Ancient China Simplified Part 3

All through these five centuries of struggle, between the flight of the Emperor with the transfer of the metropolis in 771 B.C., and the total destruction of the feudal system by the First August Emperor of Ts'in in 221 B.C., it is of supreme interest to note that religion in our Western sense was not only non-existent throughout China, but had not yet even been conceived of as an abstract notion; apart, that is to say, from government, public law, family law, and cla.s.s ritual. No word for "religion" was known to the language; the notion of Church or Temple served by a priestly caste had not entered men's minds. Offences against "the G.o.ds" or "the spirits," in a vague sense, were often spoken of; but, on the other hand, too much belief in their power was regarded as superst.i.tion. "Sin" was only conceivable in the sense of infraction of nature's general laws, as symbolized and specialized by imperial commands; direct, or delegated to va.s.sal princes; in both cases as representatives, supreme or local, of Heaven, or of the Emperor Above, whose Son the dynastic central ruler for the time being was figuratively supposed to be. No va.s.sal prince ever presumed to style himself "Son of Heaven,"

though nearly all the barbarous va.s.sals called themselves "King"

(the only other t.i.tle the Chou monarchs took) in their own dominions. "In the Heaven there can only be one Sun; on Earth there can only be one Emperor"; this was the maxim, and, ever since the Chou conquest in 1122 B.C., the word "King" had done duty for the more ancient "Emperor," which, in remote times had apparently not been sharply distinguished in men's minds from G.o.d, or the "Emperor on High."

Prayer was common enough, as we shall frequently see, and sacrifice was universal; in fact, the blood of a victim was almost inseparable from solemn function or record of any kind. But such ideas as conscience, fear of G.o.d, mortal sin, repentance, absolution, alms-giving, self-mortification, charity, sackcloth and ashes, devout piety, praise and glorification,--in a word, what the Jews, Christians, Mussulmans, and even Buddhists have each in turn conceived to be religious duty, had no well-defined existence at all. There are some traces of local or barbarous G.o.ds in the semi-Turkish nation of Ts'in, before it was raised to the status of full feudal va.s.sal; and also in the semi-Annamese nation of Ts'u (with its dependencies Wu and Yiieh); but the orthodox Chinese proper of those times never had any religion such as we now conceive it, whatever notions their remote ancestors may have conceived.

Notwithstanding this, the minds of the governing cla.s.ses at least were powerfully restrained by family and ancestral feeling, and, if there were no temples or priests for public worship, there were invariably shrines dedicated to the ancestors, with appropriate rites duly carried out by professional clerks or reciters.

Whenever a ruler of any kind undertook any important expedition or possible duty, he was careful first to consult the oracles in order to ascertain the will of Heaven, and then to report the fact to the _manes_ of his forefathers, who were likewise notified of any great victory, political change, or piece of good fortune.

There is a distinction (not easy to master) between the loss of a state and the loss of a dynasty; in the latter case the population remain comparatively unaffected, and it is only the reigning family whose sacrifices to the G.o.ds of the place and of the harvest are interrupted. Thus in 567, when one of the very small va.s.sals (of whom the ruler of Lu was mesne lord) crushed the other, it is explained that the spirits will not spiritually eat the sacrifices (i.e. accept the worship) of one who does not belong to the same family name, and that in this case the annihilating state was only a cousin through sisters: "when the country is 'lost,' it means that the strange surname succeeds to power; but, when a strange surname becomes spiritual heir, we say 'annihilated.'" We have seen in the ninth chapter how the Shang dynasty lost the empire, but was sacrificially maintained in Sung.

From the remotest times there seems to have been a tender unwillingness to "cut off all sacrifices" entirely, probably out of a feeling that retribution in like form might at some future date occur to the ruthless condemner of others. There is another reason, which is, nearly all ruling families hailed from the same remote semi-mythical emperors, or from their ministers, or from their wives of inferior birth. Thus, although the body of the last tyrannical monarch of the Shang dynasty just cited was pierced through and through by the triumphant Chou monarch, that monarch's brother (acting as regent on behalf of the son and successor) conferred the princ.i.p.ality of Sung upon the tyrant's elder half- brother by an inferior wife, "in order that the dynastic sacrifices might not be cut off"; and to the very last the Duke of Sung was the only ruling satrap under the Chou dynasty who permanently enjoyed the full t.i.tle of "duke." His neighbour, the Marquess of Wei (imperial clan), was, it is true, made "duke" in 770 B.C. for services in connection with the Emperor's flight; but the t.i.tle seems to have been tacitly abandoned, and at durbars he is always styled "marquess." Of the Shang tyrant himself it is recorded: "thus in 1122 B.C. he lost all in a single day, without even leaving posterity." Of course his elder brother could not possibly be his spiritual heir. In 597 B.C., when Ts'u, in its struggle with Tsin for the possession of CHeNG, got the ruling Earl of CHeNG in its power, the latter referred appealingly to his imperial ancestors (the first earl, in 806, was son of the Emperor who fled from his capital north in 842), and said: "Let me continue their sacrifices." There are, at least, a score of similar instances: the ancestral sacrifices seem to refer rather to posterity, whilst those to G.o.ds of the land and grain appear more connected with rights as feoffee.

Prayer is mentioned from the earliest times. For instance Shun, the active ploughman monarch (not hereditary) who preceded the three dynasties of Hia (2205-1767), Shang (1766-1123), and Chou (1122-249), prayed at a certain mountain in the centre of modern Hu Nan province, where his grave still is, (a fact which points to the possibility of the orthodox Chinese having worked their way northwards from the south-west). When the Chou conqueror, posthumously called the Martial King, fell ill, his brother, the Duke of Chou (later regent for the Martial King's son), prayed to Heaven for his brother's recovery, and offered himself as a subst.i.tute; the clerk was instructed to commit the offer to writing, and this solemn doc.u.ment was securely locked up. The same man, when regent, again offered himself to Heaven for his sick nephew, cutting his nails off and throwing them into the river, as a symbol of his willingness to give up his own body. The Emperor K'ang-hi of the present Manchu dynasty, perhaps in imitation of the Duke of Chou, offered himself to Heaven in place of his sick Mongol grandmother. A very curious instance of prayer occurs in connection with the succession to the Tsin throne; it will be remembered that the legitimate heir committed dutiful suicide, and two other half-brothers (and, for a few months, one of these brother's sons) reigned before the second Protector secured his ancestral rights. The suicide's ghost appears to his usurping brother, and says: "I have prayed to the Emperor (G.o.d), who will soon deliver over Tsin into Ts'in's hands, so that Ts'in will perform the sacrifices due to me." The reply to the ghost was: "But the spirits will only eat the offerings if they come from the same family stock." The ghost said: "Very good; then I will pray again... . G.o.d now says my half-brother will be overthrown at the battle of Han" (the pa.s.s where the philosopher Lao-tsz is supposed to have written his book 150 years later). In 645 the ruler of Tsin was in fact captured in battle by his brother-in-law of Ts'in, who was indeed about to sacrifice to the Emperor on High as successor of Tsin; but he was dissuaded by his orthodox wife (the Tsin princess, daughter of a Ts'i princess as explained on page 51).

In 575 Tsin is recorded as "invoking the spirits and requesting a victory." A little later one of the Tsin generals, after a defeat, issued a general order by way of concealing his weakness: to deceive the enemy he suggested that the army should amongst other things make a great show of praying for victory. There are many other similar a.n.a.logous instances of undoubted prayer. Much later, in the year 210 B.C., when the King (as he had been) of Ts'in had conquered all China and given himself the name, for the first time in history, of August Emperor (the present t.i.tle), he consulted his soothsayers about an unpleasant dream he had had. He was advised to pray, and to worship (or to sacrifice, for the two are practically one) with special ardour if he wished to bring things round to a favourable conclusion: and this is a monarch, too, who was steeped in Lao-tsz's philosophy.

CHAPTER XII

ANCESTRAL WORSHIP

We have just seen that, when a military expedition started out, the event was notified, with sacrifice, to the ancestors of the person most concerned: it was also the practice to carry to battle, on a special chariot, the tablet of the last ancestor removed from the ancestral hall, in order that, under his aegis so to speak, the tactics of the battle might be successful. Ancestral halls varied according to rank, the Emperor alone having seven shrines; va.s.sal rulers five; and first-cla.s.s ministers three; courtiers or second-cla.s.s ministers had only two; that is to say, no one beyond the living subject's grandfather was in these last cases worshipped at all. From this we may a.s.sume that the ordinary folk could not pretend to any shrine, unless perhaps the house- altar, which one may see still any day in the streets of Canton.

In 645 B.C. a first-cla.s.s minister's temple was struck by lightning, and the commentator observes: "Thus we see that all, from the Emperor down to the courtiers, had ancestral shrines",--a statement which proves that already at the beginning of our Christian era such matters had to be explained to the general public. The shrines were disposed in the following fashion:--To the left (on entrance) was the shrine of the living subject's father; to the right his grandfather; above these two, to the left and right again, the great-grandfather and great-great- grandfather; opposite, in the centre, was that of the founder, whose tablet or effigy was never moved; but as each living individual died, his successor of course regarded him in the light of father, and, five being the maximum allowed, one tablet had to be removed at each decease, and it was placed in the more general ancestral hall belonging to the clan or gens rather than to the specific family: it was therefore the, tablet or effigy of the great-great-grandfather that was usually carried about in war. The Emperor alone had two special chapels beyond the five shrines, each chapel containing the odds (left) and evens (right) of those higher up in ascent than the great and great-great-grandfathers respectively. The King of Ts'u who died in 560 B.C. said on his death-bed: "I now take my place in the ancestral temple to receive sacrifices in the spring and autumn of each year." In the year 597, after a great victory over Tsin, the King of Ts'u had been advised to build a trophy over the collected corpses of the enemy; but, being apparently rather a high-minded man, after a little reflection, he said: "No! I will simply erect there a temple to my ancestors, thanking them for the success." After the death in 210 B.C. of the First August Emperor, a discussion arose as to what honours should be paid to his temple shrine: it was explained that "for a thousand years without any change the rule has been seven shrines for the Son of Heaven, five for va.s.sal princes, and three for ministers." In the year 253, after the conquest of the miserable Chou Emperor's limited territory, the same Ts'in conqueror "personally laid the matter before the Emperor Above in the suburb sacrifice";--which means that he took over charge of the world as Vicar of G.o.d. The Temple of Heaven (outside the Peking South Gate), occupied in 1900 by the British troops, is practically the "suburb sacrifice" place of ancient times. It was not until the year 221 B.C. that the King of Ts'in, after that date First August Emperor, formally annexed the whole empire: "thanks to the shrines in the ancestral temple," or "thanks to the spiritual help of my ancestors' shrines the Under-Heaven (i.e.

Empire) is now first settled." These expressions have been perpetuated dynasty by dynasty, and were indeed again used but yesterday in the various announcements of victory made to Heaven and his ancestors by the j.a.panese _Tenshi,_ or Mikado; that is by the "Son of Heaven," or T'ien-tsz of the ancient Chinese, from whom the j.a.panese Shinto ritual was borrowed in whole or in part.

In the year 572 B.C., on the accession of a Tsin ruler after various irregular interruptions in the lineal succession, he says: "Thanks to the supernatural a.s.sistance of my ancestors--and to your a.s.sistance, my lords--I can now carry out the Tsin sacrifices." In the year 548 the wretched ruler of Ts'i, victim of a palace intrigue, begged the eunuch who was charged with the task of a.s.sa.s.sinating him at least "to grant me permission to commit suicide in my ancestral hall." The wooden tablet representing the ancestor is defined as being "that on which the spirit reclines"; and the temple "that place where the ancestral spiritual consciousness doth dwell." Each tablet was placed on its own altar: the tablet was square, with a hole in the centre, "in order to leave free access on all four sides." The Emperor's was twelve inches, those of va.s.sal princes one foot (i.e. ten inches) in length, and no doubt the inscription was daubed on in varnish (before writing on silk became general, and before the hair-brush and ink came into use about 200 B.C.). The rulers of Lu, being lineal descendants of the Duke of Chou, brother of the first Emperor of the Chou dynasty (1122 B.C.) had special privileges in sacrificial matters, such as the right to use the imperial music of all past dynasties; the right to sacrifice to the father of the Duke of Chou and the founder; the right to imperial rites, to suburban sacrifice, and so on; besides the custody of certain ancient symbolic objects presented by the first Chou Emperors, and mentioned on page 22.

Of course no punishment could be spiritually greater than the destruction of ancestral temples: thus on two occasions, notably in 575 B.C. when a first-cla.s.s minister traitorously fled his country, his prince, the Marquess of Lu, as a special act of grace, simply "swept his ancestral temple, but did not cut off the sacrifices." The second instance was also in Lu, in 550: the Wei friend with whom Confucius lived seventy years later, when wandering in Wei, retrospectively gave his ritual opinion on the case--a proof of the solidarity in sympathy that existed between the statesmen of the orthodox princ.i.p.alities. In the bloodthirsty wars between the semi-barbarous southern states of Wu and Ts'u, the capital of the latter was taken by storm in the year 506, the ancestral temple of Ts'u was totally destroyed, and the renegade Ts'u ministers who accompanied the Wu armies even flogged the corpse of the previous Ts'u king, their former master, against whom they had a grievance. This mutilation of the dead (in cases where the guilty rulers have contravened the laws of nature and heaven) was practised even in imperial China; for (see page 57) the founder of the dynasty, on taking possession of the last Shang Emperor's palace, deliberately fired several arrows into the body of the suicide Emperor. Decapitating corpses and desecrating tombs of great criminals have frequently been practised by the existing Manchu government, in criticizing whom we must not forget the treatment of Cromwell's body at the Restoration. In the year 285 B.C., when the Ts'i capital was taken possession of by the allied royal powers then united against Ts'i, the ancestral temple was burnt. In 249 B.C. Ts'u extinguished the state of Lu, "which thus witnessed the interruption of its ancestral sacrifices."

Frequent instances occur, throughout this troublous period, of the Emperor's sending presents of meat used in ancestral sacrifices to the va.s.sal princes; this was intended as a special mark of honour, something akin to the "orders" or decorations distributed in Europe. Thus in 671 the new King of Ts'u who had just murdered his predecessor, which predecessor had for the first time set the bad example of annexing petty orthodox Chinese princ.i.p.alities, received this compliment of sacrificial meat from the Emperor, together with a mild hint to "attack the barbarians such as Yiieh, but always to let the Chinese princes alone." Ts'i, Lu, Ts'in, and Yiieh on different occasions between that date and the fourth century B.C. received similar donations, usually, evidently, more propitiatory than patronizing. In 472 the barbarous King of Yiieh was even nominated Protector along with his present of meat; this was after his total destruction of Wu, when he was marching north to threaten North China. Presents of private family sacrificial meat are still in vogue between friends in China.

Fasting and purification were necessary before undertaking solemn sacrifice of any kind. Thus the King of Ts'u in 690 B.C. did this before announcing a proposed war to his ancestors; and an envoy starting from Ts'u to Lu in 618 reported the circ.u.mstance to his own particular ancestors, who may or may not have been (as many high officers were) of the reigning caste. On another occasion the ruler of Lu was a.s.sa.s.sinated whilst purifying himself in the enclosure dedicated to the G.o.d of the soil, previous to sacrificing to the _manes_ of an individual who had once saved his life. Practically all this is maintained in modern Chinese usage.

A curious distinction is mentioned in connection with official mourning tidings in the highly ritual state of Lu. If the deceased were of a totally different family name, the Marquess of Lu wept outside his capital, turning towards deceased's native place, or place of death; if of the same name, then in the ancestral temple: if the deceased was a descendant of the same founder, then in the founder's temple; if of the same family branch, then in the paternal temple. All these refinements are naturally tedious and obscure to us Westerners; but it is only by collating specific facts that we can arrive at any general principle or rule.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP

1. Ts'u's five capitals, in order of date, are marked. In 504 B.C.

the king had to leave the Yang-tsz for good in order to escape Wu attacks. In 278 B.C. Ts'in captured No. 4, and then the ancient Ch'ta capital (No. 5, already annexed by Ts'u) became the Ts'u capital (see maps showing Ch'en's position). Ts'u was now a Hwai River power instead of being a Han River and Yang-tsz power. Shuh and Pa are modern Sz Ch'wan, both inaccessible from the Han system. The Han system to its north was separated from the Wei system and the country of Ts'in by a common watershed.

2. Wu seems to have been the only power besides Ts'u possessing any knowledge of the Yang-tsz River, and Wu was originally part of, or va.s.sal to Ts'u. 3. Pa had relations with Ts'u so early as 600 B.C. Later Pa princesses married Ts'u kings.]

CHAPTER XIII

ANCIENT DOc.u.mENTS FOUND

The reign of the Tsin marquess (628-635), second of the Five Protectors, only lasted eight years, and nothing is recorded to have happened during this period at all commensurate with his picturesque figure in history while yet a mere wanderer. But it is very interesting to note that the Bamboo Annals or Books, i.e. the History of Tsin from 784 B.C., and incidentally also of China from 1500 years before that date, are one of the corroborative authorities we now possess upon the accuracy of Confucius' history from 722 B.C., as expanded by his three commentators; and it is satisfactory to know that the oldest of the three commentaries, that usually called the Tso _Chwan_, or "Commentary of Tso K'iu-ming," a junior contemporary of Confucius, and official historiographer at the Lu Court, is the most accurate as well as the most interesting of the three. These Bamboo Books were only discovered in the year 281 A.D., after having been buried in a tomb ever since the year 299 B.C. The character in which they were written, upon slips of bamboo, had already become so obsolete that the sustained work of antiquarians was absolutely necessary in order to reduce it to the current script of the day; or, in other words, of to-day. Another interesting fact is, that whilst the Chou dynasty, and consequently Confucius of Lu (which state was intimately connected by blood with the Chou family), had introduced a new calendar, making the year begin one (Shang) or two (Hia) months sooner than before, Tsin had continued to compute (see page 27) the year according to the system of the Hia dynasty: in other words, the intercalary moons, or ma.s.sed fractions of time periodically introduced in order to bring the solar and lunar years into line, had during the millennium so acc.u.mulated (at the rate apparently of, roughly, sixty days in 360,000, or, say, three half-seconds a day) that the Chou dynasty found it necessary to call the Hia eleventh moon the first and the Hia first moon the third of the year. A parallel distinction is observable in modern times when the Russian year (until a few years ago twelve days later than ours), was declared thirteen days later; and when we ourselves in 1900 (and in three-fourths of all future years making up a net hundred), omit the intercalary day of the 29th February, which otherwise occurs every fourth year of even numbers divisible by four. Thus the very discrepancies in the dates of the Bamboo Books (where the later editors, in attempting to accommodate all dates to later calendars, have accidentally left a Tsin date unchanged) and in the dates of Confucius' expanded history, pointed out and explained as they are by the Chinese commentators themselves, are at once a guarantee of fact, and of good faith in recording that fact.

But the neighbour and brother-in-law of the Tsin marquess (himself three parts Turkish), the Earl of Ts'in, who reigned from 659 to 621 B.C., and during that reign quietly laid the foundations of a powerful state which was destined to achieve the future conquest of all China, was himself a remarkable man; and there is some reason to believe that he, even at this period, also possessed a special calendar of his own, as his successors certainly did 400 years later, when they imposed their own calendar reckoning upon China. We have already seen (page 52) what powerful influence he exercised in bringing the semi-Tartar Tsin brethren to the Tsin throne in turn. He had invited several distinguished men from the neighbouring petty, but very ancient, Chinese princ.i.p.alities to settle in his capital as advisers; he was too far off to attend the durbars held by the, First Protector, but he sent one of these Chinese advisers as his representative, He is usually himself counted as one of the Five Protectors; but, although he was certainly very influential, and for that reason was certainly one of the Five Tyrants, or Five Predominating Powers, it is certain that he never succeeded in obtaining the Emperor's formal sanction to act as such over the orthodox princ.i.p.alities, nor did he ever preside at a durbar of Chinese federal princes. Long and b.l.o.o.d.y wars with his neighbour of Tsin were the chief feature of his reign so far as orthodox China was concerned; but his chief glory lies in his great Tartar conquests, and in his enormous extensions to the west. These extensions, however, must not be exaggerated, and there is no reason to suppose that they ever reached farther than Kwa Chou and Tun-hw.a.n.g (long. 95, lat. 40), two very ancient places which still appear under those names on the most modern maps of China, and from which roads (recently examined by Major Bruce) branch off to Turkestan and Lob Nor respectively.

Most Emperors and va.s.sal princes are spoken of in history by their posthumous names, that is by the names voted to them after death, with the view of tersely expressing by that name the essential features (good or bad) of the deceased's personal character; just as we say in Europe, officially or unofficially, Louis le Bienaime, Albert the Good, or Charles the Fat. The posthumous name of this Ts'in earl was "the Duke Muh" (no matter whether duke, marquess, earl, viscount, or baron when living, it was customary to say "duke" when the ruler was dead), and the posthumous name of the Emperor who died in 947 B.C. was "the King Muh"; for, as already stated, the Chou dynasty of Sons of Heaven were called "King," and not "Emperor" though their supreme position was as fully imperial as that of previous dynastic monarchs, and they were, in fact, "Emperors" as we now understand that word in Europe. At the same time that the Bamboo Annals were unearthed, there were also found copies of some of the old "cla.s.sics" or "Scripture," and a hitherto unknown book called "the Story of the Son of Heaven Muh," all, of course, written in the same ancient script. This Son of Heaven (a term applied to all the Emperors of China, no matter whether they styled themselves Emperor, King, or August Emperor) was supposed to have travelled far west, and to have had interviews with a foreign prince, who, as his land too, was transcribed as _Siw.a.n.gmu_. The subject will be touched upon more in detail in another chapter; but, for the present, it will be useful to say that, in the opinion of one very learned sinologist, all evidence points clearly to this expedition having been undertaken by Duke Muh of Ts'in, installed as he was in the old appanage of the emperors lost to the Tartars (as we have explained) in 771, and made over at the same time by the Emperor involved to the ancestors of Duke Muh. This view of the case is supported by the fact that in 664 B.C. Ts'in and Tsin, for some unknown reason, forced the Tartars of Kwa Chou to migrate into China, which migration was subsequently alluded to by a Tartar chief (when attending a Chinese durbar in 559 B.C.) as a well- known historical fact. It was undoubtedly the practice of semi- Chinese states, such as Ts'u, Wu, Yueh, and Shuh (the last is the modern Sz Ch'wan province, and its history was only discovered long after Confucius' time), to call themselves "Kings,"

"Emperors," and "Sons of Heaven," in their own country (just as the tributary King of Annam always did until the French a.s.sumed a protectorate over him; and just as the tributary j.a.panese did before they officially announced the fact to China in the seventh century A.D.); and there are many indications that Ts'in did, or at least might have done and would like to have done, the same thing. Hence, when the story of Muh was discovered, the literary manipulators--even if they did not really believe that it positively must refer to the Emperor Muh-might well have honestly doubted whether the story referred to Ts'in or to the Emperor; or might well have decided to incorporate it with orthodox history, as a strengthening factor in support of the theory of one single and indivisible imperial dignity; just as, again, in the seventh century and eighth century A.D., the j.a.panese manipulators of their traditional history incorporated hundreds, not to say thousands of Chinese historical facts and speeches, and worked them into their own historical episodes and into their own emperors' mouths, for the honour and glory of Dai Nippon (Great j.a.pan).

After the death of the Second Protector in 628 B.C., there was a continuous struggle between Tsin and Ts'in on the one hand, and between Tsin and Ts'u on the other. Meanwhile Ts'i had all its own work cut out in order to keep the Tartars off the right bank of the Yellow River in its lower course, and in order to protect the orthodox Chinese states, Lu, Sung, Wei, etc., from their attacks; but Ts'i never again after this date put in a formal claim to be Protector, although in 610 she led a coalition of princes against an offending member, and thus practically acted as Protector.

In addition to the Chinese adviser at the disposal of Ts'in, in the year 626 the King (or a king) of the Tartars supplied Duke Muh with a very able Tartar adviser of Tsin descent; i.e. his ancestors had in past times migrated to Tartarland, though he himself still "spoke the Tsin dialect," and must have had considerable literary capacity, as he was an author. Ts'in was now, in addition to being, if only informally, a federal Chinese state, also supreme suzerain over all the Tartar princ.i.p.alities within reach; well supplied, moreover, with expert advisers for both cla.s.ses of work. All this is important in view of the pre- eminency of Ts'in when the time came, 400 years later, to abolish the meticulous feudal system altogether.

CHAPTER XIV

MORE ON PROTECTORS

The Five Tyrants, or Protectors, are usually considered to be the five personages we have mentioned; to wit, in order of succession, the Marquess of Ts'i (679-643), under whose reign the great economist, statesman, and philosopher Kwan-tsz raised this far eastern part of China to a hitherto unheard-of pitch of material prosperity; the Marquess of Tsin (632-628), a romantic prince, more Turkish than Chinese, who was the first va.s.sal prince openly to treat the Emperor as a puppet; the Duke of Sung (died 637), representing the imperial Shang dynasty ejected by the Chou family in 1122, whose ridiculous chivalry failed, however, to secure him the effective support of the other Chinese princes; the Earl of Ts'in (died 621) who was, as we see, quietly creating a great Tartar dominion, and a.s.similating it to Chinese ways in the west; and the King of Ts'u (died 591), who, besides taking his place amongst the recognized federal princes, and annexing innumerable petty Chinese princ.i.p.alities in the Han River and Hwai River basins, had been for several generations quietly extending his dominions at the expense of what we now call the provinces of Sz Ch'wan, Kiang Si, Hu Kw.a.n.g-perhaps even Yun Nan and Kwei Chou; Certainly Kiang Su and Cheh Kiang, and possibly in a loose way the coast regions of modern Fuh Kien and the Two Kw.a.n.g; but it cannot be too often repeated that if any thing intimate was known of the Yang-tsz basin, it was only Ts'u (in its double character of independent local empire as well as Chinese federal prince) that knew, or could have known, any thing about it; just as, if any thing specific was known of the Far West, Turkestan, the Tarim valley, and the Desert, it was only Ts'in (in its double character of independent Tartar empire as well as Chinese federal prince) that knew, or could know, any thing about them. Ts'i and Tsin were also Tartar powers, at least in the sense that they knew how to keep off the particular Tartars known to them, and how to make friendly alliances with them, thus availing themselves, on the one hand, of Tartar virility, and faithful on the other to orthodox Chinese culture. So that, with the exception of the pedantic Duke of Sung, who was summarily snuffed out after a year or two of brief light by the l.u.s.ty King of Ts'u, all the nominal Five Protectors of China were either half-barbarian rulers or had pa.s.sed through the crucible of barbarian ordeals. Finally, so vague were the claims and services of Sung, Ts'u, and Ts'in, from a protector point of view, that for the purposes of this work, we only really recognize two, the First Protector (of Ts'i) and, after a struggle, the Second Protector (of Tsin): at most a third,--Ts'u.

But although the Chinese historians thus loosely confine the Five- Protector period to less than a century of time, it is a fact that Ts'u and Tsin went on obstinately struggling for the hegemony, or for practical predominance, for at least another 200 years; besides, Ts'in, Ts'u, and Sung were never formally nominated by the Emperor as Protectors, nor were they ever accepted as such by the Chinese federal princes in the permanent and definite way that Ts'i and Tsin had been and were accepted. Moreover, the barbarian states of Wu and Yueh each in turn acted very effectively as Protector, and are never included in the Five-Great-Power series.

The fact is, the Chinese have never grasped the idea of principles in history: their annals are mere diaries of events; and when once an apparently definite "period" is named by an annalist, they go on using it, quite regardless of its inconsistency when confronted with facts adverse to a logical acceptance of it.

The situation was this: Tsin and Ts'u were at perpetual loggerheads about the small Chinese states that lay between them, more especially about the state of Cheng, which, though small, was of quite recent imperial stock, and was, moreover, well supplied with brains. Tsin and Ts'in were at perpetual loggerheads about the old Tsin possessions on the west bank of the Yellow River, which, running from the north to the south, lay between them; and about their rival claims to influence the various nomadic Tartar tribes living along both the banks, Tsin and Ts'i were often engaged in disputes about Lu, Wei, and other orthodox states situated in the Lower Yellow River valley running from the west to the east and north-east; also in questions concerning eastern barbarian states inhabiting the whole coast region, and concerning the petty Chinese states which had degenerated, and whose manners savoured of barbarian ways. Thus Ts'in and Ts'u, and also to some extent Ts'i and Ts'u, had a regular tendency to ally themselves against Tsin's flanks, and it was therefore always Tsin's policy as the "middle man" to obstruct communications between Ts'in and Ts'u, and between Ts'i and Ts'u. In 580 Tsin devised a means of playing off a similar flanking game upon Ts'u: negotiations were opened with Wu, which completely barbarous state only begins to appear in history at all at about this period, all the kings having manifestly phonetic barbarian names, which mean absolutely nothing (beyond conveying the sound) as expressed in Chinese, Wu was taught the art of war, as we have seen, by (page 34) a Ts'u traitor who had fled to Tsin and taken service there; and the King of Wu soon made things so uncomfortable for Ts'u that the latter in turn tried by every means to block the way between Tsin and Wu.

Within a single generation Wu was so civilized that one of the royal princes was sent the rounds of the Chinese states as special amba.s.sador, charged, under the convenient cloak of seeking for civilization, ritual, and music, with the duty of acquiring political and strategical knowledge. This prince so favourably impressed the orthodox statesmen of Ts'i, Lu, Tsin, and Wei (the ruling family of this state, like that of Sung, was, until it revolted in 1106 B.C. against the new Chou dynasty, of Shang dynasty origin, and the Yellow River ran through it northwards), that he was everywhere deferentially received _as_ an equal: his tomb is still in existence, about ten miles from the treaty- port of c.h.i.n.kiang, and the inscription upon it, in ancient characters, was written by Confucius himself, who, though a boy of eight when the Wu prince visited Lu in 544, may well have seen the prince in the flesh elsewhere, for the latter lived to prevent a war with Ts'u in 485; i.e. he lived to within six years of Confucius' death: he is known, too, to have visited Tsin on a spying mission in 515 B.C. The original descent of the first voluntarily barbarous Wu princes from the same grandfather as the Chou emperors would afford ample basis for the full recognition of a Wu prince by the orthodox as their equal, especially when his manners were softened by rites and music. It was like an oriental prince being feted and invested in Europe, so long as he should conform to the conventional dress and mannerisms of "society."

Just as Wu had been quietly submissive to Ts'u until the opportunity came to revolt, so did the still more barbarous state of Yueh, lying to the south-east of and tributary to Wu as her mesne lord, eagerly seize the opportunity of attacking Wu when the common suzerain, Ts'u, required it. The wars of Wu and Yueh are almost entirely naval, and, so far as the last-named state is concerned, it is never reported as having used war-chariots at all. Wu adopted the Chinese chariot as rapidly as it had re- adopted the Chinese civilization, abandoned by the first colonist princes in 1200 B.C.; but of course these chariots were only for war in China, on the flat Chinese plains; they were totally impracticable in mountainous countries, except along the main routes, and useless (as Major Bruce shows) in regions cut up by gulleys; even now no one ever sees a two-wheeled vehicle in the Shanghai-Ningpo region. It must, therefore, always be remembered that Wu, though barbarous in its population, was, in its origin as an organized system of rule, a colony created by certain ancestors of the founder of the Chou dynasty, who had voluntarily gone off to carve out an appanage in the Jungle; i.e. in the vague unknown dominion later called Ts'u, of which dominion all coast regions were a part, so far as they could be reduced to submission. This gave the Kings of Wu, though barbarian, a pretext for claiming equality with, and even seniority over Tsin, the first Chou-born prince of which was junior in descent to most of the other enfeoffed va.s.sals of the imperial clan-name. In 502 Wu armies even threatened the northern state of Ts'i, and a.s.serted in China generally a brief authority akin to that of Protector. Ts'i was obliged to buy itself off by marrying a princess of the blood to the heir-apparent of Wu, an act which two centuries later excited the disgust of the philosopher Mencius. The great Ts'i statesman and writer Yen-tsz, whom we have already mentioned more than once, died in 500, and earlier in that year Confucius had become chief counsellor of Lu, which state, on account of Confucius' skill as a diplomat, nearly obtained the Protectorate. It was owing to the fear of this that the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Lu prince was attempted that year, as narrated in Chapter IX. In order to understand how Wu succeeded in reaching Lu and Ts'i, it must be recollected that the river Sz, which still runs from east to west past Confucius's birthplace, and now simply feeds the Grand Ca.n.a.l, then flowed south-east along the line of the present ca.n.a.l and entered the Hwai River near Su-chou. Moreover, there was at times boat- communication between the Sz and the Yellow River, though the precise channel is not now known. Consequently, the Wu fleets had no difficulty in sailing northwards first by sea and then up the Hwai and Sz Rivers. Besides, in 485, the King of Wu began what we now call the Grand Ca.n.a.l by joining as a beginning the Yang-tsz River with the Hwai River, and then carrying the ca.n.a.l beyond the Hwai to the state of Sung, which state was then disputing with Lu the possession of territory on the east bank of the Sz, whilst Ts'u was pushing her annexations up to the west bank of the same river. There were in all twelve minor orthodox states between the Sz and the Hwai. In 482 the all-powerful King of Wu held a genuine durbar as Protector, at a place in modern Ho Nan province, north of the Yellow River as it now runs, but at that time a good distance to the south-east of it. This is one of the most celebrated meetings in Chinese history, partly because Wu successfully a.s.serted political pre-eminence over Tsin; partly because Confucius falsifies the true facts out of shame (as we have seen he did when Ts'u similarly seized the first place over Tsin); and partly owing to the shrewd diplomacy of the King of Wu, who had learnt by express messenger that the King of Ytieh was marching on his capital, and who had the difficult double task to accomplish of carrying out a "bluff," and operating a retreat without showing his weak hand to either side, or losing his army exposed between two foes.

In 473, after long and desperate fighting, Wu was, however, at last annihilated by Yiieh, which state was now unanimously voted Protector, _Vae victis!_ The Yueh capital was promptly removed from near the modern Shao-hing (west of Ningpo) far away north to what is now practically the German colony of Kiao Chou; but, though a maritime power of very great-strength, Yiieh never succeeded in establishing any real land influence in the Hwai Valley. During her short protectorate she rectified the River Sz question by forcing Sung to make over to Lu the land on the east bank of the River Sz.

CHAPTER XV

STATE INTERCOURSE

Whatever may be the reason why details of interstate movement are lacking up to 842 B.C., it is certain that, from the date of the Emperor's flight eastwards in 771, the utmost activity prevailed between state and state within the narrow area to which, as we have seen, the federated Chinese empire was confined. Confucius'

history, covering the 250-year period subsequent to 722, consists largely of statements that this duke visited that country, or returned from it, or drew up a treaty with it, or negotiated a marriage with it. "Society," in a political sense, consisted of the four great powers, Ts'in, Tsin, Ts'i, and Ts'u, surrounding the purely Chinese enclave; and of the innumerable petty Chinese states, mostly of n.o.ble and ancient lineage, only half a dozen of them of any size, which formed the enclave in question, and were surrounded by Ts'in, Tsin, Ts'i, and Ts'u, to the west, north, east, and south. Secondary states in extent and in military power, like Lu, CHeNG, and Wei, whilst having orthodox and in some cases barbarian sub-va.s.sals of their own, were themselves, if not va.s.sals to, at all events under the predominant influence of, one or the other of the four great powers. Thus Lu was at first nearly always a handmaid of Ts'i, but later fell under the influence of Tsin, Ts'u, and Wu; Cheng always coquetted between Tsin and Ts'u, not out of love for either, but in order to protect her own independence; and so on with the rest. If we inquire what a really small state meant in those days, the answer is that the modern walled city, with its district of several hundred square miles lying around it, was (and usually still is) the equivalent of the ancient princ.i.p.ality; and proof of that lies in the fact that one of the literary designations of what we now term a "district magistrate" is still "city marquess." Another proof is that in ancient times "your state" was a recognized way of saying "your capital town"; and "my poor town" was the polite way of saying "our country"; both expressions still used in elegant diplomatic composition.

This being so, and it having besides been the practice for a visiting duke always to take along with him a "minister in attendance," small wonder that prominent Chinese statesmen from the orthodox states were all personal friends, or at least correspondents and acquaintances, who had thus frequent opportunity of comparing political notes. To this day there are no serious dialect differences whatever in the ancient central area described in the first chapter, nor is there any reason to suppose that the statesmen and scholars who thus often met in conclave had any difficulty in making themselves mutually understood. The "dialects"' of which we hear so much in modern times (which, none the less, are all of them pure Chinese, except that the syllables differ, just as _coeur, cuore, and _corazon, coracao_, differ from _cor_), all belong to the southern coasts, which were practically unknown to imperial China in Confucius' time. The Chinese word which we translate "mandarin" also means "public" or "common," and "mandarin dialect" really means "current" or "common speech,"

such as is, and was, spoken with no very serious modifications all over the enclave; and also in those parts of Ts'in, Tsin, Ts'i, and Ts'u, which immediately impinged upon the enclave, in the ratio of their proximity. Finally, Shen Si, Shan Si, Shan Tung, and Hu Kw.a.n.g are still called Ts'in, Tsin, Ts'i, and Ts'u in high-cla.s.s official correspondence; and so with all other place-names. China has never lost touch with antiquity.

There is record for nearly every thing: the only difficulty is to separate what is relevant from what is irrelevant in the ma.s.s of confused _data_.

Another matter must be considered. Although the Chinese never had a caste system in the Hindoo sense, there is, as we have stated once before, every reason to believe that the ruling cla.s.ses and the educated cla.s.ses were nearly all n.o.bles, in the sense that they were all lineal or branch descendants, whether by first- cla.s.s wife or by concubine, of either the ruling dynastic family or of some previous imperial dynastic family. Some families were by custom destined for hereditary ministers, others for hereditary envoys, others again for hereditary soldiers; not, it is true, by strict rule, but because the ancient social idea favoured the descent of office, or land, or trade, or craft from father to son.

This, indeed, was part of the celebrated Kwan-tsz's economic philosophy. Thus generation after generation of statesmen and scholars kept in steady touch with one another, exactly as our modern scientists of the first rank, each as a link, form an unbroken intimate chain from Newton down to Lord Kelvin, outside which pale the ordinary layman stands a comparative stranger to the _arcana_ within.

Kwan-tsz, the statesman-philosopher of Ts'i, and in a sense the founder of Chinese economic science, was himself a scion of the imperial Chou clan; every writer on political economy subsequent to 643 B.C. quotes his writings, precisely as every European philosophical writer cites Bacon. Quite a galaxy of brilliant statesmen and writers, a century after Kwan-tsz, shed l.u.s.tre upon the Confucian age (550-480), and nearly all of them were personal friends either of Confucius or of each other, or of both. Thus Tsz-ch'an of CHeNG, senior to Confucius, but beloved and admired by him, was son of a reigning duke, and a prince of the ducal CHeNG family, which again was descended from a son of the Emperor who fled in 842 B.C.