Man, Past and Present Part 22

These Shan alphabets of Hindu origin are supposed by de Lacouperie to be connected with the writing systems which have been credited to the Mossos, Lolos, and some other hill peoples about the Chinese and Indo-Chinese borderlands. At Lan-Chu in the Lolo country Prince Henri found that MSS. were very numerous, and he was shown some very fine specimens "enlumines." Here, he tells us, the script is still in use, being employed jointly with Chinese in drawing up legal doc.u.ments connected with property. He was informed that this Lolo script comprised 300 characters, read from top to bottom and from left to right[450], although other authorities say from right to left.

Of the Lolo he gives no specimens[451], but reproduces two or three pages of a Mos...o...b..ok with transliteration and translation. Other specimens, but without explanation, were already known through Gill and DesG.o.dins, and their decipherment had exercised the ingenuity of several Chinese scholars. Their failure to interpret them is now accounted for by Prince Henri, who declares that, "strictly speaking the Mossos have no writing system. The magicians keep and still make copy-books full of hieroglyphics; each page is divided into little sections (_cahiers_) following horizontally from left to right, in which are inscribed one or more somewhat rough figures, heads of animals, men, houses, conventional signs representing the sky or lightning, and so on." Some of the magicians expounded two of the books, which contained invocations, beginning with the creation of the world, and winding up with a catalogue of all the evils threatening mortals, but to be averted by being pious, that is, by making gifts to the magicians. The same ideas are always expressed by the same signs; yet the magicians declared that there was no alphabet, the hieroglyphs being handed down bodily from one expert to another. Nevertheless Prince Henri looks on this as one of the first steps in the history of writing; "originally many of the Chinese characters were simply pictorial, and if the Mossos, instead of being hemmed in, had acquired a large expansion, their sacred books might also perhaps have given birth to true characters[452]."

Although now "hemmed in," the Mossos are a historical and somewhat cultured people, belonging to the same group as the _Iungs_ (_Njungs_), who came from the regions north-east of Tibet, and appeared on the Chinese frontiers about 600 B.C. They are referred to in the Chinese records of 796 A.D., when they were reduced by the king of Nanchao.

After various vicissitudes they recognised the Chinese suzerainty in the fourteenth century, and were finally subdued in the eighteenth. De Lacouperie[453] thinks they are probably of the same origin as the Lolos, the two languages having much in common, and the names of both being Chinese, while the Lolos and the Mossos call themselves respectively _Nossu_ (_Nesu_) and _Nashi_ (_Nashri_).

Everywhere amongst these border tribes are met groups of aborigines, who present more or less regular features which are described by various travellers as "Caucasic" or "European." Thus the _Kiu-tse_, who are the _Khanungs_ of the English maps, and are akin to the large _Lu-tse_ family (_Melam_, _Anu_, _Diasu_, etc.), reminded Prince Henri of some Europeans of his acquaintance[454], and he speaks of the light colour, straight nose and eyes, and generally fine type of the Yayo (Yao), as the Chinese call them, but whose real name is _Lin-tin-yu_.

The same Caucasic element reappears in a p.r.o.nounced form amongst the indigenous populations of Tonking, to whom A. Billet has devoted an instructive monograph[455]. This observer, who declares that these aborigines are quite distinct both from the Chinese and the Annamese, groups them in three main divisions--_Tho_, _Nong_, and _Man_[456]--all collectively called _Moi_, _Muong_, and _Myong_ by the Annamese. The Thos, who are the most numerous, are agriculturists, holding all the upland valleys and thinning off towards the wooded heights. They are tall compared to the Mongols (5 ft. 6 or 7 in.), lighter than the Annamese, round-headed, with oval face, deep-set straight eyes, low cheek-bones, straight and even slightly aquiline nose not depressed at root, and muscular frames. They are a patient, industrious, and frugal people, now mainly subject to Chinese and Annamese influences in their social usages and religion. Very peculiar nevertheless are some of their surviving customs, such as the feast of youth, the pastime of swinging, and especially chess played with living pieces, whose movements are directed by two players. The language appears to be a Shan dialect, and to this family the writer affiliates both the Thos and the Nongs. The latter are a much more mixed people, now largely a.s.similated to the Chinese, although the primitive type still persists, especially amongst the women, as is so often the case. A. Billet tells us that he often met Nong women "with light and sometimes even red hair[457]."

It is extremely interesting to learn that the Mans came traditionally "from a far-off western land where their forefathers were said to have lived in contact with peoples of white blood thousands of years ago."

This tradition, which would identify them with the above-mentioned Man-tse, is supported by their physical appearance--long head, oval face, small cheek-bones, eyes without the Mongol fold, skin not yellowish but rather "browned by the sun," regular features--in nothing recalling the traits of the yellow races.

Let us now turn to M. R. Verneau's comments on the rich materials brought together by A. Billet, in whom, "being not only a medical man, but also a graduate in the natural sciences, absolute confidence may be placed[458]."

"The Mans-Tien, the Mans-Coc, the Mans-Meo (Miao, Miao-tse, or Mieu) present a pretty complete ident.i.ty with the Pan-y and the Pan-yao of South Kw.a.n.g-si; they are the debris of a very ancient race, which with T. de Lacouperie may be called pre-Chinese. This early race, which bore the name of _Pan-hu_ or _Ngao_, occupied Central China before the arrival of the Chinese. According to M. d'Hervey de Saint-Denys, the mountains and valleys of Kwei-chau where these Miao-tse still survive were the cradle of the Pan-hu. In any case it seems certain that the T'hai and the Man race came from Central Asia, and that, from the anthropological standpoint, they differ altogether from the Mongol group represented by the Chinese and the Annamese. The Man especially presents striking affinities with the Aryan type."

Thus is again confirmed by the latest investigations, and by the conclusions of some of the leading members of the French school of anthropology, the view first advanced by me in 1879, that peoples of the Caucasic (here called "Aryan") division had already spread to the utmost confines of south-east Asia in remote prehistoric times, and had in this region even preceded the first waves of Mongolic migration radiating from their cradle-land on the Tibetan plateau[459].

Reference was above made to the singular lack of political cohesion at all times betrayed by the Tai-Shan peoples. The only noteworthy exception is the Siamese branch, which forms the bulk of the population in the Menam basin. In this highly favoured region of vast hill-encircled alluvial plains of inexhaustible fertility, traversed by numerous streams navigable for light craft, and giving direct access to the inland waters of Malaysia, the Southern Shans were able at an early date to merge the primitive tribal groups in a great nationality, and found a powerful empire, which at one time dominated most of Indo-China and the Malay Peninsula.

Siam, alone of all the Shan states, even still maintains a precarious independence, although now again reduced by European aggression to little more than the natural limits of the fluvial valley, which is usually regarded by the Southern Shans as the home of their race. Yet they appear to have been here preceded by the Caucasic Khmers (Cambojans), whose advent is referred in the national chronicles to the year 543 B.C. and who, according to the Hindu records, were expelled about 443 A.D. It was through these Khmers, and not directly from India, that the "Sayamas" received their Hindu culture, and the Siamese annals, mingling fact with fiction, refer to the miraculous birth of the national hero, Phra-Ruang, who threw off the foreign yoke, declared the people henceforth T'hai, "Freemen," invented the present Siamese alphabet, and ordered the Khom (Cambojan) to be reserved in future for copying the sacred writings.

The introduction of Buddhism is a.s.signed to the year 638 A.D., one of the first authentic dates in the native records. The ancient city of Labong had already been founded (575), and other settlements now followed rapidly, always in the direction of the south, according as the Shan race steadily advanced towards the seaboard, driving before them or mingling with Khmers, Lawas, Karens, and other aborigines, some now extinct, some still surviving on the wooded uplands and plateaux encircling the Menam valley. Ayuthia, the great centre of national life in later times, dates only from the year 1350, when the empire had received its greatest expansion, comprising the whole of Camboja, Pegu, Tena.s.serim, and the Malay Peninsula, and extending its conquering arms across the inland waters as far as Java[460]. Then followed the disastrous wars with Burma, which twice captured and finally destroyed Ayuthia (1767), now a picturesque elephant-park visited by tourists from the present capital, Bangkok, founded in 1772 a little lower down the Menam.

But the elements of decay existed from the first in the inst.i.tution of slavery or serfdom, which was not restricted to a particular cla.s.s, as in other lands, but, before the modern reforms, extended in principle to all the kings' subjects in mockery declared "Freemen" by the founders of the monarchy. This, however, may be regarded as perhaps little more than a legal fiction, for at all times cla.s.s distinctions were really recognised, comprising the members of the royal family--a somewhat numerous group--the n.o.bles named by the king, the _leks_ or va.s.sals, and the people, these latter being again subdivided into three sections, those liable to taxation, those subject to forced labour, and the slaves proper. But so little developed was the sentiment of personal dignity and freedom, that anybody from the highest n.o.ble to the humblest citizen might at any moment lapse into the lowest category. Like most Mongoloid peoples, the Siamese are incurable gamblers, and formerly it was an everyday occurrence for a freeman to stake all his goods and chattels, wives, children, and self, on the hazard of the die.

Yet the women, like their Burmese sisters, have always held a somewhat honourable social position, being free to walk abroad, go shopping, visit their friends, see the sights, and take part in the frequent public feastings without restriction. Those, however, who brought no dower and had to be purchased, might again be sold at any time, and many thus constantly fell from the dignity of matrons to the position of the merest drudges without rights or privileges of any kind. These strange relations were endurable, thanks to the genial nature of the national temperament, by which the hard lot of the thralls was softened, and a little light allowed to penetrate into the darkest corners[461] of the social system. The open slave-markets, which in the va.s.sal Lao states fostered systematic raiding-expeditions amongst the unreduced aborigines, were abolished in 1873, and since 1890 all born in slavery are free on reaching their 21st year.

Siamese Buddhism is a slightly modified form of that prevailing in Ceylon, although strictly practised but by few. There are two cla.s.ses or "sects," the reformers who attach more importance to the observance of the canon law than to meditation, and the old believers, some devoted to a contemplative life, others to the study of the sunless wilderness of Buddhist writings. But, beneath it all, spirit or devil-worship is still rife, and in many districts pure animism is practically the only religion. Even temples and shrines have been raised to the countless G.o.ds of land and water, woods, mountains, villages and households. To these G.o.ds are credited all sorts of calamities, and to prevent them from getting into the bodies of the dead the latter are brought out, not through door or window, but through a breach in the wall, which is afterwards carefully built up. Similar ideas prevail amongst many other peoples, both at higher and lower levels of culture, for nothing is more ineradicable than such popular beliefs a.s.sociated with the relations presumed to exist between the present and the after life.

Incredible sums are yearly lavished in offerings to the spirits, which give rise to an endless round of feasts and revels, and also in support of the numerous Buddhist temples, convents, and their inmates. The treasures acc.u.mulated in the "royal cloisters" and other shrines represent a great part of the national savings--investments for the other world, among which are said to be numerous gold statues glittering with rubies, sapphires, and other priceless gems. But in these matters the taste of the _talapoins_[462], as the priests were formerly called, is somewhat catholic, including pictures of reviews and battle-scenes from the European ill.u.s.trated papers, and sometimes even statues of Napoleon set up by the side of Buddha.

So numerous, absurd, and exacting are the rules of the monastic communities that, but for the aid of the temple servants and novices, existence would be impossible. A list of such puerilities occupies several pages in A. R. Colquhoun's work _Amongst the Shans_ (219-231), and from these we learn that the monks must not dig the ground, so that they can neither plant nor sow; must not boil rice, as it would kill the germ; eat corn for the same reason; climb trees lest a branch get broken; kindle a flame, as it destroys the fuel; put out a flame, as that also would extinguish life; forge iron, as sparks would fly out and perish; swing their arms in walking; wink in speaking; buy or sell; stretch the legs when sitting; breed poultry, pigs, or other animals; mount an elephant or palanquin; wear red, black, green, or white garments; mourn for the dead, etc., etc. In a word all might be summed up by a general injunction neither to do anything, nor not to do anything, and then despair of attaining _Nirvana_; for it would be impossible to conceive of any more pessimistic system in theory[463].

Practically it is otherwise, and in point of fact the utmost religious indifference prevails amongst all cla.s.ses.

Within the Mongolic division it would be difficult to imagine any more striking contrast than that presented by the gentle, kindly, and on the whole not ill-favoured Siamese, and their hard-featured, hard-hearted, and grasping Annamese neighbours. Let anyone, who may fancy there is little or nothing in blood, pa.s.s rapidly from the bright, genial--if somewhat listless and corrupt--social life of Bangkok to the dry, uncongenial moral atmosphere of Ha-noi or Saigon, and he will be apt to modify his views on that point. Few observers have a good word to say for the Tonkingese, the Cochin-Chinese, or any other branch of the Annamese family, and some even of the least prejudiced are so outspoken that we must needs infer there is good ground for their severe strictures on these strange, uncouth materialists. Buddhists of course they are nominally; but of the moral sense they have little, unless it be (amongst the lettered cla.s.ses) a pale reflection of the pale Chinese ethical code. The whole region in fact is a sort of attenuated China, to which it owes its arts and industries, its letters, moral systems, general culture, and even a large part of its inhabitants. _Giao-shi_ (_Kiao-shi_), the name of the aborigines, said to mean "Bifurcated," or "Cross-toes[464]," in reference to the wide s.p.a.ce between the great toe and the next, occurs in the legendary Chinese records so far back as 2285 B.C., since which period the two countries are supposed to have maintained almost uninterrupted relations, whether friendly or hostile, down to the present day. At first the Giao-shi were confined to the northern parts of Lu-kiang, the present Tonking, all the rest of the coastlands being held by the powerful Champa (Tsiampa) people, whose affinities are with the Oceanic populations. But in 218 B.C., Lu-kiang having been reduced and incorporated with China proper, a large number of Chinese emigrants settled in the country, and gradually merged with the Giao-shi in a single nationality, whose twofold descent is still reflected in the Annamese physical and mental characters.

This term Annam[465], however, did not come into use till the seventh century, when it was officially applied to the frontier river between China and Tonking, and afterwards extended to the whole of Tonking and Cochin-China. Tonking itself, meaning the "Eastern Court[466]," was originally the name only of the city of Ha-noi when it was a royal residence, but was later extended to the whole of the northern kingdom, whose true name is _Yueh-nan_. To this corresponded the southern Kwe-Chen-Ching, "Kingdom of Chen-Ching," which was so named in the ninth century from its capital Chen-Ching, and of which our Cochin-China appears to be a corrupt form.

But, amid all this troublesome political nomenclature, the dominant Annamese nation has faithfully preserved its h.o.m.ogeneous character, spreading, like the Siamese Shans, steadily southwards, and gradually absorbing the whole of the Champa domain to the southern extremity of the peninsula, as well as a large part of the ancient kingdom of Camboja about the Mekhong delta. They thus form at present the almost exclusive ethnical element throughout all the lowland and cultivated parts of Tonking, upper and lower Cochin-China and south Camboja, with a total population in 1898 of about twenty millions.

The Annamese are described in a semi-official report[467] as characterised by a high broad forehead, high cheek-bones, small crushed nose, rather thick lips, black hair, scant beard, mean height, coppery complexion, deceitful (_rusee_) expression, and rude or insolent bearing. The head is round (index 83 to 84) and the features are in general flat and coa.r.s.e, while to an ungainly exterior corresponds a harsh unsympathetic temperament. The Abbe Gagelin, who lived years in their midst, frankly declares that they are at once arrogant and dishonest, and dead to all the finer feelings of human nature, so that after years of absence the nearest akin will meet without any outward sign of pleasure or affection. Others go further, and J. G. Scott summed it all up by declaring that "the fewer Annamese there are, the less taint there is on the human race." No doubt Lord Curzon gives a more favourable picture, but this traveller spent only a short time in the country, and even he allows that they are "tricky and deceitful, disposed to thieve when they get the chance, mendacious, and incurable gamblers[468]."

Yet they have one redeeming quality, an intense love of personal freedom, strangely contrasting with the almost abject slavish spirit of the Siamese. The feeling extends to all cla.s.ses, so that servitude is held in abhorrence, and, as in Burma, a democratic sense of equality permeates the social system[469]. Hence, although the State has always been an absolute monarchy, each separate commune const.i.tutes a veritable little oligarchic commonwealth. This has come as a great surprise to the present French administrators of the country, who frankly declare that they cannot hope to improve the social or political position of the people by subst.i.tuting European for native laws and usages. The Annamese have in fact little to learn from western social inst.i.tutions.

Their language, spoken everywhere with remarkable uniformity, is of the normal Indo-Chinese isolating type, possessing six tones, three high, and three low, and written in ideographic characters based on the Chinese, but with numerous modifications and additions. But, although these are ill-suited for the purpose, the attempt made by the early Portuguese missionaries to subst.i.tute the so-called _quoc-ngu_, or Roman phonetic system, has been defeated by the conservative spirit of the people. Primary instruction has long been widely diffused, and almost everybody can read and write as many of the numerous hieroglyphs as are needed for the ordinary purpose of daily intercourse. Every village has its free school, and a higher range of studies is encouraged by the public examinations to which, as in China, all candidates for government appointments are subjected. Under such a scheme surprising results might be achieved, were the course of studies not based exclusively on the empty formulas of Chinese cla.s.sical literature. The subjects taught are for the most part puerile, and true science is replaced by the dry moral precepts of Confucius. One result amongst the educated cla.s.ses is a scoffing, sceptical spirit, free from all religious prejudice, and unhampered by theological creeds or dogmas, combined with a lofty moral tone, not always however in harmony with daily conduct.

Even more than in China, the family is the true base of the social system, the head of the household being not only the high-priest of the ancestral cult, but also a kind of patriarch enjoying almost absolute control over his children. In this respect the relations are somewhat one-sided, the father having no recognised obligations towards his offspring, while these are expected to show him perfect obedience in life and veneration after death. Besides this worship of ancestry and the Confucian ethical philosophy, a national form of Buddhism is prevalent. Some even profess all three of these so-called "religions,"

beneath which there still survive many of the primitive superst.i.tions a.s.sociated with a not yet extinct belief in spirits and the supernatural power of magicians. While the Buddhist temples are neglected and the few bonzes[470] despised, offerings are still made to the genii of agriculture, of the waters, the tiger, the dolphin, peace, war, diseases, and so forth, whose rude statues in the form of dragons or other fabulous monsters are even set up in the paG.o.das. Since the early part of the seventeenth century Roman Catholic missionaries have laboured with considerable success in this unpromising field, where the congregations were estimated in 1898 at about 900,000.

From Annam the ethnical transition is easy to China[471] and its teeming mult.i.tudes, regarding whose origins, racial and cultural, two opposite views at present hold the field. What may be called the old, but by no means the obsolete school, regards the Chinese populations as the direct descendants of the aborigines who during the Stone Ages entered the Hoang-ho valley probably from the Tibetan plateau, there developed their peculiar culture independently of foreign influences, and thence spread gradually southwards to the whole of China proper, extirpating, absorbing, or driving to the encircling western and southern uplands the ruder aborigines of the Yang-tse-Kiang and Si-Kiang basins.

In direct opposition to this view the new school, championed especially by T. de Lacouperie[472], holds that the present inhabitants of China are late intruders from south-western Asia, and that they arrived not as rude aborigines, but as a cultured people with a considerable knowledge of letters, science, and the arts, all of which they acquired either directly or indirectly from the civilised Akkado-Sumerian inhabitants of Babylonia.

Not merely a.n.a.logies and resemblances, but what are called actual ident.i.ties, are pointed out between the two cultures, and even between the two languages, sufficient to establish a common origin of both, Mesopotamia being the fountain-head, whence the stream flowed by channels not clearly defined to the Hoang-ho valley. Thus the Chin.

_yu_, originally _go_, is equated with Akkad _gu_, to speak; _ye_ with _ge_, night, and so on. Then the astronomic and chronologic systems are compared, Berossus and the cuneiform tablets dividing the prehistoric Akkad epoch into 10 periods of 10 kings, lasting 120 Sari, or 432,000 years, while the corresponding Chinese astronomic myth also comprises 10 kings (or dynasties) covering the same period of 432,000 years. The astronomic system credited to the emperor Yao (2000 B.C.) similarly corresponds with the Akkadian, both having the same five planets with names of like meaning, and a year of 12 months and 30 days, with the same cycle of intercalated days, while several of the now obsolete names of the Chinese months answer to those of the Babylonians. Even the name of the first Chinese emperor who built an observatory, Nai-Kw.a.n.g-ti, somewhat resembles that of the Elamite king, Kuder-na-hangti, who conquered Chaldaea about 2280 B.C.

All this can hardly be explained away as a mere series of coincidences; nevertheless neither Sinologues nor Akkadists are quite convinced, and it is obvious that many of the resemblances may be due to trade or intercourse both by the old overland caravan routes, and by the seaborne traffic from Eridu at the head of the Persian Gulf, which was a flourishing emporium 4000 or 5000 years ago.

But, despite some verbal a.n.a.logies, an almost insurmountable difficulty is presented by the Akkadian and Chinese languages, which no philological ingenuity can bring into such relation as is required by the hypothesis. T. G. Pinches has shown that at a very early period, say some 5000 years ago, Akkadian already consisted, "for the greater part, of words of one syllable," and was "greatly affected by phonetic decay, the result being that an enormous number of h.o.m.ophones were developed out of roots originally quite distinct[473]." This Akkadian scholar sends me a number of instances, such as _tu_ for _tura_, to enter; _ti_ for _tila_, to live; _du_ for _dumu_, son; _du_ for _dugu_, good, as in _Eridu_, for _Gurudugu_, "the good city," adding that "the list could be extended indefinitely[474]." But de Lacouperie's Bak tribes, that is, the first immigrants from south-west Asia, are not supposed to have reached North China till about 2500 or 3000 B.C., at which time the Chinese language was still in the untoned agglutinating state, with but few monosyllabic h.o.m.ophones, and consequently quite distinct from the Akkadian, as known to us from the a.s.syrian syllabaries, bilingual lists, and earlier tablets from Nippur or Lagash.

Hence the linguistic argument seems to fail completely, while the Babylonian origin of the Chinese writing system, or rather, the derivation of Chinese and Sumerian from some common parent in Central Asia, awaits further evidence. Many of the Chinese and Akkadian "line forms" collated by C. J. Ball[475] are so simple and, one might say, obvious, that they seem to prove nothing. They may be compared with such infantile utterances as _pa_, _ma_, _da_, _ta_, occurring in half the languages of the world, without proving a connection or affinity between any of them. But even were the common origin of the two scripts established, it would prove nothing as to the common origin of the two peoples, but only show cultural influences, which need not be denied.

But if Chinese origins cannot be clearly traced back to Babylonia, Chinese culture may still, in a sense, claim to be the oldest in the world, inasmuch as it has persisted with little change from its rise some 4500 years ago down to present times. All other early civilisations--Mesopotamian, Egyptian, a.s.syrian, Persian, h.e.l.lenic--have perished, or live only in their monuments, traditions, oral or written records. But the Chinese, despite repeated political and social convulsions, is still as deeply rooted in the past as ever, showing no break of continuity from the dim echoes of remote prehistoric ages down to the last revolution, and the establishment of the Republic.

These things touch the surface only of the great ocean of Chinese humanity, which is held together, not by any general spirit of national sentiment (all sentiment is alien from the Chinese temperament), nor by any community of speech, for many of the provincial dialects differ profoundly from each other, but by a prodigious power of inertia, which has. .h.i.therto resisted all attempts at change either by pressure from without, or by spontaneous impulse from within.

What they were thousands of years ago, the Chinese still are, a frugal, peace-loving, hard-working people, occupied mainly with tillage and trade, cultivating few arts beyond weaving, porcelain and metal work, but with a widely diffused knowledge of letters, and a writing system which still remains at the c.u.mbrous ideographic stage, needing as many different symbols as there are distinct concepts to be expressed. Yet the system has one advantage, enabling those who speak mutually unintelligible idioms to converse together, using the pencil instead of the tongue. For this very reason the attempts made centuries ago by the government to subst.i.tute a phonetic script had to be abandoned. It was found that imperial edicts and other doc.u.ments so written could not be understood by the populations speaking dialects different from the literary standard, whereas the hieroglyphs, like our ciphers 1, 2, 3 ..., could be read by all educated persons of whatever allied form of speech.

Originally the Chinese system, whether developed on the spot or derived from Akkadian or any other foreign source, was of course pictographic or ideographic, and it is commonly supposed to have remained at that stage ever since, the only material changes being of a graphic nature. The pictographs were conventionalised and reduced to their present form, but still remained ideograms supplemented by a limited number of phonetic determinants. But de Lacouperie has shown that this view is a mistake, and that the evolution from the pictograph to the phonetic symbol had been practically completed in China many centuries before the new era.

The _Ku-wen_ style current before the ninth century B.C. "was really the phonetic expression of speech[476]." But for the reason stated it had to be discontinued, and a return made to the earlier ideographic style. The change was effected about 820 B.C. by She Chou, minister of the Emperor Suen w.a.n.g, who introduced the _Ta-chuen_ style in which "he tried to speak to the eye and no longer to the ear," that is, he reverted to the earlier ideographic process, which has since prevailed.

It was simplified about 227 B.C. (_Siao Chuen_ style), and after some other modifications the present caligraphic form (_Kiai Shu_) was introduced by w.a.n.g Hi in 350 A.D. Thus one consequence of the "Expansion of China" was a reversion to barbarism, in respect at least of the national graphic system, by which Chinese thought and literature have been hampered for nearly 3000 years.

Written records, though at first mainly of a mythical character, date from about 3000 B.C.[477] Reference is made in the early doc.u.ments to the rude and savage times, which in China as elsewhere certainly preceded the historic period. Three different prehistoric ages are even discriminated, and tradition relates how Fu-hi introduced wooden, Thin-ming stone, and Shi-yu metal implements[478]. Later, when their origin and use were forgotten, the jade axes, like those from Yunnan, were looked on as bolts hurled to the earth by the G.o.d of thunder, while the arrow-heads, supposed to be also of divine origin, were endowed in the popular fancy with special virtues and even regarded as emblems of sovereignty. Thus may perhaps be explained the curious fact that in early times, before the twelfth century B.C., tribute in flint weapons was paid to the imperial government by some of the reduced wild tribes of the western uplands.

These men of the Stone and Metal Ages are no doubt still largely represented, not only amongst the rude hill tribes of the southern and western borderlands, but also amongst the settled and cultured lowlanders of the great fluvial valleys. The "Hundred Families," as the first immigrants called themselves, came traditionally from the north-western regions beyond the Hoang-ho. According to the Yu-kung their original home lay in the south-western part of Eastern Turkestan, whence they first migrated east to the oases north of the Nan-Shan range, and then, in the fourth millennium before the new era, to the fertile valleys of the Hoang-ho and its Hoe-ho tributary. Thence they spread slowly along the other great river valleys, partly expelling, partly intermingling with the aborigines, but so late as the seventh century B.C. were still mainly confined to the region between the Pe-ho and the lower Yang-tse-Kiang. Even here several indigenous groups, such as the Hoe, whose name survives in that of the Hoe river, and the La of the Shantong Peninsula, long held their ground, but all were ultimately absorbed or a.s.similated throughout the northern lands as far south as the left bank of the Yang-tse-Kiang.

Beyond this river many were also merged in the dominant people continually advancing southwards; but others, collectively or vaguely known as Si-fans, Mans, Miao-tse, Pa, Tho, Y-jen[479], Lolo, etc., were driven to the south-western highlands which they still occupy. Even some of the populations in the settled districts, such as the _Hok-los_[480], and _Hakkas_[481], of Kw.a.n.g-tung, and the _Pun-ti_[482] of the Canton district, are scarcely yet thoroughly a.s.similated. They differ greatly in temperament, usages, appearance, and speech from the typical Chinese of the Central and Northern provinces, whom in fact they look upon as "foreigners," and with whom they hold intercourse through "Pidgin English[483]," the _lingua franca_ of the Chinese seaboard[484].

Nevertheless a general h.o.m.ogeneous character is imparted to the whole people by their common political, social, and religious inst.i.tutions, and by that principle of convergence in virtue of which different ethnical groups, thrown together in the same area and brought under a single administration, tend to merge in a uniform new national type.

This general uniformity is conspicuous especially in the religious ideas which, except in the sceptical lettered circles, everywhere underlie the three recognised national religions, or "State Churches," as they might almost be called: _ju-kiao_, Confucianism; _tao-kiao_, Taoism; and _fo-kiao_, Buddhism (Fo = Buddha). The first, confined mainly to the educated upper cla.s.ses, is not so much a religion as a philosophic system, a frigid ethical code based on the moral and matter-of-fact teachings of Confucius[485]. Confucius was essentially a social and political reformer, who taught by example and precept; the main inducement to virtue being, not rewards or penalties in the after-life, but well- or ill-being in the present. His system is summed up in the expression "worldly wisdom," as embodied in such popular sayings as: A friend is hardly made in a year, but unmade in a moment; When safe remember danger, in peace forget not war; Filial father, filial son, unfilial father, unfilial son; In washing up, plates and dishes may get broken; Don't do what you would not have known; Thatch your roof before the rain, dig the well before you thirst; The gambler's success is his ruin; Money goes to the gambling den as the criminal to execution (never returns); Money hides many faults; Stop the hand, stop the mouth (stop work and starve); To open a shop is easy, to keep it open hard; Win your lawsuit and lose your money.

Although he inst.i.tuted no religious system, Confucius nevertheless enjoined the observance of the already existing forms of worship, and after death became himself the object of a widespread cult, which still persists. "In every city there is a temple, built at the public expense, containing either a statue of the philosopher, or a tablet inscribed with his t.i.tles. Every spring and autumn worship is paid to him in these temples by the chief official personages of the city. In the schools also, on the first and fifteenth of each month, his t.i.tle being written on red paper and affixed to a tablet, worship is performed in a special room by burning incense and candles, and by prostrations[486]."

Taoism, a sort of pantheistic mysticism, called by its founder, Lao-tse (600 B.C.), the _Tao_, or "way of salvation," was embodied in the formula "matter and the visible world are merely manifestations of a sublime, eternal, incomprehensible principle." It taught, in antic.i.p.ation of Sakya-Muni, that by controlling his pa.s.sions man may escape or cut short an endless series of transmigrations, and thus arrive by the Tao at everlasting bliss--sleep? unconscious rest or absorption in the eternal essence? Nirvana? It is impossible to tell from the lofty but absolutely unintelligible language in which the master's teachings are wrapped.

But it matters little, because his disciples have long forgotten the principles they never understood, and Taoism has almost everywhere been transformed to a system of magic a.s.sociated with the never-dying primeval superst.i.tions. Originally there was no hierarchy of priests, the only specially religious cla.s.s being the Ascetics, who pa.s.sed their lives absorbed in the contemplation of the eternal verities. But out of this cla.s.s, drawn together by their common interests, was developed a kind of monasticism, with an organised brotherhood of astrologers, magicians, Shamanists, somnambulists, "mediums," "thought-readers,"

charlatans and impostors of all sorts, sheltered under a threadbare garb of religion.

Buddhism also, although of foreign origin, has completely conformed to the national spirit, and is now a curious blend of Hindu metaphysics with the primitive Chinese belief in spirits and a deified ancestry. In every district are practised diverse forms of worship between which no clear dividing line can be drawn, and, as in Annam, the same persons may be at once followers of Confucius, Lao-tse, and Buddha. In fact such was the position of the Emperor, who belonged _ex officio_ to all three of these State religions, and scrupulously took part in their various observances. There is even some truth in the Chinese view that "all three make but one religion," the first appealing to man's moral nature, the second to the instinct of self-preservation, the third to the higher sphere of thought and contemplation.

But behind, one might say above it all, the old animism still prevails, manifested in a mult.i.tude of superst.i.tious practices, whose purport is to appease the evil and secure the favour of the good spirits, the _Feng-shui_ or _Fung-shui_, "air and water" genii, who have to be reckoned with in all the weightiest as well as the most trivial occurrences of daily life. These with the ghosts of their ancestors, by whom the whole land is haunted, are the bane of the Chinaman's existence. Everything depends on maintaining a perfect balance between the Fung-shui, that is, the two principles represented by the "White Tiger" and the "Azure Dragon," who guard the approaches of every dwelling, and whose opposing influences have to be nicely adjusted by the well-paid professors of the magic arts. At the death of the emperor Tung Chih (1875) a great difficulty was raised by the State astrologers, who found that the realm would be endangered if he were buried, according to rule, in the imperial cemetery 100 miles west of Pekin, as his father reposed in the other imperial cemetery situated the same distance east of the capital. For some subtle reason the balance would have been disturbed between Tiger and Dragon, and it took nine months to settle the point, during which, as reported by the American Legation, the whole empire was stirred, councils of State agitated, and 50,000 expended to decide where the remains of a worthless and vicious young man should be interred.

Owing to the necessary disturbance of the ancestral burial places, much trouble has been antic.i.p.ated in the construction of the railways, for which concessions have now been granted to European syndicates. But an Englishman long resident in the country has declared that there will be no resistance on the part of the people. "The dead can be removed with due regard to Fung Shui; a few dollars will make that all right." This is fully in accordance with the thrifty character of the Chinese, which overrides all other considerations, as expressed in the popular saying: "With money you may move the G.o.ds; without it you cannot move men." But the G.o.ds may even be moved without money, or at least with spurious paper money, for it is a fixed belief of their votaries that, like mortals, they may be outwitted by such devices. When rallied for burning flash notes at a popular shrine, since no spirit-bank would cash them, a Chinaman retorted: "Why me burn good note? Joss no can savvy." In a similar spirit the G.o.d of war is hoodwinked by wooden boards hung on the ramparts of Pekin and painted to look like heavy ordnance.

In fact appearance, outward show, observance of the "eleventh commandment," in a word "face" as it is called, is everything in China.

"To understand, however imperfectly, what is meant by 'face,' we must take account of the fact that as a race the Chinese have a strong dramatic instinct. Upon very slight provocation any Chinese regards himself in the light of an actor in a drama. A Chinese thinks in theatrical terms. If his troubles are adjusted he speaks of himself as having 'got off the stage' with credit, and if they are not adjusted he finds no way to 'retire from the stage.' The question is never of facts, but always of form. Once rightly apprehended, 'face' will be found to be in itself a key to the combination-lock of many of the most important characteristics of the Chinese[487]."

Of foreign religions Islam, next to Buddhism, has made most progress.