In 584 a Ts’u refugee in Tsin sends a writing to the leading general of Ts’u, threatening to be a thorn in his side. It is presumed that in all these cases the writing was on wood. The text of a declaration of war against Ts’u by Ts’in in 313 B.C., at a time when these two powers had ceased to be allies, and were competing for empire, refers to an agreement made three centuries earlier between the King of Ts’u and the Earl of Ts’in; this declaration was carved upon several stone tablets; but it does not appear upon what material the older agreement was carved. In 538, at a durbar held by Ts’u, Hiang Suh, the learned man of Sung, who has already been mentioned in Chapter XV. as the inventor of Peace Conferences in 546, and as one of the Confucian group of friends, remarked: “What I know of the diplomatic forms to be observed is only obtained from books.” A few years later, when the population of one of the small orthodox Chinese states was moved for political convenience by Ts’u away to another district, they were allowed to take with them “their maps, cadastral survey, and census records.”
There is an interesting statement in the _Kwoh Yü_, an ancillary history of these times, but touching more upon personal matters, usually considered to have been written by the same man that first expanded Confucius’ annals, to the effect that in 489 B.C. (when Confucius was wandering about on his travels, a disappointed and disgusted man) the King of Wu inflicted a crushing defeat upon Ts’i at a spot not far from the Lu frontier, and that he captured “the national books, 800 leather chariots, and 3000 cuirasses and shields.” If this translation be perfectly accurate, it is interesting as showing that Ts’i did possess _Kwoh-shu_, or “a State library,” or archives. But unfortunately two other histories mention the capture of a Ts’i general named Kwoh Hia, _alias_ Kwoh Hwei-tsz, so that there seems to be a doubt whether, in transcribing ancient texts, one character (_shu_) may not have been substituted for the other (_hia_). Two years later the barbarian king in question entered Lu, and made a treaty with that state upon equal terms.
Shortly after this date, the Chinese adviser who brought about the conquest of Wu by the equally barbarous Yiieh, had occasion to send a “closed letter” to a man living in Ts’u. When we come to later times, subsequent to the death of Confucius, we find written communications more commonly spoken of. Thus, in 313, Ts’i, enraged at the supposed faithlessness of Ts’u, “broke in two the Ts’u tally” and attached herself to Ts’in instead. This can only refer to a wooden “indenture” of which each party preserved a copy, each fitting ‘in, “dog’s teeth like,” as the Chinese still say, closely to the other. A few years later we find letters from Ts’i to Ts’u, holding forth the tempting project of a joint attack upon Ts’in; and also a letter from Ts’in to Ts’u, alluding to the escape of a hostage and the cause of a war. In the year 227, when Ts’in was rapidly conquering the whole empire, the northernmost state of Yen (Peking plain), dreading annexation, conceived the plan of assassinating the King of Ts’in; and, in order to give the assassin a plausible ground for gaining admittance to the tyrant’s presence, sent a map of Yen, so that the roads available for troops might be explained to the ambitious conqueror, who would fall into the trap. He barely escaped.
All these matters put together point to the clear conclusion that such states as Ts’in, Tsin, Ts’i, Yen, and Ts’u (none of which belonged, so far as the bulk of their population was concerned, to the purely Chinese group concentrated in the limited area described in the first chapter) were able to communicate by letter freely with each other: _á fortiori_, therefore, must the orthodox states, whose civilization they had all borrowed or shared, have been able to communicate with them, and with each other. Besides, there is the question of the innumerable treaties made at the durbars, and evidently equally legible by all the dozen or so of representatives present; and the written prayers, already instanced, which were probably offered to the gods at most sacrifices. A special chapter will be devoted to treaties.
In the year 523 the following passage occurs, or rather it occurs in one of the expanded Confucian histories having retrospective reference to matters of 523 B.C:–“It is the father’s fault if, at the binding up of the hair (eight years of age), boys do not go to the teacher, though it may be the mother’s fault if, before that age, they do not escape the dangers of fire and water: it is their own fault if, having gone to the teacher, they make no progress: it is their friends’ fault if they make progress but get no repute for it: it is the executive’s fault if they obtain repute but no recommendation to office: it is the prince’s fault if they are recommended for office but not appointed.” Here we have in effect the nucleus at least of the examination system as it was until a year or two ago, together with an inferential statement that education was only meant for the governing classes.
It is rather remarkable that the invention of the “greater seal” character in 827 B.C. practically coincides with the first signs of imperial decadence; this is only another piece of evidence in favour of the proposition that enlightenment and patriarchal rule could not exist comfortably together. When Ts’in conquered the whole of modern China 600 years later, unified weights and measures, the breadth of axles, and written script, and remedied other irregularities that had hitherto prevailed in the rival states, it is evident that the need of a more intelligible script was then found quite as urgent as the need of roads suitable for all carts, and of measures by which those carts could bring definite quantities of metal and grain tribute to the capital. Accordingly the First August Emperor’s prime minister did at once set to work to invent the “lesser seal” character, in which (so late as A.D. 200) the first Chinese dictionary was written; this “lesser seal” is still fairly readable after a little practice, but for daily use it has long been and is impracticable and obsolete. If we reflect how difficult it is for us to decipher the old engrossed charters and written letters of the English kings, we may all the more easily imagine how even a slight change in the form of “letters,” or strokes, will make easy reading of Chinese impossible. It is a mistake to suppose that the Chinese have to “spell their way” laboriously through the written character so familiar to them: it is just as easy to “skim over” a Chinese newspaper in a few minutes as it is to “take in” the leading features of the _Times_ in the same limited time; and volumes of Chinese history or literature in general can be “gutted” quite easily, owing to the facility with which the so-called pictographs, once familiar, lend themselves to “skipping.”
The Bamboo Books, dug up in A.D. 281, the copies of the classics concealed in the walls of Confucius’ house, the copy of Lao-tsz’s philosophical work recorded to have been in the possession of a Chinese empress in 150 B.C.–all these were written in the “greater seal,” and the painstaking industry of Chinese specialists was already necessary when the Christian era began, in order to reduce the ancient characters to more modern forms. Since then the written character has been much clarified and simplified, and it is just as easy to express sentiments in written Chinese as in any other language; but, of course, when totally new ideas are introduced, totally new characters must be invented; and inventions, both of individual characters and of expressions, are going on now.
CHAPTER XVIII
TREATIES AND VOWS
Treaties were always very solemn functions, invariably accompanied by the sacrifice of a victim. A part of the victim, or of its blood, was thrown into a ditch, in order that the Spirit of the Earth might bear witness to the deed; the rest of the blood was rubbed upon the lips of the parties concerned, and also scattered upon the documents, by way of imprecation; sometimes, however, the imprecations, instead of being uttered, were specially written at the end of the treaty. Just as we now say “the ink was scarcely dry before, etc., etc.,” the Chinese used to say “the blood of the victim was scarcely dry on their lips, before, etc., etc.” When the barbarian King of Wu succeeded for a short period in “durbaring” the federal Chinese princes, a dispute took place (as narrated in Chapter XIV.) between Tsin and Wu as to who should rub the lips with blood first–in other words, have precedence. In the year 541 B.C., sixty years before the above event, Tsin and Ts’u had agreed to waive the ceremony of smearing the lips with blood, to choose a victim in common, and to lay the text of the treaty upon the victim after a solemn reading of its contents. This modification was evidently made in consequence of the disagreement between Tsin and Ts’u at the Peace Conference of 546, when a dispute had arisen (page 47), as to which should smear the lips first. This was the occasion on which the famous Tsin statesman, Shuh Hiang, in the face of seventeen states’ representatives, all present, had the courage to ignore Ts’u’s treachery in concealing cuirasses under the soldiers’ clothes. He said: “Tsin holds her pre-eminent position as Protector by her innate good qualities, which will always command the adhesion of other states; why need we care if Ts’u smears first, or if she injures herself by being detected in treachery?” It has already been mentioned that Confucius glosses over or falsifies both the above cases, and gives the victory in each instance to Tsin. Though these little historical peccadilloes on the part of the saint _homme_ are considered even by orthodox critics to be objectionable, it must be remembered that it was very risky work writing history at all in those despotic times: even in comparatively democratic days (100 B.C.), the “father of Chinese history” was castrated for criticizing the reigning Emperor in the course of issuing his great work; and so late as the fifth century A.D. an almost equally great historian was put to death “with his three generations” for composing a “true history” of the Tartars then ruling as Emperors of North China; i.e. for disclosing their obscure and barbarous origin, Moreover, foreigners who fix upon these trifling specific and admitted discrepancies, in order to discredit the general truth of all Chinese history, must remember that the Chinese critics, from the very beginning, have always, even when manifestly biased, been careful to expose errors; the very discrepancies themselves, indeed, tend to prove the substantial truth of the events recorded; and the fact that admittedly erroneous texts still stand unaltered proves the reverent care of the Chinese as a nation to preserve their defective annals, with all faults, in their original condition.
At this treaty conference of 546 B.C., held at the Sung capital, the host alone had no vote, being held superior (as host) to all; and, further, out of respect for his independence, the treaty had to be signed outside his gates: the existence of the Emperor was totally ignored.
A generation before this (579) another important treaty between the two great rivals, Tsin and Ts’u, had been signed by the high contracting parties outside the walls of Sung. The articles provided for community of interest in success or failure; mutual aid in every thing, more especially in war; free use of roads so long as relations remained peaceful; joint action in face of menace from other powers; punishment of those neglecting to come to court. The imprecation ran: “Of him who breaks this, let the armies be dispersed and the kingdom be lost; moreover, let the spirits chastise him.” Although both orthodox powers professed their anxiety to “protect” the imperial throne, yet, seeing that the Emperor was quietly shelved in all these conventions, the reference to “court duty” probably refers to the duty of Cheng and the other small orthodox states to render homage to Tsin or Ts’u (as the case might be) as settled by this and previous treaties. In fact, at the Peace Conference of 546, it was agreed between the two mesne lords that the vassals of Ts’u should pay their respects to Tsin, and _vice versa_. But, during the negotiations, a zealous Tsin representative went on to propose that the informal allies of the chief contracting powers should also be dragged in: “If Ts’in will pay us a visit, I will try and induce Ts’i to visit T’su.” These two powers had _ententes_, Ts’i with Tsin, and Ts’u with Ts’in, but recognized no one’s hegemony over them. It was this surprise sprung upon the Ts’u delegates that necessitated an express messenger to the king, as recounted at the end of Chapter XVI. The King of Ts’u sent word: “Let Ts’in and Ts’i alone; let the others visit our respective capitals.” Accordingly it was understood that Tsin and Ts’u should both be Protectors, but that neither Ts’in nor Ts’i should recognize their status to the point of subordinating themselves to the joint hegemons. This was Ts’u’s first appearance as effective hegemon, but her official _debut_ alone did not take place till 538. Ts’i and Ts’in had both approved, in principle, the terms of peace, but Ts’in sent no representative, whilst Ts’i sent two. It is very remarkable that Sz-ma Ts’ien (the great historian of 100 B.C., who was castrated) does not mention this important meeting in his great work, either under the heading of Ts’i, or of Tsin, or under the headings of Sung and Ts’u. It seems, however, really to have had good effect for several generations; but there was some thing behind it which shows that love for humanity was not the leading motive of the chief parties. Two years later it was that the philosophical brother of the King of Wu went his rounds among the Chinese princes, and it is evident that Ts’u only desired peace with North China whilst she tackled this formidable new enemy on the coast. Tsin, on the other hand, was in trouble with the “six great families” (the survivors of the “eleven great families” conciliated by the Second Protector), who were gradually undermining the princely authority in Tsin to their own private aggrandisement. In 572 B.C., when the legitimate ruler of Tsin, who had been superseded by irregular successors, was fetched back from the Emperor’s court, to which he had gone for a quiet asylum, he drew up a treaty of conditions with his own ministers, and immolated a chicken as sanction; this idea is still occasionally perpetuated in British courts of justice, where Chinese, probably without knowing it, draw upon ancient history when asked by the court how they are accustomed to sanction an oath; cocks are often also carried about by modern Chinese boatmen for purposes of sacrifice. In the year 504, after Wu had captured the Ts’u capital, one of the petty orthodox Chinese states taken by Ts’u– the first to be so taken by barbarians–in 684, but left by Ts’u internally independent, declined to render any assistance to Wu, unless she could prove her competence to hold permanently the Ts’u territory thus conquered. The King of Ts’u was so grateful for this that he drew some blood from the breast of his own half- brother, and on the spot made a treaty with the vassal prince. It 662, even in a love vow, the ruler of Lu cut his own arm and exchanged drops of blood with his lady-love. In 481 the people of Wei (the small orthodox state on the middle Yellow River between Tsin and Lu) forced one of their politicians to swear allegiance to the desired successor under the sanction of a sacrificial pig.
The great Kwan-tsz insisted on his prince carrying out a treaty which had been extorted in times of stress; but, as a rule, the most opportunistic principles were laid down, even by Confucius himself when he was placed under personal stress: “Treaties obtained by force are of no value, as the spirits could not then have really been present.” In 589 Ts’u invaded the state of Wei, just mentioned, and menaced the adjoining state of Lu, compelling the execution of a treaty. Confucius, who once broke a treaty himself, naturally retrospectively considered this ducal treaty of no effect, and he even goes so far as to avoid mentioning in his annals some of the important persons who were present; he especially “burkes” two Chinese ruling princes, who were shameless enough to ride in the same chariot with the King of Ts’u, under whose predominancy they were, and who were therefore themselves under a kind of stress. In 482 one of Confucius’ pupils made the following casuistical reply to the government of Wu on their application for renewal of a treaty with her: “It is only fidelity that gives solidity to treaties; they are determined by mutual consent, and it is with sacrifices that they are laid before our ancestors; the written words give expression to them, and the spirits guarantee them. A treaty once concluded cannot be changed: otherwise it were vain to make a new one. Remember the proverb: “What needs warming up more may just as well be eaten cold.” The ordinary rough-and-ready form of oath or vow between individuals was: “If I break this, may I be as this river”; or, “may the river god be witness.” There were many other similar forms, and it was often customary to throw something valuable into the river as a symbol.
CHAPTER XIX
CONFUCIUS AND LITERATURE
Let us return for a moment to the history of China’s development. Confucius was born in the autumn of 551, B.C., and he died in 479. If we survey the condition of the empire during these seventy years, we may begin to understand better the secret of his teachings, and of his influence in later times. When he was a boy of seven or eight years, the presence in Lu of Ki-chah, the learned and virtuous brother of the barbarian King of Wu, must have opened his eyes widely to the ominous rise, of a democratic and mixed China. Lu, like Tsin, was now beginning to suffer from the “powerful family” plague; in other words, the story of King John and his barons was being rehearsed in China. Tsin and Ts’u had patched up ancient enmities at the Peace Conference; Tsin during the next twenty years administered snub after snub to the obsequious ruler of Lu, who was always turned back at the Yellow River whenever he started west to pay his respects. Lu, on the other hand, declined to attend the Ts’u durbar of 538, held by Ts’u alone only after the approval of Tsin had been obtained. In 522 the philosopher Yen-tsz, of Ts’i, accompanied his own marquess to Lu in order to study the rites there: this fact alone proves that Ts’i, though orthodox and advanced, had not the same lofty spiritual status that was the pride of Lu. In 517 the Marquess of Lu was driven from his throne, and Ts’i took the opportunity to invade Lu under pretext of assisting him; however, the fugitive preferred Tsin as a refuge, and for many years was quartered at a town near the common frontier. But the powerful families (all branches of the same family as the duke himself) proved too strong for him; they bribed the Tsin statesmen, and the Lu ruler died in exile in the year 510. In the year 500 Confucius became chief counsellor to the new marquess, and by his energetic action drove into exile in Tsin a very formidable agitator belonging to one of the powerful family cliques. In 488 the King of Wu, after marching on Ts’i, summoned Lu to furnish “one hundred sets of victims” as a mark of compliancy; the king and the marquess had an interview; the next year the king came in person, and a treaty was made with him under the very walls of K’üh-fu, the Lu capital (this shameful fact is concealed by Confucius, who simply says: “Wu made war on us”). In 486 Lu somewhat basely joined Wu in an attack upon orthodox Ts’i. In 484-483 Confucius, who had meanwhile been travelling abroad for some years in disgust, was urgently sent for; four years later he died, a broken and disappointed man.
Now, it is one thing to be told in general terms that Confucius represented conservative forces, disapproved of the quarrelsome wars of his day, and wished in theory to restore the good old “rules of propriety”; but quite another thing to understand in a human, matter-of-fact sort of way what he really did in definite sets of circumstances, and what practical objects he had in view. The average European reader, not having specific facts and places under his eye, can only conceive from this rough generalization, and from the usual anecdotal tit-bits told about him, that Confucius was an exceedingly timid, prudent, benevolent, and obsequious old gentleman who, as indeed his rival Lao-tsz hinted to him, was something like a superior dancing-master or court usher, But when the disjointed apothegms of his “Analects” (put together, not by himself, but by his disciples) are placed alongside the real human actions baldly touched upon in his own “Springs and Autumns,” and as expanded by his three commentators, one of them, at least, being a contemporary of his own, things assume quite a different complexion, Moreover, this last-mentioned or earliest in date of the expanders (see p. 91) also composed a chatty, anecdotal, and intimately descriptive account of Lu, Ts’i, Tsin, CHÊNG, Ts’u, Wu, and Yiieh (of no other states except quite incidentally); and we have also the Bamboo Books dug up in 281 A.D., being the Annals of Tsin and a sketch of general history down to 299 B.C. Finally, the “father of history,” in about go B.C., published, or issued ready for publication, a _resumé_ of all the above (except what was in the Bamboo Books, which were then, of course, unknown to him); so that we are able to compare dates, errors, misprints, concealments, and so on; not to mention the advantage of reading all that the successive generations of commentators have had to say.
The matter may be compendiously stated as follows. Without attempting to go backward beyond the conquest by the Chou principality and the founding of a Chou dynasty in 122 B.C. (though there is really no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of the vague “history” of patriarchal times, at least so far back beyond that as to cover the 1000 years or more of the two previous dynasties’ reigns), we may state that, whilst in general the principles and ritual of the two previous dynasties were maintained, a good many new ideas were introduced at this Chou conquest, and amongst other things, a compendious and all- pervading practical ritual government, which not only marked off the distinctions between classes, and laid down ceremonious rules for ancestral sacrifice, social deportment, family duties, cultivation, finance, punishment, and so on, but endeavoured to bring all human actions whatsoever into practical harmony with supposed natural laws; that is to say, to make them as regular, as comprehensible, as beneficent, and as workable, as the perfectly manifest but totally unexplained celestial movements were; as were the rotation of seasons, the balancing of forces, the growth and waning of matter, male and female reproduction, light and darkness; and, in short, to make human actions as harmonious as were all the forces of nature, which never fail or go wrong except under (presumed) provocation, human or other. The Emperor, as Vicar of God, was the ultimate judge of what was _tao_, or the “right way.”
Now this simple faith, when the whole of the Chinese Empire consisted of about 50,000 square miles of level plain, inhabited probably by not more than 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 homogeneous people, was admirably suited for the patriarchal rule of a central chief (the King or Emperor), receiving simple tribute of metals, hemp, cattle, sacrificial supplies, etc.; entertaining his relatives and princely friends when they came to do annual homage and to share in periodical sacrifice; declaring the penal laws (there were no other laws) for all his vassals; compassionating and conciliating the border tribes living beyond those vassals. But this peaceful bucolic life, in the course of time and nature, naturally produced a gradual increase in the population; the Chinese cultivators spread themselves over the expanse of _loess_ formed by the Yellow River and Desert deposits and by aeons of decayed vegetation in the low-lying lands; no other nation or tribe within their ken having the faintest notion of written character, there was consequently no political cohesion of any sort amongst the non-Chinese tribes; the position was akin to that of the European powers grafting themselves for centuries upon the still primitive African tribes, comparatively few of which have seen fit to turn the art of writing to the practical purpose of keeping records and cementing their own power. Wherever a Chinese adventurer went, there he became founder of a state; to this day we see enterprising Chinamen founding petty “dynasties” in the Siamese Malay Peninsula; or, for instance, an Englishman like Rajah Brooke founding a private dynasty in Borneo.
Some of these frontier tribes, notably the Tartars, were of altogether too tough a material to be assimilated. They even endeavoured to check the Chinese advance beyond the Yellow River, and carried fire and sword themselves into the federal conclave. Where resistance was _nil_ or slight, as, for instance, among some of the barbarians to the east, there the Chinese adventurers, either adopting native ways, or persuading the autochthones to adopt their ways, by levelling up or levelling down, developed strong cohesive power; besides (owing to the difficulties of inter-communication) creating a feeling of independence and a disinclination to obey the central power. The emperors who used in the good old days to summon the vassals–a matter of a week or two in that small area–to chastise the wicked tribes on their frontiers, gradually found themselves unable to cope with the more distant Tartar hordes, the eastern barbarians of the coast, the Annamese, Shans, and other unidentified tribes south of the Yang- tsz, as they had so easily done with nearer tribes when the Chinese had not pushed out so far. Moreover, new-Chinese, Chinese- veneered, and half-Chinese states, recognizing their own responsibilities, now interposed themselves as “buffers” or barriers between the Emperor and the unadulterated barbarians; these hybrid states themselves were quite as formidable to the imperial power as the displaced barbarians had formerly been. Hence, as we have seen, the pitiful flight from his metropolis of one Emperor after the other; the rise of great and wealthy persons outside the former limited sacred circle; the pretence of protecting the Emperor, advanced by these rising powers, partly in order to gain prestige by using his imperial name in support of their local ambitions, and partly because–as during the Middle Ages in the case of the Papacy–no one cared to brave the moral odium of annihilating a venerable spiritual power, even though gradually shorn of its temporal rights and influence.
Lu was almost on a par with the imperial capital in all that concerns learning, ritual, music, sacrifice, deportment, and spiritual prestige. Confucius, in his zeal for the recovery of imperial rights, was really no more of a stickler for mere form than were Tsz-ch’an of Cheng, Ki-chah of Wu, Hiang Suh of Sung, Shuh Hiang of Tsin, and others already enumerated; the only distinguishing feature in his case was that he was not a high or influential official in his earlier days; besides, he was a Sung man by descent, and all the great families were of the Lu princely caste. Thus, for want of better means to assert his own views, he took to teaching and reading, to collecting historical facts, to pointing morals and adorning tales. As a youth he was so clever, that one of the Lu grandees, on his death-bed, foretold his greatness. It was a great bitterness for him to see his successive princely masters first the humble servants of Ts’i, then buffeted between Tsin and Ts’u, finally invaded and humiliated by barbarian Wu, only to receive the final touches of charity at the hands of savage Yiieh. His first act, when he at last obtained high office, was to checkmate Ts’i, the man behind the ruler of which jealous state feared that Lu might, under Confucius’ able rule, succeed in obtaining the Protectorate, and thus defeat his own insidious design to dethrone the legitimate Ts’i house. The wily Marquess of Ts’i thereupon–of course at the instigation of the intriguing “great families”–tried another tack, and succeeded at last in corrupting the vacillating Lu prince with presents of horses, racing chariots, and dancing women. Then it was (497) that Confucius set out disheartened on his travels. Recalled thirteen years later, he soon afterwards began to devote his remaining powers to the Annals so frequently referred to above, and it was whilst engaged in finishing this task that he had presentiments of his coming end; he does not appear to have been able to exercise much political or advisory power after his return to Lu.
During his thirteen years of travel (a more detailed account of which will be given in a subsequent chapter), he found time to revise and edit the books which appear to have formed the common stock-in-trade for all China; one of his ideas was to eliminate from these all sentiments of an anti-imperial nature. They were not then called “classics,” but simply “The Book” (of History), “The Poems” (still known by heart all over China), “The Rites” (as improved by the Chou family), “The Changes” (a sort of cosmogony combined with soothsaying), and “Music.”
CHAPTER XX
LAW
Let us now consider the notions of law as they existed in the primitive Chinese mind. As all government was supposed to be based on the natural laws of the universe, of which universal law or order of things, the Emperor, as “Son of Heaven,” was (subject to his own obedience to it) the supreme mouthpiece or expression, there lay upon him no duty to define that manifest law; when it was broken, it was for him to say that it was broken, and to punish the breach. Nature’s bounty is the spring, and therefore rewards are conferred in spring; nature’s fall is in the autumn, which is the time for decreeing punishments; these are carried out in winter, when death steals over nature. A generous table accompanies the dispensing of rewards, a frugal table and no music accompanies the allotment of punishments; hence the imperial feasts and fasts. Thus punishment rather than command is what was first understood by Law, and it is interesting to observe that “making war” and “putting to death” head the list of imperial chastisements, war being thus regarded as the Emperor’s rod in the shape of a posse of punitory police, rather than as an expression of statecraft, ambitious greed, or vainglorious self-assertion. Then followed, in order of severity, castration, cutting off the feet or the knee-cap, branding, and flogging. The Emperor, or his vassals, or the executive officers of each in the ruler’s name, declared the law, _i.e._ they declared the punishment in each case of breach as it occurred. Thus from the very beginning the legislative, judicial, and executive functions have never been clearly separated in the Chinese system of thought; new words have had to be coined within the last two years in order to express this distinction for purposes of law reform. Mercantile Law, Family Law, Fishery Laws–in a word, all the mass of what we call Commercial and Civil Jurisprudence,–no more concerned the Government, so far as individual rights were concerned, than Agricultural Custom, Bankers’ Custom, Butchers’ Weights, and such like petty matters; whenever these, or analogous matters, were touched by the State, it was for commonwealth purposes, and not for the maintenance of private rights. Each paterfamilias was absolutely master of his own family; merchants managed their own business freely; and so on with the rest. It was only when public safety, Government interests, or the general weal was involved that punishment-law stepped in and said,–always with _tao_, “propriety,” or nature’s law in ultimate view: “you merchants may not wear silk clothes”; “you usurers must not ruin the agriculturalists”; “you butchers must not irritate the gods of grain by killing cattle”:– these are mere examples taken at random from much later times.
The Emperor Muh, whose energies we have already seen displayed in Tartar conquests and exploring excursions nearly a millennium before our era, was the first of the Chou dynasty to decide that law reform was necessary in order to maintain order among the “hundred families” (still one of the expressions meaning “the Chinese people”). A full translation of this code is given in Dr. Legge’s Chinese classics, where a special chapter of The Book is devoted to it: in charging his officer to prepare it, the Emperor only uses the words “revise the punishments,” and the code itself is only known as the “Punishments” (of the marquess who drew it up); although it also prescribes many judicial forms, and lays down precepts which are by no means all castigatory. The mere fact of its doing so is illustrative of reformed ideas in the embryo. There is good ground to suppose that the Chinese Emperor’s “laws,” such as they were at any given time, were solemnly and periodically proclaimed, in each vassal kingdom; but, subject to these general imperial directions, the _themis_, _diké_ or inspired decision of the magistrate, was the sole deciding factor; and, of course, the ruler’s arbitrary pleasure, whether that ruler were supreme or vassal, often ran riot when he found himself strong enough to be unjust. For instance, in 894 B.C., the Emperor boiled alive one of the Ts’i rulers, an act that was revenged by Ts’i 200 years later, as has been mentioned in previous chapters.
In 796 B.C. a ruler of Lu was selected, or rather recommended to the Emperor for selection, in preference to his elder brother, because “when he inflicted chastisement he never failed to ascertain the exact instructions left by the ancient emperors.” This same Emperor had already, in 817, nominated one younger brother to the throne of Lu, because he was considered the most attractive in appearance on an occasion when the brethren did homage at the imperial court. For this caprice the Emperor’s counsellor had censured him, saying: “If orders be not executed, there is no government; if they be executed, but contrary to established rule, the people begin to despise their superiors.”
In 746 B.C. the state of Ts’in, which had just then recently emerged from Tartar barbarism, and had settled down permanently in the old imperial domain, first introduced the “three stock” law, under which the three generations, or the three family connections of a criminal were executed for his crime as well as himself. In 596 and 550 Tsin (which thus seems to have taken the hint from Ts’in) exterminated the families of two political refugees who had fled to the Tartars and to Ts’i respectively. Even in Ts’u the relatives of the man who first taught war to Wu were massacred in 585, and any one succouring the fugitive King of Ts’u was threatened with “three clan penalties”; this last case was in the year 529. The laws of Ts’u seem to have been particularly harsh; in 55 the premier was cut into four for corruption, and one quarter was sent in each direction, as a warning to the local districts. About 650 B.C. a distinguished Lu statesman, named Tsang Wen-chung, seems to have drawn up a special code, for one of Confucius’ pupils (two centuries later) denounced it as being too severe when compared with Tsz-ch’an’s mild laws–to be soon mentioned. Confucius himself also described the man as being “too showy.” This Lu statesman, about twenty years later, made some significant and informing observations to the ruler of Lu when report came that Tsin (the Second Protector) was endeavouring to get the Emperor to poison a federal refugee from Wei, about whose succession the powers were at the moment quarrelling. He said: “There are only five recognized punishments: warlike arms, the axe, the knife or the saw, the branding instruments, the whip or the bastinado; there are no surreptitious ones like this now proposed.” The result was that Lu, being of the same clan as the Emperor, easily succeeded in bribing the imperial officials to let the refugee prince go. The grateful prince eagerly offered Tsang W&n-chung a reward; but the statesman declined to receive it, on the ground that “a subject’s sayings are not supposed to be known beyond his own master’s frontier.” About, a century later a distinguished Tsin statesman, asking what “immortality” meant, was told: “When a man dies, but when his words live; like the words of this distinguished man, Tsang W&n-chung, of Lu state.” This same Tsin statesman is said to have engraved some laws on iron (513), an act highly disapproved by Confucius. It is only by thus piecing together fragmentary allusions that we can arrive at the conclusion that “there were judges in those days.” Mention has been several times made in previous chapters of Tsz-ch’an, whose consummate diplomacy maintained the independence and even the federal influence of the otherwise obscure state of Cheng during a whole generation. In the year 536 B.C. he decided to cast the laws in metal for the information of the people: this course was bitterly distasteful to his colleague, Shuh Hiang of Tsin (see Appendix I.), and possibly the Tsin “laws on iron” just mentioned were suggested by this experiment, for it must be remembered that Tsin, Lu, Wei, and Cheng were all of the same imperial clan. Confucius, who had otherwise a genuine admiration for Tsz-ch’an, disapproved of this particular feature in his career. In a minor degree the same question of definition and publication has also caused differences of opinion between English lawyers, so far as the so-called “judge-made law” is concerned; it is still considered to be better practice to have it declared as circumstances arise, than to have it set forth beforehand in a code. The arguments are the same; in both cases the judges profess to “interpret” the law as it already exists; that is, the Chinese judge interprets the law of nature, and the English judge the common and statute laws; but neither wishes to hamper himself by trying to publish in advance a scheme contrived to fit all future hypothetical cases.
About 680 B.C. the King of Ts’u is recorded to have passed a law against harbouring criminals, under which the harbourer was liable to the same penalty as the thief; and at the same time reference is made by his advisers to an ancient law or command of the imperial dynasty, made before it came to power in 1122 B.C.-“If any of your men takes to flight, let every effort be made to find him.” Thus it would seem that other ruling classes, besides those of the Chou clan, accepted the general imperial laws, Chou- ordained or otherwise. Although it is thus manifest that the vassal states, at least after imperial decadence set in, in 771 B.C., drew up and published laws of their own, yet, at the great durbar of princes held by the First Protector in 651 B.C., it is recorded that the “Son of Heaven’s Prohibitions” were read over the sacrificial victim. They are quite patriarchal in their laconic style, and for that reason recall that of the Roman Twelve Tables. They run: “Do not block springs!” “Do not hoard grain!” “Do not displace legitimate heirs!” “Do not make wives of your concubines!” “Do not let women meddle with State affairs!” From the Chinese point of view, all these are merely assertions of what is Nature’s law. In the year 640, the state of Lu applied the term “Law Gate” to the South Gate, “because both Emperor and vassal princes face south when they rule, and because that is, accordingly, the gate through which all commands and laws do pass.” It is always possible, however, that this “facing south” of the ancient ruler points to the direction whence some of his people came, and towards which, as their guide and leader, he had to look in order to govern them.
In the year 594 there is an instance cited where two dignitaries were killed by direct specific order of the Emperor. In explaining this exceptional case, the commentator says: “The lord of all below Heaven is Heaven, and Heaven’s continuer or successor is the Prince; whilst that which the Prince holds fast is the Sanction, which no subject can resist.”
Not very long after Confucius’ death in 479 B.C., the powerful and orthodox state of Tsin, which had so long held its own against Ts’in, Ts’i, and Ts’u, tottered visibly under the disintegrating effects of the “great family” intrigues: of the six great families which had, as representatives of the earlier eleven, latterly monopolized power, three only survived internecine conflicts, and at last the surviving three split up into the independent states of Han, Wei, and Chao, those names being eponymous, as being their sub-fiefs, and, therefore, their “surnames,” or family names. In the year 403 the Emperor formally recognized them as separate, independent vassaldoms. Wei is otherwise known as Liang, owing to the capital city having borne that name, and the kings of Liang are celebrated for their conversations with the peripatetic philosopher, Mencius, in the fourth century B.C. In order to distinguish this state from that of Wei (imperial clan) adjoining Lu and Sung, we shall henceforth call it Ngwei, as, in fact, it originally was pronounced, and as it still is in some modern dialects. The first of the Ngwei sovereigns had in his employ a statesman named Li K’wei, who introduced, for taxation purposes, a new system of land laws, and also new penal laws. These last were in six books, or main heads, and, it is said, represented all that was best in the laws of the different feudal states, mostly in reference to robbery: the minor offences were roguery, getting over city walls, gambling, borrowing, dishonesty, lewdness, extravagance, and transgressing the ruler’s commands–their exact terms are now unknown. This code was afterwards styled the “Law Classic,” and its influence can be plainly traced, dynasty by dynasty, down to modern times; in fact, until a year or two ago, the principles of Chinese law have never radically changed; each successive ruling family has simply taken what it found; modifying what existed, in its own supposed interest, according to time, place, and circumstance. Li K’wei’s land laws singularly resembled those recommended to the Manchu Government by Sir Robert Hart four years ago.
CHAPTER XXI
PUBLIC WORKS
It is difficult to guess how much truth there is in the ancient traditions that the water-courses of the empire were improved through gigantic engineering works undertaken by the ancient Emperors of China. There is one gorge, well known to travellers, above Ich’ang, on the River Yang-tsz, on the way to Ch’ung-k’ing, where the precipitous rocks on each side have the appearance and hardness of iron, and for a mile or more–perhaps several miles– stand perpendicularly like walls on both sides of the rapid Yang- tsz River: the most curious feature about them is that from below the water-level, right up to the top, or as far as the eye can reach, the stone looks as though it had been chipped away with powerful cheese-scoops: it seems almost impossible that any operation of nature can have fashioned rocks in this way; on the other hand, what tools of sufficient hardness, driven by what great force, could hollow out a passage of such length, at such a depth, and such a height? It is certain that after Ts’in conquered the hitherto almost unknown kingdoms of Pa and Shuh (Eastern and Western Sz Ch’wan) a Chinese engineer named Li Ping worked wonders in the canalization of the so-called CH’ÊNg-tu plain, or the rich level region lying around the capital city of Sz Ch’wan province, which was so long as Shuh endured also the metropolis of Shuh. The consular officers of his Britannic Majesty have made a special study of these sluices, which are still in full working order, and they seem almost unchanged in principle from the period (280 B.C.) when Li Ping lived. The Chinese still regard this branch of the Great River as the source; or at least they did so until the Jesuit surveys of two centuries ago proved otherwise; it was quite natural that they should do so in ancient times, for the true upper course, and also Yiin Nan and Tibet through which that course runs, were totally unknown to them, and unheard of by name; even now the so-called Lolo country of Sz Ch’wan and Yiin Nan is mostly unexplored, and the mountain Lolos are quite independent of China. The fact that they have whitish skins and a written script of their own (manifestly inspired by the form of Chinese characters) makes them a specially interesting people. Li Ping’s engineering feats also included the region around Ya-thou and Kia- ting, as marked on the modern maps.
The founder of the Hia dynasty (2205 B.C.) is supposed to have liberated the stagnant waters of the Yellow River and sent them to the sea; as this is precisely what all succeeding dynasties have tried to do, and have been obliged to try, and what in our own times the late Li Hung-chang was ordered to do just before his death, there seems no good reason for suspecting the accuracy of the tradition; the more especially as we see that the founder of the Chou dynasty sent his chief political adviser and his two most distinguished relatives to settle along this troublesome river’s lower course, as rulers of Ts’i, Yen, and Lu; the other considerable vassals were all ranged along the middle course.
The original Chinese founder of the barbarian colony of Wu belonged, as already explained, to the same clan or family as the founder of the Chou dynasty, and in one respect even took ancestral or spiritual precedence of him, because the emigrant had voluntarily retired into obscurity with his brother in order to make way for a third and more brilliant younger brother, whose grandson it was that afterwards, in 1122 B.C., conquered China, and turned the Chou principality, hitherto vassal to the Shang dynasty, into the Chou dynasty, to which the surviving Shang princes then became vassals in the Sung state and elsewhere. Even though the founder of Wu may have adopted barbarian ways, such as tattooing, hair-cutting, and the like, he must have possessed considerable administrative power, for he made a canal (running past his capital) for a distance of thirty English miles along the new “British” railway from Wu-sih to Ch’ang-shuh, as marked on present maps; his idea was to facilitate boat-travelling, and to assist cultivators with water supplies for irrigation.
In the year 485 B.C. the King of Wu, who was then in the hey-day of his success, and by way of becoming Protector of China, erected a wall and fortifications round the well-known modern city of Yangchow (where Marco Polo 1700 years later acted as governor); he next proceeded for the first time in history to establish water communication between the Yang-tsz River and the River Hwai; this canal was then (483-481) continued farther north, so as to give communication with the southern and central parts of modern Shan Tung province.
His object was to facilitate the conveyance of stores for his armies, then engaged in bringing pressure upon Ts’i (North Shan Tung) and Lu (South Shan Tung). He succeeded in getting his boats to the River Tsi, running past Tsi-nan Fu, and to the River I, running past I-thou Fu, thus dominating the whole Shan Tung region; for these two were then the only navigable rivers in Shan Tung besides the Sz. The River Tsi is now taken possession of by the Yellow River, which, as we have shown, then ran a parallel course much to the westward of it; and the River I then ran south into the River Sz, which, as already explained, has in its lower course, in comparatively modern times, been taken possession of permanently by the Grand Canal; but the upper course of the Sz, now, as then, ran past Confucius’ town, the Lu metropolis, of K’üh-fu. In 483 B.C. the same king cast his faithful adviser (of Ts’u origin) into the canal by which the waters of lake T’ai Hu now run to modern Soochow, and thence to Hangchow. Ever since that date the unfortunate man in question has been a popular “god of the waters” in those parts. It follows, therefore, that the Wu founder’s modest canal must have been from time to time extended, at least in an easterly direction. It was only after the conquest of China by Ts’in, 250 years later, that the First August Emperor extended this system of canals northwards and westwards, from Ch’ang-thou Fu to Tan-yang and Chinkiang, as marked on the modern maps. Thus the barbarian kings of Wu have found the true alignment of our “British”, railway for us; and, so far as the northern canal is concerned, have really achieved the task for which credit is usually given to Kublai Khan, the Mongol patron of Marco Polo. Kublai merely improved the old work. The ancient Wu capital was 10 English miles south-east of Wu-sih, and 17 miles north of Soochow, to which place the capital was transferred in the year 513 B.C., as it was more suitable than the old capital for the arsenals and ship-building yards then, for the first time, being built on an extensive scale by the King of Wu.
The first bridge over the Yellow River was constructed by the kingdom of Ts’in in 257 B.C., on what is still the high-road between T’ung-thou Fu and P’u-chou Fu. Previous to that date armies had to cross the Yellow River at the fords; and, as an instance of this, it may be stated that the founder of the Chou dynasty in 1122 B.C. summoned his vassals to meet him at the Ford of Mêng, a place still so marked on the maps, and lying on the high-road between the two modern cities of Ho-nan Fu and Hwai- k’ing Fu; thus there was no excuse for the feudal princes failing to arrive at the rendezvous. It was not far from the same place, but on the north bank of the river, that Tsin in 632 B.C. held the great durbar as Second Protector, on the notorious occasion when the puppet Emperor was “sent for” by the Tsin dictator. To conceal this outrage on “the rites,” Confucius says: “The Son of Heaven went in camp north of the river.” To go on hunt, or in camp, is still a vague historical expression for “go on fief inspection,” and it was so used in 1858, when the Manchu Emperor Hien-fêng took refuge from the allied troops at Jêhol in Tartary.
The first thing Ts’in did when it united the empire in 221 B.C. was to occupy all the fords and narrow passes, and to put them in working order for the passage of armies. As even now the lower Yellow River is only navigable for large craft for 20 miles from its mouth (now in Shan Tung), it is easy to imagine how many fords there must have been in its shallow waters, and also how it came to pass that boats were so little used to convey large bodies of troops with their stores.
The great wall of China of 217 B.C. was by no means the first of its kind. A century before that date Ts’in built a long wall to keep off the Tartars; and, half a century before that again, Ngwei (one of the three powerful families of Tsin, all made independent princes in 403) had built a wall to keep off its western neighbour Ts’in; both these walls seem to have been in the north part of the modern Shen Si region, and they were possibly portions of the later continuous great wall of the August Emperor, which occupied the forced energies of 700,000 men. There is a statement that the same Emperor set 700,000 eunuchs to work on the palaces and the tomb he was constructing for himself at his new metropolis (moved since 350 B.C. to the city of Hien-yang, north of the river Wei, opposite the present Si-ngan Fu). This probably means, not that eunuchs were common in those times as palace _employés_, but that castration still was the usual punishment inflicted throughout China for grave offences not calling for the penalty of death, or for the more serious forms of maiming, such as foot- chopping or knee-slicing; and that all the prisoners of that degree were told off to do productive work: although humiliatingly deformed, they were still available for the common purposes of native life, and their defenceless and forlorn plight would probably make it an easier matter to handle them in gangs than to handle sound males; and if they died off under the rough treatment of task-masters, they would have no families to mourn or avenge them in accordance with family duty; for a eunuch has no name and no family. The palaces in question were joined by a magnificent bridge on the high-road between Hien-yang and Si-ngan. This very year a German firm has contracted to build an iron bridge over the Yellow River at Lan-thou Fu, where crossed by Major Bruce.
CHAPTER XXII
CITIES AND TOWNS
There are singularly few descriptions of cities in ancient Chinese history, but here again we may safely assume that most of them were in principle, if only on a small scale, very much what they are now, mere inartistic, badly built collections of hovels. Sõul, the quaint capital of Corea, as it appeared in its virgin condition to its European discoverers twenty-five years ago, probably then closely resembled an ancient vassal Chinese prince’s capital of the very best kind. Modern trade is responsible for the wealthy commercial streets now to be found in all large Chinese cities; but a small _hien_ city in the interior–and it must be remembered that a _hien_ circuit or district corresponds to an old marquisate or feudal principality of the vassal unit type–is often a poor, dusty, dirty, depressing, ramshackle agglomeration of villages or hamlets, surrounded by a disproportionately pretentious wall, the cubic contents of which wall alone would more than suffice to build in superior style the whole mud city within; for half the area of the interior is apt to be waste land or stagnant puddles: it was so even in Peking forty years ago, and possibly is so still except in the “Legation quarter.”
In 745 B.C., when the Tsin marquess foolishly divided his patrimony with a collateral branch, the capital town of this subdivided state is stated to have been a greater place than the old capital. They are both of them still in existence as insignificant towns, situated quite close together on the same branch of the River Fên (the only navigable river) in South Shan Si; marked with their old names, too; that is to say, K’iih-wuh and Yih-CH’ÊNg. It was only after the younger branch annexed the elder in 679 that Tsin became powerful and began to expand; and it was only when a policy of “home rule” and disintegration set in, involving the splitting up of Tsin’s orthodox power into three royal states of doubtful orthodoxy, that China fell a prey to Ts’in ambition. _Absit_ omen to us.
In 560, when the deformed philosopher Yen-tsz visited Ts’u, and entertained that semi-barbarous court with his witticisms, he took the opportunity boastfully to enlarge upon the magnificence of Lin-tsz (still so marked), the capital of Ts’i. “It is,” said he, “surrounded by a hundred villages; the parasols of the walkers obscure the sky, whose perspiration runs in such streams as to cause rain; their shoulders and heels touch together, so closely are they packed.” The assembled Ts’u court, with mouths open, but inclined for sport at the cost of their visitor, said: “If it is such a grand place, why do they select you?” Yen-tsz played a trump card when he replied: “Because I am such a mean-looking fellow,”–meaning, as explained in Chapter IX., that “any pitiful rascal is good enough to send to Ts’u.” Exaggerations apart, however, there is every reason to believe that the statesman- philosopher Kwan-tsz, a century before that date, had really organized a magnificent city. A full description of how he reconstructed the economic life of both city and people is given in the _Kwoh-yü_ (see Chapter XVII.), the authenticity of which work, though not free from question, is, after all, only subject to the same class of criticism as Rénan lavishes upon one or two of the Gospels, the general tenor of which, be says, must none the less be accepted, with all faults, as the _bonâfide_ attempt of some one, more or less contemporary, to represent what was then generally supposed to be the truth.
Ts’u itself must have had something considerable to show in the way of public buildings, for in the year 542 B.C. after paying a visit to that country in accordance with the provisions of the Peace Conference of 546, the ruler of Lu built himself a palace in imitation of one he saw there. The original capital of Wu (see Chapter VII.) was a poor place, and is described as having consisted of low houses in narrow streets, with a vulgar palace; this was in 523. In 513 a new king moved to the site now occupied by Soochow, and he seems to have made of it the magnificent city it has remained ever since–the place, of course it will be remembered, where General Gordon and Li Hung-chang had their celebrated quarrel about decapitating surrendered rebels. There were eight gates, besides eight water-gates for boats; it was eight English miles in circuit, and contained the palace, several towers (pagodas, being Buddhist, were then naturally unknown), kiosks, ponds, and duck preserves. The extensive arsenal and ship- yard was quite separate from the main town. No city in the orthodox part of China is so closely described as this one, nor is it likely that there were many of them so vast in extent.
Judging by the frequency with which Ts’in moved its capitals (but always within a limited area in the Wei valley, between that river and its tributary the K’ien), they cannot have been very important or substantial places; in fact, there are no descriptions of early Ts’in economic life at all; and, for all we know to the contrary, the headquarters of Duke Muh, when he entered upon his reforms in the seventh century B.C., may have resembled a Tartar encampment. The _Kwoh-yü_ has no chapter devoted to Ts’in, which (as indeed stated) for 500 years lived a quite isolated life of its own. In later times, especially after the reforms introduced by the celebrated Chinese princely adventurer, Wei Yang, during the period 360–340, the land administration was reconstituted, the capital was finally moved to Hien-yang, and every effort was made to develop all the resources of the country. Ts’in then possessed 41 _hien,_ those with a population of under 10,000 having a governor with a lower title than the governors of the larger towns, Probably the total population of Ts’in by this time reached 3,000,000. A century later, when the First August Emperor was conquering China, armies of half a million men on each side were not at all uncommon. When his conquests were complete, he set about building palaces on both banks of the Wei in most lavish style, as narrated in the last chapter. It is said of him that, “as he conquered each vassal prince, he had a sketch made of his palace buildings,” and, with these before him as models, he lined the river with rows of beautiful edifices,–evidently, from the description given, much resembling those lying along the Golden Horn at Constantinople; if not in quality, at least in general spectacular arrangement.
As to the minor orthodox states grouped along the Yellow River, they seem to have shifted their capitals on very slight provocation; scarcely one of them remained from first to last in the same place. To take one as an instance, the state of Hu, an orthodox state belonging to the same clan name as Ts’i. The history of this petty principality or barony is only exactly known from the time when Confucius’ history begins, and it was continually being oppressed by Cheng and Ts’u, its more powerful neighbours; in 576, 533, 524 and onwards from that, there were incessant removals, so that even the native commentators say: “it was just like shifting a village, so superficial an affair was it.” The accepted belles _lettres_ style (see p. 78) of saying “my country” is still the ancient _pi-yih_ or “unworthy village”: the Empress of China once (about 190 B.C.) used this expression, even after the whole of China had been united, in order to reject politely the offer of marriage conveyed to her by a powerful Tartar king. The expression is particularly interesting, inasmuch as it recalls, as we have already pointed out, a time when the “country” of each feudal chief was simply his mud village and the few square miles of fields around it, which were naturally divided off from the next chief’s territory by hills and streams. On the Burmo-Chinese frontier there are at this moment many Kakhyen “kings” of this kind, each of them ruling over his mountain or valley, and supreme in his own domain.
That there were walled cities in China (apart from the Emperor’s, which, of course, would be “the city” par _excellence_) is plain from the language used at durbars, which were always held “outside the walls.” In the _loess_ plains there could not have been any stone whatever for building purposes, and there is little, if any, specific mention of brick. Probably the walls were of adobe, i.e. of mud, beaten down between two rigid planks, removed higher as the wall dries below. This is the way most of the houses are still built in modern Peking, and perhaps also in most parts of China, at least where stone (or brick) is not cheaper; the “barbarian” parts of China are still the best built; for instance, CH’ÊNg-tu in Sz Ch’wan, Canton in the south. Hankow (Ts’u) is a comparatively poor place; Peking the dingiest of all. Chinkiang is a purely _loess_ country.
At the time of the unification of China, during the middle of the third century B.C., the Ts’in armies found it necessary to flood Ta-liang or “Great Liang,” the capital of Ngwei (otherwise called Liang), corresponding to the modern K’ai-fêng Fu, the Jewish centre in Ho Nan province: the waters of the Yellow River were allowed to flood the country (this was again done by the Tai-p’ing rebels fifty years ago, when the Jews suffered like other people, and lost their synagogue), the walls of which collapsed. It is evident that the ancient city walls could not have been such solid, brick-faced walls as we now see round Peking and Nanking, but simply mud ramparts.
CHAPTER XXIII
BREAK-UP OF CHINA
We must turn to unorthodox China once more, and see how it fared after Confucius’ death. After only a short century of international existence, the vigorous state of Wu perished once for all in the year 473 B.C., and the remains of the ruling caste escaped eastwards in boats. When for the first time embassies between the Japanese and the Chinese became fairly regular, in the second and third centuries of our era, there began to be persistent statements made in standard Chinese history that the then ruling powers in Japan considered themselves in some way lineally connected with a Chinese Emperor of 2100 B.C., and with his descendants, their ancestors, who, it was said, escaped from Wu to China. This is the reason why, in Chapter VII., we have suggested, not that the population of Japan came from China, but that some of the semi-barbarous descendants of those ancient Chinese princes who first colonized the then purely barbarous Wu, finding their power destroyed in 473 B.C. by the neighbouring barbarous power of Yüeh, settled in Japan, and continued their civilizing mission in quite a new sphere. Many years ago I endeavoured, in various papers published in China and Japan, to show that, apart from Chinese words adopted into Japanese ever since A.D. 1 from the two separate sources of North China by land and Central China by sea, there is clear reason to detect, in the supposed pure Japanese language, as it was anterior to those importations, an admixture of Chinese words adopted much earlier than A.D. 1, and incorporated into the current tongue at a time when there was no means or thought of “nailing the sounds down” by any phonetic system of writing. There is much other very sound Chinese historical evidence in favour of the migration view, and it has been best summarized in an excellent little work in German, by Rev. A. Tschepe, S.J., published in the interior of Shan Tung province only last year.
The ancient native names for Wu and Yiieh, according to the clumsy Confucian way of writing them, were something like _Keu-ngu_ and _O-viet_ (see Chapter VII.); but it is quite hopeless to attempt reconstruction of the exact sounds intended then to be expressed by syllables which, in Chinese itself, have quite changed in power. The power of Yüeh was supreme after 473; its king was voted Protector by the federal princes, and in 472 he held a grand durbar at the “Lang-ya Terrace,” which place is no longer exactly identifiable, but is probably nothing more than the German settlement at Kiao Chou; in 468 he transferred his capital thither, and it remained there for over a century, till 379: but his power, it seems, was almost purely maritime, and he never succeeded in obtaining a sure footing north of or even in the Hwai valley, the greater part of which he subsequently returned to Ts’u. It must be remembered that the Hwai then had a free course to the sea, and of a part of it, the now extinct Sui valley, the Yellow River took possession for several centuries up to 1851 A.D. He also returned to Sung the territory Wu had taken from her, and made over to Lu 100 _li_ square (30 miles) to the east of the River Sz; to understand this it must be remembered, at the cost of a little iteration, that Sung and Lu were the two chief powers of the middle and lower Sz valley, which is now entirely monopolized by the Grand Canal.
[Illustration: MAP
1. The dotted lines mark the boundaries of modern Shen Si, Shan Si, Chih Li, Ho Nan, Shan Tung, An Hwei, and Kiang Su.
2. The names Chao, Ngwei, and Han show how Tsin was split up into three in 403 B.C.
3. The crosses (in the line of each name) show the successive capitals as Ts’in encroached from the west, the _last_ capital in each case having a circle round the cross.]
The imperial dynasty went from bad to worse; in 440 there were family intrigues, assassinations, and divisions. The imperial metropolis, which was towards the end about all the Emperors had left to them, was divided into two, each half ruled by an Eastern and a Western Emperor respectively; unfortunately, no literature has survived which might depict for us the life of the inhabitants during those wretched days. Meanwhile, the ambitious great families of Tsin very nearly fell under the dictatorship of one of their number; in 452 he was himself annihilated by a combination of the others, and the upshot of it was that next year the three families that had crushed the dictator and, emerged victorious, divided up the realm of Tsin into three separate and practically independent states, called respectively Wei or Ngwei (the Shan Si parts), Han (the Ho Nan parts), and Chao (the Chih Li parts). The other ancient and more orthodox state of Wei, occupying the Yellow River valley to the west of Sung and Lu, was now a mere vassal to these three Tsin powers, which had not quite yet declared themselves independent, and which had for the present left the old Tsin capital to the direct administration of the legitimate prince. It was only in the year 403 that the Emperor’s administration formally declared them to be feudal princes. This year is really the next great turning-point in Chinese history, in order of date, after the flight of the Emperors from their old capital in 771 B.C.; and it is, in fact, with this year that the great modern historical work of Sz-ma Kwang begins; it was published A.D. 1084, and brings Chinese events down to a century previous to that date.
As to the state of Ts’i, it also had fallen into evil ways. So early as 539 B.C., when the two philosophers Yen-tsz and Shuh Hiang had confided to each other their mutual sorrows (see Appendix No. 2), the former had predicted that the powerful local family of T’ien or Ch’en was slowly but surely undermining the legitimate princely house, and would certainly end by seizing the throne; one of the methods adopted by the supplanting family was to lend money to the people on very favourable terms, and so to manipulate the grain measures that the taxes due to the prince were made lighter to bear; in this ingenious and indirect way, all the odium of taxation was thrown upon the extravagant princes who habitually squandered their resources, whilst the credit for generosity was turned towards this powerful tax-farming family, which thus took care of its own financial interests, and at the same time secured the affections of the people. In 481 the ambitious T’ien Hêng, _alias_ CH’ÊN Ch’ang, then acting as hereditary _maire du palais_ to the legitimate house, assassinated the ruling prince, an act so shocking from the orthodox point of view that Confucius was quite heartbroken on learning of it, notwithstanding that his own prince had narrowly escaped assassination at the hands of the murdered man’s grandfather. It was not until the year 391, however, that the T’ien, or CH’ÊN, family, after setting up and deposing princes at their pleasure for nearly a century, at last openly threw off the mask and usurped the Ts’i throne: their title was officially recognized by the Son of Heaven in the year 378.
As to Ts’in ambitions, for a couple of centuries past there had been no further advance of conquest, at least in China. The hitherto almost unheard of state of Shuh (Sz Ch’wan) now begins to come prominently forward, and to contest with Ts’in mastery of the upper course of the Yang-tsz River. After being for 260 years in unchallenged possession of all territory west of the Yellow River, Ts’in once more lost this to Tsin (_i.e._ to Ngwei) in 385. It was not until the other state of Wei, lower down the Yellow River, lost its individuality as an independent country that the celebrated Prince Wei Yang (see Chapter XXII.), having no career at home, offered his services to Ts’in, and that this latter state, availing itself to the full of his knowledge, suddenly shot forth in the light of real progress. We have seen in Chapter XX. that an eminent lawyer and statesman of Ngwei, Ts’in’s immediate rival on the east, had inaugurated a new legal code and an economic land system. This man’s work had fallen under the cognizance of Wei Yang, who carried it with him to Ts’in, where it was immediately utilized to such advantage that Ts’in a century later was enabled to organize her resources thoroughly, and thus conquered the whole empire,
We have now arrived at what is usually called the Six Kingdom Period, or, if we include Ts’in, against whose menacing power the six states were often in alliance, the period of the Seven Kingdoms. These were the three equally powerful states of Ngwei, Han, and Chao (this last very Tartar in spirit, owing to its having absorbed nearly all the Turko-Tartar tribes west of the Yellow River mouth); the northernmost state of Yen, which seems in the same way to have absorbed or to have exercised a strong controlling influence over the Manchu-Corean group of tribes extending from the Liao River to the Chao frontier; Ts’u, which now had the whole south of China entirely to itself, and managed even to amalgamate the coast states of Yiich in 334; and finally Ts’i. In other words, the orthodox Chinese princes, whose comparatively petty principalities in modern Ho Nan province had for several centuries formed a sort of cock-pit in which Ts’in, Tsin, Ts’i, and Ts’u fought out their rivalries, had totally disappeared as independent and even as influential powers, and had been either absorbed by those four great powers (of which Tsin and Ts’i were in reconstituted form), or had become mere obedient vassals to one or the other of them. In former times Tsin had been kinsman and defender; but now Tsin, broken up into three of strange clans, herself afforded an easy prey to Ts’in ambition; the orthodox states were in the defenceless position of the Greek states after Alexander had exhausted Macedon in his Persian wars, and when their last hope, Pyrrhus, had taught the Romans the art of war: they had only escaped Persia to fall into the jaws of Rome.
In the middle of the fourth century B.C. all six powers began to style themselves _wang_, or “king,” which, as explained before, was the title borne by the Emperors of the Chou dynasty. Military, political, and literary activities were very great after this at the different emulous royal courts, and, however much the literary pedants of the day may have bewailed the decay of the good old times, there can be no doubt that life was now much more varied, more occupied, and more interesting than in the sleepy, respectable, patriarchal days of old. The “Fighting State” Period, as expounded in the _Chan-Kwoh Ts’eh,_ or “Fighting State Records,” is the true period of Chinese chivalry, or knight- errantry.
CHAPTER XXIV
KINGS AND NOBLES
The emperors of the dynasty of Chou, which came formally into power in 1122 B.C., we have seen took no other title than that of wang, which is usually considered by Europeans to mean “king”; in modern times it is applied to the rulers of (what until recently were) tributary states, such as Loochoo, Annam, and Corea; to foreign rulers (unless they insist on a higher title); and to Manchu and Mongol princes of the blood, and mediatized princes. Confucius in his history at first always alludes to the Emperor whilst living as _t’ien-wang_, or “the heavenly king”; it is not until in speaking of the year 583 that he uses the old term _t’ien-tsz_, or “Son of Heaven,” in alluding to the reigning Emperor. After an emperor’s death he is spoken of by his posthumous name; as, for instance, Wu Wang, the “Warrior King,” and so on: these posthumous names were only introduced (as a regular system) by the Chou dynasty.
The monarchs of the two dynasties Hia (2205-1767) and Shang (1766- 1123) which preceded that of Chou, and also the somewhat mythical rulers who preceded those two dynasties, were called _Ti_, a word commonly translated by Western nations as “Emperor.” For many generations past the Japanese, in order better to assert _vis-á- vis_ of China their international rank, have accordingly made use of the hybrid expression “_Ti_-state,” by which they seek to convey the European idea of an “empire,” or a state ruled over by a monarch in some way superior to a mere king, which is the highest title China has ever willingly accorded to a foreign prince; this royal functionary in her eyes is, or was, almost synonymous with “tributary prince.” Curiously enough, this “dog- Chinese” (Japanese) expression is now being reimported into Chinese political literature, together with many other excruciating combinations, a few of European, but mostly of Japanese manufacture, intended to represent such Western ideas as “executive and legislative,” “constitutional,” “ministerial responsibility,” “party,” “political view,” and so on. But we ourselves must not forget, in dealing with the particular word “imperial,” that the Romans first extended the military title of imperator to the permanent holder of the “command,” simply because the ancient and haughty word of “king” was, after the expulsion of the kings, viewed with such jealousy by the people of Rome that even of Caesar it is said that he did thrice refuse the title, So the ancient Chinese Ti, standing alone, was at first applied both to Shang Ti or “God” and to his Vicar on Earth, the Ti or Supreme Ruler of the Chinese world. Even Lao-tsz (sixth century B.C.), in his revolutionary philosophy, considers the “king” or “emperor” as one of the moral forces of nature, on a par with “heaven,” “earth,” and “Tao (or Providence).” When we reflect what petty “worlds” the Assyrian, Egyptian, and Greek worlds were, we can hardly blame the Chinese, who had probably been settled in Ho Nan just as long as the Western ruling races had been in Assyria and Egypt respectively, for imagining that they, the sole recorders of events amongst surrounding inferiors, were the world; and that the incoherent tribes rushing aimlessly from all sides to attack them, were the unreclaimed fringe of the world.
It does not appear clearly why the Chou dynasty took the new title of wang, which does not seem to occur in any titular sense previous to their accession: the Chinese attempts to furnish etymological explanation are too crude to be worth discussing. No feudal Chinese prince presumed to use it during the Chou _régime_ and if the semi-barbarous rulers of Ts’u, Wu, and Yiieh did so in their own dominions (as the Hwang Ti, or “august emperor,” of Annam was in recent times tacitly allowed to do), their federal title in orthodox China never went beyond that of viscount. When in the fourth century B.C. all the powers styled themselves _wang_, and were recognized as such by the insignificant emperors, the situation was very much the same as that produced in Europe when first local Caesars, who, to begin with, had been “associates” of the Augustus (or two rival Augusti), asserted their independence of the feeble central Augustus, and then set themselves up as Augusti pure and simple, until at last the only “Roman Emperor” left in Rome was the Emperor of Germany.
It is not explained precisely on what grounds, when the first Chou emperors distributed their fiefs, some of the feudal rulers, as explained in Chapter VII., were made dukes; others marquesses, earls, viscounts, and barons. Of course these translated terms are mere makeshifts, simply because the Chinese had five ranks, and so have we. In creating their new nobility, the Japanese have again made use of the five old Chinese titles, except that for some reason they call Duke Ito and Duke Yamagata “Prince” in English. The size of the fiefs had something to do with it in China; the pedigree of the feoffees probably more; imperial clandom perhaps most of all. The sole state ruled by a duke in his own intrinsic right from the first was Sung, a small principality on the northernmost head-waters of the River Hwai, corresponding to the modern Kwei-t&h Fu: probably it was because this duke fulfilled the sacrificial and continuity duties of the destroyed dynasty of Shang that he received extraordinary rank; just as, in very much later days, the Confucius family was the only non-Manchu to possess “ducal” rank, or, as the Japanese seem to hold in German style, “princely” rank. But it must be remembered that the Chou emperors had imperial dukes within their own appanage, precisely as cardinals, or “princes of the Church,” are as common around Rome as they are scarce among the spiritually “feudal” princes of Europe; for feudal they once practically were.
Confucius’ petty state of Lu was founded by the Duke of Chou, brother of the founder posthumously called the Wu Wang, or the “Warrior King”: for many generations those Dukes of Lu seem to have resided at or near the metropolis, and to have assisted the Emperors with their advice as counsellors on the spot, as well as to have visited at intervals and ruled their own distant state, which was separated from Sung by the River Sz and by the marsh or lakes through which that river ran. Yet Lu as a state had only the rank of a marquisate ruled by a marquess.
Another close and influential relative of the founder or “Warrior King” was the Duke of Shao, who was infeoffed in Yen (the Peking plain), and whose descendants, like those of the Duke of Chou, seem to have done double duty at the metropolis and in their own feudal appanage. Confucius’ history scarcely records anything of an international kind about Yen, which was a petty, feeble region, dovetailed in between Tsin and Ts’i, quite isolated, and occupied in civilizing some of the various Tartar and Corean barbarians; but it must have gradually increased in wealth and resources like all the other Chinese states; for, as we have seen in the last chapter, the Earls of Yen blossomed out into Kings at the beginning of the fourth century B.C., and the philosopher Mencius, when advising the King of Ts’i, even strongly recommended him to make war on the rising Yen power. The founder of Ts’i was the chief adviser of the Chou founder, but was not of his family name; his ancestors–also the ancestors later on claimed by certain Tartar rulers of China–go back to one of the ultra-mythical Emperors of China; his descendants bore, under the Chou dynasty, the dignity of marquess, and reigned without a break until, as already related, the T’ien or Ch’en family, emanating from the orthodox state of Ch’en, usurped the throne. Ts’i was always a powerful and highly civilized state; on one occasion, in 589 B.C., as mentioned in Chapter VI., its capital was desecrated by Tsin; and on another, a century later, the overbearing King of Wu invaded the country. After the title of king was taken in 378 B.C., the court of Ts’i became quite a fashionable centre, and the gay resort of literary men, scientists, and philosophers of all kinds, Taoists included.
Tsin, like Ts’i, was of marquess rank, and though its ruling family was occasionally largely impregnated with Tartar blood by marriage, it was not much more so than the imperial family itself had sometimes been, The Chinese have never objected to Tartars _quâ_ Tartars, except as persons who “let their hair fly,” “button their coats on the wrong side,” and do not practise the orthodox rites; so soon as these defects are remedied, they are eligible for citizenship on equal terms. There has never been any race question or colour question in China, perhaps because the skin is yellow in whichever direction you turn; but it is difficult to conceive of the African races being clothed with Chinese citizenship.
Wei was a small state lying between the Yellow River as it now is and the same river as it then was: it was given to a brother of the founder of the Chou dynasty, and his subjects, like those of the Sung duke, consisted largely of the remains of the Shang dynasty; from which circumstance we may conclude that the so- called “dynasties,” including that of Chou, were simply different ruling clans of one and the same people, very much like the different Jewish tribes, of which the tribe of Levi was the most “spiritual”: that peculiarity may account for the universal unreadiness to cut off sacrifices and destroy tombs, an outrage we only hear of between barbarians, as, for instance, when Wu sacked the capital of Ts’u. We have seen in Chapter XII. that a reigning duke even respected at least some of the sacrificial rights of a traitor subject.
The important state of CHÊNG, lying to the eastward of the imperial reserve, was only founded in the ninth century B.C. by one of the then Emperor’s sons; to get across to each other, the great states north and south of the orthodox nucleus had usually to “beg road” of CHÊNG, which territory, therefore, became a favourite fighting-ground; the rulers were earls. Ts’ao (earls) and Ts’ai (marquesses) were small states to the north and south of CHÊNG, both of the imperial family name. The state of CH’ÊN was ruled by the descendants of the Emperor Shun, the monarch who preceded the Hia dynasty, and who, as stated before, is supposed to have been buried in the (modern) province of Hu Nan, south of the Yang-tsz River: they were marquesses. These three last-named states were always bones of contention between Tsin and Ts’u, on the one hand, and between Ts’i and Ts’u on the other. The remaining feudal states are scarcely worth special mention as active participators in the story of how China fought her way from feudalism to centralization; most of their rulers were viscounts or barons in status, and seem to have owed, or at least been obliged to pay, more duty to the nearest great feudatory than direct to the Emperor.
No matter what the rank of the ruler, so soon as he had been supplied with a posthumous name (expressing, in guarded style, his personal character) he was known to history as “the Duke So-and- So.” Even one of the Rings of Ts’u, is courteously called “the Duke Chwang” after his death, because as a federal prince he had done honour to the courtesy title of viscount. Princes or rulers not enjoying any of the five ranks were, if orthodox sovereign princes over never so small a tract, still called posthumously, “the Duke X.”
Hence Western writers, in describing Confucius’ master and the rulers of other feudal states, often speak of “the Duke of Lu,” or “of Tsin”; but this is only an accurate form of speech when taken subject to the above reserves.
CHAPTER XXV
VASSALS AND EMPEROR
The relations which existed between Emperor and feudal princes are best seen and understood from specific cases involving mutual relations. The Chou dynasty had about 1800 nominal vassals in all, of whom 400 were already waiting at the ford of the Yellow River for the rendezvous appointed by the conquering “Warrior King”; thus the great majority must already have existed as such before the Chou family took power; in other words, they were the vassals of the Shang dynasty, and perhaps, of the distant Hia dynasty too. The new Emperor enfeoffed fifteen “brother” states, and forty more having the same clan-name as himself: these fifty-five were presumably all new states, enjoying mesne-lord or semi-suzerain privileges over the host of insignificant principalities; and it might as well be mentioned here that this imperial clan name of _Ki_ was that of all the ultra-ancient emperors, from 2700 B.C. down to the beginning of the Hia dynasty in 2205 B.C. Fiefs were conferred by the Chou conqueror upon all deserving ministers and advisers as well as upon kinsmen. The more distant princes they enfeoffed possessed, in addition to their distant satrapies, a village in the neighbourhood of the imperial court, where they resided, as at an hotel or town house, during court functions; more especially in the spring, when, if the world was at peace, they were supposed to pay their formal respects to the Emperor. The tribute brought by the different feudal states was, perhaps euphemistically, associated with offerings due to the gods, apparently on the same ground that the Emperor was vaguely associated with God. The Protectors, when the Emperors degenerated, made a great show always of chastising or threatening the other vassals on account of their neglect to honour the Emperor. Thus in 656 the First Protector (Ts’i) made war upon Ts’u for not sending the usual tribute of sedge to the Emperor, for use in clarifying the sacrificial wine. Previously, in 663, after assisting the state of Yen against the Tartars, Ts’i had requested Yen “to go on paying tribute, as was done during the reigns of the two first Chou Emperors, and to continue the wise government of the Duke of Shao.” In 581, when Wu’s pretensions were rising in a menacing degree, the King of Wu said: “The Emperor complains to me that not a single _Ki_ (_i.e._ not a single closely-related state) will come to his assistance or send him tribute, and thus his Majesty has nothing to offer to the Emperor Above, or to the Ghosts and Spirits.”
Land thus received in vassalage from the Emperor could not, or ought not to, be alienated without imperial sanction. Thus in 711 B.C. two states (both of the _Ki_ surname, and thus both such as ought to have known better) effected an exchange of territory; one giving away his accommodation village, or hotel, at the capital; and the other giving in exchange a place where the Emperor used to stop on his way to Ts’i when he visited Mount T’ai-shan, then, as now, the sacred resort of pilgrims in Shan Tung. Even the Emperor could not give away a fief in joke. This, indeed, was how the second Chou Emperor conferred the (extinct or forfeited) fief of Tsin upon a relative. But just as
_Une reine d’Espagne ne regarde pas par la fenêtre,_
so an Emperor of China cannot jest in vain. An attentive scribe standing by said: “When the Son of Heaven speaks, the clerk takes down his words in writing; they are sung to music, and the rites are fulfilled.” When, in 665 B.C., Ts’i had driven back the Tartars on behalf of Yen, the Prince of Yen accompanied the Prince of Ts’i back into Ts’i territory. The Prince of Ts’i at once ceded to Yen the territory trodden by the Prince of Yen, on the ground that “only the Emperor can, when accompanying a ruling prince, advance beyond the limits of his own domain.” This rule probably refers only to war, for feudal princes frequently visited each other. The rule was that “the Emperor can never go out,” i.e. he can never leave or quit any part of China, for all China belongs to him. It is like our “the King can do no wrong.”
The Emperor could thus neither leave nor enter his own particular territory, as all his vassals’ territory is equally his. Hence his “mere motion” or pleasure makes an Empress, who needs no formal reception into his separate appanage by him. If the Emperor gives a daughter or a sister in marriage, he deputes a ruling prince of the Ki surname to “manage” the affair; hence to this day the only name for an imperial princess is “a publicly managed one.” A feudal prince must go and welcome his wife, but the Emperor simply deputes one of his appanage dukes to do it for him. In the same way, these dukes are sent on mission to convey the Emperor’s pleasure to vassals. Thus, in 651 B.C., a duke was sent by the Emperor to assist Ts’in and Ts’i in setting one of the four Tartar-begotten brethren on the Tsin throne (see Chapter X.). In 649 two dukes (one being the hereditary Duke of Shao, supposed to be descended from the same ancestor as the Earl reigning in the distant state of Yen) were sent to confer the formal patent and sceptre of investiture on Tsin. The rule was that imperial envoys passing through the vassal territory should be welcomed on the frontier, fed, and housed; but in 716 the fact that Wei attacked an imperial envoy on his way to Lu proves how low the imperial power had already sunk.
The greater powers undoubtedly had, nearly all of them, clusters of vassals and clients, and it is presumed that the total of 1800, belonging, at least nominally, to the Emperor, covered all these indirect vassals. Possibly, before the dawn of truly historical times, they all went in person to the imperial court; but after the _débâcle_ of 771 B.C., the Emperor seems to have been left severely alone by all the vassals who dared do so. So early as 704 B.C. a reunion of princelets vassal to Ts’u is mentioned; and in the year 622 Ts’u annexed a region styled “the six states,” admittedly descended from the most ancient ministerial stock, because they had presumed to ally themselves with the eastern barbarians; this was when Ts’u was working her way eastwards, down from the southernmost headwaters of the Hwai River, in the extreme south of Ho Nan. It was in 684 that Ts’u first began to annex the petty orthodox states in (modern) Hu Pêh province, and very soon nearly all those lying between the River Han and the River Yang- tsz were swallowed up by the semi-barbarian power. Ts’u’s relation to China was very much like that of Macedon to Greece. Both of the latter were more or less equally descended from the ancient and somewhat nebulous Pelasgi; but Macedon, though imbued with a portion of Greek civilization, was more rude and warlike, with a strong barbarian strain in addition. Ts’u was never in any way “subject” to the Chou dynasty, except in so far as it may have suited her to be so for some interested purpose of her own. In the year 595 Ts’u even treated Sung and Cheng (two federal states of the highest possible orthodox imperial rank) as her own vassals, by marching armies through without asking their permission. As an illustration of what was the correct course to follow may be taken the case of Tsin in 632, when a Tsin army was marching on a punitory expedition against the imperial clan state of Ts’ao; the most direct way ran through Wei, but this latter state declined to allow the Tsin army to pass; it was therefore obliged to cross the Yellow River at a point south of Wei-hwei Fu (as marked on modern maps), near the capital of Wei, past which the Yellow River then ran.
Lu, though itself a small state, had, in 697, and again in 615, quite a large number of vassals of its own; several are plainly styled “subordinate countries,” with viscounts and even earls to rule them. Some of these sub-vassals to the feudal states seem from the first never to have had the right of direct communication with the Emperor at all; in such cases they were called fu-yung, or “adjunct-functions,” like the client colonies attached to the colonial _municipia_ of the Romans. A fu-yung was only about fifteen English miles in extent (according to Mencius); and from 850 B.C. to 771 BC. even the great future state of Ts’in had only been a _fu-yung_,–it is not said to what mesne lord. Sung is distinctly stated to have had a number of these _fu-yung_. CH’ÊN is also credited with suzerainty over at least two sub- vassal states. In 661 Tsin annexed a number of orthodox petty states, evidently with the view of ultimately seizing that part of the Emperor’s appanage which lay north of the Yellow River (west Ho Nan); it was afterwards obtained by “voluntary cession.” The word “viscount,” besides being applied complimentarily to barbarian “kings” when they showed themselves in China, had another special use. When an orthodox successor was in mourning, he was not entitled forthwith to use the hereditary rank allotted to his state; thus, until the funeral obsequies of their predecessors were over, the new rulers of Ch’en and Ts’ai were called “the viscount,” or “son” (same word).
The Emperor used to call himself “I, the one Man,” like the Spanish “Yo, el Rey.” Feudal princes styled themselves to each other, or to the ministers of each other, “The Scanty Man.” Ministers, speaking (to foreign ministers or princes) of their own prince said, “The Scanty Prince”; of the prince’s wife, “The Scanty Lesser Prince”; of their own ministers, “The Scanty Minister.” It was polite to avoid the second person in addressing a foreign prince, who was consequently often styled “your government” by foreign envoys particularly anxious not to offend. The diplomatic forms were all obsequiously polite; but the stock phrases, such as, “our vile village” (our country), “your condescending to instruct” (your words), “I dare not obey your commands” (we will not do what you ask), probably involved nothing more in the way of humility than the terms of our own gingerly worded diplomatic notes, each term of which may, nevertheless, offend if it be coarsely or carelessly expressed.
In some cases a petty vassal was neither a sub-kingdom nor an adjunct-function to another greater vassal, but was simply a political hanger-on; like, for instance, Hawaii was to the United States, or Cuba now is; or like Monaco is to France, Nepaul to India. Thus Lu, through assiduously cultivating the good graces of Ts’i, became in 591 a sort of henchman to Ts’i; and, as we have seen, at the Peace Conference of 546, the henchmen of the two rival Protectors agreed to pay “cross respects” to each other’s Protector. It seems to have been the rule that the offerings of feudal states to the Emperor should be voluntary, at least in form: for instance, in the year 697, the Emperor or his agents begged a gift of chariots from Lu, and in 618 again applied for some supplies of gold; both these cases are censured by the historians as being undignified. On the other hand, the Emperor’s complimentary presents to the vassals were highly valued. Thus in the year 530, when Ts’u began to realize its own capacity for empire, a claim was put in for the Nine Tripods, and for a share of the same honorific gifts that were bestowed by the founders upon Ts’i, Tsin, Lu, and Wei at the beginning of the Chou dynasty. In the year 606 Ts’u had already “inquired” at the imperial court about these same Tripods, and 300 years later (281 B.C.), when struggling with Ts’in for the mastery of China, Ts’u endeavoured to get the state of Han to support her demand for the Tripods, which eventually fell to Ts’in; it will be remembered that the Duke of Chou had taken them to the branch capital laid out by him, but which was not really occupied by the Emperor until 771 B.C.
In 632, after the great Tsin victory over Ts’u, the Emperor “accepted some Ts’u prisoners,” conferred upon Tsin the Protectorate, ceded to Tsin that part of the imperial territory referred to on page 53, and presented to the Tsin ruler a chariot, a red bow with 1000 arrows, a black bow with 1000 arrows, a jar of scented wine, a jade cup with handle, and 300 “tiger” body-guards. In 679, when Old Tsin had been amalgamated by New Tsin (both of them then tiny principalities), the Emperor had already accepted valuable loot from the capture of Old Tsin. In a word, the Emperor nearly always sided with the strongest, accepted _faits accomplis_, and took what he could get. This has also been China’s usual policy in later times.
CHAPTER XXVI
FIGHTING STATE PERIOD
The period of political development covered by Confucius’ history– the object of which history, it must be remembered, was to read to the restless age a series of solemn warnings–was immediately succeeded by the most active and bloodthirsty period in the Chinese annals, that of the Fighting States, or the Six Countries; sometimes they (including Ts’in) were called the “Seven Males,” i.e. the Seven Great Masculine Powers. Tsin had been already practically divided up between the three surviving great families of the original eleven in 424 B.C.; but these three families of Ngwei, Han, and Chao were not recognized by the Emperor until 403; nor did they extinguish the legitimate ruler until 376, about three years after the sacrifices of the legitimate Ts’i kings were stopped. Accordingly we hear the original name Tsin, or “the three Tsin,” still used concurrently with the names Han, Ngwei, and Chao, as that of Ts’u’s chief enemy in the north for some time after the division into three had taken place.
Tsin’s great rival to the west, Ts’in, now found occupation in extending her territory to the south-west at the expense of Shuh, a vast dominion corresponding to the modern Sz Ch’wan, up to then almost unheard of by orthodox China, but which, it then first transpired, had had three kings and ten “emperors” of its own, nine of these latter bearing the same appellation. Even now, the rapids and gorges of the Yang-tsz River form the only great commercial avenue from China into Sz Ch’wan, and it is therefore not hard to understand how in ancient times, the tribes of “cave barbarians” (whose dwellings are still observable all over that huge province) effectively blocked traffic along such subsidiary mountain-roads as may have existed then, as they exist now, for the use of enterprising hawkers.
The Chinese historians have no statistics, indulge in fen (few?) remarks about economic or popular development, describe no popular life, and make no general reflections upon history; they confine themselves to narrating the bald and usually unconnected facts which took place on fixed dates, occasionally describing some particularly heroic or daring individual act, or even sketching the personal appearance and striking conduct of an exceptionally remarkable king, general, or other leading personality: hence there is little to guide us to an intelligent survey of causes and effects, of motives and consequences; it is only by carefully piecing together and collating a jumble of isolated events that it is possible to obtain any general coup d’oeil at all: the wood is often invisible on account of the trees.
But there can be no doubt that populations had been rapidly increasing; that improved means had been found to convey accumulated stores and equipments; that generals had learnt how to hurl bodies of troops rapidly from one point to the other; and that rulers knew the way either to interest large populations in war, or to force them to take an active part in it. The marches, durbars, and gigantic canal works, undertaken by the barbarous King of Wu, as described in Chapter XXI., prove this in the case of one country. Chinese states always became great in the same way: first Kwan-tsz developed, on behalf of his master the First Protector, the commerce, the army, and the agriculture of Ts’i. He was imitated at the same time by Duke Muh of Ts’in and King Chwang of Ts’u, both of which rulers (seventh century B.C.) set to work vigorously in developing their resources. Then Tsz-ch’an raised Cheng to a great pitch of diplomatic influence, if not also of military power. His friend Shuh Hiang did the same thing for Tsin; and both of them were models for Confucius in Lu, who had, moreover, to defend his own master’s interests against the policy of the philosopher Yen-tsz of Ts’i. After his first defeat by the King of Wu, the barbarian King of Yueh devoted himself for some years to the most strenuous life, with the ultimate object of amassing resources for the annihilation of Wu; the interesting steps he took to increase the population will be described at length in a later chapter. In 361, as we have explained in Chapter XXII., a scion of Wei went as adviser to Ts’in, and within a generation of his arrival the whole face of affairs was changed in that western state hitherto so isolated; the new position, from a military point of view, was almost exactly that of Prussia during the period between the tyranny of the first Napoleon, together with the humiliation experienced at his hands, and the patient gathering of force for the final explosion of 1870, involving the crushing of the second (reigning) Napoleon.
Very often the term “perpendicular and horizontal” period is applied to the fourth century B.C. That is, Ts’u’s object was to weld together a chain of north and south alliances, so as to bring the power of Ts’i and Tsin to bear together with her own upon Ts’in; and Ts’in’s great object was, on the other hand, to make a similar string of east and west alliances, so as to bring the same two powers to bear upon Ts’u. The object of both Ts’in and Ts’u was to dictate terms to each unit of; and ultimately to possess, the whole Empire, merely utilizing the other powers as catspaws to hook the chestnuts out of the furnace. No other state had any rival pretensions, for, by this time, Ts’in and Ts’u each really did possess one-third part of China as we now understand it, whilst the other third was divided between Ts’i and the three Tsin. In 343 B.C. the Chou Emperor declared Ts’in Protector, and from 292 to 288 B.C., Tsin and Ts’i took for a few years the ancient title of _Ti_ or “Emperor” of the West and East respectively: in the year 240 the Chou Emperor even proceeded to Ts’in to do homage there. Tsin might have been in the running for universal empire had she held together instead of dividing herself into three. Yen was altogether too far away north,–though, curiously enough, Yen (Peking) has been the political centre of North China for 900 years past,–and Ts’i was too far away east. Moreover, Ts’i was discredited for having cut off the sacrifices of the legitimate house. Ts’u was now master of not only her old vassals, Wu and Yiieh, but also of most of the totally unknown territory down to the south sea, of which no one except the Ts’u people at that time knew so much as the bare local names; it bore the same relation to Ts’u that the Scandinavian tribes did to the Romanized Germans. Ts’in had become not only owner of Sz Ch’wan– at first as suzerain protector, not as direct administrator–but had extended her power down to the south-west towards Yiin Nan and Tibet, and also far away to the north-west in Tartarland, but not farther than to where the Great Wall now extends. It is in the year 318 B.C. that we first hear the name Hiung-nu (ancestors of the Huns and Turks), a body of whom allied themselves in that year with the five other Chinese powers then in arms against the menacing attitude of Ts’in; something remarkable must have taken place in Tartarland to account for this sudden change of name, The only remains of old federal China consisted of about ten petty states such as Sung, Lu, etc., all situated between the Rivers Sz and Hwai, and all waiting, hands folded, to be swallowed up at leisure by this or that universal conqueror.
Ts’in _s’en va t’en guerre_ seriously in the year 364, and began her slashing career by cutting off 60,000 “Tsin” heads; (the legitimate Tsin sacrifices had been cut off in 376, so this “Tsin” must mean “Ngwei,” or that part of old Tsin which was coterminous with Ts’in); in 331, in a battle with Ngwei, 80,000 more heads were taken off. ‘In 318 the Hiung-nu combination just mentioned lost 82,000 heads between them; in 314 Han lost 10,000; in 312 Ts’u lost 80,000; in 307 Han lost 60,000; and in 304 Ts’u lost 80,000. In the year 293 the celebrated Ts’in general, Pêh K’i, who has left behind him a reputation as one of the greatest manipulators of vast armies in Eastern history, cut off 240,000 Han heads in one single battle; in 275, 40,000 Ngwei heads; and in 264, 50,000 Han heads. “_Enfin je vais me mesurer avec ce Vilainton_” said the King of Chao, when his two western friends of Han and Ngwei had been hammered out of existence. In the year 260 the Chao forces came to terrible grief; General Pêh K’i managed completely to surround their army of 400,000 men he accepted their surrender, guaranteed their safety, and then proceeded methodically to massacre the whole of them to a man. In 257 “Tsin” (presumably Han or Ngwei) lost 6,000 killed and 20,000 drowned; in 256 Han lost 40,000 heads, and in 247 her last 30,000, whilst also in 256 Chao her last 90,000. These terrible details have been put together from the isolated statements; but there can be no mistake about them, for the historian Sz-ma Ts’ien, writing in 100 B.C., says: “The allies with territory ten times the extent of the Ts’in dominions dashed a million men against her in vain; she always had her reserves in hand ready, and from first to last a million corpses bit the dust.”
No such battles as these are even hinted at in more ancient times; nor, strange to say, are the ancient chariots now mentioned any more. Ts’in had evidently been practising herself in fighting with the Turks and Tartars for some generations, and had begun to perceive what was still only half understood in China, the advantage of manoeuvring large bodies of horsemen; but, curiously enough, nothing is said of horses either; yet all these battles seem to have been fought on the flat lands of old federal China, suitable for either chariots or horses. The first specific mention of cavalry manoeuvres on a large scale was in the year 198 B.C. when the new Han Emperor of China in person, with a straggling army of 320,000 men, mostly infantry, was surrounded by four bodies of horsemen led by the Supreme Khan, in white, grey, black, and chestnut divisions, numbering 300,000 cavalry in all: his name was Megh-dun (? the Turkish Baghatur).
Whilst all this was going on, Mencius, the Confucian philosopher, and the two celebrated diplomatists (of Taoist principles), Su Ts’in and Chang I, were flying to and fro all over orthodox China with a view of offering sage political advice; this was the time _par excellence_ when the rival Taoist and Confucian prophets were howling in the wilderness of war and greed: but Ts’in cared not much for talkers: generals did her practical business better: in 308 she began to cast covetous eyes on the Emperor’s poor remaining appanage. In 301 she was called upon to quell a revolt in Shuh; then she materially reduced the pretensions of her great rival Ts’u; and finally rested a while, whilst gathering more strength for the supreme effort-the conquest of China.
CHAPTER XXVII
FOREIGN BLOOD
The history of China may be for our present purposes accordingly summed up as follows. The pure Chinese race from time immemorial had been confined to the flat lands of the Yellow River, and its one tributary on the south, the River Loh, the Tartars possessing most of the left bank from the Desert to the sea. However, from the beginning of really historical times the Chinese had been in unmistakable part-possession of the valleys of the Yellow River’s two great tributaries towards the west and north, the Wei (in Shen Si) and the Fen (in Shan Si). Little, if any, Chinese colonizing was done much before the Ts’in conquests in any other parts of Tartarland; none in Sz Ch’wan that we know of; little, if any, along the coasts, except perhaps from Ts’i and Lu (in Shan Tung), both of which states seem to have always been open to the sea, though many barbarian coast tribes still required gathering into the Chinese fold. The advance of Chinese civilization had been first down the Yellow River; then down the River Han towards the Middle Yang-tsz; and lastly, down the canals and the Hwai network of streams to the Shanghai coast. Old colonies of Chinese had, many centuries before the conquest of China by the Chou dynasty, evidently set out to subdue or to conciliate the southern tribes: these adventurous leaders had naturally taken Chinese ideas with them, but had usually found it easier for their _own_ safety and success to adopt barbarian customs in whole or in part. These mixed or semi-Chinese states of the navigable Yang-tsz Valley, from the Ich’ang gorges to the sea, had generally developed in isolation and obscurity, and only appeared in force as formidable competitors with orthodox Chinese when the imperial power began to collapse after 771 B.C. The isolation of half-Roman Britain for several centuries after the first Roman conquest, and the departure of the last Roman legions, may be fitly compared with the position of the half-Chinese states. Ts’u, Wu, and Yüeh all had pedigrees, more or less genuine, vying in antiquity with the pedigree of the imperial Chou family; and therefore they did not see why they also should not aspire to the overlordship when it appeared to be going a-begging. Even orthodox Tsin and Ts’i in the north and north-east were in a sense colonial extensions, inasmuch as they were governed by new families appointed thereto by the Chou dynasty in 1122 B.C., in place of the old races of rulers, presumably more or less barbarian, who had previously to 1122 B.C. been vassal–in name at least–to the earlier imperial Hia and Shang dynasties: but these two great states were never considered barbarian under Chou sway; and, indeed, some of the most ancient mythological Chinese emperors anterior to the Hia dynasty had their capitals in Tsin and Lu, on the River Fên and the River Sz.
It is not easy to define the exact amount of “foreignness” in Ts’u. One unmistakable non-Chinese expression is given; that is _kou-u-du_, or “suckled by a tigress.” Then, again, the syllable _ngao_ occurs phonetically in many titles and in native personal names, such as _jo-ngao_, _tu-ngao_, _kia-ngao_, _mo-ngao_. There are no Ts’u songs in the Odes as edited by Confucius, and the Ts’u music is historically spoken of as being “in the southern sound”; which may refer, it is true, to the accent, but also possibly to a strange language. The Ts’u name for “Annals,” or history, was quite different from the terms used in Tsin and Lu, respectively; and the Ts’u word for a peculiar form of lameness, or locomotor ataxy, is said to differ from the expressions used in either Wei and Ts’i. So far aspossible, all Ts’u dignities were kept in the royal family, and the king’s uncle was usually premier. The premier of Ts’u was called _Zing-yin,_ a term unknown to federal China; and Ts’u considered the left-hand side more honourable than the right, which at that time was not the case in China proper, though it is now. The “Borough-English” rule of succession in Ts’u was to give it to one of the younger sons; this statement is repeated in positive terms by Shuh Hiang, the luminous statesman of Tsin, and will be further illustrated when we come to treat of that subject specially. The Lu rule was “son after father; or, if none, then younger after eldest brother; if the legitimate heir dies, then next son by the same mother; failing which, the eldest son by any mother; if equal claims, then the wisest; if equally wise, cast lots”: Lu rules would probably hold good for all federal China, because the Duke of Chou, founder of Lu, was the chief moral force in the original Chou administration. In the year 587 Lu, when coquetting between Tsin and Ts’u, was at last persuaded not to abandon Tsin for Ts’u, “who is not of our family, and can never have any real affection.” Once in Tsin it was asked, about a prisoner: “Who is that southernhatted fellow?” It was explained that he was a Ts’u man. They then handed him a guitar, and made him sing some “national songs.” In 597 a Ts’u envoy to the Tsin military durbar said: “My prince is not formed for the fine and delicate manners of the Chinese”: here is distinct evidence of social if not ethnological cleaving. The Ts’u men had beards, whilst those of Wu were not hirsute: this statement proves that the two barbarian populations differed between themselves. In 635 the King of Ts’u spoke of himself as “the unvirtuous” and the “royal old man”–designations both appropriate only to barbarians under Chinese ritual. In 880 B.C., when the imperial power was already waning, and the first really historical King of Ts’u was beginning to bring under his authority the people between the Han and the Yang-tsz, he said: “I am a barbarian savage, and do not concern myself with Chinese titles, living or posthumous.” In 706, when the reigning king made his first conquest of a petty Chinese principality (North Hu Pêh), he said again: “I am a barbarian savage; all the vassals are in rebellion and attacking each other; I want with my poor armaments to see for myself how Chou governs, and to get a higher title.” On being refused, he said: “Do you forget my ancestor’s services to the father of the Chou founder?” Later on, as has already been mentioned, he put in a claim for the Nine Tripods because of the services his ancestor, “living in rags in the Jungle, exposed to the weather,” had rendered to the founder himself. In 637, when the future Second Protector and ruler of Tsin visited Ts’u as a wanderer, the King of Ts’u received him with all the hospitalities “under the Chou rites,” which fact shows at least an effort to adopt Chinese civilization. In 634 Lu asked Ts’u’s aid against Ts’i, a proceeding condemned by the historical critics on the ground that Ts’u was a “barbarian savage” state. On the other hand, by the year 560 the dying King of Ts’u was eulogized as a man who had successfully subdued the barbarian savages. But against this, again, in 544 the ruler of Lu expressed his content at having got safely back from his visit to Ts’u, i.e. his visit to such an uncouth and distant court. Thus Ts’u’s emancipation from “savagery” was gradual and of uncertain date. In 489 the King of Ts’u declined to sacrifice to the Yellow River, on the ground that his ancestors had never presumed to concern themselves with anything beyond the Han and Yang-tsz valleys. Even Confucius, (then on his wanderings in the petty state of CH’ÊN) declared his admiration at this, and said: “The King of Ts’u is a sage, and understands the Great Way (_tao_).” On the other hand, only fifty years before this, when in 538 Ts’u, with Tsin’s approval, first tried her hand at durbar work, the king was horrified to hear from a fussy chamberlain (evidently orthodox) that there were six different ways of receiving visitors according to their rank; so that Ts’u’s ritual decorum could not have been of very long standing. The following year (537) a Tsin princess is given in marriage to Ts’u– a decidedly orthodox feather in Ts’u’s cap. Confucius affects a particular style in his history when he speaks of barbarians; thus an orthodox prince “beats” a barbarian, but “battles” with an orthodox equal. However, in 525, Ts’u and Wu “battle” together, the commentator explaining that Ts’u is now “promoted” to battle rank, though the strict rule is that two barbarians, or China and