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'ueh 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 role 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, CHENG, 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, a 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 Yueeh—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 Yueeh 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 naive 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 Shi- 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'EN 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 (kuen) of Shang (of. Lochiel), or Shang Kuen. 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 a 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 Meng-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 CHENG (CHENG 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 Yueeh, 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.

We have seen that, if any local annals besides those of Lu have been in part preserved, those of Ts'in at least were deliberately intended by the First August Emperor to be wholly preserved, and must therefore hold first rank among all the restored vassal annals published by Sz-ma Ts'ien in or about 90 B.C.; and it must be remembered that the original Lu annals have perished equally with those of Ts'i, Sung, and other important states; it is only Confucius' "Springs and Autumns,"—evidently composed from the Lu archives,—that have survived. Well, the Ts'in Annals, as given by Sz-ma Ts'ien, record that one of the early Ts'in ancestors "was in favour with the Emperor Muh on account of his admirable skill in manipulating horses" [names of four particularly fine horses given]. The Emperor "went west to examine his fiefs"; he was so "charmed with his experiences that he forgot the administrative duties which should have called him back." Meanwhile, a revolt broke out in East (uncivilized) China, and the manipulator of horses was sent by the Emperor back to China at express speed, in order to stave off trouble till the Emperor could get back himself. It is also stated of him that, in spite of remonstrances, he made extensive war upon the Tartars, and that, in consequence, his uncivilized vassals ceased to present themselves at court. No other mention is made of this expedition by Sz-ma Ts'ien in the imperial annals, and, so (apart from the fictitious importance afterwards given to the expedition, and especially by European investigators in quite recent times), there is really no reason to attach any more political weight to it than to the other innumerable exploring expeditions of emperors into the almost unknown regions surrounding the nucleus of orthodox China so often defined in these chapters. We have already (page 184) cited the case in which the father and predecessor of King Muh had ventured on a tour of inspection as far as modern Hankow on the Yang-tsz River, or, as some say, as far as some place on the River Han, where he was murdered; in 656 the First Protector raked up this affair against Ts'u, whose capital was very near King-thou Fu, above Hankow. Finally, scant though Sz-ma Ts'ien's two references to this affair may be, they at least agree with each other, i.e. the Emperor did actually go to Tartar regions, and a revolt of non-Chinese tribes did actually break out in the immediate sequel.

But in A.D. 281 a certain tomb at a place once belonging to Wei, but later attached to the kingdom of Ngwei formerly part of Tsin, was desecrated by thieves, and, amongst other books written in ancient characters found therein (unfortunately all more or less injured by the rummaging thieves), were two of paramount interest. One was an account of, and was entirely devoted to, the Emperor Muh's voyage to the West; the other was the Annals of Ngwei (i.e. of that third part of old Tsin which in 403 B.C. was formally recognized by the Emperor as the separate state of Ngwei), including those of old Tsin, and also what may be termed the general history of China, narrated incidentally. These Annals of Tsin or Ngwei are usually styled the Bamboo Books, because they were written in ink on bamboo tablets strung together at one end like a fan or a narrow Venetian blind. They also speak shortly of the Emperor Muh's expedition, and thus they also are useful for comparing hiatuses, names, faults, and dates; both in general history, and in the account of King Muh's expedition. Since the discovery of these old documents (which had been buried for well- nigh 600 years, and of which no other record whatever had been preserved either in writing or by tradition), Chinese literary wonder-mongers have exercised their wits upon the task of identifying the unheard-of places mentioned; the more so in that one place, and one king bearing the same foreign name as the place—Siwangmu—was so written phonetically that it might mean "Western-King-Mother." They endeavoured to show how this and other places might have lain in relation to the genuine places discovered by Chinese generals after these ancient documents were buried, seven centuries after the events recorded therein. Then came the foreigner with his Jewish Creation, Confusion of Tongues, Accadian and Babylonian origin of all science, etc., etc. Of course Marco Polo's adventures at once suggested to the European, thus biased, that 3000 years ago the Emperor Muh might have found his way to Persia, and might have been this or that Babylonian, Egyptian, or Persian hero; in fact, Professor Forke of Berlin even takes his Chinese majesty as far as Africa, and introduces him to the Queen of Sheba (= Western-King-Mother).

The distinguished Professor Edouard Chavannes of Paris has recently attempted to show, not only that the Emperor Muh never got beyond the Tarim (which, indeed, is absolutely certain from the text itself), but that it was not the Emperor Muh at all who went, but the semi-Turkish Duke Muh of Ts'in, in the seventh century B.C., who made the expedition.

To begin with, let us see what the expedition purports to be. In the first place, the thieves used as torches, or otherwise destroyed, the first few pages of the bamboo sheaf book, and we do not know, consequently, whence the Emperor started: there is much indirect evidence, however, to show that he started from some place on the headwaters of the Han River, in what must then have been his own territory (South Shen Si); especially as his three expeditions all ended there. It is certain, however, that he had not travelled many days on his first journey before he reached a tribe of Tartars very frequently mentioned in all histories, and bearing the same name as the Tartars whom Sz-ma Ts'ien says the Emperor Muh did conquer. He crossed the Yellow River on the 169th day, came to two rivers, the Redwater (222nd day), and the Blackwater (248th day), which rivers in after ages have been frequently mentioned in connection with Tibetan, Turkish, and Ouigour wars, and are apparently in the Si-ning and Kan-chou Fu, or possibly Kwa Chou regions (cf. p. 68); but first he passed, after the 170th day, a place called "Piled Stones," a name which has never been lost to history, and which corresponds to Nien-po, between Lan-thou Fu and Si-ning, as marked on modern maps. In other words, he went by the only high-road there was in existence, and ever since then has continued in existence (just traversed by Bruce), leading to the Lob Nor region; whence again he branched off, presumably to Turfan, or to Harashar; thence to Urumtsi, and possibly Kuche, as they are respectively now called; but on the whole it is not likely that he got beyond Harashar and Urumtsi. Even 800 years later, when the Chinese had thoroughly explored all the west up to the Hindu Kush, their expeditions had all to proceed from Lob Nor to Khoten, or from Lob Nor (or near it) via Harashar and Kuche along the Tarim Valley: it was not for long after the discovery of these routes that the later Chinese discovered the northerly Hami route, and the possibility of avoiding Lob Nor altogether. His charioteer is said in this account to have been a man (named) whose name is exactly the name, written in exactly the same way, as the name of the ancestor of Ts'in, who, Sz-ma Ts'ien tells us, actually was the charioteer of the Emperor when he marched forth against the Tartars, and who hurried back to China when the revolts broke out owing to the Emperor's absence. As the Emperor received, from various princes, presents of wine, silk, and rice, it is almost certain that he must have avoided bleak, out-of-the-way places, and have made for the productive regions of Harashar, Turfan, and possibly Kuche, any or all three of these. With a little more care and patience we may yet succeed in identifying, and by the same names, several more of the places mentioned by the old chronicler. In about ten months (286 days from the first day already mentioned, and 17 days out from "Piled Stones") he reached Siwangmu. This is not at all unlikely to be Urumtsi, or a place near it, possibly Ku- CH'ENg or Gutchen, because Siwangmu (also the name of the king of that place), gave him a feast on a certain lake, which lake, written in exactly the same way, became the name of a quite new district in 653 A.D., when it was abolished; and that district was at or near Urumtsi; the presumption being that, in the seventh century A.D., it was so named on account of old traditions, then well known. Roughly speaking, it took the Emperor 300 days to go, and a second 300 to get back; stoppages, feasts, functions, all included. The total distance travelled, as specified from chief station to chief station, is 13,300 li (say 4000 miles) to Siwangmu and to the hunting grounds near but beyond it. When 200 days out he came to the place where his feet were washed with kumiss; this place is frequently mentioned in history; even Confucius names it, as one of the northernmost conquests of the Chou dynasty. The only doubt is whether it is near Lan-thou Fu in Kan Suh province, or near the northern bend of the Yellow River. The journey back was hurried and shorter (as we might well suppose from Sz-ma Ts'ien's accounts above given), that is to say, only 10,000 li. But the total for the whole double journey of 660 days in all, including all by-trips, excursions, and hunts, was 38,000 li, or about 12,000 miles—say 20 miles a day. I have myself travelled several thousand miles in China and Tartary, always at the maximum rate of 30 miles a day; more usually 20, allowing for delays, bad roads, and accidents. In Dr. Legge's translation of the "Book of Odes," p. 281, there is a song about a great expedition against the Tartars in 827 B.C., one line of which is precisely, as translated by Dr. Legge: "and we marched thirty li every day,"-which means only ten miles.

This is the chief journey; and whether the Chou Emperor in 984 B.C., or the Ts'in Duke in 650 B.C., made it, there are really no difficulties, no contradictions. Four important places at least are named which are known by exactly the same names, and are frequently mentioned, in very much later history. The Emperor had hundreds of carts or chariots with him, and we have seen that these were a special feature of orthodox China. He came across a huge moulting-ground of birds in the desert regions, and the later Chinese very frequently speak of it in Tartar-land. Being caught in the waterless desert, he had to cut the throats of some of his best horses and drink their warm blood: two friends of my own, travelling through Siberia and Mongolia, were only too glad, when nearly starving from cold, to cut a sheep's throat and drink its warm blood from the newly-gashed throat itself. Fattening up horses for food is mentioned, and washing the feet with kumiss— both incidents purely Tartar. "Cattle," distinct from horses and oxen, are alluded to—probably camels, for which no Chinese word existed until about the time of our era.

The second and third journeys, which occupied another 600 days between them, both ended at, and therefore it is assumed began at, the same place as the first journey's terminus; that is, at a place marked on modern maps as Pao-CH'ENg, on the Upper Han River. In later times it belonged to the semi-Chinese kingdoms of Shuh and Ts'u in turn. One of these narratives is taken up with a description of the Emperor's infatuation for a clever wizard from a far country, and of his liaison with a girl bearing his own clan-name, who died about two months before he reached home, and was buried on the road with great pomp. These two later journeys have no geographical value at all; but as the Emperor in each case again crossed the Yellow River, it is plain that he was amusing himself somewhere along the main Tartar roads, as in the first case.

It may be added that the Taoist author Lieh-tsz, in his third chapter, repeats the story of the magician, who, he says, came from the "Extreme West Country." He also explains that it was through listening to this man's wonderful tales that the Emperor "neglected state affairs, and abandoned himself to the delights of travel,"—thus anticipating by three centuries the language of Sz- ma Ts'ien in 90 B.C. The story of the particular tribe of Tartars (named with the same sounds, but not with the same characters) who washed the Emperor's feet with kumiss is also told by Lieh-tsz. The position of the Redwater River is defined, to which textual remarks the commentators add more about the River Blackwater. Curiously enough, in himself commenting upon the Emperor Muh's conversations with the chieftain of Siwangmu, Lieh-tsz mentions the traditional departure, west, of the philosopher Lao-tsz, his own master.

Now, although there is considerable doubt as to the authorship, date, and genuineness of Lieh-tsz's book, which at any rate was well known to Chinese bibliophiles long before our era, the fact that it mentions and repeats even part of the Emperor Muh's travels 600 years before the ancient book describing those travels was found, proves that the manipulators of the ancient book thus found did not invent the whole story after our era. It also seems to prove that in Lieh-tsz's time (i.e. immediately after Confucius) the story was already known (and probably the book of travels too), Confucius himself having mentioned one of the tribes visited by the Emperor. The Bamboo Books bring history down to 299 B.C., and were found, together with the travels of the Emperor Muh, in A.D. 281. The Bamboo Books not only support part of the story of the Emperor Muh's travels, but their accuracy in dates has been shown by Professor Chavannes to strengthen the credibility of Confucius' own history: a reference to Chapter XXXII. on the Calendar will explain what is meant by "accuracy in dates." Finally, we have Sz-ma Ts'ien's history of go B.C., citing the Chou Annals and the Ts'in Annals, or what survived of them after incessant wars between 400 and 200 B.C., and after the destruction of literature in 213 B.C.

This point settled, the next thing is to consider Professor Chavannes' reasons for supposing that Duke Muh of Ts'in (650 B.C.) and not the Emperor Muh of Chou (984 B.C.) was the real traveller:—

1. He shows that the ruling princes of Ts'in and Chao hailed from the same ancestors, were contiguous states, and, besides being largely Tartar themselves, ruled all the Tartars along the (present) Great Wall line: also that the naming of individual horses and other features of the Emperor's travels recalls features equally prominent in later Turkish history. This is all undoubtedly true: compare page 206.

2. He shows that the Duke Muh's chief claim to glory was his successes against the Tartars of the West. This is also quite certain. 3. He thinks that in 984 B.C. the literary capacity of China was not equal to the composition of such a sustained work as the Travels.

4. He also thinks that the real Chinese found in Ts'in the traditions relating to Duke Muh, and then, for the glory of China, appropriated them to the Emperor Muh, and foisted them upon orthodox history.

There is a great deal to be said for this view, which has, besides, many other minor points of detail in its favour. But it may be answered:—

1. Chou itself was in the eyes of China proper, once a "barbarian" tribe of the west, as the founder of the Chou dynasty in 1122 B.C. himself showed when he addressed his neighbours and allies, the eight other states of the west, and exhorted them, as equals, to assist him in the conquest of China. It was only in 771 B.C. that the original Chou appanage (since 1122 the western half of the imperial appanage) had been ceded to Ts'in, which in 984 was a petty state, still of the "adjunct-function" (cf. page 144) type, and not "sovereign." In 984 there was no intermediate sovereign "power" between the Emperor and the Tartars, with whom, in fact, he had been directly engaged in war independently of Ts'in. He was as much under Tartar social influences as was Ts'in: in fact, the Chou principality, under the Shang dynasty, was a sort of first edition of Ts'in principality under the Chou dynasty. Just as in 1122 B.C. Chou ousted Shang as the imperial house, so in 221 B.C. Ts'in definitely replaced Chou.

2. If Duke Muh distinguished himself by Tartar conquests, so did the Emperor Muh before him, and the authorities are all agreed on this point.

3. If in 984 B.C. the long-standing orthodox Chinese literary capacity was unequal to this effort, how is it that semi-barbarous Ts'in, the least literary of all the states (not only Chinese, but also half-Chinese), into which state records had only been introduced at all in 753 B.C., was able to compose such a book; or, if not to write the book, then to dictate so sustained and connected a story? Besides, the Emperor Muh left several inscriptions carved on stone during the progress of his travels.

4. The instances M. Chavannes cites of the tombs of Yue and Shun in South China, as being parallel instances of appropriation by orthodox Chinese of semi-Chinese traditions have already been put to quite another use above, as tending to show, on the contrary, that those two Emperors either came from the south, or had ancestral traditions in the south; (see pp. 138,191).

5. Finally, about a third of the Travels is taken up with a description of the incestuous intrigue with Lady Ki, and of her sumptuous ritual funeral. Why should Duke Muh trouble himself about the rites due to members of the Ki family, to which the Emperor belonged, but he himself did not? Why should the warlike Duke Muh (who had just then been recommended by an adviser (an ex- Chinese, since become a Tartar) to adopt simple Tartar ways instead of worrying himself with the Odes and the Book "as the Chinese did") waste his time in pomp and ritual? ( see p. 180). Again, when, as the Travels tell us, various vassal rulers from orthodox China (even so far as Shan Tung in the extreme east) arrived to pay their respects to the Emperor as their liege-lord, how is it possible to suppose that these orthodox counts and barons would come to pay court to a semi-barbarian count (for that was all he was) like Duke Muh (as he is posthumously called), one of their equals, a man who took no part in the durbar affairs, and who, on account of his human sacrifices, was not even thought fit to become an emergency Protector of China? What could the semi- Tartar ruler of Ts'in have known of all these wearisome refinements in pomp, mourning, and music? Once more, the place the Emperor started from and came back to, though part of his appanage in 984 B.C. and possessing an ancestral Chou temple, was not part of the Ts'in dominions in 650 B.C., and never possessed a Ts'in temple: if not independent, it was at that time a bone of contention between Ts'in and Ts'u, and by no means a safe place for equipping pleasure expeditions. Finally, if it is marvellous that the Chou Annals of Sz-ma Ts'ien do not give full details of the voyage, is it not at least equally marvellous that the Ts'in Annals should not mention it in 650 B.C., when M. Chavannes supposes it took place, whilst they do so mention it under 984 B.C., when he thinks it did not take place? All accounts agree that the ancestor of Ts'in (named) was there with the Emperor as charioteer; he was, as we have seen, equally ancestor of Chao, and the Chao Annals of Sz-ma Ts'ien say exactly what the Ts'in Annals say.

Hence we may gratefully accept Professor Chavannes' most illuminating proofs, so far as they tend to show that the Travels of the Emperor Muh are genuine history for a tour no farther than the middle Tarim Valley; but, so far as Duke Muh of Ts'in is concerned, he must be eliminated from all consideration of the matter, and we must ascribe the tour, as the Chinese do, to the Emperor Muh. Lastly, are there any proved instances of such radical tamperings with history by the Chinese annalists as M. Chavannes suggests? I do not know of any; and such superficial tamperings as there are the Chinese critics always expose, coute que coute, even though Confucius himself be the tamperer.



CHAPTER XXXVI

ANCIENT JAPAN

The development of China is not only elucidated by documents and events probably antecedent to the strictly historical period, such as the supposed voyage of an Emperor to the Far West, but it is also made easier to understand when we consider its possible indirect effects upon Japan. The barbarian kingdom of Wu does not really appear in Chinese history at all, even by name, until the year 585 B.C. It was found then that it had traditions of its own, and a line of kings extending back to the beginning of the Chou dynasty (1122 B.C.), and even farther beyond. In 585 B.C. the new King, Shou-meng, hitherto an unknown and obscure vassal of Ts'u, altogether beyond the ken of orthodox China, felt quite strong enough, as we have seen in Chapter VII., to strike out an independent line of his own. It is a singular thing that, when the Japanese set about constructing a nomenclature (on Chinese posthumous lines) for their newly discovered back history in the eighth century A.D., they should have fixed upon exactly this year 585 B.C. for the death of their supposed first Mikado Jimmu (i.e. Shen-wu, the "divinely martial"). The next three Kings of Wu, all of whom, like himself, bore dissyllabic and meaningless barbarian names, were sons of Shou-meng, and a fourth son was the cultured Ki-chah, who visited orthodox China several times, both as a spy and in order to improve himself. Then follow two sons of the last and first, respectively, of the said three brothers. The second of these royal cousins was killed in battle, and his son Fu-ch'ai vowed a terrible, vengeance against Ts'u, whose capital he subsequently took and sacked in 506 B.C. Now appears upon the scene his own vassal, Yiieh, and at first Wu gets the best of it in battle. Bloodthirsty wars follow between the two, full of picturesque and convincing detail, until at last the King of Yiieh, in turn, has the King of Wu at his mercy; but he was, though a barbarian, magnanimously disposed, and accordingly he offered Fu-ch'ai the island of Chusan (so well known to us on account of our troops having occupied it in 1840) and three hundred married families to keep him company. But Fu-ch'ai was too proud to accept this Elba, the more especially so because he had it on his conscience that he had been acting throughout against the earnest advice of his faithful minister (a Ts'u renegade), whom he had put to death for his frankness. This adviser as he perished had cried out: "Don't forget to pluck my eyes out and stick them on the east gate, so that I may witness the entry of the Yiieh troops!" He therefore committed suicide, first veiling his face because, as he said: "I have no face to offer my adviser when I meet him in the next world; if, on the other hand, the dead have no knowledge, then it does not matter what I do." After the beginning of our Christian era, when the direct communication between Japan (overland via Corea) and China (also by sea to Wu) was first officially noticed by the historians, it was recorded by the Chinese annalists that part of Fu-ch'ai's personal following had escaped in ships towards the east, and had founded a state in Japan. But it must not be forgotten that then (473 B.C.) orthodox China had never yet heard of Japan in any form, though of course it is possible that the maritime states of Wu and Yiieh may have had junk intercourse with many islands in the Pacific.

We have already ventured upon a few remarks upon this subject in Chapter XXIII., but so much is apt to be made out of slight historical materials-such, for instance, as the pleasure expedition of a Chinese emperor in 984 B.C. to the Tarim Valley— that it may be useful to suggest the true proportions, and the modest possible bearing of this "Japanese" migration—assuming the slender record of it to be true; and the basis of truth is by no means a broad one; still less is it capable of sustaining a heavy superstructure.

Any one visiting Japan will notice that there are several distinct types of men in that country, the squat and vulgar, the oval-faced and refined, and many variations of these two; just as, in England, we have the Norman, Saxon, Irish, and Scotch types of face, with many other nuances. It is also clear from the kitchen-midden and other prehistoric remains; from the presence, even now, in Japan of the bearded Ainus (a word meaning in their own language "men"); and from the numerous accounts of Ainu- Japanese wars in both Chinese and Japanese history, that there were (as there still are) manners, and possibly yet other men, in ancient Japan, both very different from the manners and appearance of the cultured and gifted race, viewed as a homogeneous whole, we are now so proud to have as our political allies. But that brings us no nearer a historical solution, It is a persistent way with all ethnologists to search out whence this or that race came. Of course all races move and mingle, and must always have moved and mingled, when by so doing they could better their circumstances of life; but even if movement has taken place in Japan as it has elsewhere, there is no reason why, if comparatively uncivilized Japanese displaced Ainus, Ainus should not have, before that, displaced quite uncivilized Japanese; or, if other races came over the seas to displace the people already there, the natives already there should not have, later on, ejected these new-comers by sea routes.

In other words, it is quite futile (unless we can lay hands on definite objects, or definite facts recorded—even definite traditions) to try and account for hypothetical movements in prehistoric times. We are totally ignorant of early Teutonic, Hungarian, and Celtic movements-though, thanks solely to Chinese records, we are pretty certain, within defined limits, about early Turkish movements. How much more, then, must we be ignorant about the Japanese movements? If "people" must have come from somewhere, whence did these arrivals start, and why should they not go back; or why not meet other movers going to the place whence they themselves started? If we are to accept the only historical records or quasi-records we possess at all, that is, the Chinese records, then we must accept them for what they are worth on the face of them, and neither add to nor mutilate them; imperfect things that do exist are necessarily better than imaginary things that might have existed in their place. A few hundred families at most, we are told, escaped; and if it be true that they went intentionally to Japan, it is probable that the expert Wu sailors (none existed elsewhere in China) had already for long known the way thither, or to Quelpaert and Tsushima, which practically means to both Corea and Japan; in fact, if they sailed east from Ningpo, there is no other place to knock up against, even if the special intention were not there. Everything tends to show that Fu-ch'ai, though perhaps a barbarian in 473 B.C., was of orthodox if remote pedigree dating from 1200 B.C., and that the ruling class of Wu was very different from the "barbarians" by whom (as we are specifically told) Wu was surrounded; the situation was like that of the Egyptians and Phoenicians, like Cecrops and Cadmus, amongst the earliest barbarous Greeks. It amounts, then, to this, that, just as Chinese colonies and adventurers emerged under the stress of increased population, or under the impulses of curiosity, tyranny, and ambition, to found states in Ts'u, Ts'in, Tsin, Ts'i, Lu, Wu, Yueeh, and other places round the central nucleus, so (they being the sole possessors of that magic POWER, "records") other parties would from time to time sally forth either from the same orthodox centre, or from the semi-orthodox places surrounding that centre, to still remoter spots, such as, for instance, Corea, Japan, Formosa, Annam, Burma, Tibet, and Yiin Nan. Fu-ch'ai's surviving friends had indeed a very lively stimulus indeed-the fear of instant death-to drive them tumultuously over the seas; and doubtless, as they must have been perfectly harmless after tossing about hungry in open boats for weeks together, they would be as welcome to the Japanese king, or to the petty chief or chiefs who received the waifs, as in our own times was the honest sailor Will Adams when he drifted friendless to Japan, and whose statue now adorns a great Japanese city as that of a man who was, in a humble way, also a "civilizer" of Japan (600 A.D.). Doubtless, many Wu words, or Chinese words as then pronounced in Wu, had already been brought over by fishermen; but here at last was a great haul of (possibly) books and the way to interpret them; at least there was a great haul of the best class of the Wu ruling folk. It is true that the first Japanese envoys who came to China made as much of their Wu "origin" as they could; firstly, because it probably paid them as traders to do so; secondly, because it necessarily gave them a respectable status in China; and, thirdly, because they were, in the first century of our era, gradually beginning to understand the mystic power of the Chinese written character, and they would therefore naturally take an intense interest in all records, rumours, traditions, and fables about themselves, which they would embellish and "confirm" whenever it suited their interests to do so. Which of us does not begin to furbish up his pedigree when he is made a peer of the realm?