, had
another special use. When an orthodox successor was in mourning,
he was not entitled forthwith to use the hereditary rank allotted
to his state; thus, until the funeral obsequies of their
predecessors were over, the new rulers of Ch'en and Ts'ai were
called "the viscount," or "son" (same word).
The Emperor used to call himself "I, the one Man," like the
Spanish "Yo, el Rey." Feudal princes styled themselves to each
other, or to the ministers of each other, "The Scanty Man."
Ministers, speaking (to foreign ministers or princes) of their own
prince said, "The Scanty Prince"; of the prince's wife, "The
Scanty Lesser Prince"; of their own ministers, "The Scanty
Minister." It was polite to avoid the second person in addressing
a foreign prince, who was consequently often styled "your
government" by foreign envoys particularly anxious not to offend.
The diplomatic forms were all obsequiously polite; but the stock
phrases, such as, "our vile village" (our country), "your
condescending to instruct" (your words), "I dare not obey your
commands" (we will not do what you ask), probably involved nothing
more in the way of humility than the terms of our own gingerly
worded diplomatic notes, each term of which may, nevertheless,
offend if it be coarsely or carelessly expressed.
In some cases a petty vassal was neither a sub-kingdom nor an
adjunct-function to another greater vassal, but was simply a
political hanger-on; like, for instance, Hawaii was to the United
States, or Cuba now is; or like Monaco is to France, Nepaul to
India. Thus Lu, through assiduously cultivating the good graces of
Ts'i, became in 591 a sort of henchman to Ts'i; and, as we have
seen, at the Peace Conference of 546, the henchmen of the two
rival Protectors agreed to pay "cross respects" to each other's
Protector. It seems to have been the rule that the offerings of
feudal states to the Emperor should be voluntary, at least in
form: for instance, in the year 697, the Emperor or his agents
begged a gift of chariots from Lu, and in 618 again applied for
some supplies of gold; both these cases are censured by the
historians as being undignified. On the other hand, the Emperor's
complimentary presents to the vassals were highly valued. Thus in
the year 530, when Ts'u began to realize its own capacity for
empire, a claim was put in for the Nine Tripods, and for a share
of the same honorific gifts that were bestowed by the founders
upon Ts'i, Tsin, Lu, and Wei at the beginning of the Chou dynasty.
In the year 606 Ts'u had already "inquired" at the imperial court
about these same Tripods, and 300 years later (281 B.C.), when
struggling with Ts'in for the mastery of China, Ts'u endeavoured
to get the state of Han to support her demand for the Tripods,
which eventually fell to Ts'in; it will be remembered that the
Duke of Chou had taken them to the branch capital laid out by him,
but which was not really occupied by the Emperor until 771 B.C.
In 632, after the great Tsin victory over Ts'u, the Emperor
"accepted some Ts'u prisoners," conferred upon Tsin the
Protectorate, ceded to Tsin that part of the imperial territory
referred to on page 53, and presented to the Tsin ruler a chariot,
a red bow with 1000 arrows, a black bow with 1000 arrows, a jar of
scented wine, a jade cup with handle, and 300 "tiger" body-guards.
In 679, when Old Tsin had been amalgamated by New Tsin (both of
them then tiny principalities), the Emperor had already accepted
valuable loot from the capture of Old Tsin. In a word, the Emperor
nearly always sided with the strongest, accepted _faits accomplis_,
and took what he could get. This has also been China's usual policy
in later times.
CHAPTER XXVI
FIGHTING STATE PERIOD
The period of political development covered by Confucius' history--
the object of which history, it must be remembered, was to read
to the restless age a series of solemn warnings--was immediately
succeeded by the most active and bloodthirsty period in the
Chinese annals, that of the Fighting States, or the Six Countries;
sometimes they (including Ts'in) were called the "Seven Males,"
i.e. the Seven Great Masculine Powers. Tsin had been already
practically divided up between the three surviving great families
of the original eleven in 424 B.C.; but these three families of
Ngwei, Han, and Chao were not recognized by the Emperor until 403;
nor did they extinguish the legitimate ruler until 376, about
three years after the sacrifices of the legitimate Ts'i kings were
stopped. Accordingly we hear the original name Tsin, or "the three
Tsin," still used concurrently with the names Han, Ngwei, and
Chao, as that of Ts'u's chief enemy in the north for some time
after the division into three had taken place.
Tsin's great rival to the west, Ts'in, now found occupation in
extending her territory to the south-west at the expense of Shuh,
a vast dominion corresponding to the modern Sz Ch'wan, up to then
almost unheard of by orthodox China, but which, it then first
transpired, had had three kings and ten "emperors" of its own,
nine of these latter bearing the same appellation. Even now, the
rapids and gorges of the Yang-tsz River form the only great
commercial avenue from China into Sz Ch'wan, and it is therefore
not hard to understand how in ancient times, the tribes of "cave
barbarians" (whose dwellings are still observable all over that
huge province) effectively blocked traffic along such subsidiary
mountain-roads as may have existed then, as they exist now, for
the use of enterprising hawkers.
The Chinese historians have no statistics, indulge in fen (few?)
remarks about economic or popular development, describe no popular
life, and make no general reflections upon history; they confine
themselves to narrating the bald and usually unconnected facts
which took place on fixed dates, occasionally describing some
particularly heroic or daring individual act, or even sketching
the personal appearance and striking conduct of an exceptionally
remarkable king, general, or other leading personality: hence
there is little to guide us to an intelligent survey of causes and
effects, of motives and consequences; it is only by carefully
piecing together and collating a jumble of isolated events that it
is possible to obtain any general coup d'oeil at all: the wood is
often invisible on account of the trees.
But there can be no doubt that populations had been rapidly
increasing; that improved means had been found to convey
accumulated stores and equipments; that generals had learnt how to
hurl bodies of troops rapidly from one point to the other; and
that rulers knew the way either to interest large populations in
war, or to force them to take an active part in it. The marches,
durbars, and gigantic canal works, undertaken by the barbarous
King of Wu, as described in Chapter XXI., prove this in the case
of one country. Chinese states always became great in the same
way: first Kwan-tsz developed, on behalf of his master the First
Protector, the commerce, the army, and the agriculture of Ts'i. He
was imitated at the same time by Duke Muh of Ts'in and King Chwang
of Ts'u, both of which rulers (seventh century B.C.) set to work
vigorously in developing their resources. Then Tsz-ch'an raised
Cheng to a great pitch of diplomatic influence, if not also of
military power. His friend Shuh Hiang did the same thing for Tsin;
and both of them were models for Confucius in Lu, who had,
moreover, to defend his own master's interests against the policy
of the philosopher Yen-tsz of Ts'i. After his first defeat by the
King of Wu, the barbarian King of Yueh devoted himself for some
years to the most strenuous life, with the ultimate object of
amassing resources for the annihilation of Wu; the interesting
steps he took to increase the population will be described at
length in a later chapter. In 361, as we have explained in Chapter
XXII., a scion of Wei went as adviser to Ts'in, and within a
generation of his arrival the whole face of affairs was changed in
that western state hitherto so isolated; the new position, from a
military point of view, was almost exactly that of Prussia during
the period between the tyranny of the first Napoleon, together
with the humiliation experienced at his hands, and the patient
gathering of force for the final explosion of 1870, involving the
crushing of the second (reigning) Napoleon.
Very often the term "perpendicular and horizontal" period is
applied to the fourth century B.C. That is, Ts'u's object was to
weld together a chain of north and south alliances, so as to bring
the power of Ts'i and Tsin to bear together with her own upon
Ts'in; and Ts'in's great object was, on the other hand, to make a
similar string of east and west alliances, so as to bring the same
two powers to bear upon Ts'u. The object of both Ts'in and Ts'u
was to dictate terms to each unit of; and ultimately to possess,
the whole Empire, merely utilizing the other powers as catspaws to
hook the chestnuts out of the furnace. No other state had any
rival pretensions, for, by this time, Ts'in and Ts'u each really
did possess one-third part of China as we now understand it,
whilst the other third was divided between Ts'i and the three
Tsin. In 343 B.C. the Chou Emperor declared Ts'in Protector, and
from 292 to 288 B.C., Tsin and Ts'i took for a few years the
ancient title of _Ti_ or "Emperor" of the West and East respectively:
in the year 240 the Chou Emperor even proceeded to Ts'in to do
homage there. Tsin might have been in the running for universal
empire had she held together instead of dividing herself into
three. Yen was altogether too far away north,--though, curiously
enough, Yen (Peking) has been the political centre of North
China for 900 years past,--and Ts'i was too far away east.
Moreover, Ts'i was discredited for having cut off the sacrifices
of the legitimate house. Ts'u was now master of not only her old
vassals, Wu and Yiieh, but also of most of the totally unknown
territory down to the south sea, of which no one except the Ts'u
people at that time knew so much as the bare local names; it bore
the same relation to Ts'u that the Scandinavian tribes did to the
Romanized Germans. Ts'in had become not only owner of Sz Ch'wan--
at first as suzerain protector, not as direct administrator--but
had extended her power down to the south-west towards Yiin Nan and
Tibet, and also far away to the north-west in Tartarland, but not
farther than to where the Great Wall now extends. It is in the
year 318 B.C. that we first hear the name Hiung-nu (ancestors of
the Huns and Turks), a body of whom allied themselves in that year
with the five other Chinese powers then in arms against the
menacing attitude of Ts'in; something remarkable must have taken
place in Tartarland to account for this sudden change of name, The
only remains of old federal China consisted of about ten petty
states such as Sung, Lu, etc., all situated between the Rivers Sz
and Hwai, and all waiting, hands folded, to be swallowed up at
leisure by this or that universal conqueror.
Ts'in _s'en va t'en guerre_ seriously in the year 364, and
began her slashing career by cutting off 60,000 "Tsin" heads; (the
legitimate Tsin sacrifices had been cut off in 376, so this "Tsin"
must mean "Ngwei," or that part of old Tsin which was coterminous
with Ts'in); in 331, in a battle with Ngwei, 80,000 more heads
were taken off. 'In 318 the Hiung-nu combination just mentioned
lost 82,000 heads between them; in 314 Han lost 10,000; in 312
Ts'u lost 80,000; in 307 Han lost 60,000; and in 304 Ts'u lost
80,000. In the year 293 the celebrated Ts'in general, Pêh K'i, who
has left behind him a reputation as one of the greatest
manipulators of vast armies in Eastern history, cut off 240,000
Han heads in one single battle; in 275, 40,000 Ngwei heads; and in
264, 50,000 Han heads. "_Enfin je vais me mesurer avec ce
Vilainton_" said the King of Chao, when his two western friends
of Han and Ngwei had been hammered out of existence. In the year
260 the Chao forces came to terrible grief; General Pêh K'i
managed completely to surround their army of 400,000 men he
accepted their surrender, guaranteed their safety, and then
proceeded methodically to massacre the whole of them to a man. In
257 "Tsin" (presumably Han or Ngwei) lost 6,000 killed and 20,000
drowned; in 256 Han lost 40,000 heads, and in 247 her last 30,000,
whilst also in 256 Chao her last 90,000. These terrible details
have been put together from the isolated statements; but there can
be no mistake about them, for the historian Sz-ma Ts'ien, writing
in 100 B.C., says: "The allies with territory ten times the extent
of the Ts'in dominions dashed a million men against her in vain;
she always had her reserves in hand ready, and from first to last
a million corpses bit the dust."
No such battles as these are even hinted at in more ancient times;
nor, strange to say, are the ancient chariots now mentioned any
more. Ts'in had evidently been practising herself in fighting with
the Turks and Tartars for some generations, and had begun to
perceive what was still only half understood in China, the
advantage of manoeuvring large bodies of horsemen; but, curiously
enough, nothing is said of horses either; yet all these battles
seem to have been fought on the flat lands of old federal China,
suitable for either chariots or horses. The first specific mention
of cavalry manoeuvres on a large scale was in the year 198 B.C.
when the new Han Emperor of China in person, with a straggling
army of 320,000 men, mostly infantry, was surrounded by four
bodies of horsemen led by the Supreme Khan, in white, grey, black,
and chestnut divisions, numbering 300,000 cavalry in all: his name
was Megh-dun (? the Turkish Baghatur).
Whilst all this was going on, Mencius, the Confucian philosopher,
and the two celebrated diplomatists (of Taoist principles), Su
Ts'in and Chang I, were flying to and fro all over orthodox China
with a view of offering sage political advice; this was the time
_par excellence_ when the rival Taoist and Confucian prophets
were howling in the wilderness of war and greed: but Ts'in cared
not much for talkers: generals did her practical business better:
in 308 she began to cast covetous eyes on the Emperor's poor
remaining appanage. In 301 she was called upon to quell a revolt
in Shuh; then she materially reduced the pretensions of her great
rival Ts'u; and finally rested a while, whilst gathering more
strength for the supreme effort-the conquest of China.
CHAPTER XXVII
FOREIGN BLOOD
The history of China may be for our present purposes accordingly
summed up as follows. The pure Chinese race from time immemorial
had been confined to the flat lands of the Yellow River, and its
one tributary on the south, the River Loh, the Tartars possessing
most of the left bank from the Desert to the sea. However, from
the beginning of really historical times the Chinese had been in
unmistakable part-possession of the valleys of the Yellow River's
two great tributaries towards the west and north, the Wei (in Shen
Si) and the Fen (in Shan Si). Little, if any, Chinese colonizing
was done much before the Ts'in conquests in any other parts of
Tartarland; none in Sz Ch'wan that we know of; little, if any,
along the coasts, except perhaps from Ts'i and Lu (in Shan Tung),
both of which states seem to have always been open to the sea,
though many barbarian coast tribes still required gathering into
the Chinese fold. The advance of Chinese civilization had been
first down the Yellow River; then down the River Han towards the
Middle Yang-tsz; and lastly, down the canals and the Hwai network
of streams to the Shanghai coast. Old colonies of Chinese had,
many centuries before the conquest of China by the Chou dynasty,
evidently set out to subdue or to conciliate the southern tribes:
these adventurous leaders had naturally taken Chinese ideas with
them, but had usually found it easier for their _own_ safety
and success to adopt barbarian customs in whole or in part. These
mixed or semi-Chinese states of the navigable Yang-tsz Valley,
from the Ich'ang gorges to the sea, had generally developed in
isolation and obscurity, and only appeared in force as formidable
competitors with orthodox Chinese when the imperial power began to
collapse after 771 B.C. The isolation of half-Roman Britain for
several centuries after the first Roman conquest, and the
departure of the last Roman legions, may be fitly compared with
the position of the half-Chinese states. Ts'u, Wu, and Yüeh all
had pedigrees, more or less genuine, vying in antiquity with the
pedigree of the imperial Chou family; and therefore they did not
see why they also should not aspire to the overlordship when it
appeared to be going a-begging. Even orthodox Tsin and Ts'i in
the north and north-east were in a sense colonial extensions,
inasmuch as they were governed by new families appointed thereto
by the Chou dynasty in 1122 B.C., in place of the old races of
rulers, presumably more or less barbarian, who had previously to
1122 B.C. been vassal--in name at least--to the earlier imperial
Hia and Shang dynasties: but these two great states were never
considered barbarian under Chou sway; and, indeed, some of the
most ancient mythological Chinese emperors anterior to the Hia
dynasty had their capitals in Tsin and Lu, on the River Fên and
the River Sz.
It is not easy to define the exact amount of "foreignness" in
Ts'u. One unmistakable non-Chinese expression is given; that is
_kou-u-du_, or "suckled by a tigress." Then, again, the syllable
_ngao_ occurs phonetically in many titles and in native personal
names, such as _jo-ngao_, _tu-ngao_, _kia-ngao_, _mo-ngao_.
There are no Ts'u songs in the Odes as edited by Confucius, and
the Ts'u music is historically spoken of as being "in the southern
sound"; which may refer, it is true, to the accent, but also possibly
to a strange language. The Ts'u name for "Annals," or history, was
quite different from the terms used in Tsin and Lu, respectively;
and the Ts'u word for a peculiar form of lameness, or locomotor
ataxy, is said to differ from the expressions used in either Wei and
Ts'i. So far aspossible, all Ts'u dignities were kept in the royal family,
and the king's uncle was usually premier. The premier of Ts'u was
called _Zing-yin,_ a term unknown to federal China; and Ts'u
considered the left-hand side more honourable than the right,
which at that time was not the case in China proper, though it is
now. The "Borough-English" rule of succession in Ts'u was to give
it to one of the younger sons; this statement is repeated in
positive terms by Shuh Hiang, the luminous statesman of Tsin, and
will be further illustrated when we come to treat of that subject
specially. The Lu rule was "son after father; or, if none, then
younger after eldest brother; if the legitimate heir dies, then
next son by the same mother; failing which, the eldest son by any
mother; if equal claims, then the wisest; if equally wise, cast
lots": Lu rules would probably hold good for all federal China,
because the Duke of Chou, founder of Lu, was the chief moral force
in the original Chou administration. In the year 587 Lu, when
coquetting between Tsin and Ts'u, was at last persuaded not to
abandon Tsin for Ts'u, "who is not of our family, and can never
have any real affection." Once in Tsin it was asked, about a
prisoner: "Who is that southernhatted fellow?" It was explained
that he was a Ts'u man. They then handed him a guitar, and made
him sing some "national songs." In 597 a Ts'u envoy to the Tsin
military durbar said: "My prince is not formed for the fine and
delicate manners of the Chinese": here is distinct evidence of
social if not ethnological cleaving. The Ts'u men had beards,
whilst those of Wu were not hirsute: this statement proves that
the two barbarian populations differed between themselves. In 635
the King of Ts'u spoke of himself as "the unvirtuous" and the
"royal old man"--designations both appropriate only to barbarians
under Chinese ritual. In 880 B.C., when the imperial power was
already waning, and the first really historical King of Ts'u was
beginning to bring under his authority the people between the Han
and the Yang-tsz, he said: "I am a barbarian savage, and do not
concern myself with Chinese titles, living or posthumous." In 706,
when the reigning king made his first conquest of a petty Chinese
principality (North Hu Pêh), he said again: "I am a barbarian
savage; all the vassals are in rebellion and attacking each other;
I want with my poor armaments to see for myself how Chou governs,
and to get a higher title." On being refused, he said: "Do you
forget my ancestor's services to the father of the Chou founder?"
Later on, as has already been mentioned, he put in a claim for the
Nine Tripods because of the services his ancestor, "living in rags
in the Jungle, exposed to the weather," had rendered to the
founder himself. In 637, when the future Second Protector and
ruler of Tsin visited Ts'u as a wanderer, the King of Ts'u
received him with all the hospitalities "under the Chou rites,"
which fact shows at least an effort to adopt Chinese civilization.
In 634 Lu asked Ts'u's aid against Ts'i, a proceeding condemned by
the historical critics on the ground that Ts'u was a "barbarian
savage" state. On the other hand, by the year 560 the dying King
of Ts'u was eulogized as a man who had successfully subdued the
barbarian savages. But against this, again, in 544 the ruler of Lu
expressed his content at having got safely back from his visit to
Ts'u, i.e. his visit to such an uncouth and distant court. Thus
Ts'u's emancipation from "savagery" was gradual and of uncertain
date. In 489 the King of Ts'u declined to sacrifice to the Yellow
River, on the ground that his ancestors had never presumed to
concern themselves with anything beyond the Han and Yang-tsz
valleys. Even Confucius, (then on his wanderings in the petty
state of CH'ÊN) declared his admiration at this, and said: "The
King of Ts'u is a sage, and understands the Great Way (_tao_)."
On the other hand, only fifty years before this, when in 538 Ts'u,
with Tsin's approval, first tried her hand at durbar work, the king
was horrified to hear from a fussy chamberlain (evidently orthodox)
that there were six different ways of receiving visitors according to
their rank; so that Ts'u's ritual decorum could not have been of
very long standing. The following year (537) a Tsin princess is
given in marriage to Ts'u-- a decidedly orthodox feather in Ts'u's
cap. Confucius affects a particular style in his history when he speaks
of barbarians; thus an orthodox prince "beats" a barbarian, but "battles"
with an orthodox equal. However, in 525, Ts'u and Wu "battle" together,
the commentator explaining that Ts'u is now "promoted" to battle
rank, though the strict rule is that two barbarians, or China and
one barbarian, "beat" rather than "battle." In 591 Confucius had
already announced the "end" of the King of Ts'u, not as such, but
as federal viscount. Under ordinary circumstances "death" would
have been good enough: it is only in speaking of his own ruler's
death that the honorific word "collapse" is used. All these fine
distinctions, and many others like them, hold good for modern
Chinese. These (apparently to us) childish gradations in mere
wording run throughout Confucius' book; but we must remember that
his necessarily timid object was to "talk at" the wicked, and to
"hint" at retribution. Even a German recorder of events would
shrink from applying the word _haben_ to the royal act of a
Hottentot King, for whom _hat_ is more than good enough, without
the _allergnädigst._ And we all remember Bismarck's story of the
way mouth-washes and finger-bowls were treated at Frankfurt by those
above and below the grade of serene highness. _Toutes les vices et
toutes les moeurs sont respectables._
In 531 the barbarian King of Ts'u is honoured by being "named" for
enticing and murdering a "ruler of the central kingdoms." The
pedants are much exercised over this, but as the federal prince in
question was a parricide, he had a _lupinum caput,_ and so
even a savage could without outraging orthodox feelings wreak the
law on him. On the other hand, in 526, when Ts'u enticed and
killed a mere barbarian prince, the honour of "naming" was
withheld. This delicate question will be further elucidated in the
chapter on "Names."
It will be observed that none of the testimony brought forward
here to show that Ts'u was, in some undefined way, a non-Chinese
state is either clear or conclusive: its cumulative effect,
however, certainly leaves a very distinct impression that 'there
was a profound difference of some sort both in race and in
manners, though we are as yet quite unable to say whether the bulk
of the Ts'u population was Annamese, Shan, or Siamese; Lolo or
Nosu; Miao-tsz, Tibetan, or what. There is really no use in
attempting to advance one step beyond the point to which we are
carried by specific evidence, either in this or in other matters.
It has been said that no great discovery was ever made without
imagination, which may be true; but evidence and imagination must
be kept rigidly separate. What we may reasonably hope is that, by
gradually ascertaining and sifting definite facts and data
touching ancient Chinese history, we shall at least avoid coming
to wrong positive conclusions, even if the right negative ones are
pretty clearly indicated. It is better to leave unexplained
matters in suspense than to base conclusions upon speculative
substructures which will not carry the weight set upon them.
CHAPTER XXVIII
BARBARIANS
The country of Wu is in many respects even more interesting
ethnologically than that of Ts'u. When, a generation or two before
the then vassal Chou family conquered China, two of the sons of
the ruler of that vassal principality decided to forego their
rights of succession, they settled amongst the Jungle savages, cut
their hair, adopted the local raiment, and tattooed their bodies;
or, rather, it is said the elder of the two covered his head and
his body decently, while the younger cut his hair, went naked, and
tattooed his body. The words "Jungle savages" apply to the country
later called Ts'u; but as Wu, when we first hear of her, was a
subordinate country belonging to Ts'u; and as in any case the word
"Wu" was unknown to orthodox China, not to say to extreme western
China, in 1200 B.C. when the adventurous brothers migrated; this
particular point need not trouble us so much as it seems to have
puzzled the Chinese critics. About 575 the first really historical
King of Wu paid visits to the Emperor's court, to the court of his
suzerain the King of Ts'u, and to the court of Lu: probably the
Hwai system of rivers would carry him within measurable distance
of all three, for the headwaters almost touch the tributaries of
the Han, and the then Ts'u capital (modern King-thou Fu) was in
touch with the River Han. He observed when in Lu: "We only know
how to knot our hair in Wu; what could we do with such fine
clothes as you wear?" It was the policy of Tsin and of the other
minor federal princes to make use of Wu as a diversion against the
advance of Ts'u: it is evident that by this time Ts'u had begun to
count seriously as a Chinese federal state, for one of the
powerful private families behind the throne and against the throne
in Lu expressed horror that "southern savages (i.e. Wu) should
invade China (i.e. Ts'u)," by taking from it part of modern An
Hwei province: as, however, barbarian Ts'u had taken it first from
orthodox China, perhaps the mesne element of Ts'u was not in the
statesman's mind at all, but only the original element,--China. An
important remark is made by one of the old historians to the
effect that the language and manners of Wu were the same as those
of Yiieh. In 483, when Wu's pretensions as Protector were at their
greatest, the people of Ts'i made use of ropes eight feet long in
order to bind certain Wu prisoners they had taken, "because their
heads were cropped so close": this statement hardly agrees with
that concerning "knotted hair," unless the _toupet_ or chignon
was very short indeed. 'There are not many native Wu words quoted,
beyond the bare name of the country itself, which is something like
_Keu-gu,_ or _Kou-gu:_ an executioner's knife is mentioned under
the foreign name _chuh-lu,_ presented to persons expected to commit
suicide, after the Japanese _harakiri_ fashion. In 584 B.C., when the first
steps were taken by orthodox China to utilize Wu politically, it was
found necessary, as we have seen, to teach the Wu folk the use
of war-chariots and bows and arrows: this important statement
points distinctly to the previous utter isolation of Wu from the
pale of Chinese civilization. In the year 502 Ts'i sent a princess
as hostage to Wu, and ended by giving her in marriage to the Wu
heir: (we have seen how Tsin anticipated Ts'i by twenty-five years
in conferring a similar honour upon Ts'u). A century or more
later, when Mencius was advising the bellicose court of Ts'i, he
alluded with indignation to this "barbarous" act. In 544 the Wu
prince Ki-chah had visited Lu and other orthodox states.
[Illustration: Map of the Hwai system and Valley
1. The two lines indicated by...............to the north are (1)
the River Sz (now Grand Canal), from Confucius' birthplace, and
(2) the River I (from modern I-shui city south of the German
colony). After receiving the I, the Sz entered the Hwai as it
emerged from Lake Hung-t&h; but this Hwai mouth no longer exists;
the waters are dissipated in canals.
The Wu fleets coasting up to the Hwai, were thus able to creep
into the heart of Shan Tung province, east and west.
2. The Yang-tsz had three branches: (1) northern, much as now; (2)
middle, branching at modern Wuhu, crossing the T'ai-hu Lake, and
following the Soochow Creek and Wusung River past Shanghai; (3)
southern, carrying part of the Tai-hu waters by a forgotten route
(probably the modern Grand Canal), to near Hangchow.
3. The three crosses [Image: Circle with an 'X' in it] mark the
capitals of Wu (respectively near Wu-sih and Soochow) and Yiieh
(near Shao-hing). The modern canal from Hangchow to Shan Tung is
clearly indicated. Orthodox China knew absolutely nothing of Cheh
Kiang, Fuh Kien, or Kiang Si provinces south of lat. 300.]
In recognition of this civilized move on the part of an ancient
family, Confucius in his history grants the rank of "viscount" to
the King of Wu, but he does not style Ki-chah by the complimentary
title Ki _Kung-tsz_, or "Ki, the son of a reigning prince";
that is, the king's title thus accorded retrospectively is only a
"courtesy one," and does not carry with it a posthumous name, and
with that name the posthumous title of _Kung_, or "duke"'
applied to all civilized rulers. Yet it is evident that the ruling
caste of Wu considered itself superior to the surrounding tribes,
for in the year 493 it was remarked: "We here in Wu are entirely
surrounded by savages"; and in 481 the Emperor himself sent a
message through Tsin to Wu, saying: "I know that you are busy with
the savages you have on hand at present." In the year 482, when
the orthodox princes of Sung, Wei, and Lu were holding off from an
alliance with Wu, the prince of Wei was detained by a Wu general,
but escaped, and set to work to learn the language of Wu. The
motive is of no importance; but the clear statement about a
different language, or at least a dialect so different that it
required special study, is interesting. When Ki-chah was on his
travels, he explained to his friends that the law of succession
is: "By the rites to the eldest, as established by our ancestors
and by the customs of the country." In 502 the King of Wu was
embarrassed about his successor, whose character did not commend
itself to him, His counsellor (a refugee from Ts'u) said: "Order
in the state ceases if the succession be interrupted; by ancient
law son should succeed father deceased." Thus it seems that the
ancient Chou rules had been conveyed to Wu by the first colonists
in 1200 B.C., and that the succession laws differed from those of
Ts'u. Ki-chah's son died whilst he was on his travels, and
Confucius is reported to have said: "He is a man who understands
the rites; let us see what he does." Ki-chah bared his left arm
and shoulder, marched thrice round the grave, and said: "Flesh and
bone back to the earth, as is proper; as to the soul, let it go
anywhere it chooses!" This language was approved by Confucius, who
himself always declined to dogmatize on death and spirits,
maintaining that men knew too little of themselves, when living,
to be justified in groping for facts about the dead. At first
sight it would appear strange that a barbarous country like Wu
should suddenly produce a learned prince who at once captivated by
his culture Yen-tsz of Ts'i, Confucius of Lu, Tsz-ch'an of Cheng,
K'u-peh-yu of Wei, Shuh Hiang of Tsin, and, in short, all the
distinguished statesmen of China; but if we reflect that, within
half a century, the greatest naval, military, and scientific
geniuses have been produced on Western lines in Japan (as we shall
soon see, in some way connected with Wu), at least we find good
modern parallels for the phenomenon.
When Wu, after a series of bloody wars with Ts'u and Yiieh, was in
473 finally extinguished by the latter power, a portion of the
King of Wu's family escaped in boats in an easterly direction. At
this time not only was Japan unknown to China under that name, but
also quite unheard of under any name whatever. It was not until
150 years later that the powerful states of Yen and Ts'i, which,
roughly speaking, divided with them the eastern part of the modern
province of Chih Li, the northern part of Shan Tung, and the whole
coasts of the Gulf of "Pechelee," began to talk vaguely of some
mysterious and beautiful islands lying in the sea to the east.
When the First August Emperor had conquered China, he made several
tours to the Shan Tung promontory, to the site of the former Yueh
capital (modern Kiao Chou), to the treaty-port of Chefoo (where he
left an inscription), to the Shan-hai Kwan Pass, and to the
neighbourhood of Ningpo. He also had heard rumours of these
mysterious islands, and he therefore sent a physician of his staff
with a number of young people to make inquiry, and colonize the
place if possible. They brought back absurd stories of some
monstrous fish that had interfered with their landing, and they
reported that these fish could only be frightened away by
tattooing the body as the natives did, The people of Wu, who were
great fisherfolk and mariners, were also stated to have indulged
in universal tattooing because they wished to frighten dangerous
fish away. The first mission from Japan, then a congeries of petty
states, totally unacquainted with writing or records, came to
China in the first century of our era; it was not sent by the
central King, but only by one of the island princes. Later
embassies from and to Japan disclose the fact that the Japanese
themselves had traditions of their descent both from ancient
Chinese Emperors and from the founder of Wu, i.e. from the Chou
prince who went there in 1200 B.C.; of the medical mission sent by
the First August Emperor; of the flight from Wu in 473 B.C. of
part of the royal Wu family to Japan; and of other similar
matters--all apparently tending to show that the refugees from Wu
really did reach Japan; that a very early shipping intercourse had
probably existed between Japan, Ts'i, and Wu; and that, in
addition to the statements made by later Chinese historians to the
effect that the Japanese considered themselves in some way
hereditarily connected with Wu, the early Japanese traditions and
histories (genuine or concocted) themselves separately repeated
the story. One of the later Chinese histories says of Wu: "Part of
the king's family escaped and founded the kingdom of Wo" (the
ancient name for the Japanese race): the temptation to connect
this word with _Wu_ is obvious; but etymology will not tolerate
such an identification, either from a Chinese or a Japanese point of
view; the etymological "values" are _Ua_ and Gu respectively.
As in the case of Ts'u, there is no really trustworthy evidence to
show of what race or races, and in what proportions, the bulk of
the Wu population consisted; still less is there any specific
evidence to show to what race the barbarian king who committed
suicide in 473 belonged; or if those of his family who escaped
were wholly or partly Chinese; or if any pure descent existed at
all in royal circles, dating, that is to say, from the ancient
colonists of the imperial Chou family in 1200 B.C.
So far as purely Chinese traditions and history go, the cumulative
evidence, such as it is, needs careful sifting, and is, perhaps,
worth a more thorough examination; but as to the Japanese
traditions and early "history," these, as the Japanese themselves
admit, were only put together in written form retrospectively in
the eighth century A.D., and throughout they show signs of having
been deliberately concocted on the Chinese lines; that is, Chinese
historical incidents and phraseology are worked into the narrative
of supposed Japanese events, and Japanese emperors or empresses
are (admittedly) fitted with posthumous names mostly copied from
imperial Chinese posthumous names. By themselves they are almost
valueless, so far as the fixing of specific dates and the
identification of political events are concerned; and even when
taken as ancillary to contemporary Chinese evidence, except in so
far as a few Chinese misprints or errors may be more clearly
indicated by comparison with them, they seem equally valueless
either to confirm, to check, to modify, or to contradict the
Chinese accounts, which, indeed, are absolutely the sole
trustworthy written evidence either we or the Japanese themselves
possess about the actual condition of the Japanese 2000 years ago.
Meanwhile, as to Wu, all we can say with certainty is, that there
is a persistent rumour or tradition that some of its royal
refugees (themselves of unknown race) who escaped in boats
eastward, may have escaped to Japan; may have succeeded in
"imposing themselves" on the people, or a portion of the people
(themselves a mixed race of uncertain _provenance_); and may
have quietly and informally introduced Chinese words, ideas, and
methods, several centuries before known and formal intercourse
between Japan and China took place.
CHAPTER XXIX
CURIOUS CUSTOMS
In laying stress upon the barbarous, or semi-barbarous, quality of
the states (all in our days considered pure Chinese), which
surrounded the federal area at even so late a period as 771 B.C.,
we wish to emphasize a point which has never yet been made quite
clear, perhaps not even made patent by their own critics to the
Chinese themselves; that is to say, the very small and modest
beginnings of the civilized patriarchal federation called the
Central Kingdom, or _Chu Hia_--"All the Hia"--just as we say,
"All the Russias."
In allotting precedence to the various states, the historical
editors, of course, always put the Emperor first in order of
mention; then comes CHÊNG, the first ruler of which state was son
of an Emperor of the then ruling imperial house; next, the three
Protectors Ts'i, Tsin, and Sung; then follow the petty states of
Wei, Ts'ai, Ts'ao, and T'êng, all of the imperial family name, or,
as we say in English, "surname," and all lying between the Hwai
and the Sz systems (T'êng was a "belonging state" of Lu). Then
come half a dozen petty orthodox states of less honourable family
names; next, three Eastern barbarian states, which had become
"Central Kingdom," or which, once genuine Chinese, had become half
barbarian; and finally, Ts'u, Ts'in, Wu, and Yiieh, which were
frankly, if vaguely, "outer barbarian-Tartar."
It has already been demonstrated that there is evidence, however
imperfect, to show that the mass of the population of Ts'u and Wu
were of decidedly foreign origin. Even as to Ts'i, which was
always treated as an orthodox principality, it is stated that the
founder sent there in or about 1100 B.C. "conformed to the manners
of the place, and encouraged manufactures, commerce, salt and fish
industries." On the other hand, the son of the Duke of Chou (the
first vassal prince appointed by his brother the Emperor) changed
the customs of Lu, modified the local rites, and induced the
people to keep on their mourning attire for three full years. It
was considered that the Ts'i policy was the wiser of the two, and
it was foretold that Lu would always "look up to" Ts'i in
consequence of this superior judgment on the part of Ts'i. On
frequent occasions the petty adjoining "Chinesified" states, of
which Lu was practically the mesne lord, are stated to have been
"tainted with Eastern barbarian rites." From and including modern
Sü-chou (North Kiang Su) and eastward, all were "Eastern
barbarians"; in fact, the city just named (mentioned by the name
of _Sü_ in 1100 B.C., and again about 950 B.C., as revolting
against the Emperor) perpetuates the "Sü barbarians" country,
which was for long a bone of contention between Ts'i and Ts'u, and
afterwards Wu; and the name "Hwai savages" proves that the Lower
Hwai Valley was also independent. The Hwai savages, who appear in
the Tribute of Yü, founder of the Hia dynasty, 2205 B.C., revolted
1000 years later against the founders of the Chou dynasty. They
were present at Ts'u's first durbar in 538 B.C., and are mentioned
as barbarians still resisting Chinese methods so late as A.D. 970.
In Confucius' time the Lai barbarians (modern Lai-thou Fu in the
German sphere) were employed by Ts'i, who had conquered them in
567 B.C., to try and effect the assassination of Confucius'
master. Six hundred years before that, these same barbarians were
among the first to give in their submission to the founder of
Ts'i; and in 602 B.C. both Ts'i and Lu had endeavoured to crush
them.
As to the state of Ts'in, there is not a single instance given of
any literary conversation or correspondence held by an orthodox
high functionary with a Ts'in statesman. While it is not yet quite
clear that orthodox China can shake herself entirely free of the
reproach of human sacrifices in all senses, it is quite certain
that Ts'in had a barbarous and exclusive notoriety in this
regard'; and, as the Hiung-nu Tartars also practised it, and Ts'in
was at least half Tartar in blood, it is probable that she derived
her sanguinary notions from this blood connection with the Turko-
Scythian tribes. On the death of the Ts'in ruler in 678 B.C., the
first recorded human sacrifices were made, "sixty-six individuals
following the dead." In 621, on the death of the celebrated Duke
Muh, 177 persons lost their lives, and the people of Ts'in, in
pity, "composed the Yellow Bird Ode" (of these popular Chinese
odes more anon). This holocaust was given as one reason why Ts'in
could never "rule in the East," _i.e._ assume the Protectorate over
the orthodox powers all lying to its east, on account of this cruel defect
in its laws. In 387 B.C., the new Earl of Ts'in (who succeeded a nephew,
and therefore could, having no paternal duty to fulfil, introduce the
innovation more cheaply) abolished the principle of human sacrifices
at the death of a ruler. Ten years later, the Emperor's astrologer paid
a visit to Ts'in;--evidence that the imperial civilizing influence was
still, at least morally, active, This astrologer and historiographer,
whose name was Tan, is interesting, inasmuch as he has been
confused with Li Tan (the personal name of the philosopher Lao-
tsz, who was also an imperial official employed in the historiographical
department). It is added that, previous to this visit, for five hundred
years Ts'in and Chou had kept apart from each other. Notwithstanding
this prohibition of human sacrifices, when the First August Emperor of
Universal China died in 210 B.C., the old Ts'in custom was reintroduced,
and all his women who had not given birth to children were buried with
him. Besides this, all the workmen who had made the secret door and
passage to his grave were cemented in alive, so that they might never
disclose the secret of its approaches.
It was only after gradually adopting Chinese civilization that
Ts'in began to be a considerable power; thus, when Ki-chah of Wu
was entertained at Lu with specimens of the various styles of
music, he observed, on being regaled with Ts'in music: "Ah!
civilized sounds; it has succeeded in refining itself; it is in
occupation of the old Chou appanage." So late as 361 B.C., when
Ngwei (one of the three royal subdivisions of old Tsin) built a
wall to keep off Ts'in, both Ngwei and Ts'u (which by this time
was quite as good orthodox Chinese as any other state) treated
Ts'in as though the latter were still barbarian, In 326 Ts'in
first introduced into her realm the well-known year-end sacrifices
of the orthodox Chinese, which fact alone points to a long
isolation of Ts'in before this date.
The rule of succession in Ts'in seems to have been of the Tartar
kind at one time. Duke Muh, in 660 B.C., succeeded his brother,
though that brother had seven sons of his own living: that brother
again, had also succeeded a brother.
As to Yüeh, there is no question as to its barbarism, though the
one single king around whose name centres the whole glory of Yiieh
(Kou-tsien, 496-475) seems to have been a man of great ability and
some fine feeling. The native name for Yiieh was _Yü-yüeh_,
as stated in Chapter VII.; and it seems likely that all the coast
of China down to Tonquin, or Northern Annam, was then inhabited by
cognate tribes, all having the syllable _Yüeh_, or _Viét_, in
their names. The great empire or kingdom of Yiieh, founded upon
the ruins of Wu, soon split up into the "Hundred Yiieh," i.e. (probably)
it relapsed into its native barbarism, and ceased to cohere as a
political factor. "Southern Yüeh" (the Canton region) has undoubted
historical connections with the Tonquin part of Annam, and several
other of the subdivisions of Yiieh, corresponding to Foochow, Wênchow,
etc., show distinct traces of having belonged to the same race. But it is
unsafe to say how the Chinese-transcribed name Yii-yiieh was
pronounced; still more unsafe is it to argue that it must have been _U_
or _O-viêt_ simply because the Annamese so pronounce the word
now. We have seen that, according to one historical statement, the
Wu and Yiieh people spoke the same language; in which case the
members of the ruling Wu caste who fled to Japan in 473 B.C. were
probably not of the same race as the "savages around them." As an
act of bravado, in 481, the King of Wu made five condemned
centurions cut their own throats before the Tsin envoy, in order
to show what effectively stern discipline he kept, In 484 the King
of Yiieh had already committed a similar act of bravado; but
neither of these barbarian states is distinctly recorded to have
indulged in human sacrifices at the death of a sovereign. Previous
to the crushing of Wu by Yiieh, in 473 B.C., Yiieh was nearly
annihilated by Wu, and on this occasion Kou-tsien's envoy
advanced crawling on his knees to beg for mercy; this is hardly an
orthodox Chinese custom. However barbarous Yiieh may have been,
its ruling house possessed traditions of descent, through a
concubine, from an emperor of the Hia dynasty; for which reason
the founder was enfeoffed, near modern Shao-hing, west of Ningpo,
in order to fulfil the sacrifices to the founder of the Hia
dynasty, who was, and is, supposed to be buried there: like the
first colonists who migrated to Wu, he cut his hair, tattooed
himself, opened up the jungle, and built a town. In 330 B.C. Kou-
tsien's descendant spoke of "taking the road left to _Chu-
hia_," through modern Ho Nan province; that means taking the
high-road to China proper. The term originated in times when Ts'u
had not yet become a recognized "Hia." The fact that Yüeh, with
its new capital then in Shan Tung, could never govern the Yang-tsz
and Hwai inland regions, seems to prove that her power was always
purely a water power, and that she was comparatively ignorant of
land campaigns.
CHAPTER XXX
LITERARY RELATIONS
It is instructive to inquire what were the literary relations
between the distinguished statesmen and active princes who moved
about quite freely within the limited area so frequently alluded
to in foregoing pages as being sacrosanct to civilization and the
rites. There seems good reason to suppose that the literary
activity which so disgusted the destroyer of the books in 213 B.C.
did not really begin until after Confucius' death in 479;
moreover, that the avalanche of philosophical works which drenched
the royal courts of the Six Kingdoms was in part the consequence
of Confucius' own efforts in the literary line. In the pre-
Confucian days there is little evidence of the existence of any
literature at all beyond the Odes, the Changes, the Book, and the
Rites, which, after a lapse of 2500 years or more, are still the
"Bible" of China. The Odes, of which 3000 were popularly known
previous to Confucius' recension, seem to have been originally
composed here and there, and passed from mouth to mouth, by the
people of each orthodox state under impulse of strong passion,
feeling, or suffering; or some of them may even have been
committed to writing by learned folk in touch with the people.
Naturally, those songs which specially treated of local matters
would be locally popular; but it would seem that a large number of
them must have been generally known by heart by the whole educated
body all over orthodox China, It will be remembered that in the
year 1900, an enterprising American newspaper correspondent took
advantage of President Kruger's penchant for quoting Scripture,
and telegraphed to him daily texts, selected as applicable to the
event, for which the replies to be sent were always prepaid. For
instance, on news of a British victory, the American would
telegraph: "Victory stayeth not always with the righteous"; on
which President Kruger would promptly rejoin: "Yet shall I smite
him, even unto the end." This was the plan followed by Chinese
envoys, statesmen, and princes in their intercourse with each
other: no matter what event transpired, Ki-chah, or Tsz-ch'an, or
Shuh Hiang would illustrate it with an ode, or with a reference to
the "Book" (of history), or by an appeal to the Rites of Chou, or
to some obscure astrological or cosmogonical development extracted
from the mystic diagrams of "The Changes." As often as not, the
quotations given from the Odes and Book no longer exist in the
editions of those two classics which have come down to us. This
fact is interesting as proving that the _Tso Chwan_--or Commentary of
Confucius' pupil Tso K'iu-ming on Confucius' own bare notes of history--
must have been written before Confucius' expurgated Book of Odes
reduced and fixed the number of selected songs; or, at all events,
the records from which Tso K'iu-ming took his quotations must have
existed before either he or Confucius composed their respective annals
and comments. In the times when a book the size of a three-volume
novel of to-day would mean a mule-load of bamboo splinters or wooden
tablets, it is absurd to suppose that generals in the field, or envoys on
the march, could carry their Odes bodily about with them: it is even
probable that the four "scriptural" books in question were
exclusively committed to memory by the general public, and that
not more than half a dozen varnish-written copies existed in any
state; possibly not more than one copy. In fact, the only
available literary exhilaration then open to cultured friends was
to check the memory on visiting strange lands by comparing the
texts of Odes, Changes, or Book. A knowledge of the Rites would
perhaps be confined to the ruling classes almost entirely, for
with them it lay to pronounce the religious, the ritual, the
social, or the administrative sanction applicable to each
contested set of circumstances. It is very much as though,--as was
indeed the case in Johnsonian times,--the French, English, and
German wits of the day, and occasionally distinguished literary
specimens of even more "barbarous" countries, should at a literary
conference indulge in quotations from Horace or Juvenal by way of
passing the time: they would not select the Twelve Tables or the
Laws of the Pr'tors as matter for the testing of learning.
To take a few instances. In 559 the ruler of Wei had severely
beaten his court music-master for failing to teach a concubine how
to play the lute. One day the prince invited to dinner some
statesmen, the father of one of whom had taken offence at the
prince's rudeness; and he ordered the same musician to strike up
the last stanza of a certain ode hinting at treason, which the
malicious performer did in such a way as to give further offence
to the father through his son, and to bring about the dethronement
of the indiscreet prince. It gives us confidence in the truth of
these anecdotes when we find that K'ü-pêh-yüh was consulted by the
offended father as to what course he ought to pursue. This Wei
statesman, who has already been twice mentioned in connection with
other matters, met Ki-chah of Wu when the latter visited that
state in 544, and he was also an admired senior acquaintance of
Confucius himself, whom he twice lodged at his house for many
months. Three chapters of the "Book" still remain, after
Confucius' manipulations of it, to prove how Wei was first
enfeoffed by the Duke of Chou, and one of the Odes actually sings
the praises of a Ts'i princess who married the prince of Wei in
753 B.C. Thus we see that the ancient classics are intertwined and
mutually corroborative.
When the Second Protector (the last of the four Tartar-born
brothers to succeed to the Tsin throne) was on his wanderings in
644 B.C., the Marquess of Ts'i gave him a daughter, of whom he
became so enamoured that he seemed to be neglecting his political
chances amid the pleasures of a foreign country, instead of
endeavouring to regain his rightful throne at home. This princess
first of all quoted an ode from the group treating of CHÊNG
affairs, and secondly cited an apt saying from what she "had
heard" the great Ts'i philosopher Kwan-tsz had said, her object
being to promote her lively husband's political interests. This
all took place a few years after Kwan-tsz's death, and 200 years
after the founding of CHÊNG state, and is therefore indirect
confirmation of the fact that Kwan-tsz was already a well-known
authority, and that contemporary affairs were usually "sung of" in
all the orthodox states.
When the Duke of Sung, after the death in 628 B.C. of the
picturesque personality just referred to, was ambitious to become
the Third Protector of orthodox China and of the Emperor;
Confucius' ancestor, then a Sung statesman, approved of this
ambition, and proceeded to compose some complimentary sacrificial
odes on the Shang dynasty (from which the Sung ducal family was
descended): some learned critics make out that it was the music-
master of the Emperor who really composed these odes for the
ancestor of Confucius. In any case, there the odes are still, in
the Book of Odes as revised by Confucius himself about 150 years
later; and here accordingly--we have specific indirect evidence of
Confucius' own origin; of the "spiritual" power still possessed by
the Emperor's court; and of the "Poet Laureate"-like political
uses to which odes were put in the international life of the
times. This foolish Duke of Sung, who was so anxious to pose as
Protector, was the one already mentioned in Chapters X. and XIV.,
who would not attack an enemy whilst crossing a stream.
Again, in the year 651, when one of the least popular of the four
Tartar-born brethren was, with the assistance of the Ts'in ruler
(who had been over-persuaded against his own better judgment),
reigning in Tsin, the children of this latter state sang a ballad
in the streets, prophesying the ultimate success of the self-
sacrificing elder brother, then still away on his wanderings in
Tartarland. This song was apparently never included among the 3000
odes generally known in China; but it illustrates how such popular
songs and popular heroes were created and perpetuated.--It is,
perhaps, time now that we should give the personal name of this
popular prince, of whom we have spoken so often, and who is as
well known to Chinese tradition as the severe Brutus 'is, or as
the ravishing Tarquin was, to old Roman history. His name was
Ch'ung-êrh, or "the double-eared," in allusion to some peculiarity
in the lobes of his ears; besides which, two of his ribs were
believed to be joined in one piece: his great success is perhaps
largely owing to his robust and manly appearance, which certainly
secured for him the eager attentions of the ladies, whether Turks
or Chinese. His Turkish wife had been as disinterestedly
solicitous for his success, before he went to Ts'i, as his Ts'i
wife was when she induced him to leave that country. On arrival in
Ts'in, he was presented with five princesses, including one who
had already been given to his nephew and immediate predecessor in
Tsin. The "rites" were of course decidedly wrong here, but his
ally Ts'in was at this time hesitating between Chinese and Tartar
culture, and in any case he was probably persuaded in his mind to
let the rites go by the board for urgent political purposes. On
this occasion his brother-in-law and faithful henchman during
nineteen years of wanderings, sang "the song of the fertilized
millet" (still existing), meaning that Ch'ung-êrh was the gay
young stalk fertilized by the presents and assistance of the ruler
of Ts'in: he was, by the way, not so young, then well over sixty.
He had married the younger of two Tartar sisters, and had given
her elder sister as wife to the henchman in question. (One account
reverses the order.)
[Illustration: Original inscription on the Sacrificial Tripod,
together with (1) transcription in modern Chinese character (to
the right), and (2) an account of its history (to the left). Taken
from Dr. Bushell's "Chinese Art."]
Ts'u seems to have possessed a knowledge of ancient history and of
literature at a very early date. In 597 B.C., after his victory
over Tsin, the King of Ts'u had, as previously narrated, declined
to rear a barrow over the corpses slain, and had said: "No! the
written or pictograph character for 'soldierly' is made up of two
parts, one signifying 'stop,' and the other 'weapons.'" By this he
meant to say what the great philosopher Lao-tsz, himself a Ts'u
man, over and over again inculcated; namely, that the true soldier
does not glory in war, but mournfully aims at victory with the
sole view of attaining rightful ends. Not only was this half-
barbarian king thus capable of making a pun which from the
pictograph point of view still holds good to-day, but he goes on
in the same speech to cite the "peace-loving war" of Wu Wang, or
the Martial King, founder of the Chou dynasty, and to cite several
standard odes in allusion to it.
These examples might be multiplied a hundredfold, For instance, in
the year 589 a Ts'u minister cites the Odes; in 575 a Tsin officer
quotes the Book; in 569 another makes allusion to the ancient
attempt made by the ruler of the then vassal Chou state, the
father of the imperial Chou founder, and who was at the same time
adviser at the imperial court, to reconcile the vassal princes to
the legitimate Shang dynasty Emperor (who had already imprisoned
him once out of pique at his remonstrances), before finally
deciding to dethrone him. In 546 a Sung envoy cites the Odes to
the Ts'u government, and also quotes from that section of the
"Book" called the Book of the Hia Dynasty, In connection with the
year 582 an ode is cited for the benefit of the King of Ts'u,
which is not in Confucius' collection. In 541 a Ts'u envoy, who
was being entertained in Tsin at a convivial wine party, indulges
in apt quotations from the Odes.
There does not seem to be one single instance where any one in
Ts'in either sings an ode, quotes orthodox history, or in any way
displays literary knowledge. Even the barbarian Kou-tsien, King of
Yüeh, has wise saws and modern instances quoted to him in his
distress. For instance, whilst hesitating about utterly
annihilating the Wu reigning family, he was advised: "If one will
not take gifts from Heaven, Heaven may send one misfortune." This
is a very hackneyed saying in ancient Chinese history, and is as
much used to-day as it was 2500 years ago: it comes from the Book
of Chou (now partly lost). It will be remembered that the
distinguished Japanese statesman, Count Okuma, in his now
notorious speech before the Kobé Chamber of Commerce on the 20th
October, 1907, used these identical words to point the moral of
Indian commerce. It is doubtful if any other really pregnant
Japanese philosophical saying exists which cannot be similarly
traced to China. In any case, Count Okuma was only literally
carrying out in Kobé the policy of Tsin, Ts'u, Ts'i, and Wei
statesmen of China 2500 years ago.
If, as we have assumed, standard books were usually committed to
memory (and it must be remembered that the Odes, and much of the
Book, the Changes, and the Rites are still so committed to memory
in our own times), and were practically confined to the
headquarters or the wealthy families of each state, the cognate
question inevitably arises: What about the historical records? It
has already been observed that Ts'in, the half-Tartar power in the
extreme west, was the only state belonging to the recognized
federal system (and that only since 771 B.C.) of which nothing
literary is recorded, and which, though powerful enough to assist
in making Emperors of Chou and rulers of Tsin, was never in
Confucian times thought morally fit to act as Protector of the
Imperial Federal Union, _i.e._ of _Chu Hia_, or "All the Chinas."
By a singular irony of fate, however, it so happens that a few Ts'in
inscriptions are the only political ones remaining to us of ancient
Chinese documents.
When the outlying semi-Chinese states surrounding the inner
conclave of orthodox Chinese states, after four centuries of
fighting and intrigue for the Protectorate, or at least for
preponderance, at last, during the period 400-375 B.C. became the
Six Powers, all equally royal, none of them owing any real,
scarcely even any nominal, allegiance to the once solitary King or
Emperor, then it was that the idea began to enter the heads of the
Ts'in statesmen and the rulers of at least three of the Six Royal
Powers opposed to Ts'in that it would be a good thing to get rid
of the old feudal vassal system root and branch. So unquestionably
is this period 400-375 B.C. taken as one of the great pivot points
in Chinese history, that the great historian Sz-ma Kwang begins
his renowned history, the _Tsz-chi Tung-kien_, published in
1084 A.D., with the words: "In 403 B.C. the states of Han, Ngwei,
and Chao were recognized as vassal ruling princes by the Emperor."
Ts'in took to educating herself seriously for her great destiny,
and at last, in 221 B.C., after the wars already described in
Chapter XXVI., succeeded in uniting all known China under one
centralized sway; rounding off the Tartars so as to make the Great
Wall (rather than the Yellow River, as of old) their southern
limit; conquering the remains of the "Hundred Yüeh" (the vague
unknown South China which had hitherto been the special preserve
of Ts'u;) and assimilating the ancient empire of Shuh (i.e. Sz
Ch'wan, hitherto only vaguely known to orthodox China at all, and
politically connected only with Ts'in).
During this process of universal assimilation and annexation, the
almost supernaturally active First August Emperor made tour after
tour throughout his new dominions, showing a special predilection
for the coasts, for Tartarland, and for the Lower Yang-tsz River;
but not venturing far up or far south of that Great River; and
even when he did so venture a short distance, never leaving the
old and well-known water routes: nor did he risk a land journey to
Sz Ch'wan, to which country there were at the time no roads of any
kind at all possible for armies. It is well known that both he and
the legal, international, political, and diplomatical adventurers
who had been for a century or more from time to time at his court
had been strongly imbued with the somewhat revolutionary and then
fashionable democratic principles of the new Taoism, as defined by
the philosopher Lao-tsz; but he showed no particular hostility to
orthodox literature until, whilst on his travels, deputations of
learned men, especially in the ritual centres of Lu and Ts'i,
began to suggest to him the re-establishment of the old feudal
system, and to "quote the ancient scriptures" to him by way of
protesting mildly against his too drastic political changes. It
has been explained in Chapter XIII. that in 626 B.C., when his
great ancestor Duke Muh had availed himself of the advisory
services of an educated Tartar (of Tsin descent), this Tartar had
made use of the expression: "The King of the Tartars governs in a
simple, ready way, without the aid of the Odes and the Book as in
the case of China." Thus it was that, possibly with this ancient
warning in his mind, he conceived a sudden, violent, and
passionate hatred for didactic works generally, and two books in
particular-the very two, passages from which pedants, philosophers,
ambassadors, and ministers had for centuries hurled at each other's
heads alike in convivial, argumentative, and solemn moments. In
other words, the Odes and the Book, together with Confucius'
"Springs and Autumns," with its censorious hints for rulers, and all
the other local Annals and Histories, were under anathema, But
more detestable even than these were the new philosophical
treatises of a polemical kind, which girded at monarchs through
their subtle choice of words and anecdotes, or which recalled the
good old times of the feudal emperors and their not very obsequious
vassals. His self-laudatory inscriptions upon stone, scattered about
as he travelled from place to place, tell us plainly, in his own royal
words, that this hatred of presumptuous vassal claims was his prime
motive in destroying all the pedants and books he could secure. He
denounces the vassals of bygone times who ignored the Supreme
Emperor, fought with each other, and had the insolence to "carve stone
and metal in order to record their own deeds." The Changes are quoted
in history often enough by statesmen, as well as the Odes and the Book;
but, even if the First August Emperor did not entertain the suspicion that
the first were (as, indeed, they are according to our Western
lights) all "hocus-pocus," he was himself very credulous and
superstitious, and the learned word-juggling of the Changes was in
any case harmless to him; so that really his rage was confined to
the four or five books, known by heart throughout China, setting
forth the ancient ritual system of previous dynasties, as
perfected by the Chou government; the subordination of all other
kings (Ts'in included) to the Chou family; the wrath of Heaven,
the divinity of the people, and so on. Things had been made worse
during the Fighting State Period (480-230) by the extraordinary
literary activity prevailing at the different royal courts, when
the old royal _tao_ had been interpreted in one way by Lao-
tsz and his followers, in another by Confucius and his school; in
countless others by the schools of Legists, Purists, Scholastics,
Cosmogonists, Pessimists, Optimists, and so on. A clean sweep was
accordingly made, so far as it was possible and practicable, of
all literature, with the exception (amongst old books) of the
Changes, and of practical modern or ancient books on astronomy,
medicine, and agriculture. At the same time copies of the
proscribed Odes and Book were kept on record at court for the use
of the learned in the service of the Emperor. All "histories,"
except that of Ts'in, were utterly destroyed, and _á fortiori_ all
argumentative works on history or on administrative policy of any kind.
The old Tartar blood and Tartar sympathies of the First August Emperor
must surely re-appear in a policy so incompatible with all orthodox
teaching? In one sense the blight upon Chinese civilization was akin
to the blight cast upon that of Eastern Europe 500 years ago by the
"unspeakable Turk." The new ruler boldly said: "The world begins
afresh, with me. No posthumous condemnatory titles for me! My
successor will be 'August Emperor Number Two,' and so on for ever."
It was like the Vendémiaire in 1793.
Thus, except in so far as Confucius may have borrowed from local
histories besides that of Lu in making up his "Springs and
Autumns," the Annals of Ts'in are the only annals of the feudal
states (except the Bamboo Books, or Annals of Tsin, dug up in A.D.
281) now left to us. That there were such annals in each state is
certain, for in 627 B.C. the "great historian" of Tsin is spoken
of; and in 607 and 510 the names of the Tsin historians are given,
in the first case apparently a Tartar. That there should be a Tsin
Tartar versed in Chinese literature is not remarkable, for it was
shown at the close of Chapter XIII. how a learned Tsin Tartar had
acted as adviser to Duke Muh of Ts'in, and had left behind him a
work in two chapters, which was still in existence in 50 B.C.
Under the year 628 B.C., one of the expanded versions of
Confucius' history explains how the anarchy which had then been
for some time prevailing in Tsin led to certain Tsin events of the
year 630 being omitted by Confucius; this is a very important
statement, for it infers that Confucius made use of the Tsin
annals. It is recorded of Confucius that when reading the _Shi-
ki_ ("Historical Annals"), he expressed very strong views when
he came to the events of 632 and 598 B.C., that is, to the place
where the "ordering up" of the Emperor by Tsin is described, and
to the noble action of the "sage" King of Ts'u; it is interesting
to know that this old name, _Shi-ki_, was chosen by the author of
the first real history of China published under that title about 90 B.C.,
and that he was not the inventor of the name, which had already for
centuries been applied in a general sense to the historical annals either
of Lu or of China generally.
In 547 B.C. it is stated that the "great historian" of Ts'i made
certain remarks: we have already seen in the present chapter how
the Ts'i wife of the Second Protector was in 640 B.C. perfectly
well acquainted with the historical and philosophical works of
Kwan-tsz, the great administrative innovator of Ts'i under the
First Protector. In the second century B.C. Kwan-tsz's work of
eighty-six chapters was placed at the head of the Taoist works (of
course before Taoism became Lao-tsz's speciality). It is
mentioned, quite casually, in the year 538, in a political
conversation which took place with the King of Ts'u, that the
First Protector of Ts'i in the year 647 B.C. had had to contend
with the serious rebellion of a subject (who is named). All
circumstances point to the truth of this isolated, but otherwise
most specific statement; yet it is not mentioned elsewhere,--
evidence, if it were wanted, that many historical works, from
which facts were borrowed as though the details were well known to
all, must have disappeared entirely.
As to Ts'u, its Annals were known by the curious name of "Stinking
Wood," by which it is supposed that the evil recorded of men upon
wooden tablets was meant. That Ts'u subsequently developed a high
literary capacity is evident, for the anniversary of the suicide
of the celebrated Ts'u poet K'üh Yiian (envoy to Ts'i during the
fierce diplomatic intrigues of 31 B.C.) has been kept up as the
annual "dragon festival" down to our own times, in memory of his
suicide by drowning in the Tung-t'ing Lake district; and his poems
are amongst the most beautiful in the Chinese language. In 656
B.C. the dictatorial First Protector tried to play the _rôle_
of the wolf, with Ts'u in the character of the lamb: he said: "How
is it you have not for so many generations past sent your tribute
of sedge to the Emperor? How about the other Emperor who visited
(modern) Hankow in 1003 B.C. and was never heard of again?" The
King replied: "As to our failure to send tribute, we admit it; as
to the supposed murder of the Emperor 350 years ago, you had
better ask the people of Hankow themselves what they know of it."
(Ts'u had hardly yet permanently advanced so far east.)
In 496 B.C. it is recorded of a scholar at the Emperor's court
that, being anxious to see his own name in the "Springs and
Autumns," he suggested to the Emperor that for a long time no
complimentary mission had been sent to Lu. The result was that he
was sent himself, and is thus immortalized: it does not follow
from this that the knowledge of Confucius' coming book had
penetrated to the Chou court, because "Springs and Autumns" was
already the accepted term in Lu for "Annals," long before
Confucius adopted the already existing general name for his own
particular work. In 496 Confucius had left Lu in disgust, and had
gone to Wei--the capital of Wei was then on, or near, the then
Yellow River (now the River Wei), between the two towns marked
"Hwa" and "K'ai" on modern maps--where he collected materials for
his History; but he did not begin it until the year 481; so
probably the ambitious scholar simply hoped to appear in the
"Springs and Autumns" of Lu, as they had already been called
before Confucius borrowed the name, just as Sz-ma Ts'ien borrowed
the name _Shi-ki_.
As to Ts'in, Ts'in's own Annals tell us that "in 753 B.C.
historians were first established to keep record of events." Hence
even the Ts'in records, the sole annals preserved from the flames,
must be retrospective from that date. In any case they contain
nothing of historical importance farther back than 753 B.C.,
except the wars with Tartars; the accompanying of the Emperor Muh,
as charioteer, by a Ts'in prince on the occasion of his "going to
examine his fiefs in the west"; and the cession of the old Chou
appanage to Ts'in in 771. By their baldness, and by the baldness
of the Bamboo Books, and of Confucius' own "Springs and Autumns,"
we may fairly judge of the probable insufficiency and dryness of
the Annals of Ts'u, Ts'i, Wei, CHÊNG, Sung, and other states
interested in the welter of the Fighting State Period. Early
Chinese annals contain little more satisfying than the "generations of
Adam" in the fifth chapter of Genesis.
CHAPTER XXXI
ORIGIN OF THE CHINESE
Having now derived some definite notions of how the Chinese
advanced from the patriarchal to the feudal, from the submissive
and monarchical to the emulous and democratic, finally to collapse
under the overpowering grasp of a single Dictator or Despot, whose
centralized system in the main, still survives; having also seen
how the nucleus of China proper was encompassed on three sides by
Tibetans, Tartars, Tunguses, Coreans, and by various ill-defined
tribes to the south; let us see if there is any evidence whatever
to show, or even to suggest to us, whence the orthodox Chinese
originally came, and who they were.
First and foremost, it seems primarily unnecessary to suggest at
all that they came from anywhere; for, if the position be once
assumed as an axiom that all people must have immigrated from some
place to the place in which we first find them, or hear of them,
then the double question arises: "Why should the persons we find
in A., and who, we think, may have come from B., not have migrated
from A. to B. before they migrated back from B. to A.?" Or: "If
the people we find at A. must have come from B., whence did the
people at B. come, before they went to A.?" To put it in another
way: given the existence 4000 or 5000 years ago of Chinese in
China, Egyptians in Egypt, and Babylonians in Babylonia--why
should one group be assumed to be older than the other? The only
ground for suggesting that these groups had not each a separate
evolution, is the assumption that man was "created" once for all,
and created summarily; in which case it follows with mathematical
precision that the ultimate ancestry of every man living extends
back to exactly the same date. That is to say, the highest and the
lowest, the blackest and the whitest, only differ in this, that
some men began to keep records earlier than others; for the man
who keeps no records loses track of his ancestors, and that is
all. Not to mention other races, some of our own noblest English
families trace back their ancestry to a favoured or successful
person, who was of no hereditary distinction before he distinguished
himself; whilst on the other hand the tramp and the street-walker
may have as "royal" blood in their veins as any lineal princely personage.
It is records, therefore, that differentiate "civilized" from uncivilized
people, blue blood from plebeian; and as we see millions of people
living without records to-day in various parts of the world,
notwithstanding that for centuries, or even for millenniums, they
have been surrounded by or in immediate contact with neighbours
possessing records, it seems to follow that a nation's greatness may
begin at any time, independently of the blueness of its blood, the
robustness of its warriors, the beauty of its women; that is, whenever
it chooses to keep records, and thus to cultivate itself: for records are
nothing more than the means of keeping experiences in stock,
instead of having to repeat them every day; they are thus
accumulations of national wealth. It by no means follows that
because records can be traced back farther in the case of one
nation than in the case of another, that the first nation is older
than the other; for instance, although in the West our various
alphabets appear to refer themselves back to one same source, or
to a few sources which probably all hark back ultimately to one
and the same, there seems no reason to believe that the Chinese
did not independently invent, develop, and perfect their own
scheme of written records: the mere fact that we learnt how to
write is some evidence in support of the proposition that they
also, being men like ourselves, learnt how to write.
There is no documentary evidence for the barest existence of
ancient China, or of any part of it, which is not to be found in
the Chinese records, and in them alone; no nation anywhere near
China has any record or tradition of either its own or of China's
existence at a period earlier than the Chinese records indicate.
Those records do not contain the faintest allusion to Egypt,
Babylonia, India, or any other foreign country or place whatever
outside the extremely limited area of the Central Nucleus, and the
larger area occupied by the semi-Chinese colonial powers
surrounding it. Nor is there the faintest evidence that the
Biblical "land of Sinim" had any reference to China, which seems
to have been as absolutely unknown to the West previous to, say,
250 B.C., as America was unknown to Europe, or Europe to America
previous to 1400 A.D. If any ideas were derived from China by the
West, or from the West by China, the records of both China and the
West alike point, however, to one obvious connecting link, and
that is, the horse-riding nomads of the north, who are now, it is
true, in some parts a little more settled than they used to be,
and who have been tamed in various degrees by dogmatic religions
unknown to them in ancient times, but who remain in many respects
now very much what they were 3000 years ago. Of course pedlars,
hawkers, and even long-course caravans travelled, whenever the
routes were free, from place to place in ancient times as they do
now; but it is exceedingly improbable that there would be any
through-travellers from Europe to China, except one or two
occasional waifs or adventurers buffeted through by chance. If 600
years ago, Marco Polo's through-route adventures were regarded in
Europe as almost incredible, notwithstanding the then recent and
well-trodden war-path of the Mongol armies, what chances are there
of through-travel 2000 years before that? And, even if a rare case
occasionally occurred, what chances are there of any one recording
it?
The probability is, so far as sane experience takes us, that the
Chinese had been exactly where we first find them for many
thousand years, or even for myriads of years, before their own
traditions begin. With the exception of the discovery of America,
which brought a flood of strangers into a strange land, and
speedily exterminated the aborigines, there do not appear to be
any authenticated instances in history of extensive and robust
populations being entirely displaced like flocks of sheep by
others. Any one who travels widely in China can see for himself
that, wherever unassimilated tribes live in complete or partial
independence, and, _á fortiori_, where the assimilation has
been carried out, all those tribes possess at least this point in
common with the original Chinese or the assimilated speakers of
Chinese--that their language is monosyllabic, uninflected, not
agglutinative, and tonic; i.e. that each word is "sung" in a
particular way, besides being pronounced in a particular way.
Probably those tribes before they were absorbed, or, despite their
not having yet been absorbed by the Chinese, had been there as
long as the Chinese had been in the contiguous Chinese parts. It
seems reasonable to suppose that the Chinese would absorb their
own race-classes more readily than they would absorb Tartars,
Japanese, and Coreans, all of whom belong to the same dissyllabic,
long-worded, agglutinative family. And so it is: the Chinese
followed the lines of least resistance (after themselves becoming
cultured) and worked their way down the rivers and other
watercourses towards what we call South China. From the very
first, their passage northwards across the Yellow River was
contested by the Tartars, whom they have since partly driven back,
and partly (with great effort) absorbed. They have never been able
to assimilate the Coreans, not to say the Japanese, though both
peoples took very kindly to Chinese civilization after our
Christian era, when first friendly missions began to be
interchanged. Indo-China contains many more of the monosyllabic
and tonic tribes than of others; if, indeed, there are any at all
of the dissyllabic and non-tonal classes; and the Chinese have no
difficulty in merging themselves with Annamese, Tonquinese,
Cambodgians, Siamese, Shans, Thos, Laos, Mons, and such like
peoples: but their own administrative base is too far north; the
conditions of food and climate in Indo-China are not quite
favourable for the marching of armies, especially when it is
remembered that the best troops used have always been Tartars,
used to warm clothes and heating food. There have, besides, always
been rival Indian religion, rival Indian colonization, rival
Indian language, and rival Indian trade influence to contend with.
No absorption of Indian races has ever been anywhere effected by
China. Tibetans never came into question in ancient times; if they
were known, it could only have been to Shuh (Sz Ch'wan) and Ts'in
or early Chou (Shen Si).
If it had not been the Chinese of Ho Nan who first used records,
it is just as probable that the tonic and monosyllabic absorption
which, as things were and are, moved from north to south, might
have moved from south to north. During the Chou dynasty (1122
B.C.-222 B.C.), when the extension of the Chinese race took place
(which had probably already for long gone on) in the clear light
of history, it will be noticed that the rulers of all the great
colony nations of the south--Ts'u, Wu, and Yüeh--had, in turn, to
remind the Emperor of China of their perfect equality with him in
spiritual claim and ancient descent; of their connection with
dynasties precedent to his; of times when his ancestor was a mere
vassal like themselves. No Tartars of those times ever put forth
claims like these, though, it is true, in much later times some of
the (non-Turkish) Tartar rulers of North China traced their
ancestors back to the mythical Chinese emperors who reigned in
Shan Tung. Again, the founder of the Hia dynasty (2205 B.C.) is
repeatedly said to have been buried at modern Shao-hing (between
Hangchow and Ningpo), and the King of Yüeh even sacrificed to him
there. So the Emperor Shun, the predecessor and patron of the same
founder, was traditionally buried near Ch'ang-sha in modern Hu Nan
province. The First August Emperor included both these "lions" in
his pleasure tours among the great sights of China. No sound
historical deduction, of course, can be drawn from these
traditions, however persistent: if false, they were, at any rate,
open to the criticism of a revolutionary and all-powerful Emperor
over 2000 years ago, and to a second, almost equally powerful, who
visited both places a century later; the suggestion inevitably
follows from the existence of these traditions in the south that
either the cultured Chinese whom we first find in Ho Nan had moved
northwards from Hu Nan, Kiang Si, and the lake districts
generally, before they spread themselves backwards; or that the
uncultured Chinese had moved north before the cultured Chinese
moved south; or that both north and south Chinese were at first
equally cultured, until within historical times the north Chinese
(i.e. in Ho Nan, along the Yellow River) so perfected their system
of records that they carried all before them. After all there is
no strain on the imagination in suggesting this, for early Western
civilization grew up in the same way.
There is not the smallest hint of any immigration of Chinese from
the Tarim Valley, from any part of Tartary, from India, Tibet,
Burma, the Sea, or the South Sea Islands: in fact, there is no
hint of immigration from anywhere even in China itself, except as
above hypothetically described. There the Chinese are, and there
they were; and there is an end to the question, so far as
documentary evidence goes. Of course, the persistent Tarim Valley
scheme proposed is only a means to get in the thin end of the
wedge, in order to drive home the thick end in the shape of a
definite start from the Tower of Babel, and an ultimate reference
to the Garden of Eden. If there are still people who believe it
their duty on Scriptural principle to accept this naïve Western
origin of the Chinese, there is no reason why religious belief or
imagination should not be perfectly respected, and even find a
working compromise with the principle of strict adherence to human
evidence. If supernatural agencies be once admitted (as the
limited human intellect understands Nature), there seems to be no
more reason for accepting the creation of a complete whale
(already a hundred years old, according to the growth period of
later whales), than for accepting the creation of complete men
with 1000 years' history behind them instead of 100; or that of
the earth with 20,000, or even 20,000,000 years' history behind
it, and even before it; for as the first whale, or pair of whales,
must set the standard of natural history for all future whales, so
the man created with history behind him may equally well have
history created in front of him. "Nature," according to the
imperfect human understanding, is no more outraged in one case
than in the other, nor can mere time or size count as anything
towards increasing our wonder when we tell ourselves what
supernatural things unseen powers superior to ourselves may have
done. This amounts to the same thing as saying that dogmatic
belief, personal religious conviction, agnosticism, superstition,
and imagination are all on equal terms, and are equally
respectable factors when confronted with human historical
evidence, so long as they are kept rigidly apart from the latter,
As an eminent Catholic has recently said: "The Church has no more
reason to be afraid of modern science than it was of ancient
science." In other words, however pious and religious a man may be
(as we understand the words in Europe), there is no reason why, as
a recreation apart from his faith, he should not rigidly adhere to
the human evidence of history so far as it goes. On the other
hand, however sceptical and discriminating a man may be, from the
point of view of imperfect human knowledge, in the admittance of
humanly proved fact, there is no reason why, from the emotional
and imaginative side of his existence, he should not rigidly
subscribe to dogma or personal conviction, whether the abstract
idea of virtue, the concrete idea of love for some cherished human
being, or the yearning for some supernatural state of sinlessness
be concerned. A distinguished financier, for instance, may regale
his imagination with socialistic dreams of a perfect Utopia; but,
when the weekly household bills are presented to him, he deals
with overcharges in pence like any other practical individual.
From one point of view, the Chinese, already provided with their
tonic language at the Confusion of Tongues, marched to the Yellow
River, where we find them. From the other, there is no evidence
whatever to connect the Chinese with any people other than those
we find near them now, and which have from the earliest times been
near them; no evidence that their language, their civilization,
their manners, ever received anything from, or gave anything to,
India, Babylonia, Persia, Egypt, or Greece, except so far as has
been suggested above, or will be suggested below.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE CALENDAR
Allusion has already been made to the eclipses mentioned in
Confucius' history as a means by which the probability of his
general truth as a historian may in a certain measure be gauged. A
few words upon the Chinese calendar, as it is and was, may
therefore not be amiss. The Chinese month has from first to last
been uncompromisingly lunar; that is to say, the first day of each
month, or "moon" as it may strictly and properly be called, always
falls within the day (beginning at midnight) during which the new
moon occurs. Of course, Peking is the administrative centre now,
and therefore the observations are taken there with reference to
the Peking meridian. As Confucius took his facts and records
mainly from the Lu archives, and (we must suppose) noted celestial
movements from what was seen by the Lu astronomers, it has always
been presumed that the eclipses mentioned by him were observed
from Lu too; that is, from a station over four degrees of
longitude and one of latitude removed from the imperial capital as
it then was (modern Ho-nan Fu). It was the duty of all sovereign
princes to proclaim the first day of the moon at their ancestral
temple; and even if the Chinese of those days had discovered the
difference in "time" between east and west, these princes must
each of them have proclaimed the day during which the new moon
occurred as it occurred to themselves, in their own State, and not
as it occurred to the Emperor's astronomers. On the other hand,
when eclipses were observed from the comparatively small territory
of Lu, it must have occurred, at least occasionally, that visitors
from other states had either the same eclipse or other eclipses to
report. If the Emperor's astronomer reported eclipses in Ho-nan-
Fu on a given day, it is difficult to see how Lu, which was a
centre almost of equal standing with the imperial capital for
orthodoxy in rites and records, could have entirely ignored such
reports.
But the Chinese year has always been luni-solar. From the earliest
times they had observed the twelve ecliptical "mansions" and
zodiacal signs, and also that the time occupied by the sun in
travelling through a mansion was rather longer than one lunation,
or the time intervening between two new moons. Their object has
accordingly always been to bring the lunar and solar years into
manageable combination, so that the equinoxes, solstices, and
"seasons" might occur with as much regularity as possible in the
same months, and so that the husbandman might know when to sow his
grain. Formerly they regulated this discrepancy according to the
mean movements of the sun and moon; but, ever since the Jesuits
first instructed them more accurately, they have regulated the two
years, that is, the solar year and the twelve lunations, according
to the true movements, and with reference to the meridian of
Peking. If the moons were each exactly 29 1/2 days in length,
instead of being 44 minutes 2.87 seconds longer, it would have
been a simple matter to halve the ordinary lunar year, and make
six months "large" (30 days) and six "small" (29 days); but the
extra 44 minutes and a fraction accumulate, and the result is that
there must always be a larger number of "great" months than
"small" in the year. The way the Chinese arranged this was to call
a month "great" (30 days) if the interval between mid-night
(beginning of the new-moon day) and the hour of the _next_
new moon was full 30 days or over in duration; if less than 30
days, then the month was a "small" one (29 days). Not more than
two long months ever followed in succession, and two short months
never did so.
But, in any case, even twelve regular moons of 291/2 days only
make 354 days, whereas a solar year is about 3651/4 days, whilst
the sun's time in passing through a "mansion" (one-twelfth of the
solar year) is about 301/2 days. Thus there was a "superfluity"
of about ten days in every lunar year, or about one lunation in
every third year; not to mention that a "mansion" was about a day
longer than a lunation, and that therefore the husbandman was
liable to be thrown out of his reckoning. In order to remedy this,
the Chinese intercalated a month once in about thirty-three moons,
and called the intercalary month by the same name as the one
preceding it, both with regard to the common numbers 1-12, and
with regard to the two endless cycles of twelve signs and sixty
signs, by which moons are calculated for ever, in the past and in
the future. Regarding the difficulty of seasons, the solar year
was divided into twenty-four "joints," and each "joint" was about
half a "mansion" (the difference rarely exceeding one hour).
However, the spring equinox is always the sixth "joint," and is
the middle of spring season: this and the other "joints" being all
about 151/4 days in length, the Chinese seasons can be symmetrically
divided with relation to both equinoxes and both solstices; for the
intercalary moon (judiciously made unobtrusive, and kept out of vulgar
sight as far as possible) settles the lunar year difficulty; and the
seasons conform, as of course they should do, to the heat of the
sun, which is a much more natural and practical arrangement than
our own arbitrarily assorted and unequal months.
The endless sixty-year cycle of years is usually referred back to
for a beginning to either 2697 or 2637 B.C.; but, apart from the
fact that there is little or no accurate knowledge anterior to 842
B.C., it is of no importance when it began, so long as sixty pairs
of equinoxes and solstices are calculated backwards indefinitely.
It goes back, in any case, to a date beyond which the memory of
Chinese man runneth not to the contrary; it is unbroken and
continuous; we are free to take up any date we like at sixty-year
intervals, and say "here I agree to begin": we cannot deny that
1908 is the cycle year it purports to be; and even if we did,
batches of sixty years backwards from any other cyclic year called
1908, would always have a fixed relation to the other 4604 years
recorded; nor, having accepted 1908, can we deny 1808, 1708, and
so on, as far back as we like, in order to test how any given
event, eclipse or other, coincides relatively with our own date:
it is not a question of beginning, but of counting back, and
stopping. We find Confucius of Lu (Chou clan state) using the
calendar of the Chou dynasty (1122 B.C.-249 B.C.); whose founder
had said: "In future we make the eleventh month the beginning of
the year instead of the twelfth month." The previous dynasty of
Shang (1766-1123) had similarly said: "In future we make the
twelfth month begin the year instead of the first." The previous
dynasty of Hia (2205-1767) and the individual emperors before had
all said (or taken for granted): "The year begins in the first
month," from which we may naturally conclude that there could not
have been an earlier calendar, as no "sage" could reasonably begin
anywhere but at the beginning. At the same time, it must be
explained that the astronomical order of the months, counting the
first as being that when the sun enters Capricorn, is different
from the civil order. Thus the Hia, Shang, and Chou first civil
months were the third, second, and first astronomical months,
representing the sun's entry into Pisces, _Aquarius_, and
_Capricorn_, respectively. When the First August Emperor
conquered the whole of China, and proceeded to unify cart-axles,
weights and measures, written characters, and many other
discrepant popular arrangements, he said: "Let the tenth month be
in future the first in the year instead of the eleventh." That is
to say, he took as civil first month the twelfth astronomical
month, or that in which the sun enters _Sagittarius_. Thus we
see that in 2000 years the calendar had got about 90 days out of
gear; or, roughly, about an hour a year.
All the above may, perhaps, be understood more clearly by
considering the following unmistakably genuine statement made by
the Emperor in 104 B.C., a hundred years after the Ts'in dynasty
had been destroyed; after he had contemplated the tombs of the
ancient monarchs as explained in the last chapter; after the West
of Asia had been discovered; and when it is _possible_ (though
there is no record of it) that Persians, Indians, Greeks, etc., may have
intervened in discussion upon the calendar. He says: "After the
Emperors Yu and Li (the two who fled from their metropolis in 771 B.C.
and 842 B.C. respectively, as related), the Chou dynasty went wrong,
and those who were doubly subjects began to wield power; astrologers
ceased to keep reckoning of seasons; the princes no longer proclaimed
the first day of each moon. Hereditary astronomers got scattered; some
remained in All the Hia (orthodox China); others betook themselves to
the various barbarians. In the twenty-sixth year of the Emperor Siang (626
B.C.) there was an intercalary third month, which arrangement the
'Springs and Autumns' condemns (it should have been at the end of
the year)... The First August Emperor took the tenth month as the
beginning of the year... The present Emperor (of the Han dynasty)
appointed two astronomers, the second of whom (a native of East Sz
Ch'wan) advanced the calculations and improved the calendar. Then
it was found that the measures of the Sun and the Mansions agreed
with the principles adopted by the Hia dynasty... The first cyclic
day and also the first lunar day of the eleventh moon has now been
proved to be the winter solstice. I change the seventh year (of my
present reign-period), and I make of it the first year of the new
reign-period, to be called 'Great Beginning.'"--Accordingly what
had up to that date been the seventh year (of a reign-period
bearing another name) now became a year of 442 days; that is to
say, the three months postponed in turn by the Hia, Shang, and
Chou dynasties were taken up again, and accordingly that one
correcting year consisted of fifteen months. With slight changes,
always adopted only to be again rejected after a few years of
trial, this has been the basis of all later calendars; and for
this reason Confucius' birthday is kept on the twenty-seventh day
of the eighth moon instead of during the tenth moon, as it would
have been according to Chou dates.
The above examination into the calendar question tends to show
still more clearly the good faith of the historians and the
administration; it also illustrates the continuity and painstaking
accuracy of the Chinese records, whatever other defects they may
otherwise disclose.
CHAPTER XXXIII
NAMES
One of the difficulties of Chinese ancient history is the
unravelling of proper names; but, as with other difficulties, this
one is owing rather to the novelty and strangeness of the subject,
to the unfamiliarity of scene and of atmosphere, than to any
inherent want of clearness in the matter itself. In reading
Scottish history, no one is much disconcerted to find a man called
upon the same page (as an imaginary instance), Old John, John
McQuhirt, the Master of Weel, the McQuhirt, the Laird o' Airton,
the Laird of the Isle, and the Earl of Airton and Weel; there are
many such instances to be found in Boswell's account of the
Johnsonian trip to the Hebrides; but the puzzled Englishman has at
least his own language and a fairly familiar ground to deal with.
When, however, we come to unpronounceable Chinese names of strange
individuals, moving about amid hitherto unheard-of surroundings
2500 years ago, with a suspicion of uncertainty added about the
genuineness and good faith of the whole story, things are apt to
seem hopelessly involved, even where the best of good-will to
understand is present. Thus Confucius may be called K'ung-tsz,
K'ung Fu-tsz, or Chung-ni, besides other personal applications
under the influence of _tabu_ rules, Tsz-ch'an may be spoken
of as Kung-sun K'iao, or (if he himself speaks) simply as K'iao.
And so on with nearly all prominent individuals. In those times
the family names, or "surnames" as we say in English, were not
used with the regularity that prevails in China now, when every
one of standing has a fixed family name, such as Li or Yiian,
followed by an official personal name, like Hung-chang or Shï-
k'ai. In old times the clan or tribe counted first; for instance
the imperial clan of _Ki_ included princes of several vassal
states. But, after five generations, it was expected that any
given family unit should detach itself. Thus, in 710 B.C.,
Confucius' ancestor, son of the composer of odes mentioned on page
175, took, or was given by the ruler of his native state, Sung,
the detached family name of K'ung-fu (Father K'ung), "Father"
being the social application, and K'ung the surname, which thence
became the family name of a new branch. The old original clan-
names were little used by any one in a current sense, just as the
English family name of Guelph is kept in the dim background so far
as current use goes. Nor were the personal names, even of Chinese
emperors and kings, so grave and decorous in style as they have
always been in later times. For instance, "Black Buttocks," "Black
Arm," "Double Ears";--such names (decidedly Turkish in style) are
not only used of Tsin princes with an admixture of Tartar blood
nearly always coursing more or less in their veins, but also in
such states as the orthodox Lu. The name "Black Arm," for
instance, is used both by Lu and by Ts'u princes; also by a Ts'u
private individual; whilst an orthodox Duke of Sung bears the
purely Turkish name of T'ouman, which (and exactly the same
pictograph characters, too) was also the name of the first
historical Hiung-nu (later Turkish) Khan several centuries later.
The name _Luh-fu_ or "Emoluments Father," belonging to the
son of the last Emperor of the Shang dynasty in 1123 B.C., was
also the personal name of one of the rulers of Ts'i many centuries
later. In the same way we find identical personal names in CH'ÊN
and Lu, and also in Ts'u and Lu princes. Eunuchs were not
considered to possess family names, or even official personal
names. If there had been then, as now, a celibate priestly caste,
no doubt then, as now, priests would also have been relieved of
their family name rights.
It seems quite clear that many if not most family names began in
China with the name of places, somewhat after the Scotch style:
even in Lancashire the title of the old lord of the manor is often
the family surname of many of the village folk around. Take the
Chinese imperial domain for instance; in the year 558 one Liu Hia
goes to meet his master the new Emperor. His name (Hia) and
surname (Liu) would serve just as well for current use to-day, as
for example with the late viceroy Liu K'un-yih; but we are told
Liu Hia was so "named" by the historian in full because his rank
was not that of first-class statesman, and it is explained that
Liu was the name of his tenancy in the imperial appanage. At a Lu
funeral in 626 B.C. the Emperor's representative to the vassal
state is spoken of complimentarily by his social appellation in
view of his possessing first-class ministerial rank: he cannot be
spoken of by his detached clan-name, or family name, "because he
has not yet received a town in fee." A few years later, another
imperial messenger is spoken of as King-shuh (Glory Uncle),
"Glory" being the name of his manor or fee, and "Uncle" his social
appellation. In 436 B.C. the Emperor sent a present of sacrificial
meat to Lu by X. As X is thus "named," he must be of "scholar"
rank, as an imperial "minister" (it is explained) could not be
thus named. The ruler alone has the right to "affront a man" at
all times with his personal name, but even a son in speaking of
his own father to the Emperor may "affront" his father, because
both his father and himself are on equal subject footing before
the Emperor. To "name" a man in history is not always like
"naming" a member in the House of Commons. For instance, the King
of Ts'u, as mentioned in Chapter XXVII., was named for killing a
Chinese in 531, but not for killing a barbarian prince in 526 B.C.
It was partly by these delicate shades of naming or not naming,
titling or not titling, that Confucius hinted at his opinions in
his history: in the Ts'u case, it seems to have been an honour to
"name" a barbarian. Wei Yang, Kung-sun Yang, or Shang Kiin, or
Shang Yang, the important personage who carried a new civilization
to Ts'in, and practically "created" that power about 350 B.C.,
was, personally, simply named Yang, or "Bellyband." As he came
originally from the orthodox state or principality of Wei, he
might be called Wei Yang, just as we might say Alexander of Fife.
As he received from Ts'in, as a reward for his services, the petty
principality of Shang (taken in war by Ts'in from Ts'u), he might
be called the prince or laird (_kün_) of Shang (of. Lochiel),
or Shang Kün. As he was the grandson (sun) of a deceased earl
(called _kung_, or "duke," as a posthumous compliment), he
was entitled to take the family name of Kung-sun, just as we say
"Fitzgeorge" or "Fitzwilliam." Finally, he was Yang (= John) of
Shang (= Lochiel). In speaking of this man to an educated Chinese,
it does not in the least matter which of the four names be used.
In the same way, Tsz-ch'an (being a duke's grandson) was Kung-sun
K'iao. The word _tsz_, or "son," _after_ a family name, as for
instance in K'ung-tsz (Confucius), is defined as having the effect of
"gracefully alluding to a male." It seems really to be the same in effect
as the Latin _us_, as in Celsius, Brutus, Thompsonius, etc. When
it _precedes_, not the family name or the _tabu_'d personal
name, but the current or acquaintance name, then it seems to have
the effect of Don or _Dom_, used with the most attenuated
honorificity; or the effect of "Mr." _Fu-tsz_ means "The Master."
As to _tabus_, the following are curious specific instances.
King, or "Jungle," was the earliest name for Ts'u, or "Brushwood,"
the uncleared region south of the River Han, along the banks of
the Yang-tsz; and it afterwards became a powerful state. But one
of the most powerful kings of Ts'in (249-244) was called Tsz-ts'u,
or "Don Brushwood," so his successor the First August Emperor (who
was really a bastard, and not of genuine Ts'in blood at all)
_tabu'd_ the word Ts'u, and ordered historians to use the old
name King instead. In the same way the philosopher Chwang Chou, or
Chwang-tsz, was spoken of by the Han historians as Yen Chou,
because _chwang_ was an imperial personal name. Both words
mean "severe": it is as though private Romans and public scribes
had been commanded to call themselves and to write _Austerus_,
instead of _Severus_, out of respect for the Emperor Septimius
Severus. The business-like First August Emperor, himself, evidently
had no hand in the pedantic King and Ts'u _tabu_ business,
for one of his first general orders when he became Supreme Emperor
in 221 B.C., was to proclaim that "in ancient times there were no
posthumous names, and they are hereby suppressed. I am Emperor
the First. My successor will simply be Emperor the Second, and so
on for ever." There is no clear record of posthumous names and titles
anterior to the Chou dynasty; the first certain instance is the father of
the founder, whose personal name was Ch'ang, and who had been
generally known as the "Earl of the West." His son, the founder, made
him W&n Wang, or the "Civilian King," posthumously. In the same way the
Duke of Chou, a son of the Civilian King, made his brother the
founder, personally called _Fah_, Wu Wang, or the "Warrior
King." The same Duke of Chou (the first ruler of Lu, and
Confucius' model in all things) was the virtual founder of the
Chou administrative system in general, and also of the posthumous
name rules which were "intended to punish the bad and encourage
the good"; but counsellors have naturally always been very
gingerly and roundabout in wounding royal family feeling by
selecting too harsh a "punishing" name.
Not only royal and princely personages had posthumous names. In
817 and 796 B.C., each, we find a counsellor of the Emperor spoken
of both by the real and the posthumous name. In 542 B.C. a
concubine of one of the Lu rulers is spoken of by her clan-name
and her posthumous name. In 560 B.C. the dying King of Ts'u
modestly alludes to the choice of an inferior posthumous name
befitting him and his poor talents, for use at the times of
biennial sacrifice to his manes, and adds: "I am now going to take
my place _á la_ suite, in company with my ancestors in the
temple."
Persons of the same clan-name could not properly intermarry. Thus
the Emperor Muh, who is supposed to have travelled to Turkestan in
the tenth century B.C., had a mysterious _liaison_ during his
expedition with a beauteous Miss _Ki_ (_i.e._ a girl of his own
clan), who died on the way. The only way tolerant posterity can make
a shift to defend this "incest," is by supposing that in those times the
names of relatives were "arranged differently." However, the mere
fact that the funeral ceremonies were carried out with full imperial
Chou ritual, and that incest is mentioned at all, seems to militate against
the view (noticed in Chapter XIII.) that it was Duke Muh of Ts'in who
(400 years later) undertook this journey, for he did not belong to
the _Ki_ family at all. Curiously enough, it fell to the lot
of the son and successor of the Emperor Muh to have to punish and
destroy a petty vassal state whose ruler had committed the
incestuous act of marrying three sisters of his own clan-name. In
483 B.C. the ruler of Lu also committed an indiscretion by
marrying a _Ki_ girl. As her clan-name must, according to
rule, be mentioned at her burial, she was not formally buried at
all, but the whole affair was hushed up, and she was called by the
fancy name of Mêng-tsz (exactly the same characters as "Mencius"),
Another instance serves to illustrate the above-mentioned imperial
journey west, and the fief questions jointly. When the Emperor Muh
went west, he was served as charioteer by one of the ancestors of
the future Ts'in principality, who for his services was enfeoffed
at Chao (north of Shan Si province). Chao was one of the three
states into which Tsin broke up in 403 B.C., and was very Tartar
in its sympathies. Thus, as both Ts'in and Chao bore the same
original clan-name of Ying, granted to the Ts'in family as
possessions of the Ts'in fief (Eastern Kan Suh province) by the
early Chou emperors in 870 B.C., Ts'in is often spoken of as
having the sub-clan-name of Chao. These facts, again, all militate
against the theory that it was Duke Muh of Ts'in who made the
voyage of discovery usually attributed to the Chou Emperor Muh;
for Duke Muh's lineal ancestor, ancestor also of the original
Ts'in Ying, himself acted as guide in Tartary to the Emperor Muh.
The First August Emperor, who was, as already stated, really a
bastard, was borne by the concubine of a Chao merchant, who made
over the concubine whilst _enceinte_ to his (the Emperor's)
father, when that father was a royal Ts'in hostage dwelling in the
state of Chao; hence the Emperor is often called Chao CHÊNG
(_CHÊNG_ being his personal name). He had thus a double claim
to the family name of Chao, first because--granting his
legitimacy--his Ts'in ancestor (also the ancestor of all the Chao
family) was, during the ninth century B.C., enfeoffed in Chao; and
secondly because, when Chao became an independent kingdom, he was,
during the third century B.C., himself born in Chao to a Chao man
of a Chao woman.
A great deal more might of course be said upon the subject of
names, and of their effect in sometimes obscuring, sometimes
elucidating, historical facts; but these few remarks will perhaps
suffice, at least, to suggest the importance of scrutinizing
closely the possible bearing of each name upon the political
events connected with it.
CHAPTER XXXIV
EUNUCHS, HUMAN SACRIFICES, FOOD
Mention has been made of eunuchs, a class which seems to have
originated with the law's severity rather than from a callous
desire of the rich to secure a craven and helpless medium and
means for pandering to and enjoying the pleasures of the harem
without fear of sexual intrigue. Criminals whose feet were cut off
were usually employed as park-keepers simply because there could
be no inclination on their part to gad about and chase the game.
Those who lost their noses were employed as isolated frontier
pickets, where no boys could jeer at them, and where they could
better survive their misfortune in quiet resignation. Those
branded in the face were made gate-keepers, so that their
livelihood was perpetually marked out for them. It is sufficiently
obvious why the castrated were specially charged with the duty of
serving females in a menial capacity. One name for eunuch is
"cleanse man," and it is explained by a very old commentator that
the duty of these functionaries was to sweep and cleanse the
court; but it is perhaps as likely that the original idea was
really "purified man," or man deprived of incentive to certain
evils. It is often said disparagingly of the Chou dynasty that
they introduced the effeminate Persian custom of keeping eunuchs;
but the Chou family, which was in full career before Zoroaster
existed, is perhaps entitled to a much greater antiquity in
civilization than Persia--Cyrus himself was a contemporary of Lao-
tsz and Confucius--and probably the castrated were only utilized
as menials because they already were eunuchs by law, and were not
made eunuchs against the spirit of natural law simply in order
that their services as menials should be conveniently rendered.
In 655 B.C. the Tsin ruler despatched a eunuch to try and
assassinate his half-brother (the future Second Protector of
China) when in Tartar exile. When the Second Protector in 636 at
last came to his rights as ruler of Tsin, the same eunuch offered
to commit an assassination in his interest; arguing, by way of
justifying his previous attempt, that a servant's duty was to
serve his _de facto_ master for the time being, and not to
question de _jure_ claims, which were a matter beyond the
competence of a menial. In 548 the ruler of Ts'i was assassinated
by a eunuch who would not even grant his master permission to
commit suicide decently in the ancestral hall; (see p. 62). A year
later, the succeeding ruler under urgent circumstances secured the
services of a eunuch as coachman. In contrast to these traitors,
in 481 a faithful eunuch tries to save the ruler of Ts'i from
assassination by one of the supplanting great families: this was
the case that so horrified Confucius that he died soon after, in
despair of ever seeing "divine right" regain the upper hand in
China. In 544 B.C. the ruler of Wei was assassinated by a eunuch
door-keeper. In 537 the King of Ts'u conceived the idea of
castrating and cutting the feet off the two Tsin envoys for use as
a palace gate-keeper and for service in his harem; but he was
prudently dissuaded by his chief counsellor from incurring the
risks consequent upon such an international outrage; (see p. 46).
Three centuries later, in the year 239, the First August Emperor's
(real) father, for his own spying purposes, got a sham eunuch
appointed to a post in the service of the ex-concubine made over,
as explained in the last chapter, to the First Emperor's father;
by the dowager-queen, as she then was, the supposed eunuch had
two sons. When subsequently this dangerous person revolted, the
First August Emperor's own real eunuchs took part in opposing his
murderous designs.--It must be mentioned that this objectionable
father of the Emperor was himself a very distinguished man
notwithstanding, and has left a valuable historical and
philosophical work of twenty-six chapters behind him, put together
under his direction by a number of clever writers. It is usually
considered a Taoist work, because it savours in parts of Lao-tsz's
doctrine; but, like the works of Hwai-nan-tsz (an imperial prince
of the Han dynasty 150 years later) it was classified in 50 B. C.
as a "miscellany."--Finally, a eunuch played an important part as
witness when the Second August Emperor was assassinated. Thus all
the states--those around the original nucleus of Old China at
least--employed eunuchs in the royal harems, even if the vassal
princes of orthodox China as a general rule did not.
It is much the same thing with another disagreeable feature in the
manners of those times--human sacrifices. Many instances have
already been given of such practices in the state of Ts'in. The
tomb of the King of Ts'u who died in 591--of that king whose death
Confucius condescended to record, decently and in ritual terms,
because of his many good qualities--which tomb appears to be still
in existence near King-chou Fu, is surrounded by ten other smaller
tombs, supposed so be those of the persons who "followed him to
the grave." At all events, when in the year 529 a later king of
Ts'u hanged himself, a faithful follower buried two of his own
daughters with the royal body. In A. D. 312 the tomb of the first
Protector, who died in 643 B.C., was opened under circumstances so
graphically described that there can scarcely be a doubt of the
substantial truth: the stench was so great that dogs had to be
sent in first to test the effects of the poisoned atmosphere; so
many bones were found lying about that there can be little doubt
many women and concubines were buried with him. It is often said
by modern writers that it was a general custom to do so all over
ancient China, and possibly the fact that in the second century
B.C. a humane Chinese emperor (of Taoist principles) ordered the
discontinuance of the practice may be thought to give colour to
this supposition. But it must be remembered that the great house
of Han had only then recently overthrown the dynasty of Ts'in, and
had incorporated nearly the whole of China as we now view it: the
Emperor would naturally therefore be referring to Ts'i, Ts'in,
Ts'u, and possibly also to Wu and Yüeh, three of which states had,
as we see, once practised this cruel custom.
Wine, or rather spirit, was known everywhere; in Confucian times
the Far West had not yet been discovered, and there were neither
grapes nor any names for grapes; no grape wine, nor any other
fruit wine. Even now, though the Peking grapes are as good as
English grapes, no one nearer than Shan Shi makes wine from them.
Spirits seem to have been served from remote times at the imperial
and princely feasts. Here, once more, as with the two vicious
practices described, the drunkards appear to be found more among
those peoples surrounding orthodox China than in the ancient
nucleus. In 694 B.C., when the ruler of Lu was on a visit to his
brother-in-law, the ruler of Ts'i, whose sister he had married,
brother and sister had incestuous intercourse; which being
detected, the ruler of Ts'i made his Lu brother-in-law drunk, and
suborned a powerful ruffian to squeeze his ribs as he was assisted
into his chariot. Thus the Duke Hwan of Lu perished. In 640 B.C.,
as we have seen, when the future Second Protector was dallying
with his Ts'i wife, it was found by his henchman necessary to make
him drunk in order to get him away. In 574 a Ts'u general was
found drunk when sent for by his king to explain a defeat by Tsin
troops. In 560 the Ts'i envoy--the philosopher Yen-tsz--was
entertained by the Ts'u court at a wine. In 531 the ruler of Ts'u
first made drunk, and then killed, one of the petty rulers of
orthodox China. In 537 it had already been explained to the King
of Ts'u that on the occasions of the triennial visits of vassals
to the Emperor (probably only theoretical visits at that date)
wine was served at long tables in full cups, but was only drunk at
the proper ritualistic moment. Two years after that the King of
Ts'u was described as being at his wine, and therefore in the
proper frame of mind to listen to representations.
In 541 the Ts'u envoy was entertained at a _punch d'honneur_
by the Tsin statesmen, one of whom seized the occasion to chant
one of the Odes warning people against drunkenness. It is well
known that Confucius enjoyed his dram; indeed, it is said of him:
"As to wine, he had no measure, but he did not fuddle himself." In
the year 506 the ruler of Ts'in is described as being a heavy
drinker. In 489 a Ts'i councillor is described as being drunk. A
few years later the ruler of Ts'i and his wife are seen drinking
together on the verandah, and some prisoners escape owing to the
gaoler having been judiciously plied with drink.
Meat seems to have been much more generally consumed in old China
(by those who could afford it) than in modern times; and, as we
might expect, among the Tartar infected people, horse-flesh in
particular. In the second century B.C. the question of eating
horse-liver is compared by a witty Emperor with the danger of
revolutionary talk. He said: "We may like it, but it is
dangerous." (Last year, when in Neu Brandenburg, I came across a
man whose brother was a horse-butcher in Pomerania, and,
remembering this imperial remark, I asked about horse-liver. The
man said he always had a feast of horse-liver when he visited his
brother, and that he much preferred it to cows' liver, or to any
other part of the horse; but, he added, "you must be careful about
eating it in summer.") In 645 Duke Muh of Ts'in was rescued from
the Tsin troops by what was described to him as a body-guard of
horse-flesh eaters. It appeared, when he sought for explanation,
that the same Ts'in ruler had, some time before, been robbed of a
horse by some "wild men," who proceeded to cut it up and eat it.
They were arrested; but the magnanimous duke said: "I am told
horse-flesh needs spirits to make it digest well," and, instead of
punishing them, he gave them a keg of liquor, adding: "no sage
would ever injure men on account of a mere beast.", He had
forgotten the circumstance, but it now transpired that these men
had, out of gratitude, since then enlisted as soldiers. This story
is the more interesting as it proves how incompletely civilized
the neighbourhood of Ts'in then was.--Bears' paws are often spoken
of as a favourite dish. In 626 the King of Ts'u, about to be
murdered by his son and successor, said: "At least, let me have a
bear's paw supper before I die." But it takes many hours to cook
this dish to a turn, and the son easily saw through the paternal
manoeuvre, pleaded only to gain time. It may be here mentioned,
too, that Ts'u made regular use of elephants in battle, which
circumstance is another piece of testimony in favour of the
Annamese connection of Ts'u. In the _Rites of Chou_, supposed
to be the work of the Duke of Chou, mention is made of ivory as
one of the products of the "Jungle province," as then called. In
modern times Annam has regularly supplied the Peking Government
with elephants, the skin of which is eaten as a tonic. After the
annihilation of Wu by Yiieh, the cunning Chinese adviser of Yiieh
decided to retire with his fortune to Ts'i, on the ground that the
"good sleuth-hound, when there is no more work for him, is apt to
find his way to the cooking-pot." Dogs (fed up for the purpose)
are still eaten in some parts of China, and (as we shall soon see)
they were eaten in ancient Yiieh.
CHAPTER XXXV
KNOWLEDGE OF THE WEST
The question of the expedition of the Emperor Muh to the West in
the year 984 B.C., or during that year and the two following, is
worthy of further consideration for many reasons; and after all
that has been said about the rise of the Chou dynasty, the decay
of the patriarchal system, the emulous ambitions of the vassals,
the destruction of the feudal Empire, and the substitution of a
centralized administration under a new dynasty of numbered August
Emperors, it will now be comparatively easier to understand.