The next step lands us on the confines, though scarcely in the domain, of history properly so called. Among his other literary labours, Confucius undertook to produce the annals of Lu, his native state; and beginning with the year 722Annals of the Lu state.B.C., he carried the record down to his death in 479, after which it was continued for a few years, presumably by Tso-ch‘iu Ming, the shadowy author of the famous Commentary, to which the text is so deeply indebted for vitality and illumination. The work of Confucius is known as theCh‘un Ch‘iu, the Springs and Autumns, q.d. Annals. It consists of a varying number of brief entries under each year of the reign of each successive ruler of Lu. The feudal system, initiated more than four centuries previously, and consisting of a number of vassal states owning allegiance to a central suzerain state, had already broken hopelessly down, so far as allegiance was concerned. For some time, the object of each vassal ruler had been the aggrandizement of his own state, with a view either to independence or to the hegemony, and the result was a state of almost constant warfare. Accordingly, the entries in theCh‘un Ch‘iurefer largely to covenants entered into between contracting rulers, official visits from one to another of these rulers, their births and deaths, marriages, invasions of territory, battles, religious ceremonies, &c., interspersed with notices of striking natural phenomena such as eclipses, comets and earthquakes, and of important national calamities, such as floods, drought and famine. For instance, Duke Wên became ruler of Lu in 625B.C., and under his 14th year, 612B.C., we find twelve entries, of which the following are specimens:—2. In spring, in the first month, the men of the Chu State invaded our southern border.3. In summer, on the I-hai day of the fifth month, P‘an, Marquis of the Ch‘i State, died.5. In autumn, in the seventh month, there was a comet, which entered Pei-ton (αβγδ in Ursa Major).9. In the ninth month, a son of the Duke of Ch‘i murdered his ruler.Entry 5 affords the earliest trustworthy instance of a comet in China. A still earlier comet is recorded in what is known as The Bamboo Annals, but the genuineness of that work is disputed.It will be readily admitted that theCh‘un Ch‘iu, written throughout in the same style as the quotations given, would scarcely enable one to reconstruct in any detail the age it professes to record. Happily we are in possession of theTso Chuan, a so-called commentary, presumably by some one named Tso, in which the bald entries in the work of Confucius are separately enlarged upon to such an extent and with such dramatic brilliancy that our commentary reads more like a prose epic than “a treatise consisting of a systematic series of comments or annotations on the text of a literary work.” Under its guidance we can follow the intrigues, the alliances, the treacheries, the ruptures of the jealous states which constituted feudal China; in its picture pages we can see, as it were with our own eyes, assassinations, battles, heroic deeds, flights, pursuits and the sufferings of the vanquished from the retribution exacted by the victors. Numerous wise and witty sayings are scattered throughout the work, many of which are in current use at the present day.History as understood in Europe and the west began in China with the appearance of a remarkable man. Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien, who flourished 145-87B.C., was the son of an hereditary grand astrologer, also an eager student of history and the actual planner ofThe Historical Record.the great work so successfully carried out after his death. By the time he was ten years of age, Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien was already well advanced with his studies; and at twenty he set forth on a round of travel which carried him to all parts of the empire. Entering the public service, he was employed upon a mission of inspection to the newly-conquered regions of Ssŭch‘uan and Yünnan; in 110B.C.his father died, and he stepped into the post of grand astrologer. After devoting some time and energy to the reformationof the calendar, he took up the work which had been begun by his father and which was ultimately given to the world as theShih Chi, or Historical Record. This was arranged under five great headings, namely, (l) Annals of Imperial Reigns, (2) Chronological Tables, (3) Monographs, (4) Annals of Vassal Princes, and (5) Biographies.The Historical Record begins with the so-called Yellow Emperor, who is said to have come to the throne 2698B.C.and to have reigned a hundred years. Four other emperors are given, as belonging to this period, among whom we find Yao and Shun, already mentioned. It was China’s Golden Age, when rulers and ruled were virtuous alike, and all was peace and prosperity. It is discreetly handled in a few pages by Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien, who passes on to the somewhat firmer but still doubtful ground of the early dynasties. Not, however, until the Chou dynasty, 1122-255B.C., had held sway for some three hundred years can we be said to have reached a point at which history begins to separate itself definitely from legend. In fact, it is only from the 8th century before Christ that any trustworthy record can be safely dated. With the 3rd century before Christ, we are introduced to one of the feudal princes whose military genius enabled him to destroy beyond hope of revival the feudal system which had endured for eight hundred years, and to make himself master of the whole of the China of those days. In 221B.C.he proclaimed himself the “FirstBurning of the Books.Emperor,” a title by which he has ever since been known. Everything, including literature, was to begin with his reign; and acting on the advice of his prime minister, he issued an order for the burning of all books, with the exception only of works relating to medicine, divination and agriculture. Those who wished to study law were referred for oral teaching to such as had already qualified in that profession. To carry out the scheme effectively, the First Emperor made a point of examining every day about 120 ℔ weight of books, in order to get rid of such as he considered to be useless; and he further appointed a number of inspectors to see that his orders were carried out. The result was that about four hundred and sixty scholars were put to death for having disobeyed the imperial command, while many others were banished for life. This incident is known as the Burning of the Books; and there is little doubt that, but for the devotion of the literati, Chinese literature would have had to make a fresh start in 212B.C.As it was, books were bricked up in walls and otherwise widely concealed in the hope that the storm would blow over; and this was actually the case when the Ch‘in (Ts‘in) dynasty collapsed and the House of Han took its place in 206B.C.The Confucian books were subsequently recovered from their hiding-places, together with many other works, the loss of which it is difficult now to contemplate. Unfortunately, however, a stimulus was provided, not for the recovery, but for the manufacture of writings, the previous existence of which could be gathered either from tradition or from notices in the various works which had survived. Forgery became the order of the day; and the modern student is confronted with a considerable volume of literature which has to be classified as genuine, doubtful, or spurious, according to the merits of each case. To the first class belongs the bulk, but not all, of the Confucian Canon; to the third must be relegated such books as theTao Tê Ching, to be mentioned later on.Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien, dying in 87B.C., deals of course only with the opening reigns of the Han dynasty, with which he brings to a close the first great division of his history. The second division consists of chronological tables; the third, of eight monographs on the following topics: (1) Rites and Ceremonies, (2) Music, (3) Natural Philosophy, (4) The Calendar, (5) Astronomy, (6) Religion, (7) Water-ways, and (8) Commerce. On these eight a few remarks may not be out of place, (1) The Chinese seem to have been in possession, from very early ages, of a systematic code of ceremonial observances, so that it is no surprise to find the subject included, and taking an important place, in Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien’s work. TheLi Chi, or Book of Rites, which now forms part of the Confucian Canon, is however a comparatively modern compilation, dating only from the 1st centuryB.C.(2) The extraordinary similarities between the Chinese and Pythagorean systems of music force the conclusion that one of these must necessarily have been derived from the other. The Jesuit Fathers jumped to the conclusion that the Greeks borrowed their art from the Chinese; but it is now common knowledge that the Chinese scale did not exist in China until two centuries after its appearance in Greece. The fact is that the ancient Chinese works on music perished at the Burning of the Books; and we are told that by the middle of the 2nd centuryB.C.the hereditary Court music-master was altogether ignorant of his art. What we may call modern Chinese music reached China through Bactria, a Greek kingdom, founded by Diodotus in 256B.C., with which intercourse had been established by the Chinese at an early date. (3) The term Natural Philosophy can only be applied by courtesy to this essay, which deals with twelve bamboo tubes of varying lengths, by means of which, coupled with the twenty-eight zodiacal constellations and with certain calendaric accords, divine communication is established with the influences of the five elements and the points of the compass corresponding with the eight winds. (4) In this connexion, it is worth noting that in 104B.C.the Chinese first adopted a cycle of nineteen years, a period which exactly brings together the solar and the lunar years; and further that this very cycle is said to have been introduced by Meton, 5th centuryB.C., and was adopted at Athens about 330B.C., probably reaching China, via Bactria, some two centuries afterwards. (5) This chapter deals specially with the sun, moon and five planets, which are supposed to aid in the divine government of mankind. (6) Refers to the solemn sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, as performed by the emperor upon the summit of Mt. T‘ai in Shan-tung. (7) Refers to the management of the Hoang Ho, or Yellow river, so often spoken of as “China’s Sorrow,” and also of the numerous canals with which the empire is intersected. (8) This chapter, which treats of the circulation of money, and its function in the Chinese theory of political economy, is based upon the establishment in 110B.C.of certain officials whose business it was to regularize commerce. It was their duty to buy up the chief necessaries of life when abundant and when prices were in consequence low, and to offer these for sale when there was a shortage and when prices would otherwise have risen unduly. Thus it was hoped that a stability in commercial transactions would be attained, to the great advantage of the people. The fourth division of theShih Chiis devoted to the annals of the reigns of vassal princes, to be read in connexion with the imperial annals of the first division. The final division, which is in many ways the most interesting of all, gives biographical notices of eminent or notorious men and women, from the earliest ages downwards, and enables us to draw conclusions at which otherwise it would have been impossible to arrive. Confucius and Mencius, for instance, stand out as real personages who actually played a part in China’s history; while all we can gather from the short life of Lao Tzŭ, a part of which reads like an interpolation by another hand, is that he was a more or less legendary individual, whose very existence at the date usually assigned to him, 7th and 6th centuriesB.C., is altogether doubtful. Scattered among these biographies are a few notices of frontier nations;e.g.of the terrible nomads known as the Hsiung-nu, whose identity with the Huns has now been placed beyond a doubt.Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien’s great work, on which he laboured for so many vears and which ran to five hundred and twenty-six thousand five hundred words, has been described somewhat at length for the following reason. It has been accepted as the model for all subsequent dynastic histories, of which twenty-four have now been published, the whole being produced in 1747 in a uniform edition, bound up (in the Cambridge Library) in two hundred and nineteen large volumes. Each dynasty has found its historian in the dynasty which supplanted it; and each dynastic history is notable for the extreme fairness with which the conquerors have dealt with the vanquished, accepting without demur such records of their predecessors as were available from official sources. The T‘ang dynasty,A.D.618-906, offers in one sense a curious exception to the general rule. It possesses two histories, both included in the above series. The first of these, now known as the Old T‘ang History, was ultimately set aside as inaccurate and inadequate, and a New T‘ang History was compiled by Ou-yang Hsiu, a distinguished scholar, poet and statesman of the 11th century. Nevertheless, in all cases, the scheme of the dynastic history has, with certain modifications, been that which was initiated in the 1st centuryB.C.by Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien.The output of history, however, does not begin and end with the voluminous records above referred to, one of which, it should be mentioned, was in great part the work of a woman. History has always been a favourite study with the Chinese,The Mirror of History.and innumerable histories of a non-official character, long and short, complete and partial, political and constitutional, have been showered from age to age upon the Chinese reading world. Space would fail for the mere mention of a tithe of such works; but there is one which stands out among the rest and is especially enshrined in the hearts of the Chinese people. This is theT‘ung Chien, or Mirror of History, so called because “to view antiquity as though in a mirror is an aid in the administration of government.” It was the work of a statesman of the 11th century, whose name, by a coincidence, was Ssŭ-ma Kuang. He had been forced to retire from office, and spent nearly all the last sixteen years of his life in historical research. The Mirror of History embraces a period from the 5th centuryB.C.down toA.D.960. It is written in a picturesque style; but the arrangement was found to be unsuited to the systematic study of history. Accordingly, it was subjected to revision, and was to a great extent reconstructed by Chu Hsi, the famous commentator, who flourishedA.D.1130-1200, and whose work is now regarded as the standard history of China.
The next step lands us on the confines, though scarcely in the domain, of history properly so called. Among his other literary labours, Confucius undertook to produce the annals of Lu, his native state; and beginning with the year 722Annals of the Lu state.B.C., he carried the record down to his death in 479, after which it was continued for a few years, presumably by Tso-ch‘iu Ming, the shadowy author of the famous Commentary, to which the text is so deeply indebted for vitality and illumination. The work of Confucius is known as theCh‘un Ch‘iu, the Springs and Autumns, q.d. Annals. It consists of a varying number of brief entries under each year of the reign of each successive ruler of Lu. The feudal system, initiated more than four centuries previously, and consisting of a number of vassal states owning allegiance to a central suzerain state, had already broken hopelessly down, so far as allegiance was concerned. For some time, the object of each vassal ruler had been the aggrandizement of his own state, with a view either to independence or to the hegemony, and the result was a state of almost constant warfare. Accordingly, the entries in theCh‘un Ch‘iurefer largely to covenants entered into between contracting rulers, official visits from one to another of these rulers, their births and deaths, marriages, invasions of territory, battles, religious ceremonies, &c., interspersed with notices of striking natural phenomena such as eclipses, comets and earthquakes, and of important national calamities, such as floods, drought and famine. For instance, Duke Wên became ruler of Lu in 625B.C., and under his 14th year, 612B.C., we find twelve entries, of which the following are specimens:—
2. In spring, in the first month, the men of the Chu State invaded our southern border.3. In summer, on the I-hai day of the fifth month, P‘an, Marquis of the Ch‘i State, died.5. In autumn, in the seventh month, there was a comet, which entered Pei-ton (αβγδ in Ursa Major).9. In the ninth month, a son of the Duke of Ch‘i murdered his ruler.
2. In spring, in the first month, the men of the Chu State invaded our southern border.
3. In summer, on the I-hai day of the fifth month, P‘an, Marquis of the Ch‘i State, died.
5. In autumn, in the seventh month, there was a comet, which entered Pei-ton (αβγδ in Ursa Major).
9. In the ninth month, a son of the Duke of Ch‘i murdered his ruler.
Entry 5 affords the earliest trustworthy instance of a comet in China. A still earlier comet is recorded in what is known as The Bamboo Annals, but the genuineness of that work is disputed.
It will be readily admitted that theCh‘un Ch‘iu, written throughout in the same style as the quotations given, would scarcely enable one to reconstruct in any detail the age it professes to record. Happily we are in possession of theTso Chuan, a so-called commentary, presumably by some one named Tso, in which the bald entries in the work of Confucius are separately enlarged upon to such an extent and with such dramatic brilliancy that our commentary reads more like a prose epic than “a treatise consisting of a systematic series of comments or annotations on the text of a literary work.” Under its guidance we can follow the intrigues, the alliances, the treacheries, the ruptures of the jealous states which constituted feudal China; in its picture pages we can see, as it were with our own eyes, assassinations, battles, heroic deeds, flights, pursuits and the sufferings of the vanquished from the retribution exacted by the victors. Numerous wise and witty sayings are scattered throughout the work, many of which are in current use at the present day.
History as understood in Europe and the west began in China with the appearance of a remarkable man. Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien, who flourished 145-87B.C., was the son of an hereditary grand astrologer, also an eager student of history and the actual planner ofThe Historical Record.the great work so successfully carried out after his death. By the time he was ten years of age, Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien was already well advanced with his studies; and at twenty he set forth on a round of travel which carried him to all parts of the empire. Entering the public service, he was employed upon a mission of inspection to the newly-conquered regions of Ssŭch‘uan and Yünnan; in 110B.C.his father died, and he stepped into the post of grand astrologer. After devoting some time and energy to the reformationof the calendar, he took up the work which had been begun by his father and which was ultimately given to the world as theShih Chi, or Historical Record. This was arranged under five great headings, namely, (l) Annals of Imperial Reigns, (2) Chronological Tables, (3) Monographs, (4) Annals of Vassal Princes, and (5) Biographies.
The Historical Record begins with the so-called Yellow Emperor, who is said to have come to the throne 2698B.C.and to have reigned a hundred years. Four other emperors are given, as belonging to this period, among whom we find Yao and Shun, already mentioned. It was China’s Golden Age, when rulers and ruled were virtuous alike, and all was peace and prosperity. It is discreetly handled in a few pages by Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien, who passes on to the somewhat firmer but still doubtful ground of the early dynasties. Not, however, until the Chou dynasty, 1122-255B.C., had held sway for some three hundred years can we be said to have reached a point at which history begins to separate itself definitely from legend. In fact, it is only from the 8th century before Christ that any trustworthy record can be safely dated. With the 3rd century before Christ, we are introduced to one of the feudal princes whose military genius enabled him to destroy beyond hope of revival the feudal system which had endured for eight hundred years, and to make himself master of the whole of the China of those days. In 221B.C.he proclaimed himself the “FirstBurning of the Books.Emperor,” a title by which he has ever since been known. Everything, including literature, was to begin with his reign; and acting on the advice of his prime minister, he issued an order for the burning of all books, with the exception only of works relating to medicine, divination and agriculture. Those who wished to study law were referred for oral teaching to such as had already qualified in that profession. To carry out the scheme effectively, the First Emperor made a point of examining every day about 120 ℔ weight of books, in order to get rid of such as he considered to be useless; and he further appointed a number of inspectors to see that his orders were carried out. The result was that about four hundred and sixty scholars were put to death for having disobeyed the imperial command, while many others were banished for life. This incident is known as the Burning of the Books; and there is little doubt that, but for the devotion of the literati, Chinese literature would have had to make a fresh start in 212B.C.As it was, books were bricked up in walls and otherwise widely concealed in the hope that the storm would blow over; and this was actually the case when the Ch‘in (Ts‘in) dynasty collapsed and the House of Han took its place in 206B.C.The Confucian books were subsequently recovered from their hiding-places, together with many other works, the loss of which it is difficult now to contemplate. Unfortunately, however, a stimulus was provided, not for the recovery, but for the manufacture of writings, the previous existence of which could be gathered either from tradition or from notices in the various works which had survived. Forgery became the order of the day; and the modern student is confronted with a considerable volume of literature which has to be classified as genuine, doubtful, or spurious, according to the merits of each case. To the first class belongs the bulk, but not all, of the Confucian Canon; to the third must be relegated such books as theTao Tê Ching, to be mentioned later on.
Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien, dying in 87B.C., deals of course only with the opening reigns of the Han dynasty, with which he brings to a close the first great division of his history. The second division consists of chronological tables; the third, of eight monographs on the following topics: (1) Rites and Ceremonies, (2) Music, (3) Natural Philosophy, (4) The Calendar, (5) Astronomy, (6) Religion, (7) Water-ways, and (8) Commerce. On these eight a few remarks may not be out of place, (1) The Chinese seem to have been in possession, from very early ages, of a systematic code of ceremonial observances, so that it is no surprise to find the subject included, and taking an important place, in Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien’s work. TheLi Chi, or Book of Rites, which now forms part of the Confucian Canon, is however a comparatively modern compilation, dating only from the 1st centuryB.C.(2) The extraordinary similarities between the Chinese and Pythagorean systems of music force the conclusion that one of these must necessarily have been derived from the other. The Jesuit Fathers jumped to the conclusion that the Greeks borrowed their art from the Chinese; but it is now common knowledge that the Chinese scale did not exist in China until two centuries after its appearance in Greece. The fact is that the ancient Chinese works on music perished at the Burning of the Books; and we are told that by the middle of the 2nd centuryB.C.the hereditary Court music-master was altogether ignorant of his art. What we may call modern Chinese music reached China through Bactria, a Greek kingdom, founded by Diodotus in 256B.C., with which intercourse had been established by the Chinese at an early date. (3) The term Natural Philosophy can only be applied by courtesy to this essay, which deals with twelve bamboo tubes of varying lengths, by means of which, coupled with the twenty-eight zodiacal constellations and with certain calendaric accords, divine communication is established with the influences of the five elements and the points of the compass corresponding with the eight winds. (4) In this connexion, it is worth noting that in 104B.C.the Chinese first adopted a cycle of nineteen years, a period which exactly brings together the solar and the lunar years; and further that this very cycle is said to have been introduced by Meton, 5th centuryB.C., and was adopted at Athens about 330B.C., probably reaching China, via Bactria, some two centuries afterwards. (5) This chapter deals specially with the sun, moon and five planets, which are supposed to aid in the divine government of mankind. (6) Refers to the solemn sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, as performed by the emperor upon the summit of Mt. T‘ai in Shan-tung. (7) Refers to the management of the Hoang Ho, or Yellow river, so often spoken of as “China’s Sorrow,” and also of the numerous canals with which the empire is intersected. (8) This chapter, which treats of the circulation of money, and its function in the Chinese theory of political economy, is based upon the establishment in 110B.C.of certain officials whose business it was to regularize commerce. It was their duty to buy up the chief necessaries of life when abundant and when prices were in consequence low, and to offer these for sale when there was a shortage and when prices would otherwise have risen unduly. Thus it was hoped that a stability in commercial transactions would be attained, to the great advantage of the people. The fourth division of theShih Chiis devoted to the annals of the reigns of vassal princes, to be read in connexion with the imperial annals of the first division. The final division, which is in many ways the most interesting of all, gives biographical notices of eminent or notorious men and women, from the earliest ages downwards, and enables us to draw conclusions at which otherwise it would have been impossible to arrive. Confucius and Mencius, for instance, stand out as real personages who actually played a part in China’s history; while all we can gather from the short life of Lao Tzŭ, a part of which reads like an interpolation by another hand, is that he was a more or less legendary individual, whose very existence at the date usually assigned to him, 7th and 6th centuriesB.C., is altogether doubtful. Scattered among these biographies are a few notices of frontier nations;e.g.of the terrible nomads known as the Hsiung-nu, whose identity with the Huns has now been placed beyond a doubt.
Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien’s great work, on which he laboured for so many vears and which ran to five hundred and twenty-six thousand five hundred words, has been described somewhat at length for the following reason. It has been accepted as the model for all subsequent dynastic histories, of which twenty-four have now been published, the whole being produced in 1747 in a uniform edition, bound up (in the Cambridge Library) in two hundred and nineteen large volumes. Each dynasty has found its historian in the dynasty which supplanted it; and each dynastic history is notable for the extreme fairness with which the conquerors have dealt with the vanquished, accepting without demur such records of their predecessors as were available from official sources. The T‘ang dynasty,A.D.618-906, offers in one sense a curious exception to the general rule. It possesses two histories, both included in the above series. The first of these, now known as the Old T‘ang History, was ultimately set aside as inaccurate and inadequate, and a New T‘ang History was compiled by Ou-yang Hsiu, a distinguished scholar, poet and statesman of the 11th century. Nevertheless, in all cases, the scheme of the dynastic history has, with certain modifications, been that which was initiated in the 1st centuryB.C.by Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien.
The output of history, however, does not begin and end with the voluminous records above referred to, one of which, it should be mentioned, was in great part the work of a woman. History has always been a favourite study with the Chinese,The Mirror of History.and innumerable histories of a non-official character, long and short, complete and partial, political and constitutional, have been showered from age to age upon the Chinese reading world. Space would fail for the mere mention of a tithe of such works; but there is one which stands out among the rest and is especially enshrined in the hearts of the Chinese people. This is theT‘ung Chien, or Mirror of History, so called because “to view antiquity as though in a mirror is an aid in the administration of government.” It was the work of a statesman of the 11th century, whose name, by a coincidence, was Ssŭ-ma Kuang. He had been forced to retire from office, and spent nearly all the last sixteen years of his life in historical research. The Mirror of History embraces a period from the 5th centuryB.C.down toA.D.960. It is written in a picturesque style; but the arrangement was found to be unsuited to the systematic study of history. Accordingly, it was subjected to revision, and was to a great extent reconstructed by Chu Hsi, the famous commentator, who flourishedA.D.1130-1200, and whose work is now regarded as the standard history of China.
Biography.—In regard to biography, the student is by no means limited to the dynastic histories. Many huge biographical collections have been compiled and published by private individuals, and many lives of the same personages have often been written from different points of view. There is nothing very much by which a Chinese biography can be distinguished from biographies produced in other parts of the world. The Chinese writer always begins with the place of birth, but he is not so particular about the year, sometimes leaving that to be gathered from the date of death taken in connexion with the age which the person may have attained. Some allusion is usually made to ancestry, and the steps of an official career, upward by promotion or downward by disgrace, are also carefully noted.
Geography and Travel.—There is a considerable volume ofChinese literature which comes under this head; but if we exclude certain brief notices of foreign countries, there remains nothing in the way of general geography which had been produced prior to the arrival of the Jesuit Fathers at the close of the 16th century. Up to that period geography meant the topography of the Chinese empire; and of topographical records there is a very large and valuable collection. Every prefecture and department, some eighteen hundred in all, has each its own particular topography, compiled from records and from tradition with a fullness that leaves nothing to be desired. The buildings, bridges, monuments of archaeological interest, &c., in each district, are all carefully inserted, side by side with biographical and other local details, always of interest to residents and often to the outside public. An extensive general geography of the empire was last published in 1745; and this was followed by a chronological geography in 1794.
The Chinese have always been fond of travel, and hosts of travellers have published notices, more or less extensive, of the different parts of the empire, and even of adjacent nations, which they visited either as private individualsFa Hsien.or, in the former case, as officials proceeding to distant posts. With Buddhism came the desire to see the country which was the home of the Buddha; and several important pilgrimages were undertaken with a view to bring back images and sacred writings to China. On such a journey the Buddhist priest, Fa Hsien, started inA.D.399; and after practically walking the whole way from central China, across the desert of Gobi, on to Khoten, and across the Hindu Kush into India, he visited many of the chief cities of India, until at length reaching Calcutta he took ship, and after a most adventurous voyage, in the course of which he remained two years in Ceylon, he finally arrived safely, inA.D.414, with all his books, pictures, and images, at a spot on the coast of Shantung, near the modern German port of Kiao-chow.
Another of these adventurous priests was Hsüan Tsang (wrongly, Yüan Chwang), who left China on a similar mission in 629, and returned in 645, bringing with him sixHsüan Tsang.hundred and fifty-seven Buddhist books, besides many images and pictures, and one hundred and fifty relics. He spent the rest of his life in translating, with the help of other learned priests, these books into Chinese, and completed in 648 the important record of his own travels, known as the Record of Western Countries.
Philosophy.—Even the briefestrésuméof Chinese philosophical literature must necessarily include the name of Lao Tzŭ, although his era, as seen above, and his personality are both matters of the vaguest conjecture. A number ofLao Tzŭ.his sayings, scattered over the works of early writers, have been pieced together, with the addition of much incomprehensible jargon, and the whole has been given to the world as the work of Lao Tzŭ himself, said to be of the 6th centuryB.C., under the title of theTao Tê Ching. The internal evidence against this book is overwhelming;e.g.one quotation had been detached from the writer who preserved it, with part of that writer’s text clinging to it—of course by an oversight. Further, such a treatise is never mentioned in Chinese literature until some time after the Burning of the Books, that is, about four centuries after its alleged first appearance. Still, after due expurgation, it forms an almost complete collection of such apophthegms of Lao Tzŭ as have come down to us, from which the reader can learn that the author taught the great doctrine of Inaction—Do nothing, and all things will be done. Also, that Lao Tzŭ anticipated the Christian doctrine of returning good for evil, a sentiment which was highly reprobated by the practical mind of Confucius, who declared that evil should be met by justice. Among the more picturesque of his utterances are such paradoxes as, “He who knows how to shut, uses no bolts; yet you cannot open. He who knows how to bind uses no ropes; yet you cannot untie”; “The weak overcomes the strong; the soft overcomes the hard,” &c.
These, and many similar subtleties of speech, seem to have fired the imagination of Chuang Tzŭ, 4th and 3rd centuriesB.C., with the result that he put much time and energy into the glorification of Lao Tzŭ and his doctrines. Possessed of a brilliant style and a master ofChuang Tzŭ.irony, Chuang Tzŭ attacked the schools of Confucius and Mo Ti (see below) with so much dialectic skill that the ablest scholars of the age were unable to refute his destructive criticisms. His pages abound in quaint anecdotes and allegorical instances, arising as it were spontaneously out of the questions handled, and imparting a lively interest to points which might otherwise have seemed dusty and dull. He was an idealist with all the idealist’s hatred of a utilitarian system, and a mystic with all the mystic’s contempt for a life of mere external activity. Only thirty-three chapters of his work now remain, though so many as fifty-three are known to have been still extant in the 3rd century; and even of these, several complete chapters are spurious, while in others it is comparatively easy to detect here and there the hand of the interpolator. What remains, however, after all reductions, has been enough to secure a lasting place for Chuang Tzŭ as the most original of China’s philosophical writers. His book is of course under the ban of heterodoxy, in common with all thought opposed to the Confucian teachings. His views as mystic, idealist, moralist and social reformer have no weight with the aspirant who has his way to make in official life; but they are a delight, and even a consolation, to many of the older men, who have no longer anything to gain or to lose.Confucius, 551-479B.C., who imagined that his Annals of the Lu State would give him immortality, has always been much more widely appreciated as a moralist than as an historian. His talks with his disciples and with others have beenConfucius.preserved for us, together with some details of his personal and private life; and the volume in which these are collected forms one of the Four Books of the Confucian Canon. Starting from the axiomatic declaration that man is born good and only becomes evil by his environment, he takes filial piety and duty to one’s neighbour as his chief themes, often illustrating his arguments with almost Johnsonian emphasis. He cherished a shadowy belief in a God, but not in a future state of reward or punishment for good or evil actions in this world. He rather taught men to be virtuous for virtue’s sake.The discourses of Mencius, who followed Confucius after an interval of a hundred years, 372-289B.C., form another of the Four Books, the remaining two of which are short philosophical treatises, usually ascribed to a grandson of Confucius.Mencius.Mencius devoted his life to elucidating and expanding the teachings of the Master; and it is no doubt due to him that the Confucian doctrines obtained so wide a vogue. But he himself was more a politician and an economist (see below) than a simple preacher of morality; and hence it is that the Chinese people have accorded to him the title of The Second Sage. He is considered to haveMo Ti.effectually “snuffed out” the heterodox school of Mo Ti, a philosopher of the 5th and 4th centuriesB.C.who propounded a doctrine of “universal love” as the proper foundation for organized society, arguing that under such a system all the calamities that men bring upon one another would altogether disappear, and the Golden Age would be renewed. At the same time Mencius exposedYang Chu.the fallacies of the speculations of Yang Chu, 4th centuryB.C., who founded a school of ethical egoism as opposed to the exaggerated altruism of Mo Ti. According to Mencius, Yang Chu would not have parted with one hair of his body to save the whole world, whereas Mo Ti would have sacrificed all. Another earlyHsün Tzŭ.philosopher is Hsün Tzŭ, 3rd centuryB.C.He maintained, in opposition to Mencius, who upheld the Confucian dogma, and in conformity with Christian doctrine, that the nature of man at his birth is evil, and that this condition can only be changedYang Hsiung.by efficient moral training. Then came Yang Hsiung, 53-18B.C., who propounded an ethical criterion midway between the rival positions insisted on by Mencius and Hsün Tzŭ, teaching that the nature of man at birth is neither good nor evil, but a mixture of both, and that development in either direction depends wholly upon circumstances.There is a voluminous and interesting work, of doubtful age, which passes under the title ofHuai-nan Tzŭ, or the Philosopher of Huai-nan. It is attributed to Liu An, prince of Huai-nan, who died 122B.C., and who is further said to have written onHuai-nan Tzŭ.]alchemy; but alchemy was scarcely known in China at the date of his death, being introduced about that time from Greece. The author, whoever he may have been, poses as a disciple of Lao Tzŭ; but the speculations of Lao Tzŭ, as glorified by Chuang Tzŭ, were then rapidly sinking into vulgar efforts to discover the elixir of life. It is very difficult in many cases of this kind to decide what books are, and what books are not, partial or complete forgeries. In the present instance, the aid of theShuo Wên, a dictionary of the 1st centuryA.D.(see below), may be invoked, but not in quite so satisfactory a sense as that in which it will be seen lower down to have been applied to theTao Tê Ching. TheShuo Wêncontains a quotation said to be taken fromHuai-nan Tzŭ; but that quotation cannot be found in the work under consideration. It may be argued that the words in question may have been taken from another work by the same author; but if so, it becomes difficult to believe that a book, more than two hundred years old, from which the author of theShuo Wênquoted, should have been allowed to perish without leaving any trace behind. China has produced its Bentleysin considerable numbers; but almost all of them have given their attention to textual criticism of the Confucian Canon, and few have condescended to examine critically the works of heterodox writers. The foreign student therefore finds himself faced with many knotty points he is entirely unable to solve.Of Wang Ch‘ung, a speculative and materialistic philosopher,A.D.27-97, banned by the orthodox for his attacks on Confucius and Mencius, only one work has survived. it consists of eighty-four essays on such topics as the nature ofWang Ch‘ung.things, destiny, divination, death, ghosts, poisons, miracles, criticisms of Confucius and Mencius, exaggeration, sacrifice and exorcism. According to Wang Ch‘ung, man, endowed at birth sometimes with a good and sometimes with an evil nature, is informed with a vital fluid, which resides in the blood and is nourished by eating and drinking, its two functions being to animate the body and keep in order the mind. It is the source of all sensation, passing through the blood like a wave. When it reaches the eyes, ears and mouth, the result is sight, hearing and speech respectively. Disturbance of the vital fluid leads to insanity. Without the fluid, the body cannot be maintained; without the body, the fluid loses its vitality. Therefore, argues Wang Ch‘ung, when the body perishes and the fluid loses its vitality, each being dependent on the other, there remains nothing for immortality in a life beyond the grave. Ghosts he held to be the hallucinations of disordered minds, and miracles to be natural phenomena capable of simple explanations. His indictments of Confucius and Mencius are not of a serious character; though, as regards the former, it must be borne in mind that the Chinese people will not suffer the faintest aspersion on the fair fame of their great Sage. It is related in theLun Yüthat Confucius paid a visit to the notoriously immoral wife of one of the feudal nobles, and that a certain disciple was “displeased” in consequence, whereupon the Master swore, saying, “If I have done any wrong, may the sky fall and crush me!” Wang Ch‘ung points out that the form of oath adopted by Confucius is unsatisfactory and fails to carry conviction. Had he said, “May I be struck dead by lightning!” his sincerity would have been more powerfully attested, because people are often struck dead by lightning; whereas the fall of the sky is too remote a contingency, such a thing never having been known to happen within the memory of man. As to Mencius, there is a passage in his works which states that a thread of predestination runs through all human life, and that those who accommodate themselves will come off better in the end than those who try to oppose; it is in fact a statement of theοὐκ ὑπὲρ μόρονprinciple. On this Wang Ch‘ung remarks that the will of God is consequently made to depend on human actions; and he further strengthens his objection by showing that the best men have often fared worst. For instance, Confucius never became emperor; Pi Kan, the patriot, was disembowelled; the bold and faithful disciple, Tzŭ Lu, was chopped into small pieces.But the tale of Chinese philosophers is a long one. It is a department of literature in which the leading scholars of all ages have mostly had something to say. The great Chu Hsi,A.D.1130-1200, whose fame is chiefly perhaps that of aBook of Changes.commentator and whose monument is his uniform exegesis of the Confucian Canon, was also a voluminous writer on philosophy. He took a hand in the mystery which surrounds theI Ching(orYih King), generally known as the Book of Changes, which is held by some to be the oldest Chinese work and which forms part of the Confucian Canon. It is ascribed to King Wên, the virtual founder of the Chou dynasty, 1122-249B.C., whose son became the first sovereign and posthumously raised his father to kingly rank. It contains a fanciful system of divination, deduced originally from eight diagrams consisting of triplet combinations of a line and a broken line, either one of which is necessarily repeated twice, and in two cases three times, in the same combination. Thus there may be three lines, or three broken lines, and other such combinations asand. Confucius declared that he would like to give another fifty years to the elucidation of this puzzling text. Shao Yung,A.D.1011-1077, sought the key in numbers: Ch‘êng I.,A.D.1033-1107, in the eternal fitness of things. “But Chu Hsi alone,” says a writer of the 17th century, “was able to pierce through the meaning and appropriate the thoughts of the inspired man who composed it.” No foreigner, however, has been able quite to understand what Chu Hsi did make of it, and several have gone so far as to set all native interpretations aside in favour of their own. Thus, theI Chinghas been discovered by one to be a calendar of the lunar year; by another, to contain a system of phallic worship; and by a third, to be a vocabulary of the language of a tribe, whose very existence had to be postulated for the purpose.Political Economy.—This department of literature has been by no means neglected by Chinese writers. So early as the 7th centuryB.C.we find Kuan Chung, the prime minister of the Ch‘i state, devoting his attention to economic problems, and therebyKuan Chung.making that state the wealthiest and the strongest of all the feudal kingdoms. Beginning life as a merchant, he passed into the public service, and left behind him at death a large work, parts of which, as we now possess it, may possibly have come direct from his own hand, the remainder being written up at a later date in accordance with the principles he inculcated. His ideal State was divided into twenty-one parts, fifteen of which were allotted to officials and agriculturists, and six to manufacturers and traders. His great idea was to make his own state self-contained; and accordingly he fostered agriculture in order to be independent in time of war, and manufactures in order to increase his country’s wealth in time of peace. He held that a purely agricultural population would always remain poor; while a purely manufacturing population would risk having its supplies of raw material cut off in time of war. He warmly encouraged free imports as a means of enriching his countrymen, trusting to their ability, under these conditions, to hold their own against foreign competition. He protected capital, in the sense that he considered capitalists to be necessary for the development of commerce in time of peace, and for the protection of the state in time of war.Mencius (see above) was in favour of heavily taxing merchants who tried to engross for the purpose of regrating, that is, to buy up wholesale for the purpose of retailing at monopoly prices; he was in fact opposed to all trusts and corners in trade. He was in favour of a tax to be imposed upon such persons as were mere consumers, living upon property which had been amassed by others and doing no work themselves. No tax, however, was to be exacted from property-owners who contributed by their personal efforts to the general welfare of the community. The object of the tax was not revenue, but the prevention of idleness with its attendant evil consequences to the state.Wang An-shih, the Reformer, or Innovator, as he has been called, flourishedA.D.1021-1086. In 1069 he was appointed state councillor, and forthwith entered upon a series of startling reforms which have given him a unique position in the annals ofWang An-shih.China. He established a state monopoly in commerce, under which the produce of a district was to be used first for the payment of taxes, then for the direct use of the district itself, and the remainder was to be purchased by the government at a cheap rate, either to be held until there was a rise in price, or to be transported to some other district in need of it. The people were to profit by fixity of prices and escape from further taxation; and the government, by the revenue accruing in the process of administration. There was also to be a system of state advances to cultivators of land; not merely to the needy, but to all alike. The loan was to be compulsory, and interest was to be paid on it at the rate of 2% per month. The soil was to be divided into equal areas and taxed according to its fertility in each case, without reference to the number of inhabitants contained in each area. All these, and other important reforms, failed to find favour with a rigidly conservative people, and Wang An-shih lived long enough to see the whole of his policy reversed.Military Writers.—Not much, relatively speaking, has been written by the Chinese on war in general, strategy or tactics. There is, however, one very remarkable work which has come down to us from the 6th centuryB.C., as to the genuineness ofSun-Tzŭ.which there now seems to be no reasonable doubt. A biographical notice of the author, Sun Wu, is given in theShih Chi(see above), from which we learn that “he knew how to handle an army, and was finally appointed General.” His work, entitled theArt of War, is a short treatise in thirteen chapters, under the following headings: “Laying Plans,” “Waging War,” “Attack by Stratagem,” “Tactical Dispositions,” “Energy,” “Weak Points and Strong,” “Manœuvring,” “Variation of Tactics,” “The Army on the March,” “Terrain,” “The Nine Situations,” “The Attack by Fire,” and “The Use of Spies.” Although the warfare of Sun Wu’s day was the warfare of bow and arrow, of armoured chariots and push of pike, certain principles inseparably associated with successful issue will be found enunciated in his work. Professor Mackail, in hisLatin Literature(p. 86), declares that Varro’sImagineswas “the first instance in history of the publication of an illustrated book.” But reference to the Art Section of the history of the Western Han dynasty, 206B.C.-A.D.25, will disclose the title of fifteen or sixteen illustrated books, one of which is Sun Wu’sArt of War.Agriculture.—In spite of the high place accorded to agriculturists, who rank second only to officials and before artisans and traders, and in spite of the assiduity with which agriculture has been practised in all ages, securing immunity from slaughter for the ploughing ox—what agricultural literature the Chinese possess may be said to belong entirely to modern times. Ch‘ên Fu of the 12th centuryA.D.was the author of a small work in three parts, dealing with agriculture, cattle-breeding and silkworms respectively. There is also a well-known work by an artist of the early 13th century, with forty-six woodcuts illustrating the various operations of agriculture and weaving. This book was reprinted under the emperor K‘ang Hsi, 1662-1723, and new illustrations with excellent perspective were provided by Chiao Ping-chên, an artist who had adopted foreign methods as introduced by the famous Jesuit, Matteo Ricci. The standard work on agriculture,Hsü Kuang-ch‘i.entitledNung Chêng Ch‘üan Shu, was compiled by Hsü Kuang-ch‘i, 1562-1634, generally regarded as the only influential member of the mandarinate who has ever become a convert to Christianity. It is in sixty sections, the first three of which are devoted to classical references. Then follow two sections on the division of land, six on the processes of husbandry, none on hydraulics, four on agricultural implements, six on planting, six on rearing silkworms, four on trees, one on breeding animals, one on food and eighteen on provision against a time of scarcity.Medicine and Therapeutics.—The oldest of the innumerable medical works of all descriptions with which China has been flooded from time immemorial is a treatise which has been credited to the Yellow Emperor (see above), 2698-2598B.C.It is entitledPlain Questions of the Yellow Emperor, orSu Wênfor short, and takes the form of questions put by the emperor and answered by Earl Ch‘i, a minister, who was himself author of theNei Ching, a medical work no longer in existence. Without accepting the popular attribution of theSu Wên, it is most probable that it is a very old book, dating back to several centuries before Christ, and containing traditional lore of a still more remote period. The same may be said of certain works on cautery and acupuncture, both of which are still practised by Chinese doctors; and also of works on the pulse, the variations of which have been classified and allocated with a minuteness hardly credible. Special treatises on fevers, skin-diseases, diseases of the feet, eyes, heart, &c., are to be found in great quantities, as well as veterinary treatises on the treatment of diseases of the horse and the domestic buffalo. But in the whole range of Chinese medical literature there is nothing which can approach thePên Ts‘ao, orPên Ts‘no.Materia Medica, sometimes called the Herbal, a title (i.e.Pên Ts‘ao) which seems to have belonged to some book of the kind in pre-historic ages. The work under consideration was compiled by Li Shih-chên, who completed his task in 1578 after twenty-six years’ labour. No fewer than eighteen hundred and ninety-two species of drugs, animal, vegetable and mineral, are dealt with, arranged under sixty-two classes in sixteen divisions; and eight thousand one hundred and sixty prescriptions are given in connexion with the various entries. The author professes to quote from the originalPên Ts‘ao, above mentioned; and we obtain from his extracts an insight into some curious details. It appears that formerly the number of recognized drugs was three hundred and sixty-five in all, corresponding with the days of the year. One hundred and twenty of these were calledsovereigns(cf. a sovereign prescription); and were regarded as entirely beneficial to health, taken in any quantity or for any time. Another similar number were calledministers; some of these were poisonous, and all had to be used with discretion. The remaining one hundred and twenty-five wereagents; all very poisonous, but able to cure diseases if not taken in over-doses. The modernPên Ts‘ao, in its sixteen divisions, deals with drugs classed under water, fire, earth, minerals, herbs, grain, vegetables, fruit, trees, clothes and utensils, insects, fishes, crustacea, birds, beasts and man. In each case the proper name of the drug is first given, followed by its explanation, solution of doubtful points, correction of errors, means of identification by taste, use in prescriptions, &c. The work is fully illustrated, and there is an index to the various medicines, classed according to the complaints for which they are used.Divination, &c.—The practice of divination is of very ancient date in China, traceable, it has been suggested, back to the Canon of Changes (see above), which is commonly used by the lettered classes for that purpose. A variety of other methods, the chief of which is astrology, have also been adopted, and have yielded a considerable bulk of literature. Even the officially-published almanacs still mark certain days as suitable for certain undertakings, while other days are marked in the opposite sense. The spirit of Zadkiel pervades the Chinese empire. In like manner, geomancy is a subject on which many volumes have been written; and the same applies to the pseudo sciences of palmistry, physiognomy, alchemy (introduced from Greek sources) and others.Painting.—Calligraphy, in the eyes of the Chinese, is just as much a fine art as painting; the two are, in fact, considered to have come into existence together, but as might be expected the latter occupies the larger space in Chinese literature, and forms the subject of numerous extensive works. One of the most important of these is theHsüan Ho Hua P‘u, the author of which is unknown. It contains information concerning two hundred and thirty-one painters and the titles of six thousand one hundred and ninety-two of their pictures, all in the imperial collection during the dynastic periodHsüan Ho,A.D.1119-1126, from which the title is derived. The artists are classified under one of the following ten headings, supposed to represent the line in which each particularly excelled: Religion, Human Figures, Buildings, Barbarians (including their Animals), Dragons and Fishes, Landscape, Animals, Flowers and Birds, The Bamboo, Vegetables and Fruits.Music.—The literature of music does not go back to a remote period. The Canon of Music, which was formerly included in the Confucian Canon, has been lost for many centuries; and the works now available, exclusive of entries in the dynastic histories, are not older than the 9th centuryA.D., to which date may be assigned theChieh Ku Lu, a treatise on the deerskin drum, said to have been introduced into China from central Asia, and evidently of Scythian origin. There are several important works of the 16th and 17th centuries, in which the history and theory of music are fully discussed, and illustrations of instruments are given, with measurements in each case, and the special notation required.Miscellaneous.—Under this head may be grouped a vast number of works, many of them exhaustive, on such topics as archaeology, seals (engraved), numismatics, pottery, ink (the miscalled “Indian”), mirrors, precious stones, tea, wine, chess, wit and humour, even cookery, &c. There is, indeed, hardly any subject, within reasonable limits, which does not find some corner in Chinese literature.Collections.—Reprints of miscellaneous books and pamphlets in a uniform edition, the whole forming a “library,” has long been a favourite means of disseminating useful (and other) information. Of these, theLung Wei Pi Shumay be takenLung Wei Pi Shu.as a specimen. In bulk it would be about the equivalent of twenty volumes, 8vo, of four hundred pages to each. Among its contents we find the following. A handbook of phraseology, with explanations; a short account of fabulous regions to the N., S., E. and W.; notes on the plants and trees of southern countries; biographical sketches of ninety-two wonderful personages; an account of the choice of an empress, with standard measurements of the height, length of limb, &c., of the ideal woman; “Pillow Notes” (a term borrowed by the Japanese), or jottings on various subjects, ranging from the Creation to an account of Fusang, a country where the trees are thousands of feet high and of vast girth, thus supporting the California, as opposed to the Mexico, identification of Fusang; critiques on the style of various poets, and on the indebtedness of each to earlier writers; a list of the most famous bronze vessels cast by early emperors, with their dimensions, inscriptions, &c.; a treatise on the bamboo; a list of famous swords, with dates of forging and inscriptions; an account of the old Mongol palace, previous to its destruction by the first Ming emperor; notes on the wild tribes of China; historical episodes; biographical notices of one hundred and four poets of the present dynasty; notes on archaeological, supernatural and other topics, first published in the 9th century; notes for bibliophiles on the care of books, and on paper, ink, pictures and bric-à-brac; a collection of famous criminal cases; night thoughts suggested by a meteor. Add to the above, numerous short stories relating to magic, dreams, bilocation, and to almost every possible phase of supernatural manifestation, and the reader will have some idea of what he may expect in an ordinary “library” of a popular character. It must always be remembered that with the Chinese, style is of paramount importance. Documents, the subject-matter of which would be recognized to be of no educative value, would still be included, if written in a pleasing style, such as might be serviceable as a model.Individual Authors.—In a similar manner it has always been customary for relatives or friends, sometimes for the trade, to publish the “complete works” of important and often unimportant writers; usually, soon after death. And as literary distinction has hitherto almost invariably led to high office under the state, the collected works of the great majority of authors open with selected Memorials to the Throne and other documents of an official character. The public interest in these may have long since passed away; but they are valued by the Chinese as models of a style to be imitated, and the foreign student occasionally comes across papers on once burning questions arising out of commercial or diplomatic intercourse with western nations. Then may follow—the order is not always the same—the prefaces which the author contributed from time to time to the literary undertakings of his friends. Preface-writing is almost a department of Chinese literature. No one ever thinks of publishing a book without getting one or more of his capable associates to provide prefaces, which are naturally of a laudatory character, and always couched in highly-polished and obscure terms, the difficulty of the text being often aggravated by a fanciful and almost illegible script. Prefaces written by emperors, many examples of which may be seen, are of course highly esteemed, and are generally printed in coloured ink. The next section may comprise biographical notices of eminent men and women, or of mere local celebrities, who happened to die in the author’s day. Then will follow Records, a title which covers inscriptions carved on the walls of new buildings, or on memorial tablets, and also notes on pictures which the author may have seen, places which he may have visited, or allegorical incidents which he may have imagined. Then come disquisitions, or essays on various subjects; researches, being short articles of archaeological interest; studies or monographs; birthday congratulations to friends or to official colleagues; announcements, as to deities, a cessation of whose worship is threatened if the necessary rain or fair weather be not forthcoming; funeral orations, letters of condolence, &c. The above items will perhaps fill half a dozen volumes; the remaining volumes, running to twenty or thirty in all, as the case may be, will contain the author’s poetry, together with his longer and more serious works. The essential of such a collection is, in Chinese eyes, its completeness.
These, and many similar subtleties of speech, seem to have fired the imagination of Chuang Tzŭ, 4th and 3rd centuriesB.C., with the result that he put much time and energy into the glorification of Lao Tzŭ and his doctrines. Possessed of a brilliant style and a master ofChuang Tzŭ.irony, Chuang Tzŭ attacked the schools of Confucius and Mo Ti (see below) with so much dialectic skill that the ablest scholars of the age were unable to refute his destructive criticisms. His pages abound in quaint anecdotes and allegorical instances, arising as it were spontaneously out of the questions handled, and imparting a lively interest to points which might otherwise have seemed dusty and dull. He was an idealist with all the idealist’s hatred of a utilitarian system, and a mystic with all the mystic’s contempt for a life of mere external activity. Only thirty-three chapters of his work now remain, though so many as fifty-three are known to have been still extant in the 3rd century; and even of these, several complete chapters are spurious, while in others it is comparatively easy to detect here and there the hand of the interpolator. What remains, however, after all reductions, has been enough to secure a lasting place for Chuang Tzŭ as the most original of China’s philosophical writers. His book is of course under the ban of heterodoxy, in common with all thought opposed to the Confucian teachings. His views as mystic, idealist, moralist and social reformer have no weight with the aspirant who has his way to make in official life; but they are a delight, and even a consolation, to many of the older men, who have no longer anything to gain or to lose.
Confucius, 551-479B.C., who imagined that his Annals of the Lu State would give him immortality, has always been much more widely appreciated as a moralist than as an historian. His talks with his disciples and with others have beenConfucius.preserved for us, together with some details of his personal and private life; and the volume in which these are collected forms one of the Four Books of the Confucian Canon. Starting from the axiomatic declaration that man is born good and only becomes evil by his environment, he takes filial piety and duty to one’s neighbour as his chief themes, often illustrating his arguments with almost Johnsonian emphasis. He cherished a shadowy belief in a God, but not in a future state of reward or punishment for good or evil actions in this world. He rather taught men to be virtuous for virtue’s sake.
The discourses of Mencius, who followed Confucius after an interval of a hundred years, 372-289B.C., form another of the Four Books, the remaining two of which are short philosophical treatises, usually ascribed to a grandson of Confucius.Mencius.Mencius devoted his life to elucidating and expanding the teachings of the Master; and it is no doubt due to him that the Confucian doctrines obtained so wide a vogue. But he himself was more a politician and an economist (see below) than a simple preacher of morality; and hence it is that the Chinese people have accorded to him the title of The Second Sage. He is considered to haveMo Ti.effectually “snuffed out” the heterodox school of Mo Ti, a philosopher of the 5th and 4th centuriesB.C.who propounded a doctrine of “universal love” as the proper foundation for organized society, arguing that under such a system all the calamities that men bring upon one another would altogether disappear, and the Golden Age would be renewed. At the same time Mencius exposedYang Chu.the fallacies of the speculations of Yang Chu, 4th centuryB.C., who founded a school of ethical egoism as opposed to the exaggerated altruism of Mo Ti. According to Mencius, Yang Chu would not have parted with one hair of his body to save the whole world, whereas Mo Ti would have sacrificed all. Another earlyHsün Tzŭ.philosopher is Hsün Tzŭ, 3rd centuryB.C.He maintained, in opposition to Mencius, who upheld the Confucian dogma, and in conformity with Christian doctrine, that the nature of man at his birth is evil, and that this condition can only be changedYang Hsiung.by efficient moral training. Then came Yang Hsiung, 53-18B.C., who propounded an ethical criterion midway between the rival positions insisted on by Mencius and Hsün Tzŭ, teaching that the nature of man at birth is neither good nor evil, but a mixture of both, and that development in either direction depends wholly upon circumstances.
There is a voluminous and interesting work, of doubtful age, which passes under the title ofHuai-nan Tzŭ, or the Philosopher of Huai-nan. It is attributed to Liu An, prince of Huai-nan, who died 122B.C., and who is further said to have written onHuai-nan Tzŭ.]alchemy; but alchemy was scarcely known in China at the date of his death, being introduced about that time from Greece. The author, whoever he may have been, poses as a disciple of Lao Tzŭ; but the speculations of Lao Tzŭ, as glorified by Chuang Tzŭ, were then rapidly sinking into vulgar efforts to discover the elixir of life. It is very difficult in many cases of this kind to decide what books are, and what books are not, partial or complete forgeries. In the present instance, the aid of theShuo Wên, a dictionary of the 1st centuryA.D.(see below), may be invoked, but not in quite so satisfactory a sense as that in which it will be seen lower down to have been applied to theTao Tê Ching. TheShuo Wêncontains a quotation said to be taken fromHuai-nan Tzŭ; but that quotation cannot be found in the work under consideration. It may be argued that the words in question may have been taken from another work by the same author; but if so, it becomes difficult to believe that a book, more than two hundred years old, from which the author of theShuo Wênquoted, should have been allowed to perish without leaving any trace behind. China has produced its Bentleysin considerable numbers; but almost all of them have given their attention to textual criticism of the Confucian Canon, and few have condescended to examine critically the works of heterodox writers. The foreign student therefore finds himself faced with many knotty points he is entirely unable to solve.
Of Wang Ch‘ung, a speculative and materialistic philosopher,A.D.27-97, banned by the orthodox for his attacks on Confucius and Mencius, only one work has survived. it consists of eighty-four essays on such topics as the nature ofWang Ch‘ung.things, destiny, divination, death, ghosts, poisons, miracles, criticisms of Confucius and Mencius, exaggeration, sacrifice and exorcism. According to Wang Ch‘ung, man, endowed at birth sometimes with a good and sometimes with an evil nature, is informed with a vital fluid, which resides in the blood and is nourished by eating and drinking, its two functions being to animate the body and keep in order the mind. It is the source of all sensation, passing through the blood like a wave. When it reaches the eyes, ears and mouth, the result is sight, hearing and speech respectively. Disturbance of the vital fluid leads to insanity. Without the fluid, the body cannot be maintained; without the body, the fluid loses its vitality. Therefore, argues Wang Ch‘ung, when the body perishes and the fluid loses its vitality, each being dependent on the other, there remains nothing for immortality in a life beyond the grave. Ghosts he held to be the hallucinations of disordered minds, and miracles to be natural phenomena capable of simple explanations. His indictments of Confucius and Mencius are not of a serious character; though, as regards the former, it must be borne in mind that the Chinese people will not suffer the faintest aspersion on the fair fame of their great Sage. It is related in theLun Yüthat Confucius paid a visit to the notoriously immoral wife of one of the feudal nobles, and that a certain disciple was “displeased” in consequence, whereupon the Master swore, saying, “If I have done any wrong, may the sky fall and crush me!” Wang Ch‘ung points out that the form of oath adopted by Confucius is unsatisfactory and fails to carry conviction. Had he said, “May I be struck dead by lightning!” his sincerity would have been more powerfully attested, because people are often struck dead by lightning; whereas the fall of the sky is too remote a contingency, such a thing never having been known to happen within the memory of man. As to Mencius, there is a passage in his works which states that a thread of predestination runs through all human life, and that those who accommodate themselves will come off better in the end than those who try to oppose; it is in fact a statement of theοὐκ ὑπὲρ μόρονprinciple. On this Wang Ch‘ung remarks that the will of God is consequently made to depend on human actions; and he further strengthens his objection by showing that the best men have often fared worst. For instance, Confucius never became emperor; Pi Kan, the patriot, was disembowelled; the bold and faithful disciple, Tzŭ Lu, was chopped into small pieces.
But the tale of Chinese philosophers is a long one. It is a department of literature in which the leading scholars of all ages have mostly had something to say. The great Chu Hsi,A.D.1130-1200, whose fame is chiefly perhaps that of aBook of Changes.commentator and whose monument is his uniform exegesis of the Confucian Canon, was also a voluminous writer on philosophy. He took a hand in the mystery which surrounds theI Ching(orYih King), generally known as the Book of Changes, which is held by some to be the oldest Chinese work and which forms part of the Confucian Canon. It is ascribed to King Wên, the virtual founder of the Chou dynasty, 1122-249B.C., whose son became the first sovereign and posthumously raised his father to kingly rank. It contains a fanciful system of divination, deduced originally from eight diagrams consisting of triplet combinations of a line and a broken line, either one of which is necessarily repeated twice, and in two cases three times, in the same combination. Thus there may be three lines, or three broken lines, and other such combinations asand. Confucius declared that he would like to give another fifty years to the elucidation of this puzzling text. Shao Yung,A.D.1011-1077, sought the key in numbers: Ch‘êng I.,A.D.1033-1107, in the eternal fitness of things. “But Chu Hsi alone,” says a writer of the 17th century, “was able to pierce through the meaning and appropriate the thoughts of the inspired man who composed it.” No foreigner, however, has been able quite to understand what Chu Hsi did make of it, and several have gone so far as to set all native interpretations aside in favour of their own. Thus, theI Chinghas been discovered by one to be a calendar of the lunar year; by another, to contain a system of phallic worship; and by a third, to be a vocabulary of the language of a tribe, whose very existence had to be postulated for the purpose.
Political Economy.—This department of literature has been by no means neglected by Chinese writers. So early as the 7th centuryB.C.we find Kuan Chung, the prime minister of the Ch‘i state, devoting his attention to economic problems, and therebyKuan Chung.making that state the wealthiest and the strongest of all the feudal kingdoms. Beginning life as a merchant, he passed into the public service, and left behind him at death a large work, parts of which, as we now possess it, may possibly have come direct from his own hand, the remainder being written up at a later date in accordance with the principles he inculcated. His ideal State was divided into twenty-one parts, fifteen of which were allotted to officials and agriculturists, and six to manufacturers and traders. His great idea was to make his own state self-contained; and accordingly he fostered agriculture in order to be independent in time of war, and manufactures in order to increase his country’s wealth in time of peace. He held that a purely agricultural population would always remain poor; while a purely manufacturing population would risk having its supplies of raw material cut off in time of war. He warmly encouraged free imports as a means of enriching his countrymen, trusting to their ability, under these conditions, to hold their own against foreign competition. He protected capital, in the sense that he considered capitalists to be necessary for the development of commerce in time of peace, and for the protection of the state in time of war.
Mencius (see above) was in favour of heavily taxing merchants who tried to engross for the purpose of regrating, that is, to buy up wholesale for the purpose of retailing at monopoly prices; he was in fact opposed to all trusts and corners in trade. He was in favour of a tax to be imposed upon such persons as were mere consumers, living upon property which had been amassed by others and doing no work themselves. No tax, however, was to be exacted from property-owners who contributed by their personal efforts to the general welfare of the community. The object of the tax was not revenue, but the prevention of idleness with its attendant evil consequences to the state.
Wang An-shih, the Reformer, or Innovator, as he has been called, flourishedA.D.1021-1086. In 1069 he was appointed state councillor, and forthwith entered upon a series of startling reforms which have given him a unique position in the annals ofWang An-shih.China. He established a state monopoly in commerce, under which the produce of a district was to be used first for the payment of taxes, then for the direct use of the district itself, and the remainder was to be purchased by the government at a cheap rate, either to be held until there was a rise in price, or to be transported to some other district in need of it. The people were to profit by fixity of prices and escape from further taxation; and the government, by the revenue accruing in the process of administration. There was also to be a system of state advances to cultivators of land; not merely to the needy, but to all alike. The loan was to be compulsory, and interest was to be paid on it at the rate of 2% per month. The soil was to be divided into equal areas and taxed according to its fertility in each case, without reference to the number of inhabitants contained in each area. All these, and other important reforms, failed to find favour with a rigidly conservative people, and Wang An-shih lived long enough to see the whole of his policy reversed.
Military Writers.—Not much, relatively speaking, has been written by the Chinese on war in general, strategy or tactics. There is, however, one very remarkable work which has come down to us from the 6th centuryB.C., as to the genuineness ofSun-Tzŭ.which there now seems to be no reasonable doubt. A biographical notice of the author, Sun Wu, is given in theShih Chi(see above), from which we learn that “he knew how to handle an army, and was finally appointed General.” His work, entitled theArt of War, is a short treatise in thirteen chapters, under the following headings: “Laying Plans,” “Waging War,” “Attack by Stratagem,” “Tactical Dispositions,” “Energy,” “Weak Points and Strong,” “Manœuvring,” “Variation of Tactics,” “The Army on the March,” “Terrain,” “The Nine Situations,” “The Attack by Fire,” and “The Use of Spies.” Although the warfare of Sun Wu’s day was the warfare of bow and arrow, of armoured chariots and push of pike, certain principles inseparably associated with successful issue will be found enunciated in his work. Professor Mackail, in hisLatin Literature(p. 86), declares that Varro’sImagineswas “the first instance in history of the publication of an illustrated book.” But reference to the Art Section of the history of the Western Han dynasty, 206B.C.-A.D.25, will disclose the title of fifteen or sixteen illustrated books, one of which is Sun Wu’sArt of War.
Agriculture.—In spite of the high place accorded to agriculturists, who rank second only to officials and before artisans and traders, and in spite of the assiduity with which agriculture has been practised in all ages, securing immunity from slaughter for the ploughing ox—what agricultural literature the Chinese possess may be said to belong entirely to modern times. Ch‘ên Fu of the 12th centuryA.D.was the author of a small work in three parts, dealing with agriculture, cattle-breeding and silkworms respectively. There is also a well-known work by an artist of the early 13th century, with forty-six woodcuts illustrating the various operations of agriculture and weaving. This book was reprinted under the emperor K‘ang Hsi, 1662-1723, and new illustrations with excellent perspective were provided by Chiao Ping-chên, an artist who had adopted foreign methods as introduced by the famous Jesuit, Matteo Ricci. The standard work on agriculture,Hsü Kuang-ch‘i.entitledNung Chêng Ch‘üan Shu, was compiled by Hsü Kuang-ch‘i, 1562-1634, generally regarded as the only influential member of the mandarinate who has ever become a convert to Christianity. It is in sixty sections, the first three of which are devoted to classical references. Then follow two sections on the division of land, six on the processes of husbandry, none on hydraulics, four on agricultural implements, six on planting, six on rearing silkworms, four on trees, one on breeding animals, one on food and eighteen on provision against a time of scarcity.
Medicine and Therapeutics.—The oldest of the innumerable medical works of all descriptions with which China has been flooded from time immemorial is a treatise which has been credited to the Yellow Emperor (see above), 2698-2598B.C.It is entitledPlain Questions of the Yellow Emperor, orSu Wênfor short, and takes the form of questions put by the emperor and answered by Earl Ch‘i, a minister, who was himself author of theNei Ching, a medical work no longer in existence. Without accepting the popular attribution of theSu Wên, it is most probable that it is a very old book, dating back to several centuries before Christ, and containing traditional lore of a still more remote period. The same may be said of certain works on cautery and acupuncture, both of which are still practised by Chinese doctors; and also of works on the pulse, the variations of which have been classified and allocated with a minuteness hardly credible. Special treatises on fevers, skin-diseases, diseases of the feet, eyes, heart, &c., are to be found in great quantities, as well as veterinary treatises on the treatment of diseases of the horse and the domestic buffalo. But in the whole range of Chinese medical literature there is nothing which can approach thePên Ts‘ao, orPên Ts‘no.Materia Medica, sometimes called the Herbal, a title (i.e.Pên Ts‘ao) which seems to have belonged to some book of the kind in pre-historic ages. The work under consideration was compiled by Li Shih-chên, who completed his task in 1578 after twenty-six years’ labour. No fewer than eighteen hundred and ninety-two species of drugs, animal, vegetable and mineral, are dealt with, arranged under sixty-two classes in sixteen divisions; and eight thousand one hundred and sixty prescriptions are given in connexion with the various entries. The author professes to quote from the originalPên Ts‘ao, above mentioned; and we obtain from his extracts an insight into some curious details. It appears that formerly the number of recognized drugs was three hundred and sixty-five in all, corresponding with the days of the year. One hundred and twenty of these were calledsovereigns(cf. a sovereign prescription); and were regarded as entirely beneficial to health, taken in any quantity or for any time. Another similar number were calledministers; some of these were poisonous, and all had to be used with discretion. The remaining one hundred and twenty-five wereagents; all very poisonous, but able to cure diseases if not taken in over-doses. The modernPên Ts‘ao, in its sixteen divisions, deals with drugs classed under water, fire, earth, minerals, herbs, grain, vegetables, fruit, trees, clothes and utensils, insects, fishes, crustacea, birds, beasts and man. In each case the proper name of the drug is first given, followed by its explanation, solution of doubtful points, correction of errors, means of identification by taste, use in prescriptions, &c. The work is fully illustrated, and there is an index to the various medicines, classed according to the complaints for which they are used.
Divination, &c.—The practice of divination is of very ancient date in China, traceable, it has been suggested, back to the Canon of Changes (see above), which is commonly used by the lettered classes for that purpose. A variety of other methods, the chief of which is astrology, have also been adopted, and have yielded a considerable bulk of literature. Even the officially-published almanacs still mark certain days as suitable for certain undertakings, while other days are marked in the opposite sense. The spirit of Zadkiel pervades the Chinese empire. In like manner, geomancy is a subject on which many volumes have been written; and the same applies to the pseudo sciences of palmistry, physiognomy, alchemy (introduced from Greek sources) and others.
Painting.—Calligraphy, in the eyes of the Chinese, is just as much a fine art as painting; the two are, in fact, considered to have come into existence together, but as might be expected the latter occupies the larger space in Chinese literature, and forms the subject of numerous extensive works. One of the most important of these is theHsüan Ho Hua P‘u, the author of which is unknown. It contains information concerning two hundred and thirty-one painters and the titles of six thousand one hundred and ninety-two of their pictures, all in the imperial collection during the dynastic periodHsüan Ho,A.D.1119-1126, from which the title is derived. The artists are classified under one of the following ten headings, supposed to represent the line in which each particularly excelled: Religion, Human Figures, Buildings, Barbarians (including their Animals), Dragons and Fishes, Landscape, Animals, Flowers and Birds, The Bamboo, Vegetables and Fruits.
Music.—The literature of music does not go back to a remote period. The Canon of Music, which was formerly included in the Confucian Canon, has been lost for many centuries; and the works now available, exclusive of entries in the dynastic histories, are not older than the 9th centuryA.D., to which date may be assigned theChieh Ku Lu, a treatise on the deerskin drum, said to have been introduced into China from central Asia, and evidently of Scythian origin. There are several important works of the 16th and 17th centuries, in which the history and theory of music are fully discussed, and illustrations of instruments are given, with measurements in each case, and the special notation required.
Miscellaneous.—Under this head may be grouped a vast number of works, many of them exhaustive, on such topics as archaeology, seals (engraved), numismatics, pottery, ink (the miscalled “Indian”), mirrors, precious stones, tea, wine, chess, wit and humour, even cookery, &c. There is, indeed, hardly any subject, within reasonable limits, which does not find some corner in Chinese literature.
Collections.—Reprints of miscellaneous books and pamphlets in a uniform edition, the whole forming a “library,” has long been a favourite means of disseminating useful (and other) information. Of these, theLung Wei Pi Shumay be takenLung Wei Pi Shu.as a specimen. In bulk it would be about the equivalent of twenty volumes, 8vo, of four hundred pages to each. Among its contents we find the following. A handbook of phraseology, with explanations; a short account of fabulous regions to the N., S., E. and W.; notes on the plants and trees of southern countries; biographical sketches of ninety-two wonderful personages; an account of the choice of an empress, with standard measurements of the height, length of limb, &c., of the ideal woman; “Pillow Notes” (a term borrowed by the Japanese), or jottings on various subjects, ranging from the Creation to an account of Fusang, a country where the trees are thousands of feet high and of vast girth, thus supporting the California, as opposed to the Mexico, identification of Fusang; critiques on the style of various poets, and on the indebtedness of each to earlier writers; a list of the most famous bronze vessels cast by early emperors, with their dimensions, inscriptions, &c.; a treatise on the bamboo; a list of famous swords, with dates of forging and inscriptions; an account of the old Mongol palace, previous to its destruction by the first Ming emperor; notes on the wild tribes of China; historical episodes; biographical notices of one hundred and four poets of the present dynasty; notes on archaeological, supernatural and other topics, first published in the 9th century; notes for bibliophiles on the care of books, and on paper, ink, pictures and bric-à-brac; a collection of famous criminal cases; night thoughts suggested by a meteor. Add to the above, numerous short stories relating to magic, dreams, bilocation, and to almost every possible phase of supernatural manifestation, and the reader will have some idea of what he may expect in an ordinary “library” of a popular character. It must always be remembered that with the Chinese, style is of paramount importance. Documents, the subject-matter of which would be recognized to be of no educative value, would still be included, if written in a pleasing style, such as might be serviceable as a model.
Individual Authors.—In a similar manner it has always been customary for relatives or friends, sometimes for the trade, to publish the “complete works” of important and often unimportant writers; usually, soon after death. And as literary distinction has hitherto almost invariably led to high office under the state, the collected works of the great majority of authors open with selected Memorials to the Throne and other documents of an official character. The public interest in these may have long since passed away; but they are valued by the Chinese as models of a style to be imitated, and the foreign student occasionally comes across papers on once burning questions arising out of commercial or diplomatic intercourse with western nations. Then may follow—the order is not always the same—the prefaces which the author contributed from time to time to the literary undertakings of his friends. Preface-writing is almost a department of Chinese literature. No one ever thinks of publishing a book without getting one or more of his capable associates to provide prefaces, which are naturally of a laudatory character, and always couched in highly-polished and obscure terms, the difficulty of the text being often aggravated by a fanciful and almost illegible script. Prefaces written by emperors, many examples of which may be seen, are of course highly esteemed, and are generally printed in coloured ink. The next section may comprise biographical notices of eminent men and women, or of mere local celebrities, who happened to die in the author’s day. Then will follow Records, a title which covers inscriptions carved on the walls of new buildings, or on memorial tablets, and also notes on pictures which the author may have seen, places which he may have visited, or allegorical incidents which he may have imagined. Then come disquisitions, or essays on various subjects; researches, being short articles of archaeological interest; studies or monographs; birthday congratulations to friends or to official colleagues; announcements, as to deities, a cessation of whose worship is threatened if the necessary rain or fair weather be not forthcoming; funeral orations, letters of condolence, &c. The above items will perhaps fill half a dozen volumes; the remaining volumes, running to twenty or thirty in all, as the case may be, will contain the author’s poetry, together with his longer and more serious works. The essential of such a collection is, in Chinese eyes, its completeness.
Fiction.—Although novels are not regarded as an integral part of literature proper, it is generally conceded that some novels may be profitably studied, if for no other reason, from the point of view of style. With theSan Kuo Chih.novel, however, we are no longer on perfectly safe ground in regard to that decency which characterizes, as has been above stated, the vast mass of Chinese literature. Chinese novels range, in this sense, from the simplest and most unaffected tale of daily life, down to low—not the lowest—depths of objectionable pornography. TheSan Kuo Chih, an historical romance based upon a period of disruption at the close of the2nd centuryA.D., is a delightful book, packed with episodes of battle, heroism, self-sacrifice, skilful strategy, and all that goes to make up a stirring picture of strenuous times. Its author, who might almost have been Walter Scott, cannot be named for certain; but the work itself probably belongs to the 13th century, a date at which the novel begins to make its appearance in China. Previous to that time, there had been current an immense quantity of stories of various kinds, but nothing like a novel, as we understand the term. From the 13th century onwards, the growth of the novel was continuous; and finally, in the 17th century, a point was reached which is not likely to be surpassed.TheHung Lou Mêng, the author of which tookHung Lou Mêng.pains, for political reasons, to conceal his identity, is a creation of a very high order. Its plot is intricate and original, and thedénouementstartlingly tragic. In the course of the story, the chief clue of which is love, woven in with intrigue, ambition, wealth, poverty, and other threads of human life, there occur no fewer than over four hundred characters, each one possessed of a distinctive personality drawn with marvellous skill. It contains incidents which recall the licence tolerated in Fielding; but the coarseness, like that of Fielding, is always on the surface, and devoid of the ulterior suggestiveness of the modern psychological novel. But perhapsLiao Chai.no work of fiction has ever enjoyed such vogue among literary men as a collection of stories, some graceful, some weird, written in 1679 by P‘u Sungling, a disappointed candidate at the public examinations. This collection, known as theLiao Chai, is exceedingly interesting to the foreign student for its sidelights on folklore and family life; to the native scholar, who professes to smile at the subject-matter as beyond the pale of genuine literature, it is simply invaluable as an expression of the most masterly style of which his language is capable.
Drama.—Simultaneously with the appearance of the novel, stage-plays seem to have come into existence in China. In the earliest ages there were set dances by trained performers, to the accompaniment of music and singing; and something of the kind, more or less ornate as regards the setting, has always been associated with solemn and festive occasions. But not until the days of the Mongol rule,A.D.1260-1368, can the drama proper be said to have taken root and flourished in Chinese soil. The probability is that both the drama and the novel were introduced from Central Asia in the wake of the Mongol conquerors; the former is now specially essential to the everyday happiness of the Chinese people, who are perhaps the most confirmed playgoers in the world. There is an excellent collection of one hundred plays of the Mongol dynasty, with an illustration to each, first published in 1615; there is also a further large collection, issued in 1845, which contains a great number of plays arranged under sixty headings, according to the style and purport of each, besides many others.Hsi Hsiang Chi.There is one famous play of the Mongol period which deals largely in plot and passion, and is a great favourite with the educated classes. It is entitledHsi Hsiang Chi, or the Story of the Western Pavilion; and as if there was a doubt as to the reception which would be accorded to the work, a minatory sentence was inserted in the prolegomena: “If any one ventures to call this book indecent, he will certainly have his tongue torn out in hell.” So far as the written play is concerned, its language is altogether unobjectionable; on the stage, by means of gag and gesture, its presentation is often unseemly and coarse. What the Chinese playgoer delights in, as an evening’s amusement, is a succession of plays which are more of the nature of sketches, slight in construction and generally weak in plot, some of them based upon striking historical episodes, and others dealing with a single humorous incident.