As to the bulk of the Japanese race, be it mixed or unmixed, it is surely in the main to be found now where it always was, or close by? It is no more depreciating to early Japan to give her a dynasty of Chinese adventurers, or perhaps to give her only hereditary Chinese advisers and scribes, than it is derogatory to the states of Europe to possess dynasties which belong by their origin, as a general rule, to almost any place but the countries they now govern as sovereigns. As to the ancient chiefs or kings of Japan, some of their genuine native names may have been preserved in the memories of men; whether they were or not, they were, even without records, as "ancient" chiefs as the best recorded chiefs of Egypt, Babylonia, or China; and it must be remembered that Egyptian and Babylonian records were non-existent to us for all practical purposes during many thousands of years, until we recently discovered how to read them: that is to say, what was once no history at all—the present condition of the prehistoric races of High Asia—suddenly becomes history when we find the records and know how to read them.

When, a few centuries later on, the Japanese had begun thoroughly to understand Chinese books, they decided to have an historical outfit of their own; they took what vague traditions they had, and, in the absence of any long-forgotten genuine records, or visible remains having part of the effect of records, simply fitted on to their heroes, real or imaginary, the Chinese posthumous system, and a selection of the historical facts recorded about the Chinese. Even the Emperor Muh in China was not so named until he died. If a man can be given a complimentary title three years after death (that was the Chinese rule at first), why not give it him 300 years after his death? The king or chief hitherto known, whether accurately or not, whether honestly or not, as X, had most certainly existed; that is, the tenth great-grandfather of the reigning prince; the ninth, eighth, and so on; must positively have been there at some remote period of the past. By calling him Jimmu (a Chinese emperor had already been posthumously so called) he is none the less there than he was before he was called Jimmu, and his new title therefore does not make him less of an entity than he was before. And so on with all the other Japanese emperors who, in the eighth century A.D., were similarly provided with imaginary names. Possibly this is how the Japanese argued with themselves when they set about the task. The situation is a curious one, and perhaps unique in the world; but it does not matter much (as suggested in Chapter XXXI.) so long as we keep imagination separate from real evidence.



CHAPTER XXXVII

ETHICS

We propose to say a few words now about peculiar customs which had vogue all over or in certain parts of China; of course some of them may be traced back to the "Rites of Chou," and to what is prescribed therein; but general administrative schemes representing in general terms things as they ought to be, or as the Chou federal and feudal oligarchy would have liked them to be, do not give us such a life-like picture of ancient China as specific accounts of definite events which really did happen. Take, for instance, the peculiar formalities connected with abject surrender.

After a great defeat in 699 B.C., just when Ts'u was beginning to emerge from its narrow confines between the Han and Yang-tsz Rivers, the defeated Ts'u generals had themselves bound in fetters, or with ropes, in order to await their king's pleasure. In 654, when Ts'u had one of the small orthodox states (in the Ho Nan nucleus) at its mercy, the baron presented himself with his hands tied behind, a piece of jade in his mouth, followed by his suite in mourning, carrying his coffin. It is evident that at this date Ts'u was still "barbarous," for the king had to ask what it all meant. It was explained to him that, when the Chou founder conquered China, and mutilated the last Shang dynasty emperor, that emperor's elder brother by an inferior mother had presented himself before the founder half naked, with his hands tied behind his back, his left hand leading a ram (or goat), and his right carrying sedge for wrapping round the sacrificial victim; he was enfeoffed as Duke of Sung. In 537 the same thing happened to a later King of Ts'u in connection with another petty principality, and the king had to be reminded of the 654 precedent. Thus there must have been records of some kind in Ts'u at an early date. In 645 B.C., when the ruler of Ts'in took prisoner his brother-in- law, the ruler of Tsin, and was seriously contemplating the annexation of Tsin, together with the duty of discharging Tsin sacrifices, his own sister, with bare feet, wearing mourning, and bound with a mourning belt, intercedes successfully for her husband. In 597 B.C. the ruler of the important orthodox state of Cheng went through the form of dragging along, with the upper part of his own body uncovered, a ram or goat into the presence of the King of Ts'u. In 511, when the ruler of Lu had to fly the country and throw himself upon the generosity of Tsin, in order to escape from the dangerous machinations of the intriguing great families of Lu, the six Tsin statesmen (who were themselves at that moment, as heads of great private clans, gradually undermining their own prince's rights) sent for the arch-intriguer, and called upon him to explain his conduct. At that time Lu was coquetting between its two powerful neighbours, Tsin and Ts'i. The conspirator duly presented himself before the Areopagus of Tsin grandees, barefoot and attired in common cloth (i.e. not of silk, but of hemp), in order to explain to them the circumstances of the duke's exile: it is characteristic of the times, and also of the frankness of history, to find it added that he succeeded in bribing the grandees to give an unjust decision. When the Kings of Yueeh and Wu were in turn at each other's mercy, in 494 and 473 respectively, their envoys, in offering submission, in each case advanced to the conqueror "walking on the knees," with bust bared: this knee-walking suggests Annamese, Siamese, and possibly Japanese forms rather than Chinese. The Wu servants at dinner are said to have "waited" on their knees. The third and last August Emperor in 207 submitted to the conquering Han dynasty seated in an unadorned chariot, drawn by a white horse (with signs of mourning), carrying his seal-sash round his neck (figurative of hanging or strangling himself), and offered the seals of the Son of Heaven to the Prince of Han.

Something has already been said about the rules of succession in Ts'u and Ts'in. When the Duke of Sung just mentioned died, in 1078 B.C., he was succeeded by his younger brother because his own son was dead; this was in accordance with the Shang dynasty's ritual laws. Even the Warrior King himself, founder of the Chou dynasty, was not the eldest son of his father, the (posthumously) Civilian King; the latter had set aside the elder of the two sons; and it will be remembered that, several generations before that, two of the royal Chou brothers had voluntarily retired to colonize the Wu Jungle country, in order that their younger brother, father of the future Civilian King, might succeed to the then extremely limited vassal state of Chou. Later on, in 729, a Duke of Sung on his death-bed bequeathed the succession to his younger brother instead of to his own son, on the ground that the rule is, "son to father, younger to elder brother"—a "universal rule" approved by Mencius in later times. The younger brother in this case thrice refused the kingly crown, but at last accepted, and Confucius in his history censures the act, which, it is considered, contributed to Sung's ultimate downfall. (It must be remembered that Confucius' ancestors were themselves of royal Sung extraction.) In 652 the younger brother by the superior spouse wished, at his father's death-bed, to cede his right to the succession of Sung to his elder brother by an inferior wife; the dying father commended the spirit, but forbade the proposed sacrifice of prior right, and the elder therefore served the younger as counsellor. In 493 a Duke of Sung, irritated on account of his eldest son having left the country, nominated a younger son as successor, and after his death his wife confirmed by decree her late husband's nomination; but the younger brother firmly declined, on the ground that the rule of succession was a fixed one, and that he was unworthy to perform the sacrifices to the gods of the land and grain. It is a curious coincidence that the question of status in wives affects the present rulers of both China and Japan. Though the dowager was Empress-Mother, she always ceded the pas to the senior dowager, who had no children. And as to the Mikado's mother, who died last October, she was, it seems, never officially considered as an Empress.

In 817 B.C. the Emperor himself is censured by history for having, "contrary to rule," wished to set up as ruler of Lu a second son in preference to the elder son; he repeated the act in 796, as has already been explained in Chapter XX., when a few other instances were cited to illustrate the general rule in China. At this time the waning power of the emperors still evidently flickered. In 608, through the meddlesome political interference of Ts'i, a concubine's son succeeded to the Lu throne in preference to the legitimate wife's son; curiously enough, the legitimate wife was a Ts'i princess. The result of this irregularity was that the "three powerful families" of Lu (themselves descendants of the ruling family) grew restless, and the state began to decline. On the death of a King of Ts'u in 516, it was proposed to put on the throne, instead of the king's young son, the king's younger brother by an inferior mother, on the ground that the mother of the young son in question was the wife obtained from Ts'in by the king for marriage to his eldest son (who had since joined the king's enemies), which young lady the king had subsequently decided to marry himself. Even under this irregular and complicated family tangle, the proposed succession was disapproved by the counsellors, on the ground that irregular successions invariably produced trouble in the state. In the year 450 B.C. the ruler of Ts'i insisted, against advice, on the succession of a younger son by a favourite concubine in preference to his elder sons by superior mothers, including the first and most dignified spouse. But here, again, the powerful families intervened; one of the elder sons, who had fled to Lu, was brought back secretly in a sack; the wrongful successor was murdered, and the "powerful family" which took the lead in state affairs soon afterwards, to the horror of Confucius, by intrigue and by further assassination, secured the Ts'i throne for itself. It will thus be noticed that all the great states except Ts'in had their full share of succession troubles.

There were several customs practised in warfare which are worthy of short notice. In 633 B.C. a Ts'u general, in the interests of discipline, flogged several military men, and "had the ears of others pierced by arrows, according to military regulation." In 639 this same king had sent as a present to some princesses of other states, who had congratulated him on his victory over Sung, "a pile of the enemy's left ears." As the historians express their disgust at this indelicate act, it was presumably not an orthodox practice, at all events in this particular form. In 607 there were captured from Sung 450 war-chariots and 250 soldiers; the latter had their left ears cut off; in this case the victors were CHENG troops, acting under Ts'u's orders, and it is presumed that CHENG officers cut off the ears under Ts'u's commands. A few years later two or three Ts'u generals were discussing what the ancients did when they challenged for a battle; it was decided that the best "form" was to rush up to the entrenchments, cut off an enemy's left ear, carry him away in your chariot, and rush back to your own camp. As there is a special Chinese character or pictograph for "ears cut off in battle," it thus appears that to a certain extent even the orthodox Chinese practised the "scalping" art, which was doubtless intended to furnish easy proof of claims for reward based upon prowess; in fact, even in modern official Chinese, a decapitated head is called a "head-step," an expression evidently dating from the time when a step in rank was given for each head or group of heads taken.

Rulers, whether the Emperor or vassals, faced south in the exercise of their sovereign powers. Thus, when the Duke of Chou, after the death of his brother the Martial King, acted as Regent pending the minority of the Martial King's son, his own nephew, he faced south; but he faced north once more when he resumed his status of subject. It has already been mentioned, in Chapter XX., that in 640 B.C. the state of Lu made the south gate of the Lu capital the Law Gate, because it was by the south gates that all rulers' commands emanated. In 546 a counsellor of Ts'u explained to the king how, since Tsin influence had predominated in the orthodox state of CHENG, this last had ceased to "face south towards its former protector." Thus, though the Emperor faces south towards the sun, and his subjects in turn face north in his honour, those subjects face their other protector in whatever direction he may lie, supposing the Emperor's protection to be inadequate. It is evidently the same principle as "bowing towards the east," and "turning towards Mecca," both of which formalities must be modified according to place. In 315 B.C., when Yen (the Peking plain) had become one of the six independent kingdoms, a usurper (to whom the King of Yen had foolishly committed full powers) "turned south" to perform acts of sovereignty in the king's name. In 700 B.C., in the orthodox state of Wei, we hear of "princes of the left and right," which is explained to mean "sons of mothers whose official place is left or right of the principal spouse." Right used to be more honourable than left in China, but left now takes precedence of right. Thus the provinces of Shan Tung and Shan Si are also called "Left of the Mountains" and "Right of the Mountains," because the Emperor faces south. Notwithstanding, the ancient phraseology sometimes survives; for instance, "stands right of him" means "is better than he is," and "to left him" means "to prove him wrong or worse." All yamens in China face south; there are rare exceptions, usually owing to building difficulties. Once, in the province of Kwei Chou, I was officially invited by the mandarin to take my seat on his right instead of on his left, because, as he explained, his yamen door did not face south, but west; and, he added, it was more honourable for me, as an official guest, to sit north, facing west, than to sit south, facing west. In Canton, the Viceroy used out of courtesy to sit south, facing north, and make his own interpreter sit north, facing south; the consul sat east, facing west, and the consul's interpreter sat west, facing east. But the consul could not have presumed to occupy the north seat thus given to an inferior on the principle of de minimis non curat lex; nor was the Viceroy willing to assert his "command" to a guest. In 436 the armies of Yiieh marching north through Ho Nan called the Chinese places lying to their west the "left" towns; but that was perhaps because Yiieh came marching from the south. In 221 B.C., when for the first time South China to the sea became part of the imperial dominions, the Emperor's territory was described as extending southward to the "north-facing houses." Hong Kong and Canton are just on the tropical line; but the island of Hainan, and also Tonquin, are actually in the tropics. Whether the houses there do really face north—which I have never noticed—or whether the expression is merely symbolical, I cannot say; but the idea is "to the regions where, when the sun is on the tropic, you have to turn north to see him."

A point of honour in China was not to make war on an enemy who was in mourning, but this rule seems to have been honoured in the breach as much as in the observance thereof. Two centuries before the Chou dynasty came into power, an emperor of the Shang dynasty distinguished himself by not speaking at all during the three years he occupied the mourning hut near the grave. As we have seen, the first rulers of Lu (as a Chou fief) modified existing customs, and introduced the three years' mourning rule there. In connection with a Sung funeral in 651 B.C., it is explained that the bier lay between the two front pillars, and not, as with the Chou dynasty, on the top of the west side steps; it will be remembered that Sung represented the sacrifices of the extinct Shang dynasty. That same year the future Second Protector (then a refugee among the Tartars) declined to put in a claim to the Tsin succession against his brothers "because he had not been in mourning whilst a fugitive." In 642 Sung and her allies made war on Ts'i, which was then mourning for the First Protector; by a just Nemesis the Tartars came to the rescue and saved Ts'i. In 627, after the Second Protector's death, Ts'in declared war, whilst Tsin was mourning, upon a petty orthodox principality belonging to the same clan as Tsin and the Emperor, and belonging also to the Tsin vassal system. This so enraged the new ruler of Tsin that he dyed his white mourning clothes black, so as to avenge the insult, and yet not to outrage the rites: moreover, white was unlucky in warfare: victorious over Ts'in, he then proceeded to mourn for his father, and ever after that black was adopted, by way of memento, as the national colour of Tsin. In 626 and 622 the Emperor sent high officers to represent him at Lu funerals, and to carry gems to place in deceased's mouth, "to show that he (the Emperor) had not the heart to leave the deceased unsupplied with food." In 581 the ruler of Lu, being on a visit to Tsin, was forcibly detained by Tsin, in order to swell the importance of a Tsin ruler's funeral. Lu (like the petty orthodox states of Wei, Sung, CHENG, etc., further south) was nearly always under the rival political constraint of either Ts'i, Tsin, or Ts'u; and this factor must accordingly also be taken into account in explaining Confucius' longing for the good old days of imperial predominance. In 572 Tsin attacked Cheng, though of the same clan as itself, whilst in mourning; but in 567 semi-barbarian Ts'u set a good example to orthodox Tsin by withdrawing its troops out of deference to a later official mourning then in force in Cheng: in 564 the King of Ts'u withdrew his armies home altogether on account of the mourning due to his own deceased mother. In 560 barbarian Wu attacked Ts'u whilst in mourning for the above king (the one who first conquered the Canton region for Ts'u); but, here again, by a just Nemesis, Wu's army was cut to pieces, and Wu's own ally, Tsin, censured her for having done such an improper thing. In 544 the prime minister of Tsin mourned for his Ts'u co- signatory of the celebrated Peace Conference Treaty of 546; and this graceful act is explained to be in accordance with the rites. In 544 Ts'u herself was in mourning, and in accordance with the terms of the Peace Conference Treaty, under which the Tsin vassals and the Ts'u vassals were to pay their respects to Ts'u and Tsin respectively—Ts'in and Ts'i, as great powers, being excused, or, rather, discreetly left alone—Ts'u put great pressure on Lu to secure the personal presence of the Lu ruler at the Ts'u funeral. The orthodox duke did not at all like this "truckling to a barbarian"; but one of his counsellors suggested behaving before the corpse as he would behave to a vassal of his own: this was done, and the unsophisticated Ts'u was none the wiser at the time, though, later on, the king discovered the pious fraud. In 514 B.C. Wu wished to attack Ts'u while, mourning, and the virtuous Ki- chah was promptly sent by Wu to sound Tsin about the facheuse situation. At a Lu funeral in 509, it was explained that the new duke could only mount the throne after the burial was over; it was added "even the Son of Heaven's commands do not run in Lu during this critical period; a fortiori is the duke not capable of transacting his own subjects' business." But long before this, when the First Protector died, in 643, his body lay for sixty-seven days in the coffin unattended, whilst his five sons were wrangling about the succession; in fact, the worms were observed crawling out of the coffin. These painful details have a powerful historical interest, for when (as mentioned on p. 209) his tomb was opened nearly 1000 years later, dogs had to be sent in ahead to test the air, as the stench was so great. In 492 an unpopular prince of Wei was in Tsin, which state had an interest in placing him on the throne. There happened to be in Tsin at that moment a scoundrel who had fled to Tsin from Lu, because he had found Confucius too strong for him in Lu; and this man suggested to Tsin that it would be a good plan to send seventy Wei men back to Wei in mourning clothes and sash, so as to make the Wei people think that the prince was dead, and thus gain an opportunity to "run him in" by surprise, and set him up as ruler. In 489, when the King of Ts'u died in the field of battle, his three brothers, all of whom had declined his offer of the throne, but one of whom had at last accepted in order to give the dying man peace, decided to conceal the king's death from the army whilst they sent for his son by a Yiieh mother, pleading that the king had been non compos mentis when he proposed an irregular succession, and that the promise made to him was, therefore, of no avail. In 485 Lu and Wu joined in an attack upon Ts'i during the latter's mourning—a particularly disgraceful political combination: no wonder Confucius was hastily sent for from the state of CH'EN, whither he had previously retired in disgust at the corruption of his native land. In 481 a conspiracy which was going on in Ts'i was delayed because one of the chief actors, being in mourning, could not attend to public business of any kind. In 332 B.C. Ts'i took ten towns from Yen by successfully attacking her whilst in mourning; one of the travelling diplomats and intriguers so common in China at that period insisted upon the towns being restored. This was at the exact moment when the philosopher Mencius, who seems to have also been a great political dilettante, was circulating to and fro between such monarchs as the Kings of Ts'i and Ngwei, alias Liang, as is fully explained in the still extant book of Mencius.

All the above quaint instances, novel though they may be in detail, strongly recall to us in principle our own "rules" of international law, which are always liable to unexpected "construction" according to the exigencies of war and the power wielded by the "constructor." Inter arma leges silent. As usual in these ritual matters, Ts'in is distinguished by total absence of mention.



CHAPTER XXXVIII

WOMEN AND MORALS

So far as it is possible to judge from the concrete instances in which women are mentioned, it appears that in ancient Chinese times their confinement and seclusion was neither nominally nor actively so strict as it has been in later days, and they seem to have been much more companionable to men than they have been ever since the ridiculous foot-squeezing fashion came into vogue over a thousand years ago. When the Martial King addressed his semi- barbarous western allies, as he prepared his march upon the last Shang Emperor in 1122 B.C., he observed: "The ancient proverb says the hen crows not in the morn; when she does, the house will fall"—in allusion to the interference of the debauched Emperor's favourite concubine in public affairs; and we have seen, under the heading of Law in Chapter XX., how one of the imperial statutes, proclaimed or read regularly in the vassal kingdoms, prohibited the meddling of women in public business. But, in spite of this, so far as promoting the succession rights and political interests of their own children goes, wives and concubines certainly exerted considerable influence, whether legitimate or not, in all the states. The murder of an Emperor and flight of his successor in 771 B.C. was in its inception owing to the intrigues of women about Court. A few years only after that event, we find the orthodox ruler of Wei marrying a beautiful Ts'i princess (her beauty is a matter of history, and is celebrated in the Odes, which are themselves a popular form of history); and then, because she had no children, further marrying a princess of Ch'en. This princess unfortunately lost her offspring; but her sister also enjoyed the prince's favour, and her son was, after her death, given in adoption to the first childless Ts'i wife. This son succeeded to the Wei throne, but was ultimately murdered by a younger brother born of a concubine, who was next succeeded by still another younger brother, whose queen had also been one of his father's concubines. Thus in the most orthodox states (Wei was of the imperial clan), the rites often seem not to have counted for much in practice.—This book, it must here be repeated, deals with specific recorded facts, and not with civilization as it ought to have been under the Rites of Chou.—So, even in comparatively modern China, 1500 years later, the third emperor of the T'ang dynasty married his father's concubine, and she ultimately reigned as empress in her own right, which is in itself an outrage upon the "rites."

In 694 B.C. the ruler of Lu (also of the imperial clan) married a Ts'i princess, who, as has been stated in Chapter XXXIV., not only had incestuous relations with her brother of Ts'i, but led that brother to procure the murder of her husband. In connection with this woman's further visit to Ts'i two years later, the rule is cited: "Women, when once married, should not recross the frontier." The same rule is quoted in 655 when a Lu princess, who had married a petty mesne-vassal of Lu in 670, recrossed the Lu frontier in order to visit her son in Lu.

The Second Protector, during his wanderings, we know, married first a Tartar wife and then a Ts'i wife, both of whom showed disinterested affection for him, and genuine regard for his rights to the Tsin succession, Yet the ruler of Ts'in supplied him with five more royal girls, of whom one had already been married to the Second Protector's predecessor and nephew, the Marquess of Tsin. It is but fair to the memory of this uxorious Tsin ruler to say that he only took her over under protest, and under the immediate stress of political urgencies; he ultimately made her his principal spouse at the expressed desire of his ally the Ts'in ruler. He must have later married a daughter of the Emperor too, for, after the succession of a son and grandson, another of his sons named "Black Buttocks," being the youngest, and also "son of a Chou mother," came to the throne. Thus in those troublous times the honour of imperial princesses evidently did not count for very much at the great vassal courts. The readiness of Ts'in to induce the Tsin ruler to take over his nephew's wife (being a Ts'in princess) accentuates the semi-Tartar civilization of Ts'in at least, if not of Tsin too; for both Hiung-nu (200 B.C.) and Turks (A.D. 500) had a fixed rule that a Khan successor should take over all his predecessor's women, with the single exception of his own natural mother. In the year 630 the King of Ts'u married or carried off two CHENG sisters (of the imperial clan). The ruler of CHENG had been insolent to the future Second Protector during his wanderings in the year 637, and, in order to avoid that Protector's vengeance, had been subsequently obliged to throw himself under Ts'u protection. "This ignoring of the rites by the King of Ts'u will result in his failing to secure the Protectorship," it was said. However, these princesses, though of the imperial Ki clan by marriage into it, were really daughters of a CHENG ruler by two separate Ts'i and Ts'u wives: moreover, previous to the accession of the Hia dynasty (in 2205 B.C.), a Chinese elective Emperor had married the two daughters of his predecessor, whose own son was unworthy to succeed: and, generally, apart from this precedent, the rule against marrying two sisters, even if it existed, seems to have been loosely applied (cf. Chapter XXXIII.).

In connection with the Cheng succession in 629, it is mentioned that "the wife's sons being all dead, X, being wisest of the secondary wives' or concubines' sons, is most eligible" (cf. Chapter XXXVII.).

Great political complications arose in connection with a clever and beautiful princess of Cheng who had had various liaisons with high personages in the state of Ch'en and elsewhere; in the end she was carried off in 589 by a treacherous Ts'u statesman to Tsin; and indirectly this adventure led to his being charged by Tsin with a mission to Wu; to the subsequent entry of Wu into the conclave of federal princes; and to the ultimate sacking of the Ts'u capital by the King of Wu in 506: it is easy to read between the lines that the Kings of Ts'u were considered unusually arbitrary and tyrannical rulers; over and over again we find that their most capable statesmen took service with powers inimical to Ts'u. In 581 the ruler of Cheng, being forcibly detained in Tsin whilst on a political visit there, was temporarily replaced in Cheng by his elder brother, born of an inferior wife.

A marriage between the two states of Sung and Lu having been arranged, the imperial clan states of Lu and Wei had certain duties to perform at the wedding, which took place in 583; and it is recorded that the latter sent "handmaids" The explanation given is a little involved, but it seems to throw some light on the marriage of sisters question. It seems that the legitimate spouse and her "left and right handmaids" were each entitled to three "cousins or younger sisters" of the same clan-name as themselves, "thus making a total of nine girls, the idea being to broaden the base of succession." Not content with this, Lu sent a special envoy to Sung the next year to "lecture" the princess. It is explained that "women at home are under the power of their father; married, under that of their husbands." Tsin also sent handmaids this year. It is further explained that "handmaids are a trifling matter, and they are only mentioned in this Lu princess case because her marriage turned out so badly." The following year Ts'i despatched handmaids, but, "being of a different clan-name, Ts'i was not ritual in doing so."

The precise functions of these paranymphs, or under-studies of wives, together with the rules governing their selection, are doubtless clearly enough described in the Rites of Chou; but we are only dealing here with concrete facts as recorded.

In 526 B.C., when Ts'in gave a princess in marriage to the Ts'u heir, the Ts'u king decided to keep her for himself (see p. 234). Only a few years before that, Ts'u had given a princess of her own in marriage to the heir-apparent of one of the petty orthodox states (imperial clan), and the reigning father had had improper relations with her, which in the end led to his murder by his son; thus Ts'u, however delinquent, had already been given a bad example by the imperial clan.

After his humiliating defeat by the King of Wu in 494 B.C., the King of Yiieh introduced a veritable Lex Julia into his dominions, in order to increase the population more quickly, and to prepare for his great revenge. Robust men were forbidden to marry old women, and old men to marry robust women. Parents were punished if girls were not married by the time they were seventeen, and if boys were not married by twenty. Enceinte women had to be placed under the care of public midwives. For every boy born, a royal bounty of two pots of wine and a dog were given: for every girl born, two pots of wine and a sucking-pig;— the dog, it is explained, being figurative of outdoor, the pig of internal economy. Triplets were to be suckled at the public expense; twins to be fed, when big enough, at the public expense. The chief wife's son must be mourned, with absence from official duty, for three years; other sons for two; and both kinds of son were to be equally buried with weeping and wailing. Orphans, and the sons of sick or poor widows, were to receive official employment. Distinguished sons were to have their apartments cleansed for them, and had to be well fed and handsomely clothed. Learned men from other states were to be officially welcomed in the ancestral temple. With reference to this curious law, which is totally un-Chinese in its startling originality, it may be mentioned that it seems to have gradually led to that laxity of morals in ancient Yiieh which is still proverbial in those parts; for, when the First August Emperor was touring over his new empire in 212 B.C., he left an inscription (still on record) at the old Yiieh capital, denouncing the "pig-like adultery" of the region, and, more especially, the remarrying of widows already in possession of children. Only a few years ago, proclamations appeared in this region denouncing the pernicious custom of forcing widows to remarry. Although Kwan-tsz is supposed to have "invented" the Babylonian woman for Ts'i, nothing is said in any ancient Chinese history about common prostitution; nor is female infanticide ever mentioned. In 502 B.C. the Lu revolutionary, already mentioned in Chapter XXXVII., who was driven to Tsin by Confucius' astute measures, had, before leaving Lu, formed a plot to murder all the sons, by wives, of the three "powerful families" who were intriguing against the ducal rights, and to put concubine sons-being creatures of his own-in their place; thus the succession principles applied not only to ruling families, but also to private houses; though, as a matter of fact, these three were all, in their origin, descended from previous ruling dukes. As explained in Chapters XII. and XXXIII., after five generations a fresh "family" is supposed to spring out of the common clan.

In spite of Wu's barbarism, the fact of its belonging, by remote origin, to the imperial clan (through its first: ruler having magnanimously migrated from Chou before Chou conquered China in 1122), made it technically incest for Lu to intermarry with Wu; thus, when in 482 B.C., a Wu princess (evidently forced for political purposes upon Lu) died, her husband, the ruler of Lu, was obliged to refrain from a public burial, as has been explained in Chapter XXXIII. on Names.



CHAPTER XXXIX

GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE

It will have been noticed that, even in strictly historical times subsequent to 842 B.C., orthodox China was, mutatis mutandis, like orthodox Greece, a petty territory surrounded by a fringe of little-known regions, such as Macedonia, Asia Minor, Phoenicia, Egypt, and Italy; not to say distant Marseilles, and the Pillars of Hercules-all places at best very little visited except by navigators, and even then only by a few specially enterprising navigators or desperate adventurers; though later on Greek influence and Greek colonies soon began to replace the Phoenician, and to exhibit surrounding countries in a more correct and definite light.

As touches the surrounding regions of ancient China, and the knowledge of it possessed by the orthodox nucleus, such traditions as there are all point to acquaintance with the south and east rather than with the north and west. Persons who are persistently bent on bringing the earliest Chinese from the Tower of Babel by way of the Tarim Valley, are eager to seize upon the faintest tradition, or what seems to them an apparent tradition, in support of these preconceived views; ignoring the obviously just argument that, if we are to pay any attention to mere traditions at all, we must in common fairness give priority in value to such traditions as there are, rather than such traditions as are not, but only as might be. For instance, there was a Chinese tradition that the founder of the Hia dynasty (2205 B.C.) was, in a sense, somehow connected with the barbarous kingdom of Yiieh, inasmuch as the great-great-grandson of the founder of the Hia empire a century later enfeoffed a son by a concubine in that remote region. The earliest Chinese mention of Japan is that it lay to the east of Yiieh, and that the Japanese used to come and trade with Yiieh. If the Japanese traditions, on the other hand, as first put into independent writing in the eighth century A.D., are worth anything, then the Japanese pretend that their ancestors were present at a durbar held by the above-mentioned great-great- grandson of the Hia founder; and they also firmly derive their ruling houses (both king and princes) from the kingdom of Wu. We have seen in former chapters that both Wu and Yiieh, the most ancient capitals of which were within 200 miles of each other, spoke one language, and that both were derived (i.e., the administrative caste was derived) from two separate Chinese imperial dynasties. Now, the founder of the Hia dynasty is celebrated above all things for his travels in, and his geography of China, usually called the "Tribute of Yii" (his name),—a still existing work, the real origin of which may be obscure, but which has come down to us in the Book (of History). This geography is not only accurate, but it even now throws great light upon the original direction of river-courses which have since changed; in this work there is not the faintest tradition or indirect mention of any Chinese having ever migrated into China from the west.

There is no foundation, however, for the supposition, favoured by some European writers, that the Nine Tripods (frequently mentioned above) contained upon their surface "maps" of the empire; they merely contained a summary, or a collection of pictures, symbolizing the various tribute nations. On the other hand, there is no trace in the "Tribute of Yii" of any knowledge of China south of the Yarig-tsz River, south of its mouths, and south of its connection with the lakes of Hu Nan. The "province" of Yang Chou is vaguely said to extend from the Hwai River "south to the sea." The "Blackwater" is the only river mentioned which exhibits any knowledge of the west (i.e. of the west half of modern Kan Suh province), and this "Blackwater" was crossed in 984 B.C. by the Emperor Muh.

Then there is the tradition of Vii's predecessor, the Emperor Shun, who, as mentioned in the last chapter, married the two daughters of the Emperor Yao, and is buried at a point just south of the Lake Tung-t'ing, in the modern province of Hu Nan: it is certain that in 219 B.C., when the First August Emperor was on tour, the mountain where the grave lay was pointed out to him at a distance, if he did not actually go up to it. Again, the grandfather of the Warrior King who founded the Chou dynasty in 1122 B.C. was, as already repeatedly pointed out, only a younger brother, his two elder brothers having migrated to the Jungle, and, proceeding thence eastward, founded a colony in Wu (half-way between Nanking and Shanghai). Both Wu and Yiieh, for very many centuries after that, were extremely petty states of only 50 or 60 miles in extent, and for all practical purposes of history may be considered to have been one and the same region, to wit, the flat, canal-cut territory through which the much-disputed Shanghai- Hangchow railway is to run. After the death of the Martial King, when his brother the Duke of Chou was Regent for his son, the duke incurred the suspicion of other brethren and relatives as to his motives, and had to retire for some time to Ts'u, or, as it was then called, the Jungle country, for two years. There is a tradition that a mission from one of the southern Yiieh states found its way to the Duke of Chou, who is supposed to have fitted up for the envoys a cart with a compass attached to it, in order to keep the cart's head steadily south. This tradition, which only appears as a tradition in one of the dynastic histories of the fifth century A. D., is not given at all in the earlier standard history, and it is by no means proved that the undoubtedly early Chinese knowledge of the loadstone extended to the making of compasses. Yet, as Renan has justly pointed out in effect, in his masterly evidences of Gospel truth, a weak tradition is better worth considering than no tradition at all. Besides, there is some slight indirect confirmation of this, for in 880 B.C. or thereabout, a King of Ts'u gave one of his younger sons a Yiieh kingdom bearing almost the same double name as that Yueeh kingdom from which the envoys in 1080 B.C. came to the Duke of Chou; in each case the first part of the double name was Yiieh, and the second part only differed slightly. Again, in or about 820, some of the sons of the king exiled themselves to a place vaguely defined as "somewhere south of the Han River," which can scarcely mean anything other than "the country of the Shan or Siamese races," who lived then in and around Yiin Nan, and some of whom are still known by the vague name used as here in 820 B.C. The vagueness of habitat simply means that all south of the Han and Yang-tsz was terra incognita to China proper. There is another tradition, unsupported by standard history, to the effect that the Martial King enfeoffed a faithful minister of the emperor and dynasty he had just supplanted as a vassal in Corea. Here, again, if the emperor's own grandfather, or grand-uncles and trusted friends, could find their way to Wu, and, later, to Japan, not to mention Shan Tung and the Peking plain, it is reasonable to permit a respected adherent of the dethroned monarch to find his way to Corea, the more in that the centre of administrative gravity of Corea was then Liao Tung and South Manchuria—at the utmost the north part of modern Corea—rather than the Corean peninsula.

In the year 649 the First Protector began to boast of having done as much as any of the' three dynasties, Hia, Shang, and Chou, during the 1500 years before him; he then defines the area of his glory, which is circumscribed by (at the very utmost) the west part of Shan Si, the south part of Ho Nan, the north part of the Peking plain, and the Gulf of "Pechelee." The Second Protector, when he safely reached his ancestral throne after nineteen years of wanderings as Pretender, said to his faithful Tartar henchman and father-in-law: "I have made the tour of the whole world (or whole empire) with you." As a matter of fact, he had been with the Tartars, certainly in central, and possibly also in northern Shan Si; in Ts'i, which means the northern part of Shan Tung and southern part of Chih Li; thence across the four small orthodox states of Sung, Wei, Ts'ao, and CHENG (which simply means up the Yellow River valley into Ho Nan), to Ts'u; and thence Ts'in fetched him to put him on the Tsin throne. The Emperor was already an obscure figure-head beneath all political notice, and no other parts of what we now call China were known to the Protector, even by name. As we shall see in a later chapter, Confucius covered the same ground, except that he never went to Tsin or to Tartarland. The first bare mention of Yiieh is in 670 B.C., when the new King of Ts'u, who had assassinated his elder brother, and who therefore wished to make amends for this crime and for his father's rude conquests, and to consolidate his position by putting himself on good behaviour to federal China, made dutiful advances to Lu and to the Emperor (these two minor powers then best representing the old ritual civilization). The Emperor replied: "Go on conquering the barbarians and Yiieh, but let the Hia (i.e. orthodox Chinese) states alone." In 601 Ts'u and Wu came to a friendly understanding about their mutual frontiers, and Yiieh was also admitted to the conclave or entente; but this was a local act, and had nothing whatever to do with China proper, which first hears of Yiieh as an independent or semi-independent power in 536, when the King of Ts'u, with a string of conquered orthodox Chinese princes in train as his allies, and also a Yiieh contingent, makes war on Wu. In later days there is evidence showing that there was not much general knowledge of China as a whole, and that interstate intercourse was chiefly confined to next-door neighbours. For instance, when Tsin boldly marched an army upon Ts'i in 589 B.C., it was considered a remarkable thing that Tsin chariots should actually gaze upon the sea. In 560, when the Ts'i minister and philosopher, Yen-tsz, was in Ts'u as envoy, and the Ts'u courtiers were playing tricks upon him (as previously narrated in Chapter IX.) he said: "I have heard it stated that when once you get south of the Hwai River the oranges are good. In the same way, we northerners produce but sorry rogues; the genuine article reaches its perfection in Ts'u." Thus, even at this date, the Yang-tsz was regarded much as the Romans of the Empire regarded the Danube—as a sort of vague barrier between civis and barbarus. In no sense was the Ts'u capital—at no time were the bulk of the Ts'u dominions—south of that Great River; nor, in fact, were the capitals of Wu and Yiieh south of it either, for one of the three mouths (the northernmost was as now), corresponded to the Soochow Creek and the Wusung River, as they pass through the Shanghai settlement of to-day; whilst the other ancient mouth entered the sea at modern Hangchow. We have given various other evidence above to show that, even earlier than this, the Yang-tsz was an unexplored region, known, and that only imperfectly and locally, to the Ts'u government alone. In the year 656 B.C. the First Protector called Ts'u to book because, in 1003 B.C., the Emperor had made a tour to the Great River and had never returned (see Chapter XX-XV.). Again, when the imperial power collapsed in 771 B.C., the first Earl of CHENG (a relative of the Emperor) consulted the imperial astrologer as to where he had better establish his new fief: his own idea was to settle southwards on the borders of the Yang-tsz; but he was dissuaded from this step on the ground that the Ts'u power would grow accordingly as the Chou power declined, and thus CHENG would all the easier fall a prey to Ts'u in the future if she migrated now so far south. The astrologer makes another observation which supports the view that Ts'u and orthodox China were originally of the same prehistoric stock. He says: "When the remote ancestor of Ts'u did good service to the Emperor (2400 B.C.), his renown was great, yet his descendants never became so flourishing as those of the Chou family." In 597 B.C., when the Earl of CHENG really was at the mercy of Ts'u, he said: "If you choose to send me south of the Yang-tsz towards the South Sea, I shall not have the right to object"; meaning, "no exile, however remote, is too severe for my deserts." In 549, when the Tsin generals were marching against Ts'u, they were particularly anxious to find good CHENG guides who knew the routes well. Finally, in 541, a Tsin statesman made the following observations to a prince (afterwards king) of Ts'u, who was then on a mission to Tsin, by way of illustrating for his visitor the conquests and distant expeditions of ancient times:—

"The Emperor Shun (who married Yao's two daughters, and employed the founder of the Hia dynasty as his minister) was obliged to imprison the prince of the Three Miao (in Hu Nan; the savages of Hu Nan and Kwei Chou provinces are still called Miao); the Hia dynasty had to deal with quarrels in (modern) Shan Tung and Shen Si; the Shang dynasty had to do the same in (modern) Kiang Su; the early Chou monarchs the same in (modern) North Kiang Su and South Shan Tung: but, now that there are no able emperors, all the vassals are at loggerheads. Wu and P'uh (the supposed Shan or Siamese region above referred to) are giving you trouble; but it is no one's concern but yours."

From all this it is quite plain, though the Chinese historians and philosophers never seem to have discerned it clearly themselves, that the cultivated or orthodox Chinese, that is, the group of closely related monosyllabic and tonic tribes which alone possessed the art of writing, and thus inevitably took the lead and gradually civilized the rest, covered but a very small area of ground even at the time of Confucius' death in 479 B.C., and were completely ignorant of everything but the bare names of all the regions surrounding this orthodox nucleus, which nucleus was therefore rightly called the "Central State," as China is, by extension, now still called.

[Illustration: MAP

1. Si-ngan Fu (and Hien-yang opposite, on the north bank of the River Wei), marked with circles in a lozenge, were the capitals of China, off and on, from 220 B.C. for over a thousand years. The ancient capital of the Chou dynasty, forsaken in 771 B.C., is marked with a cross in a circle and is west of Si-ngan. In 771 B.C. the Emperor fled east to his "east capital" (founded 300 years before that date), which then became the sole metropolis, called Loh (from the river on which it stands); it is also marked with a cross inside a circle and is practically the modern Ho-nan Fu; it has, off and on, been the capital of all China, alternately with Si-ngan Fu, in later times.

2. The ford where the first Chou Emperor (122 B.C.) made an appointment with all his vassals is marked by two dotted lines across the Yellow River.

3. The two dots in a half-circle mark the spot whither Tsin "summoned" the Emperor to the durbar of 632 B.C. After this, Tsin obtained from the Emperor cession of the strip between the Yellow River and the Ts'in River (nothing to do with Ts'in state).

4. There is a second River Loh separating Ts'in state from Tsin state. The territory between this River Loh and the Yellow River was alternately held by Tsin and Ts'in.

5. The territory between the more southerly River Loh and the Yellow River and River I was the shorn imperial appanage after Ts'in had in 771 B.C. obtained the west half; after Tsin in 632 had obtained the remaining north half; and after Ts'u had nibbled away the petty orthodox vassals south of latitude 34".]



CHAPTER XL

TOMBS AND REMAINS

The Chinese, with the single exception of their Great Wall, have always been flimsy builders, and there is accordingly very little left in the way of monuments to prove the antiquity of their civilization. Mention has already been made of the tombs of the Emperors Shun and Yii (2200 B.C.). The tomb of another Hia dynasty emperor (1837 B.C.) lay twenty miles north of Yung-ning in Ho Nan,' where Ts'in, in 627 B.C., was annihilated by Tsin (see p. 30). The tomb (long. 115o, lat. 33o) of the King of Ts'u who died in 689 B.C. was pillaged about 500 years later, but landslips defeated the thieves' objects. The First Protector's tomb, seven miles south of his capital in Shan Tung—the town still marked on the maps as Lin-tsz—was desecrated in A.D. 312. A small pond of mercury was found inside, besides arms, valuables, and the bones of those buried with him. The palace of the Ts'u king of 617 B.C.,—son of the one whose death that year was respectfully chronicled by Confucius—is still the yam&. or protorium of the district magistrate at King-thou Fu, and can perhaps even yet be seen from any passing steamers that circulate above the treaty- port of Sha-shf. There is a doubt about the date of this king's tomb (d. 593); some place it near the palace, others over 100 miles north, near the modern city of Siang-yang. It is possible that, after the sacking of the capital by Wu, in 506, the bodies of former kings were at once removed to the new temporary capital (far to the north) to which the old name was given. For instance, it is certain that the king who died in 545 was buried quite close to the capital (King-thou Fu). Ki-chah's tomb, with Confucius' inscription upon it in ancient character, is still shown at a place ten miles west of Kiang-yin (where the modern forts are, below Nanking) and twenty miles east of Ch'ang-chou; probably the new "British" railway passes quite close to the place, as do the steamers: for the past 400 years sacrifices have been annually offered to Ki-chah's memory: as Confucius never visited Wu, the inscription, if genuine, must have been sent thither. The tomb of Ki-chah's nephew, King of Wu, is still to be seen outside one of the gates of Soochow; or, rather, the temple built on the site is there, for the tomb itself was desecrated and pillaged by the armies of Yueh, when they sacked the capital in 482. There was, originally, a triple copper coffin, a small pond, and some water birds made of gold (probably symbolic of sport), arms, valuables, etc.; but nothing is said of human beings having been sacrificed. It was said (2000 years ago) that elephants had been employed in carrying the earth and building materials for this tomb. In 506 the vengeful Ts'u officer who had fled to Wu, and had incited the King of Wu to do all he could to ruin Ts'u, actually opened the royal grave, in or near the capital, and flogged the corpse of the dead king who had so grievously offended him and his family.

In the year 501 the original bow and sceptre given by the warrior king to his brother, the Duke of Chou, founder of the State of Lu, was stolen from its resting-place, but was luckily recovered the following year. Incidentally this statement is of value; for when the King of Ts'u, as narrated above, was making his demands upon the Emperor, one of his grievances was that he possessed no relics of the founder such as the presents which had been made by him to Ts'i, Lu, Yen, Tsin, and other favoured states of no greater status than his own. The above are only a few instances out of many which show how, from age to age, the Chinese have seen with their own eyes things which in the vista of the distance now seem to us uncertain and incredible. As usual, Ts'in gives us nothing in the way of antiquity; another proof that, until she conceived the idea of conquering China, she was totally unknown (internally) to orthodox China. Confucius' own house, temple, grave, and park form an absolutely unbroken link with the past. There are remains and the relics of the Duke of Chou in the immediate neighbourhood, and it must not be forgotten that the Duke of Chou and his ritual system were Confucius' models: as Confucius insisted, "I am only a transmitter of antiquity." Moderns, and especially foreigners, have forgotten or reck nothing about the Duke of Chou; yet his remains and temples were just as much a matter of visible history to Confucius as Confucius' grounds are to us. Each successive generation in China alludes to existing antiquities, or to contemporaneous objects which have since become antiquities, with the quiet confidence of those who actually possess, and who doubt not of their possessions. The very lacunae are pointed out by themselves—no scepticism of ours is required; for whenever any historian, or any less formal writer, has outstepped the bounds of truth or probability, the critics are immediately there, and they always frankly say what they believe. In a word, the Chinese documents, be they iron, stone, wood, silk, paper, buildings, or graves; and their traditions, are the sole evidence we possess: Chinese critics were the sole critics of that evidence; and they are the sole light by which we foreigners can become critics. The great Chinese defect in criticism is the failure to work out general principles, and to criticize constructively as well as analytically. Their history is a rule of thumb, hand to mouth, diary sort of arrangement, like a vast museum of genuine but unclassified and unticketed objects. But there is no good reason whatever for our doubting the genuineness of either traditions or documents beyond the point of scepticism to which native Chinese doubts go, for it must be remembered that no foreigner possesses one tenth of the mass of Chinese learning that the professional literatus easily assimilates. All we can do is to re-group, and extract principles.



CHAPTER XLI

THE TARTARS

It is important to insist on the very close relations that existed between the Chinese and the Tartars from the very earliest times. All that we are told for certain is that they were north and west of the older dynasties, and especially in occupation of the Upper Wei River, on the lower part of which the old metropolis of Si- ngan Fu lies; which means that they were exactly where we find them in Confucian times, and where we find them now, except that they have been pushed a little further back, and that Chinese colonists have appropriated most of the oases. The Chou ancestor who died in 1231, i.e. the father of the founders of Wu, and the great-grandfather of the founder of the Chou dynasty (1122), had to abandon to the encroaching Tartars his appanage on the Upper King River (a northern tributary of the Wei, which runs almost parallel with it, and joins it at Si-ngan Fu), and was obliged to move southwards to the Upper Wei River. For nearly 1000 years previous to this, his ancestors, who had originally been forced to fly to the Tartars in order to avoid the misgovernment of the third Hia emperor, had lived among and had, whilst continuing the Chinese art of cultivating, partly become Tartars; for in 1231 B.C. the migrating host is said to have renounced Tartar manners, and to have devoted themselves seriously to building and cultivating; from which it necessarily follows that Tartar manners must for some time have been definitely adopted by the Chou family. The grandson of the migrator, the father of the Chou founder, had various little wars with a tribe called the Dog Tartars. Over 1000 years after that first flight to Tartardom, we have seen that the Emperor Muh, great-grandson of the Chou founder, not only had brushes with the Tartars, but extended his tours amongst them to the Lower Tarim Valley, Turfan, Harashar, and possibly even as far as Urumtsi and Kuche; but certainly no farther. Two hundred years later, again, the then ruling Emperor was defeated by the Tartars in (modern) Central Shan Si province, and the descendant in the sixth generation of the Ts'in Jehu who had conducted the Emperor Muh's chariot into Tartarland, only just succeeded in saving the Emperor's life; but this family of Chao, which was thus (cf. p. 206) of one and the same descent with the Ts'in family, subsequently found its account in abandoning the imperial interest altogether, and in serving the rising principality of Tsin (Shan Si), where it became one of the "six families," three of which six in 403 B.C. were ultimately recognized by the Emperor as independent rulers. As we have said over and over again, in 772 B.C. the Chou Emperor, through female intrigues, got into trouble with the Tartars, and was killed: his successor had to move the metropolis east to (modern) Ho-nan Fu, thus abandoning the western part of his patrimony—the semi-Tartar half—to Ts'in. Thus Ts'in in 771 B.C. was to the Chou Emperors what Chou, previous to 1200 B.C., had been to the Shang Emperors.

We now come to strictly historical times, and we shall have no difficulty in showing that even then—h fortiori in times not strictly historical—the various Tartar tribes were still in practical possession of the whole north bank of the Yellow River, all the way from the Desert to the sea. In fact, in 494 B.C., when the King of Wu sent a giant's bone to Lu for further explanation, Confucius said that the "Long Tartars" (who had frequent fights with Lu in the seventh century B.C.) used to extend south-east into (modern) Kiang Su, almost as far as the mouth of the Yang-tsz River: he also says that, had it not been for the energy of the First Protector and his statesman adviser, the philosopher Kwan- tsz of Ts'i, orthodox China would certainly have become Tartarized. It was Confucius also whose learning enabled him to recognize a (Manchu) arrow found in the body of a migrating goose. In the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. the Tartars made repeated and obstinate attacks upon Yen (Peking plain), Ts'i (coast Chih Li and north Shan Tung), Wei (south Chih Li and north Ho Nan), Sung (extreme east Ho Nan), Ts'ao (central Ho Nan), and the Emperor's territory (west Ho Nan). This situation explains to us why the Protector system arose in China, in competition with the waning imperial power. Ts'in and Tsin, being already half Tartar themselves, were always well able to cope with and even to annex the Tartar tribes in their immediate vicinity; but orthodox China was ever a prey to the more easterly Tartar attacks; and thus the Emperors, threatened by Ts'u to their south, and in a measure also by Ts'in and Tsin to their north and west, not only could not any longer protect their orthodox vassals lying towards the east from Tartar attacks, but could not even protect themselves.

It was Ts'i that drove back the Mongol-Manchu tribes and rescued Yen in 662; it was the Ts'i ruler who led a coalition of princes against other groups of Tartars and placed back on his ancestral throne the ruler of Wei, who had been driven from his country by Tartars in 658; it was the First Protector, ruler of Ts'i, who managed to pacify the more westerly Tartars we find persistently menacing the Emperor in 648; to whose rescue the Tartars came in 642, when a coalition of orthodox Chinese princes shamelessly took advantage of the First Protector's death to attack Ts'i during the mourning period. Now it was that the Second Protector, still a refugee among his Tartar relatives, started for Ts'i, his original idea being to replace the philosopher Kwan-tsz as adviser to the First Protector; but, shortly after he reached Ts'i, the First Protector died, and it was only by stratagem that his friends succeeded in rescuing the future Second Protector from the arms of his Ts'i Delilah and his d'elices de Capue. His chief adviser, and at the same time his brother-in-law from a Tartar point of view, was the lineal descendant of the Chao man who had saved the Emperor in 800 B.C. He set out, via the orthodox states, for his own country. These petty orthodox states, such as Wei, Cheng, and Ts'ao, which did not then see their way to profit politically by the Pretender's visit, paid the penalty of their meanness and their rudeness to him later on. Sung was polite, as at that time Sung and Ts'u were both aiming at the Protectorship. Ts'u's hospitality was bluff and good-natured, the King being too strong to fear, and too unsophisticated to intrigue after Chinese fashion. Just then news coming from Ts'in that the Pretender's brothers had all resigned or died, and that his chance had now come, the Pretender hurried to Tsin, regained his throne, and was acclaimed Protector of China exactly at the critical moment when a strong hand was urgently required to check the particular ambitions of Ts'in, Ts'i, and Ts'u. Ts'u was too barbarous; Sung was too pedantic; Tsin alone had unrivalled experience both of Tartars and Eastern barbarians, and also of Southern barbarians (Ts'u). Probably it was only the fact of the Tsin ruling family bearing the same clan-name as the Emperor that had decided Tsin throughout to be orthodox Chinese instead of Tartar. The Tartar family into which the Second Protector had married as a comparatively young man was, however, also of the imperial clan- name, i.e. it was of orthodox Chinese origin, but (even like the Chou imperial family at one time) it had adopted Tartar customs. A large number of the one thousand or more petty Chinese principalities, attached not directly to the Emperor, but to the greater vassals as mesne lords, were in the same predicament; that is to say, they were of Chinese origin, but they had found that it paid them best to adopt barbarian ways. It was exactly as though Scipio should settle in Carthage, and become a Carthaginian: C'sar in Gaul, and adopt Gallic customs; and so on with other Roman adventurers who should find a comfortable gite in Persia, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, or even in Britain and Germany.

The main point upon which to fix the attention is this. The Chinese nucleus was very small, and only by rudely thrusting aside incompetent emperors and fussy ritual did it succeed in emancipating itself from Tartar bondage. That this is not an exaggerated view is additionally plain from the fact that Tartars have, even since Confucian times, ruled more and longer than have Chinese over North China; the Mongols (1260-1368) were the first Tartars to rule over all China, and nominally over all West Asia; the Manchus (1643-1908) are the first Tartars to rule all China, all Manchuria, and all Mongolia, at all effectively; and they have even added parts of Turkestan, with Tibet, Nepaul, and other countries over which the Peking imperial Mongol influence was always very shadowy.



CHAPTER XLII

MUSIC

In these pictures of ancient Chinese life which we are endeavouring to present, the idea is to repeat from every point of view the main characteristics of that life, so that a strange and unfamiliar subject, very loosely depicted in the straggling annals of antiquity, may receive fresh rays of light from every possible quarter, and thus stand out clearer as a connected whole.

Take, for instance, the subject of music, which always played in Chinese ceremonial a prominent part not easy for us now to understand. One of the chief sights of the modern Confucian residence is the music-room, containing specimens of all the ancient musical instruments, which, on occasion, are still played upon in chorus; a picture of them has been published by Father Tschepe. (See page 128.) According to the description given by this European visitor, the music is of a most discordant and ear- splitting description: but that does not necessarily dispose of the question; for even parts of Wagner's Ring are a meaningless clang to those who hear the music for the first time, and who are unable to read the score or to follow out the "classical" style. As we have said before, the ancient emperors, at their banquets given to vassals and others, always had musical accompaniment.

In 626 B.C., when the ruler of Ts'in received a mission from "the Tartar king" (probably a local king or chief), he was much struck with the sagacity of the envoy sent to him. This envoy still spoke the Tsin language or dialect; but his parents, who were of Tsin origin, had adopted Tartar manners. The envoy was also an author, and his work, in two sections, had survived at least up to the second century B.C.: he is classed amongst the "Miscellaneous Writers." The subject of the conversation was the superiority of simple Tartar administration as compared with the intricate ritual of the Odes, the Book, the Rites, and the "Music" of orthodox China. The beginnings of Lao-tsz's Taoism seem to peep out from this Tartar's words, just as they do with other "Miscellaneous" authors. The wily Ts'in ruler, in order to secure this clever envoy for his own service, sent two bands of female musicians as a present to the Tartar king, so as to make him less virile; 140 years later the cunning ruler of Ts'i did much the same thing in order to prevent the Duke of Lu from growing too strong; and the immediate consequence was that Confucius left his fickle master in disgust. Ki-chah, Prince of Wu, was entertained whilst at Lu with specimens of music from the different states. When he came to the Ts'in music, he said: "Ha! ha! the words are Chinese! When Ts'in becomes quite Chinese, it will have a great future." This remark suggests a Ts'in language or dialect different from that of Tsin, and also from that of more orthodox China. In 546 B.C., when a mission from Ts 'u to Tsin was accompanied by a high officer from the disputed orthodox state of Ts'ai lying between those two great powers, the theory of music as an adjunct to government was discussed. Confucius' view a century later was that music best reflected a nation's manners, and that in good old times authority was manifested quite as much in rites and ceremonies as in laws and pronouncements. Previous to that, in 582, it had been discovered that Ts'u had a musical style of her own; and in 579, when the Tsin envoy was received there in state, among other instruments of music observed there were suspended bells.

Thus both Ts'in and Ts'u at this date were still in the learning stage. Before ridiculing the idea that music could in any way serve as a substitute for preaching or commanding, we must reflect upon the awe-inspiring contribution of music to our own religious services, not to mention the "speaking" effect of our Western nocturnes, symphonies, and operatic music generally.

In 562 B.C., when a statesman of Tsin (whose fame in this connection endures to our own days) succeeded in establishing a permanent understanding with the Tartars, based upon joint trading rights and reasonable mutual concessions, the principle of interesting the Tartars in cultivation, industry, and so on; as a reward for his distinguished services, he was presented with certain music, which meant that he had the political right to have certain musical airs performed in his presence. This concession ceases to seem ridiculous or even strange to us if we reflect what an honour it would have been to, say, the Duke of Wellington, or to Nelson, had the right to play "God Save the King" at dinner been granted to his family band of musicians. Four centuries before this, when the Emperor Muh made his tour amongst the Tartars, he always commanded that one particular musical air (named) should be struck up by his musicians on certain occasions (always stated in the narrative). In Tsin, and probably elsewhere, music-masters seem to have combined soothsaying and philosophy with their functions; thus, in 558 the music-master of that state was questioned on the arts of good government, to which he replied: "Goodness and justice"—two special antipathies, by the way, of Lao-tsz the Taoist, who lived about this time as an archive-keeper at the metropolis. In the year 555, either this same man or another musical prophet in Tsin reassured his fellow- countrymen who were dreading a Ts'u invasion with the following words: "I have just been conducting a song consisting of north and south airs, and the latter sound as though the south would be defeated." But music also had its lighter uses, for we have seen in Chapter VI. how in 549 two Tsin generals took their ease in a comfortable cart, playing the banjo, whilst passing through Cheng to attack Ts'u. Music was used at worship as well as at court; in 527 the ruler of Lu, as a mark of respect for one of his deceased ministers, abandoned the playing of music, which otherwise would have been a constituent part of the sacrifice or worship he had in hand at the moment. Even in modern China, music is prohibited during solemn periods of mourning, and officials are often degraded for attending theatrical performances on solemn fasts. In 212 B.C., when the First August Emperor was, like Saul or Belshazzar, beginning to grow sad at the contemplation of his lonely and unloved greatness, he was suddenly startled at the fall of a meteoric stone, bearing upon it what looked like a warning inscription. He at once ordered his learned men to compose some music treating of "true men" and immortals, in order to exorcise the evil omen; it may be mentioned that this emperor's Taoist proclivities have apparently had the indirect result that the word "true man" has come century by century down to us, with the meaning of "Taoist priest," or "Taoist inspired person."



CHAPTER XLIII

WEALTH, SPORTS, ETC.

A traveller in modern China may still wonder at the utter absence of any sign of wealth or luxury except in the very largest towns. Fine clothes, jewels, concubines, rich food, aphrodisiacs, opium, land, cattle—these represent "wealth" as conceived by the Chinese rich man's mind. In 655 Ts'in is said to have paid five ram-skins to Ts'u in order to secure the services of a coveted adviser. Not many years after that, when the future Second Protector was making his terms with the King of Ts'u, he remarked: "What can I do for you in return? You already possess all the slaves, musicians, treasures, silks, feathers, ivory, and leather you can want." In 606 a magnificent turtle was sent as a new year's dinner present from Ts'u to Cheng; in modern China this form of politeness would never do at all, as the turtle has acquired an evil reputation as a term of abuse, akin to the Spanish use or abuse of the word "garlic": however, I myself once experienced, when inland, far away from the sea, a curious compliment in the shape of a live crab two inches long (sent to me as a great honour) in a small jar. Of course chairs were unknown, and even the highest sat or squatted on mats; not necessarily on the ground, but spread on couches. Hence the word survives the object, just as with us ("covers" at dinner are "provided" but never seen; thus in China a host is "east mat" and a guest "west mat.") In 626, when the ruler of Ts'in was talking politics with the Tartar envoy just mentioned above, he allowed him, as a special favour, to sit alongside of his own mat (on the couch). These couches probably resembled the modern settee, sofa, k'ang, or divan, such as all visitors to China have seen and sat on. Tea was quite unknown in those days, and is not mentioned before the seventh century A.D.; but possibly wine may have been served, as tea is now, on a low table between the two seats. "Tartar couches" (possibly Turkish divans) are frequently mentioned, even in the field of battle, and in comparatively modern times. In 300 B.C. Ts'u made a present to a distinguished renegade prince of the Ts'i house of an "elephant couch," by which is probably meant a couch inlaid with ivory, in the present well-known Annamese style.

In 589 B.C., when Tsin troops reached the Ts'i capital and the sea (as already related in Chapters VI. and XXXIX. under the heads of Armies and Geographical Knowledge), T'si endeavoured to purchase peace by offering to the victor the state treasure in the shape of precious utensils. In 551 a rich man of Ts'u was considered insolently showy because he possessed forty horses. In 545 the envoy from Cheng, acting under the Peace Conference agreement so often previously described and alluded to, brings presents of furs and silks to Ts'u; and in 537 Tsin speaks of such articles as often being presented to Ts'u. In 494, when the King of Yiieh received his great defeat at the hands of the King of Wu, his first desperate idea was to kill his wives and children, burn his valuables, and seek death at the head of his troops; but the inevitable wily Chinese adviser was at hand, and the King ended by taking his mentor's advice and successfully bribing the Wu general (a Ts'u renegade) with presents of women and valuables. When this shrewd Chinese adviser of the Yueh king had, by his sagacious counsels, at last secured the final defeat of Wu, he packed up his portable valuables, pearls, and jades, collected his family and clients, and went away by sea, never to come back. As a matter of fact, he settled in Ts'i, where he made an enormous fortune in the fish trade, and ultimately became the traditional Croesus of China, his name being quite as well known to modern Chinese through the Confucian historians, as the name of Croesus is to modern Europeans through Herodotus. He had, between the two defeats of Yiieh by Wu and Wu by Yiieh, served for several years as a spy in Wu, and the fact of his reaching Shan Tung by sea confirms in principle the story of the family of his contemporary, the King of Wu, having similarly escaped to Japan. The place where he landed was probably the same as where the celebrated pilgrim Fah Hien landed, after his Indian pilgrimage, in 415 A.D., i.e., at the German port of Ts'ing-tao.

We do not hear much of gold in the earlier times, but in 237 B.C., when Ts'in was straining every nerve to conquer China, the (future) First August Emperor was advised that "it would not cost more than 300,000 pounds weight in gold to bribe the ministers of all the states in league against Ts'in." Yet in 643 B.C., on the death of the First Protector, the orthodox state of Cheng (lying between Ts'i and Tsin to the north and Ts'u to the south), was bribed with "metal" of some sort—probably gold or silver—to abandon Ts'i. In 538 the celebrated Cheng statesman Tsz-ch'an informs his Ts'u colleagues that the Tsin officers "think of nothing but money." What kind of money this was is doubtful, but it will be remembered that about this time the "powerful family" of Lu had succeeded in bribing the Tsin ministers, or the "six great families" then managing Tsin, to deny justice to the fugitive Lu duke. In 513 B.C. the powerful Wu king who made (modern) Soochow his capital is said to have possessed both iron and gold mines, and it is stated that not even China proper could turn out better weapons. Large "cash" are said to have been coined by the Emperor who reigned from 540 to 520 B.C.; and in 450 B.C. the King of Ts'u is reported to have "closed his depot of the three moneys." As only copper was coined, it is not easy to say now what the other two "moneys" were. In 318 B.C. a bribe of "one hundred golds" was given by Yen to one of the well-known political diplomats or intriguers then forming leagues with or against Ts'in; it is not known for certain how much this was at that particular time and place; but a century or two later it meant, under the Ts'in dynasty, twenty-four ounces; during the Han dynasty, conquerors of the Ts'in dynasty, it was only about half that. Cooks seem to have held official positions of considerable dignity. "Meat-eaters" in Confucian times was a term for "officials" or "the rich." Thus when the haughty King of Wu was suddenly recalled home, from his high-handed durbar with Tsin, Lu, and other orthodox states, to go and deal with his formidable enemy of Yueh, he turned quite pale. By dint of bold "bluff" he managed after all to gain most of his political points, and to retire from an awkward corner with honour; but Chinese spies had their eyes on him none the less, and reported to the watchful enemy that "meat-eaters are not usually blackfaced"—meaning that the King of Wu evidently had some very recent bad news on his mind, for "the well-fed do not usually look care-worn."

Silk was universally known. When the Second Protector (to be) was dallying with his lady-love in Ts'i, the maid of his mistress happened to overhear important conversations from her post in a mulberry tree; the presumption is that she was collecting leaves for the silkworms. Again in 519, a century later, there was a dispute on the Ts'u-Wu frontier (North An Hwei province), about the possession of certain mulberry trees. Cotton (Gossypium) was unknown in China, and the poorer classes wore garments of hempen materials; the cotton tree (Bombyx) was known in the south, but then (as now) the catkins could not be woven into cloth. It was never the custom of officers in China to wear swords, until in 409 B.C. Ts'in introduced the practice; but it probably never extended to orthodox China, so far, at least, as civilians' were concerned. The three dynasties of Hia, Shang, and Chou had all made use of jade or malachite rings, tablets, sceptres, and so on, as marks of official rank.

As to sports, hunting, and especially fowling, seem to have been the most popular pastimes. In 660 a prince of Wei (orthodox) is said to have had a passion for egret fights. In 539 four-horsed chariots are mentioned as being used in a great Ts'u hunt south of the modern Teh-an in northern Hu Peh province, then mostly jungle: these hunts were used as a sort of training for war as well as for sport. The celebrated "stone drums" discovered in the seventh century A.D. near the old Chou capital describe the war-hunts of the active emperor mentioned in Chapter XLI. As might be expected, Yen (Peking plain) would be well off for horses-to this day brought by the Mongols in droves to Peking: in 539 it is said of Yen: "She was never a strong power, in spite of her numerous horses." In 534 a great hunt in Lu is described with much detail; here also chariots were used, and their shafts were reared in opposite rows with their tips meeting above, so as to form a "shaft gate," on which, besides, a flag was kept flying. The entrance to Chinese official yamens is still called "the shaft gate";-in fact, the ya was orginally a flag, and "yamen" simply means "flag gate." In the Middle Ages the Turkish Khans' encampments were always spoken of as their ya—thus: "from hence 1500 miles north-west to the Khan's ya." Cockfighting was a common sport in Ts'i and Lu. In 517 B.C. two prominent Lu functionaries had a quarrel because one had put metal spurs on his bird, whilst the other had scattered mustard in the feathers of his fighting cock: owing to the ambiguity or double meaning of one of the pictographs employed, it is not quite certain that "mustard in the wings" may not mean "a metal helmet on the head." Lifting weights was (as now) a favourite exercise; in 307 a Ts'in prince died from the effects of a strain produced in trying to lift a heavy metal tripod. In Ts'i games at ball, including a kind of football, were played. As a rule, however, it is to be feared that the wealthy Chinese classes in ancient (as in modern) times found their chief recreation in feasting, literary bouts, and female society. Curiously enough, nothing is said of gambling. Women are depicted at their looms, or engaged upon the silk industry; but it is singular how very little is said of home life, of how the houses were constructed, of how the hours of leisure were passed. In modern China the bulk of the male rural population rises with or before the dawn, and is engaged upon field or garden work until the shades of evening fall in; there is no artificial light adequate for purposes of needlework or private study; even the consolations of tobacco and tea—not to say opium, and now newspapers—were unknown in Confucian days. It is presumed, therefore, that life was even more humdrum than it is now, except that women at least had feet to walk upon. We gain some glimpses of excessive taxation and popular misery, forced labour and the press-gang; of callous luxury on the part of the rich, from the pages of Lao-tsz and Mencius; the Book of Odes also tells us much about the pathetic sadness of the people under their taskmasters' hands. In all countries popular habits change slowly; in none more so than in China. We are driven, therefore, by comparison with the life of to-day to conclude that life in those times was sufficiently wretched, and it is therefore not to be wondered at that the miserable people readily sold their services to the first ambitious adventurer who could protect them, and feed them from day to day.