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ANCIENT CHINA SIMPLIFIED
ANCIENT CHINA SIMPLIFIED
[Illustration: Tripod of the Chou dynasty, date 812 B.C. In 1565 A.D. it was placed by the owner for safety in a temple on Silver Island (near Chinkiang), where it may be seen now. Taken (by kind permission of the author) from Dr. S. W. Bushell's "Chinese Art," vol. i. p. 82.]...
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ANCIENT CHINA SIMPLIFIED
ANCIENT CHINA SIMPLIFIED
BY EDWARD HARPER PARKER, M.A., (Manc.)...
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PREFACE
PREFACE
Boswell once remarked to Dr. Johnson that "the history of England is so strange that, if it were not well vouched as it is, it would be hardly credible." To which Johnson replied in his usual style: "Sir, if it were told as shortly, and with as little preparation for introducing the different events, as the history of the Jewish kings, it would be equally liable to objections of improbability." Dr. Johnson went on to illustrate what he meant, by specific allusion to the concessions to Parliament
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AIDS TO MEMORY
AIDS TO MEMORY
There is much repetition in the book, the same facts being presented, for instance, under the heads of Army, Religion, Confucius, and Marriages. This is intentional, and the object is to keep in the mind impressions which in a strange, ancient, and obscure subject are apt to disappear after perusal of only one or two casual statements. The Index has been carefully prepared so that any allusion or statement vaguely retained in the mind may at once be confirmed. The chapter headings, or contents l
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NAMES OF CHIEF LOCALITIES
NAMES OF CHIEF LOCALITIES
CHOU: at first a principality in South Shen Si and part of Kan Suh, subject to Shang dynasty; afterwards the imperial dynasty itself. TS'lN: principality west of the above. When the Chou dynasty moved its capital east into Ho Nan, Ts'in took possession of the old Chou principality. TSIN: principality (same family as Chou) in South Shan Si (and in part of Shen Si at times). TS'I: principality, separated by the Yellow River from Tsin and Yen; it lay in North Shan Tung, and in the coast part of Chi
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
The year 842 B.C. may be considered the first accurate date in Chinese history, and in this year the Emperor had to flee from his capital on account of popular dissatisfaction with his tyrannical ways: he betook himself northward to an outlying settlement on the Tartar frontier, and the charge of imperial affairs was taken over by a regency or duumvirate. At this time the confederation of cultured princes called China— or, to use their own term, the Central Kingdom—was a very different region fr
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
Having now seen how the Chinese people, taking advantage of the material and moral growth naturally following upon a settled industrial existence, and above all upon the exclusive possession of a written character, gradually imposed themselves as rulers upon the ignorant tribes around them, let us see to what families these Chinese emigrant adventurers or colonial satraps belonged. To begin with the semi-Tartar power in the River Wei Valley— destined six hundred years later to conquer the whole
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
We have already alluded to a princely family, of the same clan- name as the Chou Emperor, which had settled in the southern part of modern Shan Si province, and had thus acted as a sort of buffer state to the imperial domain by keeping off from it the Tartar- Turk tribes in the north. This family was enfeoffed by the new Chou dynasty in 1106 B.C. to replace the extremely ancient princely house which had reigned there ever since the earliest Emperors ruled from that region (2300 B.C.), but which
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
But the collapse of the imperial power in 771 B.C. led to restlessness in the south as well as in the north, north-western, and north-eastern regions: except for a few Chinese adventurers and colonists, these were exclusively inhabited by nomad Tartars, and perhaps some Tibetans, destitute of fixed residences, cities, and towns; ignorant of cultivation, agriculture, and letters; and roving about from pasture to pasture with their flocks and herds, finding excitement and diversion chiefly in peri
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
Having now shown, as shortly and as intelligibly as we can, how the germs of Chinese development were sown at the dawn of true history, let us proceed to examine how far that history, as it has come down to us, contains within it testimony to its own truth. We shall revert to the description of wars and ambitions in due course; but, as so obscure a subject as early Chinese civilization is only palatable to most Western readers in small, varied, and sugared doses, we shall for the moment vary the
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
As the struggle for pre-eminency which we are about to describe involved bloodthirsty combats extending almost uninterruptedly over five centuries, it may be of interest to inquire of what consisted the paraphernalia of warfare in those days. It appears that among the Chinese federal princes, who, as we have seen, only occupied in the main the flat country on the right bank of the Yellow River, war-chariots were invariably used, which is the more remarkable in that after the Conquest in 220 B.C.
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
Before we enter into a categorical description of the hegemony or Protector system, under which the most powerful state for the time being held durbars "in camp," and in theory maintained the shadowy rights of the Emperor, we must first introduce the two coast states of the Yang-tsz delta, just mentioned as having asserted their independence of Ts'u, each state being in possession of one of the Great River branches, In ancient times the Yang-tsz was simply called the Kiang ("river"), just as the
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
The first of the so-called five hegemons or lords-protector of the federated Chinese Empire (after the collapse of the imperial power, and its consequent incapacity to protect the vassal states from the raids of the Tartars and other barbarians) was the Lord of Ts'i, whose capital was at the powerful and wealthy city of Lin-tsz (lat. 37ø, long. 118ø 30'; still so called on the modern maps), in Shan Tung province. Neither the Yellow River nor the Grand Canal touched Shan Tung in those days, and L
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
It was a fixed rule in ancient China that envoys should be treated with courtesy, and that their persons should be held sacred, whether at residential courts, in durbar, or on the road through a third state. During the wars of the sixth century B.C. between Tsin in the north and Ts'u in the south, when these two powers were rival aspirants to the Protectorate of the original and orthodox group of principalities lying between them, and were alternately imposing their will on the important and dip
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
We must now go back a little. The first of the so-called Five Tyrants, or the Five successive Protectors of orthodox China, had died in 643, his philosopher and friend, Kwan-tsz, having departed this life a little before him. Their joint title to fame lies in the fact that "they saved China from becoming a Tartar province," and even Confucius admits the truth of this—a most important factor in enabling us to understand the motive springs of Chinese policy. Under these circumstances the Duke of S
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
All through these five centuries of struggle, between the flight of the Emperor with the transfer of the metropolis in 771 B.C., and the total destruction of the feudal system by the First August Emperor of Ts'in in 221 B.C., it is of supreme interest to note that religion in our Western sense was not only non-existent throughout China, but had not yet even been conceived of as an abstract notion; apart, that is to say, from government, public law, family law, and class ritual. No word for "reli
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
We have just seen that, when a military expedition started out, the event was notified, with sacrifice, to the ancestors of the person most concerned: it was also the practice to carry to battle, on a special chariot, the tablet of the last ancestor removed from the ancestral hall, in order that, under his aegis so to speak, the tactics of the battle might be successful. Ancestral halls varied according to rank, the Emperor alone having seven shrines; vassal rulers five; and first-class minister
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
The reign of the Tsin marquess (628-635), second of the Five Protectors, only lasted eight years, and nothing is recorded to have happened during this period at all commensurate with his picturesque figure in history while yet a mere wanderer. But it is very interesting to note that the Bamboo Annals or Books, i.e. the History of Tsin from 784 B.C., and incidentally also of China from 1500 years before that date, are one of the corroborative authorities we now possess upon the accuracy of Confuc
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
The Five Tyrants, or Protectors, are usually considered to be the five personages we have mentioned; to wit, in order of succession, the Marquess of Ts'i (679-643), under whose reign the great economist, statesman, and philosopher Kwan-tsz raised this far eastern part of China to a hitherto unheard-of pitch of material prosperity; the Marquess of Tsin (632-628), a romantic prince, more Turkish than Chinese, who was the first vassal prince openly to treat the Emperor as a puppet; the Duke of Sung
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
Whatever may be the reason why details of interstate movement are lacking up to 842 B.C., it is certain that, from the date of the Emperor's flight eastwards in 771, the utmost activity prevailed between state and state within the narrow area to which, as we have seen, the federated Chinese empire was confined. Confucius' history, covering the 250-year period subsequent to 722, consists largely of statements that this duke visited that country, or returned from it, or drew up a treaty with it, o
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
What sort of folk were the masses of China, upon whom the ruling classes depended, then as now, for their support? In the year 594 B.C. the model state of Lu for the first time imposed a tax of ten per cent, upon each Chinese "acre" of land, being about one-sixth of an English acre: as the tax was one-tenth, it matters not what size the acre was. Each cultivator under the old system had an allotment of 100 such acres for himself, his parents, his wife, and his children; and in the centre of this
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
There is singularly little mention of writing or education in ancient times, and it seems likely that written records were at first confined to castings or engravings upon metal, and carvings upon stone. In the days when the written character was cumbrous, there would be no great encouragement to use it for daily household purposes. It is a striking fact, not only that writings upon soft clay, afterwards baked, were not only non-existent in China, but have never once been mentioned or conceived
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CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
Treaties were always very solemn functions, invariably accompanied by the sacrifice of a victim. A part of the victim, or of its blood, was thrown into a ditch, in order that the Spirit of the Earth might bear witness to the deed; the rest of the blood was rubbed upon the lips of the parties concerned, and also scattered upon the documents, by way of imprecation; sometimes, however, the imprecations, instead of being uttered, were specially written at the end of the treaty. Just as we now say "t
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CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
Let us return for a moment to the history of China's development. Confucius was born in the autumn of 551, B.C., and he died in 479. If we survey the condition of the empire during these seventy years, we may begin to understand better the secret of his teachings, and of his influence in later times. When he was a boy of seven or eight years, the presence in Lu of Ki-chah, the learned and virtuous brother of the barbarian King of Wu, must have opened his eyes widely to the ominous rise, of a dem
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CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
Let us now consider the notions of law as they existed in the primitive Chinese mind. As all government was supposed to be based on the natural laws of the universe, of which universal law or order of things, the Emperor, as "Son of Heaven," was (subject to his own obedience to it) the supreme mouthpiece or expression, there lay upon him no duty to define that manifest law; when it was broken, it was for him to say that it was broken, and to punish the breach. Nature's bounty is the spring, and
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CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXI
It is difficult to guess how much truth there is in the ancient traditions that the water-courses of the empire were improved through gigantic engineering works undertaken by the ancient Emperors of China. There is one gorge, well known to travellers, above Ich'ang, on the River Yang-tsz, on the way to Ch'ung-k'ing, where the precipitous rocks on each side have the appearance and hardness of iron, and for a mile or more—perhaps several miles— stand perpendicularly like walls on both sides of the
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CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXII
There are singularly few descriptions of cities in ancient Chinese history, but here again we may safely assume that most of them were in principle, if only on a small scale, very much what they are now, mere inartistic, badly built collections of hovels. Sõul, the quaint capital of Corea, as it appeared in its virgin condition to its European discoverers twenty-five years ago, probably then closely resembled an ancient vassal Chinese prince's capital of the very best kind. Modern trade is respo
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CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIII
We must turn to unorthodox China once more, and see how it fared after Confucius' death. After only a short century of international existence, the vigorous state of Wu perished once for all in the year 473 B.C., and the remains of the ruling caste escaped eastwards in boats. When for the first time embassies between the Japanese and the Chinese became fairly regular, in the second and third centuries of our era, there began to be persistent statements made in standard Chinese history that the t
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CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXIV
The emperors of the dynasty of Chou, which came formally into power in 1122 B.C., we have seen took no other title than that of wang, which is usually considered by Europeans to mean "king"; in modern times it is applied to the rulers of (what until recently were) tributary states, such as Loochoo, Annam, and Corea; to foreign rulers (unless they insist on a higher title); and to Manchu and Mongol princes of the blood, and mediatized princes. Confucius in his history at first always alludes to t
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CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXV
The relations which existed between Emperor and feudal princes are best seen and understood from specific cases involving mutual relations. The Chou dynasty had about 1800 nominal vassals in all, of whom 400 were already waiting at the ford of the Yellow River for the rendezvous appointed by the conquering "Warrior King"; thus the great majority must already have existed as such before the Chou family took power; in other words, they were the vassals of the Shang dynasty, and perhaps, of the dis
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CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVI
The period of political development covered by Confucius' history— the object of which history, it must be remembered, was to read to the restless age a series of solemn warnings—was immediately succeeded by the most active and bloodthirsty period in the Chinese annals, that of the Fighting States, or the Six Countries; sometimes they (including Ts'in) were called the "Seven Males," i.e. the Seven Great Masculine Powers. Tsin had been already practically divided up between the three surviving gr
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CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVII
The history of China may be for our present purposes accordingly summed up as follows. The pure Chinese race from time immemorial had been confined to the flat lands of the Yellow River, and its one tributary on the south, the River Loh, the Tartars possessing most of the left bank from the Desert to the sea. However, from the beginning of really historical times the Chinese had been in unmistakable part-possession of the valleys of the Yellow River's two great tributaries towards the west and n
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CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXVIII
The country of Wu is in many respects even more interesting ethnologically than that of Ts'u. When, a generation or two before the then vassal Chou family conquered China, two of the sons of the ruler of that vassal principality decided to forego their rights of succession, they settled amongst the Jungle savages, cut their hair, adopted the local raiment, and tattooed their bodies; or, rather, it is said the elder of the two covered his head and his body decently, while the younger cut his hair
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CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXIX
In laying stress upon the barbarous, or semi-barbarous, quality of the states (all in our days considered pure Chinese), which surrounded the federal area at even so late a period as 771 B.C., we wish to emphasize a point which has never yet been made quite clear, perhaps not even made patent by their own critics to the Chinese themselves; that is to say, the very small and modest beginnings of the civilized patriarchal federation called the Central Kingdom, or Chu Hia —"All the Hia"—just as we
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CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXX
It is instructive to inquire what were the literary relations between the distinguished statesmen and active princes who moved about quite freely within the limited area so frequently alluded to in foregoing pages as being sacrosanct to civilization and the rites. There seems good reason to suppose that the literary activity which so disgusted the destroyer of the books in 213 B.C. did not really begin until after Confucius' death in 479; moreover, that the avalanche of philosophical works which
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CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXI
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 a
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CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXII
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 w
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CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIII
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' A
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CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXIV
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 f
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CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXV
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
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CHAPTER XXXVI
CHAPTER XXXVI
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 beg
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CHAPTER XXXVII
CHAPTER XXXVII
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.
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CHAPTER XXXVIII
CHAPTER XXXVIII
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 mar
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CHAPTER XXXIX
CHAPTER XXXIX
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
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CHAPTER XL
CHAPTER XL
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. 115ø, lat. 33ø) of the King of
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CHAPTER XLI
CHAPTER XLI
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
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CHAPTER XLII
CHAPTER XLII
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
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CHAPTER XLIII
CHAPTER XLIII
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 r
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CHAPTER XLIV
CHAPTER XLIV
Confucius has hitherto appeared to many of us Westerners as a stiff, incomprehensible individual, resting his claim to immortality upon sententious nothingnesses directed to no obvious practical purpose; but, from the slight sketches of the manners of the times in which he lived given above, it will be apparent that he was a practical man with a definite object in view, and that both his barebones history and his jerky moral teachings were the best he could do with sorry material, and in the fac
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CHAPTER XLV
CHAPTER XLV
Apart from the fact that reverence for rulers was the pivot of the Chou religious system, or, what was then the same thing, administrative system; official historiographers, who were mere servants of the executive, had to be careful how they offended the executive power in those capricious days; all the more had a private author and a retired official like Confucius carefully to mind the conventions. For instance, two historians had been put to death by a king-maker in Ts'i for recording the mur
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CHAPTER XLVI
CHAPTER XLVI
Consulting the oracles seems to have been a universal practice, and there are numerous historical allusions, made by statesmen of the orthodox principalities, to supposed interpretations attached to this or that combination of mystic signs or diagrams from the "Changes," together with arguments as to their specific meaning or omen in given circumstances. Doubtless the Chinese of those dates, like our own searchers for religious "analogies" and mysteries, examined with perfect good faith combinat
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