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:h 50,2.5

H^artart CoUcgf libtars

HAKOLD JKFFKRSON COOl.IDGE

Ot FitiS'lON
FUR BOOKS RKIJVTIVG TO IHrNA

THE ANCIENT HISTOEY OF CHINA

THE ANCIENT HISTORY
OF CHINA

TO THB END OP THE CHdU DYNASTY

FRIEDRICH HIRTH, Ph.D.

THE COLUMBIA ONIVERSITT PRESS

leos

^ Jo. a. . 3

^?^

^BD coo:^

MAR 6 190R

Bt the OOLUMBIA UNIVKEBITr t
Sat np ud (kcuotypad. FuUlmbad Juuinr.

HOBACIS W. CABPENTIEE

MAR 6 1908

I, Ih^ tHuf Jaittt-Stftt, 1

"B«*«Dd«n htbg kh (Mna and mi duo eehArt. Briulg dnrchitndlrt. loh lub« ait
«iei wlflhClfa Luid ^fllehiun ku^AhotiAii and kli^Bond«l, un ralAh Im FaU dtr NoUi,
to «■ anofa Jfltxt fwehflhen, dmhln eti flflAbUD, Bleh En elnein fui neaen ZoBtuidfl nok
u la niilMitiii n baflDdii, lit lahr helliuD."

PREFACE

When, in 1818, aboat the time of the battle of Leipeig,
patriotic carea preyed upon his soul, Germany's great
poet, Goethe, took refuge in the history of China. The
novelty of the study and the very diversity of the subject
bad, we may conclude from his own words,' a salutary
effect on his mind.

The century, or nearly so, which baa elapeed since the
time when Chinese subjects were the Ultima Tbule in that
wide range of scientifio industry characteristic of one of
the world's most Quiversal minds has wrought a wonder-
ful change in public interest.

Political events have brought China to the front ; and
the Western world is now more than ever bent on study-
ing the civilization of that once-neglected empire — un-
fortonately often with ill success. It is the universal
complaint among Westerners — and those who have had
the longest experience in studying Orientals are the most
ready to admit the fact — that we shall scarcely ever be-
come as familiar with the Chinese as we are with nations
nearer to ourselves in race and culture. This complaint
will probably never cease to be justified, but it may be
considerably attenuated.

Students wishing to know something about China often
believe they have done enough if they have read a book
of modem travel or one on recent politics. They re-
semble the amat«ur traveler in Italy who thinks he may
' 8m th« qnouiloni rnttt.

viii PREFACE

learn to know the country without troubling himself
about the history of Rome. Having started at the wrong
end, as it were, they will never realize that many of the
oddities and puzzles encountered in the attempt to under-
stand the modern Chinese disappear if we can trace their
historical origin and development. In this respect the
China of to-day is unique as compared with all other
countries. No other people in the world is so closely
connected with its ancient history as the Chinese, and of
this the earliest part, with that classical Chou dynasty,
the constitutional period of all Chinese culture, has
created standards which have become dominant in all
development down to our own times, not only in China
herself, but to a certain extent throughout the Far East,
especially in Corea and Japan. The ancient history of
China in this respect holds a position in the extreme East
similar to that of Greece and Rome in the West.

Such considerations had induced the author to pre-
pare lectures on the subject addressed to such university
students as did not intend to become specialists in the
language and literature of China. This necessitated the
elimination from them of the purely philological element.
On the other hand, the present state of research in sub-
jects of Chinese history and culture called for the inser-
tion of results which might have necessitated much deeper
argumentation in matters of detail than the chief object
in view would justify. The author has, therefore, en-
deavored to steer a middle course by referring students
to the foreign literature, leaving it to them to extend their
knowledge by studying these sources. It should be
understood, however, that merely a selection from the
enormous material existing in the shape of translations,

PREFACE ix

monographs, and comprehensiTe works is here presented.
A complete biblii^raphy of the foreign literature will be
found in Henri Cordier's "Bibliotheca Sinica: Diction-
naire bibliographique dea ouvrages relatifs i Tempire
chinois" (2d edition, PariD, 1904, nnder the head of
** Histoire " ; some of tlie collateral subjects, such as
arcbteolo^y, art, etc., being dealt with in other sections
of the work). The Sinological reader may dispense with
a whole library of works constituting the native sources
of our subject by referring to that huge collection of
historical extracts, the I-ihi, in 160 books compiled by
Ha Su and published in 1670 — a rentable mine of infor-
mation and a monument of methodical treatment remind-
ing one of Kaspar Zeuss's unique work *' Die Deutschen
ond die NachbarstAmme." (Cf . Wylie, " Notes on Chinese
Literature," Shanghai, 1867, p. 23.)

To my students is due my thanks for having listened
to these Lectures with never-failing interest during four
consecutive academic years, — a source of much encour-
agement to the lecturer, considering that the course lay
through paths so very far from the beaten track. Their
publication as a text-book for students and as a work
of reference for general readers is due to the liberality of
the Trustees, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of
Columbia University, ex offieio President, and Professor
William H. Carpenter, Secretary, of the Columbia Uni-
versity Press, and the cooperation of the Norwood
Press. I have also to thank Mr. Albert Porter of
Livingston, Staten Island, N.Y., for the conscientious
manner in which he has revised the manuscript for the
press.

FRIEDRICH HIRTH.

CIK.CFXBU UinTBmaiTT ih thk Ottt
or Nbw Yobk, Hftrcb, IKIT.

CONTENTS

pBXyACS

ImTKUonom fob Rkadikq Cbiksbk Wobds.

HrmoLoaiCAi. axd Lmkitvakt 1

} 1. The Fabnlons Coamogooy: Pui-ka, etc — | 2. Fa-hi

(2862-2788 B-c.)— JS- Shfln-onng (2787-2706 B.C.)

S4. Hu«ng-ti (2704-2696 B.c.)-~9 6. SuppoMd intro-
ductioD of B foreign ciTilixatioo under HuBikg4i. —
!«. Farther d»edt dI Hu«iig-»._S7. ShBu-hBu (26»4-
2511 B.C.) — 1 a CbaBD-hU (2610-2188 b.c.)— 5 »■ Ti-
k'n (2482^888 B.C.).— | 10. Ti-chl (2882-2868 B.O.).

II
The CovrucLui I

1 1 1. Tbo (2867-2268 B.C.). — i 12. Shan (2268-2206 B.O.). —
I 18. The HiB dpiBitr (2206-1708 B.C.). — S 14- Vli, or
Tft-jtt (2206-21M B.C.).— t 16. Ttt'a nooBMon (21B7-
17W B.C.}.

Ill
TsB Sbavo, OB Tor, Dtxutt (1768-1122 b.c.) . 46

{ 16. Ch'Ong-t'Bng (176(^1764 B.C.). — {17. Ch'ftng^'Bng'i
■oeoeWHB.— S 18. Chtfi^ein.— ( 10. WAo-wBog, Duke of
Cbtfo.— (20. Wn-wBugBodthefmltof tbeShBDgdjBBBtr.
— 1 21. Culture of the Shang period.

xii CONTENTS

iv-vni

PAoas

The Ch<5u Dtnastt (1122-249 b.c.)* • • • • 98-328

From Wu-wamo to K^amo-wano: the Period of Impe-
rial Authority 93-139

§ 22. Wu-wang as King of Chdu ( 1122-1116 b.c. ). —
§23. Ch'6ng-wang (1115-1079 b.c.). — § 24. The "Chdu-
li." — § 25. Origin of the mariner's compass in China. —
§ 26. Ch^dng-wang's reign continued. — § 27. K^ang-wang
(1078-1053 B.C.).

Gradual Decline of Central Power .... 141-197

§ 28. Chau-wang (1052-1002 B.C.). — § 29. Mu-wang (1001-
947 B.C.). — § 30. Kung-wang (946-935 B.C.).— § 31. I-
wang (934-910 b.c.).— § 32. Hiau-wang (909-895 B.c.).
— § 33. I-wang (894-879 b.c.). — § 34. Li-wang (878-
842 B.C.). — § 35. The Kung-ho period (841-828 b.c.).—
§ 36. Suan-wang (827-782 b.c.). — § 37. Yu-wang (781-
771 B.C.). — § 38. Fing-wang (770-720 b.c.).— 5 6Q. Geog-
raphy of the Ch^un-tsUu period (722-481 ;p.c.). —
§ 40. Huan-wang (719-697 b.c).

The Century of the «* Five Leaders " (685-591 b.c.) . 199-223

§41. Chaang-wang (696-682 b.c.). — § 42. Hi-wang (681-
677 B.C.). — § 43. Hui-wang (676-652 b.c). — § 44. Siang-
wang (651-619 b.c). — § 45. K'ing-wang (618-613 b.c).
— §46. K'uang-wang (612-607 B.C.). — § 47. Ting-wang
(606-586 B.C.).

Thi Aoi or Lau-tzI amd Cokpucius . . . . 22C
i 48. KitfD-wuig (585-572 B.C.)- — S 49. Ling-wang (671-
545 B.C.)- — § 5a KiDg-wang, the elder (544-520 b.c.).—
I U. King-WMig, the jonnger (510-476 b.c).

The CoNTKifDnta Statb§ 269-328

I 62. Tnu-wuig (475-468 B.C.). — S 5S. Chdn-ting-wuig
(468-441 B.C.). — 5 54. K'»u-w»Dg (440-426 a.c). —
{ 55. Wei-lid-WMg (425-*02 b.c). — g 56. An-w»ng (401-
876 B.C.). — 5 67. Li6-wang (376-36B b.c.). — § 68. HWn-
waog (368-321 b.c.). — f 69. The philosopherB Yang Cha
and Ho Ti. — S 60. Meneini.- S 61. Chnang-tti. —
i 62. Minor Fhiloeoi^en. — § 63. Su Ta'la and Chang L
— S 94. Sh6n-taing-wang (.'120-315 B.C.). — S 66. Nan-
w»ng (814-266 B.C.). — § 66. The "Four NobloB," —
1 67. The leadenhip of Ts-in (256-221 B.O.).

APPENDIX: Ckboholooical Tables .... 329-348

INDEX U9-883

SiKTCB Hav or Cbuia DumiKO TBI Ca6tr Dtmastt 890

INSTRUCTIONS FOR READING CHINESE
WORDS IN THIS WORK

Rkasbbs need not trouble too much about the proaon-
cutioD of the Chinese words occurring in this volume.
They should regard them as mere symbols for certain
Chinese chsrsctera transcribed in the Mandarin dialect.
Since the sounds attached to the characters of the Chinese
written langui^ vary considerably in the several prov-
inces, and even in the Mandarin dialect itself, it should
be understood that merely an approximation of the true
sounds as heard in the north of China is aimed at. The
phonetic principles on which sounds are here described
correspond in spirit to those adopted by the Royal Qeo-
graphical Society of London ' and the United States Board
on Geographic Names.* According to these principles,
vowels are to be pronounced as in Italian and on the
oontinent of Europe generally, and consonants as in Eng-
lish. But for the special purpose of rendering Chinese
sounds certain rules invdving some sl^ht modifications
are here given.

V0WXL8 AHD Diphthongs
» has the sound of a io father. Examples: ma,
hotw ; tha, sand ; won, bay ; than, mountain ;
nan, south.
> 8m Bttlffor tk» Onkagrapht of QtonrapMetit Nam**, pabUihed br
tha CooncU of Um Boj»1 Oeogni^lcftl Bociet]', IWl.

*Bm Steoud Beport of TV UnUed SuSm Board on OtognpkU
XmM, 1800-1800; 9d ad., WMbincua, 1001.

INSTRUCTIONS

has the sound of e is men. Examples: kiint
district ; tniin, face, surface ; tUi, aaow ; fii,
iron ; y^, wild ; hM, caverD ; t'Un, field ; yen^ salt.

has the sound of t in ravine, or of ee in beet.
Examples: n, west; fn, rocks under water;
£'t, rivulet ; nt, mud ; t (also read yt) city,
hamlet.

is short as t in sin, or i in view when followed by
n, by another vowel, or by a diphthong. Ex-
amples: kin, gold; Wingy blue; kia, family;
kiang, river ; tt^ palace ; k'iau, bridge ; k'iai,
model.

signifies that a vowel is to be intonated simulta-
neously with the adjoining sonant. Examples:
ek't, pool or lake ; «At, stone, rock ; ft, sun ;
•81, township ; tz% porcelain i ir, two. This
symbol is also used in describing the sound «I
in words like lei, net, etc., the i of which is but
faintly heard and disappears, as it were, in the
preceding e.

has the sound of o in mote. Examples: to, a
place; ho, river; fo, Buddha; po, a marshy
lake.

has the sound of ff in German, Hungarian, Swe-
dish, Norwegian, and Danish, or of eu in
French jeu, or of o in English love. Exam-
ples: mSn, gate, door; thUng, province; tS,
virtue.

has the sound of oo in boot. Examples: Au, lake
Am, valley ; fu, prefecture.

is short when preceding n, a, o, or a diphthong.
Examples ; t'un, village ; tung, east ; kuang,
broad ; cKuan, river, watercourses, Szl-ch'uan

FOR PEONUNCIATION ivU

province ; chuati^, a farm ; huang, yellow ;
kuan, frontier pass, cuetom-house ; tuan, abort ;
kuo, kingdom ; i'uot, quick.

(« with the timlaut) has the sound of u in French
£lu. Examples: til, islet; ku, embankment;
k'a, a drain ; ftO, market-place.

is abort when preceding n, a, or ^. Examples:
•fin, military station ; tM'ilan, fountain ; gUan,
source ; tfl^, snow ; yil^, moon.

has the sound of i in ice. Examples: hat, sea;
('at, terrace, tower ; ch'ai, stronghold, hill
fortress; tn, cliff, ledge.

has the sound of ow in how. Examples: au,
bay, cove ; kau, high ; lau, old ; miau, temple.

has the sound of the Italian e and i combined,
somewhat like ey in the English they. Exam-
ples: Act, black; lei, thunder; met, coal; pet,
north ; wet, tail, end.

is a diphthong in which the two elements are
distinctly intonated, as in fdu, bead, which
should have the sound of the first word in the
Hebrew tohu bohu without its h. Examples:
Uu, a bouse with an upper story ; iVu, mouth,
embouchure, port; kdu, ditch ; Atfu, after,
behind ; fdu, mound.

is sounded like oot, contracted into a diphthong,
or like tn in the German ^^i. Examples: thui,
water, river ; hui, whirling waters ; tui, a heap
(as of rocks).

COSBONAHTS

The initials k,p, t, cK, tt, and tt should not be
as hard as in English, though decidedly harder

xvm

INSTRUCTIONS

than g^ ft, (2, dj^ and dz. Thus the initial in kan^
sweet, should hold about the middle between
the initials in English gone and con. To indi-
cate that h^ |>, t, ch^ U^ and tz should be pro-
nounced as hard as possible an asper is placed
after them, which is frequently replaced by an
apostrophe. Examples: kan^ sweet; Van^ a
pit ; ping^ soldier ; p'ing^ even, level ; to, many ; •
lO'fo^ a camel; cha%L, morning; cKau^ dy-
nasty ; Uiau^ half-tide rocks ; U'iau^ mountain-
ous; tet, purple; U%hi^ gentle, or motherly,
pleasure (principal name of the Empress
Dowager).
eh has the sound of ch in church, slightly softer
when not marked and slightly harder when
marked by an asper. Examples: ch4u^ island ;
cKdng^ walled city. When followed by t, the
vowel disappears in it.
ras in English king, poll, and tall, but slightly

k softer, and harder when marked by an asper.

p < Examples: kduy ditch, drain ; k'6ng^ a pit; pau^

t police ward; p'uy shore, branch of a river;

^ tou, island ; t'an, a rapid.
ts slightly softer than the two consonants would
sound in English, and harder when provided
with an asper. Examples: ted', a pool; te'un,
village.
tz similar to te, the vowel disappearing in the sibi-
lant. Examples: tet, son; tz% hall.

f as in English. Examples: f&ng^ summit, peak;
/rfu, mound.

h as in English, or as a; in Spanish Xeres, both pro-
nunciations being heard in North China. Ex-
amples: hung^ red; hiU^ cavern; Ato, a gorge.

FOR PKONUNCIATION xii

I u y in French jeu, and not as in English. Ex-
amplea: jSn, man; jS, hot. When followed
by i the vowel disappears in it.
(as in English. Examples: lir^, mountain pass,
range ; mi, rice ; nt, mud ; cm, a small temple ;
kutm, inn.

r dental, not guttural, occurs solely in combination
with the vowel i, which disappears in it, so that
it is difficult to say whether it ia an initial
or a final. Example: %r, two.
■h ■■ in English show. Example: thang, above.
When followed by i, the vowel disappears in it.
Example: tfA, ten.
w is a sharp sibilant, as in English mess, in which
the vowel i disappears. Example: uif, mon-
astery,
w as in English. Example: wan, gulf, bay.
7 a consonant, as in English yard. Examples: yi,
wild land ; yen, a precipice ; ying, a military
camp; yilon, an eddy.
■C as a final, as n^ in English song. Examples: t'tn^,
an inferior prefecture; Uing, a well; yang,
ocean ; hang, hill, ridge ; chung^ middle ; far^,
dyke, pool ; timg, a cave. In certain words
beginning with a, f, or o, 719 is optional as an
initdat, and should not appear in any transcrip-
tion. Thus an, repose, is by some individuals
pronounced ngan, for which reason we often
read Si-ngmi-fu instead of Si-an-fa.
KoTB 1. — The accent in the vocalic combinations tfu,
•J and Hi shows which of the two vowels is to be intonated ;
it is otherwise not sssential ; and it must not be mistaken
for a word-accent.

XX INSTRUCTIONS FOR PRONUNCIATION

Note 2. — In the modern Peking dialect linguistic
evolution has brought about certain changes in initials
such as may be observed in the pronunciation of Latin —
the change of c, originally a decided guttural, into a sibi-
lant having been first drawn attention to by Aug. Schlei-
cher under the name of ^^zetacism." It can be compared
to such words as the Greek Kue^pmv and the Italian cice-
ronej Scotch kirk and English church, German £mn and
English chin. In the Peking dialect, however, not only
is k before i and U changed into the sibilant ch (kiang^
river, becomes chiang ; VUan^ dog, becomes cViJUm)^ but
the initial t% also becomes cA, and both the initials h and t
are changed into h». The name of the well-known prov-
ince Kiang-si thus becomes Chiang-hsi; those of the great
emperors K'ang-hi and K'ien-lung are changed into K'ang-
hsi and CK ten-lung ; and those of the city of Tsi-nan be-
comes Chi-nan. The adoption of Peking spelling in
transcribing Chinese words is bound to create confusion,
chiefly in connection with such changes in the initials,
which are liable to disturb readers accustomed to the
traditional style much more than any other deviation in
the transcription of sounds. Whether Kiu-kiang, the
name of the treaty port, be spelled in the old English style
KeW'keang or, as by French Sinologues, JSteou-kiang^ will
not matter much, whereas the Peking spelling Chiu-chiang
renders the name almost unrecognizable to readers look-
ing for it on any of the existing maps of China. I have,
therefore, in my transcriptions retained the traditional
initials (i, Uy A, and «), while otherwise reducing the
spelling to a certain conformity with the phonetic princi-
ples likely to become standards for geographical names
both in England and in the United States.

THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

MYTHOLOGICAL AND LEGENDARY

THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

MYTHOLOGICAL AND LEGENDARY

{ 1. The Fabulous Cosmoqont

A GOOD deal of what Chinese authors have placed on
record as the beginnings of their history is probably
nothing more than prehistoric lore invented by
generations much later than the events themselves. The
mventors evince a certain amount of logic in assimiing that
a degree of development was necessary to prepare mankind,
as far as known to the Chinese race, for that state of civiliza-
tion without which accounts of the beginnings of history
wiU not appear plausible.

The mythological period of the Chinese, like that of other
ancient nations, stretches from the creation of the world
out of chaos to what at first sight looks like history, but
which does not deserve that name. From the scientific
point of view this period should be allowed a much wider
range than from that of the less critical Chinese historians.

It should be remarked at once that the Cliinese themselves
do not refer to any tradition written or unwritten as to
their most ancient forefathers having immigrated from
abroad. Their oldest habitat was, so far as their own
literature goes, the cradle of Chinese civilization in the

•>^.

4 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

present provinces of Shen-si and Kan-su in the northwest
of China. If they have at any time immigrated there from
some other part of the world, we possess absolutely no
record of it. The gods and demigods mentioned as the
predecessors of their legendary emperors are supposed to
have originated in territories within that limited geographi-
cal area peculiar to the times in which these legends were
invented by the popular imagination of the ancient Chinese.
We are thus left in the dark as to any wanderings of the
race, whether from central, northern, or western Asia, to
their later homes. To judge from native accounts, the
Chinese must have been living in the northwestern part of
the country now called China from the very earliest period
of their own history. The safest view we can, therefore,
take of their origin is that of the agnostic.

Chinese mythology refers the origin of the human race
to a fabulous creature known by the name of P^an-kUj the
first human being, though endowed with all supernatural
powers. The several myths connected with his cosmo-
gonic origin, his appearance, nature, and first dissolution,
vary in the different accounts manufactm-ed about him
and his life. Such myths have, of course, nothing to do
with history. Millions of years are said to have elapsed
from the time of his creation down to the historical
period.

The fabulous period following P*an-ku, whom the poetic
fancy of his inventors regarded as the first ruler of the
world, was followed by ten distinct epochs of sovereigns,
some of whom are, even from the fabulous point of view,
nothing more than mere names to us. All that is interest-
ing in connection with their alleged doings is some sort of
progress in civilization ascribed to these several periods.

MYTHOLOGICAL AND LEGENDARY 5

Next following P'an-ku, the so-called fOn-huang, " Heavenly
emperors/' a succession of thirteen brothers, represent a
state of life similar to that of our Paradise. Man in those
days lived a life of perfect innocence, and knew neither
temptation nor impurity. Some authors ascribe to this
early period the invention of the so-called Ten Stems
{shl-kan) and Twelve Branches (sAl-ir-cAi), series of ten
and twelve symbols afterward combined to form the
"Cycle of Sixty" in the present Chinese calendar. Each
of the thirteen brothers is credited with a reign of eighteen
thousand years.

The Heavenly emperors were followed by the tirhvang,
"Terrestrial emperors," eleven brothers, credited with
having first distmguished sun, moon, and constellations.
They instituted the divisions day and night, and discovered
that thirty days constituted a month. Their homes were
ascribed to the hills of Hiung-ir and Lung-mon. The
former name appears later on in Ho-nan ; the latter, in
various towns of northern China.

The next generation saw the yon-Awangr, "Human em-
perors," nine brothers, who divided the world known to
them into nine countries, a kingdom for each, with cities
and towns.

Tliese fabtilous creatures form the so-called epoch of the
TTiree (or Nine) emperors. It is followed by a period of
"Five dragons" (wurlung), and this again by other series
of rulers, each comprising so many generations and having
fanciful names, down to the Yin-ti epoch, when the nation
was ruled by thirteen families known as Yvrch'aUy "The
Nest-builders," from yu, "to have, to possess, to occupy,"
and di'au, "a nest." Numbers of names are constructed
in this way, the syllable yu indicating that their bearers

6 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

held a territory named in the second syllable. Yin-ti .
taught the people to build dwellings as a protection against
the animal world. Beasts of all kinds are believed to have
lived in perfect peace with mankind. Primeval man was
supposed to subsist on a vegetarian diet, and it was not
before he began to kill them for food that animals became
hostile to him.

The Yu-ch'au were followed by Suirjdn, " the Fire Pro- ^
ducer/' the Prometheus of the Chinese, who discovered the
fiery element by looking up to the stars. This, however,
did not lead to any practical application until he observed
a bird pecking at a tree and thus producing sparks. The
result was the discovery, that fire might be produced by
rubbing pieces of wood against each other ; and this in
due course led to the art of cooking. The same ruler is
the reputed inventor of the prehistoric knot-writing of
the Chinese.

Several of the phenomena of progress in civilization at-
tributed to these fabulous sovereigns reappear as new inven-
tions during subsequent periods. The most that may be
gathered from such incidents of ancient lore is the convio- ,
tion that Chinese literature knows no beginning for certidn
elements of culture within the historical period and, there-
fore, assigns them to the mythological ages.

These periods represent a somewhat arbitrary mixture of
cultural development, even if we look upon them as mere
symbols of what might have been. It will be found that,
like history itself, the fabulous accounts that take its place
repeat themselves. As symbols for certain periods of
social development the legendary emperors that follow the
Yin-ti period claim a somewhat deeper interest. Ssi-ma
Ts'i^n, the Herodotus of the Chinese, b in this respect a

MYTHOLOGICAL AND LEGENDARY 7

somewhat better guide to us than the inventors of pre-
historic legends. He commences his list of emperors with
Huang-ti,* the first ruler to whom a chronolo^cal period
is assigQed.

i 2. Fu-Hi (2852-2738 b.c.)'

llie allied first emperor of Chinese historians, Fu-hi,
if we ignore the still more fabulous period preceding him,
cannot, of course, have been a historical personage. Chro-
Dologists do not agree as to his exact lifetime, but, con-
sidering the l^endar? character of his existence, this need
not concern us much. The Chinese place him in the begin-
ning of the third millennium b.c. He is also known by
the name oi Pau-ftt, which may be merely a different way
of writing the name Fvr-ki; for we cannot know what
pbc«ietic changes the syllables now pronounced ^u and
Pau respectively may have undergone since the name was
first used or invented. His official name as an emperor
was Tairhau, "the Great Almighty." Later generations
represent him as partly a supernatural being and partly
an emperor cA human form. Tbia is one of the dangers of
the prdiistoric accounts of the Chinese, which are often
reconstructed in imitation of facts that look like history
but have not the slightest claim to historic truth. Super-

' ^d. Cbawmes, Lei ttUmoira kMoriquei de S»-ma T^im. Pftria,
I8B5, Tcd. i, p. 25. ■ Different datea are given by Ui« toUowing writen:
Ibyen {Tti* Ckinttt Reader' t Manual, p. 366), 2852-2738 b.c. ; Gilea
(A CkinsM Biographieat Dittionan/, p. 233), 2953-2838 B.C. ; Arendt
(Synehronitlitclu RegententabclUn, etc., in MittktUungtn del Seminari
fir Orietttaliaclu Spracken, J&hrguig ii, 1899, p. 216), 2852-2738 a.c.
For chronological data I propose to follow the Isst-nsmed vork u
bcfng the rwult of ■ careful, special inquiry Into the miblect of
ebronolocf.

8 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

natural accounts will be taken for what they are worth,
and the historians repeating them deserve greater credit
than the uncritical crowd, who are bent on representing
the impossible as matter of fact.

According to some accounts, Pu-hi was the successor of
Sui-jon, the Fire Producer, who selected him among four
of his disciples. His mother, Hua^sii, according to some
writers a native of Lan-t'i6n near the present city of Si-an-f u,
gave birth to him under miraculous circumstances at a
place called Ch'6ng-ki, somewhere in the neighborhood of
Kung-ch'ang, in the present province of Kan-su. I lay
stress on this otherwise imimportant statement made by
later writers, because it shows again that the Chinese
themselves do not look upon their earliest rulers as immi-
grants. Neither Fu-hi nor any of his still more fabulous
predecessors are mentioned as having anything to do with
territories outside the northwest of modem China. In
other words, if the Chinese race has at all immigrated from
any other part of the world, no tradition of such wander-
ings has survived among the early legendary accounts of
the people.

What we hear of Fu-hi's life from his biographer * is a
mixture of supernatural features and mock reality. His
appearance is described as somewhat like that of a Triton,
a human figure the lower part of which has the shape of
a scaly serpent. The well-known stone sculptures of the
Wu-chi-shan tombs in Shan-tung, dating from the second
century a.d., described by Professor Ed. Chavannes,' con-
tain a representation of Fu-hi and of an apparently female
figure, perhaps his wife or sister, the lower part of the two

^ Ghavannes, op. cU., p. 3. ' Idem, La sculpture aur pierre en Chine
au temps des deux dynctsties Han. Paris, 1893.

MYTHOLOGICAL AND LEGENDARY 9

bodies being represented by serpents' tdls intertwined
with each other.

According to those authorities who consider him as the
first real ruler, it was Fu-hi who established order in the
social relations of his people, who, before him, had lived
like animals in the wilds. He is also supposed to have
introduced the marriage bond, which was previously un-
known. It was he who taught the people to hunt, to fish, v;
and to keep flocks. He constructed musical mstruments
of wood and silk threads. He is also looked upon as the
inventor of those mysterious eight diagrams, the pa-kua,
a series of lines of symbolic meaning, embodymg the oldest
system of Chinese mystic philosophy, which, in spite of
many ingenious efforts on the part of European students,
still remain a mystery to our philosophers. He is further
supposed to have replaced the ancient knot-writing, which
may have resembled the quipu of the Peruvians, by a
system of hieroglyphics. He arranged some kind of a
calendar, and gave expression to his religious sentiment
by being the first to introduce sacrifice to his God on the
sacred mount of T'ai-shan. His capital was a city called
Ch'on, in the present province of Ho-nan. He is supposed
to have died after a reign of 115 years, and to have been
succeeded by a personage called Nii-kua, or Nii-wa, whether
a man or a woman is doubtful. According to some,
Nu-kua was Fu-hi's sister. She, too, is occasionally repre-
sented as having a human head with the body of a serpent.

Nii-kua did not add much to Fu-hi's work in the way of
new phases of civilization, but he, or she, is supposed to
have invented the shong, a kind of reed organ ; and when
Fu-hi's evil spirit, his minister Kung-kung, had smashed
the vault of heaven^ it was Nii-kua who patched up the

10 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

broken firmament by melting stones. A further legend,
current in Cambodia in the twelfth century a.d., speaks of
certain stains visible in a distant comer of the sky which
she did not succeed in repcuring; referring apparently to
the so-called "coal-sacks" near the Southern Cross.

§ 3. Sh6n-nung (2737-2705 B.C.)

If, in following some Chinese authors, we assume NU-kua
to have reigned merely in the name of Fu-hi, the second
legendary emperor was Shon-nung. His dynastic appella-
ZJ^YeTti. We find hur2>metimes^resenS ^
having the body of a man and the head of an ox. To him
is ascribed the invention of the principal agricultural im-
plements and the introduction of field labor, as is indicated
by his name, Shdn-nung, which may be rendered " Divine
laborer." Among the several phases of civilization, the
introduction of which b ascribed to him, the most note-
worthy is the discovery of the medicinal properties of
plants. I have already remarked that the value of the
several discoveries ascribed to the legendary emperors is
of a negative character, inasmuch as it may be assumed
that the beginnings of certain cultural elements were
placed by the Chinese in the legendary era because they
could not be traced to any time within the historical
period. This holds good particularly in connection with
the Emperor Shon-nung's alleged discoveries. What that
ruler is supposed to have done in connection with the
products of the vegetable kingdom and their medicinal
properties has been collected in a book entitled Sh&rMiung-
pdn-ts'avrking ("The Classic of Shon-nung's Botany").
The book itself is no longer extant; but it is constantly

MYTHOLOGICAL AND LEGENDARY 11

quoted as an authority in later works on the subject.
Tliere can be no doubt that this work of Shon-nung's is as
much a fabrication of later periods as the emperor himself.
What it teaches us, however, is that the knowledge con-
vejred in it could not be historically assigned to any other
period and was handed down from a time lying beyond the
beginning of Chinese history. Possibly it is identical with
some similar production supposed to have existed during
the Han d3masty. The Emperor Shon-nung's name may
have been added to the title, in order to show that the
knowledge conveyed in the work is of the most ancient
origin. Chang Yii-si, an author of the eleventh century,
says with regard to it : —

" In remote times, when the art of writing was not yet known,
science was transmitted from generation to generation by oral
tradition, and what was called P(Hi48*au then was not a written
book. From the period of the Han dynasties medical art began to
devek>p. Chang Ki and Hua T'o [celebrated ph3r8icians in the
third century of our era] contributed largely to the completion and
diffusion of medical knowledge, commented on previous writings
and added new information, arranging the whole into a system;
and this was probably the time when the materia medica of Shon*
nung first appeared as a written treatise." *

The localities mentioned in connection with the life of
Shon-nung are for the most part in the northwest of China,
he having resided in the old capital of his predecessors.
But he b supposed to have come originally from a place in
Hu-pel, to have lived later on at K'ii-fdu, the birthplace of
Ccmfucius, in Shan-tung, and to have been buried in
Ch'ang-sha, the present capital of Hu-nan. It would
seem that the manuf actiu^rs of the accounts of the legend-

* Bretsehneider, Botanieon Sinieum, in Journal qf the China Brands
9t tiU Boyol A9iaHc Soeuty, 1881, p. 28.

12 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

ary era wished to indicate thereby the gradual increase of
the Chinese sphere of civilization in the prehistoric period.
To Shon-nung is ascribed the foundation of a family
which furnished emperors in several generations. Since
these are mere names, and the authorities disagree as to
their chronology, we need not trouble about them till we
come to Huang-ti, "Yellow Emperor."

§ 4. HuANG^i (2704-2595 B.C.)

The accounts regarding the life of this monarch, the
third of the series of great emperors grouped by the Chinese
under the name of wurti, "The Five Rulers," are also very
contradictory. According to Ssi-ma Ts'i6n he was the
son of Shau-ti6n, which would imply his relationship to
Shon-nung ; Shau-ti6n being mentioned as the father of
the latter emperor also, in spite of discrepancies in the
chronology, which is, of course, as fictitious as the entire
structure of legends before us. Huang-ti's supernatural
qualities became apparent from his very birth, since as an
infant he had a full command of language. From Ssi-ma
Ts'i6n's account it would appear that Huang-ti, whose
personal name was Hi&n-yuan, was a contemporary of
Shon-nung; that anarchy had set in under the eyes of
the old emperor, his own descendants fighting each other;
and that Hi^n-yiian became emperor by virtue of his su-
perior energy. As such he persecuted the refractory, while
leaving alone the peaceful. He cut passages through the
hills and built roads, so that in times of peace he did not
enjoy a moment's rest. He extended his empire in the
east to the sea of Shan-tung, in the west far beyond Kan-su,
and in the south to the Yang-tzi-kiang ; while in the north

MYTHOLOGICAL AND LEGENDARY 13

he drove away the Hun-yu. This name is probably merely
another transcription of what the Chinese afterward called
Hiung-nu, their old hereditary enemy on the northern
boundary, and the ancestors of King Attila's Hmis. If we
cannot look upon these tribes in this remote legendary
period as having a historical existence, the mention of them
certainly seems to show that a nation called Hun-yii, and
occupying the northern confines of China, may have been
among the earliest historical traditions of the Chinese..
Having consolidated his empire, Huang-ti moved to and
fro within its limits with his military encampments, with-
out having a fixed place of residence. Chavannes ^ suggests
that this passage in Ss!-ma Ts'i^n's account may point to
nomad life among the ancient Chinese. Huang-ti regu-
lated the sacrificial and the religious ceremonies of his
people, and he further improved upon Shon-nung's agri-
cultural work by determining the time when cereals were
to be sown and trees planted, and by devoting his attention
to the animal kingdom. Astronomy, too, received his
attention, as did the waves of the sea, the rocks, metals,
and jade. Quite a number of the fundamental inventions
of Chinese civilization are ascribed to him.

It b hardly necessary to enumerate here all the facts
ascribed to this legendary period, which, as I have said,
cannot be historical. For us the legendary emperors from
Fu-hi onward are nothmg more than symbols of the earli-
est developments of Chinese civilization, as the inventors
imagined it, possibly in connection with old traditions.
From the time of Fu-hi, however, a certain logic in the
order in which the principal phases of Chinese civilization
follow each other becomes apparent; and we shall not

^ Lm n%HnairtM hiHoriqueM, vol. i, p. 31, note 3.

■1

14 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

venture too much if, on the one hand, we discard all chro-
nology in connection with these emperors, and, on the
other, regard their names merely as representatives of the
preparatory periods of culture in Chinese national life.

If the old accounts say of Fu-hi that the people before
him lived like animals, wrapped their bodies in skins, ate
raw meat, knew only their mothers and not their fathers,
and did not practise matrimony ; that it was he who raised
his nation from thb state of savage life by introducing
hunting, fishing, cattle-breeding, the calendar, matrimony,
and cooking, — all this means no more than that he was the
representative of what is found in the beginnings of all
histories ; namely, the period of hunting and nomadic life.
As regards the chronology assigned to the legendary period,
if the time allotted to some of these rulers is much too long
as a term of government for a single human life, it is, on
the other hand, much too short, if we measure it by the
cultural progress it involves for the nation. Pu-hi's period
of hunting life must have lasted many generations before
it led to the agricultural period represented by the name
Shon-nung ; and this period in turn could not possibly have
led within a little more than one hundred years to the
enormous progress ascribed to Huang-ti.

§ 5. Supposed Introduction op a Foreign Civiliza-
tion UNDER HuANG-TI

An ingenious, but, I am afraid, hopeless attempt was
made by the late Professor Terrien de Lacouperie to explain
the several cultural developments ascribed to the Emperor
Huang-ti as offshoots of Babylonian civilization. I have
already declared my own views to be those of an agnostic.

MYTHOLOGICAL AND LEGENDARY 15

Chinese tradition contains no clue to a migration of the
Chinese race, or any part of it, from west to east ; and the
arguments laid down by De Lacouperie in his bulky
volmne devoted to this problem* seem to be doomed to
Asre the fate of De Guignes' attempt (before the French
Academy in 1758) to prove that the Chinese had grown
out of an Egyptian colony.

Every student of the Chinese language is aware that
the Chinese are very fond of expressing categories in
certain round numbers, which have no deeper meaning
than, say, the Latin sexcenii, in the sense of an indefinitely
large number. TTius the word pat or pOj which is pro-
nounced pak Q>ak) in the Canton dialect, is placed before
quite a number of nouns, in order to denote "totality.'*
Pairkuan, "the hundred Mandarins," means "all the
Mandarins," or "the official world"; pairts'aUy "the hun-
dred plants," means "all plants," or "the vegetable king-
dom." Similarly pairsing, or jxhsing, "the hundred sur-
names," means "all the surnames," or "the people."
De Lacouperie ignores these analogies, of which, to judge
from his general knowledge of the language, he must cer-
tainly have been aware, by explaining the term po-sing as
not a numerical category, but an ethnical name. He gives.
this number pai (i.e. "a hundred") its Cantonese, or old,
pronunciation pak or bak, and translates the term by the
" Bak tribes." Bak Sing, he says, "is the earliest denomi-
nation in their historical literature which the Chinese used
to give to themselves, exclusively of the native populations
they had subdued. TTie Bak Sings were the followers of
Huang-ti, who came with him from the northwest and
settled at first in the southwest comer of Kansuh." For

* W^timn Origin of the Early Chinese Civilization, London, 1894.

16 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

more than ten years the author had objected to the common
rendering of Bak Sing by "the hundred families," because
in his opinion it was an early ethnical name. Among the
arguments brought forward in support of this view the
following might decoy the uncritical reader: "In the ex-
pression Bak Sing the first s}rmbol cannot have had in
China the meaning of ' one hundred * as a definite niunber,
for the conclusive reason that the niunber of Sings in early
times was not one-fifth of that total. If the Sing^ ever
numbered one hundred before that time, it must have
been at the original seat of the race in western Asia, in the
country whence Huang-ti and his followers originated."
To this it must be remarked that pai or pak in these phrases
is not a definite number, and that the term does not neces-
sarily involve that the people should have consisted of
exactly a hundred families. Moreover, the term can-
not be shown to have been in existence at the time of
Huang-ti; its first occurrence being traceable to the
Confucian Classics, written at a time more than a thousand
years distant from the reign of that emperor. Since the
ethnical meaning "Bak tribes" must, therefore, be looked
upon as the result of an arbitrary interpretation, which we
find nowhere in Chinese literature, I cannot help ex-
pressing it as my view that this term has never had any
other meaning than that of the totality of the several sur-
names representing the Chinese people.

Now Professor De Lacouperie thinks that a people called
Bak was originally seated in Babylonia, whence they
migrated eastward. Among the arguments adduced in
support of this untenable theory is the occurrence of
geographical names in western Asia, in which the sound
"£aA" is prominent; e.g. Bakhdi (Bactra), Bakhtan,

MYTHOLOGICAL AND LEGENDARY 17

Bakihyari, Bagdad ( !), Bagistan, '' land of Bak.'' Huang-ti,
therefore, is, according to De Lacouperie, not an aboriginal
Chinese ruler, but the leader of the "Bak tribes," who
brou^t his people from Babylonia to the northwest of
China.

Ssl-ma Ts'i^n says in his Shl-ki * : " From Huang-ti down
to Shun and Yii all the emperors had the same family name ;
and consequently, to distinguish them, they were given
the names of the fief of which they were lords before their
accession to the throne." The name by which Huang-ti is
thus sometimes described in Chinese history is Yu-hiung^
which, literally translated, means, "Having Hiung," or
"Holder of the fief Hiung." Several names are formed in
analogy with this example; and I shall, in due course,
mention some of the titles meaning ''Holder of such and
such a fief" and made up of the character yu, ''to have, to
hold," and the name of the fief. The character hiung in
Huang-ti 's fief name has a twofold pronunciation in ancient
Chinese, namely, hiung and nai, according to the meaning
attaching to it; but all the native authorities on ancient
sounds agree in givmg it the sound of hiung and not nai,
when applied to the name of that fief of which the Emperor
Huang-ti was the holder. Through an oversight, the name
has been transcribed by YvHfuii instead of Yvrhiung in the
chronological table of Mayers' well-known work, "The
Chinese Reader's Manual "; it has been correctly rendered
in Arendt's " S3mchroni8ti8che RegententabcUen," the best
work we possess on Chinese chronology ; also in Chavanncs'
translation of the Shl-ki, in Giles' Dictionary; in fact,
by all the Smologues familiar with the subject.

De Lacouperie quite arbitrarily disconnects the name of

* Chavannes, vol. i, p. 03; cf. note 3.

18 . THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

the emperor's fief, Hiung, from the emperor's sobriquet
Yvrhiung, gives it the wrong somid naif which he con-
jectures stands for an original nak, and joins it to the name
Hvang-ti, in order to reconstruct a name found nowhere in
Chinese books, Nak-huang-li. This he declares to be
identical with that of a powerful king of the Babylonians,
Kudur Nakhunte ("Servant of Nakhunte")i the Elamite
chief god, who lived about the time assigned by Chinese
fictitious chronology to the Emperor Huang-ti. This
alleged identity of the two names must certauily be re-
jected on philological grounds ; and as to facts, it appears
to me that history, whether real or legendary, furnishes no
basis for the assumption of an immigration of Babylonians
to the northwest of China. I do not wish to dismiss the
idea of western origin, in an offhand manner; but I must
confess that the logic brought to bear on the subject in
De Lacouperie's much too ingenious attempts will never
inspire one with confidence in the results of his investiga-
tions. I avail myself of this opportunity to say that the
work referred to contains, nevertheless, a host of valuable
suggestions, based on Chinese literature, which are interest-
ing in connection with side questions, and fully deserving
the attention of students willing to place a lively imagina-
tion, the basis of all philological research, under the iron
rule of self-criticism.

Another attempt to derive Chinese civilization from the
West, more plausible than De Lacouperie's, has been made
by Baron von Richthofen,* who looks upon the oasis of
Khotan in the southwest of eastern Turkestan as the cradle
of the Chmese race. The possibility of an immigration
from those parts may be admitted on geographical grounds

* China f vol. i, p. 48, note.

MYTHOLOGICAL AND LEGENDARY 19

in ooDiiection with a few legendary accounts placed on
record by the Chinese; but we have to be cautious as to
the historical statements of later periods. Chinese his-
torians of the fifth and sixth centuries a.d., it is true, say
that the people of Kau-ch'ang (i.e. Turfan) and farther
west have deep eyes and high noses, and that only the
inhaUtants of Khotan do not resemble those foreigners,
they being similar in appearance and character to the
Chinese. The latest discoveries made in this part of Central
Asia, however,^ seem to show that the civilization of the
natives of Khotan and neighborhood, including the once
flourishing oases of the sand-buried cities in the desert of
Takla-makan, was imported by Indian immigrants ban-
ished from Taxila m the Punjab under King Ashoka during
the third century b.c' Numerous relics of Buddhist art
and manuscripts in the '' Kharoshthi " and other Indian
scripts are testimonies to the fact that a non-Chinese civili-
sation flourished there at the time, when the Chinese thought
they had discovered among the hated Turks a nation more
sympathetic to them in point of outward appearance and
civilization.

How much Chinese historians were inclined to look upon
the evidences of a superior civilization distinguishing cer-
tain foreign nations from their crude Turkish neighbors in
Central Asia as a sign of congeniality may be inferred from
a statement occurring in the Hdurhan-shu, the author of
which says of his contemporaries, the inhabitants of
Ta-ts'in, or the Roman Orient, that they are tall and
upri^t somewhat like the Chinese, whence they are called

' I refer to the archsological results of the famous journeys of
Dra. von Hedin and Stein. ' M. A. Stein, Preliminary Report on
a Jaurtuy in Chinete Turkestan, p. 51. London, 1901.

20 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

TortsHn} Chmese vanity was flattered by the idea, which
is found requoted for centuries by later historians. The
fact of Chinese authors comparing the highly civilized
Khotanese of Indian extraction to their own race seems to
be sufficiently explained by this precedent; and I do not
regard it as an argument supporting prehistoric immigra-
tion from that region of the Tarim basm.

§ 6. FuBTHER Deeds op Huang-ti

Huang-ti had to fight his way to the throne; but when
he had captured and decapitated Ch'i-yu, his chief opponent
and the first traitor to plant the banner of rebellion on
Chinese soil, he devoted himself to works of peace. His
first care was the organization of government. It is per-
haps characteristic of the great veneration in which in all
ages the writers of history have been held among the
Chinese, that the inventors of this period ascribed to
Huang-ti the institution of a board of historians, divided
into a right and a left wing, the one being charged with the
record of facts, the other with that of words and speeches.
The first state historian placed at the head of the new board
was Ts'ang-ki6, the legendary inventor of the art of wri-
ting. The more fabulous accounts represent him as having
four eyes. He is supposed to have derived the first clue
for his hierogljrphics from the marks of birds' claws made in
sand, which shows that the inventors of this legend cannot
have believed in Fu-hi as the originator of the hieroglyphic
system.

According to some, Ts'ang-ki6 merely perfected what had
been in existence before him. His writing material con-

^ Hirth, China and the Roman Orient, p. 41.

MYTHOLOGICAL AND LEGENDARY 21

flisted of boards made of bamboo, on which he pamted his
hiero^jri^cs mth a bamboo brush dipped m a sort of
varnish. He is the supposed mventor of about 540 hiero-
^yphics representing a special style of ancient writing
known as niaw-tei-tron, "script of birds' footprints."
While Ts'ang-ki^ was engaged in perfecting the system of
writing, Huang-ti laid the foundation of what has ever
played a most conspicuous part in Chinese public life, the
sacrificial cult. Hitherto sacrifices had been brought to
Shang-ti, ''the Supreme Ruler/' in the open air; Huang-ti
is supposed to have made bricks and to have taught his
workmen how to construct houses. With their assistance
he built the first temple for the offering of sacrifices. He
drew up rules of conduct for the people. He further built
a palace for his own use, in order to distinguish himself
from his subjects ; for hitherto the emperors had enjoyed
no privilege in this respect, they having all lived like the
most lowly of their subjects in huts built of branches of
trees. The inhabitants of his empire, who had hitherto
lived scattered about wherever they chose, were now settled
in villages, towns, and provinces. The provinces were
called ck&u, a term which down to the Middle Ages denotes
a much wider district than it does at present, for which
reason certain titles of officers, which nowadays do not
mvolve hi^ rank, have to be differently translated when
occurring in old books. The man placed over a chdu, who
is now a mere magistrate, was a governor or viceroy in
ancient times.

To regulate the calendar, the beginnings of which are
said to date from Fu-hi, Huang-ti built an observatory and
placed it under the charge of certain officers, each of whom
was given a special department of astronomical observation.

22 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

Some had to study the course of the sun, others that of the
moon, and others agam the movement of the five planets.
It was then discovered that the twelve lunar months did
not suffice to make up the year, and that an mtercalary
month had to be added. The observations made in this
respect are described in full detail by the historians of this
legendary period.

The emperor's wife, Lei-tsu, called " the Lady of Si-ling,"
studied the rearing of silkworms, the principal manipular
tions of which are said to have been her inventions.

Not satisfied with having created the sources of national
wealth, the emperor provided the means for the exchange
of produce by inventing cars drawn by oxen. The rivers
and lakes of his empire also were soon covered with barges.
His soldiers were provided with bows and arrows, swords
and lances; and his regiments were taught to follow a
standard. Precious stones and pieces of gold and copper
were introduced to serve as mediums of exchange.

To cause his people to adopt promptly all these new
elements of civilization, he ruled with a rod of iron. Implicit
obedience was the order of the day, and opposition was
threatened with capital punishment. On the other hand,
this extreme severity against rebellious elements was made
up for by the greatest kindness toward the loyal ones
among his subjects, for whose benefit he mtroduced a
number of enlivening novelties, chiefly in the way of
musical instruments. The invention of certain flutes, com-
bined in a series to form a kind of reed organ, is supposed
to have led to systematic studies in connection with the
production of certain musical sounds. The construction
of such musical instruments called for a certain accuracy
in measurements, the most minute details of which have

MYTHOLOGICAL AND LEGENDARY 23

been placed on record by Chinese authors as the result of
observations made by the officers appointed for the purpose.

It is from these musical efforts that the Chinese derive
their entire system of weights and measures. Indeed, a
regular system must have been indispensable to the in-
ventor of the Chinese musical notation, which, distasteful
thou^ it may seem to the European ear, is built up on
mathematical principles claiming much deeper efforts of
human thou^t than any of us would admit to be the case
when listening to the strains of a Chinese band.

The empress had in the meantime brought the silk
industry to a high state of perfection. Hitherto the people
had dressed in skins; weaving had been an imknown art;
and it was only through the efforts of the Lady of Si-ling
that silk textures were woven, the empress herself em-
broidering them with representations of flowers and birds.
In due course other materials were discovered, and the
emperor was able to invent imiforms to be donned by his
officers and people on certain occasions. Rank and posi-
tbn were thus for the first time mdicated by the man's
outward appearance. Caps and tiaras, coats, aprons, and
other garments were given distinctive shapes; and the
desire to increase the variety of patterns led to the applica-
tion of color, so that the use of some rude dyeing materials
may be reasonably assumed.

On one of his journeys of inspection the monarch is sup-
posed to have discovered in the neighborhood of K'ai-
fong-fu a copper mine, which led to the establishment of
a foundry in the province of Ho-nan, where the first sacri-
ficial vases are supposed to have been cast from the emperor's
models. Huang-ti, however, did not live to see the results
of his last enterprise, a fatal disease carrying him off after

24 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

a glorious reign of about one hundred years. He was suc-
ceeded by his eldest son Shau-hau.

§ 7. Shau-hau (2694-2611 B.C.)

Shau-hau did not attain to the standard of his great
father ; but he was peaceably inclined, and did not lead his
people into trouble — a merit that many a greater man
cannot claim. He had merely to continue the works of
his father, who had done quite enough to occupy the people
for some time. Still Shau-hau's love of peace must have
bordered on negligence, smce we read that during his reign
the veneration of Shang-ti, the Supreme Ruler, was vio-
lated by some of his officers, who gave themselves up to
heretical doctrines.

Shau-hau is credited with having made further distinc-
tions in the uniforms of his mandarins ; indeed, the custom
of embroidermg representations of birds on the uniforms
of civil officials and of certain beasts of prey on those of
the military — prevailing up to this day — is supposed to
date from his period. This is probably all that can be
said of his rule in the way of new elements of civilization.
Ssi-ma Ts'i^n skips his name altogether. Shau-hau died
at K'u-f6u, the birthplace of Confucius, in Shan-tung,
where his tomb, duly certified to by a number of inscrip-
tions in stone, is supposed to exist at the present day.

§ 8. Chuan-hu (2510-2433 B.C.)

The people of China had not been greatly pleased with
the government of the defunct emperor, and they, therefore,
selected from the princes of the imperial house as his sue-

MYTHOLOGICAL AND LEGENDARY 25

oeflBor not the eldest-born, but the one whom they thought
the most worthy of the position; namely, Kau-yang, a
grandson of Huang-ti, who ascended the throne under the
name of Chuan-hu. The new monarch had received a
most careful education from his early childhood. His first
step was directed against the spread of those heretical
superstitious doctrines which, under the careless rule of his
predecessor, had gamed the upper hand in public life.
The sacrificial service was reorganized, and in astronomy
progress was made which led to further improvements in
the calendar. The limits of the empire were considerably
extended under his rule, and it was divided mto nine
provinces. Chuan-hii had several wives. From the son of
his first sprang the great Emperor Yii, and by one of his
C(mcubines the Emperor Shun was his descendant. At his
death he left the empire in a most flourishing condition.

i 9. Ti-K'u (2432-2363 B.C.)

Ti-k'u, who was not one of the princes of the family, was
elected emperor on the strength of his good qualities.
Under his rule public schools were established, and the
science of music was greatly improved. He married three
wives in succession, and having no child by any of them,
took a fourth, who gave birth to Ch!, his successor. After
Chi*s birth his second wife presented him with a son, who
afterward became the celebrated Emperor Yau, while a
son bom by his third wife had among his lineal descendants
some centuries later the Emperor Ch'ong-t'ang, the founder
of the Shang dynasty. A posthumous son, bom ten
months after the death of Ti-k'u, by Kiang-yiian, his first
consort, became the legendary ancestor of the emperors

THE CONFUCIAN LEGENDS

5 11. Yau (2357-2258 B.C.)

YAU and his successor Shun are perhaps the most pop-
ular figures in Chinese history as taught in China.
Whatever estimable qualities can be imagined in
great and good rulers have been ascribed to them. Chi-
nese literature is full of their praises, and the records of
their deeds as appearing in the Shurking of Confucius and
the Shl-ki of Ss!-ma Ts'i^n may be looked upon as the
true " Mirror of Princes," held up as a canon of an emper-
or's good conduct to after generations. In the Shvrking
the ''Canon of Yau" serves as an mtroduction to that
venerable historical work. I quote the following from
Legge's translation : ^ —

" Examining into antiquity, we find that the Emperor Yau was
caDed Fang-hQn. He was reverential, intelligent, accomplished,
and thoughtful — naturally and without effort. He was sincerely
courteous, and capable of all complaisance. The display of these
qualities reached to the four extremities of the empire, and ex-
tended from earth to heaven. He was able to make the able and
virtuous distinguished, and thence proceeded to the love of the nine
classes of his kindred, who all became harmonious. He also regu-
lated and polished the people of his domain, who all became brightly
mteUigent. Finally, he united and harmonized the myriad states
of the empire ; and lo ! the black-haired people were transformed.
The result was universal concord."

^8hu-kingt p. 16.
29

30 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

After this the compiler of the Shvrking plunge right into
the annals of Yau's reign, by telling us that he ordered
Hi and Ho, whoever these worthies may have been, to
''Observe the Heavens, calculate and delineate the move-
ments of the sun, the moon, the stars, and the zodiacal
spaces; and so deliver respectfully the seasons to the
people."

Hi and Ho appear to be family names, since in the sequel,
"Hi, the second brother," "Hi, the third brother," etc.,
are mentioned as office-bearers. The several brothers were
to make astronomical observations in the distant parts of
the empire. This ancient record, if it were a true record
of the twenty-third century B.C., would reveal quite an
advanced state of astronomical science. To judge from it,
Yau must be credited with a knowledge of the astronomical
year, consisting of 366 days, and of other facts which none
but the most accurate observation could have revealed to
primeval man. Quite a library of books and papers has
appeared on the knowledge of astronomy possessed by the
ancient Chinese. Names like Deguignes, Gaubil, Biot,
and Schlegel being among those of the chief investigators,
much acumen has been brought to bear in proving the
accuracy of the statements made in these ancient records.
On the other side are the skeptics, who maintain that the
form of the original text of the Shvrking must have been
changed by later interpolations, and that later editors
introduced statements that could have been made only
with the astronomical knowledge possessed by their own
contemporaries. C!onfucius himself may have felt tempted
to date back by some fifty generations what was, after ail,
not quite so old an acquisition. It must certainly be
admitted that the question is very complicated ; and I, for

THE CONFUCIAN LEGENDS 31

one, as a non-expert in such matters, would not dare to
pose as judge.

During Yau's reign inimdations, reminding one, in their
graphic descriptions, of the Biblical deluge, threatened the
Chinese world. For these the emperor blamed Kun, his
minister of works, whom he is said to have addressed in the
fdlowing words : " chief of the four mountains, destruc-
tive in their overflow are the waters of the inundation. In
their vast extent they embrace the mountains and overtop
the hills, threatening the heavens with their floods, so that
the inferior people groan and murmur." * Nme years were
spent in trying to stop the floods, when the emperor, after
a reign of seventy years, wished to abdicate. He offered
the throne to one of his trusted ministers, who declined it
as being imworthy of it. " Point out some one among the
iUustrious or set forth one from among the poor and mean,"
the emperor sugg^ted. His advisers thereupon imani-
mously agreed that a certain young man named Shun, one
of the emperor's lowliest subjects, was the most qualified.
Hie monarch sent for him and married him to his two
dauf^ters.

i 12. Shun (2268-2206 B.C.)

Shun, as may be seen from the way in which he is intro-
duced in the Shvrking, was a self-made man. After the
death of Yau in 2258, he entered on a period of mourning
lasting three years, which the Chinese historians do not
lode upon as part of his reign. He organized the adminis-
tration of the empire, which he divided into eight branches.
Before his palace he had a board on which every subject
was permitted to note whatever faults he had to find with

> Shu-king, cd. Legge, p. 24.

32 THE ANCIENT mSTORY OF CHINA

his government ; and by means of a drum suspended at his
palace gate attention might be drawn to any complaint
that was to be made to him. He banished Kun, the
official whom Yau had called upon to stop the inundations,
owing to his incapacity in improving matters, and ap-
pointed the disgraced officer's son Yii to cany out the
labors neglected so much by his father.

§ 13. The Hia Dynasty (2205-1766 b.c.)

This is the first continuous dynasty of what native
authors consider to be the history of China. I propose to
notice merely the important details of the epoch, which
certainly cannot be regarded as history in the strictest
sense. The name of the dynasty is derived from its first
emperor's honorary title Hia-po, i.e. "Earl of Hia," or
Yvrhiay literally "having or possessing Hia," i.e. "Holder
of the fief of Hia," given him by the Emperor Shun as a
reward for his services in draining the empire from the
floods. The second title, Yvrhia, may be compared to
Huang-ti's title Yvrhiung and to a similar title Yvryu,
"Holder of the fief of Yii," by which the Emperor Shun
is sometimes designated. These and a number of other
combinations occurring in the oldest history show clearly
that the character yu, "to have, to hold," has a recognized
standard meaning in such names, and that De Lacouperie's
manipulations in joining the name of his fief to that of
the Emperor Huang-ti are, as I have already stated, not
justified.

§ 14. Yij, OR Ta-yu (2205-2198 b.c.)

The deeds of the Emperor Yu, or Ta-yu, " the Great Yu,"
as he is often called, have been set forth in the Shvrking,

THE CONFUCIAN LEGENDS 33

the compilation of which from records supposed to have
existed before his time is, perhaps wrongly, ascribed to
Confucius, who died in 479 B.C. Anyhow, the Shvrkvng
18 the oldest source for the pre-Confucian history of China.
According to later authorities, Yii was a native of the prov-
ince of Ssi-ch'uan, where his name has survived in numerous
legends. According to Ssi-ma Ts'i^n he was a descendant
of the Emperor Huang-ti, though none of his ancestors
held the throne. His father, Kun, had, as we have seen,
been commissioned by the Emperor Yau to arrest certain
inundations in the empire, he having been selected for that
Herculean task on the unanimous advice of the govern-
ment officials against the monarch's own opinion. Kun's
attempts, however, ended in failure. It is a characteristic
feature of the history of these early emperors, especially
Yau and Shun, who are held up to all the world as models
of what good rulers should be, that in all such important
selections they were guided by the advice of their ministers.
This, it appears to me, is very suggestive as to the class of
persons who were chiefly influential in inventing the Chinese
"model emperor lore,'' as we may call that part of Chinese
history, taking it for granted that in such cases the wish
was father to the thought.

It is reasonable to assume that not an independent his-
torian, but certain parties interested in raising the impor-
tance of their own class invented or modified the old records
80 as to lay the intellectual fatherhood of great decisions
on ministers or philosophical advisers. All those gushing
speeches of emperors and their ministers, placed on record
m the Shxirking, may well be said, as Baron von Richthofen
remarks,^ to have been placed together by their compilers,

» China, vol. i, p. 279.

34 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

m order to express the fundamental ideas of political and
social government and to illustrate the way of handling
them in the earliest times. The monarch asks, "Whom
shall I appoint ?" The ministers propose, and the emperor
cheerfully adopts their advice. Yau had made an unfortu-
nate move in appointing Kun, who, by his being the de-
scendant of Huang-ti, may have commanded more personal
influence than talent. Yii may have benefited by the dis-
asters experienced by his father. His education must have
given him frequent opportunities to study the causes of
the floods then devastating China and the means to stop
them, and it is quite possible that he succeeded in some
matters of detail. But if we read the accounts of what
the great prehistoric engineer is supposed to have brought
about, we are bound to agree with the view expressed by
Biot, Legge, and Von Richthofen, the last mentioned of
whom * is of opinion that the oldest account of Yii's labors,
as contained in that part of the Shu-king known imder the
name of Yu-kung ("Tribute of Yii"), is much more mod-
erate in its statements and contains less of the wonderful
than the later commentaries on it. From these later views,
which may be said to represent the belief of the modem
Chinese, it would appear that Yii cut canals through the
hills, in order to furnish outlets to the floods ; that he visited
the several provinces of the empire and all the mountain
ranges and cut down forests ; that he traced each river to
its source and back again to its mouth, in order to clear its
spring, regulate its course, deepen its bed, raise embank-
ments, and change its direction, — in other words, that he
performed work, compared to which, as Von Richthofen
justly remarks, the construction of the St. Gotthard tunnel

» Op, cU., p. 286.

THE CONFUCIAN LEGENDS 36

without blasting materials would be child's play, and all
this within a few years.

If we lean at all toward the assumption that these ancient
records have been constructed upon a historical basis, it
will be necessary to free them of what we may call the
poetical exaggeration which led the old historians to repre-
sent the work of man as that of a god. Accounts of a great
deluge occur in other literatures. Who knows how much
has been added to them by the imagination of later genera-
tions?

Such poetical exaggeration would in the first instance
induce historians to represent the inundations as much
more in the way of a catastrophe than they may have
actually been. The Emperor Yau, according to the Shur
king, describes the great deluge as embracing the mountains
and overtopping the hills, threatening the heavens with
their floods. How can such language possibly refer to phe-
nomena witnessed at any time in any part of the globe ?
Does it not rather recall a poetical figure like Schiller's
'^Bis sum Himmel spritzte der dampfende Gischt"?
Similariy, a considerable allowance may have to be made
on account of exaggeration in the description of Yii's
efforts to stop the floods, which may have subsided of
thdr own accord after a number of years. It appears to
me that Yii's father is not to be blamed for being imable
to cope with the catastrophe, when it had reached its culmi-
nation, nor does Yii himself deserve the credit, cheerfully
given him by his contemporaries, of having stopped the
floods by his own exertions. Of course, his people were
only too glad to raise him to the pedestal of a national hero
as an expression of the relief they felt after the floods had
subsided. I look upon the story of the Emperor Yii as an

36 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

early manifestation of what has continued to be a charac-
teristically Chinese view down to the present day. The
emperor is generally responsible for natm-al phenomena.
It is he who has to address Heaven and pray for rain after
a long drought ; and to his prayer is due the credit of relief,
when it comes. It seems quite consistent with the Chinese
character that the merits of a man credited with almost
supernatural powers by his contemporaries should have
been so grossly exaggerated by succeeding generations.

The most interesting document referring to this period
in the Shu-king is the above-mentioned "Tribute of Yii.''
In it the nine provinces into which Yii divided his empire
are described with their products in that terse, archaic lan-
guage peculiar to the oldest records of all nations. The
incidents related in this accoimt correspond fairly with
those in the accoimts written within the historical period,
and this is just the reason why some critics are of opinion
that they may be interpolations of a later date.

The late Professor James Legge, of Oxford, to whose
edition of the Shvrking the reader may be referred for the
original text, translation, and critical apparatus, took an
entirely skeptical view with regard to the doings of Yii.
"If we allow," he says,* "that all the resoiirces of the em-
pire, so to speak, were at his disposal, the work which he
is said to have accomplished far exceeds all limits of credi-
bility." Legge quotes Edouard Biot the yoimger, who
says '} —

"The Yellow River, after its entrance into China, has a further
course of 560 leagues; the Kiang, tak^n only from the great lake
of Hu-kuang visited by Yii, has a course of nearly 250 leagues ; the

* ShU'kingf Prolegomena, p. 59. ' Mimoire 8ur le chapitre Yu-kong
du Chourking, etc., in Journal Anatique, 3d series, vol. xiv, p. 160.

THE CONFUCIAN LEGENDS 37

Han, from its source to its junction with the Kiang, is 150 leagues
long. These three rivers present a total length of nearly 1000
leagues; and, adding the othef rivers (on which YQ laboured), we
must extend the 1000 to 1500. . . . Chinese antiquity has pro-
duced one monument of immense labour, — the Great Wall, which
extends over nearly 300 leagues; but the achievement of this
gigantic monument required a great number of years. It was
commenced in pieces, in the ancient states of Ts'in, Chau, and Yen,
and was then repaired and lengthened by the first emperor of the
Tsln dynasty. Now such a structure, in masonry, is much easier
to make than the embankment of enormous streams along an ex-
tent of 1200 or 1500 leagues. We know, in effect, how much trouble
and time are required to bring such works to perfect solidity. We
can judge it from the repeated overflowings of the Rhdne ; and the
bwer Rhdne is not a fourth of the size of the Ho and the Kiang in
the lower part of their course. If we were to believe the commenta-
tors, YQ would be a supernatural being, who could lead the inmiense
ri^'ers of China as if he had been engaged in regulating the course
of feeble streamlets."

Legge continues : —

"These illustrations of Biot are sufficiently conclusive. I
may put the matter before the reader by one of a different
character. I have represented the condition of the surface of
China when YQ entered on his labours by supposing the regions
of North America, from the St. Lawrence southward, to have been
found in similar disorder and desolation by the early colonists from
Europe in the seventeenth century. Those colonists had not the
difficulties to cope with which confronted YU; but we know how
dowly they pushed their way into the country. Gradually growing
in numbers, receiving constant accessions from Europe, increasing
to a great nation inferior to no other in the world for intelligence and
enterprise, in more than two centuries they have not brought their
territory more extensively into cultivation and order than YU did
the inundated regions of China in the space of less than twenty
years!

"The empire as it appears in 'The Tribute of YU' consisted of
nine provinces. On the north and the west its boundaries were

38 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

much the same as those of China Proper at the present day. On
the east it extended to the sea, and even, according to many,
across it, so as to embrace the territory of Corea. Its limits on
the south are not very well defined. It certainly did not reach be-
yond the range of mountains which runs along the north of Kuang-
tung province, stretching into Kuang-si on the west and Fu-ki6n
on the east. Even though we do not reckon those three provinces
in YQ's dominion, there still remains an immense empire, about
three times as large as France, which we are to suppose was ruled
over by him, the chief of K'i, and the different regions of which sent
their apportioned contributions of grain and other articles of trib-
ute to his capital year by year."

The reader will find most valuable material regarding
the Emperor Yii's exploits, and more particularly the
geographical features of the Yu-kung, in volume i of Von
Rich thof en's well-known work China. I look upon this
author as an absolute authority in his own field, the geology
and geography of the world, including that of China; but
I draw a sharp line between this cheerfully acknowledged
competency and the treatment of philological problems,
the solution of which is dependent upon a knowledge of
the Chinese language and literature.

§ 15. Yu's Successors

None of the sixteen successors of the great Yii is credited
with any particular brilliancy of character, and it looks as
if the story of their government had been written merely to
give relief to the great Confucian idols Yau, Shun, and Yii.

Yii had the intention to select a clever man rather than
his own son as his successor, but yielded to the advice of
his ministers in leaving the empire to the rightful heir,
K% or Ti-k'i, "Emperor K'i'' (2197-2189 b.c).

The people and his ministers having been highly satisfied

THE CX)NFUCIAN LEGENDS 39

with Yu as a worthy monarch; the rule hitherto observed in
sdecting a successor from some other family was broken ; and
from this precedent, the Chinese say, dates the practice of
later ages in securing the succession to one of the emperor's
own sons. Ti-k'i enjoyed the confidence of all his federal
brds except one, Yu-h6u, "Holder of the fief of H6u," who
refused to render allegiance to and took up arms against
him. With the assistance of his adherents, however, the
miperor vanquished him ; so that H-k'i at his death, which
occurred after a reign of about nine years, was able to
leave the empire in good order to his eldest son, T'ai-k'ang.

Tai-k'ang (2188-2160 b.c.) gave himself up to a gay
Sfe amid convivial pleasures, women, and the chase.
But for the fact that he was a grandson of the great Yii,
the people would have revolted against him, since he spoiled
thdr harvests by his hunting parties. All remonstrances
on the part of his ministers were in vain. Among the
latter one H6u-i, " Holder of the fief of K'iung" (yurkHung),
planned a coup (Titat. Taking advantage of the emperor's
protracted absence on one of his hunting expeditions, he
intercepted him with an army, and, making him prisoner,
offered the throne to T'ai-k'ang's brother, named Chung-
k'ang.

Chung-k'ang (2159-2147 b.c.) was a much better man,
who would not, however, assume the imperial dignity dur-
ing T'ai-k'ang's lifetime, but succeeded him formally after
his death. H6u-i continued to be his minister, but, having
assumed greater authority than Chung-k'ang approved,
his public influence was considerably curtailed. The post
of general-in-chief of the army, formerly held by H6u-i, was
given to his rival, the Prince of Yin. Under Chung-k'ang
the two court astronomers Hi and Ho — whom we must

40 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

suppose to be descendants of the two brothers of the
same name and holders of similar offices under the Em-
peror Yau — were decapitated for having failed to predict
an eclipse of the sun which took place while the two delin-
quents were absent and given to debauchery instead of
attending to their duties.

Several ingenious attempts have been made to identify
the solar eclipse referred to in the Shvrking account of
Chung-k'ang's reign, the latest and most plausible one
representing the joint labors of the late Professor G.
Schlegel, author of the great work on Chinese astronomy,
" Uranographie chinoise/' and Dr. F. Kiihnert of Vienna,
who, besides being a Sinologue, is an astronomer by profes-
sion. It seems to me that none but a scholar well at
home in both these sciences is able to understand thor-
oughly this very complicated subject; but students may
be referred to the work itself, which is published by the
Royal Academy of Sciences of Amsterdam under the title
"Die Schu-king-Finstemiss'' (Amsterdam, J. Miiller, 1889).
The authors endeavor to prove that the eclipse which the
court astronomers Hi and Ho failed to predict during
Chimg-k'ang's reign, actually took place on May 7, 2165
B.C., about one hour after sunrise and that it was plainly
visible at the time in Ho-nan. Being an utter stranger to
astronomical research, I am not able to refute the criti-
cisms of a well-known Sinologue, Dr. E. J. Eitel, * who has
the following remarks on the subject : —

"If the date of this eclipse could be fixed accurately and in a
manner bringing conviction to the mind of a vast majority of read-
ers, all doubts as to the reliability of the most ancient historical

* China Review , vol. xviii, p. 266.

THE CONFUCIAN LEGENDS 41

lecordB that exist in the world would be removedi and the basis for
a connected outline of ancient Chinese history would be gained.
But although the two professors bring together an unusual amount
of Sinologic and astronomical skill, qualifying them for the task
they have in hand, we doubt if many readers will see in the argu-
ments here propounded any more plausible evidence in favor of
May 7, 2165 B.C., than Gaubil advanced for October 11, 2154 B.C.,
or Largeteau and Chalmers (both working independently) for
October 12, 2127 B.C., or Fr^ret and D. Cassini for October 24,
2006 B.C., or Gumpach for October 22, 2155 B.C., or Oppolzer for
October 21, 2135 b.c.

** The question is extremely complicated, for the following reasons :
The original reading of the text of the Shu is uncertain. Confucius
may have altered it to bring it into conformity with his imperfect
astronomical knowledge, and especially with his prejudices against
the poflsible reading of his original, caused by his ignorance of the
precession of the equinoxes. The Han editors, who, after the burn-
ing of the books, patched up the lacunae of the ancient texts and
freely reconstructed the Shu, may likewise have corrected the
amended reading of Confucius. But, on the other hand, it is also
possible that both Confucius and the Han editors respected the
original reading of the Shu and left it untouched. It is, in our
opinion, absolutely impossible to get anything more than plausi-
bility for either view. Certainty is out of the question." '

On his death Chung-k'ang was followed by his son Ti-

8IANG (2146-2119 B.C.).

What we know about him and Yii's successors generally
is chiefly due to the records of the Bamboo Books, and it
is perhaps characteristic that Ssi-ma TsM^n does not now
give much more than the names of emperors down to Ki^.

TVsiang, a man of amiable temper, was much too yield-
ing in disposition to escape being victimissed by crafty
underlings. He had reinstated H6u-i in his post as gcneral-

> For the Chinese text, translation, and commentary see Lagge,
Shu-^nng, p. 162 $egq.

42 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

in-chief; and the latter earned great success in subduing
certain rebellious border nations. Having thereby become
a favorite with the people, he made use of his power to
reduce the emperor to a mere shadow. Tl-siang was com-
pelled to live on the frontier of his empire, not daring to
come to the capital, where H6u-i ruled supreme. When,
after a long banishment, he at last returned, H6u-i declared
him mcapable of governing and deposed him, after he had
made use of the emperor's authority to get rid of all the
officials that opposed his own schemes.

Among the adherents of H6u-i was an official named
Han-cho, who succeeded by another coup d^itat in wrench-
ing the empire from the usurper. H6u-i, like his victim
Ti-siang, had contracted a passion for the chase, and Han-
cho made use of that very circumstance which had been
fatal to the emperor. Seizing the government during the
absence of H6u-i, he caused the latter to be murdered on
his return from a somewhat protracted hunting party.
Upon this Han-cho married H6u-i's widow, by whom he
had two sons. When he took charge of the empire as sole
regent, the "shadow emperor" Ti-siang still lived in banish-
ment; and the usurper, in order to prevent any possible
legitimate interference with his plans, induced his sons in
2119 B.C. to kill the emperor, upon which the Hia dynasty
was interrupted by the reign of

Han-cho (2119-2079 b.c), characterized by the attempts
made by the legitimate emperor's family, notably his widow
and her son with their adherents, to regain the empire.
In this Ti-siang's son succeeded. He ascended the throne
under the name of Shau-k'ang (2079-2058 B.C.).

For the names of ten of Shau-k'ang's successors the reader
is referred to the chronological tables given in the Appendix.

THE CONFUCIAN LEGENDS 43

The list of emperors of the Hia dynasty is closed by the
name ci aae who brought about its ruin, and this, with
Chinese historians, is sufficient reason for describing him
as an arrant knave.

Kife, known also as Kui, Ti-kui, and Kit-KXJi (1818-
1766 B.C.), united in his person the most abominable qualities
with which a ruler may possibly be charged. If the entire
story of this first dynasty is an invention, the historians
have certainly shown method in drawing impresdve sketches
of the great Yu and the scoundrel Ki6. It may almost be
considered a rule henceforward — corresponding to what
is observed in the history of other nations — that the
founder of a dynasty is usually endowed with all the virtues
of a great man, whereas the one who has the misfortune to
be the last of a long and glorious line of rulers is, after its
downfall, credited with all the known vices. K\6 began
his reign by punishing those of his vassals who, prompted
by deep contempt of his cruel and dissolute character,
refused obedience to him. One of them, Yu-shI, "Holder
of the fief of Shi," had a beautiful daughter named Mel-hi,
and knowing the emperor's fatal weakness for female
charms, sent him the girl, with whom Ki6 became infatu-
ated. To please the woman, who is represented as gifted
with great intelligence coupled with the extreme of heart-
lessness, Ki6 gave himself up to the most extravagant
pleasures of which human imagmation can conceive.
On the heads of this couple have been heaped all the
infamies of vice that history has ever recorded; and
the historians may well be said to have created with
their account of this disastrous period the prototype of all
that is low and contemptible in human nature. The
details of their abominable acts of terrible cruelty are fully

44 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

described by the historians of the period, whose account of
Ki6'8 reign surpasses everythmg recorded in the way of
tyranny in the history of the world, not excepting the
darkest periods of imperial Rome. The reaction set in
under the leadership of Ch'ong-t'ang, or T'ang, " the C!om-
pleter," Prince of Shang, who, after overthrowing Ki6,
became the founder of the house known as the Shang,
or Yin, dynasty.

IHE SHANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY
(1766-1122 B.C.)

THE 8HAN0, OR YIN, DYNASTY (1766-1122 b.c.)
i 16. CH'ONChT'ANO (1766-1754 B.C.)

fT^HIS ruler, whose rebellion against Ki6 dates from the
1 year 1783, spent seventeen years m fighting the em-
peror, who was soon deserted by his former adherents.
In 1766 B.C. Ki6 was made a prisoner and deposed. When
Ch'ong-t'ang ascended the throne as the founder of the
Shang dynasty, he was found to be a good and virtuoxis
ruler. He was full of benevolence not only toward his
human subjects, but also toward the animal world. His
name has become proverbial in connection with hunting
and fishing, which he sanctioned, while taking measures to
prevent all cruelty to animals. The introduction of sports-
manlike treatment of these pastimes is ascribed to him.
He was succeeded by his grandson.

1 17. Cn'oNo-r'ANo's Successors

Tai-kia (1753-1721 b.c), as a young man, was inclined
to be wayward, but I Yin, the prudent minister of his
grandfather, caused him to withdraw from government for
three years, in order to prepare for the responsible duties
awaiting him, after which he returned to the capital.

I Yin must have been a man of great power, and he
should be regarded as the chief ag^nt in consolidating the

»\ ^ '

48 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

empire under the first three rulers of the dynasty. He
had greatly assisted Ch'ong-t'ang in securing the throne,
and had remained his chief adviser throughout his life.
He now held a similar position under T'ai-kia. He died a
centenarian in 1714 under the reign of T'ai-kia's son, Wu-
TiNG (1720-1692 B.C.).

T'ai-kong (1691-1667 b.c.) was the next ruler, and after
his death T'ai-kong's son

SiAU-KiA (1666-1650 B.C.)
was followed by his younger brother

YuNG-Ki (1649-1638 B.C.).

Under this reign the imperial authority became weak-
ened, and when the monarch called the princes of his
empire to a meeting, they declined to obey the summons.

T'ai-mou (1637-1563 B.C.),
known also under his posthumous name Chung-tsung, was
another brother of Siau-kia and Yung-ki. He was fright-
ened by the sudden growth of an ill-portending mulberry
tree and a stalk of grain. He consulted his minister
I Chi as to the meaning of this omen. I Chi, who was of
opinion that sorcery ought to be powerless against virtue,
ascribed the phenomenon to the emperor's lack of good
qualities. The monarch took the hint and resolved to
start a new life, upon which the dangerous plants withered
away. The result was that the princes of the empire, who
had refused to do obeisance to his brother, hastened to
tender their allegiance. He was followed by his son

Chung-ting (1562-1550 b.c).

This youthful monarch did not share his father's good
luck in having the assistance of an excellent adviser like the
prime minister I Chi, who had died soon after his master.
The neighboring states refused their former vassalage and

THE SHANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY (1766-1122 b.c.) 49

made the reign one of constant warfare. China's sorrow,
the Yellow River, added to these misfortunes a serious
inundation, which threatened with destruction the imperial
capital, situated in the adjacent lowlands. The capital
was, therefore, again transferred to a more favorable place
in the present province of Ho-nan. Chung-ting died child-
less after a reign of thirteen years. He was followed by his
brother

Wai-jon (1549-1535 B.C.),
a boy ct fifteen, who at his death left the empire to another
brother of Chung-ting's,

Ho-TAN-KIA (1534-1526 B.C.),

who again changed his residence owing to the Yellow River
troubles. He had taken good care to give his son an edu-
cation qualifying him for his responsible duties, and the
latter succeeded him imder the name of

Tbu-i (152&-1507 B.C.).
He was a peaceful ruler and enjoyed the benefit of being
assisted by a clever minister. The capital was, during his
reign, repeatedly shifted, but he left the empire in good
condition.
Y Hie greater part of the history of this dynasty is merely a
series ot names ; and the chronology of the rulers to whom
these names belong has been fixed by later generations
with the assistance of records which may possibly have
existed two thousand years ago, but have not come down
to us. From Tsu-i down to the end of the dynasty the
names ot seventeen rulers are recorded, and these are given
in the chronological tables appended to this work. The
degree of relationship in which these monarchs stand to
each other is immaterial.

Many of these names are mentioned in the Shirking, but

50 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

the det^ of the history of this dynasty, with the material
placing the philologist in the position to reconstruct some
sort of chronology, is f omid in another ancient record known
as Chvrshvrkir^iin, i.e. ''Annals of the Bamboo Books/'
which contain the history and chronology of Chinese em-
perors from Huang-ti nearly to the end of the Ch6u
dynasty. These records were discovered about the year
280 A.D. A native of the district of Ki in the north oi the
present province of Ho-nan had committed what, according
to Chinese views, would be considered a great indiscretion
in excavating the tomb of a prince of the Ch6u dy-
nasty, whose remains had rested there in peace for well-
nigh six hundred years. The record from which we learn
this fact duly insinuates that the man had no permission
to do so ; yet he did it to the great delight of the philolo-
gists of the period. It had been customary, as may be
concluded from similar cases well known in the history of
Chinese literature, to bury with the worldly remains of
great folks not only weapons and armor, but also valuable
manuscripts. Thus it came about that one of the princi-*
pal sources of the oldest history down to the year 299 B.C.
was preserved. The text contammg these annals was m-
scribed on a number of bamboo tablets, the time-honored
mode of writing prior to the invention of more handy
writing materials. It was written in characters, the deci-
phering of which had to be intrusted to the experts of the
day, who had also to make use of their philological acu-
men in arranging it, before it could be inserted in duly
transcribed copies among the treasures of the imperial li-
brary. We have no more reason to doubt the bona fides
of the philological work done in connection with it than
we are accustomed to doubt the tradition of many a his-

THE SHANO, OR YIN, DYNASTY (1760-1122 B.C.) 51

torieal work o( Greek or Roman origin; and sound argu-
metkta may be brou^t forward to support the belief in its

. iimi ;^i ;r; ;

Althou^ discrepancies of considerable weight exist m
its tradition as compared with the Shvrking, the oldest
text treating (A the most ancient history, and the great
historical work of Ssi-ma Ts'i^n, the Shi-ki, originating in
the b^inning of the first century B.C., such as they are the
Annals ct the Bamboo Books are the most detailed record,
as far as they go, of the earliest periods of Chinese history.
. Am<Mig the discrepancies the one most conspicuous is
the dironology of the early legendary periods. I have, in
the dates assigned to these emperors, followed what may
be called the standard view of Chinese chronologists.
The Bamboo Books di£fer from them considerably. The
Emperor Huang-ti's reign, which began in 2704 b.c.
according to the standard computation, is made to date
more than two hundred years later, i.e. from 2491 b.c,
in the Bamboo Annab. The difference diminishes gradu-
ally later on, but still amounts to more than fifty years
at the end o( the Shang dynasty, imtil it disappears
altogether about the middle of the ninth century b.c.

Sel-ma Ts'i^n, with true historical spirit, refrains from
any attempt at exact chronology prior to the year 841 b.c.
In the Genealogical Table inserted in the thirteenth book

j * CY. Legge> 8hu4nng, Prolegomena, p. 105 9e^., where the text is
•t reproduced with an introduction, a careful translation, and critical
: aotet; also Ed. Chavannes, Let mHnoires hidariquet, vol. i, Intro-
duction, p. dxxxviii, and especially vol. v, pp. 44^-479, appendix i,
where the moet exhaustive monograph on the archaological merits
d the work and the history of its discovery will be found. A French
trmoslation with introduction and notes was published by id. Biot in
the Journal Atiatique, 3d series, vol. xii, pp. 537-67S, and vol. xiii,
pp. 381-431.

52 THE ANCIENT fflSTORY OF CHINA

of his work, he merely gives names and generations for
the preceding periods ; and, from the indications he makes,
it seems that his chronology, vague though it has been
left for good reasons, comes nearer that of the Bamboo
Books than our standard figures.* Altogether, too much
stress should not be laid on dates of any kind previous to
the Ch6u dynasty.'

What we learn from the Bamboo Books about the Shang
dynasty is dry and immteresting. I am inclined to look
upon this as an argument supporting the confidence to be
placed in it. The accounts of the early legendary emperors
are much more detailed: they are attractive when com-
pared with the terse entries appearing imder the Shang
dynasty in that old chronicle; and this, considering the
remoteness of the period, is bound to cause suspicion.
Very little need be said about the long array of names I
have referred to of rulers of that dynasty as belonging to
the fifteenth down to the twelfth century. The beginning
of the fourteenth century saw P'an-kOng (1401-1374 b.c),
who for the fifth time removed the court — this time far
away from the troublesome banks of the Yellow River to
a site in the present province of Chi-li. A lengthy account
containing speeches in which he places on record his views
on government has been preserved in the Shvrking. One
of his successors, Wu-ting, the last of the virtuous rulers
of the dynasty (1324r-1266 B.C.), had intrusted himself in
all government aflFairs to his aged teacher Kan-p'an, who
soon had to retire on account of old age. The emperor
now sought a clever man to assist him in his duties, for

^Chavannes, op, cit,, vol. i, Introduction, p. cxci. 'The details
of the two systems of chronology have been placed together in
Arendt's SynchroniaHsche RegenUntabeUen.

THE SHANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY (1760-1122 b.c.) 63

which purpoee he addressed himself to Shang-ti, the Supreme
Rukr, that is, God, asking that He would reveal to him in
a dream the man who should act as his prime minister.
He dreamed the dream and saw his futiu-e counselor, but
he could not find his like among the grandees of the empire,
thou^ he searched the country over. Finally he proved
to be a common workman by the name of Fu-yu6, who not
only resembled the portrait shown him by God in his
dream, but in the sequel showed his possession of all the
requisite qualities for the high position to which he was
forthwith raised. Indeed he became a worthy successor
to the great I Yin, the assistant of Ch'ong-t'ang, the
foimder of the dynasty. A glorious and peaceful govern-
ment resulted from the perfectly harmonious manner in
which Wu-ting and his minister worked together.

Not much need be said about their successors, rulers as
well as ministers, down to Ch6u-sin, the last ruler of the
dynasty, on whose imworthy head all the crimes of an
incompetent and vicious monarch have been heaped by
the historians of later ages. His history is almost a parallel
to that of Ki^, the unworthy last emperor of the Hia
dynasty.

I quote the Bamboo Books in Legge's translation,^ in
order to show what this venerable record is like.

§ 18. Ch6u-sin (1154-1122 b.c.)

"In his first year, which was ki hai (thirty-sixth of the cycle
= 1102 B.C.), when he came to the throne, Ch6u-8in dwelt in Yin.
He gave appointments to the princes of K'iu, Ch6u, and YU.

" In his third year, a sparrow produced a hawk. In his fourth
year, he had a great hunting in Li. He invented the punishment of
roasting. In his fifth year, in the summer, he built the tower of

* ShU'king, Prolegomena, p. 139 9eqq,

64 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

Nan-tan. There was a shower of earth in Po. In his sixth year,
the chief of the west [Si-po, t.e. Won-wang] offered sacrifice for the
first time to his ancestors in Pi. In his ninth year, the royal forces
attacked the State of Su, and brought away Ta-ki as a captive.
The king made an apartment for her, with walls of carnation stone,
and the doors all adorned with g^ms. In his tenth jear, in the
smnmer, in the sixth month, he hunted in the western borders.
In his seventeenth year, the chief of the west smote the Ti. In the
winter, the king made a pleasure excursion in El. In his twenty-
first year, in the spring, in the first month, the princes went to Qi6u
to do homage. Po-i and Shu-ts'i betook themselves to Qi6u from
Ku-chu. In his twentynsecond year, in the winter, he had a great
hunting along the Wei. In his twenty-third year, he imprisoned
the chief of the west in Yu-li. In his twenty-ninth year, he liber-
ated the chief of the west, who was met by many of the princes and
escorted back to Ch'ong. In his thirtieth year, in the spring, in the
third month, the chief of the west led the princes to the court with
their tributes. In his thirty-first year, the chief of the west began
to form a regular army in Pi, with LU Shang as its commander. In
his thirty-second year, there was a conjunction of the five planets
in Fang. A red crow lighted on the altar to the spirits of the land
in Ch6u. The people of Mi invaded YUan, when the chief of the
west led a force against Mi. In his thirty-third year, the people
of Mi surrendered to the army of Ch6u, and were removed to Ch'ong.
The king granted power to the chief of the west to punish and attack
offending states on his own discretion.

"In his thirty-fourth year, the forces of Ch6u took K'i and Yli;
and then attacked Ts'ung, which surrendered. In the winter, in
the twelfth month, the hordes of Kun overran Ch6u. In the
thirty-fifth year, there was a great famine in Ch6u; when the
chief of the west removed from Ch'ong to Fung. In his thirty-
sixth year, in the spring, in the first month, the princes went to
court at Ch6u, and then they smote the hordes of Kun. The chief
of the west made his heir-son Fa [i.e. Wu-wang] build Hau. In his
thirtynseventh year, the Duke of Ch6u built an imperial college-
In his thirty-ninth year, the great oflficer Sin-kia fled to Ch6u. In
his fortieth year, the Duke of Ch6u made the spirit-tower. The
king sent Eiau-ko to seek for gems in Ch6u. In his forty-first year.

THE SHANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY (176G-1122 b.c.) 55

in the npnitg, in the third month, Ch'ang, the chief of the west, died.
In his forty-fleeond year. Fa, the chief of the west, received the
vermilion book from LQ Shang. A girl changed into a man. In
his forty-third year, in the spring, he had a grand review. Part of
Mount Yau fell down. In his forty-fourth year. Fa smote Li. In
his forty-eeventh year, the recorder of the Interior, Hiang Chi, fled
to Ch6u. In his forty-eighth year the I goat was seen. Two suns
appeared together. In his fifty-first year, in the winter, in the
deventh month, on the day m6u-tzi (twenty-fifth of the cycle), the
army of Ch6u crossed the ford of Mong, but returned. The king
imprisoned the Viscount of K'i, and put his relative Pi-kan to death ;
while the Viscount of Wei fled away. In his fifty-second year,
which was kong-yin (twenty-seventh of the cycle), Ch6u made its
first attack on Yin. In the autumn, the army of Ch6u camped in
the plain of 8i6n. In the winter, in the twelfth month, it sacrificed
to God. The tribes of Yung, Shu, Kiang, Mau, Wei, Lu, P'ong,
and Pu, followed Ch6u to the attack of Yin."

Some explanations will be necessary for the modem
stud^it to understand this terse account, apart from the
several geographical and personal names, to comment on
which it would take us too far afield.

I fuUy conciur with the opinion expressed by Chavannes,^
who 8a3rs with regard to the trustworthiness of Chinese
history down to this period, that the legends recorded in
connection with the model emperors Yau and Shun appear
to be built up on a sjrmmetrical system provoking suspicion ;
that neither of them is mentioned in the most ancient Con-
fucian classic, the Shl-kinQf and that most of the details of
their history betray the manners and political organization
<rf the Ch6u dynasty. Chavannes * says : —

''As regards the Emperor YQ, he is credited with having
performed hydrographic works which would have claimed the
continuous efforts of several generations. In the book of the Shur

* Les mimaireM hiitorique*, vol. i, Introduction, p. czl.

66 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

king, called 'Tribute of Yii/ we may distinguish an ancient geograr
phy with which the legend of this sovereign has been mixed up by
way of superfoetation. Yau, Shun and Yil, these three august
m3rthological phantoms, have no longer any reality, if one seeks to
seize them bodily. The veritable facts do not appear before the
Ch6u dynasty and the prince deposed by it, the perverse Qi6u-sin,
who became guilty of excessive love towards the beautiful and
cruel Ta-ki. It is, therefore, not until almost the end of the twelfth
century b.c. that we find the hitherto uncertain ground on which
the historian has guided us so far become firm enough to walk upon."

Ch6u-sin united in hb person all that is bad in an em-
peror. If Yau and Shun may be called the model emperors
par excellence, he was the very reverse. Ssi-ma Ts'i6n*
characterizes him in a few words as follows : —

"The Emperor Ch6u was of quick discernment, gifted with sharp
senses, mental ability beyond the ordinary, and physical strength
of brutal power. Knowledge enabled him to keep remonstrance at
a distance ; eloquence enabled him to gloss his vicious acts. Boast-
ing to his subjects of his ability, and exalting his empire by clamor-
ing, was to him the means to make himself prominent. He loved
the pleasures of the cup and debauchery, and was infatuated with
his consort, the beloved Ta-ki, whose words he obeyed."

From what the historian places on record in connection
with this couple, it appears that Madam Tarki was an early
prototype of that perverse mentality presented in the eigh-
teenth tjentury by that ill-famed maniac, the Marquis de
Sade.

Legge* recapitulates what the commentators of the
Shvrking have to say about her crimes as follows : —

" Ta-ki was shamelessly lustful and cruel. The most licentious
songs were composed for her amusement, and the vilest dances
exhibited. The court was at a place in the present district of K'i,

* Shi'ki, ch. ill, p. 10; of. Chavannes, op. cU., vol. i, p. 199. ' Shu-
king, p. 209 aeq.

THE SHANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY (1766-1122 b.c.) 57

dep. of Wei-4iuiy and there a palace was erected for her, with a
famous terrace or tower, two li iii;^de, and the park around stocked
with the rarest animals. This expenditure necessitated heavy
exactions, which moved the resentment of the people. At Sha-k'iu,
in the present district of P'ing-hiang, in Chi-li, there was still greater
extravagance and dissipation. There was a pond of wine, the
trees were hung with flesh ; men and women chased each other about
quite naked. In the palace there were nine market stances, where
they drank all nig^t. The princes began to rebel, when Ta-ki said
that the majesty of the throne was not sufficiently maintained;
that punishments were too light, and executions too rare. She,
therefore, devised two new instruments of torture. One of them
was called 'The Heater,' and consisted of a piece of metal made
hot in a fire, which people were obliged to take up in their hands.
The other was a copper pillar, greased all over, and laid above a
pit of live charcoal. The culprit had to walk across the pillar,
and when his feet slipped and he fell down into the fire, Ta-ki was
greatly delif^ted. This was called the pimishment of 'Roasting.'
These enormities made the whole empire groan and fume with
indignation." '

§ 19. WoN-WANG, Duke op Ch6u (1182-1135 b.c.)

Such a state of things could not, of course, last long, and
the reaction, bound to follow such misgovemment, soon
set in. Among the feudal states of the empire was that of
Ch6u, distinguished by its virtuous ruler Ch'ang, known also
by the name Sirpo, "Chief of the West," and well known
in Chinese literature as Won-wang, the father of Wu-wang,
the first ruler of the Ch6u dynasty. He had followed his
father on the throne of his duchy in 1182 b.c. His grand-
father Tan-fu, known in literature as Ku-kung, " the Old

* From the chronology of th^p Bamboo Books it would appear that
the " punishment of Roasting/' was invented by Ch6u-sin five years
before he brought away Ta-ki as a captive.

58 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

Doke/' or T'ai-wang (King T'lu), the prince (A a little state
called Pin, near the present Si-an-fu, had since 1327 B.C.
changed the name of his little duchy into that of Ch6u.
As Duke of Ch6u he was followed by his son Ki-li in 1231
B.C., the very year in which Ki-li's son Ch'ang (Won-wang)
was bom. Ki-li had been, throu^ several generations
of emperors, the most influential personage of the em-
pire, being employed as prime minister and at times as
conmiander-in-chief to fight rebels and other enemies;
and when Won-wang succeeded him, it appears the condi-
tions of the r61e the great Wu-wang's house was destined
to play in the history of China sixty years later on were
given.

Won-wang began his career by devoting himself entirely
to the administration of his state, which henceforth he
changed into a model of good government. Chinese
literature abounds with records of his doings ; and all au-
thorities agree in the praise of his virtue and wisdom. His
consort gave birth to ten sons. Of these the eldest died
young; the second, Wu-wang, whose proper name was
Fa, later on became the f oimder of the Ch6u dynasty ; his
fourth son Tan, well known as Ch6u-kung, or Duke of
Ch6u, became Wu-wang's famous assistant in consolidating
the empire. Won-wang's uprightness of character was
boimd to bring him sooner or later into conflict with the
tyrant emperor Ch6u-sin. He and two other grandees of
the empire had been raised to the dignity of dukes, although
none of them approved the vicious government of their
chief. Two friends and colleagues of Won-wang's had
made an attempt to cure the emperor of his infatuation
for Tarki, for which they were condemned to death. The
body of one of them was cut into pieces, cooked, and served

THE SHANQ, OR YIN, DYNASTY (176ft-1122 b.c.) 59

as a didi (rf meat to the father of the victim, who also was
gubeequently killed. Won-wang freely gave vent to his
indignation at these horrors, whereupon one of the emperor's
creatures, the Biarquis of Ch'img, denounced him for the
crime q( lese-majesty ; but Won-wang's reputation through-
oat the empire for unimpeachableness of character gave
bun an authority which even the emperor respected, and
CSi6u-sin dared not take his life lest the people should rise
in indignation ; he, therefore, confined himself to making
the duke a prisoner at Yu-li, in the modem Honan. There
Won-wang spent three years, making use of his seclusion
in producing one of the most famous works of Chinese
literature, the I-king, "Book of Changes." Next to cer-
tain ballads (A the Shl-king, "Book of Odes," and apart
from the hieroglyphic inscriptions of the Shang, this is
(me of the oldest products of Chinese literature now in
existence.^

As we have already seen, the invention of the so-called
Pnhkua, "Eight kua," or mystic trigraphs of Chinese super-
stition (I have no better name for them), is ascribed to the
Emperor Fu-hi. This means that historians are unable
to name an inventor for them within the historical period.
The ei^t trigraphs, or Kua, consisted of a combination of
continuous and broken lines, each corresponding to cer-
tain elements of nature. The continuous lines represent
the male, the broken lines the female, principle. Every-
thing good and superior, according to Chinese ideas, is
male; the opposite is female. The female clearly takes

* It* rival, aa regards antiquity, ia poaaibly the very abort text
known aa Yn-Ul, "The Philosopher YQ/' ascribed with some uncer-
tainty to YQ Hiung, W5n-wang'a own teacher. Wylie, Noiu en
CHmm LUeraiure, p. 125.

60 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

a back seat in nature. Heaven is male, earth is female;
the smi is male, the moon is female. Similarly, the ideas
of "day," "south," "white," as positive terms, are male,
while their opposites "night," "north," and "black" are
female. If the mventor of these mystic combinations,
which m the last instance fall back on the most ancient
Chinese division of natural phenomena into male and
female, was aware that he was dispensing all the good
things to man, leaving his fair companion in the cold, the
eight kvxL could not have originated at a time when matri-
archy was the order of the day, as ought to have been the
case before Fu-hi, the inventor of matrimony, before whose
time, we are told, "children knew only their mothers and
not their fathers." This unmistakable allusion to matri-
archy occurs in the Pairhvrt^ung, a work published by the
celebrated historian Pan Ku, who died 92 a.d. The coin-
cidence of matriarchy being abandoned for matrimony,
headed by a pater f amilias, which involves the ascendency
of the male to rulership in the family, and the invention of a
system of S3nnbols associating all the sympathetic phe-
nomena of nature with the male, leaving their cold and
unsympathetic opposites to the female, impresses me as
another instance of logical reasoning among the historians
responsible for these details in their imaginary history of
primeval man.
The eight trigrams of Fu-hi were the following : —

1st ^^= KHSn^ heaven, the ethereal principle; the

symbol consisting of three male lines.

2d ^ ^ K^un, earth; three female lines.

3d ^= = Ohon, thunder; two female lines above one

male.

THE SHANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY (1766-1122 b.c.) 61

4th z=i := Kon, mountain and hills; two female lines

below one male.

5th Ld, fire, light, heat; one female between two

male lines.

6th ~ ZZ K^an, water, liquid element; one male be-
tween two female lines.

7th Tin, steam ; one female above two male lines.

8th Sun J wind ; one female below two male lines.

It will be seen that all these symbols constitute a com-
bination of broken and unbroken lines ; the latter stand for
male, or yang; the former for female, or yin. The pre-
ponderance and relative position of the one or the other of
the two principles of gender produce the idea of certain
dements of nature. Won-wang is supposed to have per-
fected this system by doubling the number of strokes, thus
obtaining sixty-four combinations, to each of which he
attached a number of symbolic meanings. He described
this system in the /-Aring, which is regarded by the Chinese
themselves as the chief classic of their literature. In their
opinion it forms the essence of all wisdom. Its occultness,
however, makes it unintelligible to any student not willing
to devote all his energies to its interpretation. The I-king,
which during recent years has attracted the attention of
Sinologues, is important not only from any value modem
scholars may attach to it, but also from the close connec-
tion, mysterious though it may appear to us, in which it has
stood for three thousand years with the entire mental and
social life of the Chinese. The native literature in the shape
of commentaries on Won-wang's work is enormous. As a
book containing what the Chinese would call the principles
ct their acience of divination, the I-king has, in spite of its

62 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

unintelligibility, permeated the masses more deeply per-
haps than the writings of Confucius. Confucius himself
spoke of the work in the highest terms ; and this could not
but act as a reconmiendation to all the philosophers of his
school.

Won-wang's son Fa, who later on became the founder of
the Ch6u dynasty imder the name of Wu-wang, was anxious
to see his aged father delivered from his confinement, and
since he did not see his way to bring this about by either
persuasion or force, he took refuge in the emperor's weakr
ness for female beauty. He made him a gift of a beautiful
yoimg woman, who availed herself of the tyrant's tem-
porary infatuation in demanding Won-wang's release.
Won-wang was reinstated in all his former dignities and
declared the first prince of the court. This included the
privilege of smrounding himself with an armed retinue.
Won-wang soon left the court and returned to his duchy.
There he gathered aroimd him the discontented elements
among the emperor's grandees and, by making war on
some of the neighboring states which the emperor had
asked him to subdue, increased his military power. Hav-
ing changed his capital twice and spent several years in
warfare, he died in 1135 B.C. at the age of ninety, after a
glorious reign of half a century.

§ 20. Wu-WANG AND THE FaLL OF THE ShANG DyNASTT

Won-wang's government had so much strengthened the
power of his duchy, and his grand reputation as a ruler
with the emperor's misgovemment had made him so many
friends, that his son Wu-wang soon found himself at the
head of a revolutionary party destined to make an end of

THE 8HANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY (1766-1122 b.c.) 63

the abhctfred dynAsty of Shang. New, unheard-of cruelties
committed by Ch6uH3in and his consort Ta-ki helped to
kindle the fire oi sedition. The remonstrances and ex-
hortations ci the well-disposed among the emperor's
entourage were of no avaU. One of his own relatives,
named Pi Kan, who had dared to reproach him for his
depravity, became one of the last victims of his cruelty.
In reply to a long speech he had made before the emperor,
the latter cried out : '' They say a sage has seven orifices
in his heart. Let us see if this is the case with you/'
Up<m which he caused Pi Kan to be disembowelled in his
presence.

Another kinsman of the emperor's, the Viscoimt of WeT,
left court to place himself under Wu-wang's protection,
who at last assembled his forces to take in hand the punish-
ment <rf the tyrant. Before crossing the Yellow River,
at a pUce called Mdng-tsin, he made some celebrated
speeches to his adherents, in which he explains the motives
of his action, the supposed tenor of which has been pre-
served in the Shvrking} Wu-wang there says : —

"Heav«i and earth is the parent of all creatures; and of all
creatures man is the most highly endowed. The sincere, intelligent,
and perBpicacious among men becomes the great sovereign; and
the great sovereign is the parent of the people. But now Ch6u-8in,
the king of Shang, does not reverence Heaven above, and inflicts
calamities on the people below. He has been abandoned to drunk-
enoeas, and reckkfls in lust. He has dared to exercise cruel oppres-
sion. Along with criminals he has punished all their relatives.
He has put men into office on the hereditary principle. He has
made it his pursuit to have palaces, towers, pavilions, embank-
ments, ponds, and all other extravagances, to the most painful
injury of you, the myriad people. He has burned and roasted the

^ Leggc, p. 2S1 uqq.

64 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

loyal and good. He has ripped up pregnant women. Great Heaven
was moved with indignation, and charged my deceased father
Won-wang reverently to display its majesty; but he died before
the work was completed.

"On this account, I, Fa [Wu-wang], who am but a little child,
have by means of you, the hereditary rulers of my friendly states,
contemplated the government of Shang; but Ch6u-sin has no
repentant heart. He abides squatting on his heels, not serving
God or the spirits of heaven and earth, neglecting also the temple
of his ancestors, and not sacrificing in it. The victims and the
vessels of millet all become the prey of wicked robbers ; and still
he says, 'The people are mine ; the decree is mine,' never trying to
correct his contemptuous mind. Now Heaven, to protect the
inferior people, made for them rulers, and made for them instruc-
tors, that they might be able to be aiding to God, and seeing the
tranquillity of the four quarters of the empire. In regard to who
are criminals and who are not, how dare I give any allowance to
my own wishes? Where the strength is the same, measure the
virtue of the parties; where the virtue is the same, measure their
righteousness. Ch6u-sin has hundreds of thousands and myriads
of ministers, but they have hundreds of thousands and myriads of
minds ; I have three thousand ministers, but they have one mind.
The iniquity of Shang is full. Heaven gives command to destroy
it. If I did not comply with Heaven my iniquity would be as
great.

"I, who am a little child, early and late am filled with appre-
hensions. I have received charge from my deceased father Won-
wang; I have offered special sacrifice to God; I have performed
the due services to the great Earth — and I lead the multitude of
you to execute the punishment appointed by Heaven. Heaven
compassionates the people. What the people desire. Heaven will
be found to give effect to. Do you aid me, the one man, to cleanse
for ever all within the four seas. Now is the time ! It may not be
lost."

With similar speeches Wu-wang addressed the leaders
and soldiers of his army and his allies, who had '' come from
afar, being men of the Western regions." This may pos-

THE 8HANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY (lV6^1122 b.c.) 65

8U>ly imply that he relied on the help of the Huns, his
nei^bors in the West. He certainly mentions a number
of ^hnic names belonging to non-Chinese tribes. ''Lift
up your lances, join your shields, raise your spears."
"C3i6u, the king of Shang, follows only the words of his
wife." "They are only the vagabonds of the empire,
loaded with crimes, whom he honors and exalts, whom he
employs and trusts, making them great officers and nobles,
80 that they can t3rrannize over the people, exercising their
villainies in the city of Shang."

On having made a goodly number of speeches, which are
preserved in the Shu-king, Wu-wang gave battle to the
assembled army of the emperor. After a bloody fight the
latter was completely defeated. Ch6u-sin took refuge in
his palace, where he ordered all his most valuable jewels
to be lm)ught, and set fire to the building, in order not to
fail into the hands of the enemy. When the news of
C3i6u-sin'8 death was brought to Wu-wang, he entered
C3i6u-6in'8 palace to convince himself of the fact. Ssi-ma
Ts'i^n informs us that Wu-wang shot three arrows at the
emperor's corpse, descended from his car, and stabbed it
with his dagger, after which he severed the head from the
body and suspended it from a white standard. Madam
Ta-ki and another favorite of the emperor were killed, and
their corpses were similarly treated.

The word used by Ssi-ma Ts'i^n for the dagger with
which Wu-wang stabbed the dead emperor is king-hUn,
which means a "light two-alged sword." But this is
clearly not the original reading. The latter is preserved
in the Chdu-shu, a work which Chavannes^ has good
reason to believe to be older than the Shl-ki. In the cor-

* Les mimoitf histariqueMf vol. i, p. 235, note 1, and vol. v, p. 457.

66 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

responding passage of the Ch&Urshu, which appears with
but slight alterations in Ssi-ma Ts'i^n's text, the word
used for Wu-wang's dagger b king-lu (king = " light/' lu =
"a musical pipe")- The two characters employed in
describing this sound give absolutely no sense in ordinary
Chinese; and the commentators found it necessary to add
that the term represents the "name of a double-edged
sword," or "a dagger" (kiin-ming). Ssi-ma Ts'i^n, or per-
haps some later editor of his text, who did not understand
the word, substituted Hng-kiM, "light double-edged
sword." But the word is easily explained if we look upon
it as a foreign term. We receive a broad hint as to its
origin in the accoimt of a historical event preserved in the
history of the earlier Han dynasty/ When, in 47 B.C.,
the chief of the Hiung-nu, or Hims, was about to conclude
a treaty with the Chinese court, the ceremony of swearing
a solemn oath had to be gone through, in which the Great
Khan, or SJuxn-yu, had to swallow a beverage prepared by
himself and consisting of the blood of a white horse mixed
with wine. The khan stirred the wine with a king-lvk and
a golden cyathus, and the scholiast explains the term king-
luk as "the precious sword of the Hiimg-nu." I have for
years, in the course of my readings of Chinese texts re-
garding the Turkish nations in central Asia, tried to trace
the prototypes of Chinese transcriptions representing
Turkish words; and quite a number of examples seem to
suggest that the language used by the ancient Huns, or
Hiung-nu, was actually Turkish, as has been suggested by
Klaproth and others. The word corresponding to the
Chinese transcription king-luk may be easily recognized
in a word found in the modem Turki language and some

1 Ta^Un-han-ahu, ch. 94 B, p. 6.

THE SHANO, OR YIN, DYNASTY (176^1122 b.c.) 67

oiher Turkish dialects; namely, kingrak, "a two-edged
knife, a sabre." I do not hesitate to apply this identifica-
tion to the word used for Wu-wang's dagger, king-luy which
may be merely another transcription for the purely Turk-
ic word kingrak. If my deductions are correct, they
would indicate that a Turkish name was in use for a kind
of weapon which the first emperor of the Ch6u dynasty
carried with him in the twelfth century B.C., and that this
b the oldest Turkish word on record. But it seems also to
suggest that Wu-wang, whose dominions lay on the western
border of China, stood in certain relations with his next-
door nei^bors, the ancestors of the Hiung-nu. It is
hi^y probable that the barbarians mentioned in connection
with certam inroads they made on Chinese territory during
the remotest periods of Chinese history are identical with
the well-known hereditary enemy of the Chinese, the
Hiung-nu, whose history begins to be told with palpable
detail from the beginning of the third century B.C.

The various names under which these northern and west-
em nei^bors of the Chinese are mentioned during the
earlier periods of history appear to be variants in the
transcription of the same name Hvn or Hunnu. Thus we
find the Hun-yu mentioned as a tribe on the northern bor-
ders, against whom the Emperor Huang-ti is supposed to
have made war in the twenty-seventh century B.C. A later
name was Hiinryun, the designation in use previous to
the introduction of the term Hiung^u in the third century
B.C. The root Hun or Kun will appear to those gifted
with a lively imagination to occur in various other names
for the ancestors of King Attila's people, then occupying
the northern and western borders of China. The reason
why the Chinese compare these northern nomads and other

68 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

barbarous tribes to "dogs" (K^uan or K^un) may have
originated in a kind of jeu de moL As early as 689 B.C.
we read in Tso's commentary on the "Spring and Autumn
Annals "V that the "dog barbarians," in Chinese K^Oanr
jung, were defeated. If this word K^Oan (in Cantonese
K^un), "dog," is another transcription for Hun or Hun,
this may remind us of the popular etymology of the Ger-
man abusive term Hundsfott, which has been wrongly
explained as having originated in the words Hunnus
fuit. One of these tribes, whom Won-wang is supposed
to have defeated 1138 B.C., was called Kvmi, Kun, or Hun,
and has been located by the Chinese historians in the south
of the present Ordos territory. Mencius praises Won-
wang for the wisdom with which he "served" the Kun
barbarians. "It requires a perfectly virtuous prince," he
says,' "to be able with a great country to serve a small
one, as, for instance, King Won served the Kun barbarians.
And it requires a wise prince to be able with a small country
to serve a large one, as King T'ai [Won-wang's grand-
father, 1327 B.C.] served the Hiin-yii." The two ethnic
names here mentioned probably both refer to the Hims.
How Won-wang served his neighbors, the Huns, may be
seen from another passage in Mencius,' who says : —

" Formerly, when King T'ai dwelt in Pin, the barbarians of the
north were constantly making incursions upon it. He served them
with skins and silks, and still he suffered from them. He served
them with dogs and horses, and still he suffered from them. He served
them with pearls and gems, and still he suffered from them. See-
ing this, he assembled^the old men, and announced to them saying :
* What the barbarians want is my territory. I have heard this —
that a ruler does not injure his people with that wherewith he

* Legge, CA'un-f«'tM, p. 126. ' Mencius, ed. Legge, p. 31. • Men-
ciu8, ed. Legge, p. 52.

THE SHANO, OR YIN, DYNASTY (1766-1122 b.c.) 69

them. My children, why should you be troubled about
no prince? I will leave this.' Accordingly, he left Pin,
croflsed the mountain Liang, built a town at the foot of Mount K'i,
and dwelt there. The people of Pin said : ' He is a benevolent man.
We must not lose him.' Those who followed him looked like crowds
hastening to market."

We learn from this passage that T'ai-wang, known also
as Ku-kung, whose personal name was T'an-fu, the grand-
father of Won-wang, changed his residence from a place
called Pin to another called K'i, and that the move was due
to the grinding tribute exacted from him by his neighbors,
the Hun-yii (Hunnu), or, as they were afterward called
by the Chinese, Hiimg-nu tribes. The foundation of the
duchy of Ch6u is, therefore, closely connected with this
historical fact, placed by Chinese standard chronologists,
whether rightly or not, in the year 1327 B.C. I am inclined
to believe that the steady growth in the power of this
house of Ch6u was due to two main causes : (1) the rotten-
oeflB of the Chinese government under Chou-sin, who lacked
the backbone absolutely essential to protect the nation
against the common enemy that, after the lapse of fifteen
hundred years, was to become fatal to powerful Europe;
(2) the exposed position of the dukes of Ch6u, who had for
generations to defend their distant palatinate against the
conunon enemy, while the resp)onsible head of the nation
roasted his subjects to please his favorite Ta-ki. But for
the dukes of Ch6u, China would have then become a prey
to the Huns. In one of his speeches to the assembled army,
preserved in the Shu-kingj^ Wu-wang mentions eight
ethnic names: "0 ye men of Yung, Shu, Kiang Mau,
Wei, Lu, P'ong and Po, lift up your lances, join your

' Leggc, op. cii., p. 301.

70 THDE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

shields, raise your spears! I have a speech to make."
The Chinese commentators hold that these names belong
to barbarian tribes living outside of China proper, and
insinuate that they were subject to the dukes of Ch6u
without falling under the dominions of the emperor of
China. Some of them may be safely located in the south
and southwest of the Ch6u duchy; others are stated to
have occupied the western and northern borders. In the
Bamboo Books Wu-wang is represented as " assembling the
barbarians of the West (sirt) and the princes to attack Yin"
(i.6. Shang) ; ^ which seems to imply that his ascendency
was actually brought about by a foreign army. It is,
therefore, quite posirfble that a portion of Wu-wang's army
was formed by the Kim barbarians, or Huns, of the Ordos
territory, his nearest neighbors, defeated and, as we may
assume, incorporated into his dommions by his father
Won-wang in 1138 B.C.

We need not be astonished from all this to find that
Turkish words, like the one for Wu-wang's dagger, have
crept into the Chinese language, which is as much mixed
up with foreign elements as is Chinese civilization gen-
erally. I wish to lay stress on this idea, which, it appears
to me, has not been sufficiently appreciated by the his-
torians, although at this stage we can but faintly trace the
foreign influences affecting the nation, which during later
centuries, in spite of the well-known conservative character
of Chinese culture, have assumed such dimensions as almost
to amount to amalgamation.

^ Legge, ShU'kingj Prolegomena, p. 144.

THE SHANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY (176^1122 B.C.) 71

I 21. CULTUBE OF THE ShANG PeRIOD

Before leaving the Shang dynasty, which may be de-
scribed as the semi-historical period of Chinese history,
a few words as to its culture will be in place. The Shang
and C3i6u dynasties have left to the Far-eastern world
most valuable legacies in the shape of monuments of
national art, chiefly sacrificial vessels and bells made of
bronse and covered with characteristic ornaments, some-
times also with hieroglyphic inscriptions. Under the
Emperor Sh!-huang-ti works of literature and of art had
a narrow escape from being consigned to oblivion, owing
to the persecution of this enemy of all ancient civilization.
Lovers of these precious monimients of antiquity had to
bury, inunure, or conceal them, lest they might be dis-
covered and destroyed under a cruel law. Later centuries
rediscovered them, when a period of renaissance set in,
culminating in the imperial collections of the T'ang dy-
nasty in the ei^th, and again in the twelfth, century, imder
the great imperial collector Hui-tsung, and finally \mder
K'ito-lung of the present dynasty. Chinese archaeologists
have done excellent work in applymg a sound method of
criticism to the examination of such works ; and I am per-
scMiaUy inclined to place confidence m the results of their
researches. Whether an ancient bronze vessel is 1000,
2000, or 3000 years old, can in my opinion never be decided
on the mere appearance of its surface. Chemical analysis
mi^t throw light on the question; but I am not aware
that this has been attempted. In deciding whether such
vessels date from the Shang dynasty, Chinese archaeologists
were guided by the style of ornament — which only a trained
eye can distinguish from that of the succeeding Ch6u dy-

72 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

nasty — by the contents and style of the legends appearing
on them, the shape of the hieroglsrphics used therein, and
chiefly by the names of persons mentioned in them.

Let us start with these personal names. It is a character-
istic of the Shang period that personal names are repre-
sented by cyclical characters such as /, Tingy Sin, Kui,
Kong, and Wu, which were originally used as calendar
signs to denote certain days of the month. When a child
was bom, it received the name of the day on which the
event took place. This custom is said to have prevailed
throu^out the Shang period down to the beginning of the
Ch6u dynasty. In examining the list of the Shang em-
perors one finds that, with the exception of Ch'ong-t'ang,
the founder of the dynasty, every one of their names con-
tains a personal epithet, like T'ai ("great"), Siau ("small,
young"), Tsu ("ancestor"), and others, followed by one
of these cyclical characters denoting the birthday, e,g.
T'ai-kia, Siau-sin, and Tsu-i, being names of Shang em-
perors, or Fu-i and Tsu-m6u, which are foimd among the
inscriptions of sacrificial vessels. With other words the
formation of names becomes typical as compared with
both the previous legendary period and the succeeding
Ch6u epoch. It stands to reason that the appearance of
a name constructed on this principle caused the medieval
art critics to infer that works thus marked dated from the
Shang period. This has led them to the study of other
characteristics — the shape of the hieroglyphics used, the
style of ornament, class of vessel in connection with its
sacrificial use, etc.

The study of these ancient bronzes began to be taken up
from a critical point of view in the tenth century a.d.,
when, imder the title K^au-kurt^u, an illustrated work was

THE SHANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY (1766-1122 b.c.) 73

published with the cooperation of the celebrated painter
Li Lung-mi^n, known in Japan as Ririumin, himself a
great collector of antiquities, by whom some of the illus-
trations showing the shapes and ornaments of ancient
bronses were drawn. The compiler of the book had to
collect his material from manifold sources, since at that
time only a small number of the vessels described was
found in state collections, the remainder being in the hands
of thirtynsieven private collectors living in several parts of
the empire, but chiefly in the capital Ch'ang-an, the present
Si-an-fu. Within less than a century a considerable change
took place. The great catalogue of the collections of the
Emperor Hui-tsung, comprising the art treasures formerly
in private hands, besides a great many new additions, was
prepared and published under the name Po-kvrt^U'lu in
thirty books during the years 1107-1111. Its author,
Wang Fu, was an eminent archaeologist ; and the Emperor
HuHtsung (1101-1126), insignificant though he was from
a political point of view, was the greatest patron of art
that ever occupied a Chinese throne. In his capital,
K'ai-fong-fu, he imited the most extensive art treasures
consisting of bronzes, works in jade, paintings, and manu-
scripts. Among an enormous number of bronzes there
were 148 vessels which Wang Fu ascribes to the Shang
dynasty. In 1749 the Emperor K'i6n-lung of the present
dynasty caused a magnificent illustrated catalogue of
ancient bronzes to be published by a committee of scholars,
in which, besides those previously known, a number of
Shang examples, apparently not known to Wang Fu, were
described and illustrated; and further additions were
made in a publication of the year 1822, the Kin-shl-so in
twelve books.

74 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

These bronze works of the Shang dynasty, with thdr
mscriptions, and a few ballads in the SMrking, "Book of
Odes/' are the chief monuments that throw li^t on the
culture of that period. The mscriptions of these, as of
later bronze vessels, have been collected in nimierous works.
The Chinese method of taking rubbings of old mscriptions
and transferring them to wooden blocks for printing greatly
facilitates the publication of illustrations for works of
this kind. The best known thesaurus of hieroglyphic
legends, found in nearly every good collection of Chinese
books, is the Chung-ting^k'irkuanrshlf published in 1804
by Yiian Yiian (died in 1849), the great statesman and
scholar, well known for his obstructive policy as viceroy of
Canton in dealing with foreign relations. This work con-
tains facsimiles of all the hieroglsrphic inscriptions on the
oldest bronze vessels known up to his time. Of these
about 170 short inscriptions appear on sacrificial vessels
and bells ascribed to the Shang dynasty. Yiian Yiian
faithfully reproduces the opinions of former native archae-
ologists, who deserve all credit for unbiased conservatism
in judgment; and the critical apparatus contained in his
commentary presents ample proof of the care with which
native students have sifted the several arguments for or
against the genuineness of each of these inscriptions. Such
as it is, Yiian Yiian's "Thesaurus of Hieroglsrphics,*' while
probably containing far less than the entire treasury of
words which might then have been included, may serve to
throw some light on the civilization of that remote
period.* I shall attempt a rapid survey of the hiero-

* Of. Frank H. Chalfant, Early Chinese Writing, reprinted from
Memoirs of the Carnegie Museum (Pittsburg), vol. iv, no. 1, Septem-
ber, 1906.

THE SHANO, OR YIN, DYNASTY (176^1122 b.c.) 75

^yphic material contained in Yiian Yiian's work; as far as
deciphered by native critics. We find in it the following
words: —

(a) NOUNS AND PRONOUNS

Tlie technical names of a number of sacrificial vessels
such as ting, i, tsimf etc. ; the words for bell, spear, arrow,
bow, and hatchet, the last two names being merely the
pictures of those articles; carriage, broom, cowries (the
oldest means of exchange), and possibly amber; further,
the terms for wood or tree, vessel or vase, clothes, field,
palace, gate. Among the terms representing persons we
find father, mother, son, grandson, uncle, woman, wife,
ancestor, friend, prince or king, minister of state, military
leader, lord. Names of animals are represented solely by
hawk and pictures of the horse, tiger, and deer, the meaning
bdng uncertain. Apart from these are found the terms
for sun or day, moon or month, year, evening, family, ter-
ritory, history, beginning, middle, orders, sacrifice, and
; the pronoun denoting he, she, it.

i» »• iiir;.; :

« «

(6) QUALmES, NUMBERS, ETC.

West and east, precious, eternal, good, military, wild or
rude, and nearly all the cardinal numbers, including xvan
C myriad ").

To make, use, complete, uphold, guard, register, engrave,
bestow, rely upon, see, arise, spread out (as troops), move,
mourn, admonish, say, drink, and follow.

Of personal names, which are mostly compounds, of

76 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

one of the above words and a cyclical character, I have
already spoken.

The odes of the Shl-king^ a collection of popular songs
compiled by Confucius, probably contain a number of
specimens representing Shang-lore, if not the very text
handed down from the Shang period. But such a sup-
position rests on nothing better than conjecture, since
historical allusions, which would enable us to refer them
to some particular period, are wanting. The Chinese con-
mder one particular ode as the oldest to which a date can
be assigned,^ of which I shall speak later on ; and since this
does not take us farther than the eighth century B.C., we
have to content ourselves with the idea that some portions
of the SKi-king may possibly reach beyond the time of
Wu-wang.

What we know about the culture of the Shang epoch
and the legendary periods preceding it, apart from these
monuments of art, appears in the historical accounts of
the Shvrkingj the dry-as-dust annals of the Bamboo Books,
Ssi-ma Ts46n's Shl-ki, and the occasional remarks foimd
in Confucian and later literature. The Shvrking is a his-
torical source which becomes the more suspicious the more
it enters into the detail of cultural life ; and I, for one, am
inclined to think that much of what we read about those
beautiful maxims of social and official life preserved in the
speeches of emperors and ministers, supposed to have been
made during the earliest periods from Yau and Shun and
the great Yii down to Ch6u-sin, are merely the philosophical
views of Confucian sages, who fitted them into a chronologi-
cal framework of their own invention, in order to make a
deeper impression on the people. In this, if ever it was

* Shi'VrU'k^ i-yiian, ch. iv, p. 3.

THE SHANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY (176^1122 b.c.) 77

their intention, they have succeeded perfectly. The old
emptor lore, divested of this chronological framework,
may be r^arded as dramatized social philosophy of the
sixth and fifth centmies b.c. Considered in this li^t, it
certainly is of great value from a cultural point of view.
Tlie few traces of real cultural development found in these
alleged old records may be due to traditions still alive at
the time when they were amalgamated with contempo-
raneous lore.

It will ever be a matter of regret that we are not in a
position to support the most ancient history of China by
unchallengeable moniunents such as those of ancient
E^3rpt. Had Napoleon I appeared with his army on the
banks of the Yellow River instead of on the NilC; his his-
torical conscience would not have entitled him to inform
his soldiers that ''four thousand years looked down upon
them'' without adding emphatically the word ''perhaps."
He could more confidently have said "three thousand/'
thou^ he would have looked in vain for witnesses to im-
preas the imagination of his hearers, such as the venerable
pyramids of Gizeh or the temple ruins of Luxor and Kamac.
^th the exception of the Great Wall, an almost modem
structure when compared with its Egyptian rivals, and a
few tombs of doubtful identity, China has only literary
evidence to advance m support of the antiquity of her cul-
ture. Its oldest extant witnesses are the sacrificial vessels
and bells of the Shang and Ch6u dynasties. Of them we
possess faithful descriptions with rubbings of the hiero-
C^yphics found on them. But who is able to tell the differ-
enoe between an original actually dating, say, from the fif-
teenth century B.C., and a clever recast or an imitation made
two thousand years later, such as have been prepared m

78 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

thousands of copies ever since the Han djmasty? These,
the only monuments of the second millennium B.C. and the
succeeding Ch6u dynssty, are now scattered throughout
the world. They are foimd in the curiosity shops of Japan,
the museums of Europe, and the drawing-rooms of American
millionaires. We are bound to acknowledge the bona fides
of these witnesses of ancient culture, whether genuide or
not, since a recast, or a close imitation, or even a good book
illustration, is to us as good as an original, so long as the
ancient style has been preserved in its purity; and we
hardly ever meet with specimens where this is not the
case. The material fiunished by these renmants of Shang
and Ch6u art may be scanty as compared to the records
of Uterature; but this much may be said in their favor,
that they have not been tampered with by literary editors.
The culture of the Shang period, as far as the religious
life of rulers, grandees, and people, and the social relations
between them are concerned, we may assume to be reflected
in that mirror held up by the historians of the Ch6u dy-
nasty; and what we learn about the legendary emperors
Yau, Shun, and Yii may be held to apply more aptly to
the period immediately preceding the Ch6u epoch than to
the more remote ones. From the records of the Shurking
we are bound to admit that the ancient Chinese were
decided monotheists. Shang-ti, "the Supreme ruler," re-
ceived as much veneration at the hands of his people as
did God, under any name, from any contemporaneous
nation. The religious instinct of the Shang and Ch6u
rulers may have been less romantic than that of Homeric
Greece, but it came nearer the Christian standard than
that of many another nation of antiquity. The worship
of other spiritual beings was less developed than it has

THE SHANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY (176^1122 b.c.) 79

become in the China of later centuries. Religion was not
in the hands of priests; but the father was the priest for
his family, the prince of each state for his people, and the
"Son of Heaven" for the empire. The emperor's duties
in his capacity as high priest of the nation were not a mat-
ter of personal belief, but formed the most important part
of his position.

The ideas entertained by the ancient Chinese of the one
God, ranking above all the other spirits, such as Sun, Moon,
and Stars, the "Five Sacred Mountains," Heaven and
Earth, his creatures, as represented in the accounts of the
Skthking, are well described by Legge * as follows : —

"The name by which God was designated was 'the Ruler' and
'the Supreme Ruler,' denoting emphatically his personality,
supremacy, and unity. We find it constantly interchanged with
the term 'Heaven,' by which the ideas of supremacy and unity are
equally conveyed, while that of personality is only indicated vaguely,
and by an association of the mind. By God kings were supposed
to reign, and princes were required to decree justice. All were
under law to Him and bound to obey His will. Even on the in-
fericyr people He has conferred a moral sense, compliance with which
would show their nature invariably right. All powers that be are
from Him. He raises one to the throne and puts down another.
Obedience is sure to receive His blessing ; disobedience, to be visited
with His curse. The business of kings is to rule in righteousness
and benevolence, so that the people may be happy and good. They
are to be an example to all in authority, and to the multitudes imder
them. Their highest achievement is to cause the people tranquilly
to pursue the course which their moral nature would indicate and
approve. When they are doing wrong, God admonishes them by
judgments, storms, famine, and other calamities ; if they persist in
evil, sentence goes forth against them. The dominion is taken from
them, and given to others more worthy of it. The Duke of Ch6u in
hii address on 'The Establishment of Government' gives a striking

* Shthking, Prolegomena, p. 193 9eqq,

80 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

summary of the history of the empire down to his own time. Yti the
Great, the founder of the Hia dynasty, sought for able men to honor
God. But the way of Ki^, the last of his line, was different. He
employed cruel men; and he had no successors. The empire was
given to T'ang the Successful [Ch'ong-t'ang], who 'greatly ad-
ministered the bright ordinances of God.' By and by T'aqg's
throne came to Ch6uH3in, who was all violence, so that God sov-
ereignly punished him. The empire was transferred to the house of
Ch6u, whose chiefs showed their fitness for the charge by finding
out men who would reverently serve God, and appointing them as
presidents and chiefs of the people.

"It was the duty of all men to reverence and honor God, by
obeying His law written in their hearts, and seeking His blessing
in all their ways ; but there was a solemn and national worship of
Him, as ruling in nature and providence, which could only be per-
formed by the emperor. It consisted of sacrifices, or offerings
rather, and prayers. No image was formed of Him, as indeed the
Chinese have never thought of fashioning a likeness of the Supreme."

Besides God as the Supreme Ruler, the Shang rulers
and their alleged predecessors are shown in the Shvrking
to have worshiped several minor deities, if we may so
call them. Legge speaks of this phase of religious life in
the following terms : —

"Who the 'six honored ones,' whom Shun sacrificed to next to
God, were, is not known. In going on to worship the hills and
rivers, and the host of spirits, he must have supposed that there were
certain tutelary beings, who presided over the more conspicuous
objects of nature, and its various processes. They were under
God and could do nothing, excepting as they were peniiitted and
empowered by Him; but the worship of them was inconsistent
with the truth that God demands to be recognized as 'He who
worketh all in all,' and will allow no religious homage to be given
to any but Himself. It must have always been the parent of many
superstitions ; and it paved the way for the pantheism which enters
largely into the belief of the Chinese at the present day, and of which
we find one of the earliest stei>s in the practice, which commenced

THE SHANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY (1766-1122 b.c.) 81

with the Ch6u dynasty, of not only using the term 'Heaven' as a
gynoiaym for God, but the combination Heaven and Earth."

Ancestor worship, the leading feature of all religious
belief among the Chinese down to the present day, must
have taken its rise long before historical times, since allu-
sions to it in the Shurking are referred to the times of the
legendary emperors. Legge says with regard to it : —

"There was also among the early Chinese the religious worship
d their departed friends, which still continues to be observed by
all clfianefl from the emperor downward, and seems of all religious
« rv ice s to have the greatest hold upon the people. The title given
in the Shu to Shun's minister of religion is that of ' Arranger of the
Ancestral Temple.' The rule of Confucius, that 'parents when
dead should be sacrificed to according to propriety,' was doubtless
in accordance with a practice which had come down from the earliest
times of the nation.

"The Bpiriis of the departed were supposed to have a knowledge
of the circumstances of their descendants, and to be able to affect
them. Events of importance in a family were communicated to
them before their shrines ; many affairs of government were trans-
acted in the ancestral temple. When Yau demitted to Shun the
buflinefls of the government, the ceremony took place in the temple
id 'the accomplished ancestor,' the individual to whom Yau tra^d
his poewflsion of the supreme dignity ; and while Yau lived. Shun, on
every return to the capital from his administrative progresses, offered
a buQock before the shrine of the same personage. In the same
way, when Shun found the toils of government too heavy for him, and
called YQ to share them, the ceremony took place in the temple
ci ' the q>iritual ancestor,' the chief in the line of Shun's progenitors.
In the remarkable narrative, which we have in the sixth of the books
ci Cb6a, of the Duke of Ch6u's praying for the recovery of his
brother. King Wu, from a dangerous illness, and offering to die in
his stead, he raises three altars, to their father, grandfather, and
great-grandfather, and prays to them as having in heaven the charge
ci watdiing over their great descendant. When he has ascertained

82 TPIE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

by divination that the king would recover, he declares that he had
got Wu's tenure of the throne renewed by the three kings, who had
thus consulted for a long futurity of their House.

''This case shows us that the spirits of good kings were believed
to be in heaven. A more general conclusion is derived from what
we read in the seventh of the Books of Shang. The Emperor P'an-
kong, irritated by the opposition of the wealthy and powerful Houses
to his measures, and their stirring up the people also to murmur
against them, threatens them all with calamities to be sent down
by his high ancestor, T'ang the Successful. He tells his ministers
that their ancestors and fathers, who had loyally served his predeces-
sors were now urgently entreating T'ang, in his spirit-state in heaven,
to execute great punishments on their descendants. Not only,
therefore, did good sovereigns continue to have a happy existence
in heaven, but their good ministers shared the happiness with them,
and were somehow roimd about them, as they had been on earth,
and took an interest in the concerns which had occupied them dur-
ing their lifetime. Modem scholars, following in the wake of Con-
fucius, to whom the future state of the departed was all wrapt in
shadows, clouds, and darkness, say that the people of the Shang
dynasty were very superstitious. My object is to bring out the fact
and the nature of their superstition.

/' There is no hint in the Shu, nor elsewhere, so far as I am aware,
of what became of bad emperors and bad ministers after death, nor
indeed of the future fate of men generally. There is a heaven in
the classical books of the Chinese; but there is no hell, and no
purgatory. Their oracles are silent as to any doctrine of futiu^
rewards and pimishments. Their exhortations to well-doing and
their warnings against evil are all based on a reference to the will
of God,' and the certainty that in this life virtue will be rewarded
and vice punished. Of the five happinesses the first is long life;
the second is riches ; the third is soundness of body and serenity of
mind ; the fourth is the love of virtue, and the fifth is doing or re-
ceiving to the end the will of Heaven. There is no promise of rest
or comfort beyond the grave. The virtuous man may live and die
in suffering and disgrace ; let him be cheered. His posterity wHl
reap the reward of his merits. Some one sprung from his loins
will become wealthy, or attain to distinction. But if he should

THE SHANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY (1766-1122 b.c.) 83

hftve no posterity — it never occurred to any of the ancient sages
to ooDsider such a case.

" I wiU pass on from this paragraph with a reference to the sub-
ject of divination. Although the ancient Chinese can hardly be
nid to have had the knowledge of a future state, and were not
curious to inquire about it, they were anxious to know about the
wisdom and issues of their plans for the present life. For this pur-
pose they had recourse to divination. The Duke of Ch6u certainly
practised it; and we have a regular staff of diviners among the
officers of the Ch6u dynasty. P'an-kong practised it in the dynasty
of Shang. And Shun did so also, if we can put faith m the ' Counsels
of YQ/ The instruments of divination were the shell of the tortoise
and the stalks of a certain grass or reed. By various caustic opera-
tions on the former, and by manipulations with the latter, it was
supposed possible to ascertain the will of Heaven. It is difficult
to understand how the really great men of ancient China could have
bdieved it. One observation ascribed to Shun is worthy of remark.
He tells YU that divination, when fortunate, must not be repeated.
I once saw a father and son divining after one of the fashions of
the present day. They tossed the bamboo roots which came down
in the unlucky positions for a dozen times in succession. At last
a lucky cast was made. They looked into each other's faces, laughed
\ and rose up delighted from their knees. The divination
now successful; and they dared not repeat it."

Sacrificial service, we may conclude from all we read in
the Shurking and other accounts relating to the Shang
dynasty, was the leading feature in the spiritual life of
the Qiinese, whether devoted to Shang-ti or God, or to
what we niay call the minor deities as being subordinate
to "the Supreme Ruler" or to the spirits of their ancestors.
That minuteness of detail which up to the present day
governs the entire religious and social life of the Chinese
gmtleman, the more so the higher he is in the social scale,
and most of all in the case of the emperor himself, had
cleariy commenced to affect public and private life long

THE AXCIEXT IlLSTOKY OF CHINA

)efore the ascendency of the Ch6u dynasty, under which
rule it reached its highest development to serve as a
pattern to future generations. The vessels preserved as
living witnesses of that quasi-religious relation between
man and the unseen powers supposed to influence his
life are full of symbolic ornament. Each of their mani-
fold shapes is devoted to a special purpose, which in those
days had nothing to do with the burning of incense, a
form of worship peculiar to Buddhism and other modem
cults rather than to the rites of the Shang period. The
bronze vessels of the Shang and Ch6u epochs were used
for holding viands placed before the spirits worshiped,
or wines for libations to be made to them. The term
'' censer" often applied to them is a misnomer; for, al-
though the Chinese of later ages have used such vessels for
holding ashes of incense burned in them, their prototypes
were not made for that purpose. The shapes of sacrificial
vases, pots, and bottles invented during, if not before, the
Shang dsoiasty were perfected under the Ch6u, and have,
in the course of imitation, become the models in the later
jade and ceramic industries. They have thus exercised no
little influence on Ein-opean pottery, the forms of which are
in their origin not confined to the models handed down by
Greece and Rome.

Among the ornaments engraved on the outer surface of
Shang vessels is one occurring in great frequency. It
represents the conventionalized face of a monster with a
feline expression, called TaurVii by the Chinese, the old
pronunciation of which name was probably fo-Vit, to-tin,
or to-tim. I cannot endorse the attempt made * to con-
nect this sound with Greek ravOe, which is derived from

' China und Babylon^ in BeUage tur AUgemeinen Zeitung, July 25, 1903.

THE SHANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY (1760-1122 b.c.) 85

the cuneiform Tiarnat,^ nor do I think that the attempts
to comiect the name with similar words in west-Asiatic
languages will be crowned with success. From the defini-
tions of the oldest Chinese dictionaries it appears that the
two syllables representing that name are separate Chinese
words of which the first, t^au^ means ''greedy of eating and
drinldng/' the second, (U, "cravmg for money and prop-
erty/' So it is explained in the Tso-chuan, the ancient
commentary on the Ch^un-tsHuy or "Spring and Autumn
Annals." * There the term occurs in connection with four
parallel names, each of which represents the personifica-
tion of some abominable quality. Whether their bearers
were persons or tribes, the Emperor Shun " banished these
four wicked ones, 'Chaos,' 'Monster,' 'Block,' and 'Glutton'
[the last being Legge's translation for t^avrfiS], to meet the
spite of the sprites and evil things. The consequence of
this was, that when Yau died, all under Heaven, as if they
had been one man with common consent bore Shun to be
emperor, because ... he had put away the four wicked
ones." The terms used for what Legge translates by
"Chaos," "Monster," "Block," and "Glutton" are built
up on a uniform plan by combining two words of evil sig-
nificance. According to one of the commentaries the
Glutton, or T'au-t'i6, was identical with a personage or tribe
(for it appears to be an ethnic name) called San-miau, whom
the emperor banished from his dominions and who originally
occupied the regions about Mt. Hong-shan and the shores
of Tung-ting Lake in the present Hu-nan province. From
these ancient seats the emperor is said to have banished
them to a place called San-wei, which Chinese commenta-

* Cr. Q. Oppert, in ZeiUehri/t fUr Ethnologie, 1903, p. 213. * Legge,
pp. 280, 283.

86 THE ANCIEM IILSTORY OF CHINA

tors have identified with a locality now known as San-wei-
shan in the neighborhood of Tun-huang-hi6n in northwest-
em Kan-su. The San-miau are considered the forefathers
of the Tangutans, or K'iang, the southern neighbors of the
Yii6-chi, or Indo-Scythians, before their great migration
westward in the second century B.C. and of the Miau-tzi
tribes. If Klaproth's derivation^ based on Chinese notices,
of the origin of the Tibetan race from these K'iang tribes
holds good/ the legend of the banishment by the Emperor
Shun of the San-miau, their ancestors, may be looked upon
as a symbolic allusion to the shifting of their aboriginal
seats. It would appear from this tradition that Tangutans,
Tibetans, and Miau-tzi originally occupied the north of
Hu-nan province and were thence driven westward, owing
to the rapid growth of the Chinese race. Legge' appro-
priately remarks in connection with this piece of folk-lore :
"The references to men and things in what we may cidl
the prehistoric period were, no doubt, in accordance with
traditions current at the time, though we cannot accept
them as possessed of historical authority, more especially
as there is an anti-Confucian spirit in what is said of
Yau."

The story of the banishment of the San-miau has been
recapitulated by Ssi-ma Ts'i6n in his Shi-ki; • and one of
the commentaries on this occasion refers to an early work
on spirit lore, the Shdiv4-king, probably dating from the
fourth or fifth century a.d., in which the word faurfii
occurs in connection with the San-miau. The paragraph
from which this quotation is taken says : —

* Cf . S. W. Bushell, The Early History of Tibet, in Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society, 1880, p. 439. » Ch'un^s'iu, p. 283. • Cha-
vannes, op. cit,, vol. i, p. 67 et passim.

THE SHANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY (1760-1122 B.C.) 87

"In the wilds of the West there is a beast shaped like a tiger,
but having dogs' hair two feet long ; it has the face of a man, the
feet of a tiger, mouth and teeth of a pig, and a tail eighteen feet in
length. It infests the wilderness and is called T'ati-um, t.e. ' Block '
or 'Blockhead/ or Aurlang, 'Werwolf,' lit. 'The scornful wolf,' or
Ncn^-^i^, * the Untamable. ' The ' Spring and Autumn Annals ' say :
'The Emperor Chuan-hU had a degenerate son named T'au-¥ai with
whom it is identical. He had a man's face and his eyes, hands and
feet were of human shape, but on his arms he had wings, without
being able to fly. He was a man greedy and voracious [for which
the words t'au and t*ii are used], lewd, idle and void of reason;
he, or his people, were called Miaii,**

These are the San-miau mentioned in the '' Spring and
Autumn Annals," of whom the Shvrking says that " the
emperor banished them to San-wei.''

If we allow for gross exaggerations in this piece of folk-
lore, the Tibetan mastiff, a ferocious, long-tailed, and
long-haired hound, probably well known in the regions
referred to in this passage, may be the foundation of it.
Anyhow, the word TavrtH appears in all these old accounts
as a compound adjective with a distinct meaning, " greedy
and voracious." This does not exclude the term having
originated from popular etymology, like the German
Vidfrass, a term of similar meaning as understood by the
broad masses, but actually derived from tJorse fjaUfress,
t.e. ''inhabitant of rocks," a bearlike quadruped in the
Scandinavian hills. Under no circumstances, however,
should we rush to conclusions on the mere evidence of a
similarity in sound.

From all I can discover, as far as Chinese tradition goes,
the monster called T'au-t'i6 appears to be a native inven-
tion. So are the other mythological figures represented on
the sacrificial vessels of the Shang dynasty, chiefly quad-

88 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

rupedSy birds, and reptiles, conventionalized to such a
degree as to render it almost impossible to identify their
shape. Among them we find the dragon and the phenix
{lung and fong) . These names occur in the oldest literature,
it is true, but the shapes in which they are represented in
those older works of art are quite different from the elabo-
rate pictures made of them by later artists. The pictorial
attributes added by them do not appear before the Han
dynasty, when foreign influences began to modify the con-
servative art of the Shang and the Ch6u. I, therefore,
readily adopt the suggestion made by Professor Chavannes,
who m a review of my researches on foreign influences on
Chinese art says : * —

''The bird one sees on these archaic bronzes is generally the
pheasant. I find before the Han period nothing that resembles the
phenix ; it appears to me that this fantastic bird is entirely derived
from some Western legend or drawing ; the dragon itself could well
be related to the nagas of India. Dragon and phenix, it is true,
are mentioned in those writings which, in the face of the rudimentary
state of their texts as accepted by Sinologues, we must look upon
as very old; but the traditional shape which they have adopted
is of recent date and seems to have been derived from some foreign
model. It is interesting to note that this group of fantastic con-
ventionalizations is perhaps not Chinese at all from the outset,
and in any case not so old as one would feel tempted to believe."

Among the chief ornaments on the sacrificial vessels of
the Shang dynasty we find a combination of lines which
at first sight in some instances recalls the Egyptian scroll
or Greek pattern. It has, however, nothing to do with
the latter, but is to be considered an independent creation
of Chinese symbolism. Chinese archseologists derive its
origin from the oldest hieroglyphic for "thimder,'' which

* Journal Asiatiqiie, 1896, p. 533.

THE SHANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY (1760-1122 b.c.) 89

represents a spiral, pure and simple. In this shape we find
it here and there on vessels of the Shang djmasty. Since
round objects are more difficult to engrave than square
ones, we soon find it changed into a ''quadrangular spiral/'
if we may so call it, and two of these combined yield the
design called Lei-iPdn, or "thunder pattern," by the
Chinese. Placed side by side in border style, we often see
them forming an ornament somewhat resembling the
Egyptian scroll. The difference is that the latter is con-
tinuous, whereas in the genuine Chinese scroll the elements
are not connected. In the majority of cases these ele-
ments are crowded mto empty spaces surrounding some
principal pattern and thus used for filling-m purposes. The
symbolic meaning attributed by native archseolo^sts to
this pattern is that of "thunder-storm and rain" as the
chief benefactors of agriculturists.

Besides the sacrificial vessels and bells, and a few bronze
weapons, such as spearheads and lances, ascribed to the
Shang djmasty, the ant iciui ties of this period are represented
by a number of jade specimens. A huge number of works
m this material has been described in a comprehensive il-
lustrative catalogue, published m 1176 a.d., under the title
Kuryiirt ^Urp^u, of which a new edition appeared in 1779.
Among the collaborators mentioned in the preface are
found some of the most noteworthy painters of the period,
especially the great landscapists Ma Yiian, Hia Kui, and
Li Tang, known in Japan as Bayen, Kakei, and Rito, who
^>pear to have supervised the preparation of the numer-
ous illustrations. Whereas the critics who have published
and interpreted the Chinese bronze treasures do not go
beyond the Shang dynasty, this book shows us jade tablets
covered with undecipherable hieroglyphics and ascribed

90 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

to the fabulous Emperor Yii. So say the inscriptions added
on the back surface during the seventh and tenth centuries.
The characters of the original inscriptions are stated in the
text to resemble the style of the celebrated tablet of Yii,
which, if it were genuine, would beyond doubt be the oldest
specimen of Chinese writing now in existence and which,
even if it is a forgery, must be one of very ancient date, as
Mr. C. T. Gardner has shown in his paper, " The Tablet of
Yii." * These jade tablets, as well as the stone inscrip-
tion ascribed to the Emperor Yii and the nine geographical
tripods he is supposed to have left to posterity as a pictorial
record of the nine provinces into which he divided his
empire, are probably as doubtful in their origin as the
accounts of his reign, his engineering work, and his provinces
placed on record in the Shu-king and other works. The
Confucian age is responsible, it appears to me, for forgeries
not only of literature, but of art also. If the Emperor
Huang-ti is reported to have discovered a copper mine
and established a foundry in Ho-nan a short time before
his death, it appears that the forger of literature merely
works into the hands of the inventor of Yii's tripods. The
Kvryvrt^Vrp^u coutains a number of illustrations showing
that numerous copies were made in jade of the ancient
sacrificial vessels of the Shang period as well as of the Ch6u
dynasty. Yet, although it appears that the style has been
well preserved in these imitations, they are for the greater
part declared even by the Chinese archaeologists to be

* China RevieWf vol. ii, p. 293 seqq. Cf. also E. Haenisch, Die
Ta/el des Yu^ in MiUheilungen des Seminars fur Orientalische Spror
chen, vol. viii, 1905, p. 293 seqq. Mr. Haenisch thinks the tablet is
not a forgery, but an ancient monument, which has nothing to do
yrith Ytt.

THE SHANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY (1760-1122 b.c.) 91

works of the Han period. I do not wish to say that jade
sculptures were an impossibility during the Shang period.
Indeed, we read of gems and badges of rank, which may, or
may not, have been made of jade, and the word yu, "jade,"
occurs over and over again in the oldest texts. It must
also be admitted that jade, or jadeite, may in the course of
trade have come to China from quarries in other countries,
if not from Khotan, without the Chinese having been aware
ci its origin. But it is not likely that this industry existed
on a very large scale previous to the Han dynasty. The
jade quarries of Khotan, which have ever since the Han
dynasty had the lion's share of the trade in that precious
material as far as China is concerned, were not known to
the Chinese before the end of the second century B.C.

It is a remarkable feature of that old catalogue of jade
works that during all this time, from the first century B.C.
down to the twelfth century a.d., almost every one of the
jade vessels and implements represented in it has its proto-
type in the shape of an old bronze object. The Chinese of
the Shang d}aiasty must be considered as the creators of
Chinese autochthonous art. At this time the foundation
for much of the later development was laid. We are en-
titled to adopt this view on the strength of existing monu-
menta of Shang culture in the shape of sacrificial bronses
bearing testimony more substantial than mere literary
fabrications.

iv-vm

THE CH6u dynasty (1122-249 b.c.)

rV. FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG: THE
PERIOD OF IMPERIAL AUTHORITY

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG: THE PERIOD OF

IMPERIAL AUTHORITY

§ 22. Wu-WANO AS Kino op Ch6u (1122-1116 B.C.)

AFTER the death of Ch6uHan, Wu-wang became mas-
ter of the empire. The renitent among the former
adherents of Ch6uH3in had dispersed in the hills.
Wu-wang rejected the advice given him to persecute them,
and invited those who promised to become loyal subjects
to return. On the other hand, he treated the refractory
with great severity. One of Chdu-sin's former ministers,
Shang Jung, greatly assisted him in appeasing the startled
population, and he soon found himself universally recog-
nized as "Son of Heaven" (i'i^-tei). This is the style by
which the holder of the supreme authority is designated
m China, whatever his other titles may be. The term has
been applied to the legendary emperors ; the great Yii calls
himself "Son of Heaven'' in one of his speeches preserved
in the Shvrking. The Shang emperors used the same title,
and if Wu-wang is so described, he is virtually emperor of
CSiina, who rules over his people — the people par excdr
lenee — whose lord has received the approval of Heaven,
who rules the world in the name of Heaven, and who is
the representative of the (itnrhia, "what is under heaven,"
"the world," "the Chinese people." Tiinrizi may in this
sense be appropriately traoislated by "Son of God/' a

96 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

designation for which it is easy to find parallels in the his-
tory of both Oriental and Occidental nations. For, al-
though shang-ii, "the Supreme Ruler/' may be looked
upon as the very term for God in pre-C!onfucian monotheism,
Ti&n, "Heaven," has very much the same force as a term
in the natural philosophy of the Chinese. In one sense
it means the other world, and the term is actually applied
to the Mahomedan heaven in the account of a califal
embassy of the early part of the seventh century * accord-
ing to which the Mahomedan who dies before the enemy
is bom again in fi6n ("heaven")* According to the
same accoimt, Mahomedans kneel five times a day before
i'Unshon, "the spirit of Heaven"; and the members of
the califal embassy declined to perform the ceremony of
the k^(ht^6Uj saying : " The inhabitants of our coimtry
kneel only before i^Un; when seeing the king, they do
not kneel." In this case i^i&n clearly refers to Allah, or
God. The "Son of Heaven" is thus apparently a term
which may be compared to the Homeric SioyAnj^ ffcuriXeu^j
the epithet Divtis of the Roman emperors, and quite a
host of parallels in Oriental titles.

When Wu-wang had become "Son of Heaven," he
bestowed on Ch6u-sin*s son, Wu-kong, known also as Lu-fu,
who had tendered him allegiance, the title of chvrh&u,
"Prince of the Empire," and appointed him king of Corea.
The title tij "emperor," had grown unpopular after the
many examples of weakness and lack of virtue displayed
by so many of the previous emperors, who would not
conform to the model set for them by the " Five Emperors,'
by which name Fu-hi and his immediate successors are
designated. In his modesty he continued to style himself

* Vang-shUf ch. ccxxi B, p. 18.

PROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 97

siinply wang^ or ''king/' and his successors followed his
example. It is for this reason that down to the time of
Shi-huang-ti, who purposely ignored all previous history
and called himself "The First Emperor/' this being the
literal meaning of his title, all the rulers of the Ch6u dy-
nasty styled themselves iwingf, that is, "king'' or "prince/'
besides holding the dignity of " Son of Heaven." Wu-wang
had been duke of Ch6u after the death of his father for
twelve years when he became emperor. As such, he was
virtual ruler of the Chinese empire from 1122 to 1116 B.C.
Personal qualities and a fine physique, coupled with great
affability, assisted him greatly in gaining the sympathy of
his people ; and this was increased by his good government.
In the latter he was assisted by his brother Tan, known in
literature as Ch6u-kung, the " Duke of Ch6u." From the
time of Wen-Wang's death Ch6u-kung was the soul of
Wu-wang's government, and to him must be ascribed an
important share in the consolidation of the power of the
Ch6u dynasty. Many fundamental institutions were the
result of his suggestions. So great was his zeal in govern-
ment matters that, if summoned on business matters, he
would interrupt his bath and consult with his interviewer
while holding his wet hair in his hand.

After Wu-wang had made his solemn entrance into the
capital, he issued a manifesto, destined to calm the people,
in which he promised to conduct the government in the
q>irit devised by the ancient sages. He opened the prisons
and set free the victims of Ch6u-sin's severity. Ch6u-sin's
granaries also were opened, and their contents distributed
among the people. The treasures and luxuries found in
Ch6u-8in's palace were used in rewarding the officers and
soldiers of Wu-wang's army and were also dbtributed

98 THE ANCIENT fflSTORY OP CfflNA

among the people, for the king would not appropriate to
his own use any of those ill-gotten riches. Further, the
many women assembled in Ch6uH3in's harem were allowed
to return to their families.

Soon after his ascension to the throne he decided to pay
a visit to his native duchy of Ch6u. He had found in the
imperial treasury the celebrated bronze tripods, supposed
to have been cast by order of the Great Yii and containing
the descriptions of that emperor's nine provinces. These
national relics he caused to be transported to his capital
in the west, possession of them being regarded as a guarantee
of the security of the empire. One of the first govern-
mental measures taken by Wu-wang was the regulation
of the nobility of his empire. Hereditary rank appears to
have occupied a more prominent position in the most
ancient periods of Chinese history than during its modem
development. The division of the nobility into the five
grades existing at the present day, namely, kung (" duke ")>
h6u C' marquis ")> P^ (" earl "); ^^ C' viscount '')> *^d nan
C' baron ")> is supposed to have been first made by the em-
perors Yau and Shun. Wu-wang arranged that each of
these dignitaries should be allowed to hold a fixed area of
land. In selecting the officials of his government he made a
careful choice among those of his predecessor, dismissing all
the incapable ones. He tried to improve the moral standard
of his people, and paid special attention to the welfare of
the laboring classes as well as to industry and trade. At
the beginning of his reign he had to contend with some
refractory elements among his own people; but he soon
overcame these, and established peace all over his empire.

He then devoted himself to the improvement of the
calendar. He declared red to be the color of his reign,

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 99

just as yellow is the color of the present djmasty; and it
was directed that all the imperial flags show this color.
The old capital Fong-ch'ong, "City of Affluence," which
had been built generations ago by his father Won-wang,
proving too small to hold his court, he transferred the seat
of government to a place caUed Hau, situated in the neigh-
borhood of the modem Si-an-f u ; and this remained for a
long period during antiquity and the Middle Ages the
center of the Chinese empire. There he established schools,
divided into six classes, the three lower ones of which were
to serve for the education of boys of the age of eight to
fifteen years. In admitting yoimg candidates to the
highest possible degrees of learning, no distinction was
made between high and low, between rich and poor. In
this he laid the foundation of that democratic principle
which has, up to the present day, been characteristic of
the system of education and the subsequent promotion to
hi^ oflSces among the Chinese. His own son, the heir
presumptive to the throne, was educated at one of these
schools like the son of a common laborer. As a further step
toward the consolidation of his power he surrounded him-
self with a phalanx of faithful supporters to the throne
by reorganizing that class of nobility called chu-h6u,
"Princes of the Empire," selected from the representatives
of families deriving their pedigree from the old sacred em-
perors and other personages of similar merit. It appears
that, whether wrongly or not, descendants of Shon-nung,
Huang-ti, Yau, and Shun were supposed to exist, and that
Wu-wang rewarded the merits of their respective ancestors
by ^>pointing such descendants fief-holders in different
parts of the empire. To his own brother, Ch6u-kung, hb
confidential adviser, he gave the earldom of Ku-f6u, called

100 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

also Luy in whose capital Confucius was bom in the sixth
century. Other brothers of his were made fief-holders.
The sentiment of gratitude thus implanted in the hearts
of his grandees remained constant during their lifetimes.
But later generations are apt to be forgetful of benefits
accorded to predecessors — a fact exemplified in the his-
tory of all nations ; and in this respect China was destined
not to prove an exception.

The good ones among the most ancient rulers of China
are represented as having been full of religious sentiment.
We meet with numerous instances of the most ancient
emperors addressing themselves in prayer to God the
Almighty, and, if we find social life to have been made
dependent in all its phases upon thousands of little cere-
monies, all these served one end — the humble recognition
of a powerful fate that rules us all. The worship of an-
cestors began to be gradually cultivated as a side develop)-
ment of this original monotheism. It culminated in the
belief that the spirit of a departed forefather actually re-
places fate by influencing the life of his descendants. I
have already referred to the beginning of ancestor worship
in connection with the legendary emperors as early as the
thirteenth century. The virtuous Emperor P^an-kong says,
according to the Shvrking : * —

"Were I to err in my government, and remain long here, my
High Sovereign, the founder of our house, would send down great
punishment for my crime, and say, *Why do you oppress my
people ? ' If you, the myriads of the people, do not attend to the
perpetuation of your lives, and cherish one mind with me, the one
man in my plans, my predecessors will send down on you great
punishment for your crime, and say : * Why do you not agree with
our young grandson, but so go on to forfeit your virtue ? ' When

» Legge, p. 238.

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 101

they punish you from above you will have no way of escape. Of
M, my royal predecessors toiled for your ancestors and fathers.
You are equally the people whom I nourish ; but your conduct is
injurious — it is cherished in your hearts. Whereas my royal
predecessors made happy your ancestors and fathers, your ancestors
and fathers will cut you off and abandon you, and not save you
from death. Here are those ministers of my government, who
diare with me the offices of the state — and yet only think of
hoarding up cowries [the old medium of exchange] and gems I
Your ancestors and fathers urgently represent to my High Sovereign
8a3ring, 'Execute great punishments on our descendants.' So
they intimate to my High Sovereign that he should send down great
calamities."

TTie God of the ancient Chinese was the creation of their
own mind and the result of their natural instinct; there
was no revelation made to them resembling our Ten Com-
mandments or the New Testament. \Miether Shang-ti,
"the Supreme Ruler/' or Ti6n, " Heaven/' the real God
has never been, as He is not now, entirely disavowed by the
Chinese ; but we find Him occasionally viewed in the spirit
of that much-quoted precept attributed to Oliver Cromwell :
"Put your trust in God; but mind to keep your powder
dry." The Shiirking clearly shows this in a conversation
between one of the representative gentlemen of the period,
the Duke of Ch6u, and a Prince of Shi, in which the duke
prognosticates the stability of the newly founded dynasty
by saying : * —

" I do not dare to say as if I knew it : the final end will issue in our
misfortunes. Oh I you have said, O prince, ^t depends on our-
selves. I also do not dare to rest in the favor of God, never fore-
easting at a distance the terrors of Heaven in the present time when
there is no murmuring or disobedience among the people ; the issue
is with men. Should our present successor to his fathers prove

* Legge, p. 475.

102 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

greatly unable to reverence Heaven and the people, and so bring
to an end their glory, could we in our families be ignorant of it?
The favor of Heaven is not easily preserved. Heaven is hard to be
depended upon. Men lose its favoring appointment because they
cannot pursue and carry out the reverence and brilliant virtue of
their forefathers. Now I, Tan, being but a little child, am not able
to correct our king. I would simply conduct him to the glory of
his forefathers, and make his youth partaker of that. . . . Heaven
is not to be trusted. Our course is simply to seek the prolongation
of the virtue of the tranquilizing king Wu-wang, and Heaven will
not find occasion to remove its favoring decree which Won-wang
received."

The influence of God on the fate of man is here brought
into direct opposition with that of one's forefathers.
Heaven, or God, having bestowed favors on one's ancestors,
it rests with the present generation to shape its own fate.

Who were the real powers to be addressed in prayer, and
whose influence on the fate of the living generation was
thus sought, has been clearly indicated in an anecdote told
in the Shu-king,^ Two years after the conquest of the
Shang dynasty, that is, in 1120 B.C., Wu-wang fell ill and
"was quite disconsolate." Some one proposed to consult
the tortoise oracle concerning him, but Ch6u-kung dis-
approved because that would ''distress our former kings.*'
Keeping his powder dry would not have availed much in
saving a dying man. But it is characteristic that, instead
of praying to Heaven, Ch6u-kung addressed the spirits
of his ancestors, to each of the preceding three generations
of whom he erec^ an altar on which he deposited the
sacred gem (pt). This he did with the seriousness of a
modem clairvoyant while upholding with his folded hands,
as the evidence of his person and rank in appearing before

' Legge, p. 351 aeqq.

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 103

those exalted spirits, his own personal jade badge (kui).
Thus prepared, he prayed to the spirits of T'ai-wang,
Tai-wang^s son Ki, and Won-wang, his and Wu-wang's
father.

"The grand historian by his order wrote on tablets his prayer
to the following effect: 'A. B., your chief descendant, is suffering
from a severe and dangerous sickness ; — if you three kings have in
Heaven the charge of watching over him, Heaven's great son, let
me. Tan, be a substitute for his person. I have been lovingly
obedient to my father; I am possessed of many abilities and arts
which fit me to serve spiritual beings. Your chief descendant, on
the other hand, has not so many abilities and arts as I, and is not
to ci4>able of serving spiritual beings. And, moreover, he was
appointed in the hall of God to extend his aid to the four quarters
of the empire, so that he might establish your descendants in this
lower world. The people of the four quarters stand in reverent
awe of him. Oh I do not let that precious Heaven-conferred appoint-
ment fall to the ground ; and all our former kings will abo have a
perpetual reliance and resort. I will now seek for your orders
from the great tortoise. If you grant what I request, I will take
these symbols and this mace, and return and wait for the issue.
If you do not grant it, I will put them by.' "

The duke then divined with the three tortoises and all
were favorable. He took a key, opened, and looked at the
oracular responses, which were also favorable, and said:
''According to the form of the prognostic the king will take
DO injury. I have got his appointment renewed by the
three kings." On the following day the king got better.

In the fourth year of his reign (1119 B.C.) a great assembly
of the princes and grandees of the empire took place, when
they all did homage to Wu-wang as their emperor. Wu-
wang died m 1116 b.c.

104 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

§ 23. Ch'Ong-wang (1115-1079 B.C.)

Wu-wang's son and heir, Ch'ong-wang, was a minor
when he became emperor, and his imcle, the Duke of Ch6u,
had l)een appointed his guardian before Wu-wang's death.
The duke, being now the senior of the family, was also
appointed regent of the empire. The jealousy and in-
trigues of his brothers and other discontented parties
resulted in the circulation of rumors among the people to
the effect that Ch6u-kung intended to usurp permanently
the supreme power for himself, and that his guardianship
over the young emperor was merely a pretext leading to
this end. With great delicacy of feeling he met all these
accusations by withdrawing from the court without in-
forming the emperor. But so great was his personal in-
fluence among the people, that it seemed as though he
carried the court with him, to judge from the attention
he received wherever he made his appearance. He re-
mained two years in his voluntary exile, during which time
he is said to have occupied himself with an extension of
the work commenced by his father Won-wang, while in
prison, the I-king^ or "Book of Changes." He kept, how-
ever, as far as distance would permit, a watchful eye on
his brothers, who were at the bottom of the intrigues
against him and who had in the meantime taken charge of
the young emperor. It appears that two of his brothers,
driven by personal ambition, had invented these rumors
for the special purpose of getting the powerful duke out
of sight so that they might accomplish their own ends.
With the assistance of Wu-kong, the son of the last emperor
of the Shang dynasty, whom Wu-wang had placed in charge
of Corea, a rebellion was planned. Seeing the danger of

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 105

these plots to the yoiing emperor, Ch6u-kung is supposed
to have written a poem, preserved among the odes of the
Shl'kingy^ a sort of allegory in which he represents himself
as a bird bewailing the attacks made by owls on its nest
and its young one (that is, the emperor) sitting in it.
Whether this ode was really composed by Ch6u-kung or
not, it is ascribed to him and is characteristic of the situa-
tion. The last two verses read, in Legge's translation, as
follows : —

"With my claws I tore and held.
Through the rushes which I gathered,
And all the materials I collected,
My mouth was all sore: —
I said to myself, I have not yet got my house complete.

" My wings are all injured ;
My tail is all broken ;
My house is in a perilous condition ;
It is tossed about in the wind and rain : —
I can but cry out with this note of alarm."

TTie young emperor had always silently sided with Ch6u-
kung. When, owing to a great storm, the crops through-
out the empire had been destroyed, he searched the
court records in order to find out what his predecessors
had done in the presence of such calamities. On this
occasion he discovered the record of Chdu-kung's prayer
to his ancestors, in which the duke had asked them to take
his own life in order that his brother, the Emperor Wu-
wang, might recover. This moved the young emperor's
heart. He was now convinced that the great storm had
been sent by Heaven as a punishment for the ill-treatment
Ch6u-kimg had received at his hands. He recalled the
exile and reinstated him in all his honors.

1 Legge, p. 233 9eq,

106 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

His enemies now broke out in open rebellion and took
up arms under the pretext of defending the dynasty
against its minister, the Duke of Ch6u, to the great delight
of Wu-kong, who was led to hope that through the en-
deavors of the Ch6u family to ruin each other his own
house might come into power again. The emperor was
prudent enough to see through these designs and sent an
army under Ch6u-kimg against the imited forces of Wu-
kong and his friends. Ch6u-kung gained a decisive vic-
tory and made Wu-kong prisoner. His brothers tendered
their submission ; one of them was executed with Wu-kong,
the other being banished. Within three years Ch6u-kung
established peace throughout the empire. After Wu-
kong^s death the dignity of a prince of the empire, granted
to him as the last scion of the Shang dynasty, was trans-
ferred to the late Emperor Ch6u-sin's stepbrother We'i-tzi
(or K'i, Baron of Wei), by which act of grace toward a
descendant of the dynasty headed by one of the best
monarchs China had seen, Ch'ong-t'ang, the emperor
showed his appreciation of the legitimacy of tradition.
Wei-tzi had been among those who had protested against
the late Emperor Ch6u-sin's cruelties and, therefore, deserved
to be selected as the one member of his family to be given
the chance of continuing the generation in a prominent,
if not imperial, position. A special chapter is devoted to
a speech of Ch'ong-wang's on the occasion of Wei-tzi's
investiture in the Shvrking} In appointing him prince
of Sung the emperor said, among other things : —

"Reverently and carefully you discharge your filial duties;
gravely and respectfully you behave to spirits and to men. I
admire your virtue and pronounce it great and not to be forgotten.

^ Legge, p. 376 seqq.

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 107

God will always enjoy your offerings ; the people will be reverently
harmonious under your sway. I raise you, therefore, to the rank
of Hif^ Duke, to rule this eastern part of our great land [i.e, Corea].
"Be reverent. Go and diffuse abroad your instructions; be
carefully observant of your robes and various other symbols of
your appointment ; follow and observe the proper statutes — so as
to prove a bulwark to the royal House. Enlarge the fame of your
meritorious ancestor, be a law to your people I so as forever to pre-
serve your dignity. So also shall you be a help to me, the one man ;
future ages will enjoy the benefit of your virtue ; all the states will
take you for a pattern 1 and thus you will make our djmasty of
CSi6u never weary of you. Oh I go, and be prosperous. Do not
disregard my charge."

§ 24. The " Ch6u-u "

TTie reign of Ch'ong-wang is distinguished by what may
be called the laying of the foundations of a government in
China; and the king's uncle, Ch6u-kimg, must be looked
upon as the organizer of the state machinery of the Ch6u
d3masty. In the Shu-king two chapters, entitled respec-
tively "The Establishment of Government" and "The
Officers of Ch6u,'' are specially devoted to the fundamental
institutions made by Ch'ong-wang under the advice of the
Duke of Ch6u. To Ch6u-kung is also ascribed the author-
diip of the CMu'lif a work in which the entire government
apparatus of the Ch6u djrnasty is described. It seems
quite possible that Ch6u-kung may have outlined such a
work ; but it is not likely that he is responsible for all the
details found in the present text, since it must have taken
generations of government life before opportunities could
have arisen to place on record ail the minute regulations
embodied m this huge collection of statutes. Opinions
have, therefore, differed a great deal among the Chinese

108 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

themselves as to the real authorship of the work in ques-
tion. It was the great expounder of Confucian philosophy,
Chu Hi (1130-1200 a.d.), who investigated the subject and
defended the ancient origin of the Chdvrli, claiming that it
might possibly be traced back to Ch6u-kung himself. Even
if that be SO; it stands to reason that a standard work on
government institutions would be subject to a great many
additions and modifications, called for by practical require-
ments in the course of seven himdred and fifty years, which
was the period that elapsed from the time of Ch6u-kung
down to the end of the dynasty. If we assume that the
nucleus of the contents was actually Ch6u-kung's work,
the text as handed down to posterity seems to represent
the public institutions of the dynasty in their fullest develop)-
ment, and as such, it forms a most important source in the
history of cultural life during the Ch6u period, which must
be regarded as a model serving as a guide to later genera-
tions. As an educator of the nation the Chdnrli has
probably not its like among the literatures of the world,
not excepting even the Bible. This remark refers es-
pecially to its minute details of public and social life, in
which respect its influence on the character of the Chinese
has been fully equal to that exercised by the teachings of
Confucius in regard to morals. Its contents, as repre-
sented in fidouard Biot's valuable French translation,* throw
considerable light on the constitution and culture of the
nation during the Ch6u period.

China was in those days divided, somewhat like Ger-
many, into a number of smaller states, all of which recog-
nized the Son of Heaven as their principal ruler, who
from the outset must have had considerable power over

^ Le Tcheou4i, ou riles dea Tcheou, 2 vols., Paris, 185L

PROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 109

the several feudatory governments; for it is he who
establishes states, defines their limits, and indicates the
location of their capitals ; through him, also, their rulers
hdd their appointments. Their government is to be
modeled like the emperor's, and is to be controlled and
inspected from time to time by him, he having the power
to revoke and to depose or reprimand the refractory. The
most ri^d religious ceremonial regulates the daily life of
emperor, government officers, and feudatory lords. It is
this detail in regard to the outer forms of life that has held
the Ch6u organism together for so many centuries. There
is hardly an act in official, and even social, life which is not
performed with certsun ceremonies. This applies to the
mode of dress to be worn, the speeches to be made, and
the postures to be assumed on all possible occasions,
whether at court or in private life. Biot appropriately
ranarks that the chief aim of all these minute regulations
was the founding of a certain immutability of government
on the physical and moral immutability of individuals by
depriving them as much as possible of all spontaneous
action in public and private life. Although catastrophes
have every now and then exploded dynastic and social
relations among the people, it would appear that the tra-
ditional veneration in which their ceremonial has been
held by the Chinese ever since the days of the Cfuhirli has
had much to do with the stability of China and the Chinese
as an empire and a nation.

Far below the emperor and the princes of the empire
was the mass of the people, placed in rank and file accord-
ing to their occupations. The nation consisted of rulers
and their assistants, government officers, and the rest of
the world, who were the working classes. These latter

110 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

were divided into nine sections ranking in the following
order: first, landholders, the producers of grain; second,
gardeners, who grow plants and fruit trees; third, wood-
men, occupied with the products of the forests and moun-
tains; fourth, livestock holders, raising cattle and fowl;
fifth, artisans, who convert raw materials into articles of
daily use; sixth, merchants, both resident and traveling;
seventh, the wives, who change oik and hemp into clothes;
eighth, servants, both male and female; ninth, the mis-
cellaneous class, who have no fixed profession, but change
their occupation as occasion may demand.

The agricultural population forming the first class hold
their estates as tenants of their princes, and have to deliver
a percentage of the cereals they grow proportionate to the
fertility of the soil. The latter is ascertained by special
officers appointed for the purpose, who also instruct the
cultivators in the nature of the grains and vegetables best
adapted for cultivation, and the times for tilling, sowing,
watering, and harvesting. Under their advice a system of
irrigation best suited to the configuration of the land is intro-
duced. It is by government officers that the people's work
connected with the production of silk is supervised in all
its details. The inhabitants are treated like a huge family,
at the head of which is the emperor, their patriarch. The
government apparatus is, therefore, not confined to those
who mete out justice and collect taxes or administer what
with us would be called government departments, but the
officers of Ch6u (Ch&urkuan, which was the original title of
the Chdvrli) comprise inspectors, appointed by the gov-
ernment, for almost any useful work performed by the
people.

Nearest the emperor in power is the prime minister

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 111

{ta49ax)f who has general charge of the six divisions of
government. This division of dl official business into six
categories, as described in the Ch&urli, has become the
prototype of the six boards of government (liurpu) of later
dynasties, and the corresponding divisions made in the
administrative offices down to our own days. The six
ministries, or boards, are but slightly different. At the
head of them is the "Board of Heaven," or the "Mandarin
of Heaven" (tHinrkium). Its chief is identical with the
prime minister. This highest board has, therefore, a
general supervision over all government affairs, as having
e(xitrol of the appointment of officers. It is the origin of
the board which later on was called, as it is known to-day,
the Zt*-pu, or "Board of Civil Office." The president of
this board (li^-piirshang'Shu) has always had precedence
over his colleagues of the other boards ; and the minister
presiding over the Board of Civil Office has at all times been
known, as he is to-day, as fUnrkuaUy" Heaven's Mandarin,"
the chief assistant of tihirtziy the "Son of Heaven," that is,
the emperor.^ Foreign affairs had up to this time been
rd^ated to the background among the Chinese adminis-
trative divisions. The old tsung-liryamen was merely a
eommiflsion which the Chinese would never admit to be a

* This has been so for the Ust three thousand years; and it was
aoi until qtiite recently that, under the pressure of negotiations with
lordlgD powers, the head of a newly created board, the Wai-wu-
fm, or ''Board of Foreign Affairs/' was assigned a rank above all
flie presidents of the other boards. The creation of a seventh board,
in addition to the time-honored six, is a thing which would have been
impoasible in conservative China previous to the era of reforms, ini-
tialed by the Emperor Kuang-sQ in 1898 and forced upon the recal-
cUrant conservatives under foreign pressure after the troubles in
1900. This change of rank was notified to the empire in an imperial
•dtel dated July 24, 1901. « See note on p. 1 13.

112 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

board; chiefly because statesmen of three thousand years
ago had made their arrangements, never thinking that the
relations with foreign nations would be sufficiently impor-
tant to justify the existence of a special ministry. Chinese
national ambition has, ever since the constitutional ar-
rangements of public life were made, looked upon the em-
peror as the person who rules the entire world by the
decree of Heaven. The " world " was China, in which sense
she is called t^i&nrhia, that is, "all that is under heaven."
Foreign nations were regarded as mere boundary tribes in
a state of rebellion against the emperor, their lawful ruler ;
and if they sent embassies with gifts of courtesy to the
Chinese court, such gifts were styled "tribute" (kung).
During the Ch6u dynasty down to that of the western
Han, when China led an isolated life in the Far East, long
before the existence of other great countries like India,
and the great monarchies of western Asia and the Roman
empire, became known to them, this view was not without
good foundation, since China was then actually the only
civilized country, towering high above a host of barbarous
tribes surrounding it. During this long period of undis-
puted superiority over her neighbors, that characteristic
national megalomania, of which she finds it so difficult to
rid herself even at the present day, had a thousand years
to develop and to take firm root in the heart of the nation.
The Chinese would never have dared to make a change in
those sacred institutions, said to have been first placed on
record by the Duke of Ch6u, but for circumstances over
which they had no control.

The six departments of government as described in the
Chdvrli were the following : (1) " The Mandarin of Heaven,"
{Ciifi'kuan), who had general control over all the other

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANQ 113

departments. His office corresponded to the modem
K'-pu, * or " Board of QvU Office." (2) " The Mandarin of
Earth" (tirkuan), charged with the instruction of the
people, primarily in agriculture (ndng), that being the
dneS source of national wealth and consequently of govern-
ment revenue. It is from this point of view that we have^
to explain its gradual change into what is now called
hvrpUj the "People's Board/' or "Board of Revenue."
(3) "The Mandarin of Spring" {ch'uvrhuan), who was in
charge of the state ceremonial and whose office corresponded
to the modem li*'pu,^ or " Board of Ceremonies." (4) " The
Mandarin of Summer" {hia-kium), who exercised executive
power, and is now represented by the "Board of War"
{pmg-pu). (5) " The Mandarin of Autumn " (tsHurhmn) , in
charge of punishments, represented by the present " Board
of Justice" (hing-pu), and finally, (6) "The Mandarin of
Winter" (tttng-kuan) ^ who was in charge of public works
and corresponded to the modem kung-jm, or "Board of
Works."

These six categories have down to the present day been
the basis of all division of official work, and the yamen, or
government offices, throu^out the empire imitate metro-
politan arrangements by classifying business in separate
departments, secretariats, desks, or pigeonholes, large or
small, as the range of their jurisdiction may be, under the
six heads of "Personal," "Revenue," "Ceremonies,"
"MiUtary," "Judicial," and "Works."

The Mandarin of Heaven performed, as it were, the func-
UoDS of a prime minister, having joint responsibility for the

* Note that the first syllable in W-fm and H^-pu, as indicated by
Bumben, Is pronounced in different tones in the two words and in
Chinese is written with different characters.
I

114 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

five other boards. It was he who fixed the amounts to be
levied under the heads of dues, local tribute, and taxes of
all kinds, which constituted the imperial revenue ; he r^u-
lated the public expenses; the entire inner and outer gov-
ernment service, both civil and military, was under his
jurisdiction; so also was the management of the several
imperial households, those of the emperor himself, of the
empress, of the crown prince, and of the imperial concubines.
The great number of the last named had even in those early
days led to the employment, in personal attendance on the
imperial ladies, of a special class of court officials — those
pests of Oriental court life, the eunuchs. This feature of
the constitution of the Ch6u dynasty forms a strange con-
trast to the moral purity which otherwise characterizes
the early social life of the Chinese. Eunuchism has proved
a curse to public life in China at all times; and many a
catastrophe must be ascribed to its intrigues which have
raised unworthy men to high positions and worked much
harm in an underhand manner. It appears that the early
legislators of the Ch6u dynasty cannot be held responsible
for such a degeneration of court life as that, for instance, of
the Ming dynasty, whose downfall is ascribed to the in-
famous power attained by the court eunuchs as a class.
Under the Ch6u rule these were merely servants and in
no way connected with administrative or political duties.
The imperial palace consisted of a vast inclosure sur-
rounded by high mud or brick walls, in which were the
following : the dwelling-houses of the emperor, the empress,
the concubines, and their servants ; the offices of the minis-
ters, reception halls, and temples ; shops for weaving silk
and hemp for the use of the court ; treasuries for the preser-
vation of the imperial archives, historical documents,

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 115

jewelry, and other precious belongings of the state or the
empen^ ; depositories for stores and all that was necessary
for the maintenance of life. In other words, it was a walled
city within the capital city reserved for the emperor, his
household, and his government; and the monarch seldom
left it except in his official capacity. The emperor's per-
sonal life was regulated by strict ceremonial in its most
minute details, in which respect the most powerful man
among millions was less free than any of his subjects. His
mode of dress, the work he had to do during every hour
of the day, the postures he had to assimfie in performing
certain ceremonies, and the words he had to pronounce on
every possible occasion were regulated by that cruel tyrant,
state ceremonial. Even his daily meals, the nature and
the quantity of food to be served to him at each season of
the year and on special occasions were subject to fixed rules.
He was supposed to starve himself when famine prevailed
m the country or in times of public calamity. His meals
were not jwesented to him by state dignitaries or by eunuchs,
who mi^t flatter his senses in order to curry favor, but by
a court attendant who had to taste them in his presence.
The same rigid ceremonial was brought to bear on the feudar

Since the broad masses of the people were not supposed
to know how to behave in the various conditions of life,
the 8ec<^ among the administrative divisions, that of
instruction, headed by the Mandarin of Earth, had to take
precautions for their welfare. The mandarin's jurisdiction
extended to all relations in life: the occupations of the
people, their trade, civil services, religious duties, family
matters, etc. The ordinary subject was, even in his private
Bfe, under government control. Tlius a special mandarin

116 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

was in charge of marriages. He had to see that no man re-
mained unmarried after the age of thirty, ^Is being sub-
ject to marriage at twenty. The chief duty of this depart-
ment was the levying of taxes in accordance with a budget
drawn up by the prime minister. The Mandarin of Earth
acted also as a kind of justice of the peace. Thousands of
little rules had been made to prevent disorders of any kind ;
and in order to see that they were duly observed both by
the government agents charged with their execution and
the people who had to obey them there were officers who
had to watch public life and denounce any irregularity
occurring. All these measures were calculated to main-
tain the nation in a state of general goodness ; and lest the
government itself should fail in its sacred duties, there were
the pavrshl, an officer endowed with power to reprimand
the emperor himself if he was at fault ; the ssl-shi, who had
to instruct the emperor and the sons of the empire {hu/h
tzi)j i,e, the elder sons of high officials, in all that is good
and virtuous; and the ssi-fd&nj or public remonstrator,
who was expected to mix with the people in order to study
their lives, correct their faults, and report on any evils he
might discover. These officers, dependent on the Mandarin
of Earth, may be said to have performed the functions of
preachers, though their duties had nothing to do with re-
ligion, but merely with morality, virtue, and goodness,
pure and simple. Their subordination to a higher board
seems to indicate that they had not the political influence
exercised later on by the institute of Public Censors
{yu-shi)j which was not developed before the Ts'in and
Han dynasties.

To what degree the government solicitude for the life
of the people went into detail, may be seen from the fact

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 117

that ei^t out of the forty-four books in the great code of
the C3i6u dynasty are devoted to the functions of the
Mandarin of Earth and his subordinate officers. One of
these was charged with the duty of making tours of inspec-
tion in order to ascertain the merits of individuals qualify-
ing them for office ; for, with the exception of the emperor,
his princes, and the several feudal lords, the incumbents of
all, even the hi^est, government officials were selected
from among the people. Merely the eldest sons of the
hi^er officials enjoyed certain privileges under the name
"Sons of the Empire" (kuo-tzi), inasmuch as they were
pven the chance of a higher education imder a special
officer. They had their special uniforms and were admitted
to court ceremonies as pages.

Exceptions were also made with regard to heredity of
office in cases where certain qualifications, required for its
duties, were likely to be confined to certain families and
had become traditional, having been transmitted from
gmeration to generation, such as the practice of certain
arts which were treated as family secrets. It is a feature
of Chinese social life that specialties in art and workman-
Aip are treated as the monopoly of certain families on
which no outsider is allowed to trespass. Such was the
case under the Han dynasty with certain patterns of silk
brocade. Many trades, such as the superior lacquer in-
dustry in Foochow and the manufacture of bronze drums
m Canton, have been family secrets ; and these secrets are
80 well guarded that a branch of art may die out with the
last scion of the family that created it, as in the case of the
celebrated Foochow lacquer, the secret of which was lost
diuing the T'ai-p'ing rebellion.

The Mandarin of Spring, who was in charge of religious

118 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

ceremonies, was a characteristic creation of the Chinese
nation. If, as we have seen, the emperor addressed himself
to God, or Heaven, as the supreme ruler, his subjects sacri-
ficed to beings of a lower order: sun, moon, and stars,
hills, rivers, and forests, and last, not least, the departed
souls of their ancestors. The manner in which sacrifice
was to be brought was regulated by thousands of petty
rules. In recording such rules the Chdurdi places us in a
position to form an idea of the spiritual life of the people,
which was full of superstition. The art of obtaining an
omen from the unseen spirits was cultivated in every pos-
sible detail. The chief means of auguration was, of course,
the time-honored system of Pa-kva, as explained m Won-
wang^s I'king. In many cases the scales of the tortoise
scorched by fire were used as oracles. The fissures thus
created on the surface of a scale were of great variety ; and
a regular system had been invented for the interpretation
of what may be called tortoise palmistry. There were
scientists for the interpretation of dreams, and sorcerers,
male and female, who could bring on fine weather or rain.
Observation of the stars was, of course, a great means of
ascertaming man's fate. The position of court astronomer,
with functions distinct from those of the astrological ex-
perts, was hereditary. The astronomer did good work in
connection with the calendar, and what we learn in the
Chdurli about his duties betokens an advanced state of
scientific development. The astrologer held a diflferent
office from that of his colleague just mentioned. The
latter had to watch the position and movements of the
heavenly bodies; the astrologer was required to interpret
their forebodings, since numbers of ceremonies were con-
nected with the seasons. Both of these officers were of

PROM WU-WANO TO K'ANG-WANG 119

great importance in connection with the Board of Cere-
monies. The astronomers of the Ch6u dynasty were
familiar with the use of the gnomon; and their observa-
tions, which have been checked by European savants, have
proved correct.

The fourth of the six boards, represented by the Mandarin
of Summer, corresponded to the present Board of War.
The diinese in those days had no standing army, but when
soldiers were required for the purpose of fighting external
enemies, suppressing rebellions, or assisting in the em-
peror's hunting expeditions, the necessary numbers were
enlisted. The Mandarin of Elarth in charge of the Peoples'
Board made the levies; and his subordinates placed them
at the disposition of the Mandarin of Summer, who was a
kind of commander-in-chief of the empire. Mmute in-
structions were issued in connection with the levy of troops ;
the nimiber of able-bodied men each family had to keep in
readiness was prescribed by law, and for this purpose
a general census was taken of the entire population once
every three years, when males and females, adults and
children, were distinguished and note was taken of domestic
animals and of tools used for work. S tftti8^>ics had de-
veloped into a regular science even in those early days.
How the statistical method was made use of for govern-
ment purposes, apart from the levy of troops, will be shown
later on by the work of the philosopher Kuan-tzi, who
died 646 b.c. The levying of troops thus laid the founda-
tion of vital statistics as a science, and it also became a
great stimulus in improving the records of the geographical
eondition of the empire, which was then divided into
nine provinces. Of these maps were made showing their
principal rivers, lakes, and mountains, their products and

<' ^.

120 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

articles of trade, and other useful details. The China d
those times was, of course, not the big empire it is to-day.
Her dominions were then confined to the northern part of
the present "Eighteen Provinces." At the beginning of
the Ch6u dynasty the Tartar nations in the northeast, the
precursors of the Huns, constantly encroached upon what
later on became undisputed Chinese territory; and the
nation did not feel much tempted to extend toward the
south and southwest which were then held by unculti-
vated Man barbarians. On the east the sea was still the
most satisfactory boundary, since no foreign fleets threat-
ened the peace of the empire from that direction.

The most distant province and the first one described
in the Ch&urli was Yang-ch6u, occupying the coast terri-
tories near the mouth of the Yang-tzi River south and
north of it. The term Yang-ch&u, as denoting the southern
margravate of the empire, has been very elastic in the
course of history. Some Chinese authors make it cover
the entire south of China, as far as imperial authority went,
during the several periods of history ; others, more critical,
distinctly exclude from the Yang-ch6u of the Ch6u dynasty
those territories in the south which are screened off by
the Nan-ling range. The name Yang-chdu has survived
in that of the city so called and possibly in that of the river
Yang-tzi, the etymology of this latter name being uncertain.
This province was irrigated by the lower Yang-tzi', with its
affluents, and the T*ai-wu Lake, and its trade consisted in
metals, tin, and bamboos. The Ch6u-li says of its popula-
tion that there were five men to every two women, and that
the cultivation of rice formed their principal occupation.
Every province had its sacred mountain. That of Yang-
ch6u was caUed Kuirki (Hui-ki),

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 121

The second province described in the Ch&Urli is King-
ch6u, comprising those fertile territories on the banks of
the middle course of the great river. Its name has sur-
vived in that of the city of King-ch6u-fu, near the present
treaty port of Shasi. Since Mt. Hong is mentioned as its
sacred hill, its territories must have extended far south-
ward into the province of Hu-nan. Hu-nan and Hu-pei
may be said to cover the territory of the ancient King-
ch6u. The C?i6u4i states that its trade consisted of
vermilion (cinnabar), ivory, and skins. The word used
m the Chdurli for ivory is cA'i, which means a "front tooth,"
pure and simple; but the commentaries give it the sense
of "elephants' teeth." Although the elephant is now quite
extinct in these regions, local records contain quite a nimfi-
ber of traditions to the effect that the animal was to be
found among the fauna of the barbarian districts in this
nei^borfaood in ancient times. One of the local legends
mentions that an elephant was seen there as late as the
seventh century of the present era [Hurnan-fang-wurchl,
ch. viii, p. 9). In its population females predominated,
the proportion being two women to one man.

The province adjoining King-ch6u in the north and
reaching as far as the south banks of the Yellow River was
Yu-ch6u. Its tutelary hill was Mt. Hua, and its trade
consisted in bamboos, varnish, silk, and hemp. The pro-
portion of the sexes was three women to two men.

A territory occupying the present Shan-tung was called
T8'ing-ch6u, with Mt. I as its sacred hill. Its trade was
in rushes and fish. As regards the population the sexes
were equally divided. Fowls and dogs are mentioned as
the principal animals, showing that the country was well
settled, and rice and grain thrived in the fields.

122 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

North of Ts'ing-ch6u, occupying the northern part of the
present Shan-tung, was the province of Yen-ch6u, with the
celebrated Mt. T'ai as its sacred hill. It was situated on
the banks of the Yellow River, which then ran into the
Gulf of Chi-li as nowadays. Men and women were in the
proportion of two to three respectively.

The extreme west, the country south of the Ordos ter-
ritory, with Mt. Yo as its sacred hill, was called Yung-ch6u.
It was bounded by the river Wei on the south, and its
trade consisted of jade and other minerals. The male sex
predominated to the extent of five men to three women.
Oxen and horses were the principal animals, and certain
kinds of millet were grown.

That part of the present province of Chi-li which faces
the sea-coast was called Yu-ch6u. Its sacred hill was Mt.
I-wu-lii, situated in the present province of Shong-king.
Fish and salt were its chief products, and the proportion
of females to males was three to one.

The southern part of Shan-si was occupied by the province
of Ki-ch6u. Its sacred hill was called Ho. The trade
of the district was in pines and cypresses; the male sex
prevailed in the proportion of five to three; horses and
oxen were the chief animals ; and millet was grown.

The northernmost province, Ping-ch6u, occupied the
north of Shan-si, with the celebrated Mt. Hong as its sacred
hill. Its products were cotton and silk textures. Ping-
ch6u and Yung-ch6u were the two frontier provinces which
came most into contact with the nomad tribes of the
northern steppe, and most of the great battle-fields com-
memorating that endless contest between the Chinese race
and its northern neighbors lie within their boundaries.

The geography of the Ch&urli bears a remarkable resem-

PROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 123

Uaaoe to that of the YUrkimg, though dififerences m de-
tail can be traced. What we learn of China during the
Shang dynasty appears quite different from either, and it
would seem that the conjecture that Yii's nine provinces
are a reconstruction of the philosophers of the Ch6u dynasty,
is supported by this consideration. Scanty though it is,
the g^ogn^hical section of the Ch&urli gives us an idea of
the extent of China during the early part of that period.
The care with which the proportions of the sexes in the
several provinces is placed on record shows that no little
attention was paid to vital statistics, which is quite in
accord with the lessons given to his prince by the philosopher
Kuan-tzi.

The fifth great governmental division was the Board of
Justice, presided over by the Mandarin of Autumn, who was
supposed to be "in charge of the brigands." He and his
subordinates had to mete out justice m criminal cases.
Hie penal code of the Ch6u dynasty represents a system
full ot detail which may be called humane when compared
with other Asiatic systems. Before capital punishment
could be pronounced on a criminal, the most minute and
rigid rules had to be observed ; appeals were made first to
a board of hi^ officers, then to a commission composed of
offic^B of lower rank, and lastly to the people themselves ;
and it appears that the people's verdict was final, some-
what like that of the juries of modem civilized nations, the
sovereign alone having the right to pardon. The people
were also consulted in cases of punishment for minor
offenses. All subjects were equal before the law; but
monbers of the imperial house and the administrative
offic^B enjoyed the privilege of being punished behind the
as it were, so that the dignity of their positions

124 THE ANaENT HISTORY OF CHINA

might be mwitained. The people had also to deliberate
and decide under the authority of government justices
what was to be done m the case of invasion of the country
by an enemy ; or, when a part of the population had to be
transferred to another provmce, owing to a failure of the
means of subsistence in their original homes ; also, when a
new king had to be elected, there being no heir to the
throne, — in brief, we find traces of parliamentary power.
Certain officials subordinate to the Mandarin of Autumn
were, conjointly with the delegates of the Board of Cere-
monies, charged with the responsibility of legalizi^g state
contracts, such as the agreements made between the em-
peror and his feudatory princes, or between the latter
themselves. Other officials had to superintend the cere-
monial connected with contracts among the people, the
main feature of which was an oath in which the blood of an
animal sacrifice was an important factor. Also subordinate
to this board was the official called ta-hing-jon, the "Great
Traveler," as Biot translates, the chief authority in charge
of ambassadorial matters, who, together with his staff,
performed functions somewhat resembling those of a foreign
office. He was in charge of the ceremonial connected with
the reception of visitors to the court, whether from the
feudatory states or from abroad. The most minute details
regarding these court receptions have been placed on record
in the Ch&urii, The "Great Traveler'' and his junior col-
league, the "Small Traveler'' {siavrhmg-jon) were, more-
over, charged with police duties, inasmuch as their sub-
ordinates had to inspect the condition of the feudatory
states and their population. They had to keep the em-
peror informed of all that was going on within his dominions.
The emperor himself traveled through his dominions to see

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 126

for himself where his authority was called upon to inter-
fere. In his journeys through the empire, he was accom-
panied by an official provided with charts of his provinces,
which gave him the information he desired in connection
with the countries he visited. Another officer had to keep
himself posted on historical, social, and economical ques-
tions concerning the localities visited.

The Great Traveler also convened periodical meetings
of the court interpreters, the musicians, and the official
historians. The Interpreters {siang-su) had to be familiar
with the languages of the surrounding nations and to assist
at the court receptions ; the musicians are called ku, ** blind,"
because the performers on the various musical instruments
and the singers at court were selected from blind men.
The court historians are represented by a large and com-
plicated staff of officials, one of whom, the siathshi, or
"Small Historian,'' was in charge of the documents con-
taining the material for the history of the states of the
empire, whereas another, the vxiirshi, the " Historian of the
Exterior," was charged, among other duties, with the record
of the history of foreign nations as well as of that of the
Three Emperors and the Five Rulers {sanrhiumg-wurti).
It is probably one of these officials who, on higher inspi-
ration, is responsible for the fabrications placed on record
in connection with the fabulous Fu-hi, Shon-nung, and
Huang-ti, the fine speeches of Yau and Shun, and the
engineering exploits of the great Yu.

The sixth great board was that of Public Works. The
section of the Chdthli describing the organization of this
department is lost and has been replaced under the
Han djmasty by a work called Tung-kuan'k'ayrk%mg4ri,
" Records of the Public Works of the Mandarin of Winter,"

126 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

or Ssirkung, " Superintendent of Works." We learn from it
nothing about the administrative functions of this important
dividon of government life; but the work contains an
enormous mass of detail concerning the arts and industries
of the period, of which so few remnants have come down
to later generations. Thus most valuable facts are re-
corded with regard to the manufacture of bronze imple*
ments and vessels. Bells, tripods, and other sacrificial
objects contained one-sixth part of tin in an alloy of cop-
per; hatchets of all sdzes contwied one-fifth; lances and
spears, one-fourth; knives and swords, one-third; erasing
knives and arrow-heads, one-fifth, and metallic mirrors, one-
half. All the important objects of art and productions of
handicrafts are fully described in this interesting chapter,
which is quoted by the historians of Chinese culture in
connection with the origin of quite a host of characteristic
products of Chinese civilization.

Such as it is, the Ch&urli is a mine of information on the
culture of the Ch6u period, which has in many respects
become the prototype of later institutions. The very few
facts I have extracted from it are but a poor substitute for
the work itself, for more detailed information as to which
the reader is referred to Biota s French version. It should
be remarked that the style of the work is often so terse and
ambiguous that a comprehension of it, as of the other
Chinese classics, is in many cases impossible without the
aid of later Chinese commentaries.

§ 25. Oriqin of the Mariner's Compass in China

The reign of Ch'ong-wang (1115-1079 B.C.) has been
quoted by Chinese and foreign authors alike as the period

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 127

during which the north-, or as the Chinese say, south-
pointing qualities of the magnetic needle were discovered.
In the sixth year of his reign, so the legend runs, Ch'ong-
wang received the news that the ambassadors of a distant
foreign kingdom, called the tribes of Yii^h'ang, had ar-
rived with presents to do him homage. They had come
from the south of the country of Kiau-chi, i.e. the present
Timgking. Later Chinese historians placed them at the
very spot where, during centuries at the beginning of our
era, the embassies from India {T^i6nrchu) and Syria {Tor
te'm) disembarked, in order to be conveyed to the Chinese
court, and where, according to the Shuirking-chu, a geo-
gr^)hical record of the fifth century a.d., ships used to
start for the journey south to the countries of the Malayan
Peninsula. This place clearly marks what may be called
the terminus of Western navigation as described on the
diinese side, which is probably identical with Ptolemy's
city of Cattigara, the terminus of shippmg enterprise in the
Far East according to Western classical authors. The
emperor gave orders that the Yii^-ch'ang ambassadors
duHild be conducted to the court and that great honor
riiould be paid them. The ambassadors, who were accom-
panied by interpreters speaking different languages, brou^t
pheasants and the tusk of an elephant as tribute. Since
they were in doubt as to how to find their way back to
thdr home, the Duke of Ch6u, the emperor's uncle and
prime minister, is said to have presented them with five
chariots provided with a south-pointing contrivance
{chUuinrku, " south-pointing chariots "). Thus they found
thdr way back "to the seas of Pu-nan and Lin-i," the last-
named country, well known during the Han dynasty, em-

128 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

bracing the territory from which they had come, as Legge *
has pointed out.

No trace of this embassy or of the south-pointing char-
iots mentioned in connection with it is contained in the
Shvrking and the Shv-ki. Legge, therefore, looks upon
it as a myth. Nevertheless there are early traces of the
belief that such a contrivance was invented, if not by Ch6u-
kimg, at least by some one among the old rulers. The
philosopher Han Fei, who died in 233 B.C., says in one
of his essays ' : " The early kings constructed the sswian,
i.e. 'the south-pointer,' in order to fix the position of
morning and evening. *' And a still earlier philosopher,
Kui-ku-tzi, who lived in the fourth century B.C., refers to
the people of Chong (K*ai-f6ng-fu) as having made use of
the "south-pointing chariof {ssv-nan-kiX), when sending
for jade {Kui-kurtzXy sec. 10). Kui-ku-tzi, whose little
work is not preserved in its entirety, is also quoted in the
TairpHng-yu-lariy a cyclopedia of the tenth century, as
having toid : '* The Su-shon ' offered a white pheasant to
Won-wang. Lest they might lose their way on the jour-
ney, Ch6u-kung constructed the * south-pointing chariot '
to accompany them.'' *

Possibly Won-wang and Ch'ong-wang were confounded
in this passage. Kui-ku-tzi's text contains yet another
passage (p. 4 B), in which he speaks of "loadstone attract-
ing a needle"; but, since this need not necessarily involve
a knowledge of the magnetic compass, I lay no stress on it.

* Shu-king, p. 535 seq. ' Han-fei-tzi, ch. ii, p. 4. • This is the
same name by which, many centuries later, the NQ-chon, Ju-chI, or
Djurdjen Tartars, the Tungusic ancestors of the Manchus, were
known, but which in this case probably represents an unknown
barbarous tribe somewhere near the Chinese territory mentioned in
the Shu-king, Legge, p. 12, par. 56. * Legge, OTp. cU,, p. 537.

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 129

From all this it would appear that as early as the fourth
century b.c. some sort of a contrivance indicating a southern
direction either existed or was believed to have existed in
former times. In the later literature, the term cklr^nan
(from chi, "to point with the finger," and nan, "south,"
and identical with ssi^nan) is occasionally used meta-
phorically ; for instance, in the " History of the Tliree King-
doms,"^ from which it would appear that the term was
known in the sense of " a guide " about the year 200 a.d. Yet
we have no indication whatever to show what the south-
pointing chariot, or chl^nan-ku, really was. We do not
hear of the magnetic needle being used as a compass in
eonnection with it any more than on board ship for several
oenturies after the downfall of the Ch6u dynasty ; and if the
needle was at all connected with those chariots, the in-
vention of which was attributed to the Emperor Huang-ti
b one, and to Ch6u-kung in another passage of the Kvrkinr
cku, a work of the fourth century a.d., we possess no record
riiowing how they were constructed. From an account of
the history of this invention contained in the Sung^hu, a
historical work of the fifth century,' it appears that the
secret of the "south-pointing chariots" had been lost for
many centuries, when the eminent astronomer Chang Hong, «
who died in 139 a.d., reconstructed it. In the troubles caus-
ing the downfall of the eastern Han dynasty his model, too,
was lost and consequently forgotten.

From the third century a.d. renewed interest began
to be taken in these mysterious allusions of the ancient
literature, which led to repeated attempts to reconstruct
what the would-be reconstructors apparently mistook as a
mechanical contrivance; and it appears that all that was

* San-kuo-chi, Shu, ch. viii. p. 4 B. * Ch. zviii, p. 4.

S">

130 THE ANCTENT HISTORY OF CHINA

turned out was a machine conasting of certain whc
possibly registering the movements of the axle of a cha
in such a manner as to cause an index to point in
same direction, whatever direction the chariot might U
I do not know whether such a construction is actu^
within the range of possibility; if so, I should be inch
to think that these reinventions were used as mechan
toys to be kept in some imperial museum as models s
posed to correspond with Ch6u-kung's chariots and doon
to oblivion as being practically useless. I findJU^sta
in the Sung-shu, to which account Professor^^E-Vai
has drawn attention in the China Review (vol. xi
p. 197), that certain models made under instructions fi
Shi Hu, the emperor of a short-lived foreign dynasty
the middle of the fourth century, and from Yau Hing,
emperor of the later Tsin dynasty (about 400), fell i
the hands of the Sung court in 417 a.d., but " the machin
being too coarse, the south-pointer showed so often
the wrong direction that men were required to set it ri
again." Subsequent attempts are spoken of as hav
been more successful, but, as I understand the Sung-s
the author of this account thinks of "machinery" anc
not aware of the real agent, although he casually rema
that, during the Tsin dynasty (265-420), there i
also a chi-nsm-chdu, i.e, "a south-pointing ship J* ''.
Emperor Yau Hingis contrivance is more clearly descril
in the biography of its engineer,* which says it had
machinery at all, but that, whenever it was put in moti
a man had to step inside to move the apparatus. Read
between the lines, I am inclined to assume that this
mark strongly suggests the use of a compass, the man v

* Nan-U^i-shUf ch. lii, p. 15.

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 131

had to step inside giving the chariot the direction ascer-
tained from it. Yet we find in the Sung-shl ^ the detailed
descripticm (ji the model of a "south-pointing chariot/'
seriously submitted to the Emperor Jon-tsung as late as
1027 A.D.y based on a most complicated system of cogged
irtieels (diameters and numbers of cogs being given), and
8aid to have been originally constructed about 806 a.d. A
similar machine, also described in the Sung-shl, was con-
structed in 1107, when it was submitted to the Emperor
Hui-tsung. From other sources it may be shown that at
this time the magnetic needle must have been well known,
if not as a guide to mariners, at least as an instrument in
the hands of geomancers for centuries before that date.
Dr. Edkins, in his paper " On Chinese Names for Boats and
Boat Gear," quotes Mr. Wylie in showing that the Buddhist
priest and imperial astronomer I-hing at the beginning of
the ei^th century knew not only the south-pointing
qualities d the magnetic needle, but also its eastern devia-
tion.' Since no references arc given, I am not able to con-
firm the fact, but I am certain that the deviation of the
needle was well known in China about the year 1115 a.d., .
when it was described in the Pon-ts'athyenr^.* It was there
stated that, if one rubbed a needle with loadstone, it
would point to the south, but that it would always deviate
a little to the east and not show due south. To prepare
the contrivance, one had to single out a fine thread from a
new skein of silk floss and fix it with half a candareen of
bees' wax on the middle of the needle, the latter to be hung
up where there was no wind. Tlie needle would then always

■ Cai. cxlix, p. 15. * Journal of ths China Branch, Royal Aiiaiie
SoeiMy, N.8., vol. xi, p. 13S. * Quoted in the Ko-chi-kinQ-yikan, eh.
xlix, p. 12 B.

132 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

point to the south. By stickmg the needle through a piece
of lamp wick (which in China is made of pith), thus cauang
it to float on the water, it would also point to the south with
a slight deviation, which the author tries to explain from
the mystic point of view of Chinese natural philosophy.
Shon Kua, who wrote about the middle of the eleventh
century, gives a still clearer account of the contrivance,
which, according to his own words, was used by the ^ang-
kia, or geomancers, and he says absolutely nothmg about
its use in navigation. He also describes the deviation of
the needle, without any attempt at explanation. For,
'Hhe reason why loadstone points to the south, just as
cypresses point to the west, cannot be explained." ' Since
Shon Kua was a native of Hangchow, where in those days
a lively traffic existed with Arab and Persian traders, it
seems quite possible that the latter have seen the needle
used for geomantic purposes somewhere in that neighbor-
hood, if not in Chinchew (Zaitun) or Canton, learned the
secret of its preparation from the Chinese, and discovered
its further use in navigation.

The Ch'avry6'tsH6n-tsai^ states that in 692 a.d. a me-
chanic was sent to court from Hai-ch6u, a seaport on the
coast south of Kiau-ch6u (Shan-timg), who had constructed
a "chariot showing the twelve hours of the day" (sAi-ir-
cKdn-ka) by the shaft being turned due south. It looks
very much as though the magnetic needle had something
to do with it, too. It may have been a mechanical toy to
be used indoors, somewhat like another "south-pointing
cAario(," so styled and described on the preceding page of
the cyclopedia referred to as being only seven and one-half

* Mdng-J^inpi-fan, ch. xxiv, p. 7 B. 'A work of the eighth century
A.D. quoted in the Ko-chX-king-yilanj ch. xxix, p. 25.

*0mm

[

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 133

inches long and about fifteen inches high, and not a chariot
in the ordinary sense.

Tlie earliest unmistakable mention of the use of the
magnetic needle as a guide to mariners that I have been
able to find in Chinese literature is probably as old as the
knowledge of its use in Europe. It occurs in a work of the
twelfth century, entitled PHng-chdurk'o-t^an, and compiled ' i
by cme Chu Yii, a native of Hu-ch6u in Cho-kiang. In -.j
the second chapter of this work the author has inserted a ;
series of notes on the foreign trade at Canton, which, pre-
vious to the arrival of the Portuguese in Eastern waters,
had been in the hands of Arab and Persian navigators.
Since, from what we know of the author's lifetime, he him-
self never lived at Canton, whereas his father, Chu Fu, had
held oflSce there at the end of the eleventh century, the
critics of the great Catalogue of the Imperial Library at
Peking ^ hold that his information about the foreign trade
in Canton is based on accounts of Chu, the father, and that
it, therefore, dates from the latter part of the eleventh
century a.d. This view is supported by the fact that
the years 1086 and 1099 are mentioned in Chu Yii's
paragraphs referring to Canton in other connections.
Among these interesting notes I find (ch. ii, p. 2) one
referring to the foreign ships by which trade was carried on
betwe^i Canton and San-fo-ts1 (Palembang) on the coast
of Sumatra and farther on to the ports in Arabian coun-
tries, including India. It runs as follows : —

"In dear weather the Captain ascertains the ship's position, at
ni|^t by looking at the stars, in the daytime by looking at the sun ;
in dark weather he looks at the south-pointing needle (chl-nan^ch&n).
Sometimes he will make use of a rope, ten chang in length, to hook

' Ttung-mu, ch. cxli, p 15 9eq.

134 THE ANCIENT fflSTORY OF CHINA

up mud from the bottom of the sea, the smell of which will tell him
where to go. In the open sea there is no rain; and when it rainSi
they are nearing land/' etc.

The wording of this passage is such that it gives us no
clue as to whether or no the Chinese at the time were
familiar with the use of the compass on shipboard. I am
inclined to think, however, that attempts to use the needle
on ships must have been made in China about as early as
it was known there to geomancers, but that it was aban-
doned as a useless luxury by the conservative jimk masters,
who were accustomed to steer their ships by bearings and
sotmding9, and who scarcely ever required a compass for
their coasting trips. Navigation on the high seas in those
days was in the hands of foreigners (Arabs and Persians) ;
and this may be the reason why we first hear of them as
having turned the old Chinese invention to practical use
on shipboard.

We have seen that, apart from the great probability
of the magnetic needle being known in high antiquity,
instances are on record of its use during the Middle Agds
for geomantic purposes. If my assimiption proves correct,
that the magnetic needle was seen by Arab traders on the
coast of China in the hands of geomancers, was applied by
them to navigation, and was then brought back to China
as the "mariner^s compass/' the history of this invention
may be looked upon as perfectly analogous to that of gun-
powder, the preparation of which was probably known to
the Chinese long before they learned its application to
firearms through Europeans.

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANQ 135

ABSTRACT OF DATES

2704-2594 B.C. The invention of the "south-pointing chariot"
ascribed to the legendary Emperor Huang-ti according to the
K%i-kin-chu (4th cent. a.d.).

1231-1135 B.C. "South-pointing chariots" were presented by W6n-
wang to certain ambassadors. The passage, which may be
wron^y handed down, is contained in the Kui-ku-Ui, a work
of the fourth century b.c.

1115-1079 B.C., under Ch'5ng-wang. Legend of the arrival of am-
bassadors from the south, conducted home by the aid of "south-
pointing chariots." No indication is on record as to what these
were. The entire accoimt is legendary and not backed by con-
temporaneous records.

4th Cent. b.c. The philosopher Kui-ku-tzl speaks of the use of the
"south-pointing chariot" by the people of Chdng. He knows
that loadstone will attract a needle.

233 B.C. The philosopher Han Fel speaks of a "south-pointer"
by which the position of east and west may be ascertained.

139 A.D. The astronomer Chang Hong tries to reconstruct the old
"south-pointing chariot." His model, however, was lost and
forgotten.

200. The term ehi-nan ("south-pointer," or "compass") Is used
figuratively in the sense of " a guide " (San-kuo-chi),

850-400. The emperors Shi Hu and Yau Hing are in the possession
of apparatuses pointing south; but, the "machinery" being
defective, they point wrong (Sung-shu), and in Yau Hing's con-
trivance a man is required to move it (Nan-U'i-thu),

265-420. "South-pointing ships" (ehi-nan-chdu) are mentioned.

092. A south-pointing contrivance showing the hours of the day is
invented.

700. The Buddhist astronomer I-hing is familiar with the eastern
deviation of the magnetic needle. (Ekikins, quoting Wylie.)
Wylie, in a paper entitled "The Magnetic Compass in China,''
reprinted in Chinese Reeearchee (Shanghai, 1897), p. 155, says:
"A passage from the life of Yih-hing, a Buddhist priest and
imperial astronomer at the commencement of the eighth century,
will show that the subject had engaged attention at least nine
hundred years earlier [than the seventeenth century]. It is
said, that 'on comparing the needle with the north pole, he found
the fonna* pointed between the constellations ha and toef . The
pole was Just in degrees of hH, from which the needle declined

136 THE ANCTENT HISTORY OF CHINA

to the right (east) 2*" 95' . As it declined to the right of the north
pole, it was necessarily to the left of the south pole.' " I have
not succeeded in finding this passage in the lives of I-hing I
was able to consult, but take it for granted, on the excellent
authority of the late Mr. Wylie, that it is contained in some other
Chinese text, which I hope to be able to hunt up some day.
Unfortunately neith^ Mr. Wylie nor Dr. Edkins has given chap-
ter and verse of this passage, so very important in the history
of our subject.

806. A south-pointing contrivance consisting of cogged wheels
is said in the Sung^hi to have been constructed.

1027. A "south-pointing chariot," described as a mechanical con-
trivance, is submitted to the Emperor J6n-tsung {Sung-M).

1030-1093. Lifetime of the encydopsddist Sh5n Kua, who speaka
of the magnetic needle and its deviation as used for geomantio
purposes.

1100, or earlier. Probable first unmistakable mention on record
in Chinese literature of the use on shipboard of the ''south-
pointing needle" by foreign (Arab and Persian) navigators at
Canton.

1107. A ''south-pointing chariot," also described as a system of
cogged wheels, etc., is submitted to the Emperor Hui-tsung.

1115. The magnetic needle is described in detail and its deviation
mentioned in the Pdn-t^au-yenH, where no allusion is made to
its use on shipboard.

§ 26. Ch'ong-wang's Reign (Continued)

After the alleged embassy from the Yu6-ch'ang barbarians
in Tung-king, Ch'ong-wang decided to erect a new capital
which should be more centrally situated than his old resi-
dence in the west ; and he selected the city of Lo-yang, cor-
responding to the present city of Ho-nan-fu. Ch6u-kung
made all the necessary arrangements, and the court re-
moved to Lo-yang. The country about Lo-yang being
supposed to occupy the middle of the then Chinese empire,
it was called, in distinction from the other provinces.

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 137

Chung-kuo, the "Middle Country," or the "Middle Kmg-
doiD." In this sense the term, which has been quoted as
the origin of the present name for China and which is
generally translated by the "Middle Kingdom," occurs
repeatedly in the Shirking. The same classic, however,
contains an ode ^ in which long before that Won-wang,
Gh'ong-wang's grandfather, b made to use the term
Ckung-hw in the sense of China as opposed to Kuirfang, or
the "Demon Regions." In the "Tribute of Yu"» China
is unmistakably to be understood by the term Chung-
pangy which Legge translates by the "Middle Regions."
Another name Chung-yOanj which may be translated by
"Bliddle Plain," occurs in the sense of "China" in the
SMrking and other classics. All this shows that, during
the Ch6u dynasty and probably even long before that, the
Chinese looked upon their country as the middle of the
world.

In 1105 B.C. Ch6u-kung died, and Ch'ong-wang buried
him with royal honors. The Chinese nation regards him
as one of the most important personages in its history.
Mencius,* referring to Yu, Confucius, and Ch6u-kung,
speaks of the "Three Great Sages" {san-shong) whose work
he should like to continue. Ch6u-kung was the type of a
monarchist ; and the example of loyalty set by him may be
called the mainstay of the stability of the Ch6u dynasty.
TTie long duration of that uniform spirit of Chinese official
life which, in spite of all political and personal changes, has
under all dynasties come to the front again, is mainly the
work of this model statesman, the main spokesman of hu-
mane government and absolute justice on the one hand
and of undisputed legitimacy of the supreme ruler on the

« Legge, p. 5Q9, ^ Legge, 8hu4iing, p. 141. ■ Lcgge, p. 160.

138 THE ANCIENT fflSTORY OF CHINA

other. "In former times," Mencius says, "Yu repressed
the vast waters of the inundation, and the empire was
reduced to order. Ch6u-kimg's achievements extended
even to the barbarous tribes of the west and north; he
drove away all ferocious animals; and the people enjoyed
repose." Mencius sings Ch6u-kung's praises to mark the
contrast with certidn philosophers of his own time, esp^
cially Yang Chu, the cynic, " whose principle was each one
for himself, and who would not acknowledge the claims of
the sovereign." "These father-deniers and king-deniers
would have been smitten by Ch6u-kung," says Mencius.
If Ch6u-kung had done nothing but furnish the germs of
that imique code, the Chdurli, he would indeed have done
more to give to Chinese official life its characteristic feature
of systematization than any ruler, statesman, or philosopher
after him.

The years of Ch'ong-wang's reign following Ch6u-kung's
death were spent in peaceful government. Ch'ong-wang
died in 1079 B.C. Chau, his heir presumptive, being a
minor, he had appointed the dukes of Shau and Pi as
regents, under whose guidance Chau ascended the throne.
He reigned under the name of K'ang-wang.

§ 27. K'ang-wang (1078-1053 B.C.)

K'ang-wang's rule, like that of his father, was a great
blessing to the empire, being full of humanity and of love
for his people. The Duke of Shau {Shavrhmg), one of
his guardians, who acted as his prime minister, actively
seconded him in this friendly disposition. The duke's
condescension toward the people was so great that he

FROM WU-WANG TO K'ANG-WANG 139

would travel about the country in order to listen to their
grievances. Tlie result was his great popularity, which
has found a lasting memorial in one of the best-known odes
<rf the Shirking: * —

"This umbrageous sweet pear tree;
Clip it not, break not a twig of it.
For under it the Duke of Shau rested.^

Tlie sweet pear tree {kanr^ang, the translation being doubt-
ful) has ever since been the sjrmbol of the people's appreciar
tion of condescension and kindness shown to them.

* Legge, p. 26.

'/^

' >•• J

^ *p

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER
S 28. Chau-wang (1052-10Q2 B.a)

SSl-MA TSlM insmuates that under Chau-wang 'Hhe
lung's ways became feeble and defective." He left
the cares of government to his ministers^ among
whom were none like the dukes of Ch6u and Shau. In
qiite of serious warnings given by Heaven in the shape of
natural phenomena, the king would not change his wa3rs,
but devoted hunself solely to pleasure. To indulge in the
chase, he did not mind spoiling the crops in the fields of
his subjects. The req)ectf ul remonstrances of his ministers
made no impression on him. In 1002 b.c. there was a
revolt amcHig the people of Ch'u, the semi-barbarous state
on the southern frontier. Chau-wang went south to make
war on the barbarians. Even then he looked upon the
campaign as a sort of pleasure trip and, by damaging the
fields of his people in pursuit of his hunting parties, drew
on himself their dislike. To enable him to cross a river,
— said by some to have been the Kiang or Yang-tzi, by
others, the Han-kiang,' — the people furnished him with a
boat, the boards of which were insecurely fastened together
— the time-houOTed method of committing a political mur-
der. In the middle of the river the boat broke up, and the
king had a narrow escape from drowning. He died aooa
after as a result of this "accident.''

148

144 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

§ 29. Mu-WANG (1001-947 B.C.)

On going south with his army, Chau-wang had appointed
regent his son Man, and the latter on his father's death
ascended the throne under the name of Mu-wang. He was
then at the ripe age of fifty, and was a great admirer of the
virtue of his forefathers Won and Wu. Detiuls of his life
and government in the Shvrking are very scant, and a great
deal of what we know about him has been supplemented
by later authorities. The most prominent of his charac^
teristics referred to by these is his restless love of traveling
beyond the confines of his empire. His alleged journeys
to the West have given rise to the wildest speculations as
to his having been a mediator between the western Asiatic
and Chinese civilizations. The Bamboo Books contain
only a few allusions to his expeditions against the hordes of
the K'iian barbarians, or K^Han-jung, identified by the
Chinese commentators with the later Hiung-nu, or the
Huns, who, as I have already shown, had under various
names linguistically answering to the root Hun or Kun,
engaged the king's forefathers, when they (the Hiung-nu)
were still holding the northwestern borders of the empire
during the Shang dynasty under T^ai-wang and Won-wang.
Besides a number of hunting and punitive expeditions and
journeys described as "tours of inspection," the Bamboo
Books ^ record that, " in his seventeenth year he [Mu-wang]
went on a punitive expedition to Mt. K'un-lun and saw the
Si-wang-mu [lit. "Western King's Mother"]. That year
he [Si-wang-mu] came to court." Here a note is added,
which may be that of a commentator of later date, saying
that " the king, in his expeditions to the north, traveled a

* Legge, Shtt-king, Prolegomena, p. 150 seq.

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 145

thousand li over the Liu-sha'' ("The Moving Sands/' by
which name any part of the central Asiatic desert west of
the Great Wall may be understood, if not the Desert of
Takla-makan) ; that he also traveled "a thousand li over
the Tsi-yu" [lit. "Heaped-up Feathers"]; and that "he
made war on the K'uan-jung [Huns?] and returned to the
east with their five kings as captives/' Westward he is
said to have "pushed his expeditions to where the green
birds cast their feathers" (said by some Chinese commenta-
t(»r8 to be identical with the San-wei-shan near the Tang-ho,
an affluent of the Bulungir). The note ends by saying that
on these expeditions he traveled over 190,000 li. This
dry-as-dust account is greatly supplemented by another
work specially devoted to Mu-wang's expeditions, the
Murt*iin4zi'chuan, " Biography of Mu, the Son of Heaven,"
probably originating in a period not later than the third
century B.C., if we accept the fact that it was found in a
tomb of one of the Wei princes dating from 281 B.C. Of
this work Wylie * Bsys : " It savors too much of the fabulous
to be admitted among the authentic records, but it is pre-
served as a specimen of ancient composition."

Tlie work contains a host of geographical names which
it b scarcely possible now to identify, the best known of
which b that of Mt. K'un-lun, where the king is supposed
to have met Si-wang-mu. TTie name K'un4itn first occurs
in the Shu-king * in the list of articles said to have been sent
to the Emperor Yu ; but in that passage it seems extremely
doubtful whether it does not apply to the name of some
wild tribe of the West furnishing "hair-cloth and skins."
It seems quite possible that this name, as mentioned in the
Bamboo Books, amounts to no more than this; but since

* Noi€$ on ChintM LiUraiur€, p. 153. * Legge, p. 127.

146 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

it is there described as a hill, it can be understood how the
author, or some interpolator, of the MthtH6nrtzfrchuan came
to identify it with the K'un-lun-shan, or Karakorum rang^,
the reputed source of the Yellow River, which, according
to early Chinese ideas, took its rise in the affluents of the
Tarim, and disappeared into the ground at Lake Lob-nor,
reappearing at its real source in northwestern Tibet. Tlie
K'un-lun-shan has in times much more recent than the
Shvrking grown into a sort of fairy-land and become the
seat of numerous legendary creations, among which is the
Si-wang-mu, who, owing to the meaning of these three
words, is usually represented as a queen, the ''Royal Lady
of the West," heading the troops of genii inhabiting Mt.
K'un-lun and holding from time to time intercourse with
favorite imperial votaries. Such is the legend which has
grown up in the course of ages from the slender basis
afforded by the occurrence of the name in very early tra-
ditions. An obscure reference to Si-wang-mu is also to be
found in the Shan-hai-kingy a geographical record possibly
as old as it is insipid ; and upon these ancient notices the
philosopher Li6-tzi is supposed to have based in the fifth
century B.C. a fanciful and perhaps allegorical tale of the
entertainment with which King Mu was honored and en-
thralled by the supernatural being. In later ages the
superstitious vagaries of the Emperor Wu-ti (140-87 B.C.)
gave rise to innumerable fables respecting the alleged visits
paid to that monarch by Si-wang-mu and her fairy troop ;
and the imagination of the Tauist writers of the ensuing
centuries was exercised in glowing descriptions of her
mountain palace.^ Her palace was supposed to stand on
Mt. K'lm-lun which, after Wu-ti's expeditions, was well

^ From Mayers, The Chinese Reader's Manual, p. 178; cf. p. 108 9eq.

GRADUAL DECUNE OF CENTRAL POWER 147

known to be somewhere in the south of Khotan. It is
understood by all serious Chinese historians that the gen-
eral Chang K'i6n, who returned from his first journey to the
West in 126 b.c., was the first to bring notices to China of
such countries even as near the western boundaries as
Khotan. The mention of the K'un-lun in connection with
Mu-wang's travels must therefore remain a puzzle, unless
we assume that some other region much nearer to his own
dominicHis is indicated by this name. We need not be
astonished to find such shifting of names, which Mr. Kings-
mill thinks correspond to the development of geograph-
ical knowledge among the Chinese. Although the K'un-lun
itself, after it was once understood to be identical with
Mt. Karakorum, was not affected thereby, several of the
other creations of Chinese popular imagination can be
diown to have wandered to the West in the same measure
that matter-of-fact knowledge began to extend in China.
This refers especially to certain legendary terms associated
with each other in the very earliest periods. The Si-wang-
mu, mistaken for a fairy queen, owing to the name being
transcribed with characters suggesting such an interpretar
tion, had been made to live somewhere on a hill, sometimes
called the " White Jade Hill," in a palace of jade. Near her
abode were the Liursha, or "Shifting Sands " : and this may
have been any part of the Tarim desert, even to the east
of Lake Lob-nor, since the Liu-sha is said by Chinese geog-
raphers to begin about eighty li west of Sharch6u. Another
name which also occurs in the Shvrking is the Jo-shui, or
"Weak Water," to the west of which the "Western King's
Mother" held court. I am inclined to assume that the
localities covertly referred to by these legendary terms
were originally much nearer the Ch6u empire than they

148 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

were held to be later on, and that, being constantly asso-
ciated with the western terminus of what was to the ancient
Chinese the inhabited world, their imaginary position had
to be shifted farther west from time to time; for, in ac-
cordance with some of these legends, the Si-wang-mu had
to be located somewhere near the place "where the sun
sets." When Chang K'i6n returned from his visit to
Bactria, he had f oimd there was a still farther West ; and
when the first detailed accounts of Ta-ts'in, i.e. the eastern
provinces of the Roman empire, became known in China,
the Chinese became aware that T'iau-chi, or Chaldea,
which after Chang K'i^n's expeditions had been nearly
the westernmost Asiatic country known, by name at
least, in China, was not the end of the world, but that
Ta-ts4n, or Syria, was still farther west. For, as Chi-
nese writers in the second century a.d. say, "formerly
it was wrongly believed that the Jo-shui, or 'Weak
Water,' was in the west of T'iau-chi; now the Jo-shui
is in the west of Ta-ts'in. Formerly it was wrongly be-
lieved that, going over two hundred days west of Tlau-
chi, one came near ' the place where the sun sets ' ; now
one comes near the place where the sun sets by going
west of Ta-ts'in." *

As to the Si-wang-mu mentioned in the Bamboo Books
as having visited Mu-wang's court, the responsibility for
all the fanciful tales heaped about that name must be left
to later authors. If we confine ourselves to the really
oldest texts, or even to the more detailed account of the
MvrtH&n'tzi-chiuin, there is nothing to prevent us from
adopting the opinion expressed by the author of a critique
of the work published in the great Catalogue of the Imperial

^ Hirth, China and the Roman Orient, pp. 68, 291 seqq.

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 149

Library of Peking.^ This view has been independently
arrived at by Dr. E. J. Eitel, to whom we are indebted for
a translation of the work, with some valuable explanatory
notes.' Regarding the name Si-wang-mu, Dr. Eitel says :

"These three characters probably are merely a transliteration of
a name belonging to a polysyllabic non-Chinese language. The
meaning of the individual characters, chosen to represent the foreign
name, ought not to prejudice the reader. There is nothing in this
or any other ancient text to indicate that Si-wang-mu was a woman.
Taking this name like other names in our text, it seems to me best
to treat Si-wang-mu as the name of a tribe whose chief went by
the same name."

Such transformations are by no means uncommon in
legendary subjects of periods much more recent even than
the Si-wang-mu legend; and the change of a man into a
woman has its parallel in Buddhist lore, if we consider that
the goddess Kuan-yin, the Holy Virgin of the Chinese, has
grown out of Avalokitds'vara, an Indian male divinity
represented as late as the eighth century by the great
Chinese painter Wu Tau-tzi, the Godoshi of the Japanese,
as a tall young man with a respectable mustache.

The impression I myself have received with regard to
the historical signification of Mu-wang from a survey of
the native literature is as follows : If we fall back on the
very oldest records, there is nothing to prevent us from
assuming that the emperor was fond of traveling about, but
that his most distant journeys did not take him far beyond
the present wall frontier in the west. Even Terrien de
Lacouperie puts a stop to the emperor's progress at Karashar,
which he thinks may be considered as the farthest point

> Ch. cxlii, p. 4. ^ China lUview, vol. xvii, pp. 223, 247.

150 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

reached in a westerly direction.^ In that case the accounts
of the K'un-lun and all that can be proved to refer to the
western part of Chmese Turkestan should be looked upon
as havmg been interpolated in later times. If, however,
we adopt Dr. Eitel's opmion, who looks upon the Mu-
tH6nrizirchuan as a work of the tenth century B.C., we could
not well deny that some region called K'un-lun, if not the
Karakarum, was then known to the Chinese. The former
opinion had found its advocates among the Chinese them-
selves, since the local records of the city of Su-ch6u in
Kan-su claim the K'un-lun-shan, where Mu-wang met Si-
wang-mu, to have been identical with a certain hill called
Su6-shan, i.e. "Snow Mountain,'' situated two hundred and
fifty li southwest of that city (Su-ch6u). The inventor of
this theory, a magistrate by the name of Ma Ki, who lived
during the tenth century a.d., thought he had to look for
" Si-wang-mu's Stone House and Jade Hall" in this locality.

The Si-wang-mu legend and the relations of Mu-wang with
that mysterious personage have quite lately given rise to
a somewhat extravagant view of the extent of the emperor's
expeditions. Professor A. Forke, of Berlin, in an ingenious
attempt to explain the several accounts preserved in Chinese
literature,' comes to the conclusion that Si-wang-mu is no
less a personage than the Queen of Sheba, and that the em-
peror's journeys took him to her kingdom in Arabia Felix.

But the name Si-wang-mu is by no means confined to the
lifetime of Mu-wang. For, apart from its occurrence in
later legends, the annals of the Bamboo Books ■ mention

* Origin of Early Chinese Civilizationf p. 265 seqq. ' Mu Wang und
die Kdnigin von Saba^ in MiUheilungen dee Seminars fur Orientalische
Sprachen zu Berlin, Jahrgang vii, 1904. • Legge, Shu-king, Prole-
gomena, p. 115.

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 151

a visit of Si-wang-mu to the Emperor Shun, and Legge,
following the native commentaries, explains the name as
that of ''a state or kingdom in the distant west." Cer-
tainly the compiler of the Bamboo Books cannot have
thought of the Queen of Sheba, when he connects the name
with that of Shim, who, according to this very source, should
be held to have lived eleven hundred years before Mu-wang.
The arguments brought to bear on the Si-wang-mu problem
by Forke are very interesting, but I cannot, with Chavannes,
make up my mind to accept his conclusions. Chavannes ^
has devoted an excursus to "Le voyage au pays de Si-
wang-mou,'' in which he endeavors to show that the Mu-
wang of the Si-wang-mu legends is not the emperor of that
name, but his namesake Duke Mu, of the state of Ts'in, who
reigned from 659 to 621 b.c'

Whichever view we may adopt, the journeys of Mu-wang
seem. to have in no way affected Chinese civilization. Sup-
posing the emperor had actually reached the distant region
of Khotan, no one to-day can tell what sort of people he
may have found there, whether Indians, Persians, or Tar-
tars ; and even admitting that the illustrious traveler may
have brought home some strange impressions from his
interesting trips into the formerly unknown parts of cen-

> Le9 Mim&iru hiMUfriqtieM, vol. v., pp. 480-489. > Cf. Profc»-
•or H. A. Giles's paper Who imm Si Wang Mut in his AdvtT9ana
Siniea, no. 1, Shanghai, IOCS, p. 1; also Ed. Ruber's notes on
Forke' s work in Bulletin de V A cole Fran^aiee d^ Extreme Orient,
vol. iv, pp. 1127-1131. Huber (p. 1128) jusUy draws attention to
the record in the Bamboo Books of Si-wang-mu's visit to the
Chinese court "in the same year/' which would involve the fact
that the Queen of Sheba was an Asiatic traveler fully as bold as
her friend Mu-wang. The Queen of Sheba theory, Huber points
out (p. 1131), had been raised as early as 1863 by Paravey, thou^
rejected by Bumouf and Von Humboldt.

152 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

tral Asia, we fail to notice in the development of Chinese
civilization during the Ch6u dynasty any such palpable
proofs for the accession of foreign elements as we can show
to have been introduced about nine himdred years later
imder the Emperor Wu-ti of the Han.

Mu-wang had, contrary to the opinion of his advisers,
made great preparations for a campaign against the K'iian-
jung, which apparently ended in fwlure. Altogether his
long reign did not tend to strengthen the empire. He died
at the advanced age of 104, after a reign of fifty-five years.

§ 30. KuNG-WANG (946-935 B.C.)

Mu-wang's eldest son I-hu was himself seventy-two years
of age when he succeeded his father under the style of Kung-
wang. His reign, which lasted about ten years, would
have been one of perfect peace save for an event casting a
slur, savoring of the scandalous, on the emperor's character.
One of his vassals, the duke of a little state called Mi, had
married three women of his own surname. This has at all
times been looked upon in China as a sort of incest, and it
was also contrary to the laws of the Ch6u dynasty. Ac-
cording to SsJ-ma Ts16n, his mother had reprimanded him
on this account, saying: '^You ought to hand over your
wives to the king, for as three animals constitute a flock
and three persons a meeting, three wives are a luxury.
Luxury is a fine thing, but not even the emperor will take
three wives of the same clan. If you assume to do what
even he is not worthy of, this will be your end." When
Kung-wang had seen the duke's three beauties, he called
for their delivery and, the women being withheld, the
emperor made war on the duchy of Mi and destroyed it.

GRADUAL DECUNE OF CENTRAL POWER 153

It does not appear from Ssi-ma Ts'i^n's account for what
reason the emperor wanted the three women. From other
accounts it would appear that old man though he was he
had fallen in love with them.^ Kung-wang died at the
age of eighty-four, leaving the throne to his son I-wang.

S 31. I*-WANG (934-910 B.C.)

Ssi-maTsl^n describes this monarch as an incapable ruler,
under whose government the royal house rapidly declined ;
and he insinuates that many of the satirical poems con-
tained in the Shirking referred to him.'

S 32. HiAU-WANG (909-895 B.C.)

This is the first monarch of the Ch6u dynasty who was
not the son of his predecessor. Hiau-wang, the younger
brother of Kung-wang, usurped the government, the chil-
dren of I-wang being too young to succeed their father.
The most noteworthy event of his reign was the elevation
of a favorite by name of Fei-tzi to the rank of prince of
Ts'in. Fei-tzi was supposed to derive his pedigree from
Po I, minister of ancestor worship under the Emperor
Shun in the twenty-third century B.C.; but, his family
having degenerated, he was obliged to make a living by
dealing in horses. The emperor being a great sportsman,
he managed so to ingratiate himself that he became
chief equerry and finally rose to be a prince of the em-
pire. In the course of centuries the duchy of Ts'in grew
in power and was destined after several generations to
cause the downfall of the Ch6u empire.

' De Mailla, Histoire g^rUraU de la Chines vol. ii, p. 11 teqq,
* His name I* differs in tone from that of his son P (| 33).

154 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

§ 33. P-WANG (894-879 B.C.)

P-wang was the eldest son of IWang, Hiau-wang's
nephew and predecessor. The tyrannical temper of Hiau-
wang, the usurper, had prevented Twang's character from
developing that self-consciousness inseparable from the
dignity of a ruler. Gossip has it that on his first court
assembly, when the grandees and ministers of the empire
were assembled to do him homage as emperor, he descended
from the throne to salute his friends. The princes did not
appreciate this democratic familiarity ; on their part, they
began to take liberties; discipline began to wane in the
empire, and internal wars were the result.

§ 34. Li-WANG (878-842 B.C.)

Li-wang tried to make up for his father's mildness by
excessive severity ; and the result of his imreasonable tem-
per was that the imperial authority sank rapidly into a
shadow. More than any of his predecessors, he tried to
rule by force and by terrorizing the people ; moreover, the
king was greedy for money, and he favored such officials
as knew how to extract it from the people. t^The spirit of
J independence which had taken possession of the feudatory
! princes under P-wang took more positive shape under Li-
' Wang. China now became more and more a confederation
of smaller states, and the power of the central government
became more and more nominal in spite of the emperor's
^eat exertions to keep down every attempt at freedom on
the part of his own subjects. Once in an interview with
his chief minister, the Duke of Shau, the emperor gave vent
to his displeasure because the people sneered at his ways.

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 155

XJpcm the duke's remarking that it was impossible to issue
orders in this connection, the emperor became furious and
sent for the court wizards, whom he ordered to furnish a
list of those of his subjects who had dared to say evil things
about him. The list being supplied, all the alleged slan-
derers were executed. Nobody henceforth dared to say a
word, for the very streets had eyes to detect offenders.
When Li-wang expressed his gratification at his success by
saying, ''Well, what has become of your gossipers now?"
the duke is supposed to have retorted in the famous speech :

"All you have brou^t about is a screen which prevents you
from learning the real sentiments of the people; but you should
know it is more dangerous to shut the people's mouths than to stop
the waters of a river. To stop the progress of a river means to force
It to expand, and thus do more harm than if it had been allowed
to take its natural course. Such is the case with your people. If
you want to prevent the damage threatening from the inundation
of a river, you have to lead it into a proper bed which will hold all
its waters; if you want to make an impression on the people, let
them have perfect liberty of speech."

He then goes on to explain why it is the best policy to
allow poets, historians, and statesmen to speak out freely ;
in fact, he places on record all the well-known commonplace
arguments brou^t forward against the evil effects of too
much seal in public censorship.

Li-Wang's speech has been preserved in a work of doubt-
ful origin, said to have been compiled during the Ch6u
dynasty, entitled Ktuhyu, "State Speeches" — a typical
representative of quite a number of works containing
speeches ascribed to all possible historical personages, but
bemg probably nothing better than the riietorical effusions
of some philosopher who wished to air his views by pigeon-

ttc

166 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

holing them m his register of historical anecdotes. This
seems, indeed, to be the origin of a great deal of what has
been handed down to us as ainese history; and m this
respect our knowledge of Chmese antiquity is hardly better
than that of ancient Rome, whose history often impresses
one as though it had been expressly gotten up for the stage.
Even the Shvrking, our oldest source for all that precedes
Confucius, is mainly a series of speeches embodying political
and social wisdom, loosely strung on anecdotes, possibly in-
vented for the purpose and distributed over a chronological
framework which may or may not be fictitious. We have
seen that the Emperor Huang-ti was credited with having
created a board of historians, divided into a right and a left
wing: the former of which had to record facts; the latter,
words and speeches. This is, of course, an invention of
later ages; but it clearly indicates the method observed by
the ancient Chinese in constructing or reconstructing their
most ancient history. The question arises whether the
facts were not invented in order to find nails on which to
hang the speeches. The latter, divested of their alleged
historical background, might be collected into a regular
system of political and social philosophy. Their associa-
tion with the dramatis personce of the several dynasties and
reigns, which would otherwise have remained an iminter-
esting skeleton of names, gives life to the lifeless and renders
abstract theories more palatable to the reader. Professor
Grube in his History of Chinese Literature * justly draws
attention to this peculiarity of the oldest historical texts,
in which speeches preponderate, whereas facts are referred
to in a mere casual manner in order, as it were, to facilitate
the understanding. The historical accounts of the Shvr

^ OeachichU der chineaischen Litteratur, Leipzig, 1902, p. 118.

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 157

king, therefore, consist much more of philosophical col-
loquies than of matters of fact.

Li-wang's govermnent was, of course, not liked by the
people, who broke out in open rebellion in 842 b.c, and
forced the king to spend the rest of his days in banishment,
leaving the government to the dukes of Ch6u and Shau,
descendants of the great Ch6u-kung.

§ 35. The Kunq-ho Period (841-828 b.c.)

The interregnum during which the two dukes conducted
the government on behalf of the absent king was called
kung-ho, which term may be rendered by ''common har-
mony," as alluding to the regency of the two officials named
by Ssi-ma Ts46n. According to the Bamboo Books and
the philosopher Chuang-tzi (4th cent. B.C.), the word Kung-
ho represents a personal name of one Ho, Earl of Kung,
which would imply that he, and not the two dukes, was
actually responsible for the government. When the
popular indignation had grown into open rebellion, Tsing,
the heir presumptive to the throne, took refuge after his
father's fli^t with the Duke of Shau, who shielded him
against the revolutionists ; and when in 828 b.c. Li-wang
died in banishment, Tsing, who had in the meantime
attained his majority, was proclaimed king under the name
of Suan-wang.

§ 36. SiJAN-WANG (827-782 B.C.)

Under the advice of the two virtuous dukes Ch6u and
Shau, Siian-wang earned the complete confidence of his
people as well as of his officials, althou^ dereliction of duty

158 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

had repeatedly brought on political reverses, which the
historians are so fond of tracmg back to the rulers' not hav-
ing listened to good advice before acting.

There was a time-honored custom under the Ch6u dynasky
that the emperor had to perform the ceremony of working
in person in the " Fields of a Thousand Acres" set aside for
the purpose, a ceremony similar to the handling of the
plough by the emperor at the present day. Siian-wang
declined to comply with the practice, in spite of the re-
monstrances of one of his dukes, with the result that in
789 B.C. his army was defeated in a battle against certain
Tangutan tribes. The name of the battle-field, according
to Ssi-ma Ts'i^n, was Ts'i6n-m6u, which means " a thousand
acres," but it would appear that the name was given to
that locality afterward in commemoration of the emperor's
disinclination to listen to his minister's remonstrances.
Ssi-ma Ts'i6n's account of Siian-wang's reign is very meager,
and he says nothing about any military achievements
against the Huns.

We learn much more on this subject from an ode in the
Shirking, which throws considerable light on one of those
contests of the Chinese against their old hereditary foe, the
Hi^n-yiin, or HUns, in the north. Although not a historical
narrative, the Shi-king serves occasionally as a most valu-
able historical source; its odes probably existed genera-
tions before Confucius and may, where facts of history are
alluded to, be regarded as almost contemporaneous tradi-
tion in poetical shape. This piece of ancient poetry con-
tains a lively account of a battle between the Chinese army
and the Huns which, according to the commentators, took
place in the first year of Siian-wang's reign, in July, 827 b.c.
The philosopher Chu Hi, in describing the situation referred

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 159

to by the poet, 8a)r8: "After Ch'ong-wang and K'ang-
wang the house of Ch6u fell into decay. Li-wang was so
oppressive that the people drove him from the capital.
TTie Hi6n-]riin then took advantage of the internal disorder
and invaded the country, till on the king's death his son
Tsing, known as Siian-wang, succeeded to the throne and
despatched against them Yin Ki-fu, whose successful
operations were sung by the writer of this ode.'' * Tliis part
of the Sh^kingf written by a poetical recorder of Hunnic
fighting living fully twelve himdred years before Priscus
and Jordanes, is probably as valuable a historical account
as any of the speeches attributed to emperors or ministers
and preserved so religiously in the Skurking and other
histories. I reproduce the ode in Legge's translation : ' —

** In the sixth month all was bustle and excitement.
The war carriages had been made ready,
With the four steeds of each, strong and eager ;
And the regular accoutrements had been placed in the

carriages.
The Hi6n-yQn were in blazing force,
And thence was the urgency.
The king had ordered the expedition,
To deliver the royal kingdom.

''Matched in strength were the four black steeds.
Well trained to observe every rule.
On this sixth month,
We completed our accoutrements.
Our accoutrements were completed.
And we marched thirty li every day.
The king had ordered the expedition.
To help the Son of Heaven.

* Cf . Qfles, A Ckineu Biographical DieUanary, p. 943, no. 2486.

* p. 281.

160 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

"The four steeds were long, and stout^
And laige-headed.
We smote the Hi6n-yihiy
And achieved great merit.
Severely strict and careful was our leader,
Discharging his military service, —
Discharging his military service,
And settling thereby the royal kingdom.

"Badly reckoned the Hi6n-y(in,
When they confidently occupied Tsiau and Huo
And overran Hau and Fang,
As far as to the south of the King.
On our flags was oiu: blazonry of birds,
While our white streamers fluttered brightly.
Ten large war chariots
Led the way in front.

"The war carnages were well made.
Nicely balanced before and behind.
Their four steeds were strong,
Both strong and well trained.
We smote the Hi^n-yiin,
As far as T'ai-yiian.
For peace or for war fit is Ki-fu,
A pattern to all the states.

"Ki-fu feasts and is glad;
Great happiness is his.
In returning from Hau,
Distant and long had been our march.
He entertains and feasts his friends.
With roast turtle and minced carp.
And who are there?
There is Chang Chung, the filial and brotherly."

It appears from this ode that the Hi^n-yiin had made in-
roads into the very heart of the Chinese dominions. Al-
though the several local names mentioned in connection

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 161

with the territories as being occupied or ovemrn by their
wild hordes cannot now be safely identified, there cannot
be any doubt about the river King, the south of which
(not the north, as Liegge inadvertently translates) the
enemy had reached. The King is an affluent joining
from the north the river Wei, near the present city of
Si-an-fu. We see that Siian-wang's army "smote the
Ki^n-yun as feu* as T'ai-yuan.'' This shows that the Huns
even after SiiiEtn-wang's victory held the entire north of the
Shan-si province, the very neighborhood where in the
third century B.C. their great monarch Mau-tun had his
capital. The hero of this ode was Yin Ki-fu, who is re-
peatedly mentioned in the "Book of Odes" as a military
leader, and who appears to have had a confidential position
among the king's surroundings. In another ode ' the
imperial troops are praised for their deeds on returning
from an expedition against the Hi^n-yiin imder a general
who is described as "the awe-inspiring Nan-chung.^' This
cide is generally referred to the much earlier wars of Won-
wang against the Hi^n-yiin, though it may have originated
at a later time. A descendant of this same Nan-chimg
is also mentioned in one of the odes ' as a military leader.
I am not prepared to say in what relation this man, whose
personal name was Huang-fUy stands to the name Nan-
chung occurring in a hieroglyphic inscription found on the
celebrated bronze tripod, now in the Buddhist Monastery
of Silver Island in the Yang-tzi River, near Chinkiang, and
of which I succeeded in taking a photograph in 1892.*
This interesting relic of Chinese ancient art has been the
subject of several learned essays by native archsologists,

* Legge, p. 261 9€qq, ' Lcggc, p. 555. ' See Toung pao, vol. vii,
p. 487 teg.

162 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

who have proved from the inscription that it dates from
the year 812 B.C., which falls in the reign of Suan-wang.
This emperor's wars against the Hi6n-yun give us, in con-
nection with what the bards of the ShVking have to tell
about them, an appropriate idea of the outfit of a Chinese
army in those days. The phases of pre<!onfudan culture,
as described in the several odes of the Shirking, have been
collected and methodically arrange by Ed. Biot in a paper
entitled ''Sur les moeurs des anciens Chinois, d'aprds le
Chi-king/' ^ and reproduced in an En^ish version by
Legge, in an Appendix to the Prolegomena of his edition
of the Shirking} While referring the student to this excel-
lent source of our knowledge of the Ch6u cultiu^, I think
the reign of the fighting emperor Siian-wang furnishes a fit
opportunity to extract the most noteworthy facts regarding
the manner in which wars were conducted by the Chinese
of the Ch6u period generally. Biot says : —

" It has been said that hunting is the image of war. This com-
parison becomes a reality in the deserts of North America and Cen-
tral Asia. When the men of one horde assemble and issue from
their place of settlement, their association has two simultaneous
objects : hunting in the vast steppes which have no definite pos-
sessors, and war with the other hordes which come to hunt on the
same debatable ground. In the times described in the Shi4nng
the greater part of the country surrounding the great cultivated
valley of the Yellow River was such a hunting ground, undivided
between the Chinese and the indigenous hordes. The CSiinese
armies, then led against the barbarians, hunted and fought by turns ;
their warriors used the same arms against the enemies and against
the wild animals. Nevertheless, several odes give the description
of regular expeditions directed by the sovereign, or by a CSiinese
feudal prince against another prince; several of them depict the

^ Journal Asiatique, 4th series, vol. ii, 1S43, pp. 307 9eqq,, 430 $eqq,
* Shirking, Prolegomena, pp. 142-171.

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 163

po«U ngularly ortablished upon the frontJen. Some extracta
from theM odea give an idea of what was then the art of war in

"Tbe frontier posts between the stat«e at war with one another,
m on the borders of tiie barbarous regions, were supplied from the
peaaantiT, and were relieved from year to year ; the service at these
posts was truly forced, and hence the lamentations of the soldiers
who were so stationed. Hie edict which enjoined regular service
OD tbe frontiers was inscribed on a bamboo tablet placed at the
post. In the Chinese armies of Uiis epoch, as in the feudal anniea
of our Middle Ages, the infantry was composed of husbandmen
taken from their labors, and they complained bitterly of their lot,
especially when they formed part of an expedition against the bar-
barous hordes of the north and the south. They had the greatest
fear of tbe HiAi-yOn on tbe north, known afterwards as the Hiung-
nu. The principal element of a Chinese army was the chariot
drawn by four horses. It carried three mailed warriors, the officer
to wbom it belonged being in the middle. He had on his right his
esquire, who passed to him bis arms, and on his left the charioteer.
A troop of soldiers followed the chariot to protect it. Tlie term
' chariot' was then a collective name like ' lance ' in our Middle AgM.
lite Li-la reckons for every chariot three mailed warriors, 25 foot-
men in front and at the ndes to guide the horses and the chariot,
and 72 U^t-armed foot-soldiers following. But this number or
oompany was never complete. . . . The sovereign never marched
without a guard of 2500 men, called ihl. Every dignitary, or great
officer, had an escort of 500 men called la. To employ our military
terms, ihl was a regiment and IQ a battalion. 8iz thl, or 15,000
men, formed an ordinary army. They distinguished the soldiers
of the left wing and tbe ri^t, according to the division long used
b the marching and encampments of the Tartar hordes. An army
was divided into three troops. . . . The chief of each corps had
his place in the middle of it.

"The chariot of the sovereign, or of the commander-b-chief, had
four or six horses, yoked abreast. When there were four horses,
which was the ordinary number, two of them were yoked to the
pols, and two to the transverse bar of tbe chariot. Tbe horses
were eorered with mail, or protected by bucUers. Those of the

164 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

commanders had golden bits with a small bell at each side of the
bit. The reins were richly adorned and led through rings of leather
on the backs of the horses. The sides of the chariots were covered
with boards as a defense against the arrows of the enemy. They
were adorned in the inside with mats of bamboo, or embroidered
carpets. The axle-trees of the chariots of the chiefs were wrapped
round with green silk, or with leather, probably to strengUien
them . The pole was also covered with leather, painted in five colors.

** The princes and regular warriors wore helmets. Those of the
princes of the blood were adorned with a plume of red silk. The
regular warriors had a sword, two lances (or spears) and two bows.
The scabbards of the chiefs' swords were adorned with precious
stones, or with other ornaments. The spears were of three kinds :
man, which was 4 meters long (20 Chdu cubits), and the ko,
16 cubits. These were set up in the war chariots. The javelin
was 6 cubits 6 ins. long, and was used by the foot-soldiers. ' All
the lances had red pennants or streamers.

" Like the hunting bows, those used in war were of wood adorned
with green silk. The bows of the chiefs had ornaments of ivory.
There were also bows of horn, or strong as horn, which discharged
several arrows at once. To preserve the bows, they were kept in
cases of tiger skin, or of ordinary leather. Every case contained
two bows, and they were closely fitted to bamboos, to hinder them
from being warped by the damp. The bow-cases and the quivers
were made of the skin of some marine animal called yu, which may
have been a seal.

''The mailed warriors had bucklers and battle-axes with handles
of wood. The foot-soldiers were usually armed only with javelins
and spears. The horses in the chariots neigh ; the flags and pennons
wave in the air ; the foot-soldiers and the assistants who guide the
horses march in silence. Besides the war chariots, there followed
the army carriages laden with sacks of baggage, and drawn by oxen.
These sacks had one or two openings, and contained provisions.
The chariots were unloaded, and arranged around the place of
encampment. Then the feeble watched the baggage, while the
strong advanced against the enemy.

''The expeditions against the indigenous tribes of the center,
the west, and the north, were made in the sixth moon, the time of

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 165

the year corresponding to the end of May and the beginning of
June. They marched 30 li per day, about 11 kOometera, if we
value the li at 1800 cubits and 10 centimeters each. For a grand
army of 300 chariots, 10 chariots formed the advanced guard.

''On the banners were figures of birds and of serpents. There
were attached to them little beUs and ribbons. On the royal
standard there was the image of the sacred dragon. The princes of
the blood, and secondary chiefs or viceroys had broad pennons or
flags. One pennon, formed of an ox-tail upon a pole, was placed
behind in the chariot of the chief of a squadron.

"The warriors wore colored cuisses, and buskins on their legs.
In one of the odes a man of Ts'in engages another to follow him to
the war by the promise of clothes, shoes, and weapons, should he
need them. The commandant of a corps d'armU had the title
K'i-fu or of Shang-fu. Several odes designate the general by the
name of ' the illustrious man,' meaning ' the Prince,' ' the Dignitary.'

"The drum gave the signal for departure, for attack, and for
retreat. Large drums were covered with the skin of a lizard called
Vo. Before the battle, the warriors excited one another by mock
combats. They leaped, ran, and threatened one another with their
weapons.

"In one of the odes. King Won causes the assault of a fortified
city, and his soldiers ascend the wall by means of hooked ladders.
He takes some prisoners and punishes them as rebels, proportion-
ing their chastisement to the gravity of their offense. He causes
the left ears of his captives to be cut o£f ; and in contenting himself
with this punishment he passes for a just and humane man. In
the state of Lu (towards the south of Shan-tung), the army returns
from an expedition. They present to the prince the ears that have
been cut o£f; they bring the captive chiefs in chains before the
judge, by whom they are condemned by regular sentence. Like
the tribes of America, the Chinese then made very few prisoners;
they put the vanquished chiefs to death, and released the com-
mon soldiers after cutting o£f one of their ears, as a mark of dis-
honor, or that they might recognise them if they met with them
again.

"On the parade ground of the ci^ital they practised archery
and the use of other weapons."

166 THE ANQENT HISTORY OF CHINA

This graphic description of the Chinese method of war-
fare under the Ch6u djmasty has been gathered from
numerous passages in the Shirking. It will serve as an
example showing how the old poetical literatiu^ fills a gap
in the historical tradition similar to that filled up by the
Homeric epics in Greek history. The student will find
references in detail, with some valuable critical notes, partly
modifying the results drawn by Biot from the Shirking, in
Legge's translation.

From a military point of view the Chinese method of
warfare does not strike one as very practical, if one con-
siders that the Hi6n-]riin, or Hims, as true sons of the
steppe, which they must have been at all times, ought to
have enjoyed a great advantage in moving about on their
fleet horses against an enemy possessing no cavalry what-
ever. Although the Chinese have been defeated here and
there by the Huns, it appears that on the whole, in spite of
then* clumsy chariot fighting, on roads which were probably
hardly any better than those of the present day, they have
had on their side greatly superior armament and a certain
uniformity of organization ; but their chief advantage dur-
ing centuries of this warfare may have been the fact that
the fighting took place on hilly territory, where cavalry
forces could not well be displayed, the Huns having always
been more successful on extensive plains, like the Mon-
golian steppe, than in alpine regions, like the north of
Shan-si. When they broke into Europe twelve hundred
years after Siian-wang, their first successes were largely
supported by the conditions of the ground, those extensive
plains of southern Russia, over which they sent that ava-
lanche of warlike hordes, increasing their power by forcing
kindred folks into their service. Finally, we have to con-

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 167

ader the probability that, during the Ch6u period, the Huns
had not as yet consolidated into a nation, whereas the
Chinese, althou^ a confederation of smaller states some-
what like the German emph^, cheerfully followed the call
of the Son of Heaven when the nation was in danger.
With all the welcome detail regarding the Chinese side of
that warfare, the ShVking tells us very little about the Huns
of those days. The earliest account of the gradual develop-
ment of Hunnic life has been supplied by Ssi-ma Ts'i£n,
who probably reconstructs his sketch of the most ancient
Huns from what he had learned about these nomads at
his own time, the beginning of the first century b.c. Ssi-
ma Ts'i^ ^ gives us the following account of the oldest
Hiung-nu.

''Their earliest ancestors were the descendants of the
Eknperor Yu of the Hia dynasty and were styled Shun-weL"
Parker suggests that this name Shvnrweif which most prob-
ably applies to the chief of the country, — since not the
whole nation, but merely the reigning family could have
descended from the Emperor Yii, — is related to an old
diinese family name Shvn-yu. This seems quite possible,
althou^ the Chinese themselves derive it from a small
state mentioned in their "Spring and Autumn Annals."
Since we hardly know anything about the sounds of Chinese
characters during the Ch6u dynasty, excepting the some-
what doubtful conclusions we may arrive at from a study
of the rhymes m the ShV-king odes, it may not be too bokl
a conjecture if we connect this title Shun-w^^ or «SAufi-yfi,
with the sound Shan-yu, by which throughout Chinese his-
tory the supreme ruler of the Hiung-nu is designated.

^8H4ri, ch. ex; cf. E. H. Parker, Th« Turko-^cytkian TrAtt, in
diiMi Review, vol. xx, p. 1 M99.

168 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

"Before the time of Yau and Shun there were the Shan-jung,
the Hi^n-yiin and the Hun-yii, who occupied the northern de-
pendencies, following their cattle and shifting their abodes. Their
herds chiefly consisted of horses, oxen and sheep, these being the
animals commonly reared by them; the camel, mules and other
equine animals [named in the text, but difficult to identify] being
of less frequent occurrence. Following their pasturages, they shifted
about and had neither cities and towns, or other fixed abodes, nor
regular agriculture, though they divided their territories ; they had
no written documents, the spoken word being sufficient by way of
contract. From early childhood they were taught to ride on sheep,
to draw the bow and shoot birds and rats ; when half grown they
would shoot foxes and hares as game for food. Having grown to
become soldiers, they would thus become excellent archers, when
they were all supplied with armors on horseback. In easy times
they would follow their cattle and live on the chase, but in times of
trouble every man was trained to fight in battle and ready to make
raids on other lands. This was their natural disposition. For
distant fight their weapon was the bow and arrow ; for close fight
they used swords and small spears. If they could, they would go
on and on in fighting, but withdraw if they were not successful.
They were not ashamed to take to flight, and as long as a matter
was of advantage to them, they did not know propriety or justice.
From their prince and king downward they all lived on the flesh
of their cattle, using their skins for clothing ; they wore felt coats.
The able-bodied would eat the fat and dainty parts of meats,
leaving the remnants of meals to old folks, for they honored strong
and robust men, and despised those that were old and decrepid.
The man whose father had died would marry his step-mothers
(i.e. his father's own wives except his own mother) ; when a brother
died his consorts became the wives of the surviving brother. It
was their custom not to taboo names ; and they had no clan names
or by-names. When the Hia dynasty became weak, Kung Liu
[Duke Liu, an ancestor of the Chou emperors] had lost his hus-
bandry-post, he changed to become a western Tartar and had his
city in Pin. Three hundred years after this, the Jung and the Ti
Tartars attacked the great king T'an-fu [the grandfather of Won-
wang]."

GRADUAL DECUNE OF CENTRAL POWER 169

I am inclined to assume from this passage that the ances-
tors of the house of Ch6u had for centuries adopted semi-
Tartar life, which supports the hypothesis that Wu-wang
brou^t about the downfall of the Shang dynasty with the
assistance of Hunnic tribes and helps to explain the use of
a Turkish word for the dagger handled by him in giving
the body of his enemy Ch6u-sin his final coup.

" T'an-fu fled and went to the foot of Mount K'i, whither the peo-
ple of Pin followed him and founded a city which was the beginning
of the state of Ch6u. Fully a hundred years after this the Duke of
the West [i,e, Won-wang] n^ade war on the Kun barbarians, and some
twelve or thirteen years afterwards Wu-wang made war on Ch6u-
sin and took up his camp at the city of Lo and again lived in Fong
and in Hau, and scattered and drove away the Jung barbarians to
the north of the rivers King and Lo, from whence they offered
periodical tribute, and orders were given to call them Huang-fu,
the 'Steppe Dependency.'

"More than two hundred 3rears later the prestige of the (3i6u
dynasty began to decline, and when Mu-wang made war on the
K'Qan barbarians, he obtained four white wolves and four white
deer to come back with. From this time onward the Huang-fu
did not come, upon which Ch6u introduced the punishment of
mutilation [probably referring to the habit of cutting o£f the left
ear of prisoners in war, which thus seems to be looked upon as an
act of reprisal for the Huns not sending tribute to the Chinese
court]. Over two hundred years after Mu-wang, Yu-wang of the
Ch6u dynasty had quarreled with the Marquis of Shon [father of
the legitimate empress] on account of his favorite sultana Pau SsL*
The Marquis of Shon got angry and formed an alliance with
the K'Qan barbarians and attacked and killed Yu-wang of the
Ch6u djmasty below the Li-shan. Upon this they seised certain
territories of the C3i6u and settled down between the rivers

* Cf. Chavannes, MhnmreM huioruiu€$, vol. i, p. 281 ; also Giles,
A Chinese Bio^aphicdL Dictionary, p. 619, who r e pr es en ts Yu-waof
as ''King of Yu" in modem Chl4i, though I do not know on what au-
thority.

170 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

King and Wei, encroaching over and terrorising the Bfi

dom."

The time of Suan-wang has been credited with the pro-
duction t)f a most interesting monument of Chinese an-
tiquity in the shape of a lengthy stone inscription, the so-
called " Stone Drums of the Ch6u Dynasty," describing, as
Chinese critics mamtain, a himting expedition by the em-
peror to the neighborhood of Mount K'i, the ancestral home
of the Ch6u rulers. Ever since they were first discovered,
the ten stone slabs containing the remnants of these ancient
hieroglyphics have been the subject of much controversy
among the Chinese. To imderstand the name ''stone
drums," in Chinese shirku, it should be known that the
Chinese include imder that term all rocks having a flat sur-
face and a shape in any way similar to a drum. Since their
first discovery, early in the seventh century a.d., on what
must be supposed to have been their original site near the
old Mt. K4 in southwestern Shen-si, the stone drums have
been shifted about a good deal, so that the seven hundred
characters which may have constituted their original tenor
have dwindled to a few more than three hundred, the re-
mainder being totally effaced. Among the many learned
opinions placed on record by native archaeologists, the most
noteworthy seem to be those of Ou-yang Siu, the Mommsen
of his time, the eleventh centiuy, inasmuch as he was the
first historian and epigrapher, who is entirely skeptical as
to its being a genuine document, and another writer of the
Sung dynasty who tries to refute Ou-yang Siu's arguments
one by one. The modem view among the Chinese au-
thorities is in favor of the inscriptions being true records
of the Siian-wang period. This is also the view expressed
by Dr. S. W. Budiell in an elaborate essay, "The Stone

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 171

Dninifl of the Ch6u Djmasty/' ^ who concludes his paper
by saying: "No motive has been suggested to account
for forgery on so large a scale. If we accept the train of
reasoning of Ou-yang, we must reject all the sculptured
monuments of Egypt, Assyria and Persia, which have
been brou^t to li^t in such profusion of late years."
Chavannes, while accepting the Stone Drums as a g^-
uine relic of antiquity, differs from the Chinese re-
ceived view in ascribing them not to Siian-wang, the em-
peror, but to a king of the Ts'in state sometime about
300 B.c.»

J 37. Yu-WANO (781-771 B.C.)

In quoting this rapid survey of the oldest relations of
the Chinese with the nei^boring Hims, I have anticipated
the troublesome times which followed the energetic Siian-
wang under the reign of his lascivious son Yu-wang. Suan-
Wang's armies had fou^t successfully not only against the
Huns, but also against the Man barbarians in the state of
King, on the borders of the Yang-tzi River, about Lake
Tung-t'ing and other enemies in the east and west. In all
directions the old frontiers of the empu^ were maintained
and extended by him. Yu-wang led a dissolute life, and
his government was oppressive. Like several of his prede-
cessors, he brought trouble on himself and his country by
his infatuation for a woman. When he intended to make
war on a small state called Pau, the chief of that country
sent him for his seraglio a girl of great beauty, named Ss!,

> Jownal €f tk§ China Branch of ths Royal AiioHc SocUty, New
Serial, no. 8, pp. 133-160. * See Mimoir*$ hulaHquo$, toL t, p.
488 Mf.

172 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

for which reason she is known as Pau-ssi, or Ssi of Pau.
The king became so enamored with her that he deposed in
her favor his legitimate consort, who was a daughter of
the Marquis of Shon. He was weak enough to conform all
his life to the pleasures of his favorite, who did not seem
to appreciate his attentions. She even made him wait in
vain to see her smile. Having allowed it to become known
that the sound of the tearing of silk was a particularly
pleasant noise to her, the emperor caused many fine pieces
of precious texture to be torn up to gratify her whim ; but
even this failed to bring the desired smile. She wished for
a greater sacrifice, and what seemed to her a good practical
joke was actually carried out: Huge beacon fires, which
had been agreed upon to serve as a signal to the emperor's
vassals to come with their troops to his rescue in time of
danger, were lighted. The princes promptly responded,
and the frivolous queen laughed at them. She little
thought, however, how dangerous it is to cry "wolf!"
without need. When, later on, the Huns made renewed
inroads, the beacon signals were lighted m earnest, but the
feudal princes, without whose assistance the king was at
the mercy of the enemy, thinking that they might again
be the victims of a hoax, failed to obey the simimons, which
led to Yu-wang's ruin. Ssi-ma Ts'i6n places the time of
Yu-wang's being first enthralled by his mistress in the
third year of his reign (779 B.C.). The emperor had by
her a son named Po-fu; hence the wish of the unworthy
couple to depose the legitimate consort as mother of the
heir to the throne. This caused the court astronomer
Po-yang to predict the downfall of the dynasty ; and good
reason he had for his prediction, if we view things through
the eyes of an ancient Chinese philosopher. For nature

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 173

itself began to show warnings of all sorts. An earthquake
created alarm among the people ; a famine throu^out the
empire was interpreted as the immediate punishment of
Heaven for Yu-wang's evil ways ; but the most portentous
of all Heaven's warnings was an eclipse of the sun. Re-
garding this eclipse, in connection with the other public
misfortunes that had befallen the empire, we possess an
ode of the Shi-king,^ which proves to be a historical docu-
ment of the greatest value. It says : —

'' At the conjunction of the sun and moon in the tenth month.
On the first day of the moon, which was Hn-mau,
The sun was eclipsed,
A thing of very evil omen.
Then the moon became small.
And now the sun became small.
Henceforth the lower people
Will be in a very deplorable case.

"The sun and moon announce evil.
Not keeping to their proper paths.
All througfk the kingdom there is no proper government^
Because the good are not employed.
For the moon to be eclipsed
Is but an ordinary matter.
Now that the sun has been eclipsed, —
How bad it is 1

Grandly flashes the lightning of the thunder; —

There is a want of rest, a want of good.

The streams all bubble up and overflow.

The cragi on the hill-tops fall down.

Hi^ banks become valleys;

Deep valleys become hills.

Alas for the men of this time 1

How does the king not stop these thingn?

* Legge, p. 820.

174 THE ANCTENT HISTORY OF CHINA

"Huang-fu is the president;
Fan is the minister of instruction;
Kia-po is the chief administrator;
Chung-ytln is the chief cook;
Ts6u is the recorder of the interior;
K'ui is master of the horse ;
Yd is captain of the guards;
And the beautiful wife blazes, now in possession of her place/'

This ode, of which I have quoted the first four stanzas
in Legge's translation, has for its subject the lamentation
of one of the emperor's officials living in an out-of-the-way
quarter of the empire, alone and sorrowful over the sad
corruption into which the empire had sunk. If we hesi-
tate in accepting the identification of the date of the
eclipse under Chung-k'ang in 2165 B.C., there cannot be
any doubt as to the one referred to in this ode. The tenth
month and first day of the moon, designated by the cyclical
characters sin-mau of the Ch6u calendar, correspond to
August 29, 776 b.c. (not 775; Dr. Chalmers, and with him
Legge and other Sinologues, make a mistake of one year in
all their chronological statements by not coimting the year
of Christ's birth as 1 b.c.).* This fact, highly important in
calling Heaven itself as a witness in confirming the reliance
we may place in this early period of Chinese history, has
been pointed out without contradiction, as far as I am
aware, from either Sinologues or astronomers by the Jesuit
Father Amiot in his celebrated paper on " The Antiquity
of the Chinese proved by their Monuments." ^ The coin-
cidence of the two dates proves beyond a doubt that the
opinion of Chinese commentators, who described this ode

^ Arendt, Synchronistische RegenterUdbellen, p. 196. ' Mifno%re$
eoneernarU Us Chinois, vol. ii, Paris, 1777, p. 99 seqq.

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 176

as applying to Yu-wang on the ground of circumstantial
evidence, must be correct. It is, according to all the
Chinese chronological authorities, the sixth year of Yu-
wang's reign ; and this is, indeed, as Legge says, '' the earli-
est date in Chinese history about which there can be no
dispute." Previous dates have been arrived at by compu-
tation. This should not involve that the historical period
be^ns as late as Yu-wang's reign, as Mayers seems to assume
in his Chronological Tables. Doubts may be justified, it
is true, as far as exact chronology is concerned ; but we
have in this case to distinguish between chronology and
history. We have seen that the main two sources of the
former, the standard reckoning and the Bamboo Book
Annals, show considerable deviations from each other, in-
creasing as we go back to the earliest times and amounting
to more than two hundred years under Huang-ti, but dis-
appearing altogether with the end of Li-Wang's reign
(842 B.C.). If such solar eclipses as ought to have been
visible in China previous to Yu-wang's time are not men-
tioned in the early Chinese history, otherwise so conscientious
in placing on record astronomical facts, the reason may be,
as Amiot has pointed out, that they occurred when cloudy
weather made their observation impossible. I, therefore,
see no reason why we should not date the commencement
of the historical period, as far as the main facts are con-
cerned, many generations before Yu-wang, while making
allowance for doubts in the chronology owing to the two-
fold tradition. The dates of the Bamboo Books will be
found in Arendt's Table. The differences in the begin-
nings of the main periods are shown in the following
extract: —

176

THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

Standard Chronology Bamboo Books

Huang-ti

Yau

Shun

Chung-k'ang

Ch'ong-t'ang

Ch6u-sin

Wu-wang

Mu-wang

Li-wang

Kung-ho period

B.C.

2704
2357
2258
2205
2150
1766
1154
1122
1001
878

B.C.

2491
2145
2045
1089
1952
1558
1102
1050
962
853

It seems strange that the two divergent chronologies
should harmonize just at the commencement of the Kimg-ho
period, the name of which, we have seen, was interpreted
in a twofold sense. Is it possible that neither of the inter-
pretations is correct, and that the term Kung-ho, " common
harmony,'^ refers to the end of the discord among chronolo-
gists, signalized by the first year of this period ?

We have seen from the Shi-king that the beautiful Pau-
ssi was "in possession of her place" at the emperor's side
in the sixth year of his reign. The legend, if it may be so
called, of her having lighted the beacons to make fools of
the feudatory princes would, therefore, seem to fall in the
years following the eclipse. Certainly the punishment for
it, ending with Yu-wang's destruction, belongs to the year
771 B.C., as the last year of his reign. Ssi-ma Ts'i^n does
not mention the eclipse referred to in the Shl-king ; but he
has preserved fuller details about the beacon affair. It
appears that Yu-wang himself had made the arrangement
of a fire beacon, or pyre, being lighted " when the big drum
announced the approach of an enemy," the smoke of which

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 177

was to serve as a signal in the daytime, whereas the flames
were visible at long distance at ni^t, the beacons being
placed on the summits of the hills. The Marquis of Shon,
father of the legitimate empress, of course, resented the
treatment his daughter and grandson had received at the
hands of Yu-wang and his ambitious minion. In his dis-
tress he had allied himself with the K'iian barbarians (Huns)
to attack the emperor. The signal beacons were lifted,
but no soldiers came to the rescue. Yu-wang was killed
by the Huns, who also carried away Pau-ssi and plundered
the imperial treasury.

I 38. P'ING-WANG (770-720 B.C.)

After the fall of Yu-wang the feudal lords arranged with
the Marquis of Shon that the late emperor's legitimate son
I-kiu, who had been staying with the marquis, should be
raised to the throne, and he occupied it under the name of
PHng-toang, — Ssi-ma Ts'i^n says, " in order that he mi^t
be charged with the sacrifices of the Ch6u dynasty." This,
it appears, was henceforward the most important duty of
the Ch6u emperors, who, with the great respect for legiti-
macy characterizing the Chinese, were required to see that
sacrifices were duly offered to their distinguished fore-
fathers. But that is all; the real power went more and
more into the hands of the emperor's vassab. P'ing-wang,
feeling the weakness of his dominions in the western por-
tions, owing to their being so much exposed to the attacks
of the barbarians, removed his capital to the city of Lo,
previously known as Tung-tu, i.e. eastern capital.^ P'ing-

* Thk dty, known also as Lo-yang , the present Ho-nan-fu, was also
the capital of the eastern Han dynasty.

178 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

Wang's reign, according to Ssi-ma Ts'i^n, is characterised
\ by the rapid decUne of the imperial power in favor oi the
rising influence of feudal states. Among the latter Ssi-ma
Ts'ien mentions especially those of T&'i, Ch'u, T&'in, and
Tsin, which treated the emperor more and more as a
nonentity, and the lords of which held the leadership each
in his own sphere.

It is perhaps characteristic that imder the reign of P'ing-
wang an important change takes place in our historical
sources. The Shurking closes here its account of the Ch6u
emperors, which is merely a collection of documents or
speeches placed on record as being attributed to king^ and
other historical personages, and contains important lacunae
for long periods, during which nothing remarkable is re-
corded. Legge * says with regard to this gap in the Shur
king: —

''This fact is sufficient to prove that Confucius did not compile
the Shu as a history of his country, or even intend that it should
afford materials for such a history. Hb design, we may rather
judge, was to bring together such pieces as might show the wonder-
ful virtue and intelligence of ancient sovereigns and statesmen,
who should be models for those of future ages, but between P'ing-
wang and Mu-wang there had reigned seven sovereigns of the house
of Ch6u; and it is remarkable that not a single document of the
reign of any of them was incorporated by Confucius into the ShU"
king. Indeed, Wu-wang, the first of the sovereigns of Ch6u, had
no successor equal to himself ; and but for his brother, the Duke of
Ch6u, the dynasty would have come to an early end. There was a
constant degeneration after K'ang-wang. Its progress was now
and then temporarily but feebly arrested. Power and influence
passed with a steady progress from the imperial court to one feu-

^ Shu-king, p. 613, in a footnote, the substance of which is repro-
duced above.

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 179

datoiy and another, till in the time of Confucius himself the sue-
oeasors of Wu-wang were hardly more than shadows of an empty
name."

Hie removal of P'ing-wang's capital to the east marks a
new epoch in the history of the Ch6u dynasty. Chinese
historians speak up to this time of the Sircfufu, i.e. the
"Western Ch6u/' and from P'ing-wang downward as the
Ttmg-chdu, or " Eastern Ch6u." It is a remarkable coinci-
dence that from this time also dates the period described
in another historical classic compiled by Confucius under
the name of Ch'un-tsHu, "Spring and Autmnn Annals/'
which no longer describes the history of the house of Ch6u
as that of the imperial dynasty, but that of a vassal state
called Lu, covering certain territpries in the west of the pres-
ent province of Shan-tung and being the sage's native coun-
try. Such as they are, the "Spring and Autiunn Annals"
contain the history of twelve dukes of Lu, extending from
722 to 481 B.C. Confucius is supposed to have compiled
them from records made in connection with the ducal
court oi Lu. The mam text of the work is confined to the
briefest possible notices of the chief events ; but it has been
extended by three early commentaries, the most notable
of which is that of Tso-k'iu Ming, a personage of doubtful
identification, possibly a disciple of Confucius himself. It
is known and much quoted under the name of Tso-chuan.
Tlie Tso-ckuan is our principal source for the period covered
by the " Spring and Autumn Annals. " The latter itself con-
tains scarcely enough detail to make up a history, whereas
Uie commentary throws important li^t not only on events
connected with the state of Lu, but also on the history
of other states and of the imperial house. The author
has been at great pains to collect information apart from

180 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

the ducal records, so that Legge^ justly says of this
work : —

"The events and the characters of the time pass as m reality
and life before us. In no ancient history of any country have we
such a vivid picture of any lengthened period of its annals as we
have from Tso of the 270 years which he has embraced in his
work."

Two other commentaries on the " Spring and Autimm
Annals " exist ; namely, those of Kung-yang Kau and Ku-
liang Ch'i, both of whom lived in the fifth century B.C., but
were probably somewhat more recent than Tso-k'iu Ming.
The Tso-chiuin, however, is not only the most complete, but
probably also the most reliable of the three, although, as is
the case with many of the works of the Ch6u dynasty which
have seen the light after the Confucian Classics, it has gone
through the purgatory of philological treatment at the hands
of native scholars of the Han dynasty, who are responsible
for interpolations and additions easily distinguishable from
the purely historical substance as philosophical reflections
or ex post facto predictions. When compared with the
Tso-chican commentary, the CKun-tsHu itself appears as a
work unworthy of a great historian ; and doubts have been
entertained whether Confucius must be really regarded as
its author. If the great sage is really responsible for it,
he must have had special reasons for leaving it with all
the imperfections pointed out by later critics. The high
reputation which the work has at all times enjoyed among
Chinese scholars is apparently due to the personal admira-
tion in which the great teacher was held by his nation.
Confucius was not a writer. The CKun-tsHu is the only

* CVufi-to'iu, Prolegomena, p. 28.

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 181

work the actual authorship of which is attributed to him,
if we accept the doubts expressed as to his fatherhood of
the Skurking, and if we regard his connection with the Sh\r
king as merely an editorial one. His greatness, like that
of Socrates, consisted more in his personality and the
teaching? among his friends than in his writings, and if
Mencius ^ quotes him as having said, "It is the 'Spring and
Autunm' which will make men know me; and it is the
' Spring and Autumn ' which will make men condemn me,"
he clearly refers to his political views, and not to his position
as an educator of his nation. Possibly the work has not
come down to us in its original shape. Professor Grube, in a
judicious essay on this vexed question of Chinese literature,'
takes into consideration the possibility that both the CKunr
Win and its commentary, the Tso-chiuin, were the work of
Confucius ; and if we have to make allowance for the text of
the latter having been tampered with by the Han editors,
the occasional contradictions which may appear in the two
texts in their present shape need not prevent us from mak-
ing such a sympathetic compromise.

I 39. Geography of the Ch'un-ts'iu Period

(722-481 B.C.)

If we ^ance at a historical map of Germany during the
Thirty Years' War, and if we recall the changes it under-
went both before and after that period within the space of
about two centuries and a half, corresponding in duration
to the Ch'un-ts'iu period, we may comprehend the diffi-
culty, not to say impossibility, of furnishing a 83moptic
view of the numerous states constantly at war with each

* Legge* p. 157. ' OtMehiehU der chineMtscken Liiterahir, p. 68 Mgq.

182 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

other, falling under the nominal sway of the Ch6u dynasty.
Each generation of those days presents a different view.
The geography of the Ch6u4i, with its nine provinces, or
duiu, bearing such close resemblance to the divisions of the
empire under the Great Yii, is a simple affau- when com-
pared with that multiplicity of states which began to grow
up from small beginnings, some of them attwiing great
power, others being short-lived and swallowed up by their
neighbors. Their development in history may be traced
in the Tso-chtum ; but as affecting the history of China at
large, I shall mention only the more important ones among
them. Students who care for further detail will find it in
Legge's edition of the historical classic itself.

The development of supremacy among certain states,
nominally coming within the jurisdiction of the emperor,
is probably to a large extent the result of their geographical
position. The states occupying the eastern part of the
empire were naturally prevented from expansion by their
being situated so close to the sea-coast ; those in the north,
west, and south had the opportunity to join arms with
rude but warlike neighbors, whose territories, by force or
persuasion, they managed to incorporate into their own
dominions, allowing their populations to amalgamate,
spreading Chinese civilization among them, while profiting
by their warlike spirit. The states which most benefited
by such a conjimcture were those of Tsin, Ts'in, and Ch'u.
The first two names, so similar in sound, should not be con-
founded with each other; the initial of the tsin (without
an apostrophe) being comparatively soft, whereas tsHn is
pronoimced with a hard explosive almost approaching an
aspirate. The countries represented by these names were
next-door neighbors and occupied the entire northwest of

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 183

the present empire. Tsin held the greater part of the
present province of Shan-si and the adjoining portion of
Chi-li with that portion of Shen-si which lay on and near
the opposite shore of the Yellow River. Hie large tract of
country west of it, comprising that fertile valley of the Wei
River with a number of seats of the ancient Chinese civili-
lation, had from small beginnings grown into the dominion
of the Ts'in state. Both these states had for centuries
to do all the fighting for the Chinese of the interior against
their northern and western enemies, the Huns, whose several
divisions are mentioned under various names, as we have
seen. The result of this fitting was the gradual increase
of their military strength. We have seen how the ancestors
of the Ch6u emperors originally also occupied a small terri-
tory on the western frontier, and how the warlike spirit
and the virtue of their rulers was exercised and fostered
by their having to do the fitting for that lazy and voluptu-
ous court of the decadent Shang dynasty ; also, how thereby,
from small beginnings, the dukes of Ch6u had grown so
powerful that with the assistance of Huns and other
boundary tribes they managed to throw the Shangs out
of the field, whose last scion they placed in charge of the
kingdom ot Corea as a vassal state.

Hie states of Tsin and Ts'in and their great rival in the
south, the state of Ch'u, now tried with the assistance of
the foreign elements on the boundary to make use of the
weakness of the imperial court to increase their power.
Who those foreigners were is, of course, not an easy ques-
tion to decide. If I speak of the nei^bors of Tsin and
TiB'in as ''Huns,'' I wifih this term to be understood in its
broadest sense. The Huns that broke into Europe in the
fourth century a.d. should be looked upon as a politicali

184 THE ANQENT HISTORY OF CHINA

and not a racial, union. The Huns proper, as the dominant
race, were probably of Turkish extraction. So were
the Hiimg-nu, their predecessors in the east.* But the
Hiung-nu, as a political power, comprised, besides the
Turkish elements among central Asiatic nations, also
the ancestors of the races which we now separate from them
as being of Mongolic and Tungusic extraction. It is quite
probable that the different tribes of the north and west of
China whose names appear in the history of the Ch'un-

^ Quite a number of arguments support this hy|K>thesis. The dis-
covery and decipherment of the Old-Turkish stone inscriptions found
on the banks of the Orchon and of the Tonjukuk inscription found near
Urga leave not the slightest doubt that the language in which they are
written is Turkish. There can, further, be no doubt whatever that
the two allied nations, the Turk and Sir-TardiLsh, a portion of whose
history is described in those inscriptions, are identical with the nar
tions called Tu-kui and SU-yen-t*o respectively in Chinese records,
both of whom are distinctly stated to have been offshoots of the old
Hiung-nu. Similarly the nation described by the Chinese as Kau-ku,
which we know to be identical with the Uigurs, one of the chief repre-
sentatives of the Turkish stock during the Middle Ages, is stated in
Chinese accounts as considering the Hiung-nu as their ancestors.
They were even said to speak the language of these, their forefathers,
with but slight differences occasioned by the lapse of centuries.
This may account for the fact that many of the Hiung-nu words, of
which the approximate sound and the meaning have been preserved
in Chinese contemporaneous records, are easily explained by the cor-
responding words in the Uiguric vocabulary or that of its modem
representatives such as the Turki, Djagatai, or Teleutic dialects.
The only conclusion we can draw from these considerations is, that the
Hiung-nu, or Huns, were actually Turks in a racial sense, whatever
the other nations may have been, whether Mongols or Tunguses,
who were forced to join arms with them and formed part of the
Hiung-nu, or Huns, as a political union. The identity of the Huns
of Europe and the Hiung-nu of Chinese historians, denied by R^musat
and Ritter, has been proved in my paper Ueher Wolga-Hunnen und
Hiung-nu {Siizungsberichtt der phUos.-philol. Claaae der k. bayer.
Akademie d, Wiasenach., 1899, Band ii, Fasc. ii, Mttnchen, 1900).

GRADUAL DECLINE OP CENTRAL POWER 185

ts'iu period were just as different in race and language as
they are nowadays, and that it was merely their nomadic
life and a certain uniformity in social organization which
united them into one group. In the Tso-chtum these
northern and western barbarians appear under various
names, which now take the place of the former Hun-yii
and Hi^n-yun, the Huns of the earliest periods, with whom
they are identified by the later Chinese historians. As
falling within this category, we may regard the hordes
described in the Tso-chuan as Jung, Ti, and /. The Jung
were chiefly found in the west, the Ti in the north, and the
/ in the east of the present Chinese dominions. We know
nothing about their relations with the inhabitants of the
more distant parts of the Asiatic continent; and if they
had anything in common with the earliest Scythians, which
have become more or less imperfectly known in Europe,
such a supposition can only rest on conjecture. Their be-
ing mentioned under so many different names seems to
show that in the earliest times they did not form a polit-
ical union, as they certainly did at the end of the third cen-
tury B.C., when Mau-tun, — which name I have endeavored
to explain as the old Chinese transcription of Turkish
Baghalur, " valiant," " hero," — as Great Khan of the Hiung-
nu nation, united under his scepter the Tartars of all races
between Manchuria in the east and Lake Aral in the west.
An old Latin chronicle, the "Chronica Hungarorum," by
John of Thur6cz, who probably wrote about the year 1490,
has placed on record a list consisting of thirty-seven
names siud to represent King Attila's ancestors.* We

■Hirth, SinologUeKs BtUrdge zur OeMchiehU der TQrhMkmr:
I. Du AhnerUafel AUUa*$ nach JoKannf von TkurdcM, in BulUiin qf
tiU Imjmrial Academy of 8i. P^Urthwrg, 5th aeriei, vol. ziii, no. 2.
OeptemlMr, 1000.)

186 THE ANCIENT fflSTORY OP CHINA

do not know what sources this author had before him ; and
it was generally believed that he had drawn upon his
imagination for his facts. This was my own belief, toO|
until I compared the names found in the Latin chronicle
with those appearing in a genealogical table of Hiimg-nu
kings, reconstructed from Chinese records. I then found
that some of the names of the chronicle in their proper
generations and the identical sequence are strongly sug-
gestive of the Chinese transcriptions of the names of certain
Hiung-nu kings then settled in the north of China. Tlie
Hungarian carries his list to the thirtieth ancestor of King
Attila. At the head of it he places, in accordance with the
time-honored custom of medieval authors, certwi Biblical
names. If we except these, from Noah down to Nimrod, the
first name having an indigenous coloring is that of King
Attila's thirty-third ancestor which, if we give an average
of thirty-three years to each generation, carries us to about
the year 635 b.c. If we can make up our minds as to the
chronicler's bona fides with regard to King Attila's ancestors
during the Han period, we may perhaps be justified in
doing so as regards the Ch6u d)masty to the extent of
assuming that at least that portion of the northern tribes
which was looked upon as the ancestral horde of the later
Hiung-nu was governed by kings of the same family.
Ssi-ma Ts'i6n {Shl-kif ch. ex, p. 9) even goes a good deal
farther, when he asserts that " from Shun-wei [their alleged
first monarch, called a descendant of the Chinese Emperor
Yii] down to T'6u-man [probably standing for Turkish
Tumarit or Tiimdn, 'ten thousand,' Mau-tim's father, who
died 209 B.C.] fully a thousand years elapsed, though their
genealogy could not be traced." This would bring us to
the thirteenth century B.C., as the period in which regal

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 187

power was organized at least among some portion of the
Huns.

The name Jung^ found in the TBo-chuanj is probably
nothing but another form of the root Hun or Kan, which,
we have seen, has assumed the most different shapes in the
course of Chinese history. For like the Hun-yu, Hi^n-
yun, etc.| they may be located, from the indications of the
T^thchuant in certain parts of the northern or western
boundary. This boundary was then, however, much nearer
the center of the empire than it was later on. One of the
tribes called Jung for generations made constant inroads
on the state of Lu in the present Shan-tung, and b said to
have had its seat at one time in the present prefectm^ of
Ts'au-ch6u, south of the Yellow River. The Pei-jimg, or
"Northern Jung," the Shan-jung, or "Hill Jung," which
name seems to indicate that they were not occupants of
the steppe, and the Wu-chung were settled in Tsun-hua-
ch6u about one hundred miles east of Peking. Accordmg
to the Tso-chumf the Northern Jung made a raid on the
state of Chong in the north of K'ai-fong-fu, Ho-nan. This
entry in the TBChckuan * is of importance, inasmuch as it
states that, while the Chinese were fighting in chariots, the
Jung had only f ootH9oldiers. The Tsfhchuan says : —

"The Earl of Chung withstood them, but was troubled by the
nature of their troops, and said, 'They are footmen, while we
have chariots. The fear is, lest they fall suddenly upon us.'
His son Tu said : ' Let a body of bold men, but not persistent,
feign an attack upon the thieves, and then quickly draw off from
them ; and at the same time place three bodies in ambuscade to
be ready for them. The Jung are light and nimble, but have no
Older; they are greedy and have no love for one another; when
they conquer, no one will jrAA place to his fellow; and when they

* Legge, p. 28.

188 THE ANCIENT fflSTORY OF CHINA

are defeated, no one tries to save another. When their front men
see their success, they will think of nothing but to push forward.
When they are thus advancing and fall into the ambush, they
will be sure to hurry away in flight. Those behind will not go
to their rescue, so there will be no support to them; and thus
your anxiety may be relieved.' The earl followed this plan. As
soon as the front men of the Jung met those who were in am-
buscade, they fled, pursued by Chu Tan. Their detachment waa
surrounded and smitten both in front and in rear till they were
all cut to pieces. The rest of the Jung made a grand flight."

This description of the battle, recorded under the year
714 B.C., shows that the Northern Jung, then said to be
settled in Yimg-p'ing-fu, Chi-li, were fighting without
horses and that this was regarded as a disadvantage to the
Chinese, who fought in chariots. We are further told by
the Tso-chuan^ that the Jung and the Ti were continually
changing their residence, and were fond of exchanging land
for goods. This latter weakness, if we may so call it, was
probably the reason for the Chinese buying the barbarians
off their territory, when an appeal to arms failed, and of
finally driving them into the Mongolian steppe, their later
home. This is also probably one of the reasons why the
federal states occupying the boundaries facing uncivilized
barbarians, have grown so powerful as compared with the
emperor's own dominions, which lay in the middle of the
empire and occupied a comparatively small territory north
and south of the Yellow River about the present city of
Ho-nan-fu. The states of Tsin and Ts'in had apparently
the lion's share in territorial extension at the expense of
their Hunnish neighbors. The state of Yen, occupying the
present Chi-li, was similarly successful; other states like
Ts'i, Lu, Wei, Chu, Sung, Kii, etc., were hemmed in by the

» Le^e, p. 424.

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 189

sea-coast and could not, of course, increase by conquest
among the barbarians. This, however, was the case in a
prominent degree with the third of the great feudal states,
Ch'u (to be distinguished from Chu mentioned above).

The state of Ch'u was chiefly occupied by the southern
barbarians known as Man, or Man-tn, Marco Polo's Manzi.
Ch'u was its name as a state, which, like Tsin and Ts'in
and all the other territories surrounding the imperial do-
main, was under the more or less nominal jurisdiction of
the Son of Heaven. In those very scanty records preserved
of the reign of Chau-wang, the region where this worthless
monarch came to grief, while crossing a river in 1002 B.C.,
b described as "the south." Ssi-ma Ts'i^n simply says
that Chau went to "the south" on a tour of inspection,
and that he did not return, having died on the kiang, or
river.* Later commentators, however, identify " the south "
with the Ch'u country; and, since this entire region was
even at a much later period occupied by the Man barbarians,
we may look upon this as an early mention of their country.
In the Tso-chuan commentary on the " Spring and Autumn
Annab," the Ch'u state is constantly referred to under this
name ; but in the main text it was called King down to the
year 659 B.C., when the name Ch'u took its place. From
the tradition preserved in the commentaries' it would
appear that the semi-barbarous state, if we may so call it,
was from remote antiquity governed by rulers of Chinese
extraction. The chiefs of Ch'u were at first viscounts with
the surname Mi, which means "the bleating of sheep."
Their lineage is traced up to prehistoric times, the family
being said to be descended from the Emperor Chuan-hu

* Chavannei, Mimoiru ki$Ufrique$, vol. i, p. 250. ' Legge, Ch'un*
If'ttf, p. 86.

190 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

(2510-2433 B.C.). This sounds, of course, very fabulous;
but representatives of the line are mentioned by name as
early as the times of Won-wang and Wu-wang, t.e. in the
twelfth century B.C., when the head of the family was named
Yii-hiimg. His great-grandson, Hiung I, was invested by
Ch'ong-wang, the second Ch6u emperor, with the lands of
King-man, i.e. " the Man barbarians of King." His capital
was Tan-yang in the neighborhood of the present city of
Ichang, in Hu-pei. It appears that after him the family
name of the Man rulers was Hiungy "Bear," and from
them this Chinese family name is supposed to have been
derived.^ In 887 B.C. one Hiimg K'ii usurped the title
of king, which was afterward dropped for a time, but
permanently resimied by Hiung T'ung, known as King Wu,
in 704 B.C., who also moved his capital to Ying, near the
present city of King-ch6u-fu.' The rule of the Hiung
family extends from 1078 b.c. down to the extinction of
the Ch'u state by that of Ts4n in 223 B.C. Whether the
forty names mentioned in this list are those of descendants
of an originally Chinese family, as their being traced to the
mythical emperor Chuan-hii would indicate, or whether
they were the descendants of an aboriginal Man family,
is immaterial. This seems a matter of doubt. On the one
hand, their pedigree being traced to the Emperor Chuan-hii
may not have more historical value than King Attila's
in John of Thur6cz's '* Chronica Himgarorum," headed,
as that is, by the Biblical names Noah, Japheth, Cush, and

* See Giles, The Family NameSf in Joum. of the China Branch
of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series, vol. xxi, 1886, p. 265, no. 121.

' For a genealogical table of the rulers over the state of Ch'u, see
Appendix: Chronological Tables, xi; also Legge, Ch'un-U'iu, Prole-
gomena, p. 109 eeq.; and Shl-ki, ch. xiv, Chavannes, vol. ill, p.
35 seq.

GRADUAL DECUNE OF CENTRAL POWER 191

Nimrod. ITie Hungarian chronicler here merely indulges
in what may be called the European practice of liis age.
He Chinese did something dmilar in extending the pedi-
grees of distinguished barbarian houses to some of their
old legendary emperors. We find a perfect parallel in the
great khans of the Hiung-nu, whom the Chinese described
as descendants of their Emperor Yii, and we can prove
from Chinese history that, within historical times, princes
<A the same family were proud to refer to their Chinese
pedigree. The rulers of the state of Ch'u certunly identi-
fied themselves with their people, at least in certun pas-
sages of Ssi-ma Ts'i^n's iSAi-Ari,' where Hiung K'ti, ruler of
Ch'u some time in the ninth century b.c, justifies the
appointment of hb sons as "kings" of certain Man bar-
luuians in the Yang-tzi region, saying, "We are Man
barbarians and have nothing to do with Chinese titles,"
which refer to the year 704 B.C., when Hiung T'ung, dis-
satisfied with the scant recognition he had hitherto received
at the hands of the imperial court, assumed on his own
responsibility the title of "king," as under the existing
circumstances he seemed justified in doing. In a discus-
aon with his opponent, the Prince of Sui, he distinctly says,
"We are Man barbarians" (Wo Afan-t yi). Chavannes*
translates these words even by " Je suis un barbare " ; but
it appears that both interpretations may be justified.
Anyhow, he may have called himself a barbarian in spite
of Chinese descent. He goes on to say that "now the
princes of the empire are in a state of rebellion, that they
encroach on their territories and that some even kill each
other." On expressing his desire that the emperor should
give him a hi^er title, the court refused this request, up<Hi

• Oh. xl, pp. 3B ud fi A. 'Vol. It, p. S44.

192 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

which the barbarian chief recapitulates the history of his
house, saying, " My forefather Yii Hiung was instructor to
Won-wang. Ch'ong-wang gave my forefathers a baronetcy
and instructed them to live in Ch'u, and the Man barbarians
all recognized him as their leader," etc.^ This again may
involve that the Ch'u princes were originally a Chinese
family, and that we may place confidence in the detailed
pedigree commimicated in Ssi-ma Ts'i^n's chapter devoted
to the Ch'u kingdom,' which contains no allusion to the
Man barbarians down to the time of Ch'ong-wang. TTie
non-barbarian origin of this pedigree is, moreover, if lineage
and names as given by Ssi-ma Ts'i6n are correct, greatly
supported by the fact of Yii Hiung, Won-wang's teacher,
having been one of the most distinguished writers of the
Chinese language during his time, he being known as the
author of a book, the Yu-tzij the "Philosopher Yii," which
is possibly the oldest specimen of Chinese literature; older
even than the I-king, though opinions are divided on that
point.' In forming an opinion as to the cultural develop-
ment of the barbarians, we should take the following facts
into consideration: —

The Man barbarians were organized into a state, ruled
over by a continuous line of princes, and, as such, formed
an integral part of the Chinese empire under the Ch6u
dynasty. Their state territory extended from about 23
degrees north latitude in the north to Lake Tung-t'ing and
beyond in the south. An expansion from north to south
probably took place during this long period of political
life, since we find Man barbarians occupying the whole
south and southwest of China and the adjacent parts in

» Chavannes, loc. cit. ' Chavannes, p. 337 seqq. » Wylie, Notes on
Chinese LUerature, p. 125.

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 193

Tung-king. For, soon after the absorption of the state of
Ch'u by Ts'in, the native state of Ts^innshi-huang-ti (em-
peror of China in 221 B.C.)) we find a native of north China,
Chau T'o, appointed king of the Man barbarians. Accord-
ing to Chinese views, the south of China in the present coast
provinces and on the Tung-king border was an uninhabited
wilderness at the dawn of history, and the ii;ihabitants
found there later on were immigrants from north and
central China. The word Man, as an ethnic term, is liable
to create confusion, and requires some specification to be
rightly understood. The term Nan-man, " southern Man,"
or "barbarians," in its widest sense comprises nations of
quite different affinities from those of the Man barbarians
who formed the state of Ch'u under the Ch6u dynasty;
but from the genealogy of the southern and southwestern
tribes, as reconstructed from Chinese sources, it appears
that the Man of that southern state of the Ch6u empire
retreated before the extension of Chinese culture into their
later southern territories, which extended far beyond the
present limits of China deep into the Malay Peninsula.
It is, of course, quite possible, that races of the Man t3rpe
have been settled there from times immemorial and that the
Chinese idea of their having immigrated there from the
north originated in the fact that they were discovered
within historical periods in parts of the continent formerly
believed to be uninhabited. Yet the wandering spirit of
some of their tribes can be clearly traced in Chinese history.
The best proof for this is what we read, for instance, about the
history of one of their great divisions, the Liau barbarians,
whose original seats were in Han-chung, south of the pres-
ent Si-an-fu, whence they spread over the province of Ssi-
ch'uan and farther on to Kui-ch6u. In the twelfth century

194 THE ANCIENT mSTORY OF CHINA

A.D., if not earlier, we find them divided into over a hundred
tribes on the southwest of the river Yu-kiang near the
boundary of Tung-king.^ According to an old legend, a
Man barbarian named P'an-hu assisted the emperor Ti-k'u
(2432 B.C.) in procuring the head of his enemy, a certain
chief of the E'iian-jung, for which he gave him, among other
rewards, his daughter in marriage. This P'an-hu became
the legendajy ancestor of quite a number of southern bar-
barian tribes, the Miau-tzi being among them according
to some accounts. There b, of course, not the di^test
historical foundation for this popular story ; but the legend
seems to point to an early relationship between the Man
barbarians and the Chinese race, to whom they rendered
assistance in fighting their other neighbors, the Huns.'
Whether we assume the tribes now foimd in the northern
part of the Malay Peninsula to have migrated there from
the confines of China, or whether they have been settled
there from times immemorial, so much is certain, that
wanderings from north to south have taken place on Chinese
territory; that the forefathers of at least some of them
during the Ch6u dynasty were subjects of the state of Ch'u ;
that they must consequently have participated to a certain
extent in the benefits of Chinese civilization, and that
those who were formerly connected with the Ch'u state
may have become the mediators of such traces of Chinese
influence which may now be discovered not only among
the former members of the Ch'u state as one of the con-
federate territories of China under the Ch6u d3masty, but
also among their southern neighbors on the Malay Penin-

* Of . D* Hervey de Saint-Denys, Ethnographie des peupUt Hranger$
& la Chine, vol. ii, pp. 10^121. > Cf. D* Hervey de Saint-Denys, op.
eU,, pp. 1-45.

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 195

aula. Such Chinese influences may have existed in former
ages without their being traceable in the records.

The only legacy left to us of the old Man culture consists
of a still limited number of ancient bronze drums bearing
ornaments on their outer surface, some of which may be
declared as being of Chinese origin, whereas other specimens,
and probably the oldest ones among them, whatever their
age may be, have been for years a problem still awaiting
solution. To judge from the localities where such bronze
drums were first discovered, whether in the tombs of old
Man chiefs or among dealers in antiquities in China, or in
some place on the Malay Peninsula, and from what the
Chinese have placed on record regarding them, I feel in-
clined to comprise all the aboriginal tribes who can be
shown to have made use of the bronze drum as an instru-
ment of authority or worship under the common name of
"bronze drum nations/' The area on which these imple-
ments can be shown either to have been used formerly or
to be used at the present day may be said to extend from
the Yang-tzi region in the north over the whole southwest
of China, including portions of the Euang-tung province,
and well into the Malay Peninsula and even some islands
of the Archipelago. The nations which might come within
this denomination of '^ bronze drum nations'' may be
divided into a northern and a southern section. The former,
comprising the several denominations of the Man bar-
barians and the Miau-tzi and extending certainly as far
south as the present boundary of China, offer scarcely any
difficulty as to their most ancient connection with Chinese
civilization through the Ch'u state. Several of the south-
Chinese Man barbarians can be shown to have migrated
to their later homes from the old Ch'u territory within his-

196 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

torical periods, and the Miau-tzi, as well as other aboriginal
tribes, probably including the Tangutans in the northwest
of China, are referred by the old legend of the banishment
of the San-miau^ to former seats in central China in remote
antiquity. The southern section, comprising various tribes
of the Malay Peninsula, cannot, as far as I am aware, be
traced to the ancient Ch'u state, and if in then* case migra-
tions from north to south have at all taken place, they
must be referred to prehistoric periods.

It seems difficult to decide whether any racial afiBnities
exist between the several nations using bronze drums. It
appears, however, that traces of Chinese influences appear
in the ornament even of the more remote discoveries, since
one of its principal elements is the more or less convention-
alized figure of a bird, standing or flying, which can only be
identified with the south-China egret, an old traditional
emblem of the Chinese skin drum. The southern section
may also have been influenced in its culture from India,
and finally the Man and other barbarians may have added
features of their own invention to the traditional ornament
of Chinese or Indian origin. This probably holds good
with regard to the figures of frogs or toads cast on the face
of these instruments corresponding to the skin of ordinary
drums. These frogs, found on some of the most ancient
specimens discovered in south China, may be interpreted
as a totem of the barbarians of Kuang-tung, Kuang-si, etc.,
since the barbarian inhabitants of the old state of Nan-
yu6 are referred to by the name of "frogs" or "toads" in
an entry in the Chinese court annals under the year 112 B.C.*

* See above, p. 85. ' Cf. Hirth, Chinesische Ansichten aber Bron-
zetrommeln. Leipzig (Otto Harrassowitz), 1904, and the several
works and papers referred to therein by Meyer and Foy, Heger, De
Groot, etc.

GRADUAL DECLINE OF CENTRAL POWER 197

Surrounded by its federal states was the emperor's own
domain of Ch6u, a comparatively small territory in the
present province of Ho-nan. The imperial power during
the Ch'un-ts'iu period had become more and more nominal,
and the Ch'tm-ts'iu itself, as explained above, does not
describe the history of the Ch6u emperors, but that of the
princes of Lu. The history of the other states, though
much more important from a political point of view, has
to be reconstructed from the liberal amplifications con-
tained in the Tso-chuan. The line of Lu rulers is represented
by twenty-eight names, extending from 1122 B.C. to 249
B.C. The Ch^un-tsHu records of Lu history begin with the
fifteenth ruler of that state, Duke Yin, in 722 b.c. The
main text of the Ch'un-tsHu narrates the events of history
from the local Lu point of view year by year under the
twelve following dukes down to the fourteenth year of
Duke Ai, about 480 b.c, and the commentaries carry it
just about a generation farther on. With the understand-
ing that, as a matter of course, each of the federal states
has had its own history, claiming at some time or other
much greater importance than that of the imperial house
itself, I propose to continue my account where I left it, at ,
the death of P'ing-wang with the most noteworthy events
during the time of his successors as Ch6u emperors.

{ 40. HuAN-WANG (719-697 b.c.)

Huan-wang, P'ing-wang's grandson, tried in vain to
assert his authority among the contending states. His
reign was characterized by constant wars among his vas-
sals, and his attempts to establish order ended in defeat
on several occasions. Huan-wang died in the twenty-
third year of his reign and was followed by his eldest son,
C3iuang-wang.

d£.

TEE CENTURY OF THE "FIVE LEADERS"

(685-691 B.C.)

THE CENTURY OF THE "FIVE LEADERS" (685-691 B.C.)
i 41. Chuano-wang (696-682 B.C.)

THERE was some trouble in the succession to the
throne, the emperor having declared himself in favor
of his second son. But to the exertions of the minister
Sin-po it was due that the legitimate succession gained the
upper hand. Court intrigue had ended in an attempt to
take the emperor's life in 694 b.c, and had been success-
fully defeated by Sin-po. The rival prince fled to a northern
state, and his chief patron, Ilei-ki^n, Duke of C!h6u, was be-
headed. During the preceding year (October 3, 694 B.C.),
an eclipse of the sun is recorded in the main text of the
Ch'un-tsHu.

Under the reign of Chuang-wang we have to record the
temporary rise to considerable power of one of the minor
federal states, that of Ts'i, occupying the northeast, with
a portion of the sea-coast, of the present province of Shan-
tung and adjoining the right bank of the lower course of
the Yellow River. The political success of this state dates
from the prudent administration of Duke Huan, who, as its
fifteenth ruler, reigned from 685 to 643 B.C. Duke Huan's
good fortunes were entirely due to the excellent advice he
received from his prime minister, the philosopher Kuan-
tsi, known also as Kuan Chung and Kuan I-wu. Kuan-tzi
impresses us as having furnished an example, unparalleled

201

202 THE ANCIENT HISTORT OF CBINA

in the history of nations, of sdentific reasoning applied to
practical statesmanship, Tlie chief um <rf his policy was
the economic development of the nation, and by implying
his theories to state life, he did more for the benefit erf his
country than many of the official advisers oi the emperors
and princes both before and after him. For a careful digest
of his life and doctrines the reader is referred to G. von
der Gabelentz's excellent monograph '' Vorbereitendes lur
Kritik des Euan-tsi." ^ His theories have been recorded
in a book handed down under the title of Kuan4sA, the
''Philosopher Kuan," which is printed both as a separate
work and as one of a series comprising the ten minor philoe-
ophers of antiquity. Opinions are divided as to its author-
sliip, some authorities, both native and foreign, holding
that it was compiled during the Han dynasty. Giles'
calls it ''one of the numerous forgeries of later times";
but I feel inclined to side with Grube, who ' regards the
subject-matter of this text as contemporaneous. Indeed,
if we compare Euan-tzi's wisdom m govemmg with what
we read in the Cfuhhli concerning Chinese government
institutions during the Chdu dynasty, there would seem to
be no reason to doubt that the almost modem method of
deriving political action from philosophical reasoning need
not be looked upon as an anachronism in the face of the
deep interest with which the intelligent part of the nation
has devoted itself to the advancement of official life ever
since the early Ch6u rulers. The advice given to his duke
by Kuan-tzi has become the prototjrpe of governmental
prudence for Chinese official life. Thus Euan-tzi, by meas-

* SiUgh. d. Kgl, PreusB, Akad, d. WUienseh., 1892, vol. i, p. 127 teqq.
* A Chinese Biagraphieal Didionary, p. 382. ' Cft^MchU dtr ehin€9-'
%9chtn Litter<Uur, p. 113.

THE CENTURY OF THE "FIVE LEADERS" 203

ures he adopted in the federal state of Ts'i, has become the
father <rf institutions of the utmost importance to the
whole empire during its later economic development ; for
example, in regard to the iron and salt monopolies. If we
consider that his lifetime lay in the early days of regal
Rome, and that the work of his life was done before Solon
the Athenian was bom, Ku^^t^i may be regarded as
having furnished the very type of a statesman in the
modem sense by collecting facts for the purposes of gov-
ernmental administration; further, by endeavoring to
describe such facts in the shape of a numerical formula,
he may in the proper sense of the word be regarded as
the oldest '' statistician " of all nations. The method
he adopted in persuading his monarch to introduce
taxes on salt and on iron may in all respects be called
statistical.

The duke in a conversation with Kuan-tsi had consulted
him on government affairs, and was advised to levy taxes
upon salt and iron, hitherto not sources of public revenue.
''How is this to be done?" the duke inquired; upon which
the philosopher replied : " In a family of ten individuals
there will be ten consumers of salt; in a family of a hundred
there will be a hundred consumers. A male adult will
consume five pints or at least half that quantity of salt
every month ; a female adult, three pints, or at least half of
this ; a child, two pints, or at least half of this. Tliese are
the average for salt consumption." Kuan-tzi continues
his reasoning by calculating from these averages the con-
sumption, not known at his time, for the whole country.
''In a country of ten thousand chariots," he says, "the
number of consuming individuals may be set down at ten
millioDs.'' Upon these salt consumers the philosopher

204 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

recommends the imposition of a tax payable by the dealers
in this article; this, he said, would be an impost which
nobody could escape.

With a similar calculation he recommended the intro-
duction of a tax upon the iron production of the coimtry.
The officials in charge of the iron-works had reported that
every woman in the coimtry must have a needle and a
knife ; that every field laborer must have a plough, a spade,
and a cooking-pan, a cart, a hatchet, etc., — aU these
being necessaries of life, a tax upon which would be a regular
source of public revenue. This conversation of Kuan-tzi
with his duke led to the institution of the salt and the iron
monopolies, both of which not only yielded the desired
revenue, but also became a great stimulus to succeeding
governments to do all in their power to promote produc-
tion as well as consumption. We know that the iron in-
dustry of China assumed important dimensions during
the following centuries. Chinese iron must have been of
very superior quality, since not only the countries of
central Asia drew their supplies from the Far East, but
even the Roman market, as is known from Pliny, who says,
that of all kinds of iron coming to Rome the Chinese (seri-
cum ferrum) is the best. The salt produced on the Shan-
tung coast during the Ch6u dynasty was not only con-
sumed in the country of Ts4, but we are informed that the
states of Liang, Ch6u, Sung, Wei, and Tu-yang were in
great trouble when the usual supply was not forthcoming
from Ts'i, not to speak of the frontier nations, the Huns,
etc., who were then entirely dependent on this source. The
salt monopoly introduced by Kuan-tzi thus became the
source of immense wealth, collected in the state of Ts'i,
and was the basis of a regular system of administra-

THE CENTURY OF THE "FIVE LEADERS" 205

tion known hereafter as yen-fa^ i.e. " the method of salt ad-
ministration." There are apparently no records to show
that a similar system existed in other parts of the coast
during the Ch6u dynasty; but the native accoimt from
which I have derived my information states that the state
revenue yielded by the salt and iron monopolies had dur-
ing the Ts'in dynasty (255-209 B.C.) grown to about twenty
times the amount gained during the Ch6u period.^

Tliese are merely some important examples of govern-
mental reforms introduced by Kuan-tzi. It goes without
saying that the economic development of the little state
could in the hands of a clever administrator be changed
into an instrument by which political power might be
wielded over rival states, which had for generations be-
come dependent for their supplies upon industrious Ts'i.
The discussions on political and economic subjects laid
down in Kuan-tzi's work extend to all possible questions of
government; and even if we grant that much of the ex-
isting text may be interpolations, it is not likely that the
doctrines attributed to Kuan-tzi sprang entirely from the
imagination of Han compilers. As Grube points out, Ssi-ma
Ts'i^n states that the philosopher's descendants held hi^
offices as hereditary fief-holders for more than ten generar
tions in succession, and that this may furnish an explana-
tion why Kuan-tzi's memory, in the shape of the work
bearing his name, was preserved with such piety among
his family records.

The great success, due to a large extent to Kuan-tzi's
advice, of the state of Ts'i initiated a period lasting about

*Cr. my NoUm on the Early History of the Soli Monopoly in
China, in Journal of the China Branch of the Royal AeioHc Society,
New ScriflSy vol. zzii, p. 65 $€qq.

206 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

a century, during which some of the great feudal states
began to wield supreme power in the empire. Duke Huan
of Ts'i opens the series of the five great leaders, whose
power by far outshone that of the Son of Heaven and
who by turns were virtually the rulers of China. These
leaders are known as the tim-pa, the "Five Mighty
Ones," or "Tyrants,'' interpreting the latter word in
its original sense of " one who holds power not by ri^t,
but by might." The five states thus prominent were
those of Ts'i, Sung, Tsin, Ts'in, and Ch'u; and their
several chiefs were: (1) Duke Huan of Ts'i (685-643
B.C.), (2) Duke Siang of Sung (650-637 B.C.), (3) Duke
Won of Tsin (636-628 b.c), (4) Duke Mu of Ts'in (659
-621 B.C.), and (5) Prince, or King, Chuang of Ch'u
(613-591 B.C.).

The history of the internal wars waged during this period
of wrangling for leadership is given in detail in the Tso-
chiuin. It is full of romance and has left its traces deeply
engraved in the heart of the Chinese nation. No one could
better summarize the main events of this interesting period
than the late Dr. James Legge, who had just finished his
great edition of the ''Spring and Autumn Annals," when
in a lecture delivered at Hongkong in March, 1873,^ he
gave a charming sketch of what he called "Two Heroes
of Chinese History." The two heroes placed before his
audience by the venerable lecturer were Duke Huan
of Ts4 and Duke Won of Tsin, the first and third of the
"Five Leaders" respectively. I shall allow Dr. Legge to
resume the thread of history where I* had broken it in de-
scribing the relations between Huan and his great minister
Kuan-tzi.

* See China Review, vol. i, p. 370 aeqq.

THE CENTURY OF THE "FIVE LEADERS" 207

Two Hbrobs of Chinbsb History

" Huan and Kuan-tzi took measures in the first place to strengthen
the resouroes of Ts'i itself and then proceeded to cultivate the good-
will of their neighbors. Itfl territories were extended ; its industries
cultivated; its levies well trained; a policy of forbearance and
generosity displayed in its external relations. The natural result
was that it became the asylum of the fugitive and the helper of the
weak and oppressed. Gradually its preeminence was recognized,
and Huan, whenever there was occasion, would assemble several
of the other princes and preside among them, all engaging by cove-
nant to observe the statutes of Ch6u, and take common measures
against the unruly. By and by the King of Ch6u [i.e. the emperor]
acknowledged the position which Huan had secured for himself,
and gave him the title of 'President of Covenants,' devolving on
him at the same time the duty of dealing in the royal name with all
refractory vassals. With the barbarous tribes that squatted among
the feudal States and occupied the country beyond them, he had
many conflicts, and very much broke their power. In 660 [661]
he and his minister Kuan-tzl conducted a great expedition against
the tribes of the Hill Jung, who had reduced the State or Marquisate
of Yen, lying on the east of Ts'i and extending nearly to the present
capital of China, to the greatest straits. It would take a whole
lecture to describe the toils which they underwent and the per-
tinacity with which they followed up their successes through a
country which was then cither pathless forest or howling desert,
where there were no supplies of water or food. The expedition
was entirely successful. The chiefs of the Hill Jung and other
tribes were slain, and the tribes themselves extirpated or hopelessly
dispersed. The Marquis of Yen could not show his gratitude
sufficiently to his deUverer. Unable to part from him, he escorted
him past the boundary of his own state nearly twenty miles into
Ts'i. 'You have transgressed,' said Huan to him, 'the statute
which forbids a prince to cross the boundaries of his state saving
on the king's service. But you must not suffer for it, and I here-
with bestow upon you all the tract of my territory over which we
have passed.' *He did wrong in this,' say many Chinese writers;
'for he had no right to give to another a foot of his land without

-.y

208 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

the king's authority.' 'He may have done wrong,' say othen^
'but the wrong-doing showed the kindness of his heart and the
magnanimity of his nature.'

"Of all the expeditions which Huan imdertook, the greatest
was one in 655 [656] against the great State of Ch'u in the south.
The lords of this had only the patent of viscoimts from the Kings
of Ch6u ; but they had long usurped the title of 'King,' and it was
the barest acknowledgment which they deigned to make of their
vassalage. The feudal states proper of China and the kings lived
in a state of constant apprehension of the encroachments (d ChHi,
which year by year with untiring determination advanced upon
them. It was evident that, unless some severe check were inflicted
upon it, it would ere long overflow the Middle Land with its bar-
barous population and usages. Kuan-tzi had long seen that, to
put the crown upon his ruler's presidency, he must contrive to
beat back the advance of this power. Preparations were made for
some years for an expedition against it and, when all things were
ready, an opportunity was sought to burst upon it, and take it by
surprise and unprepared. And this seemed to be afforded in the
following way. A favorite lady of Duke Huan was a daughter
of the house of Ts'ai, the southernmost of the feudal states, and
nearest to the territories of Ch'u. One day he was amusing him-
self with her in a boat upon a lake, though he had a dread of the
water. The lady amused herself with playing on this weakness,
and moved about so as to rock the boat. The Duke got angry
and told her to desist, but she would not do so, and irritated him
still more by taking up water with her hands and casting it upon
him. The consequence was that he sent her back to her father,
who soon after found another husband for her. This Duke Huan
pretended to take as a great insult, and giving it out that his object
was to punish the Marquis of Ts'ai, in the year which I have men-
tioned, he called out all the forces of his own state and seven others,
and marched in grand force to the south. The real object was to
burst with this great host upon Ch'u. That state, however, was
not unprepared. A favorite eunuch of Huan's harem had let out
some time before the secret of the expedition; and the forces of
the allies found themselves confronted in the present Hu-ch6u of
Ho-nan by those of Ch'u. A great battle seemed imminent; but

THE CENTURY OF THE "FIVE LEADERS" 209

both sides were afraid to hasard such a risk. The King of Ch'u
was brought to acknowledge his failure in duty in not sending tribute
to Ch6u and to promise reformation, and thereupon a covenant
was entered into, and both armies retired. It was a lame and
impotent conclusion to an expedition on so grand a scale, but Ts'i
had rather the better of it. The dreaded Ch'u had been threatened
and obliged to slink away ; and all China breathed more freely and
resounded with the praises of Duke Huan.

" I will mention only one other exploit of our hero. In 654 [655^
having heard that there was serious disagreement in the royal
family and that the king meant to degrade hb eldest son, who had
been declared heir to the throne, — a proceeding which would
produce great disorder and have disastrous consequences as a
precedent throughout the states, — Huan said that it must be pre-
vented, and for that purpose called a meeting of the states at a place
in the present department of Kui-to, Ho-nan, at which also he begged
the attendance of the crown-prince. This was intended to be a
public recognition of the prince by the states as their future king.
The reigning monarch could not refuse his powerful noble and sent
his son to the meeting, though with inward dissatisfaction and
grumbling. The device succeeded. In 651 [652] the king [Hui-
wang] died, and the crown-prince took his place [as Siang-wangl
and the next year Huan called another meeting in the province of
Ho-nan, in the department of K'ai-f5ng, as an expression of loyalty
to the new sovereign. To this assembly the king sent his chief
minister with a portion of the flesh which he had used a little before
in sacrificing to the founder of his dynasty. This was a special
gift to Duke Huan of the royal favor and could only be received
with reverent obeisance. The Duke was about to descend from
his high place as president of the assembly to render the obeisance,
when the king's minister proclaimed : 'The Son of Heaven further
diarged me to say that in consideration of his uncle's seventy years,
he confers on him an additional distinction ; he shall not descend
and do obeisance.' 'Heaven's Majesty/ replied our hero, 'is not
far from me. Shall I, Siau-pi [the duke's personal name], dare
to covet this favor of the Son of Heaven, and not descend and do
obeisance?' With this he went down the steps, and received the
with humble homage.

210 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

"Mencius has preserved for us the five articles of the covenant
which was entered into at this meeting. The first was! 'Slay the
unfilial; change not the son who has been appointed heir; exalt
not a concubine to the rank of wife/ The second: 'Honor the
worthy, and maintain the talented to give distinction to the vir-
tuous.' The third: 'Respect the old, and be kind to the young.
Be not forgetful of strangers and travelers.' The fourth: 'Let
no offices be hereditary, and let not officers be pluralists. Let
not a ruler take it on himself (without the authority of the king)
to put to death a great officer.' And the fifth : ' Follow no crooked
policy in making embankments. Impost no restrictions on the
sale of grain. Make no promotions without first annoimcing
them to the king.' It was then said in conclusion: 'All we who
have united in this covenant shall hereafter maintain amicable
relations.' *

"Duke Huan was now, as has been intimated, about seventy
years old, and his course was drawing to a close. In 645 [646] his
great minister died. Kuan-tzi was aware of the defects of his
master's character as well as his excellence, and with his dying
breath warned him of the perils to which he exposed himself by
the confidence he reposed in several unworthy favorites. The
chief of these were his cook and the master of the eunuchs. The
former, it is related, had won his confidence by a monstrous act.
The Marquis was fond of the pleasures of the table, and was one
day talking with the cook, who was a great artiste, about the various
dishes which he had enjoyed. Kid, and lamb, and veal, and leveret
had all their attractions for him, and he added in a joke, *I wonder
how child would taste; I have never tasted that dish.' Next day
there was the flesh of some young creature on his table, which had
a peculiar delicacy. What would it be, — like lamb or veal, and
yet better than either of them ? He called the cook, and asked him,
and was told that in consequence of his remarks the day before, the
cook had taken his own child, put it to death, dressed it, and served
it on the table. The Marquis was indignant, and ordered the ar-
tiste away. His stomach rose, and got rid of what he had eaten ;
but on reflection he said, ' Surely this man is faithful and devoted
to mci having killed his own child, in consequence of my foolish
* Cf. Von der Gabelentz, op, cU,, p. 142.

THE CENTURY OF THE "FIVE LEADERS" 211

words.' The cook kept his place in his favor; but the Minister
reasoned differently, and said : ' If the cook could kill his child to
please you, what will he not do, if he can gain his own ends by
taking a course adverse to you?' The Marquis, however, would
not take his advice, and when Kuan-tzi was taken away, he fell,
in the dotage of his old age, entirely into the hands of his unworthy
parasites, dying a most miserable death in 642 [643].

"He had been addicted to the pleasures of the harem as much
as to those of the table, and had by five different ladies five sons,
all come to age, and all eager to succeed him. Their mothers
caballed with the favorites and high officers, each wishing to secure
the state for her own son. His attendants utterly neglected the
Marquis in his sickness, forged a notice that he wished to be left
alone, and allowed him to perish in his palace of hunger. One of
bis sons was raised by them to the marquisate, the others ragingi^
it is said, like so many young tigers. Amid the confusion, the corpse
of the mighty president lay for months unburied, only to be entombed
at last, according to barbarous practice, with a multitude of women
and others, buried alive with him, to be his servants in another world.
So passed away the glory of Duke Huan. His sons continued at
variance, and four of them came to the marquisate, each one as
it were over the dead body of a brother. The presidency of Ts'i
among the states was overthrown. We have to go down the stream
of Chinese history for nearly three hundred years before we find it
again in the strength to which Huan had raised it, though his name
survived and still survives ' to point a moral, or adorn a tale.'

*• I must hurry to and through my other subject, — Duke Won
of Tsin.' The presidency of Ts'i, I have said, perished with Huan
and his minister Kuan-tzi. The idea of such an institution, how-
ever, had now become familiar throughout the kingdom, and one
prince and another endeavored to assert it for themselves and their
states, but in vain. It was upon the Marquis of Tsin that at last
Huan's mantle fell.'

* Throughout incorrectly spelled Ts'in in the China Review.

' It should be no tod that Dr. Legge's account here skipfl the second
of the "Five Leaders/' Duke Slang of Sung. Huan and W5n. se-
lected as the ''two heroes'' of his lecture, may, however, be said to
be typical characters of the period.

212 THE ANCIENT HKTORY OF CHINA

''To find him we must go frcHn the east to the west of the then
C3iina; from Shaintmig to Shan-d. There a cadet of the C3i6a
family had been [in 1107 B.C.] invested with the State of Tsin, in
the present department of T'ai-yuan, soon after the rise of the
djnoasty. It was at first smaU, and long continued so, but its posi-
tion afforded it great opportunities for enbirging its territory and
increasing its population by reducing and absorbing the wild tribes
Ijring to the north and east of it, as soon as it became consolidated
in itself. Soon after Huan became Marquis in Tsl, a certain Kui-
chu, known in history as Duke Hi^n, obtained the same dignity
in Tsin and held it for twenty-six years [676-651 B.C.]. He was a
worthless man, but his rule was not devoid of vigor, and he added
to his state by subjugating several smaller ones in its nei^borhood,
and was recognized by the more civilised states on the east as an
important member of the feudal kingdom. He had three sons by
different ladies, all grown up, and the eldest of them, recognized as
heir to the state, the second of them, with whom we have now to do,
being named Ch'ung-ir. In the year 671 [672] he had subjugated
a wild tribe called the Li-jung, and brought back with them the
daughter of the chief, a young lady of wonderful personal attractions.
Having taken her and a cousin of hers into his harem, he became
infatuated by their fascinations, and each of them soon presented
him with a son. The usual consequences followed. His regards
were soon away from his older sons, and it was determined that
these young children should supersede them in the state. They
were sent away from the court, and placed in charge of different
cities at a distance. But this did not satisfy the new mistress of
the seraglio; she wrought until the eldest son, after-time heir
apparent, was driven to commit suicide, and an armed force was
S(uit to ea(!h of the cities held by his two brothers to deal with them,
and bring their dead bodies to the capital.

" (^h'ung-ir had been placed in charge of P'u, the people of which
Imd become attached to him, and proposed that he should lead them
against the assailants. 'That would be,' said he, 'to strive with
my father, and a great crime. I will rather fly.' And fly he did,
making a very narrow escape from the eunuch who led the force
against him. The latter was close upon him, and caught hold of his
sleeve, as he was leaping over a wall to get out of the city. A

THE CENTURY OF THE "FIVE LEADERS" 213

sword blow mined the prince, but cut off half the sleeve, which
remained in the hand of his pursuer.

" From P'u Ch'ung-ir fled to a northern tribe of the Ti, where he
continued with about a dozen of his relations and partisans, who
had escaped with him, for twelve years, — the chief being fond of
him, and having given him as a wife a beautiful captive whom he
had taken in a war with a neighboring tribe. In the meantime his
father died in 649 [650], leaving the state to his young child by the
chief tainess of the Li-jung. There was great confusion in the
state, and there came in the interference of the Earl of Ts'in, the
large and growing state on the west in the present Shen-si. He
was married to a sister of the two fugitive princes, and he sent to
them in their different exiles, proposing to each on certain condi-
tions to establish him in Tsin. Ch'ung-ir declined the offer in a
sentence, which has become celebrated : 'A fugitive as I am, it is
not the getting of the state which is precious in my sight, but the
maintenance of my benevolence and my filial piety.' His younger
brother eagerly accepted the offers of Ts'in, and was accordingly,
on terms disgraceful to himself and ruinous to the state, made Mar-
quis of Tsin. He is known as Duke Hui. He held the state for
fifteen years, — years of trouble and disaster ; and one of his earliest
measures was an attempt to take the life of his brother among the
Ti [645 B.C.]. This it was which determined Ch'ung-ir to flee to a
more distant and safer refuge. Calling to him hb Ti wife, he said
to her : * Wait for me five and twenty years, and if I have not come
back then, you can take another husband.' 'I am now twenty-
five,' said the lady, 'and if I am to be married again after other
twenty-five, it shall be to my coffin. I will wait for you.'

"The asylum which he proposed for himself was Ts'i, where he
would be under the wing of the great Duke Huan. Passing with
his followers through the State of Wei on his way to Ts'i, he was
treated discourteously by its Marquis, and reduced to such straits
that he had one day to beg food from a countryman. The man was
churlish, and offered him a clod of earth. Indignant, he was about
to scourge the fellow with his whip, when one of his followers
mterfered, saying: 'It is heaven's gift; a gift of the soil, a happy
omen.' Ch'ung, who bowed to the speaker, let the man go, and
took the clod with him in his carriage.

214 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

"Duke Huan received him kindly in Ts'i, gave him as a wife a
relative of his own, and nobly entertained both him and his fol-
lowers. The prince abandoned himself for years to the enjojnnent
of his position, much to the dissatisfaction of his followers. They
had always been confident in his fortunes, and in their own as
associated with him. They were determined that he should yet
be Marquis of Tsin ; and one day, going with him a little distance out
of the capital, they halted under the shade of a large mulberry tree,
and insisted on his leaving Ts'i. It so happened that a girl from
his harem was in the tree, gathering mulberry leaves for silkworms,
and overheard all that was said. Returning to the city, after they
had broken up their conference, she reported all to the Lady Kiang,
his wife. That lady rewarded her by causing her to be put to death,
that the thing might not get talked about ; and at night talked the
matter over with the prince. He denied the design of departiu^e,
and said he wished no greater happiness than to continue to live
with her. 'And shall 1/ said she, 'by keeping you in the lap of
pleasure, contribute to ruin your fame ? ' She communicated with
his followers, made him dead drunk, and had him carried off by
them. When he came to himself, they were many miles from the
capital of Ts'i; and though he stormed against them for their
deed, he consented at last to go with them.

"After various adventures, and passing through the States of
Ts'au, Sung, and Chong, he found himself in Ch'u, at the court of
the king who was the sole rival of Duke Huan. There he was
honorably treated as he had been in Ts'i. There appears to have
been something fascinating about his appearance and manners.
He had double pupils in his eyes, and his ribs presented the appear-
ance of being one piece of solid bone. The King of Ch'u auspiced a
great future for him, and after feasting him one day in his palace,
said to him : ' If you return to Tsin, and become its Marquis, how
will you recompense my kindness to you?' Ch'ung-ir replied:
'Ladies, gems, and silks your Majesty has. Plumes, hair, ivory,
and hides are all produced in your country ; those of them that come
to Tsin are but your superabundance. What then should I have
wherewith to recompense your kindness?' 'Nevertheless,' urged
the other, 'how would you recompense me?' 'If,' said Ch'ung-ir,
'by your Majesty's powerful influence I shall recover the state of

THE CENTURY OF THE "FIVE LEADERS'' 216

Tirin, should Tedn and Ch'u go to war, and meet in the plain of the
Middle Land, I will withdraw before you three stages of ten miles
each. If then I do not receive your commands to stop from hos-
tilities, with my whip and my bow in my left hand, and with my
quiver on my right, I will manoeuvre with your Majesty.'

" Many of the King of Ch'u's officers would have had their king
take the opportunity to make away with the prince and his followers
as dangerous to the fortunes of their country ; but the king was of
too noble a nature to listen to them. ^The Prince,' said he, 'is a
grand character, and yet distinguished by moderation, highly
accomplished and courteous. His followers are severely grave and
3ret generous, loyal and of untiring ability. Tsin will yet be his.
When Heaven intends to prosper a man, who can stop him 7 He
that opposes Heaven must incur great guilt.'

** He then sent Ch'ung-ir away with an escort to Tsin, where the
way was soon opened for his return to Tsin, his native state. His
unworthy brother, Duke Hui [650-638 b.c], was by this time dead ;
and his son, who had been a hostage in Tsin, and received to wife
a daughter of the Elarl, had broken his parole, left his wife, and
stolen away to Tsin. The Earl was indignant, insisted on the
lady's taking Ch'ung-!r as a husband in room of his runaway nephew,
and prepared to lead an expedition to establish the prince in Tsin.
The lady declaimed, but was obliged to submit, and in 635 B.C.
[636], after an exile of nineteen years, Ch'ung-ir once more entered
Tsin. He encountered no serious opposition. His nephew was
put to death, and with the general satisfaction of the people, he
was hailed as Marquis.

** But he was now getting old. Only eight years of life remained ;
but during that short time he accomplished much for Tsin and for
China. His long experience of adversity had been of use to him,
and made him fruitful in expedients, and gave him much self-com-
mand. He nobly rewarded those who had faithfully adhered to
him through so long a period of trial and difficulty, and towards
the partisans of his brother and nephew he manifested a generous
forbearance. His wives from the Ti, from Ts'i and from Tsin all
came to him ; and there was a most edifying contest among them
as to which should be Marchioness and mistress of the harem, and
he decided at last in favor of the lady Kiang of Tsl.

216 THE ANQENT HISTORY OF CHINA

"The year after his return an opportunity occurred to do good
service to the king, the same for whom Duke Huan secured the
throne. The king was now a fugitive in Chong, driven from the
capital by the rebellion of a younger brother. Duke Won raised his
forces, and went to his relief. The rebel was defeated and slain,
and the king restored to his place.

"Three years after, in 631 [632], the thing occurred which
Won had prognosticated in Ch'u, the king of the country and
he meeting in arms in the plain of the Middle Land. All the mili-
tary forces of Tsin were collected in the field. Ch'u had with it
the levies of Chong and Ch'on, and on the side of Tsin were aux-
iliaries from Sung, from Ts'i and from Ts'in. Nearly a thousand
chariots of war on either side shook the ground. Mindful of what
he had said in Ch'u, Duke Won on three successive da3rs retreated
before the forces of that State, a distance altogether of thirty miles,
taking post at last at a place called Ch'ong-p'u, in the present dis-
trict of Ts'au, Dept. of T8'au-ch6u, Shan-tung. There the battle
was fought, — if not one of the great battles of the world, yet one
of the great battles of China; a battle of civilization against bar-
barism. Ch'u was entirely defeated. What Huan of Ts'i had
failed in doing was now accomplished by Won of Tsin. Immedi-
ately on hearing of the result, the king sent commissioners to the
camp of Tsin to hail the Marquis as President of the States, and
confer on him all the insignia of that appointment. In the winter
of that year, he presided over a great meeting of the princes or
representatives of ten States, at which he required the presence
even of the king himself, in the present district of Won, Depart-
ment Huai-k'ing, Ho-nan. Confucius condemns him for requiring
the presence of the king, and in his own account of the meeting
has tried to conceal the fact. Won's glory was at its height. He
was unchallengeably the foremost man in the kingdom, and re-
turned to Tsin to pursue fresh measures to increase the military
strength of the State. Some writers think that he had it now in
mind to displace the dynasty of Ch6u, and establish himself as King
of China. If he had been a younger man, I think he would have
done so. But his battle of life was nearly over; and, four years
after the great victory of Ch'ong-p'u, he breathed his last in his
chief city, leaving to the son whom he had declared his successor

THE CENTURY OF THE "FIVE LEADERS" 217

quiet poa ocfl rion of Tsin, and to that State a presidency in the king-
dom, which waa maintained for nearly two hundred years." ^

TWs graphic account of two Chinese "heroes," as Legge
calls them, will indicate what we might expect should we
enter more deeply into the history of this period. It will
be seen that the ups and downs in the life of the more power-
ful federal states were greatly dependent on the personal
qualities of their leaders. Yet it may be said that the hero
who initiated the period of the "Five Leaders" was Duke
Huan of Ts'i, who rose to the high position he held among
the confederation of dukes and princes by following the
advice of his great minister Kuan-tzL This advice led
him, on the one hand, to adopt such measures as would in
reality unite the greatest power in his government ; on the
other, to be absolutely loyal to his emperor, the traditional
head of the confederation. Without this loyalty he could
have scarcely succeeded in maintaining his position ; and
with all the troubles that in subsequent periods created
discord among the contending states and opposition from
one side or another to imperial authority, it was that spirit
of loyalty, the respect due to the heir of ancient thrones in
the person of the emperor, whose main duty and privilege
it was to bring sacrifice to the spirits of his ancestors, which
held together the shaky framework of the Ch6u dynasty.
This loyalty, based in its main effect on what may be called
the religious feeling of the nation, in which the most con-

' In reproducing this account of Dr. Legge' s lecture, taken from
the China Review, I have been obliged to correct quite a number
of misprints. I have also changed the spelling of Chinese names
00 as to conform with that adopted in the present work. It should
be understood that Lrgge's dates have to be advanced one year
throughout, in order to correspond with the chronology of Western
history.

218 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

flicting interests xrnited, ancestor worship, would ever and
ever again remind the disloyally inclined that they had to
do what their ancestors in remote antiquity had done in
looking upon the Son of Heaven, whether wielding his
power or not, as the ruler of the world by the grace of God.
With all its misfortimes the Ch6u d)masty was upheld by
this loyalty, feeble though it may have been among the
powerful chiefs; and nothing short of the destruction of
every memory of what had been sacred to their forefathers,
in many generations could, as we shall see later on, succeed
in temporarily disconnecting the nation from its ancestors.

§ 42. Hi-WANG (681-677 B.C.)

Hi-wang, Chuang-wang^s son, reigned only five years,
during which time, as we have seen, Huan, Duke of Tsl,
was the mainstay of power in the empire. He was followed
by his son Hui-wang.

§ 43. Hui-wang (676-652 b.c.)

There was some trouble in the succession, one of his
imcles posing as a pretender. During his reign Duke Huan
of Ts'i, who had favored the king's succession, continued
to be as powerful as he was loyal to the imperial house.
Hui-wang was followed by his son Siang-wang.

§ 44. Siang-wang (651-619 b.c.)

During the first year of this king's reign Duke Huan of
Ts'i presided at the covenant of princes described in Dr.
Legge's lecture. Duke Huan died in 643 B.C., leaving five
sons fighting each other in Ts4, of whom Duke Hiau was

THE CENTURY OF THE "FIVE LEADERS" 219

finaUy established as his successor under the assistance ot
a nei^boring prince, Duke Siang of Sung. Sung was a
central state comprising parts of the present Ho-nan and
Kiang-su, and its Duke Siang henceforth became the suc-
cessor of Duke Huan as second of the "Five Leaders."
Hb great opponent was the king of Ch'u who ruled over
the south as Ch'ong-wang (671-626 B.C.). The contest for
power ended with the defeat of Siang, who was wounded
in a battle against Ch'u. He died in 637 B.C., leaving be-
hind him a name not nearly as popular as that of his great
colleagues Huan and Won. The latter had just entered
his native state and become the ruler of Tsin, in which ca-
pacity he had an opportunity to be of great service to the
king in fighting the Jimg-ti and in reinstating him in his
capital, from which he had been obliged to flee. He
earned the gratitude of the king, who invested him with
large tracts of land and, by appointing him president of the
covenant of the feudal princes, raised him to the leadership
as third .among the Wu-pa. The state of Ch'u, as we have
seen, continued to make trouble until Duke Won fought
the great battle of Ch'ong-p'u in 632 B.C. Duke Won of
Tsin died in 628 B.C. His son, Duke Siang, was not able
to hold his own in a feud against Duke Mu of Ts'in (reigned
659-621 B.C.), who by his victory became the fourth among
the great leaders, which dignity he held only for a few years
down to his death in 621 B.C. Siang-wang, the emperor,
was followed at his death by his son K4ng-wang.

ft 45. K'iNO-WANG (618-813 B.C.)

Under K'ing-wang the imperial prestige had become so
low that even the king's treasury was found insufficient to

220 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

pay the deceased emperor's burial expenses, and a loan had
to be raised from the prosperous state of Lu. K'ing-wang
was succeeded by his son K'uang-wang.

i 46. K'UANO-WANG (612-607 B.C.)

The state of Tsin, which took the lead with its duke,
Won, had under his successors become the victim of a crazy
ruler, Duke Ling (620--607 b.c), a cruel tyrant who shot
his subjects like game and would not listen to the serious
remonstrances of his excellent minister Chau Tun, whom
he unsuccessfully tried to do away with. Chau Tun was
the son of Chau Ts'ui, the friend and faithful companion
of Duke Won during his voluntary banishment and his
Tartar wife. Chau Ts'ui had been rewarded with the post
of prime minister under Duke Won, and Chau Tun had
become his successor in this office. The persecution of his
mad master caused him to take to flight, but he was recalled
and reinstated after one of his relatives had slain the
duke. The court historian laid the blame of this crime
upon Chau Tun, whose influence did not suffice to prevent
it, the historians holding that as minister he ought to have
punished the perpetrator of a duke's murder. K'uang-
wang was followed by his brother Ting-wang.

§ 47. Ting-wang (606-586 b.c.)

Under this reign an event took place which, better than
anything else, characterizes the situation during this period.
The sacredness of the imperial throne was, as we have seen,
in a large measure connected with the king's duties in
bringing sacrifice to the spirits of his great ancestors.

THE CENTURY OF THE "FIVE LEADERS" 221

From them the Ch6u family had inherited the celebrated
tripods, said to have been cast by the Emperor Yii, upon
which maps and records of the nine divisions of his empire
were engraved. These Nine Tripods (kiu-ting) had ever
since passed from dynasty to dynasty as emblems of the
imperial power, as it were. We have seen that Wu-wang
on his ascension to the throne (1122 B.C.) took particular
care to transfer the Nine Tripods, which he had found in the
imperial treasury of the Shang, to his new capital, and the
Ch6u emperors had ever since regarded them as emblems
of their dignity. In 606 b.c. Viscount Chuang of Ch'u,
"King of Ch'u/' according to the self-assumed title of
several generations, had successfully made war on some
Hunnic tribes in the northwest. On his return he had to
touch the territory of the imperial domain. Ting-wang
sent an officer to him with congratulations and presents,
when it occurred to the powerful vassal to make fim of
the emperor's weakness by asking about the size and
wei^t of his tripods. The ambassador promptly replied
that the strength of the kingdom depends on the sovereign's
virtue. He added : —

"Anciently when Hia was distinguished for its virtue, the
distant regions sent pictures of the remarkable objects in them.
The nine pastors [i.e. governors] sent in the metal of their
provinces, and the tripods were cast, with representations on
them of these objects. All the objects were represented, and in-
structions were given for the preparations to be made in reference
to them, so that the people might know the sprites and evil things.
Thus the people, when they went among the rivers, marshes, hills,
and forests, did not meet with the injurious things, and the hill-
sprites, monstrous things, and water-sprites, did not meet with
them to do them injury. Hereby a harmony was secured between
the high and the low, and all enjoyed the blessing of Heaven.

222 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

When the virtue of Ki^, the last emperor of the Hia d3niasty,
was obscured, the tripods were transferred to Shang for 600
years. Ch6u-sin of Shang proved cruel and oppressive, and they
were transferred to Ch6u. When the virtue is commendable and
brilliant, the tripods, though they were small, would be heavy;
when it gives place to its reverse, to darkness and disorder, though
they were large, they would be light. Heaven blesses intelligent
virtue ; on that its favor rests. Ch'ong-wang fixed the tripods in
Kia-ju and divined that the dynasty should extend through thirty
reigns, over 700 years. Though the virtue of Ch6u is decayed,
the decree of Heaven is not yet changed. The weight of the tri-
pods may not yet be inquired about." ^

The gentle rebuflf involved in this reply seems to show
that imperial authority was not yet at its lowest ebb ; for
we do not read that Chuang-wang took the matter amiss.
The manner in which the anecdote, however, is told speaks
in favor of the genuineness of the Tso-chuan. The thirty
reigns which Ch'ong-wang gave to the owners of the
tripods were in reality thirty-three, and the 700 years
proved in reality to be 866, or, by the chronology of the
Bamboo Book annals, 805. Had this passage, like so
many other texts ascribed to theCh6u period, been tampered
with by Han editors, they would have inserted figures
nearer those stated in the acknowledged history of the
period and have given the modern critic an opportunity
to look upon Ch^ong-wang's divination as a vaticinium ex
eventu,

Chuang-wang, the "king'' of the state of Ch'u, was now
by far the most powerful among the confederates; and,
loyal as he was to the imperial house, he became the fifth
among the great leaders. Ch'u in the south was separated
from the great rival state Tsin partly by the imperial

^ From the Tso-chuarif translated by Legge, Ch^un-Wiu, p. 293.

THE CENTURY OF THE "FIVE LEADERS" 223

domain on the west and partly by the state of Chong
adjoinmg this in the east. Chuang-wang's leadership was
greatly concerned in his authority over that state ot C3idng,
disputed by its northern nei^bor, the state of Tsin. The
latter had considerably declined in power since Duke Won's
demise. The combined forces of Tsin and Chong were
beaten by the Ch'u army, when Chong was placed under
the supremacy of Ch'u. Chuang-wang died in 591 B.C.

THE AGE OF LAU-TZI AND CONFUCIUS

THE AGE OF LAU-TZI AND CONFUCIUS
i 48. KiBN-WANG (586-572 B.C.)

UNDEIR Ei6n-wang, Ting-Wang's son, the rivalship
between the states of Ch'u and Tsin concemmg the
supremacy in the central state of Chong continued,
and now Tsin was again victorious and obtained the su-
premacy in Chong. Ki^n-wang was followed by his son
Ling-wang.

{ 49. LiNO-WANG (671-646 B.C.)

Under this ruler the jealousies among the contending
states continued. The number of these states was now
increased by two, destined to a certain rdle even in a cursory
review of China's history, the states of Wu and Yu6. Wu
adjoined C!h'u on the east ; it occupied the country on both
sides near the mouth of the Yang-tzi River in the present
province of Kiang-su. Yii^ adjoined it in the south and
at first approximately corresponded to the present province
of di'o-kiang. Later on it extended farther and farther
south, when two lands of Yii^ were distinguished, occupy-
ing the entire southern coast provinces of China, of which
the Nan-yu6, "Southern Yu6," comprising Kuang-tung,
Kuang-si, Tung-king and adjoining parts, became the
lorn of the southern Man barbarians.

227

228 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

The chief event of Ling-wang's reign was the birth in
551 B.C. of the great sage Confucius. This name is the
Latinized form of the Chinese designation K*ung Fu-tzl,
the " Philosopher K'ung." Confucius sprang from a family
that had served in various states as officials for several
generations. K'xmg Kia, his great-great-great-grand-
father, who lived at the end of the eighth century, was an
equerry to the Duke of Sxmg and perhaps one of the oldest
known members of the family, although the time-honored
custom of inventing pedigrees for distinguished personages
has not spared the peaceful house of the sage, whose an-
cestry has by some of his admirers been traced to the times
of Wu-wang, the head of the Ch6u dynasty, and even back
to those of the Emperor Huang-ti. Some of the genealogists
of his family trace its origin to some dukes of the state of
Sung. WTiichever of the several accounts may be correct,
this much is certain; namely, that the K'ungs of which
Confucius was a member represent probably the oldest
nobility of which any family in this world can boast, the
dukes of K^ung, now living in K'ii-fou in the west of Shan-
tung province, being able to trace their pedigree back by
some seventy odd generations and possibly a good deal
more, if the pre-Confucian part of the family tradition be
correct. The present duke in Shan-tung is merely the
head of a family, the male members of which some two
hundred years ago already numbered eleven thousand
individuals, — not merely dukes and princes, but the
majority of them in the lower walks of life, such as field
laborers and wheel-barrow men. The history of the K'ung
family is full of romance. Legge says : * —

* The Chinese Classics, vol. i, Prolegomena, p. 57 aeq.

THE AGE OF LAU-TZI AND CONFUCIUS 229

''K'ung Kia was an officer of well-known loyalty and probity.
Unfortunately for himself, he had a wife of surpassing beauty, of
whom the chief minister of the state, by name Hua Tu, happened
on one occasion to get a glimpse. Determined to possess her, he
conunenced a series of intrigues, which ended in 709 [710] B.C. in
the murder of Kia and the reigning Duke Shang [of Sung]. At
the same time, Tu secured the person of the lady, and hastened to
his palace with the prise, but on the way she stran^^ herself
with her girdle.

"An enmity was thus commenced between the two families
of K'ung and Hua which the lapse of time did not obliterate, and
the latter being the more powerful of the two, Kia's great-grandson
withdrew into the State of Lu to avoid their persecution. There
he was appointed commandant of the city of Fang, and is known in
history by the name of Fang-shu. Fangnshu gave birth to Fi-hia,
and from him came Shu-liang Ho, the father of Confucius. Ho
appears in the history of the times as a soldier of great prowess
and daring bravery. In the year 562 [563] B.C., when serving at
the siege of a place called Pi-yang, a party of the assailants made
their way in at a gate which had purposely been left open, and no
sooner were they inside than the portcullis was dropped. Ho was
just entering, and catching the massive structure with both his
hands, he gradually by dint of main strength raised it and held it
up till his friends had made their escape."

When Confucius was bom his father was seventy years
of age. His legal first wife had nine dau^ters, but no son ;
and since the only son bom to him by a concubine was a
cripple, the old man married a second wife, whose maiden
name was Yen. She gave birth to Confucius, whose exact
birthday and even birth year are matters in dispute. At
his birth he received the personal name /C'tu, and his
literary name was Chung-ni. His exact birthplace, like
that of Homer, is also in dispute. But the two places
mentioned in connection with his nativity were in close
proximity to each other, somewhere within the limits of

230 THE ANCIENT HISTORT OF CHINA

the present prefecture of Yen-ch6u-fu in Shan-tung.
Confucius lost his father at the age of three. Among the
notices of his early life Legg^ mentions that as a boy he used
to play at the arrangement of sacrificial vessels and at
postures of ceremony. This is extremely characteristic,
even if it be an invention. The daily life of the Chinese
gentleman, which had for centuries, as we must conclude
from that minute social and governmental code, the Chdu4if
been forced into the strait-jacket of etiquette, was the
main subject of Confucian philosophy. Every situation
in life had its prescribed form; and the anecdote told of
Confucius the boy seems to be in full harmony with what
we know of the man. At the age of fifteen he began to
study art. He married at the age of nineteen and had a
son whom he called Li, i.e. " the Carp," and whom he after-
ward styled Po-yUy i.e. "the First Fish," probably anticipat-
ing that others would follow ; but in this hope he was dis-
appointed, though he had a daughter. He called his boy
"carp," because his monarch, Duke Chau of Lu, had pre-
sented him with a couple of carp on the birth of his child,
which shows that the rising scholar was well connected at
that early age. Soon after he received his first appoint-
ments in the public service, unimportant offices in Lu's
administration. His official work was, however, far from
taxing his talent. All he had to do was to make no mis-
take in his calculations, and to see that the oxen and sheep
on the public fields were fat and strong. When twenty
years old he became a public teacher, professing to expound
the doctrines of antiquity. It was in this pursuit that he
laid the foundation of his wisdom. In his twenty-third
year he lost his mother, and much has been written about
the manner in which he buried her and mourned for her.

THE AGE OF LAU-TZl AND OONFUaUS 231

During the succeeding years he devoted himself to teach-
ing, and soon found himself surrounded by a number of
disciples anxious to study the rules of propriety as handed
down in the old historical records.

In recapitulating the sage's early career, regarding which
comparatively little reliable information is on record, we
have run ahead of our chronological account of the Ch6u
emperors; and, having arrived at the reign of Ling-wang,
we have also left behind probably the most important per-
sonage of the i)eriod, the philosopher Lau-tzi, this being
among a number of other names the designation under
which he is best known in China as well as abroad. We have
to distinguish between the historical Lau-tzi and the
legendary creation which sprang from him. As a man he
is supposed to have been bom in 604 b.c, his real name
being Li Ir. Lau-tzi, literally, "the Old Philosopher,"
which gives perfectly good sense and seems to render other
explanations superfluous, is said by some of his commenti^
tors to have received his name from his old appearance at
birth; and in this sense the name may be translated by
" the old child." Another view is that in old age he looked
like a boy. According to Ssi-ma Ts'i6n's very short ac-
count of Lau-tzi's life, he was a native of the state of Ch'u,
which makes it doubtful whether purely Chinese blood ran
in his veins. We learn nothing about his early life, but
the historian states that he lived in the capital of the Ch6u
imperial dominion as keeper of the archives. If we take
into account Confucius's main study, which was based on
research in old historical records and which resulted in the
compilation of the ' ' Spring and Autiunn Annals, " there were
certain points of contact between the two great philosophers
at least in their daily occupations; and yet one could not

232 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

imagine any greater contrast than that which exists in the
life-work of these two great men, who have become the
representative types of the development of Chinese spiritual
life. Lau-tzi must have been a very old man when Ckm-
fuciuSy then a comparative junior, expressed the wish to
one of his well-connected disciples to visit the imperial
court in order to meet the aged philosopher and to learn
his views on ceremonies and music. His ducal patron
liberally placed a carriage and a pair of horses at (Tonf udus's
disposal for the expedition. If Lau-tzi was really in charge
of the Ch6u archives, it was possibly he who placed on
record the court annals of Ling-wang and those (d his suc-
cessor and son King-wang.

§50. King" -WANG (544-620 B.C.)

During the reign of this emperor the eastern nei^bor
of the imperial domain, the state of Chong, which, owing
to its central position, had to suffer a good deal from the
jealousy of Tsin in the north and Ch'u in the south, had
the good fortune to be governed by a prudent minister,
Kung-sun Tzi-ch'an, a great friend of Confucius, who said
of him that he had four of the characteristics of the superior
man : in his conduct he was humble ; in serving his superiors
he was respectful ; in nourishing the people he was kind ;
and in ordering the people he was just. He added that he
looked upon him as the foundation of the state. Tzi-ch'an's
government was distinguished by its liberality and his
personal kindness to the people. Mencius * relates that the
minister would convey people in his own carriage across
some shallow rivers from sheer kind-heartedness; but he

* Legge, p. 193.

THE AGE OF LAU-TZI AND OONFUaUS 233

blamed Tzi-ch'an for so doing, sa3ring that although the
action was kind, it showed that he did not understand the
practice of government. Having commented on the im-
practicability of what Tzi-ch'an considered kindness shown
to the people, Mencius added that if a governor should try
to please everybody, he would find the days insufficient for
his work. Tzi-ch'an introduced a penal code and brought
order into his state in troubled times. His leading prin-
ciple in government was generosity to the people, and con-
sequently, severity to offenders, this being the best way to
show his love for his subjects. " He stands out in history
as one of the very few men in authority during those dark
times who were able and pure, true to their chief and
generous to their people." * Tzi-ch'an died 522 B.C.

8 51. King* -WANG (519-476 B.C.)

This was a son of the former King-wang, whose throne
name (King) seems identical in its transliteration, but is
really written with a different character and pronounced
in a different tone. On his accession there was dissension
among the brother princes, three of whom claimed the
throne, and the emperor had to live for some time outside
his capital until his brother Ch'au had fled to the state of
Ch'u (519 B.C.). Under this reign a feud, lasting throu^
many years, arose between the two states of Wu and Yvl6.
The ruler of the state of Wu had usurped the kingship under
the title of Ho-lihwang. He reigned from 514 to 496 B.C.,
and removed his capital to the site of the present city of
Soochow. Ho-lu died from a wound received in battle,

* Waiters, A Guide to the TableU in a Temple <^ Canfueiue, ShAHf-
hai, 1879, p. 36.

234 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

and his son Fu-ch'ai, after several defeats, was successful
against the state of Yu6, whose king, K6u-tsi^, had reigned
from 496 to 466 B.C. King Ho-lu of Wu had in his service
a famous general, Sun Wu, whose name has been perpetuated
as Sun-tzi, i.e. the '' Philosopher Sun." Under this name
a little work on military tactics is ascribed to his authorship;
and since it is mentioned in the Shlrki, it is probably the
oldest work of its kind. The philosophy of war is its sub-
ject ; and among the qualifications for military leadership
there is, according to the author, none more essential than
the maintenance of the severest discipline. According to
an oft-repeated legend. King Ho-lu had asked him to organ-
ize a corps of one himdred and ei^ty Amazons selected from
the royal harem, but at their first roll-call the yoimg women
made light of the idea and burst out laughing. The corps,
however, became desperately serious and actually grew into
a useful body after Sun-tzi had decapitated two of the
king's favorites for insubordination.

TTie wars that had arisen between the two states of
Wu and Yu6 lasted throughout the reign of King*-wang
and only terminated on the absorption of the state of Wu
by that of Yu6 (473 B.C.). A special work, the Wti-yui-
cKun-tsHu ("Spring and Autumn Annals of the States
of Wu and Yu6"), in ten books, originating from the
Han dynasty, is devoted to the history of these states.
Another work, dating from the later Han dynasty (since
the year 52 is mentioned in the body of the book),
the Yu6-tsu6'ShUy deals with the antiquities of Yu6. It has
probably been recast from a contemporaneous record, since
the work is primarily ascribed to Tzi-kimg, one of the
favorite disciples of Confucius. From an account contwned
in chapter xi of this work it appears that the period of

THE AGE OF LAU-TZI AND CONFUCIUS 235

King K6u-tsi£n of Yu6 coincided with that in which the
superiority of iron swords over the time-honored bronze
arms was seriously discussed. We have seen that the^
philosopher Kuan-tzi had advised the Duke of Ts'i to
introduce a tax upon the iron industry, which henceforth
became one of the chief sources of wealth and power to
Huan-kung. Kuan-tzi, in his discourse, mentions agri-
cultural and domestic implements and ''women's knives
and needles" as being made of iron; in spite of his anxiety
to quote high figures for the consumption of iron, he docs not
say a word about arms. It appears from this that in his time
(seventh century) iron was used for the implements of peace,
but not for weapons of war, which would require sharper
edges and finer points than could be produced during th^
early stage of iron manufacture. Three hundred years later
we find King K6u-tsi£n in the possession of certain magic
swords, with which feats of wonder could be performed.
It is distinctly stated that these were cast from tin and
copper. But it is stated that the production of iron swords,
alleged to possess magic qualities, excited the curiosity
of the king of Ch'u, who consulted an expert named
Fong-hu-tzi about them. It seemed an entirely new thing
then that iron, in the form of swords, possessed virtues
hitherto ascribed to bronze alone; and this may possibly
be due to some improvement in the manufacture, such as
the chilling of iron into steel, which may not have been
tried until after the lapse of generations following the intro-
duction of the ruder implements (ploughshares, hatchets,
and other articles of merely domestic use). When the king
asked, '' How is it possible that swords made of nothing but
iron can be of such magic subtleness?" F5ng-hu-tsl
answered in terms which seem to suggest that he was fully

236 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

conscious of the extent and sequence of cultural periods
in high antiquity, knowledge of which, as the result of
scientific reasoning, is a comparatively recent acquisition
with Westerners. F6ng-hu-tzi places his "Stone age "in
the time of the primeval emperors Hi6n-yuan (about
3000 B.C.), Shon-nung (2737-2705 B.C.), and Ho-su (an
emperor supposed to have lived before the first-named).
In this period weapons (ping) were made of stone and were
used for splitting wooden blocks for the construction of
dwellings. The dead were buried by dragons. This first
period is followed by a second age, extending from Huang-ti
(about 2700 b.c.) down to Yii (about 2200, or say, 2000 b.c,
by the annals of the Bamboo Books), in which jade was
used for similar purposes. This may be compared to our
neolithic period, when hatchets and arrow-heads were
made of polished stone, either jade or flint. The next
period, the Bronze age, extends from Yii down to the time
when the above-mentioned conversation of the king of
Ch'u with his sword expert took place, i.e. from the twenty-
second or twentieth century down to about 500 b.c, when
the Iron age, as far as arms (swords) are concerned, began.
Such a cultural change, as the replacement of bronze by
iron or steel, in the manufacture of arms could not, of course,
have taken place all at once. But the year 500 b.c. seems
a reasonable date to assign to it, if we allow for the sporadic
occurrence of iron swords, recorded as having been pre-
sented as tribute from abroad, and if it be borne in mind
that in certain parts of China iron ore was produced, whereas
in others it remained unknown for centuries. Those few
words placed on record in the Yui-tsuishUf in which an
expert on swords places his views before the inquiring mind
of the king of Ch'u, the head of the southern barbarians,

THE AGE OF LAU-TZI AND OONFUCTUS 237

seem to give us a more correct idea, limited though it be,
of the real development of Chinese history than the gush-
ing accounts of Confucian literature^ in which many of the
results of a much more recent cultural development have
been simply transferred to periods we are wont to call pr©-
historical. If we are told by the Chinese that Huang-ti,
who ought to have lived about the end of the Stone age,
caused the first sacrificial bronze vases to be cast, and that
Yii, whom F6ng-hu-tzi places at the head of the Bronze
age, received iron and steel as tribute from one of his
provinces/ this would be an anachronism according to our
philosopher and seems to support the skeptical point of
view which forces us to read the entire early history of the
Chinese with great caution.'

We have now to return to the most important two per-
sonages of the previous two generations, the philosophers
Lau-tzi and Confucius. These are the names representing
the two reaUy indigenous religions of China — if " religion"
be not a gross misnomer, which should perhaps be replaced
by some such term as doctrine. The philosophies of
Lau-tzi and of Confucius — if again "philosophy" be not
a misnomer — have, however, though often misapplied and
misunderstood, become the starting-point for those cultural
phases which may be called religion, inasmuch as they are
connected with worship and are represented by temples
and priests. Since Buddhism was added to Lau-tzi's doc-
trine of the Tau, i,e, "the Right Way," and Confucius's
teachings on the duties of the Superior Man, the Chinese
speak of san-kiau, i.e. "the Three Teachings," or "Reli-
gions," if we admit the parallel by which Christianity was

> Sk^iMng, ed. Legge, p. 121. * Cf. Hirth, CAtiMtiidU AntidUm
iib$r Bnmattrammdn, p. 18 $^qq.

238 THE ANCIENT fflSTORY OF CHINA

called king-kiau, the ''Luminous Reli^on/' when first
brought to China by the Nestorians (636 a.d.) or fiin-ckU'
kiau, "the Religion of the Lord of Heaven/' the modem
term for Roman Catholicism, or Yi'SVrkiau, " the Religion
of Jesus," under which designation the Protestant denomi-
nations used to be comprised.^ One of these so-called
religions is Tauism, supposed to be based in the last in-
stance on a text called the Tavrto-king, "The Canon, or
Classic, of the Way and of Virtue," the authorship of which
is usually ascribed to Lau-tzi. It seems, however, very
doubtful whether the work in its present shape is really
identical with that written by the philosopher himself, if
indeed he wrote a work at all and if he did not play a r61e
similar to that of Socrates, whose teachings were placed on
record by others. Some of its critics, however, among them
Legge, look upon it as the more or less genuine record of the
great philosopher's views. Others, guided by Professor
H. A. Giles ^ take an entirely skeptical view, and regard
the TaU'to-king as a forgery. Confucius and his adherents,
the oldest sources for what we know about the history of
the Ch6u dynasty, have nothing to say about either Lau-
tzi or his work ; but this is possibly the result of a certain
antagonism between the two schools. For, as I have already
remarked, no greater contrast can be imagined than that
between the teachings of Confucius and those of Lau-tzi.
The latter would be unknown but for the fragments handed
down in the works of his later adherents where he is often
quoted as "Lau-tzi says," and from the Tau-to-king, which
may be entirely spurious, or, on the other hand, may con-
tain remnants of his actual sayings. With the material

* Since the last few years changed to K%-tu-kiau,t.e, "Christ's Reli-
gion." * The Remains of Lao-izH, in China Review , vol. xiv.

THE AGE OF LAU-TZI AND CONFUCIUS 239

now before us it is difficult, if not impossible, to reconstruct
what Lau-tzi really said. His philosophy, if in the face of
such insufficiency in its tradition we can use this term,
impresses one as transcendental, when compared with
Confucius's applied moral philosophy. Like Johann Jacob
Engel, the instructor of King Frederick William III of
Prussia, Confucius was a "philosopher for the world'' —
the world in a much narrower sense than that of Lau-tzi,
the Chinese world as it had grown out of its own history.
The kunrtzi, the "superior man," or the "true gentleman
in all positions of life,'' as we may call him, is one of the
chief objects of Confucius's teachings, which are devoted
to practical life and its requirements; whereas Lau-tzi's
work, as we may conclude from the disconnected fragments
in which it is presented to us, must have been full of mystic
abstractions. These, I feel bound to confess, I do not
understand ; but for this I do not blame Lau-tzi. If in-
sufficient training in philosophical thought must be accepted
as an excuse for not understanding the works of so many
of our own contemporaries, written in our own language,
what shall we say about the Tavrid-king and the fragments
of Lau-tsi's sayings preserved in later mystics, the ele-
mentary terms of which, such as txiu ("The Way," or
"The Word," possibly with a dotible-erUendre like the
Greek Xiytt^) or wihw&i ("non-action"), have been trans-
lated by as many diflferent terms as there were commen-
tators?

Unfortunately the translation of a Chinese philosophical
work, even if handed down to posterity without adultera-
tion of any kind, is fraught with difficulties fully as great
as the rendering of Chinese poetry. The latter requires a
man to be not only an exact philologist, but also a poet;

240 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

and these two will quarrel on every concession they have
to make to each other. The translation of a work like
Lau-tzi's Tavrid-king suffers under a similar difficulty.
The philosopher should not think he understands unless he
has heard what the philologist has to say ; and the philolo-
gist should neither condemn nor indorse without entering
heart and soul into the subject. Extensive though the
literature, both native and foreign, on Lau-tzi and his
philosophy is, as well from the skeptical as from the re-
ceptive point of view, it seems too early to arrive at a final
conclusion as to the authenticity of any or all of his sayings
now on record. Further, assuming the genuineness of the
fragments that have come down to us, it would be difficult
to reconstruct from them the sage^s philosophical system.
The story of Conf ucius's visit to Lau-tzi, as told by Ssi-ma
Ts*i^n, may be merely hen trovato; but it seems quite
characteristic of the two men, of whom Lau-tzi must have
been the more genuine sage. True to the principle of non-
action, he had discarded all ambition in life when he found
himself interviewed by the rising young philosopher anxious
to search the records of past generations, from which
he wished to derive the principles by which to reform
the life of his nation. Lau-tzi is said to have given Con-
fucius the following reply: '^The men of the times you
refer to have rotted in their graves and live only in their
words. The superior man must fall in with his time in
order to make his way; otherwise he will be surrounded
by difficulties. I have heard that a prudent merchant
will keep his valuables concealed in the depths of his store-
houses as though he had none to show ; similarly the supe-
rior man may be full of merit and yet his appearance may
be plain and simple. Discard withal haughtiness and

THE AGE OF LAU-TZI AND OONFUaUS 241

those many desires, with outward appearances and licen-
tious schemes. These are all of no advantage to you.
That is all I can tell you/' The rebuff involved in these
few words seems to speak volumes as to the character of
the two sages.

Lau-tzi certainly appears as the real philosopher of the
two, whose views of the world had ripened after a life spent
in deep thought ; spemere mundum and spemere se spemi
seem to have been the leading notes of his personal
character. Confucius was the very reverse. He took the
greatest interest in this world, its men (himself included)
and their lives. To reform the social life of his native land,
to lead his contemporaries to adopt a certain standard of
morality as exhibited in their daily doings, was the main
ambition of his work. This standard he endeavored to
derive from the records of the past. What he taught the
Chinese world of his time was not so much the creation of
his own philosophical mind as the result of his historical
studies. That characteristic of Chinese social life, the
burying of man's individual life among a rigid mass of
ceremonies, can be traced to the very beginnings of Chinese
history. Confucius was merely the son of his time; and
his time was bent on ceremonies and had been so for cen-
turies, as the early history of the Ch6u dynasty, with its
great code of government and social life, the Chdu-li^ clearly
shows. He merely placed on record what had existed for
ages and gave it his own interpretation, both by his teach-
ings and his personal life. In this respect he has probably
bad greater influence on the life of his nation than any
philosopher of the Western world on that of his own race.
In spite of many political changes during thousands of years
there has always been a China from beginning to end, from
a

242 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

the dawn of history to the present day. This much cannot
be said of any of the other great empires of the world, since
none of these has attained to any such longevity, not even
excepting Egypt, which name covers a variety of races,
each with a history of its own. This stability in the life
of the nation is greatly due to the principles inherent in
the nation itself, but codified, as it were, by the great sage.
If we afiix to these principles the label '^ Confucianism,"
we should not forget that as regards their main character-
istics their creator has merely voiced views held long before
him, and that the life of the nation, as far back as history
goes, may in a certain sense be looked upon as '' retrospective
Confucianism." Certainly Confucius would not have been
what he was without that preparatory period. This, how-
ever, does not detract from his merits as a maker of his
people, whose dependence on him has been well expressed
by Von der Gabelentz in his excellent lecture on Confucius
and his teachings.^
That writer says : —

" Quite unique b the position occupied by him, who, as no other
man, was a teacher of his people, who, I venture to say, has become
and continued to be a ruler of his people, the Sage of the family
K'ung in the State of Lu, whom we know by the name of Confucius.
Unique is his position not only in the history of philosophy, but
also in the history of mankind. For there is hardly any other man
who, like Confucius, incorporated in his own person all the constit-
uent elements of the Chinese type and all that is eternal in his
people's being. If we are to measure the greatness of a historic
personage, I can see only one standard applicable for the purpose :
the effectiveness of that person's influence according to its dimen-
sions, duration, and intensity. If this standard be applied, Con-

' Confucius und seine Lehre, Leipzig (F. A. Brockhaus), p. 4 seq.,
and the English version in the China Review, vol. xvii, p. 63.

THE AGE OF LAU-TZl AND OONFUCTOS 243

fucius was one of the greatest of men. For even at the present
day, after the lapse of more than two thousand years, the moral,
social, and poUtical life of about one-third of mankind continues
to be under the fuU influence of his mind."

(Tonf ucius's visit to the capital of the Ch6u emperor and
his interview with Lau-tzi made a deep impression upon
him. He had seen the splendor of the imperial court and
been impressed with reminiscences of the great history of
the empire in the shape of wall paintings of the old rulers
Yau and Shun, with their successors, but especially by a
representation of the Duke of Ch6u, with his ward, the
infant emperor Ch'ong, giving audience to the princes of
the empire. A remark- attributed to him, according to
which he refers to the Duke of Ch6u as the origin of imperial
power under the Ch6u dynasty, shows in what veneration
he held the supposed first author of the Chdurli. After a
short stay in the capital Confucius returned to his native
country, the state of Lu, and there his fame began to spread,
the followers of his doctrines being counted by thou-
sands. Lu soon became disorganized by political factions
which made war on each other; and matters went so far
as to cause the legitimate ruler, Duke Chau, in 517 B.C.,
to take refuge in the neighboring state of Ts'i, which a
century and a half earlier had been brought into such a
flourishing condition by its famous ruler, Duke Huan, and
his prime minister, the philosopher Kuan-tzi. In order
to avoid the troubles of Lu, Confucius followed his duke.
The court of Duke King, the ruler erf Ts'i, was celebrated
for its music. The impression of a certain piece which
Confucius heard played on his arrival was so great that he
refrained from meat for three months. Confucius's rela-
tions with Duke King became pleasant, and led to an ex-

244 THE ANCIENT fflSTORY OP CHINA

change of opinions on political and social subjects, but they
did not lead to the appointment of the sage to the position
he probably desired, viz. adviser-in-chief to the duke, the
latter having been warned by his minister against the con-
ceited scholar who, in his opinion, held impracticable
views, set such high value on funereal ceremonies, wasted
property on burials, and had a thousand peculiarities con-
nected with his rules of propriety. It appears from this
that Conf ucius's social system was not received with open
arms by some of the common-sense statesmen of the time.
Duke King, accordin^y, made little of his visitor's services^
who, after a stay of about two years, returned disgusted
to his native state of Lu. There he lived the life of a private
scholar down to the year 501 B.C.

At this time all was in disorder in Lu. While the duke
was living as a refugee in Ts'i, his prominent relatives
fought for supremacy in the government, and they con-
tinued to do so till his death in 509 B.C., when he was suc-
ceeded by one of his relatives imder the style of Duke
Ting. Even then fighting did not cease among the power-
ful grandees of the duchy. Confucius during all this time
kept aloof from politics. After fifteen years spent in study
and literary work, he was appointed magistrate in one of
the cities of Lu, where he put his social theories to a prac-
tical test. The people of Chung-tu, the district over which
he had jurisdiction, had now to conform to his rules of
propriety with all that pedantry which, even to this day,
governs the life of educated Chinamen. His government
was one of interference with all individual liberty. Every
act of life had its prescribed ceremonial; ceremonial in
every detail, such as we are wont to see only in the courts
of rulers and the households of high dignitaries, became

THE AGE OF LAU-TZI AND C»NFUCIU8 246

oUigatory on the people at large ; and all matters of daily
life were subject to some rigid rule. Even the food which
the different classes of people were allowed to eat was
regulated ; males and females were kept apart from each
other in the streets ; and even the thickness of coflSns and
the shape and situation of graves were made the subjects
of his regulations. The result of this system is said by the
admirers of the sage to have been marvelous ; for the man-
ners of the population were changed entirely, and they
became patterns of good behavior. The princes of nei^-
boring states wished to imitate his style of administration ;
and Duke Ting was so much impressed by the good results
of Confucius's system that he decided to bring him to the
front and appoint him to some higher metropolitan oflSce.
Thus we soon see him in the position of minister of justice,
the effect of his appointment being that all crime dis-
appeared in the state. In deciding cases he would take the
opinions of several individuals and, after due consideration,
decide in favor of one of them. Once he made light of a
case in which a father had brou^t a serious charge against
his son. When questioned how this judgment was com-
patible with his views on filial piety, he threw the guilt on
the accuser for not having tau^t his son to be filial.

In this hi^ position Confucius was not without political
influence, the chief object of which was the strengthening
of the duke's position against that of his grandees. It is
very likely that many of the stories of the sage's life are
of a legendary character; still whatever truth may be at
the bottom of them must be due to the greatness of his
personal character. Even the most patient population
in the world would have revolted against such t3rranny of
interference as he imposed upon the people of Chung-tu,

246 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

had he not unpressed his contemporaries as the embodi-
ment of absolute morality in a world full of vice and mis-
conduct.

To Conf ucius's management of affairs in the state of Lu
was ascribed such a rise in the ruling duke's political power
that the latter's neighbors, especially the Duke ci Ts'i,
became jealous of his successful govemmenti which threat-
ened to raise Lu to a certain leadership among the con-
federate states. An old trick was resorted to as a means
to divert Duke Ting's interest from excellence in govern-
ment to things of a more worldly nature. Ei^ty beautiful
girls and one hundred and twenty fine horses were offered
as a gift to the duke, who to the great disgust of the sage
accepted them. From this time onward Confucius lost
his influence over the duke; and gradually, thou^ with-
out an open rupture, he again withdrew into private life.
He could not now bear to live in his home, but wandered
about for fourteen years a voluntary exile.

He first went with some of his disciples to the state of
Wei. ting, its reigning duke (534r-493 B.C.), was a dissi-
pated character; yet, recognizing the great reputation
enjoyed by the sage throughout China, he encouraged the
latter's stay in the country by assigning him a revenue of
60,000 measures of grain. Life at the court of Wei, how-
ever, was apparently not congenial to his views, one of
the chief characteristics of which was purity in morals.
The duke, to whose court Confucius was attached as an
ornament rather than as a propagandist of his views, was
married to a lady of evil reputation, named Nan-tzi. Being
summoned to an interview with her, Confucius unwillingly
obeyed, and when one of his disciples remonstrated with
him for having been seen in the company of a woman of

THE AGE OP LAU-TZi AND CONFUCIUS 247

such an unfavorable character, he swore emphatically that
nothing improper had ocdured between them. Some
time afterward, the duke, as an act of grace, invited Con-
fucius to accompany him on a ride through the streets in
a cort^ in which the duke and his wicked consort occupied
a carriage followed by one containing the sage, when the
people cried out, "Lol here is lust in front and virtue
behind." The idea of being forced to associate with those
who, thou^ of exalted rank, were not of equal virtue with
his own, was incompatible with his principles ; and he,
therefore, decided to leave the country. He visited several
other states, but did not succeed in obtaining the position
he desired, — a position of high trust in which he might
have an opportunity to reform society and government
according to hb principles. All he wanted was such a
position. ''If any one would make use of me," he says,'
** twelve months would suffice to score results in teaching,
and in three years all would be completed." The desired
invitaticm to join any of the minor rulers in the cares of
government was not, however, forthcoming, and he con-
tinued to wander from state to state. He seemed to have
a chance to carry out his ideals when he visited the state
of Ch'u, mostly inhabited by Man barbarians, whose king
was inclined to endow him with some territory; but the
monarch, being warned by his prime minister that a man
like Confucius, surrounded by so many men of superior
talent calling themselves his disciples, would soon rise to
become a political power and a danger to his government^
abandoned the idea. When soon afterward the king died,
Confucius left the south and returned to Wei.

* Confucian AnaUcU, cd. Legge, p. 13L

248 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

Great changes had in the meantune taken place in Wei.
Duke Ling had died. The legitimate heir, his son, was
forced to leave the country, owing to a quarrel with his
mother, the notorious Nan-tzi ; and the government fell to
Duke Ling's grandson, who reigned under the name of Ch'u.
Ch'u invited Confucius to assist him in the government of
his state, but the sage had his doubts as to the legitimacy
of the succession and declined the honor. He continued
to live in Wei for about five years in a private capacity.

Through the influence of one of his disciples, who held
office in the state of Lu, Confucius, now sixty-eight years
old, was at last recalled to his native country. There he
died five years after his return, in 479 B.C. After the
many disappointments he had received, it seems that his
ambition had lessened, and that he had become reconciled
to the idea of living the quiet life of a scholar among his
compatriots, highly honored indeed, and even consulted,
by those in power, but not wielding the power himself.
Several of the literary works ascribed to Confucius are said
to have originated during this period of retirement. He
also lost his son Li, "the Carp," to whom he was not half
so much attached as to certain of his disciples. Some of
the latter, also, he was destined to outlive, and among them
none was more attached to him than his favorite Tzi-lu.
Legge * says of him : —

"He [Tzi-lu] stands out a sort of Peter in the Confucian school,
a man of impulse, prompt to speak and prompt to act. He gets
many a check from the master; but there is evidently a strong
sjrmpathy between them. Tzi-lu uses a freedom with him on which
none of the other disciples dares to venture, and there is not one
among them all for whom, if I may speak from^my own feeling,
the foreign student comes to form such a liking."

* The Chinese Classics, vol. i, Prolegomena, p. 87.

THE AGE OF LAU-TZI AND C»NFUCIUS 249

Tzi-lu, whose original name was Chung Yu, was of poor
descent and was known for his filial piety. Another
disciple, known as Tzi-yiian, whose name was Yen Hui,
was remarkable not so much for his sayings as for his great
devotion to, and his personal friendship with, Confucius.
He was thirty years younger than the latter, and the his-
torian relates of him that at the age of twenty-nine his
hair turned white. Confucius had to mourn the death of
this follower also.

Another of the sage's pupils, who outlived him many
years, was Tzi-yii, properly called Tsong Ts'an, well known
throu^out China as a model of filial piety. In the legends
current about him he is represented as a regular caricature
in his exaggerations of this, the cardinal domestic virtue
of the Chinaman. The idol he worshiped beyond any-
thing else was his mother ; once he refused to enter a vUlage
simply because its name, Shang-mu, meaning '' better than
a mother," displeased him, and he divorced his wife because
she had served his mother an unsavory dish. In other
words, his virtue, notwithstanding the great admiration
with which it is viewed by the Chinese, was, like that of
Confucius himself, sometimes of a pettifogging and pedantic
character and devoid of all humor. The well-known
Hiaurking ("Canon of Filial Piety") is ascribed to Tzi-yii.

One of the best-known followers of Confucius, and the
one to whose life Ssi-ma Ts'i^n devotes particular attention
in his chapter on "Confucian Disciples," was Tzi-kung,
properly called Tuan-mu Tz'i, who, like Tzi-lu, is one of
the chief interlocutors in the accounts of the sage's personal
life, and of whose judgment Confucius himself had the
hi^est opinion. The master was by no means so well
satisfied with all his adherents, and he made no secret of

250 THE ANQENT HISTORY OF CHINA

his displeasure if he found fault with them. Such was the
case with Tzi-o, properly called Tsai Yu, a man of talent
who did not accept Confucius's moral standard, as may be
shown from a celebrated passage in the "Confucian
Analects'' : ''Tsai Yii being asleep during the dasTtime, the
Master said, 'Rotten wood cannot be carved; a wall of
dirty earth will not receive the trowel. This Yii — what is
the use of my reproving him?'" Thus every one among
the better-known disciples had his personal characteristics
not only in his relation to the master, as shown in numerous
anecdotes of this kind, but also in the views expressed by
him in conversation.

There can be no doubt that Confucius has had a greater
influence on the development of the Chinese national
character than many emperors taken together. He is,
therefore, one of the essential figures to be considered in
connection with any history of China. That he could in-
ffluence his nation to such a degree was, it appears to me,
due more to the peculiarity of the nation than to that of his
own personality. Had he lived in any other part of the
world, his name would perhaps be forgotten. As we have
seen, he had formed his character and his personal views
on man's life from a careful study of documents closely
connected with the moral philosophy cultivated by former
generations. What he preached to his contemporaries
was, therefore, not all new to them ; but, having himself,
in the study of old records, heard the dim voice of the sages
of the past, he became, as it were, the megaphone phono-
graph, through which were expressed to the nation those
views which he had derived from the early development
of the nation itself. His influence may be considered from
a threefold point of view; for, the practical lessons he

THE AGE OF LAU-TZI AND C»NFUaUS 251

tau^t are to be found in what he wrote, in what he said,
and in what he did.

What Confucius wrote is probably confined to editorial
work rather than contained in independent compositions.
The so-called "Chinese Classics" consist of two series of
books, the first of which, known as the Wu-king, " Five
Canons/' are works of pre-Confucian origin and were
partly edited or compiled by the sage himself, whereas the
second, the St^hu, the so-called ''Four Books,'' consists
of texts connected with Confucius's life and teachings,
but not written or edited by him. The Wurking now com-
prises the following works : —

(1) The I'king, ''Canon of Change," about which we
have had occasion to speak in connection with Won-wang,
father of Wu-wang, the founder of the Ch6u dynasty.
Confucius is said to have had a high opinion of this work,
thou^ it seems he had no hand in the compUation of its
text as known at the time.

(2) The Shu-king f "Canon of History," as the title is
sometimes translated, though its literal rendering indicates
merely a canonical collection of writings or documents.
We have had occasion, when discussing the history of the
most ancient emperors, such as Yau, Shun, and Yii, to
speak of this book, the detailed accounts of which contain
so many excellent speeches, extolling the virtue of the great
model rulers, in contrast with certain miserable tyrants,
and yet do not inspire us with confidence in their historical
accuracy. There may be an element of truth in some of
them; but it would seem that the names of Yau, Shun,
and Yii were merely borrowed for the purpose of expresring,
as those of hi^ antiquity and therefore of great authority,
views which in reality breathe the spirit of an age almost

252 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

contemporaneous with Confucius himself. What the SJnh
king places on record as Chinese history of the third millen-
nium B.C. is much too interesting to deserve credit; and I
am inclined to date the beginning of that period, the record
of which we may accept with a certain amount of confidence
when it becomes dry and monotonous imder the Shang
dynasty, about the middle of the second millennitun B.C.
It does not seem that Confucius himself was responsible
for this fabrication) He may have merely copied or com-
piled what he found of the old emperor lore existing
before his own time; but if this work, which Professor
Grube^ may be right in calling a "poetical production/' has
been received as gospel by the Chinese down to the present
day, Confucius must be considered as the one great au-
thority that perpetuated the error.

(3) The Shi'kingy " Canon of Odes/' that mine of informa-
tion on the most ancient culture of the Chinese, containing
over three hundred odes then current among the people,
the dates of some of which may be determined from his-
torical facts alluded to in them and many of which may
have been sung by the people and its bards centuries before
they were written down. The work was probably arranged
and edited by Confucius himself.

(4) The Li'kij "Canon of Rites/' a collection of rules
describing, to the minutest detail, the ceremonial to be
observed by the Chinese gentleman on all the occasions of
daily life. These rules, which may be called the very soul
of Chinese society, probably existed long before Confucius.
The Li-ki corresponds in spirit to the Chdu-liy which to us
is of much greater importance as a record of historical value,
though it is not now included among the canonical books

> Qeschichte der chinesUchen Litterahir, p. 41.

THE AGE OF LAU-TZI AND CONFUCIUS 253

of prime importance. TTie Lirki may be called the cere-
monial code of the private man, whereas the Chdnrli is
devoted to public life and the institutions of government.

(5) The Ch'ttn-tsHu, ''Spring and Autumn/' annals of
the state of Lu, first compiled by Confucius, and then
largely extended by commentaries, which constitute its
real value, chief among the latter being the Tso-chtum by
Tbo K'iu-ming.

TTiese five canons were probably the books with which
Confucius occupied himself at various periods of his life.
If I do not hold him, or any philosopher connected with
his school, responsible for the contents of the Shu-king, it
is chiefly on the ground that religious views are expressed
in it which appear to be foreign to the Confucian school.
That unmistakable monotheism cultivated by the ancient
emperors must have been clearly discernible in those
ancient records or traditions which the inventors of the
old emperor lore, whoever they may have been, made the
starting-point of their historical accounts.

What Confucius said, his views on life and his practical
I^osophy, has been deposited mainly in the works known
as the S«l-sAw, "TTie Four Books." Althouf^ their con-
tents are inseparable from the master's person and his doc-
trines, Confucius had nothing to do with their compilation,
which must be ascribed to the sage's disciples and adher-
ent*. TTie Ssi-shu now comprise the following four works,
which may be called the main text-books of Confucianism :

(1) Lim-yu, " Discourses," m which the master's views
are embodied in dialogues of a desultory kind between
himself and his disciples. Legge's translation of this
title by "Confucian Analects" is not, of course, literal;
but it seems appropriate as being descriptive of the char-

264 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

acter of the work, the twenty books of which are supposed
to have originated from cerj^ memoranda, preserved by
his disciples, of their conversations with Confucius and to
have been collected after his death by the followers of his
disciples. The key-note of these discourses is that virtue
placed by the Chinese of all ages above every other, namely,
filial piety. The love of one's parents has become almost
a craze among the Chinese, the cultivation of which has
led many of them to the most wonderful eccentricities.
Filial love is the basis of all that is good and proper in
family Ufe; and brotherly submission, the respect due to
the senior by the junior, is closely connected with it. The
state with its government is merely family life on a larger
scale. The filial love of the people is shown in obedience
to its parents, the ruler and his government. In one of
his definitions of filial piety, Confucius simply explains it
by "obedience." The obedience due to a father by his
child is also due to the sovereign by his subjects. Man in
his relation to the world is considered from five points of
view : (1) sovereign and subject, (2) father and son, (3) hus-
band and wife, (4) elder and younger brother, (5) friend
and friend. In each of these relations man has his duties,
the proper discharge of which by all will insure good gov-
ernment and general peace and happiness. Similar ques-
tions are treated in the Lun-yu, The considerations due
to these relations determine the character of "man as he
ought to be/' "the superior man," "the true gentleman,"
or whatever translation we may give to the Chinese term
kun-tzly the proper creation of Confucius's mind.

(2) TorhiOy "The Great Learning," a treatise on self-
culture, based on knowledge as a means of reforming
society.

THE AGE OF LAU-TZI AND OONFUaUS 255

(3) Ckung-yung, ''The Doctrine of the Mean/' also tran&-
hited by ''The Golden Medium." The superior man will
in all his views and doings " stand erect in the middle with-
out inclining to either side.'' It is the path of the philoso-
pher which the sage advises him to pursue. He does the
ri^t thing for its own sake, whether the world regards him
or not.

(4) Mdng^zlf "The Philosopher Mong," (whose proper
name was Mong K'o), well known among foreigners under
the Latinized name of Mencius, which stands for Mong-tzl,
just as the term K'tmg-furtzi, the "Philosopher K'ung,"
has been Latinized into Confucius. Mencius lived several
generations after Confucius, 372-289 B.C., but, after its
founder, was the principal representative of the Confucian
school. The above-mentioned work, bearing his name, is
a record and compilation of his teachings. It is similar in
style to the Lun-yu inasmuch as in it accounts of conversa-
tions prevail. The doctrines embodied in it, which mainly
concern government matters, will be referred to later on.
Althou^ in this work Confucius himself is but occasionally
introduced as having said certain things, the views ex-
pressed by Mencius and his disciples form part of the Con-
fucian doctrines.

The great influence of Confucius's personality on national
life in China was due not only to his writings and his
teachings as recorded by others, but also to his doings.
His personal character, as described by his disciples and in
the accounts of later writers, some of which may be en-
tirely legendary, has become the pattern for millions of
those who are bent on imitating the outward manners of a
great man. Tlie tenth book of the "Analects," describing
the demeanor of Confucius in all the relations of life, — his

356 THE ANCIENT fflSTORY OF CfflNA

x)i\w^ hi« food, his behavior in the company of friends, etc.,
--w^yrwwit« him as a man full of caprice, even from a
KlMw'*!'^ |H>int of view. Whatever he did in public was
^^iPi^t^l U> the minutest detail by ceremony. This was
1^ ijtAVVtilkMi of his own, since ceremonial life had been
i^iv«iMJt^^ m^tty centuries before Confucius; but his
jiMi^^wrt^Y a^i example did much to perpetuate what he
QOUciiiicivU d^?iarable social practices. Legge* quotes the
following peculiarities from this memorable biographical
r^oojxl: —

'^ In public, whether in the village, the temple, or the court, he
was the man of rule and ceremony, but at home he was not formal.
Yet if not formal, he was particular. In bed even he did not for-
get himself; * he did not lie like a corpse,' and * he did not speak.'

* He required his sleeping dress to be half as long again as his body.'

* If he happened to be sick, and the prince came to visit him, he
had his face to the east, caused his court robes to be put over him,
and drew his girdle across them.'

"'lie was nice in his diet, not disHking to have his rice dressed
fine, nor to have his minced meat cut small.' 'Anything at all
gone he would not touch.' 'He must have his meat cut properly,
and to every kind its proper sauce ; but he was not a great eater.'
' It was only in wine that he laid down no limit to himself ; but he
did not allow himself to be confused by it.' 'When the villagers
were drinking together, on those who carried staves going out, he
went out immediately after.' 'There must always be ginger at
the table'; and 'when eating, he did not converse.' 'Although
his food might be coarse rice and poor soup, he would offer a little
of it in sacrifice, with a grave and respectful air.'

" ' On occasion of a sudden clap of thunder, or a violent wind, he
would change countenance. He would do the same, and rise up
moreover, when he found himself a guest at a loaded board.' 'At
the sight of a person in mourning he would also change countenance,
and if he happened to be in his carriage, he would bend forward

^ 7^ Chinese ClassicSf vol. i. Prolegomena, p. 89 seqq.

THE AGE OF LAU-TZI AND CJONFUCIUS 257

with a leBpectivi salutation.' 'His general way in his carriage
was not to turn his head round, nor talk hastily, nor point with
his hands.' ' He was charitable.' ' When any of his friends died
if there were no relations who could be depended on for the neces-
sary offices he would say, ''I will bury him."'"

We have to take into consideration that these accounts
were written not by Confucius himself, but by an admiring
set of juniors. Those many whims which, in the eyes of
Europeans of the twentieth century, appear as weaknesses,
may lessen our respect for the sage's genius ; but they will
not diminish the esteem in which we must hold the spotless
virtue of his life.

vra

THE CONTENDING STATES

THE CONTENDING STATES
§ 52. YiJAN-WANG (475-469 B.C.)

WE left the reign of King^-wang (see above, p. 234)
with the two southern states Wu and Yu6 at war
with each other. During the reign of his successor
Yuan-wang, K6u-tsi4n, the king of Yii^, who had at first been
utterly routed by the forces of his enemy, the king of Wu,
succeeded in a final campaign in making an end of the Wu
dynasty, and annexed its state to his dominions. After
his defeat by the king of Wu, K6u-tsi4n had been allowed,
as an act of grace, a little strip of territory; and during
the years that followed his defeat "he slept on firewood
and tasted gall,'' ^ — a phrase which has since come into
common use for the expression of resentment at great
humiliation coupled with the determination to take revenge.
And revenge K6u-tsi4n took when, a few years later, he
rallied his forces and wiped out every trace of his old
enemy. He was at first inclined to requite the generosity

* This phraflc occurs in an edict of the Empreas Dowager (Octo-
ber 2, 1901), where she refers to the period of trouble through which
the imperial court had just passed after its exile to the western
capital Si-an-fu. It is one of those historical allusions by which,
through the mere insertion of a few words, a whole perspective of
ideas is opened to the reader well versed in classical and historical
literature, though seldom noticed by interpreters working with
no better help than a native secretary, who may or may not call
attention to them.

281

262 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

previously shown to him; but his minister advised
him, for political reasons, to desist from the exhibition
of such good nature lest the king of Wu might agiun
turn upon him. The king of Wu thereupon committed
suicide, and K6u-tsi6n, now master of the two king-
doms, became one of the most powerful supporters of
Yiian-wang.

The Ch'im-ts'iu period, so called from the historical classic
of that name, the main text of which is ascribed to Con-
fucius himself, must, of coiu*se, be considered as closed
before the death of its author. The Tso-chuan commentary
carries its accounts about seventeen years farther on, thus
covering Yiian-wang^s reign. About this time commences,
according to some authorities, that period of the Ch6u
dynasty which precedes its downfall, and which is known
by the name of Chan-ktiOj "the Contending States." The
history of this period, which covers rather more than the
last two centuries of the dynasty, is described in a work
entitled Chan-kuo-ts^dj ''Documents relating to the Con-
tending States,'^ unless ts^o here means as much as " strata-
gems, '' or, as Grube suggests, "counsels." The Contend-
ing States witnessed the most wretched times of Chinese
history from a political point of view. Had there
been a powerful neighbor on the Asiatic continent in
those days, China would have been absorbed, as indeed
she finally was, by one of her own princes. Public mo-
rality was at its lowest ebb; and yet some of the
country^s unforgotten patriots and some of its great
philosophers flourished during this troublous period. The
reign of Yiian-wang was still a comparatively easy one.
Times began to be more serious under his son Chon-ting-
wang.

THE CONTENDING STATES 263

§ 53. Chon-tinq-wang (468-441 b.c.)

Under this ruler internal troubles disorganised several
of the once powerful states. Six grandees of the state of
Tsin wrangled about supremacy ; two of these were defeated
and the remaining four divided their possessions. The
duke himself had to take refuge in a nci^boring state.
Tlie southern kingdom of Ch'u conquered two of the middle
states. Tlie one satisfactory feature in Chon-ting-wang's
reign was the partly successful warfare of the states of
Ts'in and Tsin against the Jung barbarians, probably
Huns, whO| with the exception of one tribe called I-k^u,
ceased to make inroads into China.

5 54. K'au-wang (44(M26 b.c.)

K'au-wang, who was one of the younger sons of Chon-
ting-wang, fou^t his way to the throne throu^ two
palace revolutions, in which two of his elder brothers fell
victims. The ri^tful heir to the throne was the eldest
son, who reigned just three months under the name of
Ai-wang, when he was killed by his next brother, who
reigned five months under the name Ssl-wang, and who, in
turn, was killed by K'au-wang, the third brother. In the
state of Tsin the power of the reigning duke had dwindled
to a mere nominal title, and the control of this important
territory, which had been considerably increased in the
eoiurse of generations by conquest among the nei^boring
barbarians, now lay chiefly in Uie hands of the three families
of Han, Chau, and Wei.

§ 55. Ww-Li*-WANG (425-402 B.C.)

Under this title K'au-wang's son reigned twenty-four
years. Three powerful families in Tsin were recogniied

264 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

by the emperor in 403 b.c. as the heads of so many feudal
states. They are henceforth known in Chinese history as
San-Tsin, "the Three Tsin States." Their chiefs had
hitherto held the rank of marquis and were now officially
confirmed as chvrh&u, "Princes of the Empire." The
year 403 b.c. marks an epoch in Chinese history, as regards
both the course of events and the sources from which we
draw our information. The next following period of the
Contending States, as described in the Chan-kuo^s^o, re-
ceives much additional light from the works of the minor
philosophers living at the end of the Ch6u djmasty and
from those of some later authors, including, of course,
the Shi-ki of Ssi-ma Ts'i^n. These are also the main
sources for the sixty-one years preceding the elevation of
the three Tsin usurpers.

From this time, that is, from the year 403 B.C., — which is
also the year from which some of the conflicting authori-
ties date the period of the Contending States, — starts the
account of the Tung-kUn-kang-mUy the work of the great
historian Ssi-ma Kuang, who submitted it to his emperor
in 1066 A.D. The original work, styled Tzi-chi't^ung'ki6n,
literally, " Universal Mirror to benefit Government," was an
enumeration of historical facts in chronological order some-
what in the style of the CKun-tsHu. The philosopher Chu
Hi suggested an extension of the work in the shape of a
commentary somewhat like the Tso-chuan, and this plan
was carried out by Chu Hi's disciples, who laid the com-
pleted work before the throne in 1223. Later editions
of this standard work were again considerably enlarged;
and they now form the most complete, though not the most
ancient, handbook of Chinese general history. Under
Kublai Khan, in 1282, the work was translated into

THE CONTENDING STATES 265

the Uigur language.* The Emperor K'ang-hi (1662-1723)
ordered it to be translated into the Manchu language;
and the celebrated French missionary Abb6 de Moyria de
Maillac, known as Father de Mailla, undertook the gigantic
work of translating its main substance into French. De
Mailla died and was buried with imprecedented honors at
Peking in 1748; but his manuscript had already been sent
to Paris, and it was published by the Abb6 Grosier in thir-
teen quarto volumes under the title '' Histoire G^n^rale de
la Chine " (Paris, 1777-1785). De Mailla, who spent forty-
five years of his life on Chinese soil, had surrounded him-
self with all the literary aids of an extensive Chinese library
and had acquired a deep knowledge of both the Chinese and
Manchu languages. Speaking of the T'ting-kUn-kang-^mUj
he says in his Preface (p. 6), "Telle est Thistoire que Tem-
pereur Kang-hi a fait traduire en Tartare, et dont j'entre-
prends de donner la traduction." It. would appear from
this that he made use of the original and Manchu versions
in preparing his translation, which is the most detailed
work on the history of China hitherto published in any
language. It should, of course, be read with caution, since
the author, with the exception of a few quotations of the
sources in the beginning of his work, hardly ever refers to the
Chinese authorities responsible for the several historical
statements. He simply reproduces the matters of fact he
was able to gather from that huge collection of quotations
derived from the entire Chinese literature contained in the
Chinese or Manchu text without examining into their histor-

* Bee Herbert A. Gilca, Note on Four Chinese Volumee tni/or Idenii-
fieaium (Cambridge, October 7. 1901), from which the above datCB
have been derived. 8oe also the elaborate essay in Wylie, NoUe on
Chinete LUeraturej p. 20 ieqq.

266 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

ical value. Sinological research has, moreover, made
rapid strides since De Mailla's time, which causes us to
look upon the subject from an entirely different point of
view.

Returning to the three states of Han, Wei, and Chau:
Ssi-ma Kuang seems to have been dominated by an in-
stinctive idea that the emperor's weakness in raising the
illegitimate usurpers to the highest positions in their terri-
tories marked a great epoch in the development of China.
If the Son of Heaven had been reduced to a mere shadow
for centuries up to this time, he had been at least the nomi-
nal head of his vassals. Now all tradition was broken.
The sacredness of the imperial will could not prevent the
dukes of Tsin from losing their inherited rights, which they
had held ever since their forefathers had been invested with
their domain under Ch^ong-wang in 1106 B.C. The empire
then consisted of fourteen states, the most powerful among
which, Ts4n, Ch'u, Ts4, Yen, Han, Chau, and Wei, became
subsequently known as ts'i-hiungy "the Seven Heroes."
Among these the boundary states of Ts'in, Chau, and Ch'u
enjoyed the advantage of unlimited capability of extension
at the expense of the foreign tribes surroimding China,
and the same influences which at the close of the Shang
dynasty had brought the duchy of Ch6u, with Won-wang
and Wu-wang, into prominence, may have then been at
work infusing into them some of the energetic spirit of
their uncivilized but warlike neighbors.

Ts4n had long ago outgrown its original territories in the
valley of the Wei River; native maps of the Contending
States extend its boundaries far into territories formerly
occupied by Jimg tribes, comprising the present Shen-si
province, with the Ordus country and some regions of the

THE 00NTENDIN6 STATES 267

Man barbarians down to the Yang-tzi River boundary
of Ssi-ch'uan.

Chau occupied an equally exposed territory in Shannsi,
and its importance also was due to its geographical position.
With its capital near the present Kuang-ping-fu in western
Chi-li, it occupied the northern confines of China, including
the present north Shan-si, the mountain defiles of which
have so often served as thoroughfares for the irruptions of
Huns, Turks, and Mongols coming from the great steppe.

Ch'u, as we have seen, was the country of the Man bar-
barians in the south. Its rulers and government officials
may have been Chinese, and Chinese modes of life were
probably cultivated at the court of its kings as much as in
the other states; but it seems natural that in a country
which for centuries had effected its growth by absorbing
foreign elements, as must have been the case with the state
of Ch'u in its extension toward the south, the character of
the people could not be maintained in its original purity.
As the barbarians became semi-civilized, their Chinese
leaders were infected with barbarian qualities ; and the inter-
marriages which took place here, as in the other boundary
states, between Chinese and aboriginal families may have
tended to infuse new blood into the veins of both, thus
creating a population comparing well in energy and cour-
age with the more effeminate though more refined inhabit-
ants of the interior and eastern coast states. I, therefore,
readily adopt a theory advanced by Chavannes, who*
says: —

"Tbln and Ch'u were not, in the proper sense of the word, to be
eompriaed among the kingdoms of the Middle. Their populations,
Ihouji^ civilised by the Chinese, were of different races. From

' L$9 Miwufiru h%9tariqi»4$, vol. v, p. 1 Mff .

268 THE ANaENT HISTORT OF CHINA

the time when TbIh and TbI fell victims to internal diaBensions,
Ts'ln and Ctk'n became the leading actors in that drama destined
to end with the triumph of Ts'in and the establishment of the
empire by Ts'in Shi-huang-ti in 221 B.C. We may thus say that
the revolution which finally led to the establishment of imperial
China can be traced to the year 403 B.C., and that this is the reason
why Ssi-ma Kuang makes this year the starting point of his great
history entitled Ti^-chU'ung4ciin."

This, it appears to me, is the only theory which helps to
explain quite a number of cultural problems encoimtered
by the student of Chinese history a few centuries later in
the shape of important changes that must have taken place
in the popular views of the masses, in folk-lore, supersti-
tions, and art. We possess the most plausible arguments
for the introduction of foreign influences in Chinese culture
at the time when relations with western Asia were opened
imder the Emperor Wu-ti at the end of the second century
B.C. ; but if we examine numerous facts still on record as
referring to times immediately preceding the Wu-ti period,
we are boimd to notice that changes of a different kind had
come over the Chinese of this as compared with those of
the Confucian and pre-Confucian periods. The growing
influence of foreign elements from Ts'in in the west, Chau
in the north, and Ch'u in the south may accoimt for this.
Possibly much of what impresses us as new under the Ts'in
dynasty and the early part of the western Han had existed
for centuries before those times. For we must not forget
that our main sources down to the end of the Ch'un-ts'iu
period originate with writers of the Confucian school, who
would not place on record facts and ideas at variance with
their own views ; and it is quite possible that ancient China,
as represented to us by Confucian writers, would appear
quite different if other sources existed. The little we know

THE CONTENDING STATES 260

of Lau-tsi as a personage and of the teachings which became
the genn oi Tauism is an almost foreign element in CJon-
fucian China, and this seems to confirm our theory; for
Lau-tsi, as a native of the state of Ch'u, was bom, and
probably brou^t up, among the southern barbarians.

The Chau family, which now seems to have become the
strongest among the three usurpers of Tsin, was of old
standing in that state. Its pedigree is traced to a common
origin with the Ts'in princes at the time of Ch6u-sin, the
last monarch of the Shang dynasty, when two brothers be-
came the respective ancestors of the two lines of Ts'in and
Chau. The Emperor Mu of the Ch6u djmasty was accom-
panied in one of his expeditions by a member of this family
as his charioteer; and he rewarded him with the city of
Chau in the present South Shannsi. The power of the
family was further augmented by gifts of territory imder
the dukes of Tsin. We have met the names of members of
this remarkable family on former occasions. Chau Ts'ui
had been the companion of Duke Won of Tsin during his
voluntary exile among the Tartars, and after his return
had become prime minister of Tsin. His son and successor
in office, Chau Tun, was the son of a Tartar* wife. But
Chau Tun was not the only bastard in the family. Chau
Siang-tzi, who died after a reign of thirty-three years in
425 B.C., and whose personal name was Wu-sii, was also
the son of a Tartar wife, and he himself married a Tartar
woman.' Need we be astonished, therefore, to find that in-

* Qutvannes, op. eii., vol. v, p. 13. His son Chau Sho and hit
posthumous child Chau Wu were the subject of the romantic drama
of the Mongol period translated by St. Julien in his L'orpMin ds la
Chine (^yaloxe nouvelU, etc., vol. ii, p. 309 9eqq.).

* Gbavmonea, op, cU., pp. 32, 61.

270 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

fluences quite foreign to Chinese tradition were even then at
work in the introduction of hitherto unknown elements in
the life of these quasi-Chinese princes ? Altogether, readers
of the history of Chau, as represented in Ssi-ma Ts'i^n's
account^ will receive the impression that it contains various
prognostics of that important change in cultural life which
became dominant in the age of Ts'in Shi-huang-ti ; namely,
a Tartarized China, the traditional Confucian views of life
having been supplanted by Tartar, Sc3rthian, Hiumic, or
Turkish elements — elements that, whatever name we may
give them, had grown out of the national life of central
Asiatic foreigners and that now began to disturb the
quiet development of the nation whose civil code was the
Chdvrli and whose model gentleman had been Confucius.
Chavannes ^ says in connection with the history of Chau : —

" You will remark in this chapter the important part played by
the Wonderful; dreams, predictions and visions of supernatural
beings will be found in it in much greater numbers than in any other
part of the Shi-ki,"

Liu An, who died 122 B.C., has preserved a characteristic
anecdote of Chau Siang-tzi. The interests of the house of
Tsin had, after its fall, been represented by a faithful ad-
herent named Chi Po. In the struggle between the latter
and the united forces of Chau, Han, and Wei, Chi Po was
killed, and Chau Siang-tzi took possession of his skull,
which he had made into a drinking vessel.'

This procedure, which I am inclined to regard as a ritual
act rather than as a whim of the perpetrator, seems to
speak volumes in favor of Hunnic influences, since we have
a perfect parallel in the history of the Huns, or Hiimg-nu,

* Loc. cit.ip.8, 'A slightly later author makes it "a drinking ves-
sel varnished or lacquered."

THE CONTENDING STATES 271

under their Great Khan Lau-shang, who reigned 175 to
160 B.C., and who, having defeated the Yii^-chi, or Indo-
Scythians, decapitated their king and made his skull into
a drinking vessel. Chinese arehseologists have quibbled a
good deal about the sense of the word translated '' drinking
vessel/' some holding that it was a cup used in wine feasts,
others giving it a still more cynical interpretation ; but the
truth is, probably, that such trophies served a ritual pur*
pose, since we learn from later accounts that the skull of
the defeated king had been preserved by the Hiimg-nu for
generations, and that it was reserved for a solemn state
act, the drinking of the blood of a white horse in taking an
oath to sanctify the conclusion of a treaty of peace. Cha-
vannes ^ refers to an interesting parallel furnished by Livy,'
who, describing a disaster suffered by the Romans under
their consul Lucius Posthumius in 216 B.C. at the hands
of Gaulic hordes, sa3rs : —

''The Boii, having cut off his head, carried it and the spoils they
stripped off his body in triumph into the most sacred temple they
had. Afterwards they cleansed the head according to their custom,
and, having covered tlie skull with chased gold, used it as a cup for
libations in their solemn festivals, and as a drinking-cup for their
hi^ priests and other ministers of the temple." '

The Boians, who then occupied certain territories in the
north of Italy, were a nation of very doubtful origin.
Zeuss^ s]3eaks of them in connection with Celtic tribes,
but, in view of the conflicting notices of classical authors,
thinks they may have come across the Danube from the
north ; and he quotes a passage from Strabo to show that

*Qiavannes, op. eit., p. 50. *xxiii, eh. 24, || 11-12, ed. Wds-
aenbom. * Transl. by Spilian and Edmonds, vol. ii, p. 180. * DU
DmUMchen und die Nachbartidmwu, Munich, 1837, p. 244.

272 THE ANCTENT HISTORY OP CHINA

at one time they occupied the Hercynian forest suirounding
Bohemia. The skull story related by Livy might involve
a hint as to Scythian origin; but it will be difficult to prove
that Sc3rthians in those days had extended their wander-
ings as far west as that, thou^ they are sud to have been
settled near the lower course of the Danube.

Another instance of the gradual Tartarization, if we may
so call it, of Chinese culture was chronicled a few generar
tions later, when the king of CShau, who reigned under the
name of Wu-ling (329-299 B.C.), resolved for political
reasons to exchange the traditional Chinese court dress for
that of a Tartar ruler. He did this in spite of the re-
monstrances of several members of his family, who pleaded
in vain for the retention of the traditional Chinese eti-
quette. The manners and customs of antiquity, he thought,
were good enough for the ancients, but the modern man
had to conform to the requirements of his time; this is
the leading idea of the replies made to remonstrances of his
friends, as recorded by Ssi-ma Ts'ife.*

A still more thorough change made by Wu-ling in this
process of Tartarization was the introduction of cavalry
in the army. During the early part of the Ch6u dynasty

* Chavannes, op, cU., pp. 70-84. Whatever innovations were
implied in the adoption of Tartar dress, were attributed to king Wu-
ling of Chau, who is supposed to have been the first to break
through the traditional lines in regard to dress, though Tartar cus-
toms were again cultivated on a larger scale at various later periods.
It appears that the mode of dress now adopted was better suited to
the quick movement of the body. Those cumbrous big sleeves of
the old Chinese court robe were abandoned for narrower shapes;
and the sandals and shoes of straw or hemp were replaced by short
boots, varying in style down to the present dynasty. Indeed King
Wu-ling is credited with having introduced the boot into the Chinese
gentleman's attire. It was in those days made of yellow leath^.

THE CONTENDING ETATES 273

the horse had been used nuunly in harness. The heroes
of Chinese warfare fou^t on chariots, standing up and not
dtting, accompanied, of course, by a retinue of pedestrians;
and to at astride on horseback was originally not a Chinese,
but a Hunnic custom, which possibly took its rise from
King Wu-ling's adoption ol cavalry fighting. I find it
stated in a later commentary on the Tso-ekuan that riding
on hOTseback did not become customary before the time
of the "Six States," i.e. the third century b.c. The king-
dom of Chau had absorbed too much of the Tartar clement ;
and the purely Chinese subjects of King Wu-ling seem to
have been in too great a minority to maintain the traditional
conservative ^irit of an original Chinese dynasty.

i 56. An-wano (401-376 b.c.)

Under this emperor a great change took place in the
state oi Ts'i. During the time of Duke Huan aod his
minister Kuan-txt, a prince of Ch'on had taken refuge in
Ts'i, whose descendants had grown into a powerful clan.
For some reason or other they changed their name to T'i^n.
In 481 B.C. a member of this family named T'i^n Ch'ang
had managed to drive Duke Ki^n of Ts'i from the throne,
have him murdered and replaced by the duke's younger
brother, who made him hia minister. His grandson T'i^n
Ho in 410 B.C. actually deposed the then reigning duke,
usurped the throne for himself, and was finally confirmed
by An-wang as Duke of Ts'i. In this he had obtained the
good offices of the Marquis of Wei, one of the San-tain.
Another state of Wei (so pronounced at present, but the
Bouod of the name was different in ancient times) had given
iMTth to one of the typical characters of the time, which,

274 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

owing to the eaGoness with which men of talent were allowed
to wander about from state to state, produced quite a num-
ber of political adventurers. Wu E'i had studied with
Tsong Ts'an, that hjrperfilial disciple of Confucius (505-
437 B.C.), but did not agree with him. He emigrated to
Lu, where he studied the art of warfare. Uncontrollable
ambition led him to hope to be made oonunander of the
army of Lu during a war between that state and its northern
nei^bor Ts'i. Tlie Duke of Lu appreciated his talent, but
would not appoint him becaiise his wife was a Ts'i woman.
Wu K'i then simply killed her as being in his way, and the
duke, regarding this as an act of loyalty, gave him the
desired appointment, in which it is recorded he justified
his strategical reputation. After this he took service under
the state of Wei, but in 387 B.C. got into trouble with the
government and fled to Ch'u in the south, where King Tau
made him his chancellor. In this capacity he did excellent
work and, by his great energy and severity as a military
chief, maintained rigid discipline among the troops. He,
however, also made enemies among the grandees of the
state, who, after the death of the king, conspired against
and killed him. Under the name Wurtzl, i.e. " the Philoso-
pher Wu," there still exists a little book on military art
said to have been written by him.

§ 57. LiE-WANG (375-369 B.C.)

Dxiring this reign the state of Han made war on Chong,
one of the old feudal states near the present K'ai-fong-fu,
and conquered its territory. Otherwise, the most notable
event during this period was the birth (372 B.C.) of the great
philosopher Mencius in the state of Lu, where Confucius

THE CONTENDINa ETATES 275

and some of his disciples were also bom. Hiere the usurper.
Tito Ho'a successor, bad in the meantime aasumed the
title "King ot Ts'i"; but the Son ci Heaven having pre-
viously confirmed his family in their usurpation, he remained
loyal to him, and when in 370 b.c. an assembly (A the feudal
princes was summoned to the imperial court, he was the
only one who did homage to the emperor. Li6-wang was
succeeded by his younger brother Hito-wang.

I 68. HiEN-WANO (36S--321 B.C.)

During hie reign, covering nearly half a century, Hifo-
wang was nothing better than a silent on-looker, without
the sli^test power to interfere in the eodlefls struggles
between his nominal vassals. Ssi-ma l^'ito's accotmt of
it ' is merely a list (rf ceremonial courtesies shown to the
dukes cS Ts'in, who with his imperial sanction claimed
b^i;emony among the Contending States — a position fore-
casting the shadows of future events. Ts'in had, as Ssi-ma
I^'i^n says,* kept aloof from the remaining states, not even
sending ambassadors to their peaceful meetings; and the
purely Chinese states regarded it as a barbarian country.

f 59. Tbb Philosophebs Yakq Chit and Mo Ti

Fluting all round was now the order (rf the day, fitting
alike with arms and words; for the several philosophic
schools that had been reared on the foundations laid by
Lau-tsi and Confucius rose against each other in a contest
for leadership in the world of intellect, fitting as vigor-

■ ChftVBonM, op. eO., vol. I, pp. 303-804. ■Chftvanncs, op. df.,
vol. U, p. 83.

276 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

ously as the several confederate states in their endeavon
to annihilate each other by force of arms. The philoso-
phers of the age show a tendency to apply their doctrines
to practical state life. That unsteadiness^ characteristic
of political life in the fourth century B.C., which knew <rf
no equilibrium among the contesting powers and which
caused even conservative minds to become accustomed to
the most imexpected changes in politics, was coupled with
a hitherto unprecedented freedom of thought in the ranks
of thinkers and writers. The most heretical views on state
and private life were advanced and gained public adherence.
Certain philosophers became the fashion, temporarily over-
shadowing the sages of old ; and in the energy with which
they tried to vindicate the creations of their minds, they
parallel the political leaders of the Contending States. No
greater contrast could be imagined than the two philoso-
phers Yang Chu and Mo Ti, who probably flourished about
this time, though no exact dates are ascertainable. We may
be allowed, however, to draw conclusions from the terms
in which they are spoken of by Mencius, who disap-
proves of both, and whose antagonism to the two philoso-
phers seems to show that they must have occupied the
public mind not very long before he wrote.

Yang Chu impresses us as one of the most original think-
ers China has produced. He did not study old books like
Confucius, but, having bestowed much thought on the
world and on human nature, gave utterance to his views
with a freedom bordering on cynicism. The main part of
his doctrines is contained in the work known as Li^-tzi,
"The Philosopher Li6,'' according to Giles * a fictitious title,
covering the compilation of some other scholar; but some

* Biographical Dictionary^ p. 432, no. 1251.

THE CONTENDING STATES 277

of his sajringis are also referred to in the works of Chuang-
tzi and notably in that of Mencius, his great adversary.^
Yang Chu was essentially a pessimist. Is life actually
worth living 7 We may conclude that it is not, if we follow
his calculation, according to which so great a part of it is
spent either in a state of indifference during infancy and
extreme old age, or in sleep and during many hours in the
da3rtime, not counting the hours spent in pain and sickness,
sorrow and bitterness. In a hundred years a man may
live there may remain ten years actually worth counting,

* Besides the abstracts from the chapter on Yang Chu in Lii-Ul,
communicated by Legge in the Prolegomena to his edition of Meneiu$,
I wish to refer to Dr. A. Forke's excellent paper Yang-ehu the EpicU'
reofi in hU Relation to Lieh-tse the Pantheist in the Journal of the
Peking Oriental Society, vol. iii, no. 3, pp. 203-258. Yang Chu holds
that the best use one can make of wealth is to procure by its means
all sorts of personal pleasure and distribute the residue among one's
fellow-creatures. The following extract is from Forke, p. 239: —

" Tuan-mu Shu of Wei was a descendant of TzI-kung. His patrimony
pfx>cured him a treasure of ten thousand gold pieces. Indifferent
to the devices of life, he followed his inclinations. What people liked
to do and the heart delights in, he would do and delight in. As tor
walls and buildings, pavilions and verandahs, gardens and parks,
ponds and lakes, wine and food, carriages and dresses, women and
attendants, he could emulate the princes of Ts'i and Ch'u in luxury.
Whenever his heart desired something, his ear wished to hear some-
thing, his eye to see or his mouth to taste, he would procure it at all
costs, though the thing might only be had in a foreign land and a
far-off country and not in the kingdom of Ts'i, Just as if he had it
within his four walls. When on a Journey, mountains and rivers
might be ever so difficult and dangerous to pass and the roads ever
so long, he would still proceed. Just as other men walk a few stepa
A hundred guests were entertained daily in his palace. In his kitch-
ens there were fire and smoke uninterruptedly, and the vaults of
his hall and the peristyle incessanUy resounded with songs and musie.
The remains from his table he first divided amongst his clansmen,
what they left was then divided amongst hia fellow-citixons, and what
these did not eat was distributed throughout the whole kingdom."

278 THE ANCIENT fflSTORY OF CfflNA

but "not even in them will be found an hour of smiling
self-abandonment without the shadow of solicitude";
for post equitem sedet atra cura. Death awaits us all alike,
whether we die at the age of ten or of a hundred; and
once man's bones are rotten it does not matter whether
he was a great character like Yau and Shun, or a mean
creature like the tjo-ants Ki6 and Ch6u-sin. We, therefore,
have every reason to make the best of life while it lasts.
To Yang Chu, nothing can come after death. Fame is
nothing. The great men of the past, " celebrate them —
they do not know it ; reward them — they do not know
it; their fame is no more to them than to the trunk of a
tree or a clod of earth."

To the old emperors Yau, Shun, and Yii, to Wu-wang
and Ch6u-kung, who spent their lives in toil and worry, he
compares those contemptible last monarchs of the Hia and
Shang dynasties respectively, Ki6 and Ch6u-sin, who were
pleasure-hunters all their lives and " never made themselves
bitter by the thought of propriety and righteousness, and
died like all of us." Yet theirs was a happy life in spite of
the evil fame that followed their death. For the reality
of enjoyment is what no fame can give. Legge,^ to whose
abstract from Yang Chu's sayings I would refer, adds : —

"It would be doing injustice to Epicurus to compare Yang with
him, for, though the Grecian philosopher made happiness the chief
end of human pursuit, he taught also that ' we cannot live pleasur-
ably without living virtuously and justly.' The Epicurean system
is, indeed, unequal to the capacity, and far below the highest com-
placencies of human nature; but it is widely different from the
reckless contempt of all which is esteemed good and great that
defiles the pages where Yang is made to tell his views."

* Mencius, Prolegomena, pp. 95-102.

THE CONTENDING STATES 279

, Yang Chu's pessimism is also of a different kind from
that of Schopenhauer, which abuts in altruistic ethics based
on compassion.^ We also find in his sayings traces of that
atheistic fatalism which would seem to absolve man from
all responsibility for his doings by denying the freedom
of will. For "intelligence and stupidity, honorableness
and meanness, are not in one's power, neither is that con-
dition of putridity, decay, and utter disappearance. A
man's life is not in his own hands, nor is his death ; his in-
telligence is not his own, nor his honorableness, nor his
meanness.''

It stands to the credit of the Chinese nation that a man
of Yang Chu's t3rpe was not placed on a level with their
other great philosophers, and that views quite different
from his became dominant among later generations. Yet,
if we take into consideration his philosophy of private life
and the forcible manner with which he seems to state his
argtanentum ad hominem, we may look upon him as an
important link in that process of decay which brou^t about
the fall of the Ch6u dynasty and the ultimate victory oi
principles which culminated in the burning of the old
sacred books under a decree of the Emperor Ts'in Shi-
huang-ti. For what we observe now is quite analogous
to the logic of Confucius and his school, which made the
life of the individual the basis of views on government
and public life. Yang Chu's ''egotism," first applied to
individual man as a member of society, finally reigned su-
preme among the authorities responsible for the welfare
of the Contending States, each of whom fought for the
principle ''first we and then the world," or "aprte nous le
d^ug^."

^ Grube, t>p. eit., p. 127.

280 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

Confucianism had to undergo a severe trial in those days ;
and the example set by Chinese princes, who could follow
the barbaric custom of makmg a lacquered bowl out of a
dead enemy's skull or don the uncanonical dress of north-
em foreigners, quite corresponded to the spirit of the age,
which was characterized by ruthless contempt of the
sacredness of tradition. To stick to tradition, to derive
every blessing in life from one's ancestors, is the original
Chinese principle ; and the frequency of examples betraying
disregard of this principle that we now meet in political as
well as in literary life may be* looked upon as a symptom of
elements originally not Chinese havmg temporarily gamed
the upper hand. This may be shown by the example even
of Mo Ti, whose teachings were diametrically opposed to
those of Yang Chu. What stamps him as a son of his time
is an almost revolutionary independence of old Chinese
tradition. Yang Chu and Mo Ti ''stood at the opposite
poles of human thought and sentiment'' (Legge). The
views of the latter were as altruistic as those of the former
were frivolous. If Mencius treats Mo Ti as an adversary,
it is because antiquity was not so sacred to him as it de-
served to be in the eyes of orthodox Confucianists.

Here I have to say a word about the name Mo Ti^ the
several variants in the spelling of which may mislead readers
of Mo Ti literature. The sound of the sage's family
name, which means "ink" in Chinese, as heard in most of
the mandarin dialects in China, is Mo; in Canton it is
pronounced Maky which may be said to have been the
sound corresponding to the ancient pronunciation; the
final consonant has left its traces in some of the mandarin
dialects in the shape of the abrupt termination of the vowel,
which some transcribers express by a final A, for which

ik.

THE CONTENDING STATES 281

reason Williams^ spells Moh. Morrison, in the old-fash-
ioned English spelling, gives it as MtA, and Legge follows
him. From this spelling in connection with the designation
tzl (Mih-td, i.e. ''Mih or Mo, the philosopher'') has arisen
the Latinized name Micius, invented by Faber, who also
calls LiMzi Licius in analogy with the Latinized names
Confucius and Menciua.

Mo Ti is keenly aware of the rottenness of Chinese state
life. In trying to ascertain its prime cause he comes to
the conclusion that all evils arise from want of mutual love ;
that this mutual love is wanting not only between individu-
als and families, but between states also. If all were per-
vaded by this spirit of love, thieves and robbers would dis-
appear, the great officers would cease to throw one another's
families into confusion, and princes would cease to attack
one another's dominions. It is only throu^ that universal
and mutual love that the empire will thrive. He sum-
marizes the evils of his time thus : — i

"The mutual attacks of state on state ; the mutual usurpatioiiB ^,
of family on family; the mutual robberies of man on man; the
want of kindness on the part of the sovereign and of loyalty on the
part of the minister ; the want of tenderness and filial duty between
father and son — these, and such as these, are the thin^ injurious
to the empire. All this has arisen from want of mutual love. If
but that one virtue could be made universal, the princes loving one
another would have no battle-fields; the chiefs of families would
attempt no usurpations; men would commit no robberies; rulers
and ministers would be gracious and loyal ; fathers and sons would
be kind and filial ; brothers would be harmonious and easily recon-
ciled. Men in general loving one another, the strong would not
make prey of the weak ; the many would not plunder the few ; the
rich would not insult the poor; the noble would not be insolent
to the mean ; and the deceitful would not impose upon the simple.**

> SyUabie Dictionary, p. 004.

fcnf''

282 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

To bring about reform in this direction^ the princes and
governments should start with a good example, when society
at large will follow ; and he goes on to prove from ancient
history the fact, which holds good for China even at the
present day, that the people will readily fall in with the
wishes of their rulers, and that, in other words, the rulers
have it in their hands to promote the imiversal love among
the people if they choose to set the example.*

Mo Ti's almost Christian altruism was much superior to
Confucianism, and might have been able to save the em-
pire had it been quite so easy as the philosopher dreamed
to apply his theories to practical life. Not only did the
states continue fighting, usurping, and robbing one another,
but his very colleagues in moral philosophy tried to belittle
the value of his unique doctrine, chief among them being the
great Confucianist, Mencius.

§ 60. Mencius

Comparatively little is known of the personal life of
Mencius (Mong K^o), He was born in 372 B.C., in the little
state of Ts6u, not far from Confucius's own birthplace, and,
having lost his father in early childhood, was educated
entirely by his mother, who, from the many anecdotes
circulating about her educational methods, has earned in
China the reputation of a model mother. "Mong-mu,'*
"Mother Mong,'' or ''Mother of Mencius,''. is as familiar

* For further extracts and translations of Mo Ti's work, supposed
to have been compiled by his disciples under the name Mo-tzi in fif-
teen books, see Legge, MenciitSj Prolegomena, p. 104 seqq.; cf. also
Faber, Die Grundgedanken des alien chinesischen SocidHsmus^ oder die
Lehre dee Philosophen Micius (Elberfeld, 1877); G von der Gabelentz,
Udiet den chinesischen Philosophen Mek Tik, in Ber. d. kgL Sdchs,
Gee, d, Wissensch, (1888); and W. Grube, op, cU,f p. 129 aeqq.

THE CONTENDING STATES 283

a figure to the Chinese as the " Mother cf the Gracchi " was
to the people of Rome. She changed her home several times
because she did not like certain associations which seemed
to affect the education of her little son. Thus she moved
away from the neighborhood of a cemetery because the
boy would mimic the mourners who came to wail at the
tombs. Then she left a house near the market because he
would mimic the ways of shopkeepers. Finally she settled
near a school ; and here the boy's imitative talent was at
last in its proper element.* With all the authority exer-
cised by her as a mother and despite the great veneration
in which her memory has at all times been held by the
Chinese nation, it is she who is credited with the strongest
opposition to all female emancipation. Once Mencius
planned to leave the state of Ts'i because its prince declined
to listen to his gratuitous advice; he hesitated, however,
on account of his old mother staying with him, and when
he spoke to her about this, she gave him the following
reply : —

"It is a woman's duty to be skilful in the preparation of food
and careful in the preservation of household articles ; to look after
the comfort of her parents-b-law, and to sew and weave. To these
things her sphere of activity is limited. It is her province to main-
tain order withm the house ; but her thoughts ought not to wander
beyond the boundaries of her home. In the * Book of Changes ' it
is said : ' Let her attend to the preparation of food within the
rooms allotted to her, and take nothing else on herself.' And in
the * Book of Poetry ' it is said : ' It is theirs neither to do wrong
nor to shine by prominent good actions ; let them limit their thoughts
to the wine and the food.' This means that it does not belong to
a woman to determine anything of herself, but she is subject to the

> Arendt, TAe Mother of Af enctiM, in China Review, vol. zii, p. 314
mqq.

284 THE ANaENT HISTORY OF CHINA

rule of the three obediences. Therefore, when young, she has to
obey her parents; when married, she has to obey her husband;
when a widow, she has to obey her son. This is her duty. At
present, you are a man in your full maturity, and I am old. Do
you act as your conviction of righteousness teUs you you ou^t to
do, and I will act according to the rule which belongs to me.''

Altogether she must have been a very superior woman;
and it is quite probable that the excellent education she
gave Mencius in his early youth contributed greatly to his
subsequent distinction. After his boyhood nothing is
known of his life until he comes forward as a teacher, or a
"professor of morals and learning," as Legge puts it, some-
thing like his great prototype Confucius. He was now
about forty years of age and surrounded by a number of
disciples.

Mencius's teachings, as laid down in the book bearing his
name, are mainly of a political kind. During the 150 years
which lay between the times when Confucius and Mencius
taught that process of decay of imperial power, which
had set in long before the Ch'un-ts'iu period, had become a
continuous threat foreboding general collapse. Four or
five generations earlier the princes of the empire cultivated
at least some sort of nominal loyalty toward the Son of
Heaven. This feeling as regards the legitimacy of the
emperor's position, which Confucius had tried to foster as
best he could, had now given way to utter disregard of
imperial rights. Had the house of Ch6u produced men of
action able to assert themselves in this turmoil of mutual
jealousies among the feudal states, there would have been
room for a hero of history to perform great feats; but no
such man arose. The emperor was now a mere shadow, and
things took their own course before his eyes. There was

THE CONTENDING STATES 285

constant warfare among the princes, who would form leagues
against one another, changing the equilibrium of power
from generation to generation. All these political troubles
were greatly augmented by the philosophers' custom of
traveling about from court to court to tender advice. It
had become the ambition of the learned classes to be con-
nected somehow or other with political life ; and the free-
dom with which it was possible to leave one's home in
order to settle down in another state, that Freuugigkeil
which in the United States and in modern Germany ap-
pears as a concession made by local legislation to federal
power, probably had an important share in the general
decay which followed this period. In those days the fate
of China lay much more in the hands of irresponsible ad-
venturers than with the real heads of the several states,
who allowed themselves to be persuaded by the clever
tongues of ambitious strangers to plunge into adventures
most dangerous to themselves and to the common welfare.
These advisers had sometimes risen from the very lowest
ranks of the people; becoming adherents of one of the
several philosophic schools dominant at the time, they made
use of a certain superiority in dialectics thus acquired in
gratifying their ambition to rise to political influence.

Still it must be admitted that among these amateur dip-
lomats were men of real importance, whose talents would
have shone had they served a better purpose than that
of internal wars. Such are the lives of Chang I (died 310
B.C.) and Su Ts'in (died 317 B.C.), who from being servants
in a school picked up the most necessary education in this
connection, then studied the sophistical art of persuading
any one to an3rthing under the Tauist philosopher Kui-ku-
tsi, who prepared them for the adventurous career of an

286 THE ANaENT fflSTORY OF CHINA

itinerant volunteering diplomat. Many of these men were
devoid of all local patriotism, perhaps because the rising
man is so often treated with contempt by his own people.
Thus Chang I, being a native of the state of Wei, became
minister in Ts'in, when through the chief work of his life
he did his own country every possible harm, thou^, hav-
ing to leave Ts'in after the death of his patron, he accepted
the post of prime minister in Wei again. He was one of
those men of whom one of Mencius's interlocutors says,
" Once they are angry, the princes of the empire will be
afraid ; and when they live quietly, the world will see its
troubles quelled/' Altogether Mencius tried to oppose the
current of the times, in which Confucian tradition was en-
tirely neglected, with the full weight of his authority, though
in vain. He spent a portion of his life, some time between
333 and 324 b.c, in the state of Ts'i as a counselor of the
prince's, for which services he declined to receive any salary.
In the conversations which he held with the sovereign and
the government officers of this, as of other states, he has
placed on record his views on state management. These
views represent merely an extension of the Confucian
philosophy to the state life in that troubled period of the
Contending States.

Mencius was a man of great pride; like Mahomet, he
expected the mountain to come to him if he wanted it;
and he never secured a footing of cordiality with the king
of Ts'i, which, together with the freedom he was wont to
use in his conversations, led to his withdrawal from his
otherwise great admirer. In doing so, he was led to hope
that the king would recall him for the benefit of the people
of Ts'i, nay, for the happiness of the whole empire ; but the
mountain would not come to him, and Mencius was no

THE CONTENDING STATES 287

Mahomet. He then embraced the life of a wandering
philosopher. In 319 B.C. he visited King Hui of Liang
in the present K'ai-fong-fu, to his conversation with whom
on matters of government the first of the seven books of his
work is devoted. The sage's conversations with sovereigns
and statesmen are characterized by that spirit of expostu-
lation peculiar to philosophical quibblers; but, being a
sworn Confucianist, he commands respect for defending
his views against such an overwhelming opposition under
the conflicting interests of political and literary authorities.
After the death of Hui in 320 B.C. Mencius returned to Ts'i,
where he held a court appointment and occasionally gave
offense by his overbearing pride. When his aged mother
died, he buried her with great pomp, possibly to spite his
adversary Mo Tl, who had advocated simplicity in funeral
ceremonies.

Political troubles connected with the conquest by Ts'i
of the northern state of Yen, in which Mencius was involved,
led to his adoption of a wandering Hfe again (312 B.C.);
and after a stay of two years in the state of Sung he re-
turned to his native country, Lu (310 B.C.), where one of
his disciples had been appointed prime minister. Thb
disciple, named Yo Chong, had arranged for an interview
between him and the reigning duke ; but one of the courtiers
had thought it improper for the latter to pay the first visit
to a mere scholar, and Mencius, anxious though he had been
all his life to present his theories on government to those in
power, would not again approach the sovereign voluntarily.
He consoled himself with the thought that, though certain
men mi^t seem to be instrumental in fostering or hinder-
ing good work, they could not really interfere with its
progress, and that the failure of the Duke of Lu to meet

288 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

him was Heaven's decree. After this disappointment,
which was clearly the result of his unbending "Manner-
stolz," he refrained from interviewing sovereigns for the
rest of his life, the last twenty years of which he spent in
retirement, devoted to the company of his disciples and to
literary work. He died in 289 B.C.

The distinctive merit of Mencius's philosophy, as com-
pared with the teachings of Confucius himself, is its applica-
tion to state life, starting, of course, in true Confucian spirit
from family relations and filial duty ; but his feelings in this
respect are essentially democratic, the prosperity of the
people being his first care, and loyalty to the sovereign, as
taught by Confucius, being of secondary importance. It
was not sufficient for governments to provide for the physical
welfare of the masses; it was also their duty to educate
the people. He despises power and external grandeur if
not backed by justice and righteousness; but he is an
idealist and expects the world to be better than it can ever
be. He docs not respect history, and books do not inspire
him as infallible. For *'it would be better to have no
books at all than to believe everything they relate";
and of the records describing Wu-wang^s achievements he
selected only two or three as trustworthy.* If by these
''books" the Shu-king is meant, it is remarkable that such
confessions should come from a Confucianist of Mencius's
standing, who, moreover, was a firm believer in Yau and
Shun, the model emperors. But it would seem that his
antagonism was directed mainly against warfare, about
which the "books" had so much to say and which he
condemned in the strongest terms, and that he was not so
much opposed to the '* Book of History" as to its contents,

* Leggc, MenduSf p. 355.

THE CONTENDING STATES 289

which did not condescend to prove his theories. Man
should and need not fi^t ; he ought, according to Mencius,
to be benevolent, for "the benevolent man has no enemy"
— that is what a sovereign should be. Those who boast
of their skill in making war are to him great criminals;
and all the wars described in the Ch'un-tsHu were unjust.
To King Hui of Liang he advises the benevolent administra-
tion of government, by lenient punishments, light taxa-
tion, etc.; thus he would soon be backed by a people
who could dispense with warfare, being strong enough to
oppose the ''strong mail and sharp weapons" of his en-
emies, the troops of Ts'in and Ch*u, " vrilh mere sticks in
their haruis.** *

Mencius was a great leader in questions of political
economy, which have at all periods played an important
part in Chinese political life. If his ideas were not carried
out at once, they were certainly of great influence in later
centuries. In that mutual warfare of opinions, when ad-
vice on public matters was so freely tendered, would-be
reformers were to be found everywhere, who tried to surpass
each other in the originality of their schemes. Mencius,
with all his idealism, at least kept aloof from eccentricities.
Not only did he steer a middle course between the two
great antipodes, Yang Chu and Mo Ti, but he rebuked
absurdities of every kind, such as the hyper-asceticism of
Ch'on Chung, who thought he could purify his heart by
starvation and an almost total neglect of the decencies of

* Legge, Mencius f p. 11. Modem China will not be able to adopt
this advice, and Kuang-sQ in hiM celebrated edict of June 11, 1898,
aftlu his nation: "Shall we be able to hold our own, fighting with
fiticka against mailed armor and sharp weapons, if we continue to
neglect the drilling of our troops, the education of our people and the
development of national resources?"
u

290 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OP CHINA

life, in which respect he could vie with many a Buddhist
self-torturer.

An eccentric of another kind was 'Hhe agriculturist"
Hii Hing, who hailed from the semi-barbarian state of
Ch'u. He was one of the many peripatetic philosophers
who traveled from court to court hawking their theories of
good government, and who had to pocket nimierous dis-
appointments until they found the prince of some state,
however small, who approved their ideas. Such a petty
state was T'ong, whose ruler, Duke Won, had on a previous
occasion consulted Mencius on that vexatious question, a
solution of which caused all the little states considerable
anxiety ; namely, which of their big neighbors it was most
desirable to side with in order to avoid being swallowed up
themselves. It is not known at how many doors Hii Hing
had knocked in vain, when he came to Duke Won's gate,
saying : " A man of a distant region, I have heard that you,
Prince, are practising a benevolent government, and I wish
to obtain a site for a house, and to become one of your
people ** ; and the duke gave him a dwelling-place. His dis-
ciples, numbering some dozens, wore clothes of hair-cloth
and made sandals of hemp and wove mats for a living.

Hii King's theory was that the cultivation of the soil was
the only source of the true welfare of the people. In this
he clashed with the views of Mencius, who proved in detail
that Hii Hing's were fallacious. Hii Hing had expected
sovereigns to cultivate the ground and eat of the fruit of
their labor like ordinary peasants. " They should prepare
their own meals morning and evening, while at the same
time carrying on their government." The granaries,
treasuries, and arsenals kept by princes were merely a
burden on the people. To these arguments Mencius re-

THE CONTENDING STATES 291

plied: ''I suppose that Hu Hing sows grain and eats the
produce. Does he also weave cloth ? " "No; for he wears
hair-cloth." " And his cap ? " "He gets it in exchange for
grain." "And the food-boilers and earthenware pans re-
quired for cooking his food, and the iron share used for
ploughing?" "He gets them all in exchange for grain."
It was by such questions that Mencius, like most of the old
Chinese philosophers, tried to prove his point, — the
erotetic method by which Socrates used to demonstrate
his reduclio ad absitrdum. Having thus elicited from the
defender of Hu Hing's theories all their absurdities, he
developed his oWn system of political economy, which went
to show that husbandry cannot be the only basis of good
government and that industry claims its rights ; also, that
some men labor with their minds, while others labor with
their bodily strength; mind laborers being the govern-
ment class, and physical laborers those that are governed
by others. Dr. W. E. Macklin, in an interesting paper on
Mencius,^ remarks in connection with this anecdote : —

"Tolstoi edited a book written by a leveler like HQ Hing, who
tauf^t that every one should raiiie his own grain. I forget the jaw-
breaking Russian name of the writer. If Tolstoi had not already
been converted from the error of his wa3r8, Mencius could turn him.
We see from this that Mencius is no crank with a wheel or twist in
brain."

Among the many philosophers who from the days of
Confucius down to the end of the Ch6u dynasty helped to
raise decadent China to such a high intellectual standard
Mencius impresses us as the clearest in judgment. He is
certainly not a mjrstic ; and in common-sense argumenta-

* Jl/«fictii« and Same Other Reformer $ of China, in Journal qf the
Branch qf the Royal AHaiie Society, vol. zxxiii.

292 THE ANQENT HISTORY OF CHINA

tion, by which he tries to sift his problems to the bottom,
his work contrasts favorably with the Tavrto-king. Chinese
philosophers do not present their teachings in the shape of
regular "systems"; but how a system can be constructed
out of a work which at first sight appears as an incoherent ac-
count of anecdotes and a series of dialogues reproducing the
sage's remarks on all possible details of individual, family,
and official life, has been well shown in Dr. Ernst Faber's
German book on Mencius.* It is perhaps characteristic,
and a testimony to his common sense, that Mencius does
not share with his great master Confucius the esteem in
which the latter held the I-kingj or "Book of Changes,"
if we may draw conclusions from the fact that he never
referred to it. A glance at Faber^s digest shows that his
"Mencius" covers a wide range of philosophic thought, but
that man in all his relations is its chief concern. In this
respect he goes much more into detail even than Confucius,
and when compared with him, his detail is characterized
by a certain moderation in accepting the observance of
outer formalities.

All the important phases of Chinese social and official life
are discussed in the book, which, moreover, appeals to the
sympathy of all those among us whose principle of life
is that never ending self-education of character. In
this respect Mencius may be considered a model. We
have, it is true, to make allowance for his being a Chinese
and for the remoteness of the period in which he lived, but
not nearly to the same extent as in the case of Confucius.

* ** Eine Staatslehre auf ethischer Grundlage, oder Lehrbegriff des
chinesischen Philosophen Mencius J* Elberfeld, 1877. The author
does not in all his translations and interpretations agree with Legge,
whose volume on Mencius (The Chinese Classics , vol. ii) appeared in
1861.

THE CONTENDING STATES 293

Further, considerably more of the disciple's thou^t than
of that of the master himself seems to have retained its
eternal value. Benevolence and justice are the great vir-
tues which should govern man's actions in all his relations;
of these relations the most important is that between
sovereign and people ; and sovereigns should cultivate these
virtues in the first instance. Many of the sage's sayings
may, therefore, be said to come under that chapter, so much
cultivated by Oriental philosophers, of "Mirror of Princes."
But that in which all are concerned, the great lesson he
gives to humanity at large, is the education of one's per-
sonal character. Character is more important than clever-
ness. Man's life ought to be a constant strife in subduing
one's passions, in order to attain to perfection by the
dominancy of ethical principles and the suppression of
sensual instincts ; and all this striving for perfection should
not be undertaken for the sake of external rewards, but for
the pleasure one takes in perfection itself. It does Dr.
Faber, the missionary, as much credit as it does the ancient
sage that, far from condemning these views as pagan, he
regards them as an incentive to Christians to vie with
heathen characters in the exercise of virtue. The Chinese,
he thinks, are now as far away from these ideals as they
were in the time of Mencius, whose teachings represent,
as it were, the conscience of the Chinese, — the knowledge
of what is normal in goodness, by which the deviations of
individual life may be judged.

In his political views Mencius was decidedly loyal to the
traditional position of the Ch6u emperor ; and he denounced
the decadence of his age as being the result of the ne^ect
of loyalty. The "Five Leaders" (xvu-pa, seventh century
B.C.) ofifended in loyalty against the "Three Kings" («m-

294 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

wang, i.e. the founders of the three dynasties Hia, Shang,
and Ch6u). This means they were the first to disavow
openly imperial authority. Then he says: "The princes
of the present day ofifend in loyalty against the Five Lead-
ers, and the great officers of the present day ofifend in loyalty
against the princes." He laments the position of the em-
peror, who formerly visited the princes on tours of inspec-
tion and received at his court visits from the princes who
reported to him on their official acts. It used to be a
custom in the spring to examine the ploughing and to supply
any deficiency of seed ; in autumn, to examine the reaping
and to assist where there was a deficiency in the crop.
When the emperor entered the boundaries of a state, if
new ground was being reclaimed and the old fields were
well cultivated, if the aged were nourished and the worthy
honored, and if men of distinguished talents were placed in
office, the prince was rewarded by the emperor with an
addition to his territory. On the other hand, if the em-
peror found that the ground was left wild or overrun with
weeds, if the old were neglected and the worthy unhonored,
and if the offices were filled with hard tax-gatherers, the
prince was reprimanded by the emperor. Non-attendance
at court was visited by degradation of rank, loss of terri-
tory, and, if persisted in, by removal from government.
The emperor merely used his authority in commanding
such punishments, the execution of which rested with the
other princes. It was only through the rule of the Five
Leaders that the time-honored imperial privilege passed
out of the hands of the Son of Heaven into those of the
Leaders. This was, according to Mencius, an offense in
loyalty against the Three Kings. The period of the Five
Leaders thus marks, according to him, the first stage of

THE CONTENDING STATES 296

that decay of imperial power which had ruled supreme for
a thousand years and more.

The most powerful of the Five Leaders, Duke Huan of
Ts'i, as we have already seen, called a covenant of the
princes of the empire in which five articles were agreed
upon for the guidance of the several sovereigns. The
fifth article says: ''Make no promotions without first
announcing them to the king, or emperor." This involves
at least a certain amount of loyalty to the central power, if
merely a nominal one; but, as Mencius continues, the
princes of his time all violated the prohibitions contained
in these five articles, for which reason he held them to
ofifend in loyalty against the Five Leaders. Mencius
contrasts the disloyalty of a man who merely foUows his
sovereign in a wicked enterprise with that of the man who
instigates him to wickedness. This was, indeed, the great
crime of the hi^ officers of his own time, who ofifended in
disloyalty to their sovereigns.^ Altogether we could not
find any better exponent of the gradual coUapse of that
once ^orious Ch6u dynasty than the philosopher Mencius.

The history of the state of Ts'i has dxavm how in ancient
China the application of scholarship to the affairs of govern-
ment bore practical fruit, and there has probably been no
second example on record in which the results of phUo-
sophic thou^t were so immediately and successfully con-
nected with state management as that of the philosopher
Kuan-tzi. After him Confucius strove in vain to gain
personal influence in matters of government. If he did
not succeed, some of his disciples did, besides hundreds of
influential men who in later generations educated them-
fldves by the study of his teachings. Something similar

* Lesge, op. cii., pp. 311-314.

296

THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

was eminently the case with the great Ck)nf ucianist Mencius
who devoted a good deal of thought to questions of political
economy and to politics generally. He advocated tutelage
over the people, though on liberal principles. One of his
pet theories was the division of fields among the population.
According to him, the expenses of government ought to be
raised by levying the tenth part of all land cultivated by
the people on government account. For this purpose he

recommended the tsing, or "weU," sys-
tem of tithing, by which all land was
to be divided into equal squares of so
many acres, each square being separated
from its neighbor by boundary lines re-
sembling the shape of the Chinese char-

acter tsing

("weir*) so as to yield nine square lots.

Of these the eight outer ones were to be held by private
owners among the people, who by their joint labor were
to cultivate the central lot for the government. This was,
of course, a utopianism but little better than Hii Hingis
agricultural eccentricities; and it is difficult to imagine
how in the long run it could work successfully in practice.
Still the tsing system has again and again been considered
in the course of history as having been favored by such
a deep thinker as Mencius and, with its claim of certain
lands for government use, may have actually influenced
the laying out of city plans and field- marks.

The question how to defray the expenses of government
has, of course, occupied the sovereigns of China at all
periods of its history, and when Mencius devoted his atten-
tion to the subject, several systems of taxation had already

THE CONTENDING STATES 297

been tried ; but, with that complexity which has at all times
prevailed in the sources of revenue, it seems natiu^al that
in ancient China, at a time when foreign trade was still
inconsiderable and agriculture was by far the most im-
portant basis of public wealth, the taxation of land (Ju)
and personal services (t) should form the backbone of
taxation. From the earliest existence of a government in
China, land has been considered to be the property of the
sovereign. There was no private ownership, but subjects
were allowed to claim lots on payment of a tax, which con-
sisted in the surrendering of a certain percentage of the
harvest. This percentage has, of course, varied a good deal
in the course of history. At first calculated on the mere
area held by farmers, it is stated to have been levied accord-
ing to the nature of the land as early as the Emperor Yau
(2300 B.C.). The Emperor Yii (2200 b.c.) is supposed to
have introduced the so-called tribute system (kung-fa), by
which fifty tn&Uf or acres, were granted to each adult, the
corresponding tribute being one-tenth of the produce of the
land. Ch'ong-t'ang, founder of the Shang dynasty (1766
B.C.), is supposed to have been the originator of a mutual
aid system (isurfa), which the philosopher Chu Hi believes
to have been the foundation of the Uing system remodeled
by Mencius, and by which a tsing was divided into nine
squares, each measuring 70 mdu. By this system the
ground tax, would seem at first si^t to have been one-
ninth of the produce ; but since the farmers had to live in
houses occupying certain portions of their lots, it may be
said that practically the government tax amounted to that
prototype of all ancient taxation, the tithe. At the be^n-
ning of the (7h6u dynasty (1122 b.c.) a combination of the
two older systems was resorted to, householders in cities

298 THE ANCIENT mSTORY OF CHINA

and towns pajring their tithe in kind on the land belonging
to them, whereas the mutual aid fifystem remained in force
in the rural districts. This arrangement was known as
the "share system" (ch!d-fa) and prevailed during the
greater part of the Ch6u dynasty. Under it a certain
percentage of the land held by farmers was allowed for
buildings, and of the remainder, as ground imder actual
cultivation, the tenth portion of the crops, i.e. the tithe, was
due to the government.

AU through the Ch6u djmasty the principle by which land
was held was that the sovereign, whoever he might be, was
in all cases the real owner and that the tenant held it under
conditions determined by the government. Man was held
to be an adult at the age of twenty, and his portion of land
was then allotted to him; at the age of sixty his fields
reverted to the government ; and no sale or other disposal
was permitted. This system was not changed under the
feudal government by which so many kings, dukes, mar-
quises, counts, and barons were sovereigns and consequently
owners of all the soil within their respective dominions —
under the more or less doubtful authority of the Son of
Heaven. The laws of land-ownership experienced a
thorough change on the establishment of the new empire
under Shi-huang-ti, when, for the first time in the history
of China, occupants hitherto treated as mere landholders
became virtual proprietors and when important changes
took place in the levy of the ground tax.*

* I. M. Daae, The Landtax in China. A description of its origin
and development together with the nature and incidences of the present
levy. Collected from the most reliable Chinese sources. In Transactions
of the VIII International Congress of Orientalists^ Stockholm, 1889, pt.
iv, pp. 53-86. I differ from Mr. Daae in the translation of the term
Mhi-i, lit., "ten and one," which here does not mean eleven parts, but

THE CONTENDING STATES

(61. Cbuano-tsi

Aa Mencius was the principal representative at the Con-
fucian achool of philosophers, eo Chuang-tBi,his contempo-
rary, was the chief representative of Tauist philosophy.
Cbuang-tsi's views thus formed the greatest contrast at
everything preached by the Coofucianists ; and this contrast
may be shown even in his personal life. Whereas Confucius
and Mencius constantly hankered after personal influence
with princes and govemmenta, their great ambition being
to be social reformers, Chuang-tii was the better philoso-
pher inasmuch as he cared more for the absolute liberty
<rf a scholar's life than for a grand position in the world.
Twice he declined the honor of being prime minister to the
king of Ch'u. He compared the man who held such a posi-
tion and who could at any time fall into disgrace to " the
sacrificial ox fattened for years in order to be led to the
altar, decked with embroidered trappings, and killed."
On another occasion, when the king had offered him that
same hi^ position, be referred to " a sacred tortoise which
bad been dead for some three thousand years, but was held
in reverential memory on the altar of the king's ancestral
temple." "Would not this tortoise," he asked the king,
" rather than seeing its dead remains worshiped, prefer to
be alive and wag its tail in the mud?" He philosopher
preferred to "wag bis tail in the mud" rather than be a
grand personage and be practically dead. If Hencius may
be said to be a better exponent of Confucian teachings than

"one out of ten," i.». the tithe. Cf. alao A. Fork«, Da* eAtiMfudb*
Finan»- mmI SlM^ncttm, in UUOmluiigm dt S«mtiMr« /Br OrinXaf*
itdu apndtm m Btrtin, Jihrgang Ui, 1900, pt. 1, p. 187 Mgg.

300 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

Ck)nf ucius himself, owing to the simplicity and deameas of
his language, something similar is the case with Chuang-tzi
as an exponent of Lau-txi's Tauist wisdom, whose work (if
it is his indeed), the Taurtd-king, is a good deal more in
need of a commentary than the sajdngs of Confucius. We
possess an excellent translation of Chuang-txi's writings by
Professor Herbert A. Giles,^ whose skepticism concerning
Lautzi's Taurtd-king seems to qualify him especially as
a spokesman on Chuang-tzi. Mr. Giles says in his intro-
duction : —

"Lau-tzi was the great Prophet of his age. He tauf^t men to
return good for evil, and to look forward to a higher life. He professed
to have found the clue to all things human and divine.

" He seems to have insisted that his system could not be reduced
to words. At any rate, he declared that those who spoke did not
know, while those who knew did not speak.

"But to accommodate himself to conditions of mortality, he
called this clue TAU, or THE WAY, explaining that the word was
to be understood metaphorically, and not in a literal sense as the
way or road upon which men walk.

'"The following are sentences selected from the indisputably
genuine remains of Lau-tzi, to be found scattered here and there
in early Chinese literature:

All the world knows that the goodness of doing good is not real ftoodnc

When merit has been achieved, do not take it to yourself. On the other hand
if you do not take it to yourself, it shall never be taken from you«

By many words wit is exhausted. It is better to preserve a mean.

Keep behind and you shall be put in front. Keep out and you shall be kept in.

What the world reverences may not be treated with irreverence.

Good words shall gain you honor in the market-place. Good deeds shall gain
3rou friends among men.

He who, conscious of being strong, is content to be weak, he shall be a csmosure
of men.

The empire is a divine trust, and may not be ruled. He who rules, ruina. He
who holds by force, loses.

Mighty is he who conquers himself.

* Chuang-Ul, Mystic, Moralist and Social Reformer, trandaUd/ram
the Chinese. London, 1880.

THE OONTENDma STATES 301

Ha who y «iDt«it h>a lointi.

To Um (Ood I wooM b* (ood. To tho not food I wonld *!■> bo good, ia onki
M maka tfaas ftMXi-

It th( lonraBMt i* lotanat, ih» pMipU will b* withoot ■uU*. If (bo gonn-
BMit i« -vr""-« tbwa will bo oonMoal infrmstiOB ol Iho taw.

"t ™ r— ~ injwr witb Mnilawi.

"Of such were the pure uid simple teftcbings of L«u-UI. But
it b upon the wondroua doctrine of Inactum that hia claim to im-
mortality b founded :

Do Bothinc uid kO (hinc* viO bo doooL

I do DOthiag, fjid my pcopld boeoow gaod ol UhJt dwd aoBord.

AbuKloD wudom mad dianonl koowladcii and Um poopta wlQ bo b»ifllKl u

nom« Iho ■««»«. tb« m>l\ tmnoam tho hwd. AH Iho worid

!«■ in tho world owTidathihvdtrt. ThKt wUob hu do nboUaea

"Such doctrioM as these were, however, not likely to appeal
with force (o the sympathies of a practical people. In the sixth
century B.C., before I«u-tii'a death, another pr(q>het arose. H«
tau^t his countrymen that duly la one's neighbor comprises the
whole duty of man. ChBritableneBs of heart, jiutioe, sincerity, and
fortitude, sum up the ethics of Confucius. He knew nothing of a
God, of a soul, of an unseen world. And he declared that the un-
knowable had better remain untouched.

" Apinst these hard and worldly utterances, Chuang-til raised
a powerful cry. The idealism of Lau-tii had seised upon his
poetic soul, and he determined to stem the tide of materialism in
which men were being fast rolled to perdition.

" He failed, of course. It was, indeed, too great a task to per-
suade the calculating Oiinese nation that by doing nothing all
things would be done. But Chuang-tii bequeathed to posterity
a work which, by reason of its marvelous literary beauty, has al-
ways held a foremost place. It is also a work of much originality
of thought. The writer, it is true, appears chiefly as a disciple
insisting upon the principles of a master. But he has contrived to
extend the field, and carry hia own q>eculations into regiims never
t o( by Uu-UI."

302 THE ANCIENT fflSTORY OF CHINA

Chuang-tzi's works are full of acrimonious attacks on
Confucius and his school. That antagonism between
Confucianists and TauistS; which in later centuries divided
the Chinese world of thought into two hostile camps, had
begun to take positive shape among the philosophers of the
Contending States. Confucius and his adherents were
treated with ironical contempt. In those days he was not
half so great a man among the Chinese as he became in later
centuries after the apotheoses of such influential writers as
Han Yii (768-824) and Chu Hi (1130-1200); and to ex-
pose him to the ridicule of the masses all possible dia-
lectic artifices were resorted to by his adversaries, not the
least powerful among whom was Chuang-tzi.

One of the best-known attacks on Confucius is that mas-
terful literary caricature, forming the spurious twenty-
ninth chapter of Chuang-tzi's work, containing the story of
" Robber Chi/' Chi, a fictitious Bill Sykes, was at the head
of a band of nine thousand ill-reputed characters and be-
came a regular scourge to the empire. This was an eyesore
to Confucius, who determined to use his eloquence in trying
to persuade him that virtue is better than vice. When the
robber was advised of the sage's visit, he flew into a rage
and at first would not see him, calling him evil names ; but
finally he admitted him into his presence. The conversa-
tion which ensued forms a satire on the life and teachings of
Confucius which, better than anything else, was apt to
predispose the masses against him, the great robber scourg-
ing him with the merciless lash of his irony. "You wear
patched clothes and a narrow girdle," he tells Confucius;
" you talk big and act falsely, in order to deceive the rulers
of the land, while all the time you yourself are aiming at
wealth and power ! You are the biggest thief I know ; and

THE CONTENDINQ ffTKTES 303

if the world calls me ' Robber Chi,' it most certainly ou^t
to call you 'Robber' Confucius." And among other things
he says : " You call yourself a man of talent and a sage, for-
sooth 1 Twice you have been driven out of Lu. You were
tabooed in Wei. You were a fulure in Ts'i. In fact, the
empire won't have you anywhere. It was your teaching
which brought Tsi-lu to his tragical end. You cannot take
care, in the first place, of yourself, nor, m the second place, erf
others. Of what value can your doctrine be?"

Ihen he goes on to prove the fallacy erf a number of the
moet cherished traditions of Chinese iustory. All the heroes
of high antiquity, such as Huang-ti, Yau, Shun, Yii, Ch'ong-
t'ang, Won-wang, and Wu-wang, had their flaws. Whatever
their reputation among men may be, "fuller investigation
shows that a desire for advantage disturbed their original
purity and forced it into a contrary direction; hence the
BhamelesanesB of their deeds." Having cmpha^sed some
of the views known from other books to be those of the
philosopher Yang Chu (one of the several anschronisma
Btamping this entire chapter as spurious), he winds up by
Baying : —

"'Confucius! all your teachings are nothing to me. Begone I
Go home I Say no more I Your doctrine is a random jargon, full
of falsity and deceit. It can never preserve the original ptirity of
man. Why discuss it further T '

"Confucius made two obeisances and hurriedly took his leave.
On mounting his chariot, he throe times missed hold of the reins.
His eyes were so dascd that he could see nothing. His face was
ashy pale. With downcast head he grasped the bar of his chariot,
unable to find vent for his feelings." '

ITie story of Robber Chi is one of thoee allegorical fictiona
made use of by the contending philosophers of the Contend-

' OOei, sp. eU., pp. 3S7-Vlt.

304 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

ing States as the most impresave we^xm in that spiritual
contest now raging between the adherents of Lau-tzi and
Confucius. In one of the spurious chapters appearing
in the works of Chuang-tzi/ Confudus is introduced in
conversation with a mysterious sage i^proaching him in
the disguise of a ample-minded old fisherman with beard
and eyebrows snowy white. Among other unpalatable
truths Confucius has to hear from his lips is the following
parable, describing his vain attempts to gain a position
in reforming the world, thus never conquering that philo-
sophical calmness he might have enjoyed had he left others
alone and cultivated his own physical and mental self in
accordance with Lau-tzi's principle of inaction : —

"There was once a man who was so afraid of his shadow and so
disliked his own footsteps that he determined to run away from
them. But the oftener he raised his feet the more footsteps he
made, and though he ran very hard, his shadow never left him.
From this he inferred that he went too slowly, and ran as hard as
he could without resting, the consequence being that his strength
broke down and he died. He was not aware that by going into the
shade he would have got rid of his shadow, and that by keeping
still he would have put an end to his footsteps. Fool that he was 1 "

The old fisherman appears to hit the nail on the head by
vituperating the Confucian mania for external ceremonies.
"Real mourning grieves in silence." "Our emotions are
dependent upon the original purity within, and it matters
not what ceremonies may be employed." "Ceremonial is
the invention of man. Our original purity is given to us
from God." "The true sage should model himself upon
God and hold his ori^nal purity in esteem ; he should be
independent of human exigencies. Fools, however, reverse

> Giles, op. cU,, pp. 413-422.

THE CONTENDING STATES 306

this." Such a fool, we read between the lines, was Con-
fucius, who in this fictitious tale is represented as almost
a convert to Tauism, — a mere satire and a mild literary
fraud which, like many others, has probably done a good
deal to undermine that authority of Confucian teachings,
which after all must be considered as the cement, so to
speak, that had so far prevented the utter collapee of the
Ch6u dynasty.

{ 62. Minor Philobophbbs

The age of Mencius and Chuang-tei and the generations
following them down to the earlier Han dynasty produced
quite a number of minor phUoeophers whose teachings
have been handed down in texts not always beyond sus-
picion as to genuineness and authorship. Theae texts were
copied and recopied during the Middle Ages, and have been
published in countless editions since the development of
the book-printing industry; and they have all found their
commentators, defenders, and adversaries. Apart from
the Confucian classics, the recognition oi the several texts
of which, as canonical books, has varied a good deal in the
course of history, the Taurtd-king and the several minor
philosophers have been reprinted in numerous series, the
selection of texts varying according to the tastes of their
publishers. Thus we have series reproducing the texts of
5, 6, 10, 20, or 22 philosophers, and many (A these texts
have been inserted here and there in collections of reprints
Dot exclusively devoted to philosophical literature.

During the Ming dynasty, about 1600 a.d., an edition of
[^oflophical works appeared under the title Si^-ts'in-
cAu-tel-Ao-ptM, which means "Complete Edition of the

306 THE ANCIENT mSTORY OF CHINA

Philosophers that lived prior to the Ts'in Dynasty." This
is the period interesting us at present. The minor philoso-
phers — it is merely their texts that are included in the
series — are there divided into Conf ucianists, Tauists,
writers on government, Mihists (adherents of Mo 11, the
philosopher of universal love), "criss-cross philosophers/'
i.e. those who teach the dialectic art of defending opposite
views in politics, and miscellaneous celebrities. This classi-
fication has been adopted in imitation of the division of
philosophical writers first applied to the imperial library
of the Sui dynasty about 618 a.d. The classification varies
a good deal, and some individual writers are placed in
different classes in other editions. Thus Yii-tzi, or Yii
Hiung, the venerable teacher of Won-wang (twelfth century
B.C.), whose little work on government would be the oldest
text extant in Chinese literature if it could be proved to be
genuine, is classed among Tauists in the Ming collection
referred to, and among Confucianists in another Ming col-
lection published in 1577, while one of the latest large
collections, published in the reign of T'ung-chi (1862-
1875), the Tzl-shu-pai-chunQy "A Hundred Philosoph-
ical Texts,'' more correctly places him among the miscel-
laneous authors. This comprehensive series contains also
special headings for military writers, some of whom, as
living under the Ch6u dynasty, have already been men-
tioned, and other classes containing writers of later periods.
It cannot be said that the Confucianists are represented by
any prominent writers, besides Mencius, toward the end of
the Ch6u dynasty ; and the principal minor philosophers to
be noted were Tauists. One among these is Won, perpetu-
ated in the work entitled Won-tzif "The Philosopher Won."
This may be a fictitious name, since we do not know whether

THE CONTENDING STATES 307

such a personage ever existed ; but seeing that the principal
theses of Lau-tzi's philosophy, of which the work purports
to be an extension, are discussed in it in a manner purely
philosophical and free from the charlatanic pretenses of
later Tauists, we may be right in considering the work in its
main substance as of Ch6u origin. Other philosophical
works ascribed to this period must be held to be the fabri-
cations of later compilers. To know this is of special im-
portance to the historical student; on account of the many
cultural anachronisms which may appear in texts credited
with ancient origin, but amalgamated with matter con-
temporaneous with later editors. Such a work is the Kuatir
yifirtzij ascribed to a philosopher Kuan-yin, whom tradition
represents as an official in charge of one of the mountain
passes leading from China to the distant West, probably
an entirely legendary personage, who is also supposed to
have met Lau-tzi riding on a buffalo, on leaving China for-
ever, and to have received from him then the manuscript of
his Taurt&-king.

Among the minor philosophers of the Contending States
is that typical class, the Chinese designation of which, tstrng-
hdng-kia, I have ventured to translate by "criss-cross
philosophers"; the term tstmg-hdng being written with
diflferent characters, a mode of writing implying that their
teaching was both horizontal and vertical, meaning that
they taught the art of persuading every one to anything.
Another interpretation is that they were prepared to place
their dialectics at the service of the two opposing political
factions of the time, federation {tsung)^ or imperialism
(hang). Tliey were the sophists among Chinese philoso-
phers, and the chief professor of their art was Kui-ku-tzl.
"Philosopher of the Devil Valley," so called after 1 i

308 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

sanctuary in the hills, whose proper name was Wang Ha.
The work left under the name of Kui-kurts!^ has been com-
mentated and provided with a preface by T'au Hmig-ldng,
the greatest scholar. of his time, who lived 451-536;
but with all this it seems doubtful whether the work as-
cribed to him, though it has an ancient ring about it, actu-
ally originated with the man whose name it bears. Posably
he was an entirely legendary personage. But if legendary,
Kui-ku-tzi is likely to have existed as the type of a professcnr
of dialectics, to whose school ambitious young men would
flock to study the art of persuasion for future use in the
service of the state. Certainly we have it on the authority
of Ssi-ma Ts'i^n ^ that two of the greatest diplomats China
has ever produced, who, by the mere use of their tongues,
directed the march of events in state life and whose policy,
moreover, stamped them to be antipodes to one another,
were fellow-students under Kui-ku Si6n-sh6ng, " Teacher of
the Devil Valley," who in a work of the second century of
the present era is described as a isung-hong-kia,^ i.e. a
"criss-cross philosopher." But for that the philosopher's
teaching would involve no more than the good general
education imparted by a little college to a couple of friends,
who are ^terward found in opposite political camps.

§ 63. Su Ts'iN AND Chang I

Such were the two great diplomats Su Ts'in and Chang I,
of whom I have already spoken. Soon after their college
days in the "Devil Valley" these two yoimg men set out
on the time-honored career of itinerant political adventurers.
The two main political factions, the constitution of which

* Shi'ki, ch. Ixix, p. 1; ch. Ixx, p. 1.

' Giles, A Chinese Biographical Dictionary, p. 388, no. 1014.

THE CONTENDING OTATEB 309

varied a good deal with the success or noD-succeas of their
diplomatic leaders, may be described aa Ts'in and Anti-
Ts'in. Ts'in, that semi-barbarous state on the vestera
boundary destined to become the ruin of the Chdu dynasty,
strove hard for h^emony among the Contending States and
was well on the way to ascendency. Among the other
states some, on the advice of Su Ts'in, entered into con-
federation. Being an opportunist of the purest water,
Su Ts'in had at first made up his mind to hang on to the
power most likely to succeed ; but the schemes by which
he tried to persuade the King of Ts'in to crush his rivals
made do impresedon, and he left the court of Ts'in smarting
under the mortification of a man who had been snubbed,
thou^ he mi^t have done great service. Ill-rewarded, he
returned to his home in the imperial dominion of Ch6u,
where his own folk, including his brothers and wives, heap-
ing insult upon injury, ridiculed him as the would-be great
man who had come back penniless and a beggar. Handi-
craft and trade, they said, would have been much better
for him than cultivating his tongue.' Su Ts'in, however,
now devoted himself again to his books in order to perfect
himself in the field he had or^nally entered, which may
be properly described as that of diplomacy; and thus pre-
pared, he conceived the great plan of persuading the most
powerful princes to enter into a confederation against Ts'in,
thus counteracting the schemes he had originally defended
with such ill-success. His wounded pricic must have helped
him to develop that persistency of purpose which made him
overcome all the difficulties besetting the path of a man,
unknown and despised, but determined to gain the ear of

310 THE ANCIENT mSTORY OF CHINA

80 many powerful princes. Having wori^ his way throogjh
numerous back doors, he managed to obtain an interview
with the Duke of Yen at his ci^ital, the present Peking,
whom he succeeded in persuading that confederation and
immediate action against Ts'in were the only means to
prevent the minor states from being swallowed up. From
this time he became one of the great men cS Qiina. The
Duke of Yen made him his confidential ambassador and
sent him in turn to the courts of Chau, Han, Wei, Ts'i, and
Ch'u. Dr. W. A. P. Martin, in his most interesting paper
" Diplomacy in Ancient China/' ^ says with regard to the
unprecedented diplomatic success of all these several mis-
sions, which had brought great honors on Su Ts'in's head
from the several sovereigns concerned in the scheme : —

''The achievement was one the difficulty and grandeur of which
it is not easy to overestimate. The man who conceived the plan
and, with steady purpose, carried it through, deserved all the honors
that were heaped upon him. Like Prince Bismarck, who to the
chancellorship of the empire adds that of the kingdom of Prussia,
Su held a duplicate or rather multiple office. His chief dignity was
that of president of the sextuple alliance, and in order that he might
render it effective, each of the six powers conferred on him the seal
of a separate chancellorship."

From Su Ts'in's great scheme of confederation dates the
term, well known in Chinese history, livrkuo, i.e. " the Six
States.''

Ssi-ma Ts'i6n's chapter on Su Ts'in contains in terse
language the several arguments he used in persuading the
princes of these six kingdoms to his policy, each of whom
he won over to his side by carefully allowing for local and
personal idiosyncrasies. Su Ts'in's great success was, of

' Journal of the Peking Oriental Society, vol. ii, 1889, pp. 241-262.

THE CONTENDING STATES 311

eouree, based on the force of circumstances, thou^ it
seems that in the general turmoil none of the Contending
States had as yet thought of stirring. Ts'in had gained
victory after victory over one or another of its neighbors ;
and nothing seemed more natural than the conclusion of a
defensive alliance like the one negotiated by Su Ts'in, in
which it was stipulated that whenever any of the Six States
were attacked by Ts'in the other five should come to the
rescue, and that if any of the contracting states should re-
fuse the call, the other states should punish it with their
united forces. This was in 333 B.C.

Su Ts'in was loaded with honors and made his head-
quarters the court of Chau. There he was approached by
his old fellow-student Chang I, almost his equal as a
scheming statesman, though his first venture at the court
of the southern state of Ch'u had proved a failure owing to
the intrigues of a courtier, who had falsely accused him of
theft and exposed him to the degrading punishment of the
bastinado, after which he had fled to the north to seek
refugQ with his powerful friend. Su Ts'in saw in Chang a
rival rather than a comrade, and tried to shake him off by
giving him money and servants to pave his way to the
court of Ts'in, although certain crafty designs of a different
kind have been assigned to this move.' If Su Ts'in thought
he had laid a trap for his rival by causing him to accept
the most tempting gifts from an unknown benefactor who
would afterward reveal himself as the arch-enemy of the
Ts'in court, he was mistaken. Chang I proved his equal
as a diplomat by disowning his connection with his former
friend. Not in vain had he trusted to the power of his

* Ch« PitoD, Ths Six Oreat ChaneeUarM cf T^in, or the Conquut qf
China 6y Urn Houm pf T^in, In China Review, vol. xiii, p. 132.

312 THE ANCIENT mSTORY OF CHINA

tongue. When, after his flight from the court of Ch'u, he
reached his home in the kingdom of Wei, his wife reproached
him upon the entire failure of his life, but Chang I simply
replied, "Just see whether my tongue is still in its place";
and on her remarking that it was, he said quietly, "Tliat
will do." With this same tongue he made a deep impression
on Hui-won, Duke of Ts'in, to whom he had submitted his
anti-confederate schemes and who straightway appointed
him an adviser ad hoc with the rank of a minister. In the
sequel he did excellent service both as an administrator by
developing the resources of the country and as a military
leader.

His great task, as a diplomat, was to counteract the work
of his former friend Su Ts'in, whose superior he apparently
was in the craftiness of his schemes. After a successful
war against the kingdom of Ch'u in 312 B.C., Ts'in was very
anxious to negotiate about the acquisition of a certain
boundary province belonging to the king of Ch'u, who
offered its cession for no other consideration than the
delivery of the p)erson of Chang I. That wily statesman,
far from objecting, even volunteered to place himself into
the hands of the southern king. He trusted to the power
of his tongue and to certain personal connections at the
court of Ch'u, whose king put him in prison to await exe-
cution. Chang I, however, had not in vain counted on the
help of a friend who happened to be the right hand of the
king^s favorite wife. This friend excited her jealousy by
telling her that the prince of Ts'in intended to ransom the
prisoner by the gift of a beautiful woman. This had the
desired effect. The king of Ch'u's wife used all her in-
fluence in bringing about Chang I's release and return to
the court of Ts'in before the much-dreaded ransom could

THE CONTENDING STATES 313

be despatched. Su Ts'in's "Six State Confederation" had
succeeded in delaying the designs of Ts'in for a number of
years, it is true, but in the long run Chang I's policy got
the better of his. In the meantime the shadow emperor
Hi6n-wang was followed by his son Shon-tsing-wang.

i 64. Shon-tsing-wang (320-315 B.C.)

The history of this ruler, like that of his successors,
scarcely deserves to be considered as representing China.
The chief events of his reign were an unsuccessful attempt
by five of the confederate states to attack Ts'in, ending in
their defeat at the Han-ku Pass in Ho-nan, the place where
Lau-tzi is supposed to have taken leave of the world, and
the assassination of Su Ts'in in 317 B.C. Su Ts'in's lucky
star had been on the wane for some time. We have seen
that he had settled in the state of Chau as the strongest
among the confederates, and his efforts in holding together
the federation had indeed succeeded, as Ssi-ma Ts'i^n puts
it, m keeping the armies of Ts'in out of the Han-ku Pass
for fifteen years. But in the meantime Ts'in had secured
the services of another great diplomat, like Chang I, a
native of Wei, in the person of Kung-sun Yen, who was
sent on a mission to the east to persuade the rulers of Ts'i
and Wei into a joint attack on Chau with intent to break up
the confederation. In this he perfectly succeeded, Chau
was actually attacked by the two confederates (332 B.C.) ;
and from this time onward Ts'in had become more and
more successful in its policy of sowing discord among its
opponents.

Su Ts'in had, after the collapse of his scheme, fallen out
with the prince of Chau and, under the pretext of a diplo-
matic mission, had withdrawn to the state of Yen, where he

314 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

accepted the post of minister. But there he was involved
in a scandal with the mother of his prince, which forced
him to take refuge again at the court of Ts'i. His intrigues
in Ts'i, however, created dissatisfaction among the people
and led to his assassination. Chang I, who had for a num-
ber of years been chancellor of Wei, was called after the
death of his opponent to Ts'in again, which by the policy
of its great chancellor had greatly increased in territory, its
latest conquest (316 B.C.) being that of the country of Shu,
the present province of Ssi-ch'uan. One of the most power-
ful rivals of the state of Ts'in was the southern kingdom of
Ch'u, which had attained supremacy over the whole of the
south of China by the conquest of the kingdom of Yu6 in
334 B.C. Shon-tsing-wang was succeeded by his son Nan-
wang.

§ 65. Nan-wang (314-256 B.C.)

This monarch was the last Son of Heaven under the Ch6u
dynasty. Like all his predecessors, he wore the modest
title king (wang) ; but several of the more powerful states
being nominally his vassals, had in the course of generations
assumed the rank of kingdoms. The Ch6u empire now
consisted of eleven states, all the heads of which, with the
exception of two, had in the course of time enforced from
the shadow emperor their recognition as kings ; and as such,
every one of them was much more powerful than the king
of Ch6u himself. A title is not, of course, an absolutely
exact index of the power wielded; for the rulers of Ts4n
had been among the strongest long before they assumed
the title wang in 325 B.C. It seems characteristic that for
centuries Ch'u, which owing to its great extension toward
the south, and the non-Chinese character of its population,

THE CX)NTENDING STATES 315

would naturally feel leas inclined to be loyal in its relations
to the imperial court, claimed the royal crown as early as
704 B.C. Ts'i followed next in378 b.c. ; Wei, m 370 B.C. ; Yen
and Han, in 332 B.C. ; Chau, in 329 b.c. ; and Sung, following
Ts'in, in 318 B.C. The prince of Lu had remained a duke as
he was at the time of Confucius ; and the rulers of the little
state of Wei (not to be confounded with the larger one of
that name), who had been dukes for many centuries, had to
submit to ''Irish promotion" by being reduced to the rank
of marquises, and finally that of mere lords {kun).

Two years after the ascension of Nan-wang, Ts'in gained
that great victory against Ch'u following which Chang I
volunteered to proceed to the southern court as a captive
of the king. This proved to be a ruse of war, by which
Ts'in gained as much as Ch'u lost. King Huai of Ch'u
then had in his service a distant relative named K'ii Yiian,
a man of character, who in spite of his youth had gained,
by the wisdom of his advice, the king's entire confidence.
K'u Yiian had in vain protested against the artful schemes
of Chang I, as he had warned the king against that war
which brought so much trouble on his country. His ad-
vice had been disregarded; and the persistency of his
warnings paved the way for the intrigues of a set of jealous
courtiers, who managed to bring about his absolute dis-
grace with the king. His melancholy outbursts of feeling
over the unjustness of his fate formed the subject of a
celebrated poem by him entitled Lirsau, ''Incurring Mis-
fortune," or " Under a Cloud." Finally, the poet put an
end to the persecutions of his enemies by drowning himself
in a river. This sad event is commemorated throughout
China on the anniversary of its occurrence, viz. the fifth of
the fifth moon, by a kind of regatta, when well-to-do young

516 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

men man boats and beat gong? and drums as thou^ they
were searching for the body of the lamented poet who
sacrificed life and happiness in doing his best to serve his
king and his country.

Next to the odes of the Shl-king K'ii Yiian's poetry is in
point of age as well as of merit the most important produc-
tion of Chinese literature of this class, which saw its best
days centuries later under the glorious T'ang dynasty.
The Lirsau poem is the principal contribution to the collec-
tion known as Ch!vrtz\ " The Ch'u Elegies," which has an
extensive literature of its own by way of commentary and
supplement. K'ii Yilan's effusions are almost unequaled
in popularity, because they appeal to the hearts of all who
feel that world-weary melancholy which is the subject also
of some of the odes of the Shl-king.

The king of Ts'in's great diplomat, Chang I, tried very
hard to win over the eastern states to Ts'in; but in the
meantime King Hui-won, who had occupied the throne of
Ts'in since 337 B.C., had died (311 B.C.); and King Wu, his
successor (310-307 B.C.), does not seem to have fallen in
so readily with Chang I's policy. After Chang I's attempts
at a federation in favor of Ts'in had failed, he left again
for Wei, where he resumed the post of minister and died
soon after (310 B.C.). Wu-wang himself died after a sliort
reign in Ts'in, during which a successful war with the state
of Han ended with a further aggrandizement of his territory.
It was at this time (308 B.C.) that Wu-ling, King of Chau,
adopted Tartar dress and remodeled his army by intro-
ducing the Tartar style of fighting on horseback — a
cultural change supporting, as we have seen, that upheaval
of time-honored institutions and views always favored by
Ts'in, the semi-Tartar state.

THE CONTENDING STATES 317

An important time was now in store for the state of
T^'in under its king, ChauHsiang (306-251 b.c.)» during
whose long reign great strides were made in bringing Ts'in
to the front. Chau-siang was a minor when he ascended
the throne, and his mother, who had assumed the regency
as Siian t'ai-h6u, i.e. "Queen Dowager Suan/' appointed
Wei Jan, a relative by marriage of the former king Hui-
won, thou^ a native of Ch'u, commander-in-chief of the
army and defender of the T^'in capital Hi6n-yang, the
present Si-an-fu, which appointment had become necessary
to secure the throne against internal family intrigues.
Wei Jan's management proved a great success. The
efficiency of his army, supported by all possible ruses both
of war and diplomacy, succeeded in securing the upper
hand over the other states. King Huai of Ch'u, who had
already become the victim of Chang Ts cunning, fell into
a trap laid by the wily Ts'in diplomat. Being invited, after
a number of unsuccessful hostilities to an interview, under
the pretext of concluding an alliance with Ts'in, he went,
contrary to the advice of his faithful friend, the poet
K'ii Yiian, to the appointed meeting-place, only to be
made a prisoner (299 b.c.) and to die in captivity three
years later.

In the continuation of its wars with the southern state
of Ch'u, Ts'in wrenched from it seventy-six cities, with large
tracts of territory. In the meantime some of the eastern
states had again rallied and had formed an alliance. King
Chau-siang had also taken into his service Mong-ch'ang-
kun, a member of the T'i^n family of Ts'i, who acted as
diplomatic agent. Being suspected of secretly working in
the interests of his native state, Ts'i, he had a narrow escape
in saving his life by flight, took service in Ts'i, formed an

318 THE ANCIENT fflSTORY OF QEHNA

alliance with Han and Wei, and actually did some damage
to Ts'in, which had to surrender three of the cities previ-
ously conquered by it on the east of the Yellow River
(298 B.C.). Wei Jan now became chancellor in Ts'in and
appointed the great strategist Po K'i commander-in-diief
in his place. Po K4 entirely crushed the armies of Han
and Wei in the famous battle of I-k'ii^ (south of the present
city of Ho-nan-fu), where 240,000 combatants were killed
and further territory was gained by Ts'in (293 B.C.). In his
subsequent encounters with the allied armies, Po K4 was
equally successful ; and the several annexations of neigh-
boring territories increased King Chau-siang's power to
such an extent that as early as 288 B.C. an attempt was
made, on the advice of Wei Jan, to crown him as " Emperor
of the West.'' The most powerful sovereign among the
eastern states was now the king of Ts'i, which state had
made rapid progress since the recognition of the T'i^n
family as hereditary rulers ; and the services of a man like
Mong-ch'ang-kiin, who must have been thoroughly familiar
with all the schemes of the Ts'in court, may have tended to
qualify it all the better for leadership in the east. For
this reason King Chau-siang could not claim sufficient in-
fluence to justify his assumption of the title of emperor
of the whole of China, but he took that of "Western Em-
peror" (Si-ti)j at the same time sending an embassy to
King Min of Ts'i offering him a diploma as "Eastern
Emperor'' {Tung-ti). King Min's adviser Su Tai, a brother
of Su Ts'in, the creator of the anti-Ts'in confederation, was
in favor of accepting the diploma without assuming the
title ; such modesty, he thought, would win the favors of
the other sovereigns. Ts'i adopted this plan, when Ts'in
had no alternative but to follow the example, and the

THE CX)NTENDING STATES 319

emperor question was shelved for the time being. In
286 B.C. Ts'i was involved in war with the state of Sung,
which was incorporated into its territories; and in the fol-
lowing year (285 B.C.) King Min made an attempt to establish
himself as emperor; but the king of Yen in 284 B.C.,
backed by the states of Ts'in, Ch'u, Chau, and Wei, sent
against Ts'i his general Yo I, who took the capital, forced
the king to flee, and conquered over seventy cities, annexing
them to the possessions of Yen. King Min was killed by
his own minister. The throne of Ts'i was then occupied
by his son Siang-wang. The attacks of Yen on the leading
state of Ts'i gave the king of Ts'in a free hand to pick a
quarrel with the neighboring state of Chau, and in 280 B.C.
Po K'i was able to report a victory which had cost 20,000
of^the Chau soldiers their lives. Two years later (278 b.c),
Ts'in turned again against its most powerful opponent,
the state of Ch'u; General Fo K'i conquered Ying, its
capital, the present King-ch6u-fu in Hu-pei, and destroyed
I-ling, the burial-place of the kings of Ch'u, in its neigh-
borhood. Ehmng the succeeding years Ts'in was success-
ful in several wars against one or another of the eastern
states. An attack on Chau was, however, repulsed in
270 B.C., when the army of Ts'in was completely routed
under the leadership of the Chau commander Chau Shd.
In 266 B.C. an important crisis took place in the govern-
ment of Ts'in. For about forty years Wei Jan had been
the soul of Ts'in's political aggrandizement. As a relative
and favorite of the queen dowager, it had been easy for
him to grasp the reins of government with a firm hand, and
while effectually serving the cause he had made his own,
the absolute supremacy of Ts'in among the states of China,
he had also numagcd to concentrate in his person an

»^.-.»»#tJl»"*-»-"

'."

ij r:Z>T ELiT'IsT OF CHEN'A

•.-■•-: _i-. - :f :r-7-r-7 iz>i r.;^-fr x-ii-jh in the long run
>-"i*:i'- ji'- "L. in.:-^*^ ": i.:? fCT-frfuni. who ^^^ in ihe
:. Li _..- r* "^1 ' " .ir ' >:■:. a -^z <-uAii-gi.ing in 266 B.C.
:.j*: - Li -z."- " : "j.-^ r:C-ii '7 ir -i^ zi'irjier ajid to the ehancel-
--^.: •: ""t^ TiZ- -^-ii-: irif lar'.-^iiei to his marquisate
i::^ JL "■- Trvj-z.- tr :~iz.':e :c E>^.ir Wei Jan's di*-
~_-.-'.:^ "r II -It ^ ' " - f^rvi-^e "vi; i».v.M:c:raiueiJ with all
■_■. - 1 1 rf : jt^ ' : i^ tizjl iz*i zr \ Ti^:^:^'Aoll of his valu-
i ■ ■■ -^---re : :t 1: ii :Liri.':cr!:5r:': oc Wei Jan's career
"-•..i" ";. 1 !i-f T^i^ric- ~i5 ?^:ar:h-fi.i rn passing the eastern
-ti .- ._Lr- .- ~-Lr _s-:-Trr: 'zsz z-r i^^zr^i r^ore jewels than
■;.- a-.r.i: :•: 7? z. .i-r.L?«el:. W^:- Ji:i ii^i <<>^ii after his
Mr„':_'.-r." :-I> t^j.'-' iz Tsl:: ■^^'is oooupie^i bv Fan
.-■. :. : V. -.. .".- r.ij*.: ;:■.::: :ai^ '^'v-.-.r.se nvairj- Uei
"-J. /.i^ i.- :;r ■ :: : ::r. . ':.:•/: s. y. .iz of :he court of
7- ... ?' ...J i :.:^-.--: : '^' :. F:tr. T<".': ha.i. after an
i..- ;." .: ..- i: : :; . : "i'!: :^!1 r-fsiblv rriva:ions and

:. :: /. '- :j.\:.\z . ' i :1 "'Vvi .':i::"> ^•i^:anoe and. after

i :-> :. -. !:.-:-.: -^^ -.;. K::.^ C':::i".:-si:i:i^:. had received
ar. i: ::;.*:..:.■ :^ :!.: :v.:::>":v 27"' B.C. . It was he who
hro.^':.' £i"r ■'. :• '':..\: ..sz.z ir. :Lv T-in covorimient which
1^'d to ti.'^: r Al ' : ".'■;' .^ir. ar. : ::.r:-r' other ministers sup-
porting.' ]i\r. ],h]\r-y: and h:jv:::t: by Lis advice and moral
«.ijjiport hr-lj/d t},fr i:ii:rr to oo:u: v at last his rightful posi-
tion, li'- /.;i;v ]iijiir(]f .-U'ld'-iily rais-:- 1 to Ix' the most power-
ful man in rfiina. with tljo rank of a :r.ar«iui>. Tlie manner
in whirh \n- took nrv^-n^r- on some of his enemies in the east
for ;ill llir- liiirniliations they ha'l forced him to undergo is
full (jf dranifitic infi<ifnt>.

Fan 'r.ij, of foursr', eonlinucvl the outward poHcy of his
predfcessr^r in striving for the hegemony of Ts'in. In this
he waH supported at first by the great general Po K'i, who

THE CONTENDINO STATES 321

in 260 B.C. won another leaf io his wreath of laurelfi by the
celebrated siege of the city of Shang-tang,the present Lu-
an-fu, in Sban-a. Sometime before this Ts'ta had got pos-
aesfflon, by force of arms, of a portion of the state of Han ;
but the people of Sbang-tang would not consent to its
annexation and preferred to join the state of Chau.with that
portion of its territory which contuned the dty. Hiis led
to another war against Chau, whose anny was defeated and
inclosed in the city of Shang-tang. Hiere it was be«eged
by the Ts'in army for forty-six days, the population suffei^
ing the most terrible hardships culminating in cannibalism.
With the city 40,000 men surrendered and were killed.

8 66. The "Fodb Nobles"

The final struggle of the house of Ts'in agunst the other
Contending States was delayed by the efforts of the so-called
" Four Nobles " (sstrhau), prominent members of the princely
houses of their respective states or of princely rank who
had gained great influence coupled with political success
in the management of the government of their sovereigns.
One of these we have already met in the person of Hong-
ch'ang-kiin, the minister of Ts'i, the once rejected employee
of the Ts'in government. Hie three others were P'ing-
yOan-kiin, a junior prince of Chau, who died in 250 b.c. ;
Siu-ling-kiin, known also as Prince Wu-ki of Wei, who died
in 244 B.C.; and Ch'uo-shdn-kun, the chief minister of
Ch'u, whose proper name was Huang Hi^ and who was
asaaaanated in 237 B.C. TTie "FourNoblea" were the chief
antagonists of Fan Tsu's policy.

Huang Hi6, the only one of the "Four Nobles" who was
not of princely blood, had been made prime minister uid
ennobled as prince by King K'au-li^ of Ch'ui and on his

322 THE ANCIENT fflSTORY OF CfflNA

advice the Ch'u capital was removed from its former site
at the present King-ch6u-fu to that of the present Soochow
(248 B.C.). Huang Hi6 had been tutor to the king when
crown prince, and since, previous to his succession to the
throne, his master resided as a pledge in Ts'in, he must have
been well familiar with Ts'in politics. In 258 b.c. Ts'in
renewed its attacks on Chau and surrounded Han-tan, its
capital. This time the famous general Po K'i, having
fallen out with the chancellor Fan Tsii, had refused to place
himself at the head of the Ts'in army, which led to his dis-
grace and subsequent suicide.*

Two of the '^Four Nobles," Ch'un-shon-kun of Ch'u and
Sin-Iing-kiin of Wei, now came to. the rescue under the
leadership of the latter, raised the siege, killed Wang Ho,
the Ts^n general, and defeated his army. AH the troubles
Ts'in had to undergo in connection with this defeat were
due to mistakes made by the chancellor Fan Tsii, whose
hostility to the best military leader the state had seen in
many years had deprived King Chau-siang of one of his
most useful subjects, to say nothing of the mortification
it must have caused him to have committed such grave
injustice. It was due to Fan Tsii's favoritism that incapa-
ble generals had been sent against Chau.

Fan Tsii, knowing his guilt, acted in truly Chinese spirit,

* To save him the humiliation of an execution, the king had sent
him a sword, with which he killed himself. It looks as if this is
an early example of a custom prevailing in China centuries before it
took the shape of harakiri in Japan. The diflference is that by the
Japanese custom the victim had to cut his abdomen, while the dis-
graced Ts'in general cut his throat. The essential feature of Po
K'i's undeserved punishment is that a sword was sent to him, just
as it used to be sent to the daimyOs and samurai of Japan, who were
exempted from the indignity of public execution.

THE CONTENDING STATES 323

when he asked Chau-siang to punish him for hia mistakes;
but, far from doing this, Chau-siang only rewarded him with
new honors. This was in 257 b.c. A most important
event now took place.

As a result of previous treaties it had become customary
to send princes of the blood as pledges to the courts of con-
tracting states, from whence they escaped when political
reasons rendered such a breach of good faith advisable.
We have seen that in 263 B.C. the crown prince of Chau
Bed from the court of Ts'in, and we find now Prince I-jon,
eoD of the crown prince of Ts'in, residing as a pledge at the
court of Chau. I-jon was not a legitimate successor of his
father, being one of the many sons bom to him by his
concubines. Poor and not very sharp-witted, illiterate and
inexperienced, be was the very man to become the victim
of a clever intrigant. At the city of Han-tan, the capital
of Chau, he had made the acquaintance of a merchant
named Lii Pu-wel, who had come from one of the eastern
states to settle there, and who was one of the most remark-
able men of his time. Described as a wholesale merchant
at the time when he fell in with the prince, he soon proved
a scheming politician, who understood how to lay his plans
and raise his own person to a position which made him
almost the principal agent in securing for the house of Ts'in
the final result, for which it had struggled so many genera-
tions, in seating its head on the throne of China. ^Vhen he
first met I-j6n, he is reported to have said, "This is rare
merchandise indeed, and a good chancel" And he decided
to make the most of it. His first scheme was based on the
fact that the prince's father, the crown prince of Ts'in, had
no children by his le^timate first wife, Hua-yang, in spite
of his infatuation for her. Since I-jon's father did not make

324 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

much of his children by his other wives, he persuaded the
prince to make an effort to be recognized as heir to the
throne. The yoimg man did not exert himself much in
the matter ; his clever friend did it all for him. Lii Pu-wei
invested his entire little f ortime in procuring an outfit for
the needy prince and in buying royal gifts in order to bribe
himself into favor with the childless queen. He thus man-
aged to get his prot^g^ to be adopted in preference to his
half-brothers and declared heir apparent to the crown prince.
Having succeeded so far, Lii Pu-wei committed one of the
boldest frauds recorded in history. He married a society
girl of the city of Han-tan, described as a woman of irre-
sistible charms and a clever dancer, subsequently known as
the "Lady of Han-tan," whom history declares to have
been pregnant by him, though the world never hears the
truth about such family secrets, and the possibility of the
prince having had connection with her at Han-tan as Lii
Pu-wei's friend must be admitted. I-j6n fell in love with
her; and Lii Pu-wei, with feigned reluctance, consented
to let him have her, while persuading him that the boy to
which she afterward gave birth had been begotten by the
prince. It was not till after the birth of this boy, whose
name was Chong, that I-j6n made the beautiful dancer his
wife. According to Ssi-ma Ts'i6n, all this took place before
the princess flight from Han-tan, which, according to the same
author, was effected by Lii Pu-wei bribing the city guards.
When, a few years later (251 B.C.), King Chau-siang died
after a reign of fifty-six years, I-j6n's father followed him
as king of Ts'in under the throne name Hiau-w6n-wang,
and I-j6n became crown prince. It appears that it was
not till then that the Lady of Han-tan with her son Chong
made her entry at the court of Ts'in, the people of Chau

THE OONTENDINO STATES 325

having up to this time put difficulties in the way ol thdr
departure from the country. I-jon'e son, Chong, the re-
puted natural offepring of a ample merchant, waa no less
a personage than the future Emperor Shi-huang-ti, "the
Burner of the Books," as we shall see in the sequel.

During the last few years of old King Chau-dang's gov-
ernment, Ts'in had gained further victories over Han aod
Chau (256 B.C.), resulting in great augmentations of its
territory and enormous loss of life of the contending armies.
"Die shadow emperor Nan-wang had made an unsuccessful
attempt to assert himself by trying to form another alli-
ance among tiie eastern states; but the result waa that
Ts'in invaded bis territory and wrenched the western part
of it from him. Soon after Nan-wang died (256 b.c),
leaving the eastern part of his domioion to a relative, who
reigned there under the style of Tung-Ch6u-lriin, " Prince of
Eastern Ch6u," until the year 249 b.c, when Ts'in put an
end to this last remnant of the once ^orious dynasty by
making the regent a prisoner and annexing his territory.
The Emperor Yu's nine sacred tripods had been in the hands
of the Ch6u kings ever once Wu-wang conquered them
from the vicious Emperor Chfiu-sin. A year after Nan-
wang's defeat they were taken poesesuon of by the king
(rf Ts'in.

In 255 B.C. the philosopher Sun K'uang, the opponent of
Hencius, inasmuch as he held that man's nature was bad
from the outset and not good, as the Confucianists main-
tain, was appointed to the hi^ office of governor in the
state of Ch'u, where he exercised great influence under the
patronage of Ch'un-shoD-kun. The death of that states-
man brou^t about his dismissal, upon which he devoted
bimaelf to the education of pupils, chief among them being

326 THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF CHINA

the philosopher Han-Fei-tzi and the great anti-Confucian-
ist Li Ssi* destined ere long to play a conspicuous part.
Ch'u had in 255 B.C. made conquests in Lu (south Shan-
tung); and in 254 B.C., after Ts'in had wrenched a city
from Wei, the king of Han did homage at its court at the
funeral ceremony of the late king, while the other states
confined their courtesies to sending messages through some
official.

The court of Han had ever since the last one hundred and
seventy years refrained from paying this tribute of acknowl-
edgment to the Son of Heaven, and the orthodox Confucian
writers of the Tung'H&n'kang-mu look upon this act of
prudence as a grave sin, the punishment for which followed
in due course ; for while Han was the first state to recog-
nize the leadership of Ts'in, it was also the first to be swal-
lowed up by Ts4n within less than a generation.

§ 67. The Leadership of Ts'in (256-221 b.c.)

After the death of Nan-wang there was actually no Son
of Heaven in China. Tung-Chou-kiin, "the Lord of
Eastern Ch6u/' was a scion of the Ch6u family, it is true,
but he could not even claim the title of wang. With the
loss of the sacred tripods he had forfeited the right to call
himself "Son of Heaven^' ; and, to complete the ceremonial
part of taking up the position as the representative of the
Chinese nation, without actually assuming the title of
emperor, King Chau-siang had in 253 B.C. offered sacri-
fice to Shang-ti, the Supreme Ruler, the one god with
whom, by the tradition dating from the very beginning of
Chinese history, only the emperor is supposed to communi-
cate.

THE CONTENDING STATES 327

The thirty-dx years following Nan-wang'a death are,
therefore, a kind of iDterregnum, such as is found in the
history of the German empire during the years 1254 to
1273. It was the time of Ts'in's final and successful
struggle with its rivals for supreme power. Of this period
I have already recorded some introductory events. King
Chau-Mang's son, I-jon's father, Hiau-won, reigned one
year, or, not counting his term of mourning, only three
days, when I-j6n succeeded him under the style of Chuang-
siang-wang (249-247 B.C.). He and Lii Pu-wei were sworn
friends; uid no sooner was the former exile seated on the
throne than he appointed Lu Pu-wei prime minister with
almost unlimited powers, at the same time raising him to
the rank of marquis. It mi^t look like aD acknowledg-
ment of the alleged historic scandal concerning the paternity
of Chong, the crown prince, that this very son afterward
added to these honors, as a special title, the designation
Chung-fu, "Second Father"; but I am inclined to look
upon this very act as a refutation of what may after all
have been idle gossip, if not a deliberate falsehood invented
by the Confucianists in order to place their greatest enemy,
the destroyer of Confucian literature, under a cloud. If
among the intimates of the court of Ts'in there had been
the merest shadow of a doubt as to his paternity, the young
king would certainly not have been imprudent enougji to
invent for his prime minister just this title; nor would Lii
Pu-wei have had any interest in inducing him to bestow it.

Lii Pu-wei's chief merit in the advancement of the cause
of Ts'in is the clever trick with which he succeeded in regu-
lating the succession to the throne among about twenty
clfumants. But for him internal troubles might have
delayed, if not prevented, final success. One of his first

328 THE ANCaENT fflSTORY OF CHINA

political acts was the definite extinction of the last remnant
of Ch6u independence by the capture of the eastern Ch6u
capital, situated near the present Ho-nan-fu, and formally
deposing its prince. In the same year he sent the general
Mong Au against Han, thus ill requiting the loyalty pre-
viously shown by its prince ; the same leader, who was the
grandfather of the great Ts'in general Mong T'i^n, then was
sent with varying success against Chau and Wei. Thou^
Ts'in was defeated in 247 B.C. by Sin-ling-kun, one of the
"Four Nobles" who did so much to check Ts'in's final
progress, the outcome of the several campaigns undertaken
by Lii Pu-wei was further aggrandizement of Ts'in territory.
Sin-ling-kiin, the valiant leader of the state of Wei, had
placed himself at the head of the combined forces of the
five states Wei, Han, Chau, Ts4, and Ch'u, which woul.d
probably have been a perfect match against Ts'in had he
succeeded in keeping them together.

King Chuang-siang, alias I-j6n, died after a short reign
of about three years, leaving his son Chong, then a boy
of thirteen, to succeed him. Hu An-kuo (died 1138 a.d.),
one of the commentators of the T^ung-ki&n'kang-mu, sug-
gests that the premature death of the two kings Hiau-won
and Chuang-siang may have been caused by Lii Pu-wei ;
and though no positive statement to that effect is on record
in the older historians, it must be admitted that these two
lives were the only obstacles to his becoming practically
supreme ruler in Ts^in. Hiau-won's death gave him a free
hand with his old friend, whom he had raised to the throne,
it is true, but whose memory he subsequently betrayed by
scandalous intimacy with the queen-mother, his first wife,
Chuang-siang's dowager.

APPENDIX

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES

I. MYTHOLOGICAL AND LEGENDARY

P'on-Jbu, the first ruler and originator of mankind.

T'iHh^uang, "Heavenly Emperors." Thirteen brothers^ eadi

reigning 18,000 years.
Ti^uang, ''Terrestrial Emperors." Eleven brothers.
J&n-^uang, " Human Emperors." Nine brothers.
Wu4ung, ''Five Dragons," and other generations of rulers bearing

fanciful names.
Yin4i epoch. Thirteen families known as Ythch'aUf or "Nest

Builders."
Suirj&n, " Fire Producer."

B.C.

Fu-^i, the alleged first emperor 2852-2738*

Shdn-nung, or Ym4i 2737-2705

Huang4if the Yellow Emperor, or Hiin-yUan . 2704-2595

;SAau-Aaii, son of Huang-ti 2594-2511

Chuan-^Uf Huang-ti's grandson Kaurtfang . . 2510-2433

Tt-I^'u,* <^ nepbew of Chuan-ha 2432-2363

7i-cM, son of Tl-k'u 2362-2358

IL THE CONFUCIAN LEGENDS

Yon, Ti-chi's step-brother • 2357-2258

8kun^ a self-made man of the people .... 2258-2206

* Note Uutt thedatm here inaerted are thoee of the Chineee etandiird ehro-
DokigyMMloptedbythefrrAterpartortlieiuUivehietoriAiie. There k, beMei»
the chronology of the Bamboo Books, differing by fully 300 yean at the
beginning. Readers will find them in ProfeMor Areodfto Syndmnuiia^it
tUgenUnUibeUen, from which the data here c o mmunicated have been derived.

' Ti meana emperor and ia praAxed to the namea of aeveral of the eariy
rulers (Tl-ehf, Ti-kl, Ti-aiang, Tl-ch'u, etc.). the name being occ a ato n al ly
quoted without the prefix.

829

First eclipse of the sun mentioned in Chinese his-
tory, possibly one of the several dates calcu-
lated by European savants, viz.

330 APPENDIX

The Hia Dynasty, 2205-1766 b.c. b.c.

YH, Ta-yu, the " Great Yti," or Hiorhdu . . . 2205-2198

Ti-ib'i, or i^'i, Yu's son 2197-2189

7"ai-ib'an^, Ti-k'i's son 2188-2160

Chung-k'anQf T'ai-k'ang's younger brother . . 2159-2147

f 2165, May 7
2155, Oct. 22
2154, Oct. 11
2135, Oct. 21
2127, Oct. 12
L2006, Oct. 24

Ti-8iang, Chung-k'ang's son 2146-2119

HanrchOf the usurper 2119-2079

Shavrk'ang, Ti-siang's son 2079-2058

Ti-ch\ Shau-k'ang's son 2057-2041

n-Ziiiai, Ti-ch'u's son 2040-2015

Ti-mang, Ti-huai's son 2014-1997

Ti-sii, Ti-mang's son 1996-1981

Ti'pu-kiang, Ti-si6's son 1980-1922

Ti-kiungj Ti-pu-kiang's younger brother . . . 1921-1901

Ti-kin, Ti-kiung's son 1900-1880

Ti'k^ung-kia, Ti-pu-kiang's son 1879-1849

Ti-kau, Ti-k'ung-kia's son 1848-1838

Ti-Zo, Ti-kau's son 1837-1819

KU, also Kui, Ti-kui, and KU-kuiy Ti-fa's son . . 1818-1766

III. THE SHANG, OR YIN, DYNASTY, 1766-1122 b.c.

Ch'ong-Vang, Tang, or Shang-Vang .... 1766-1754

Had reigned as prince of Shang since 1783

Tai-kiay Ch'ong-t'ang's grandson .... 1753-1721

TTu-^in^f, T'ai-kia's son 1720-1692

Tai'kong, Wu-ting's younger brother . . . 1691-1667

Siau-kiGj T'ai-kong's son 1666-1650

Yung-kiy Siau-kia's younger brother .... 1649-1638

T^ai-mdUj or Chung-tsungt another brother of Siau-kia's 1637-1563

C/iungh^in^, T'ai-m6u's son 1562-1550

Wai'joTif Chung-ting's younger brother . . . 1549-1535

H94'<m-Jaa, another brother of ChuDg*

Tiu-t, son of Ho-t'an-kia

Tni-nn, Tsu-i'a son

Wu-kia, younger brother of Tni-i

Tau-ling, Tsu-ein's son

Nan-kOng, Wu-kia's son

Yang-kia, Tsu-tiag'a bod

P'an^Sng, Yang-kia's younger brother

Svau-nn, P'sn-kong's younger brother

8iau-x, Siau-ein's younger brother

Wu-tinff, or Kau4»ung, Siau-i's son

Ttu-kSng, Wu-ting's eon

Ttu-kia, Tsu-kong's younger brother

Ltn-mn, Tsu-kia's son .

K6nQ4ing, Lin-dn's younger brother

ffw-t, Kong-ting's son .

T'ai-itnjT, Wu-i's son

ri-i, T'ai-ting's son . . .

Ch6ti-nn, Sh6u, or 5Ai$u-ttR, ll-i's son

l$34-152(t

1506-1401
1490-1466
1465-1434
1433-1409
1408-1402
1401-1374
1373-1363
1352-1326
1324-1266
1265-1269
1258-1226
1225-1220
12I»-1199
I198-11S6
1194-1192
1191-1155
1164-1122

IV. THE DUKES OF CHOU BEFORE WU-WANG
T'an-fu, or Ku-kunn ("The Old Duke") at his new

reaiclence aa Duke of ChAu 1327-1231

Ki-li, T'an-fu's mn 1230-1185

WOn-wmg, Ki-li's mm, also called Ck'ang and Si-po, or

"Chief of the West" 1184-1136

W**-viang, so called as first emperor of the Ch6u dynasty

(personal name fo) 1134-1123

V. THE IMPERIAL CH6u DYNASTY, 1122-249 b.c.

IFu-tninj;, first king of ChAu 1122-1116

CA'<)nj^u<antr, Wu-wang's son 1115-1079

X'anjr-tMing, CTi'dng^wang'seon 1078-1053

Chau-wang, K'ang-wang's son ..... 1052-1002

J/u-worV, Chau-wang's son 1001-947

Kvnu-voHg, Hu-wang's son Olft-fOS

332

APPENDIX

/ *'Wangf Kung-wang's son

Htau-wanQf Kung-wang's younger brother

/ ^-wangf I *-wang's son .

LirwanQf son of I '-wang . - .

The Kung-ho period of interregnum

Suan-wang, Li-wang's son

Yu-wangf Slian-wang's son

PHng-wanQf Yu-wang's son

Huan-wang^ P'ing-wang's grandson

Chuang-wang, Huan-wang's son

Hi-Wang^ Chuang-wang's son .

Hui-wangf Hi-wang's son

Siang-wanQf Hui-wang's son .

KHng-wanQy Siang-wang's son .

K*uang-wangj K'ing-vvang's son

Ting-wang, K'uang-wang's younger brother

Ki&n-wangy Ting-wang's son .

Ling-Wang^ Ki^n-wang's son .

King ^-wang^ Ling-wang's son .

King ^-wang^ son of the former

Ytian-wangf son of King-wang

Chon-ting-wangj Yiian-wang's son

K'au-wang, a younger son of Chon-ting-wang's

Wei-li^-wangf K'au-wang's son

An-wang, Wei-li6-vvang's son .

Lii'Wangj An-wang's son

Hien-wangy Li^wang's younger brother .

Shdn-ising-wangy Hi6n-wang'8 son

Nan-wangj Shon-tsing-wang's son

Tung-chdnrkiin, the ''Prince of Eastern Ch6u"

VI. PRINCES OF TS'IN

The state of Ts^in (to be distinguished from Tsin) had grown out
of a small territory near the present city of Si-an-fu, given by the
emperor Hiau-wang to a member of the Ts'in family by name of
Fei-tzi as keeper of his herds of horses. From small beginnings
Ts'in gradually grew to become the most powerful among the

B.C.

934-910

909-895

894-879

878-842

841-828

827-782

781-771

77Q-?20

719-697

696-682

681-677

676-652

651-619

618-613

612-607

606-586

585-572

571-545

544-520

519-476

475-469

468-441

440-426

425-402

401-376

375-369

368-321

320-315

314-256

255-249

feudal states during the (^Au dynasty, occupying the greater part

of the present 8hen-ai province and indefinite tracts of tanitoiy
to the west of it.

B.C.

Pa-U (lord of Ts'in) about S97-8S8

Ta'tn-Atfu (i.e. marquis of Tsln) 857-848

Kung-po 847-845

Tt'itKhttng (since 827 minister at the imperial court) . 844-822

Duke CAuofHT 821-778

" 8vmg 777-766

" Win 765-716

" Wu,ormng 715-704

" CVit, or CA'u-M 705-698

" Wu 697-678

" Ti 677-676

" Saon 675-664

" Ch'Ong 663-660

" Wu, or Jen-hau . 659-621

" K'ang,otYing 620-609

" Rung 608-604

" Huan 603-577

" King 576-537

" Ai 536-501

'•Hut 600-492

" Taa 491-477

" Kuag, or lA-kung 476-i43

" Taav 442-429

" Huai 428-125

" Ling 424-415

" KiM 414-400

"Bui 399-387

" Hiin 384-362

" Hiau 361-338

King/fui-wtfn 337-311

•• Wu 310-307

" Chau-nang 306-201

334 APPENDIX

B.a

Elng ^TunMoAi 250

" Ckuang-^iang, Ck% or I-i&n .... 249-247

, '' Ch&ng (=r«'m Sh!irhwmg4Ci, as king of Tain 246-221

80 emperor of CSuna 220-210

Vn. PRINCES OF Tsm

Tlie state of Tmn (to be distiiiguidied from Tsln) had grown out
of a fief given to a younger bod, of Wu-wang, the founder of the
C3i6u dynasty, byname of YQ, and situated in the southern part of
the present Shan-ei province, which filled the greater part of its
later extent. It was conterminous with Tsln in the west and the
Huns in the north. In 745 b.c. Marquis Chau had i^pointed his
uncle lord of K'd-wu in South Shan-si, whose descendants usurped
the throne and were confinned as dukes of Tein in 678 bx.

Fa, or ShuryU (invested with the territory of T'ang) . 1107

Marquis SiS, Yil's son
" Wu
" Ch'dng
" Li

" Tsing 858-841

" Li, or Hi 840-823

" Hi^ 822-812

" Mu 811-785

Shang^hu, usurper 784-781

Marquis TTiJn 780-746

" Chau 745-739

" Hiau 738-724

" Au 723-718

"At 717-710

" Sianrttl 709-705

" Min ... 704-679

Usurpers of the house of K*iirvm (678-376 B.C.)

DukeTTu 678-677

" Hiin 676-651

" Hui 650-638

APPENDIX 335

B.C.

Duke Hua» . 637

" W&n, or Ch'ung4r 636-628

" Siang . 627-621

" Ling 620-607

" Ch'dng 606-600

" King 609-581

" Lt 680-573

'* Tau 572-558

" P'ing 557-532

" Chau 531-526

" K'ing 525-512

" Ting 511-474

" Ch'u 473-457

'* At 466-439

'' Yu 438-420

'* LU 419-393

" Hiau 392-378

" Tsing 377-376

376 B.C. Duke Tsing was (lo{>osed, and his territory divided by

the princes of Wei, Han, and Chau,

VIII. PRINCES OF WEI

Marquis W&n (confirmed 403 B.C.) 425-387

*' Wu 386-371

King^ui 370^335

Siang 334^19

Ai 318-296

Chau 295-277

An-ki 276-243

King-min 242-228

Kia 227-225

IFd was annexed by Ts'in in 225 b.c.

DC. PRINCES OF HAN

Marquis King (confirmed 403) 408-400

'' LU 399-387

336 APPENDIX

B.C.

Marquis TTdn 38&-377

"At 376-371

" / 370-359

" Chau 35a-333

EmgSHan-hui 332-312

" Siang 311-296

" Hi(Kiu) 295^273

" Huan-hui 272-239

"An 238-230

Han was annexed by Ta'in in 230 B.C.

X. PRINCES OF CHAU

Marquis LU (confirmed 403) 408-400

DukeWt* 399-387

Marquis King 386-375

Ch'ong 374-350

" 5u 349-326

King Wu-ling 325-299

" Hui-won 298-266

'' Hiau-cWimg 265-245

" Tau-siang 244-236

" TsHen (Yu-mu) 235-228

Chau was partly annexed by TsHn in 228 B.C., the annexation
being completed in 222 B.C.

XI. PRINCES OF CH'U

Ch\ originally the country of the southern barbarians (nan-
man) y occupied the entire south of the federal states, especially the
country on both banks of the Yang-tzi in its middle course. Its
first, probably legendary, prince was supposed to have been a
great-grandson of Yv^hiungy the philosopher and teacher of Won-
wang. This was Hiung /, supposed to have been invested as prince
of Ch'u by Ch'ong-wang. The princes of Ch'u henceforth have
the surname Hiung.

Viscount Hiung I about 1100

"At 1078-1053

B.C.

YiBCOuat Hiung T'an 1052-1002

" Sk9ng 1001-fl47

" Ymg 946-

" K'fl, temporarily "King" about . . 887
" Mu-k'ang (died prematurely)

" Chl-hung 867-866

"Yen 865-848

" Yung 847-838

'• Ym 837-828

" Skuang 827-822

••San 821-«00

" ^u 799-791

" I,oTjo-aii 790-764

" Siau-au 763-758

" Fdn-fMU 757-741

Kingffu 740-690

" Wan 689-677

Ttt-OM 676-672

magCh'Ong 671-626

" Mu 625-614

" Chiiang 613-591

" Rung 690-500

" K'ang 56»-M5

Kuhou H4-641

King Ling 540-529

" P'ing 628-516

" Chau 615-489

" Hwi 488-432

" Kiin 431-408

" ShOng 407-402

•• Tau 401-381

" Su 380-370

" Soon 369-340

" Wa 33(^-320

" Hvai 328-299

" K'xng-aiang . . 298-263

" K'a^ii 282-238

338 APPENDIX

BX.

EingFii 237-2

"At 228

" Fvrch'u 227-221

Ch*u was annezad by Win in 223 B«a

XIL PRINCES OF TEN

Ten was the northenunoflt among the eastern states and Ml

together with the greater part of modem C3i!-li. One duke of

Shau by name of Shi is mentioned as the first prince of Ten; his
ninUi desoendanty ICarquis Htd, heads the line <rf those wiiose names
and periods of goveroment have become known.

Marquis Hui BMrW

"Hi 825-791

" KHng 790-767

Duke At 766-765

Marquis CA^ 764-729

** Mu 728-711

" Suan 710-698

" Huan 697-691

Djjike Chuang 690-658

Siang 657-618

Huan 617-602

SHan 601-587

Chau 586-n574

Wu 673-555

W6n 654-649

/ 548-545

Hui 544-536

Tau 535-529

Kung 52&n524

P'ing 523-505

Klin 504r^93

Hiin 492-^465

Hiau 464-450

Ch'(hig 449-434

Min 433-403

APPENDIX 339

B.C.

Duke Hi 402-^73

" Huan 372-362

" W&n 361-333

King/ 332-321

" R'uai 320-314

" Chau 311-279

** Hut 278-272

" Wvr€h'&ng 271-258

" Hiau 257-256

"Hi 255-222

Yen was conquered by TaHn in 222 B.C.

XIII. PRINCES OF TSl

The state of Ts'i occupied the southeastern shore of the Yellow
River and fell together with the northeast of the present Shan-
tung province. The legitimate line of its princes is headed by
T*airkung Shang^ said to have been invested with it by Wu-wang.
In the fourth century a line of usurpers set m, who adopted the family
name T'iin, the name of the legitimate line superseded by them,
being La.

a. Princss or thb Lu Family

DukeTtn^ 1077-1052

" / 1051-1001

*' Kui 1000-035

*' At 034-894

" Hu 893-860

" Hihi 859-851

*' Wu 850-825

"Li 824-816

" W&n 815-804

" Ch'&ng 803-795

" Chuang 794-731

** Hi 730-698

" Siang 697-680

" Huan 685-643

340 APPENDIX

Duke Hiau 642-633

'' fChau 632-613

"I 612-609

*' Hui 608-509

'' KHng 598-582

'' Ling 581-554

'' Chuang 553-^48

'' King 547-489

'* Taa 488-485

'* Klin 484-481

" P'ing 480-456

'' auan 455-405

" K'ang 404r379

6. Princes op the T'risN Familt

THin-ho (confirmed as duke of Ts'i, 386 B.C.) . . 410-385

DukeHuan 384-379

KingfTei 378-343

" SUan 342-324

" Min 323-284

" Siang 283-265

" KiSn 264-221

T$'i was annexed by TaHn in 221 B.C.

XIV. PRINCES OF LU

The state of Lu occupied the southern part of the present Shan-
timg province on the south of T8*i. The chronology of the princes
of Lu has been made the basis by Confucius of his historical work,
the Ch'un-ts'iu, for which reason it claims special attention during
the period concerned. The first prince of the state was Chdurkung,
the brother of Wu-wang. The chronology down to Duke Ch6n is
doubtful.

Duke Chdu (Ch&u-kung) 1122-1109

" P<hkHn 1108-1063

" K'au 1062-1059

" Yang 1058-1053

■aYu 1052-1039

WA 1038- 989

hi 988-952

Hitn 951-.. .

CAfti 865-826

Wu 825-816

/ 815-807

Po-ya (iMurper) 806-796

Htou 795-769

Uui 768-723

Yin 722-712

Hvm 711-694

Chvang 693-662

Min 661-660

Hi 659-627

TTAi 626-609

Sam 608-591

Ch'6n9 690-573

Siang bT2-M2

Chau 641-410

Ting 609-495

Ai 494-468

Tau 467-431

" Yuan 430-410

" Mu 409-377

" A'wnjT 376-355

" K'avg 354-346

" King 345-315

'■ P'ing 314-296

" Win 295-273

" K'ing 272-249

Im was annexed by Ch'u in 240 B.C.

XV. pniXCES OF 8UN0

Sung WA8 one of the central states, with ita capital near the present

Kui-td-fu in Ho-nan. Its line of prinnw is headed by Wd-tH, «

prince of the Sbang dynasty and an opponent of the tyrant Sh6u-nn.

WA^aKH iiia-ion

W*ehiiig 107B-10M

Duke X't of Song lOSa-lOOl

" Ting 1000-«86

" Min 9S5-9O0

" YoKg

" lA

'• Bi

"Hut

" Ai 800

" Tai 7W-76S

" Wv 766-748

" soon 747-7»

" Afu 728-720

" 8hang 719-710

" Chuang

" Min

" Huan 681-651

" Siang 650-637

" Ch'Ong 636-620

" Chau 619-611

" WSn 610-689

" Kvng 588-576

" P'ing 575-532

" Y^an 531-517

" King 516-451

" Chau 450-404

" Tau . . . .' 403-396

" Hiu 395-375

"Pi 374r^70

" T'i-ch'Ung 369-329

King Yen (king since 318) 328-286

Sung was annexed by Ta'i in 286 b.c.

XVI. PRINCES OF CH'ON

Ch'dn ma a smalt central state near the present E'at-f6ng^u, ad-

joiniog the state of Sung in the south. Its line of princes is headed

by a suppooed deaccndant trom the emperor Shun raised to rank
by Wu-wang as Duke Hu. Ilia succcsflon were named SMn,
Siaag, Hiau, and Shdn, who again waa followed by

B.C.

Duke Yu SS4-S32

Hi 831-796

Wu 78S-781

/ 780-778

P'ing 777-755

Wdn 754-745

Uuan 744-707

lA 706-700

Chwmg 690-093

Suan 602-648

Mu 647-633

Rung 631-614

Lint 613-590

Ch'ifng

Hui

Huai 505-003

Min 501-478

Ck'dn waa annexed by Ch'u in 478 B.C.

XVII. PRINCES OF TS'AU

Tt'au waa a snail atate wrdp>d in hctwrcn Sun|[ and Lu in the
•outheant of the preacnt .Shan-tunK {irovinrc. Ita line of prineea
IB headed by Ch6n-to, a bmthrr of Wu-wan);. Ilia ■urcraaora were
T'ai-po, Ckunf-kOn, and the eounta Kunf/ and lliati, followed by

Count/ 854-835

•' Tai 825-796

" //«it 795-700

Duke ,Wu 759-757

" //WW 75«-7flS

344

Duk.

Prin
_ _ Ts-a

APPENDIX

. 670-662

P'ing

. 537-52J

Sianij

Yin

Tsing

PC Po-yang

u was ADDexcd by Sung in 487 B.C.

. 505-502
. 501-487

XVIII. PRINCES OF CHONG

Chdng was a centrally situated state adjoining the imperial terri-
tory of Ch6u on the east, in the preaent Ho-nan province. It was
created in 806 b.c. by Siian-wang as a fief for hia younger brother
Yu, who thereby became

Duke Hwm 806-771

" Wu 770-744

" Chiang 743-701

■ " Za (usurper) 700-697

" Chau 696-695

Tel-wd 694

r«-y»nff 693-680

Duke Li 679-673

WBn 672-628

jtfu 627-606

Ling 605

Siang 604-587

Tau 586-586

Ch'Ung 584r-571

Duke Hi 57»-Me

Kiin 665-«30

Tittg 629-514

Hiin 813-501

Skdng S00-4M

At 463-456

Rung 455-424

yu 423-...

K'ana 396-375

Chdng WH uincxcd by Han in 375 b.c.

XDC. PRINCES OF TS'AI
Ts'tti wu & small state adjoining Chonx and Sung on the south
and Ch'on on the west. Its first prince, Tu, was a younger brother
of Wu-wang.

Ta'dt-tAu Tm about 1 122, then banished

Ti'aiChunff-hM 1107-1054

Tt'ai~po 1053-94S

Marquis Kung 947-m)4

Hi. OT Li 893-845

Wu 846-ATS

/ 837-810

Hi 809-762

Rung 761-760

Tai 759-750

Suan 749-715

Huan 714-695

Ai 694-075

Mu 674-646

Chuanfl 646-4tl2

W6n 611-592

King 591-543

Ling 542-531

P'ing 529-522

ran Ul-519

346 APPENDIX

9JC.

Marquis C%ay BlS-m

*' Ch'&ng 4S»A72

" Sh&ng 471-457

'' Yikm 45^-451

" Trt 4fiQ-4l7

T9*ai was annftind by CVu in 447 b.o.

XX. PRINCES OF WM

The small state of ITd on the banks of the TeDow Ri'w about
the present Wd-hui-fu in Ho^ian should not be confounded with
the bigg^ Wei state farther west, ccnnprising lower Shan-si and part
of Ho-nan and being one of the three states into which Tsin was
divided since 376 b.c. Its first prince was a jrounger brother of
Wu-wangy Fongy prince of K'ang.

K*ang (eleventh century)

Count Jt'ang 1078-1053

" K'au,oTHiau 1052-1017

"551 1016- 935

** TsiS 934r^910

" 'Tsing 909-895

" Chon 894-867

Marquis i5:'in^ 866-855

''Hi 854-«13

DukelFu 812-758

" Chuang 757-735

" Huan 734-719

" SHan 718-700

"Hut f699-696

1688-^9

X'i^rwndu (usurper) 696-688

Duke/ 668-661

" Tai 660

" W(hi 659-635

" Ch*(hig 634-600

" Mu 599-689

" Ting 688-677

APPENDIX 347

B.C.

DukeHiin |576-659

1546-544

" Shang (intennediate) 558-547

" Siang 549-535

" iMg 534-403

" Ch'u 1492-^1

1476-469
" Chiang (intennediate) 4SQ-478

Lord #C'i (intennediate) 477

Duke Tau 468-451

" King 450-432

" Chau 431-426

" Hvai 425-415

" Sk&n 414-373

" SlUhig 372-362

Marquis CV^ 361-333

F'ing 332-325

Lord 54 324-283

*' Hwd 282-253

'' Yikm 252-230

*' Kio 229-209

This state of Wt% was the only one that actually sunrived to the

foundation of Tsln-shi-huang-ti's ascension to the throne of the

empire. Lord Kio had been allowed his title, but was reduced to

the position of a private citisen in 209 b.c.

XXI. PRINCES OF WU

The legendary origin of the state of Wu, which occupied the ter-
ritories on and near the shores of the Yang-td at its mouth, is
referred to Tai-po, the eldest son of Tan-fu, Duke of Ch6u, and
therefore Won-wang's uncle, who, being excluded from his legitimate
right of succession to the ducal throne, became an exile in this
distant region and the alleged ancestor of its line of princes. There
are names mentioned down to the time when Wu became better
known in Chinese history, but the entire genealogy with its chro-
nofegy is uncertain till 585 b.c.

348

Prince

King
IPuw

Sk6u-m6ng 5S5-561

Chu-lan 560-548

Ya-ckai 547-544

/-mrt 543-527

Liaa 526-515

Ho-lu 514-496

Fu-ch'ai 495-473

s annexed by YHi in 473 B.C.

XXII. KINGS OF YiJ^

The kingdom of Y'&6, during the Ch6u period, occupied about
the present province of Ch'6-kiang. Although YU6 ia mentioned
as a state aa early as 601 b.c. in the Tso^kuan (Legge, Ch'un-ts'iu,
p. 302), its history as known to us begins with its king K6ii-tnfn
fully a century later.

Kingi£cfiWn^ 496-465

" Lit-ying 464r-459

" Pu^hdu 458-449

" Cliu-k6u 448-412

" / and luB Bucceaaore 411-334

Ym was umoxed by Ch'u in 334 SM,

\ ^^

INDEX

AfreemenU, itata : Me Contbactb.

Agriculture: introduction of^ as-
cribed to Shon-nung, 10; im-
proved by Huang-ti, 13 ; during
Ch6u dyiuMty according to
the Ch&u4i, 110; in charge of
Mandarin of Earth, 113; Huns
have no regular, 168; HQ
Hing's theory regarding, re-
futed by Menciufl, 290 ; taxation
of, 296-298; m« aUo Irriqa-
noN or Soil; LAKOHOLOBaa;
Land Tbnvke.

Altrui«m : 9ee Mo Ti.

Amaaone, corps of: under Ho-lu,
King of Wu, 234.

Ambaaaadom : from the YG^h'ang
tribes, 127 ; SM aUo Diplomats.

Amiot, Father : firat to point out
identity of eclipse referred to
in Shi-kifig, 174.

Anceitors : merits of, become a bene-
fit to descendants, 82; cause
dearendants to be rewarded aa
fief -holders, 99 ; Ch6u-kung prays
to, and not to Ood, for the re-
covery of Wu-wang, 102~103;
have charge in Heaven of de-
acendanta on earth, 103; Ch6u-
ktmg's prayer to, reveals his
loyalty, 105 : see aUo Sacrificb
TO Ancestors; Spirits or
THB Departed.

Antiquity, monuments of: none
comparable to those of Egypt,
77.

An-wang, the Emperor: 273-274,
332.

Arckueologists, Chinese : trustworthi-
ness of, fiO, 71-73, 74.

Archives, sUte : 125.

AreiMit, C. : his chronologtcal tables.

7, note 2, 52, note 2, 174, note 1,
HA ; on the mother of Mencius,
283, note 1, 329, note 1.

Army : beginnings under Huang-ti,
22; no standing, at beginning
of Ch6u dynasty, 1 19 ; with all
accoutrements marched 30 U
(10 miles, or less) a day, 169,
165 ; characteristics of, compiled
from the Shl-king, 158-166;
infantry composed of husband-
men, 163; regimental divisions
and "chariots," 163-164; train-
ing before the battle, 165 ; cav-
alry introduced by King Wu-
ling of Chau, 272-273 ; see oiao
Chariots ; Horses ; War ;
Weapons.

Arrow-heads : aae Weapons.

Art : works of, destroyed and con-
cealed under 8hl-huang-ti, re-
discovered in perioda of renaia-
aance ; early collectors of, 71 ;
during Shang dynasty chiefly
symbolic, 84 ; Confucian age
responsible for forgeries in, 90;
autochthonous, during Bhang
dynasty, 91 ; objects of, and
handicraft described in Ck6%t4i,
120; •M aUo Arcrjboukhsts ;
Rronee Drxtms ; lisoNtEs ;
Draoon and Phenix ; Hiero-
OLTPHirs ; Jade ; Nine Tripods,
the; Pa-rua; Pottery; T'au-
T*ir.; Thunder Pattern ; Wrhw
iNo, ART or.

Artisans: rank fifth in population,
110.

Astrologers, duties of: 118.

Antronomers, duties of: 118.

Astronomv : practised by Huang-H,
13, 21-22; progress in.

849

350

INDEX

Ghuaii-liil, 25; Hi and Ho,
MtronomMi under Tau, 80;
under CShung-k'ang Bl and Ho
fail to predict eelipee otmm, 80-
40 ; eelipee reoordad in tha 8h»'
king, 40-41, 174; "a oonjuno-
Uon of five plaaata/' M; "two
auna H^peared together, ** 66;
dutiee of oflioera Sk ehargb of,
118-110; uee of gnomon, 110;
eolipea of 770 B.O., foreboding
diaaater, oonftrmad l^ Weitorn
eavante, 172-176; adipae of
004 B.C., 201.

AttUa, King of tha Huna: hia an-
oeetora among the aoyereigna
of the ffiung-nu nation, 186-
186, 100.

Autunm, Mandarin of {t&Hu kwm) ;
118, 128-126.

AvalokitAi'vara: 1^.

Bactiia: 148.

Badge of jade (ibut) : 103.

Baggage, army: watched by the
feeble during battle, 164.

Baghatur ("hero"), probable Turk-
ish form of the name Mau-tun :
185.

Bak tribes : T. de Lacouperie's, 15.

Bamboo Books, the : chief authority
on Yii's successors, 41 ; and on
the Shang dynasty, 50; dis-
covery of, 50; their chronology
differs from that of other
sources, 51, 175-176, 329, note
1 ; their account of the Shang dy-
nasty dry as compared to the
8hurking*8 model emperor chap-
ters, 52; specimen from, on
Ch6u-sin, 53-55 ; Chavannes,
Legge, and Biot on, 51, note 1 ;
throw light on Shang culture,
76; on Mu-wang and 8i-wang-
mu, 144-145, 148; mention
visit of Si-wang-mu to Em-
peror Shun, 150-151; on the
Kimg-ho period, 157.

Bamboo roots : as modem instru-
ments of divination, 83.

Bamboo tablets: see WRiriNa, abt

OF.

Battlei, Ln port aafe ! Wo-wg d»>
ieali CSidMfaL [at llii^ 65;

anniaa moatly in North ShsMi
and Ordoa imilUMy, 128; of
TMii-m6u, 780
ageinat the Huna
wane, 827 B.O., I6S-161;
aona and moda of
164-166; moda of 4ghtii«
among the Hua«y 108^ 180; fae-
ekmm deaoribea btttOa of n4
B.O., 187-188; ba t wa w Tal atnd
Ca&'u, 208-aOO; balvMa tWn
and Cbhi at CSi^Bat-pli, 816 ; ba*
twaen Bang and Cai% 810; Wn
and ChOog baatiB bgr Oh*^ 888;
batwaen Wtt and TU, 889, 881^
861; ftva eoofedente ateitm
baatiB l^ IWln at Uka Hnift4ai
Pa«, 818; Fto Kl of Tiln
eruehes Han and Wet at I-kfl4,
818; Po K1 takee the oity of
Hang-tang, 821; Teln de-
feated at siege of Han^tan,
322; Ts'in's victoriea in 256
and 249 B.C., 325; Tsln de-
feated in 247 B.C., ita final
engagements againat federal
states, 328.

Beacon fires: lighted aa "gna^la q{
aUrm, 172, 176-177.

Beasts: not hostile to man in pri-
meval period, 4.

Biblical names at the head of King
Attila's genealogical table : 186,
190-191.

Biot, £klouard : on Yfi^i eng^eering
exploits, 34, 36-^38; hia trans-
lation of Bamboo Booka, 61,
note 1 ; of the ChdvM, 108 ; oon^
aiders immutability of govern-
ment based on that of individual
life, 109 ; extracta from hia notea
on the customs of the ancient
Chinese collected from the ShU"
king, 162-166.

Boards, the Six (liurpu), of modem

times: correspond to six oate-

. gories of the Ch&urli, 111;

basis of claaBJfication of official

work, 118.

INDEX

351

BoiftiM, the : like the Hlung-nu, eon-
▼erted ekiiUa into drinikiiig vee-
■els, 271-272.

Boots : when introduced, 272.

Botany : research in, ascribed
Shdn-nunc, 10-11.

Bows and arrows : 9m Wkafons.

Brstsehneider, £. : quoting

on Shdn-nung^i botany, 11.

Brigands: Mandarin of Autumn in
eharge of, 123.

Bronse age, the, in diina : 236.

"Bronse drum nations" : 105 ; com-
prise elements of different afl&ni-
tiss, IM.

Bronse drums: manufacture of, at
Oanton, a family secret, 117;
of the Man barbarians, 195-lM ;
smhiems found among the or-
naments of, IM.

Broiises : copper mine discovered by
Huang-ti supposed to have fur-
nished oldest, 23, 00, 236; of
the Shang and Ch6u dynssties
destroyed, buried, and immured,
under 8hl-huang-ti and later on
rediscovered; difficulty of fix-
ing age of, 71, 77; personal
names in legends of Shang, 72;
private coUeetions of, 73; sse-
rificial, and bells the only wit-
ne siBS of high antiquity, 77;
have become models in ceramic
and jade industries, 84, 01;
alloys of, according to the Ckdu-
K, 126 ; the tripod of 812 a.c,
161 ; swords still in use about
600 a.c., 236; tm aUo BaoNia
DauMs ; Ninb TairoDa, thb.

Boeklera: 164.

Bumouf, £.: on SMrang-mu, 161,
note 2.

BusheU, 8. W.: on "The Stone
Drums of the Ch6ii Dynasty,"
171.

sv^ipossd to have been
introduced by Fu-hi, 0, 14;
developed by Huang-ti, 21, 22;
by Qiuan-hQ, 26 ; by Wu-wang,
9M aim CrcucAi. CsAa-

Carriages, Osrs, and Garts: 9m
CHAmiora.

Csssini, D. : on the Sku-4dng eclipse,
41.

Oattigara: the terminus of western
navigation, 127.

Oattle-breeding : see Flocks.

"Censer," the term: wrongly ap-
plied to bronses of the Shang
and Ch6u dynasties, 84.

Censors, public (yti-Mf) : officers
performing duties similar to
those of, 116.

Censorship, public : evil effects of
too much, 156.

Census of population: 110.

Ceremonial: love of, predominates
long before Confucius, 83-84,
230, 241 ; holds together Ch6u
dynssty, 100; in emperor^
personal life, 115; in charge of
Mandarin of Spring, 118; Con-
fucius exaggerates funeral, 230,
244; the people of Chung-tu
educated by strict, 244-246;
Confucius' personal life rvgu-
lated by, 256-267; Chuang-tsi
despises, 304.

Ceremonies, Board of: 113, 117-110.

Chalfant, F. H. : on eariy Chinese
writing, 74, note 1.

Chalmers, John : on the 8kt/hkin§
eclipse, 41 ; his year dates a.c.
diff«r from those of astronomers,
174.

Ckan'-ktto: mit ComrsirDtKO SrATia,

Chtmrkuo-U'6: 262,264.

Chang H6ng, the astronomer: 120,
135.

Chang I, statesnum: pupil of Kui-
ku-til, 285, 286, 308 ; his career.
311-314; K*0 YOan warns king
of Ch*u sgsinst, 316-316; dies
as minister in Wcf, 316.

Chang K'Mn, the general: 147, 148.

Chang YQ-si: on Shdo-oungli boi-
any, 11.

Ch'ang-an : old capital, ssat of col-
lectors of ancient bronses, 73.

Ch'ang. Duke of Ch6u; set Wbif-

WAKO.

OtlHg^u (Hn-Dw)! faukl pUee

of Shdn-nnoK, 11.
CbMW : aodal, befora F»U, 9, 14.
ChuiotMn: 168.
ChMioU lek'« or M): di*wn by

for, oo(

1Z7-180; nwo lo war a^MMmt
tba Hum, Ue-IM), US, 373;

1 In populatiam
aUtlattea, 303; had pwts of

a04.

Qiku: city in the premnt South
Shan-gi, 269.

Ch»u, Duke of Lu: 230, 243-244,
341.

C3wu, Hsrquis of Tain : appoints
hia uncle lord ot K'Q-wu, 334.

Ch«iU Sbo, commandeT in Chau ; 319.

Chau Sho, son of Chau Tun : 269.

Chsu-aang, king of Tsin: 317-325,
333 ; under the regency of bis
moUier with Wei Jan aa chan-
cellor, 317-319; sole regent with
Fan Teii as cbojicellor, 320-325;
praoticaily "Son of Heaven,"
offers sacrifice to Shang-ti, 326.

Chau Siang-tn : son of, and nuuriee
Tartar woman, 260; usee akuU
of enemy tor drinldng vessel,
270.

Chau, the Btat« of ; beginnings, 263 ;
confirmed aa a feudal state, 264 ;
one of the "Seven Heroes "
■Ut«B, 286; thoroughfare tor
northern tribes, 267 ; Hb priocce
tavor Tartar customs, 269-273,
816; common deecent with
princes of Ts^, grow in power
by gifts of territory, 269; its
chief Cban 8iang-tii, son of, and

married to, Tartar woman, 269;
and changes enemy's skull into
a drinking vessel, 270-272; its
history full of supernatural
accounts, 270; joins confed-
eration against Ta 'in, 310 ; head-
quarters of Su Ts'in, represent-
ing the "Sii Statee," 311, 313;
attacked by Ts^ and Wei, 313;
kingdom since 329 B.C., 316 ; de-
feated by, and repulses Ts'in,
319; defeated by Ts'in at Shang-
tang, 321 ; P'ing-yiian-kuu,
a prince of, 321 ; Han-tan,
capital of, beueged by Tain,
322; Prince I-jon of Ts'in at
the court of, 323-326 ; defeated
by Ts'in, 325; annexed by
Ts'in, 328, 336; princes of, 336.

ChMi Tsui, companion of Duke Won
Mkd prinu ministar of lUn:
220,269.

Oiau Tun, minioter in Tinu: 220,
260.

CliaU'wang, the Emperor : 148, 189,
331.

Chau Wu, son of Chau Sho ; subject
of a hiatorical drama, 269.

Ch'au, the Emperor King*-WBng'a
brother: flees to Cb^i, 233.

Ch'au^t-tt'itn-ttai; 132.

Chavannee, £douard: on trust-
worthinen of Chinese history
previous to Ch6u-sin, S5-66;
on dragons and ph«mixM, SS;
on 8i-wang-mu, 161; on the
"Stone Drums of the Ch6Q
Dynasty," 171 ; on Ts^ and
Ch'u as non-Qiineae states, 267-
268; on the supernatural ele-
ment in history of Chau state,
270; on skulls changed into
drinking vessds, 271 ; ms oin
8hi-ki and Wc-cbi-bhaji-toubs.

Chi: see Robber Chi**.

Chi, the Emperor : get Ti-ohi.

Chl-nan: term for the magntttjo
needle, used metapborically, 129,
135.

Chi Po, official of Tsin ; opposes the
iSan-7'ttn, 270.

.Ch'i-yu: rebel under Hiiirn tl, 20.

CbOn-to, brother of Wu-wuig : in-
v(at«d with Ti'ftu, 343.

Ch'An, the city of: ewplUl of the
Emperor Fu-hi, 9,

Ch^, the itate of: OD nde of Ch'u
in mr with Taia, 31B ; deaeend-
uita of ita bouae become lover-
eiCna of Ti*), 273; prince* of,
843-343.

Ch-jtii CbuDC, Hcetie: 28^200.

Oiftas, uit*-nuptial eon of Prince
I->6d of Tain : 324-336 ; croWD-
prince md KiD| of Ti'in, 327-
328, 334 ; ■« <■:» Shi-Huaho^.

CbOnt. the lUt* of: attacked by
Juuf tribea, 187; travelen
from Ti"! (o Ch'u paned, 314;
the Emperor Sianc-waiis a
furtive in, 319, 319; on Uic
aide of Ch'u in war with Tain,
310: under the iupremacy of
Ch'u, 323; of Tain, 237; lU
milliliter Td-ch'ao, 232; con-
quered by Han, 274, 34& ; aQan-
wani inveila hia brother Yu
with, 344; princea of , 344-34S.

Ch'tas-ki (Kan-au) : birthplace of
the EmjicTor Fu-hi, 8.

Ch'6ns-p'u ; city near the pmvnt
Ta'au-cbAu In Shan- tunc 310,
219.

Ch'Anc-t'anc the Emperor: de-
•eeodant of Tt-k'u, 36; orer-
throwa the Ilia dynaaty under
Kit, 44, 47; founder of the
Bhanc dyaaaty. 47, 330; hia
beoevolence toward animala, 47 ;
hia iucreaaora, 47-67 ; referred
to aa an anceitor by the Fjd-
peror P'ao-k[>ii|[, 113; ayatem of
taiatlon umler. 207.

Cb'tac-wanjc. Uie Kmperor : 104-
107, I3S-I38, 331 ; appoinia
OiAu-aiD'a ilepbnilhpT, Wpi.tii,
prince of the nnpin-. 10ft-in7.
341 ; receivea amba— Jow from
the YtW^rh'anc tribM, 13A-I3S;
aoraa capital to I.o-vanM, 130:
bia death, 138; loveata tUuat 1

with territory of Jlfon barbari-
ana, 190, 193, 330; flxea th«
Nine Tripoda and proBncatl-
eatea duration of djmaaty, 322;
wall painting rcpreaenting, with
hia pianiiao CbAu-lcims, 343;
inveata younner brother with
Trin, 300, 334; aai ataa Ca6o-

CbAu : dulUB of, daacendanta ol
Tl-k'u and hia poathumoua aotl
BAu-tai, 3S, 30; evly liiatory
el, S7-&8 ; eauaea tending to
devriop influence of dural itata,
09, 1S3; Wu-vans twelve yeara
duke of, 97; ancaatora of, aaid
to have adopted Uunnie lite,
168, 109; chronohicy, 331
T'an-tu, Duke of, aat Tah-to
Ch'amo, Duke of, 8H n
WANO : Kl-U, Duke of, aM Ki-u
Fa, I>uke of. aM Wo-wano
Tan, DukL of, aet Ca6v-KVMa
diikea of, deacendanta of ChAu-
kung : a mlnialer under Cha»-
wang. 143 ; the co-rt«ent during
the Kung-ho neriod and min-
iatn to EMan-wang, 1ST; Hd-
kitn, Duke of, under Cfauanf-

ChOu d>-n^lyl 93-338, 3S1-S33.

Ch^u-kuan: original title at the
CMwJi. 110.

Ct>6u-kung ; fourth eon of WOo-
wang, 68; addrtaaw anceatora
In prayer for Wu-vang*! bfe,
81, 103-103; prafliand dirina-
tion, 83 ; aoul uf Wu-waDg*!
Bovemment, 79-103; beponxa
fief -holder of K "U-IAu ( I.u) ,
99-10O, 340; thinka talc la
dincted by Ood, o
and oDndr, 101-103:
of hia aUlity, 103;
(li'5ng-wnng'i guardian, but
to meet the intrigue* of hia
brulliFn krepa away from court,
writing eiten«on of l-ktnf, 10* ;
an ode in ShI-kiitf aarribed to,
hi* lovally r
feat* hia n
of CbAu K

354

IKDEX

author of the Ch&ik4i, 107;
presents ambaaaedori with eouth-
pointing eheriota, 127| 128; hie
death and eulogy, 137-188; a
wall painting repreaenting, and
Confuciua' veneration for, 243.

Ch&u4i, the: authorahip aacribed
to Ch6u-kung, 107, 138; Chu
Hi on, 108 ; aerves aa a model of
government and culture for
later perioda, tranalated by
l&douKtd. Kot, 106; traoea dF
atatiatioal method, devdoped by
Kuan-ttf, found in, 119, 202;
a mine d information, 126 ; ita
geography oompared to that
of Ch'unrta'iu, 182; aa oom-
pared to Lirki, 252-253; ita
atatutea cramped by Tartar in-
fluencea, 270.

ChSurshu, 65.

Ch6u-sin : last emperor of the Shang
dynasty, 63-67, ;j31 ; his wicked-
ness described in the Shf-ki, 66 ;
Legfl^c's recapitulation of Shur-
king commentaries on, 66-67;
punishment of roasting is his
invention, 67, note 1 ; obejrs his
wife Ta-ki, 66, 66 ; his renewed
crimes lead to his ruin, 63-66;
his godlessness and incapacity
emphasized by Wu-wang, 64;
his death, 66; his minister
Shang Jimg becomes Wu-wang 's
assistant, 96; disposal of his
treasures, 07; loses the Nine
Tripods, 222 ; Yang Chu thinks
Ch6u-sin's a happy life, 278.

Chdu: term meaning "a province "
in ancient times, 21.

Ch6u, the imperial dominion : Su
Ts'in native of, 309; see cUao
Emperor, the.

Christian principles in Mo Ti's
philosophy: 282.

Chronological Tables : 329-348.

Chronology: discrepancies in early,
7, note 2; of early sovereigns
fixed by later generations, 49;
the standard, and that of the
Bamboo Books, 61, 176-176;
uncertain previous to Ch6u

dynaaty, €2; beyond diapute
in eaae oi eelipee of 770 b.o., 175.

C9iu ]^ the philoaopher: on the
CMu-H, 106; <m the early em-
perora of the Ch^ dynaaty,
158-160; eauaaa commentary
of the T'ung t n im k a n g-mu to
be compiled, 264; on the oric^
of the tamg qratcm of taxation,
297; defanda Omnfticianiam, 302.

ChitrMu C'Frinoea of the £knpiie").
96, 99; Wel-td i^nKn^ted a,
106; aubjeet to aame ceremonial
aa the emperor, 115 ; the chidb
of Han, Chau, and Wei ap-
pointed, 264.

Ckit^hu-H^*Un: aee Bamboo Booxb.

Chu Tan: a leader in war againat
Jung tribea, 188.

Chu, the atate of : 188.

Chu Yii (eleventh century aj>.):
first author to refer to use of
compass on shipboard, 133, 136.

Ch'u, Duke of W«[ : 248, 347.

Ch'u, the state of : Chau-wang's war
against, 143; becomes powerful
under P'ing-wang, 178; causes
of its growth, 182, 189; caUed
"the south" by Sm-ma TsTife;
caUed " King " in the Ch'un-
to'tu, 189; its sovereigns, 189-
192; its old capitals Tan-yang
and TTmg, 190; kings of, caU
themselves "Man bsurbarians,"
191 ; its king Chuang one of
the "Five Leaders," 206, 221,
222 ; expedition of Tsl against,
208-209; federal states in fear
of, 208; Duke Won of Tain's
good treatment in, 214 ; products
of, 214; defeated by Tsin in
battle of Ch'ong-p'u, 216, 219;
defeats Ts'i, 219; successful
war of, against Hunnic tribes;
insults imperial dignity, 221 ;
Lau-tn a native of, 231, 269;
King^-wang 's brother Ch'au aeeka
refuge in, 233; a king of, in-
quirea about iron sworda, 235;
Confucius' sojourn in, 247 ; con-
quers middle states, 263; one
of the "Seven Heroes " states.

INDEX

355

306; its population, 967; non-
Chioeae eharacter of, 267-368;
Wu Kl chaocellor in, 274;
prineM of, known for luxury,
277, noU 1; HQ Hinc, "the
africulturist," a native of, 290;
Chuang-til declines post of
prime minist.er in, 200; joins
confederation against Tsln, 310 ;
Qiang I ill-treated by, 311, 312;
Chang I^ successful court in-
trigue in, 312, 316; since con-
quest of YM possesses whole
south of diina; chief rival of
Tknn, 814; first to claim kingli
crown among federal states,
316; K'Q YQan, the poet of,
316-316 ; Wei Jan, a naUve of, as
dianceUor of Tsln does his
country much harm, 317; d»-
f^atedbyTsIn; its capital taken
and kings' mausolea destroyed,
310; Huang Hi«, chief minister
of, 821-322, 826; capital of,
removed to Wu (Soochow), 822 ;
makes conquests in Lu, 326;
and oonquera it, 841 ; annexed
by Ts'in, 828, 838; Princes of,
836-388; ssi oUo Man

CK*w-4an, <<the C9i'u Elegies " : 816.

ChuaD-hQ, the Emperor : 24, 26, 320 ;
ancestor of YQ and Shun, 26;
and of the Kingi of Ch'u, 180.

Choang, King of Ch'u : fifth among
the Five Leaders, 221, 222, 337.

Chttang-siang, King of Tsln
(•Prince I-Jdn), 328-828, 884;
an exile in Chau, 823 ; becomes
hsir apparent, marries L<Q Pu-
wsfb wife, 824; as king of Ts la
appoints LO Pu-wsl prime min-
teier, 827; his death possibly
caused by LO Pu-wci, 828.

Ch'on-ehAo-kfin (Huang Hi^), one
of the "Four NobU«," 821;
al the siege of Han-tan, 822;
patronises SQn K*uang, 826.

Ch\m^*yiik: the "Spring and Au-
tumn Annals," by Confucius,
a chronological account of ths
state of Lu, 722 to 481 a.c, 170,

107, 263, 840; doubto as to
authorship, 180; its geography,
181-107; calls the Ch'u stata
"King," 180; its extent, 107,
262; records eclipse of the sun
in 604 B.C., 201.

Chuang-Ul (the book) : 200-306.

Chuang-ttf, the philoeopher: on
the Kung-ho period, 167 ; refers
to Li6-ttf, 277; his character
and work, 200-308; better ex-
ponent of Tauism than Lau-trf
himself, 300; extracts from
Qilee' work on, 800-301; at-
tacks Confucius and his school,
802; the satires " Robber Chi"
and "The Old Fisherman,'!
802-306.

Chuang-wang, the Emperor: 301*
218, 832.

CSiung, Eari of : 187.

Chung-fu ("Second Father ") : bono-
rific Utle rf LQ Pu-wsf, 827.

C9iung-Ir : tm W6n, Dukb or Tstw .

Chung-k'ang, the Emperor : 80. 3.10.

Ckwfi-kuo: see Miodl*^ IIimoooii.

Chung-ni, literary name of Confu-
cius: 229.

Chung^in^^i^S'kwBm sfcC; 74.

Qiung-ting, the Emperor: 48, 830.

Chung-tsun^, the Emperor: ssi
T'ai-mou.

C9iung-tu: Confucius magistrata of,
244.

CSiung-3ru: se« Ttl-LU.

Ckung-y%ing ("The Doctrine of the
Mean"): 26, note 1, 266.

Ch*ung, Marquis of: denounces
W6n-wang for lese-majesty, 60.

Cinnabar: 131.

Ovil Office, Board of : formeriy had
precedence over other boards,
111, 113.

Classics, the Chinese : Leggeli edition
of, 26, note 1 ; their connection
with Oonfudus, 261 -266; recog-
nition of, as classical books,
806.

Coal sacks : referred to in old legend,
10.

Compass : ser MAatxsas

Concubines, imperial: 114.

356

INDEX

Confucian Clasmcs: «ee Clabsiob,
THE Chinese.

Confucianiam : main cause of stabil-
ity of Chinese nation, 242; re-
strained by Tartar influences,
268-273 ; by rival philosophers,
280.

Confucianists : see Contuciub ; BfxN-
cius; Tbonq Tb'an.

Confucian Legends, the: 27-44.

Confucius: his edition of the Shu-
king, see Shu-kino; not posi-
tive on belief in future life, 82;
his authorship of CA'im-to'tu,
see Ch'un-tb'iu; his greatness
not based on his writings, 181 ;
disapproves of Duke Won of
Tsin's requiring emperor to
attend meeting of princes, 216;
his birth, name, and genealogy,
228-229 ; his early histor>', 229-
231 ; exaggerates burial cere-
monies, 230 ; iniorviews Lau-
tzi, 232, 240-241, 243; his view
♦^f Tzi-ch'an, 232 ; liis pliilosophy
a sort Cf indigenous religion,
237 ; is silent on Lau-tzi, 238 ;
the "superior man*' chi-^f object
of his teachings, 239, 254 ; com-
pared with Lau-tzi, 240-241 ;
his life, 243-248 ; visits imperial
capital, 243 ; his sojourn in
Ts'i and love of music, 243 ; in
Lu under Duke Ting, 244-246;
in Wei under Duke Ling, 246-
247 ; wanderings from state to
state, 247; from Ch'u returns
to Wei, 247-248; recalled to
Lu, dies in 479 B.C., 248; his
di.sciples, 248-250; his influence
on Chinese nation, 250; his
works, 251-253; his sayings,
253-255; his personaUty, 255-
257 ; his ethics according to
Giles, 301 ; his fame greater
during Middle Ages than under
Ch6u dynasty, 302.

Contending States, the: 259-328;
sources of history of, 204-266.

Contracts: how legalized, 124.

Cooking : introduction of, 6, 14.

Copper : $ee Bronzes.

Copper-mine: eariiest, aDeged to
have been discovered by Huang-ti,
23.

Cordier, Henri : his BiblioOieea Si-
niea, cited, ix, 26, note 1.

Corea: supposed to have formed
part of Yu's empire, 38; Wu-
kong, Ch6uHsin's son, king of,
96, 104, 106, 183.

Cosmogony: 3-7.

Court management: in charge of
Mandarin of Heaven, 114.

Criminal law : aee Autumn, Manda-
rin OF.

"Criss-cross" philosophers : 306,
307-308.

Culture: periods of, represented by
names of fabulous and legend-
ary emperors, 6-7, 13-14;
house, palace, and temple build-
ing, towns, and provinces under
Huang-ti, 21 ; dyeing materials
under Huang-ti, 23; matri-
archy replaced by matrimony,
60 ; words represented by hiero-
glyphics during Shang dynasty,
75; hints as to Shang culture
in the Shi-king, 76 ; the Ch6u-li,
a mine of information on, of
the Ch6u period, 126; stone,
jade, bronze, and iron ages,
234-237 ; foreign influences in
early Chinese, 268-273 ; sec also,
under the respective headings.
Agriculture, Art, Astron-
omy, etc.

Cj'clical characters : invention of,
referred to prehistoric period,
5 ; used in the formation of
personal names, 72 ; dates desig-
nated by, 173, 174; ace also
Calendar.

Cj'presses : 122.

Daae, I. M. : on the landtax in

China, 298, note 1.
Deer, white : presented as tribute

to Mu-wang, 169.
Deguignes, J. [father and son] :

30.
Deluge under Yau and Shun : 31 ;

supposed to have been over-

INDEX

357

come by the engineering workA
of YQ, 33-38; apparent exag-
geration in description of, 35,
65-56.

Dialectics, professors of : 307-308.

Diplomats : according to Chdu4i,
124-125; adherents of philo-
sophical schools, traveling about,
285; study of dialectics by in-
tending, 307-308 ; Su Ts'in and
Chang I, the, par excellence,
308-313; itinerant, kept out
of Ts'in court by Wi^ Jan,
320.

Diadplcs of Confucius : 24^-250.

Divination : must not be repeated
when fortunate, 83; good issue
prayed for by Ch6u-kung before
practising, 102, 103; means of,
during the Ch6u dynasty, 118.

Dogs : 121 ; sss aUo Mastiff, the
Tibetan.

Dragon and Phenix : on bronses
previous to Han d3masty have
not their later attributes, 88.

Dragon Boat Regatta, the : in com-
memoration of K'tt YQan's
death, 315-310.

Dragon, the Chinese: possibly the
naifa of India, 88.

Dreams : influence the selection of a
elsver minister, 53 ; interpreted
by scientisU, 118; in the history
of Cbau state, 270; sss aUo
MnucLEs.

Dress : skins used for, before Huang>
ti, 23; invention of wea\'ing
ascribed to Huang-ti's wife, 23;
skin and felt coats worn by the
Huns, 158; Tartar dms worn
and boots introduced by King
Wu-ling of Chau, 272 and note
1 ; sss aUo Unifokms.

Drums: sss Musio and Beonib

DBUMS.

Earth, the ICandarin of (H-ktutn) :
lis, 115-117; levied soldiers,
119.

Eastern Ch6u : sm Tnco-cnou.

Eclipses : set AsTKO>ro»rr.

Edkiaa, J.: 181, 135-180.

Egotism, Yang Chnls philoBophy of :
§ee Yang Chu.

Egret, the : an old emblem of Chinese
skin drums and of bronie dmms,
196.

Egyptian scroll : sss Thttndeb pat-
tern.

EStel, E. J. : on the 8ku4nng eclipM,
40-41 ; on Si-uiang-mu, 149, 150.

EHephants : occurred in Hu-nan up
to seventh century a.d., 121 ;
tusk brought from Tungking,
127; see aUo Ivobt.

Emperors : the Three and the Nine,
5; the Five Rulers, 12.

Emperor, the, or ''Son of Heax'en'*:
responsible for natural phe-
nomena, 36; high priest of the
nation, reigns in the name of
Ood, 79; represents nation in
sacrificing and praying to Ood,
certain minor deities and his
ancestors, 80-83, 177. 220; his
title rOn-iMf, sss "Son of
Heaven"; the tiUe H ("em-
peror'*) discarded and replaced
by wang ("king'O, 96-97; re-
sumed by Shi-huang-ti, 97 ;
during the Ch6u d3masty held
position similar to German Em-
peror, 106; his functions. 109;
Is the patriarch of the nation,
his chief assistant Is the "Man-
darin of Heaven," 111; re-
garded as the ruler of the
world, 112; his palace during
the Ch6u dynasty, 114-115;
personal life of, regulated by
strict ceremonial, 1 15 ; his right
of pardon in criminal cases. 123 ;
trax'eled about for his informa-
Uon, 124-125; staff of ollicerB
reporting to, on occu r rences in
his dominions, 124; on topo-
graphical, historical, social,
and economical questions, 125;
warned bv Heaven on account
of bad government, 143. 172-
174 ; condescension and affa-
bility of. weaken his position,
154; terrorism creates spirit of
indepeodeoos among

858

INDEX

IM; SQAii-waDg^ fidlure to per-
form field labor tm » oeremo-
nial act ends in diauter, 168;
hia dominion small aa oom-
parod with federal statee, 188,
107; his power nominal in the
Ch'un48Hu period, 107; loyally
supported l^ Duke Huan of
TbI, his most powerful thbmiIi
207; his authority to ohange
boundaries of federal states,
207-208; great ofl&oers not put
to death and promotiooa not
made without his sanction, 210;
required to attend meeting pre-
sided over by Duke WAn of
T6in, 210; laSm nominal power
upheld solely l^ spirit of
loyalty among feudal states,
217-218; obliged to flee from
his capital, 219; has to raise
loan to defray predecessor's
burial expenses, 220; slighted
by vassal of Ch'u, 220-221;
his summons disobeyed by
vassal princes, 275; a mere
shadow at the time of Mencius,
284-285; Mencius on the po-
sition of, 204; Ts'in and Ts'i
plan the adoption of title, 318;
his dominion annexed by Ts'in ;
fall of the Ch6u dynasty, 325,
327-328; tee also Intibrreg-

NUM ; KUNG-HO PBBIOD ; MEET-
ING OF PRINCES.

Epicure compared to Yang Chu:

278.
Eunuchs, court: 114.
EbLchange, means of : precious stones,

gold, and copper, 22; skins,

silks, dogs, horses, pearls, gems,

68; cowries, 76.

Fa, Duke and King of Ch6u : see

Wu-WANG.

Faber, E. : on Mo Ti (Micius), 282,
note 1 ; on Mencius, 292, 293.

Fame, according to Yang Chu : 278.

Fan Tsu, chancellor in Ts'in : 320-
323 ; his policy counteracted by
"The Four Nobles," 321-322;
his hostility against Po K'i,

822; asks to be punJahed and is

rewarded, 823.
Fang-hQn: private name of Yan,

20.
Fatalism, Tang Chu^: 279.
Fel-td, the first prince of Tsln: 163,

882,888.
Fief-holders: appointed to reward

merit of distinguished ancestors,

90.

Fief names: ses YuC'tohave'O u^^
the several names following.

FiHal piety: want of, according to
Oonfuoius, parents fault, 245;
Td-lu known for, Tidng Ts'tm
model of, 249; key-note of
Oonfuoiua' views on govern-
ment, 264; basis of Hencius'
philosophy, 288; Canon of, set

HiAV-KING.

Fire: discovery of method of pro-
ducing, 6.

Fire Producer : see Sui-jon.

"Firewood, to sleep on," the phrase :
261 and note 1.

Fisherman, story of the old : 304.

Fishing: introduction of, ascribed
to Fu-hi, 9, 14; sportsmanlike
treatment of, advocated by
Ch'ong-t'ang, 47; Ts'ing-ch6u
(Shan-tung) and Yu-€h6u (Chi-li)
noted for their, 121, 122.

"Five Canons," the : see Wu-king.

Five Dragons (period) : 6, 320.

Five Happinesses, the: see Happi-
nesses, THE Five.

Five Leaders, the : century of, 100-
223; names of, 206; according
to Mencius offended in loyalty
against the old emperors, 293-
295.

Five relations, the, of man to man :
254.

Five Rulers, the (Fu-hi, Shon-nung,
Huang-ti, Yau, and Shun) : 12.

Flags and standards introduced by
Huang-ti : 22 ; red the color of
imperial, under Wu-wang, 99;
adorned with blaaonry of birds,
160; used in war according to
Skinkingf 164; their emblems
described, 166.

INDEX

359

VloelcSy keeping of: BAid to have
been commenced by Fu-hi, 9,
14.

FBof [-ch'dng]: old capital of the
dukes of Cb6u, south of the WeC
River, 99, 169.

Fteg-hu-td, expert on swords : 236.

Fteg» Prince of K'ang, Wu-wang's
brother: invested with Wd,
846.

Vbreign affairs: no special Board
of, before 1901 a.d., Ill and
note 1 ; in charge of subordi-
nate of Mandarin of Autumn,
134.

Foreigners: superior civilisation of,
compared by Chinese to their
own, 19.

Foreign influences before the time
of Wu-ti : 26»-273.

Foreign nations regarded as mere
boundary tribes : 1 12.

Forke, A. : on ICu-wang and the
8i-wang-mu legend, 160-161 ;
on Yang Chu, 277, note 1.

" Four BoolJ," the : mw Ssi-sru.

Four Nobles, the : 321-326, 328.

Fowls: 121.

Friret, N. : on the Shu-inng eclipse,
41.

Frogs : an emblem on ancient bronse
drums, possibly a totem of Man
Daroanans, ivo.

Frontier posts: relieved annually,
supplie<l from peasantry, 163.

Fu-eh'ai, King of Wu: 234, 848;
commits suici<ie, 262.

Fu-hi : alleged first historical em-
peror, 7, 329; appearance and
IMctorial representations of , 7, 8 ;
organises society, 9; Intro-
duced hunting, fishing, otttle
flocks, mufic, the pa-iua sym-
bols, hieroglyphics, etc., 9:
divides all things into male and
female, 69-61 ; replaces matri-
archy by matrimony, 60.

Fu-nan: 127.

Future life: ses ANCseToaa;
Hbavbn; LirB Arraa dkatm;
Sptarrs or tiik DKrAancD.

Fu-yiM: minister under WiMing, 63.

Qabelents, Q. von der : on Kuan-ttf ,
202 ; on Confucius, 242 ; on Mo
Ti (Mek Tik), 282, note 1.

Oardencrs hold second rank in popu-
lation : 1 10.

Gardner, C. T. : on the Tablet of YQ,
90.

QaubU, A. : 30, 41.

Gem, the sacred (pi) : 102.

Genealogy : of early emperors, 26 ;
pedigrees of YQ, Shun, Chi, Yau,
Ch'oiig-t'ang, and the Ch6u
emperors derived from Ti-k'u,
26-26; YQ a descendant of
Huang-ti, 33; Confuciun', 228;
tee aUo Chronological Tables.

Generals in command : how styled,
165.

Geographical position of states closely
connected with their develop-
ment : 182, 188.

Geography : of the Empire accord-
ing to the CA<fu-/t, 119-123;
resembles that of the Yi^4mmg,
123, 182; legendary terms in
Chinese, connected with we st ern
boundary, 147; of the Ck'uf^
UHu period, 181-197.

Geomanrers (fang-^na) : 132.

Germany : China during the Ch6m
dvnaiity resembles, 108, 181.

Giles, U. A. : his chronology of Fu-hl,
7, note 2; on 8i-wang-mu, 161,
note 2; on Kuan-td^ work,
202; on the Tou4^^4nng, 238;
on the T*ung-kiin4ean^mut 264-
266 ; on U^tsI, 276 ; on Lau-tsi
and Chuang-til, 300-301.

Gnomon : aee Astronomt.

God (Shamff^ : prayers to, referreu
to in accounts of oklmt emper-
ors, 100, 263 ; never disavowed
by the ancient Chinese, 101 ;
Cli6u-kung^ views on, 102-103;
sfe aUo Ukavkn ; SAcnincB to
God.

Goethe : interested in CMnssi stud-
ies, V, vii.

Qovemmi^t : strict neas and liber-
ality of Huang-ti'S. 22; divicM
into eight brauchra by Shun, 31 ;
share of responsibility in, by

360

INDEX

ministers and advisers, 33; the
sovereign responsible for natural
catastrophes, 36, 79-80, 105,
172-174; reorganized under Wu-
wang, 98-99; democratic sys-
tem in promotion of officers of,
99; foundation of government
due to Ch6u-k\mg, 107; immu-
tabiUty of, based on that of
individuals in public and pri-
vate life, 109 ; patriarchal char-
acter of, 110; six divisions of,
prototype of modem "Six
Boards," 111, 112-113; inter-
ference with private life, 116-
117; officers of, selected from
among the people, 99, 117; not
punished in pubUc, 123-124,
322; "the five articles" fixing
principles of, 210; Confucius*
views of, based on filial piety,
254 ; see also Ch6u-li ; Con-
fucius ; KuAN-Tzi ; Mencius.

Great Khan : see Shan-yu.

Greek pattern : see Thunder pat-
tern.

Groot, J. J. M. de : 196, note 2.

Grosicr, Abb<5 : 265.

Ground taxes : 296-298 ; see also
Taxes.

Grube, W. : on the preponderance
of speoc'hcs in ol(iost historical
texts, 156 ; considers both Ch'un-
ts'iu and Tso-chxian works of
Confucius, 181 ; on Kuan-tzi,
202, 205; on Yang Chu, 279.

Gumpach, J. von : on the Shu-king
echpse, 41.

Haenisch, E. : on the Tablet of Yii,
90, note 1.

Han, the state of : beginnings, 263 ;
recognized as a feudal state,
264; one of the "Seven Heroes"
states, 2G6 ; conquers Chong.
274 ; joins confederation against
Ts'in, 310; kingdom since 332
B.C., 315; loses territory against
Ts'in, 316; defeated by Ts'in in
battle of I-k'ii^, 318; defeated
by Ts'in, 325; does homage to
Ts'in, neglecting the emperor,

and is annexed by Ta^, 326,
328, 336; princes of, 335-336.

Han-cho, usurper: 42, 330.

Han-fei, the philosopher: mentions
"south-pointers," 128; pupil of
Siin K\iang, the anti-Confu-
cianist, 326.

Han^fei-Ui (the book) : 128, note 2;
see also Han-fei, th£ philos-

OPHEB.

Han-ku Pass: Lau-ta there takes
leave of China, 307, 313 ; Tain's
victory at the, 313.

Han River : 143.

Han-tan : capital of Chau, 322-324 ;
the "Lady of Han-tan," mother
of Shi-huang-ti, 324, 328.

Han Yii, author: defends Confu-
cianism, 302.

Hangchow : 132.

Happinesses, the Five : 82.

Harakiri : traces of, in China, 322,
note 1.

Hatchets : see Weapons.

Hau : city built by Wu-wang near
the present Si-an-fu, 54, 99, 169.

Heaven and Earth : as objects of
worship, 79.

Heav^euly emperors : 5, 329.

Heaven, Mandarin of {Vi^-huan) :
111, 112-115.

Heaven : the term t'idn for, may
mean the "other w^orld" and
Allah, or God, 96 ; ancestors in,
have charge of descendants, 103 ;
gives warnings on account of
bad government, 143, 172-174;
see also Ancestors ; God.

Heger, Franz : 196, note 2.

Hei-ki6n, Duke of Ch6u : 201.

Hell and purgatory : none referred to
in the Ciiinese Claries, 82.

Hehnets : worn by princes and war-
riors, 164.

Hemp: 121.

Hereditary monopolies : 117.

D'Hervey de Saint- Denys : 194,
notes 1 and 2.

Hi and Ho, the astronomers : fail to
predict an eclipse under Yau,
30; under Chung-k'ang, 39-41.

Hi-wang, the Emperor : 218, 332.

Ri> dynMty, the: 33-44, 330.

Hi* Kui (Japwine Kakfi). uiirt : B9.

Hi»-po, title or the EmpCTor YQ : Sa.

Hi>u, Duke of Ta^ : 318-210. 340.

Uiatfkmg ("Cknoa ol Fili»l nety") :
349.

HUu-waog, the Emperor: 153, 332.

Iliau-woD, Kin« ot Tain: 334;
(■ther ot Prinre I-j&n, dtcUml
heir kpp*rent by LQ Pu-wti's
intriffup, 323-324 ; r«4;Tuid but
one yrar, 337; prematura death
ot, poaibly due to LQ Pu-wd.
33S.

Hidsa : ttt SlIKB.

mta, Duke ot Tun : 212. 334.

HUn-wuii, the Emppror : 2TS, 333.

Uite-yuig : capital of Ti'in, the
pre*rat Ri-«ii-tu, 317.

Hite-yOan : pmonal name ot Huang-
ti, 13; of a priioeval entpcror
pr*i-i(Hi> to Fu-hi, 330.

Hi«ii-yfin : tt Hirxa.

IIlerDf[l>'phire : of 390 B.C. deciphered
■ — ,ao;

by..

« In 281) A

OD bronae vmaeki ot the 8hanic
dynaaty. TI-TS; Chiiuae worki
containing lanimile repmduc-
Udiw ot, 73-74 : word* repre-
■mlHi by. q( the Shang ilynaiity,
75-70; tbf. for "thunder" uard
(or omaineDlal purpoura ; lym-
bolic Rwaning. M ; hleniglyphlra
attributed to the Emperor YU
probably forgeriea, 00; on the
"Stone I>nuna ot the Ch6u Dy-
BMaty." 170-171; awoboCnaL-
r*NT, F. H.

Rin Jung : *M SRaH-irma.

Hlaloriana ; not rritical m to b^
^nnlng of hiatorical period, 3;
board of, aarribed to Iluang-tl,
30. ISA; Ti'ang-kM. the flnrt
■tate hiatortan, 30; lonie. ex-
clude prriud of mourning from
nvttrign*' rrign. 31 ; aarrihp
grrat ilrriaiona to minlatna and
ailvlam, 33, 31 ; extol virlim
ot tounden and blacken rhar-
aeter of laat nilera of dynantiea.
43. 113 ; reaponiiible lor Irftendary
character of parioda down to

ChAu-on, U-M. 138; kerp
emppior poated on local ble-
loriea; diviaion of work among,
during the Cb6u dynaaty, 13Si
ought to enjoy liberty ol ipeeeh,
l&A; method adopted in coo-
■trucling moat ancient hiitory,
ISe ; pvtiality of Confuaanirt,
2eS.

Hiatorical period : hfulnnlng o(,
varioiMly dated, I7G.

lUatory, the ancient, of China : bMt
baaia tor knowledge of nation,

Hlung I clan name ot the aoverei g na
otCh'u. 100, S3«.

Hiung I : anceator ot the kin|P ol
CfaM, inrrated with thk terri-
tory, 100, 193, 330.

Hiung-Ir (Ho-nao): auppoaed bona
of primeval cmper of . S.

Blung K'O of Ch'u : iwurpe the till*
■■King." 100, 337,

Hiung-nu : tr Hi-kb.

Uiung T'ung of Ch'u ; conSimed m
King Wu, 100, 337.

Ho : a mrred mountain, 133.

Ho-lu, King of Wu : 333-334. 34S.

Ho-aO, primeval nnpcror: 330.

Ho-tan-kia, the Emperor: 40, 131.

H6ng ; a lacred mountain, 131, 133.

Horn : bowi made ot, 1(H.

Honei : in hiero^yphica ot Bhang
dynaety, 7S; with oxen, chief
produce of Yuog-chAu (the
Ord« territory), and Kl-ch6u
(South 8hanii). 133; a dealer
Id. elevated to rank ot Prirtce ol
Tain, 1S3; four ataeda har^
neaaed to war ehariota In cam-
paifn Bgainat the lluna. 109;
long, (tout, and larga headed,
ion : how yoked, hameawil. and
adorned before war ehariola,
Ie3-I04; guided by toot-aol-
dirn in war, 104; with men
and iheep. r«ar«d by the Hum,
IW; cavalry, introduced by
King Wu-lii^ of Chau, 373-
373; ridit^t, not ueual beta*
third century ».c., 373.

a4u (-mar^uli): Og.

362

INDEX

H&u^umrOiu: 19.

H6u-i minister and genenl-in-
• chief, 89^42.

H6u-t8i: poethumous son of the
Emperor TI-kHi, 30.

House-building : first introdueed l^
Huang-ti, 21.

H& Hing, "the sgrioultarist" : re-
futed byMendus, 200.

Hu, a desoendsntof the Emperor
Shun : invested with Gh'&i, 848.

Hu An-kuo, historian: on U Po-
we!, 828.

Hu^nanrfang^ufu^^ki: 121.

Hu-pe! provinee: supposed home
of Shdn-nungy 11.

Hua : a saored mountain, 121.

Huarsfl: mother of the EoDiperor
Fu-hi, 8.

Hua Tu : nunister in Sung, 229.

Husryang: principal wife of EBau-
w5n, the King, as Prince of Ts^,
323.

Huai, King of Ch'u : 316, 317, 337.

Huai-nan-ta : see Lin An.

Huan, Duke of Ts'i: first of the
"Five Leaders," 201, 206, 207-
211, 217, 218, 339; given to
evil courses in old age, 211 ; his
end, 211, 218-219; his treat-
ment of Duke Won of Tsin, 214 ;
favors legitimate succession to
imperial throne, 209, 218.

Huan-wang, the Emperor : 197, 332.

Huang-fu (= Nan-chung), general :
161.

Huang>fu: special term for the
"Steppe Dependency," 169.

Huang Hi^ : Bee Chtjn-shon-kun.

Huang-ho : see Yellow River.

Huang-ti: first emperor according
to Ssi-ma Ts'i^n, 7, 329; his
person and government, 12;
makes war on the Huns, 13;
inventions ascribed to, 13, 20-
23; alleged connection with
Babylonia, 14-18 ; further deeds
of, 20-23; his death, 24; de-
scendants of, appointed fief-
holders under Wu-wang, 99;
said by some to have invented
south-pointing chariots, 129 ;

feprssflDts tba prehistoric
neolithic period, 280.

Hnber, iSd., on St-waof-mu : 161,
note 2.

Hui, Dnke of TWn : 218, 216, 834.

Hui, B3ng of liang, iA Wei: 835;
IfcDcius' conversatioiis with,
287,289.

Hui-tsong, the Bsiperor: a patron
of art, 71, 78, 181.

Hui-waag, the Emperor: 218, 882.

Hui-wSn, ffing of l^ln : 810, 338.

Human e mp ero fs : 5, 829.

Humlxddt, Von, on SMrans-mu:
161, note 2.

"Hundsfott** (Qermaa) : wrongly
derived from "Humnisfuit,"68.

Huns : known in CSiina as Huo-yil,
HQn^yil, HiAn-yitai, KHian, and
Hiung-nu, names connected
with the root Hun or Kun, 13,
67-09, 159, 168; driven away
by Huang-ti, 13 ; as Wu-wang 's
allies help to overturn the Shang
dynasty, 64-05, 70, 169; con-
clude treaty witii China in 47
B.C. ; words from tiieir language
preserved in Chinese literature
prove to be Turkish, 66; levy
tribute f rom T'ai-wang and Wdn-
wang and attack T'ai-wang 's
state, 68-69, 169; defeated by
Won-wang (1138 B.C.), 70; en-
croached on Chinese territory
during Ch6u d3masty, 120;
campaign against, described in
the Shl'king, 159-161; at one
time held territory as far as the
River King and T'ai-yuan, 160,
161 ; Chinese soldiers afraid of,
163; expeditions against, in
what season undertaken, 164;
more successful on large pliuns
than on hilly territory, 166;
advantages on the Chinese side
in war against, 166-167 ; Ssi-ma
Ts'i6n's account of, 167-170;
Shan-jimg, Hi^n-yun, and Hun-
yu divisions of, before the time
of Yau and Shun ; honor robust,
and neglect old and weak men,
168; attack and kill Yu-wang,

lao, 177; the aUta o( Ttrio
■od Titn fisht BS>iiMt Hun* to
protect duns, 1S3; • political,
not > nciMl imioo. 1B3-1S4;
Buna of Europe and BiUDg-DU
Identical and ot Turkkh extntc-
tion ; the TOrk and Sir-TanliMh
nation* and the lTl(UTa ofl-
■boota of the Hiung-nu, 184,
note 1 ; poaably relalcc) to
Beythiana, IBS; thiir Una of
kinci compared with Chineae
fwordi. lSfr-lS7 ; Northen
taof aend foot-aoldiera to fight
the Chineae, 1ST-IS8; «viy
coDt«ata brlwaeu, and titan bar-
barlana aerording to old legvod,
IM ; depend on the ooaat ol
Tin for wit. 3M ; after war with
Tiln and Tain ceaae to make
fairoadi,a03; twe ekull ofeMmy
lot rftual purpoaea like the
BolaM, 370-373; mw aba I-k'u-
$xma; Jcito amd Tt; K'oan-

Bnn-yit and Rttn-jrH : a** Hmn.

Bunting : introduetioo ot, aarribed
to Fu-hi, 9, 14 ; fauntlng partita
catMB of pnlitieal troublea, 30,
43, 143; fportsnaniika tit«t-
ment ot, by Ch'Af^t'ang, 47
ChAu-ainli hunting partlea, 53,
A4; loldipTv enliat#d for, 11*"

Qiau-wang'i ] '-" for, 14

Hu-wang'i hunting eipeilitioi
144; hunting tbe image ot war,
1113 ; birdi, rata, toxea, and
harva shot by ciuidrea ; hunting
and cattle-breeding meana of
UvrUbood among Huoa, IM;
SOan-wang'i hunting eipedl-
tiooa d^ribed on Btona Dnuna,
170.

• Bhang

1 : a aanea motmialn. 131.

I {bartsriarta oT the eaat) : reterred

to In Ti»«huan, ISO
I CU: minkttr during

/-Mv, or " Book of Changes " ; one
of the oldaat producta of Chineae
Uteraturc. W, 193; baaed on
Fu-hi'i mystic trigrapha (ear
Pi-xu<) ; awtribed to W4o-
wang, SIMt3; recommaoded by
Confuciua, 03; extended ^
ChAu-kung, 1D4; Oontudua' re-
lation to, 361.

I-Uu ; peraonal name of Plng-wang,
177.

I-k'O-iung (Hun^: witlMtand Tida
andTiln, 303.

l-ktU: city in tbe pCMent Ho-naa
province, celebrated battl»«eld,
318.

CbM, 819.

IMrang, tbe Emperor : IM, S33.

I*-waog, the Emperor: ISS, 333.

I-VU-IQ: a Hcml mountain, 133.

I Yin : minlater under Ch 'Oog-t 'ang
and hia auec ttmim. 47 ; conanB
datia the pownr of tba 8hai^
dynariy. 47-48.

Indian population in Eaatare Twka-
•tan: 1«.

Indutrlra described In the CAtfw«.-
130.

Inacriptlons, Uero^yphia : on tbe
faronie veaela of the Bhang
dynasty, 71-7S; oa slona and
Jade attributed to the Emperor
YD, 00 ; on the brooa* tripod o(
aiver Island, I SI ; on tbe Slooa
Drums, 170-171 ; aatolas BlBMO-

Intarcalary month : tntroduetlon of,
aarribed to Iluang-U, ti.

Inlerprrtars, court : 120 ; a««m-
pany siiilis^iliiis from Tung-
king, 137.

Interrognum : wb«i Ihcra was no
mpm-or in tliina, 337; sm •!*•
Kmo-Ko naioD. ma.

Inundation: as* Ubldob; Ybllow

RlVBB.

Iniption of soil: under advlea of

.hi'ir' [i^r*- in <^''.i:;:i ' <-rr»--j><»i;'i
i.<-<>!:t ijic p. :,.„•, \ j.W'i.

J.'i'io : ^;u'l f<> 1j;iv<' \n-(i\ kno\
lliiang-ti, 13 ; works of art
of, 89-91 ; the word yu
occurs in the oldest texts,
aa coming from Khotan p
ably sparingly u.se<l before
end century B.C., 91 ; article
trade in Yung-ch6u south
Ordos territory, 122.
Jon-hau (or Mu), Duke of Ts*in : 3i
Jon-huang: sec Human emperor
Jon-tsung, the Em}x;ror : 131, 13i
Jo-shui ("Weak Water") : 147, 14i
Julien, Stani>«Ia8 : translates his

torical drama, 209, note 1.
Jung (Huns) : attack T'an-fu, 168
driven away by Wu-wang and
called Iluang-fu as a tributary
state, 169; referred to in Tea-
chtian, 185, 187, 188; emperor'i:
war against, supported by Tsin,
219; Tsin and Ts'in unite
against, 263.
Juries : see People's voice.
Justice, Board of: 113, 123-125.
Justice of the peace, Mandarin ol
Earth acts as: 116.

K'ai-fong-fu (Ho-nan) : vo»-:-
coUectinn"

XT-

INDEX

365

KnC Duke of Til : 243-244, 340.

King4Htaid king4%Jc ^ kingrak ("a
Hibre") : oldest Turkish word
on record, 66-67, 169.

King4:iaUf the early Christian re-
ligion : 238.

Cof , River : Huns penatrata to
south of, 160, 161.

King*-wang, the Elmperor : 232, 332.

King^wang, the Emperor : 233, 332.

Klng-wang, the Emperor : 219-220,
332.

KlngsmiU, T. W. : 147.

Kiu^Hng: see Nine Tripods, thb.

Klu, personal name of Confucius:
229.

Knives : alloys of bronse, 126 ; made
of iron in seventh century B.C.,
204.

Knot-writing : 7, 9.

K4h€kt-king^yQan : 131 .

K6u-tsi«n, King of YM: 234-236,
261-262. 348.

KQ, the sUte of : 188.

K*d-f6u (Shan-timg) : supposed resi-
dence of Shdn-nung, 11 ; burial
place of 8hau-hau, 24 ; the earl-
dom of, given to Cb6u-kung,
09-100; home of the KHmg
(Confucius) family, 228.

K'Q-wu, in South Shan-si : seat of a
family usurping the throne of
Tstn, 334.

KHk YOan, the poet : 315-316, 317.

Kikn^Ul : see Supcmoa Man, the.

Kublai Khan: causes the T'ung-
kUfi'^nf^-mu to be translated
into Uigur. 264-266.

Kt^-kin-chu: 129.

Ku-kung : m« T'an-fu.

Ku^iang Chi : his commentary on
the Ch*un^*\u, 180.

jrw-ya-l'«*-p'ii ; 89, 00.

K'u, the Emperor : aee Ti-k'u.

K'Oan-jung (Huns) : 68; Mu-wang'ii
campaign against the. 144. 152.
169; bring about the ruin of
Yu-wang and his paramour
Pau Ssl, 169. 172-177; they
settle between the rivm King
and Wri. 169-170; legend of
of their chiefs being killed

by P'an-hu, tha ancestor of
the Man barbarians, 194.

Kua : set Pa-kua.

Kuan Chung : sss Kcan-tvu

Kuan I-wu: sss Kuan-tiI.

Kuan-tii, the philosopher : an early
sUtistician, 119, 123, 203; aa
minister of Tsl helps Duka
Huan to leadership, 201, 207,
217; opinions divided as to
his work on govornmant metb-
ods, 202, 205; his adminis-
tration in Tsl a model to later
generations, exemplified by his
views on the taxation of salt
and iron, 203-205; his expedi-
tion against the Shan-jung, 207 ;
his policy against the Qi*u
sUte, 208; his death and last
advice, 210.

Kuan^tst: work of the philosopher
so-called; set Kuan-tbi, tkb

PHILOSOPBKB.

Kuan Yin : legend of his farewell to
Lau-tii, 307.

Kuan-yin, the "Holy Virgin": orig-
inally a male deity, 149.

iCMOi»-yiff»-ifff ; 307.

K'uang-wang, tha Emparor: 220^
332.

KQhneK, F. : 40.

Kui : see Baooe of iadb.

Kui-chu : sss Hibn, Duui of Tux.

Kui-ki : a sacred mountain, 120.

Kui4n^4Mt: 128,285,807-309.

Kui, the Emperor: ssi Kitf.

Kun barbarians (Huns): 68,70,169.

Kun : minister of works uikder Yau
and father of the Elmperor YQ,
31 ; faib to sUy deluge, 31-36.

K'un-lun. Mount : 144-151.

Kumg (- duke) : 98.

Kung-ho period : 157, 176, 832.

Kung-kung: im ashes tha vault of
heaven. 9.

Kung Liu : an ancestor of tha Cb6u
emperors, 168.

Kungnmn Til-ch'an: ssi Tif-ca'Air.

Kung-sun Yen, statesman, brsaks up
confederation against Ts In, 3 1 3.

Kung-wang, tha Empsror : 153-158,
331.

366

INDEX

Kuxig-3rang Kau: his commentary
on the Ch*unrU*iu, 180.

K'lmg, dukes of: in K'u-f6u, de-
scendants of Confucius, 228.

K'ung-fu-ta and K^mg K'iu: tee
CtoNFucnis.

K^mg Kia: an ancestor of Ck>n-
fucius, 228; murdered, 220.

K-uo-tzi : see Sons of the Empibe.

KwHifH: 155.

Lacouperie, T. de: on the Western
origin of Chinese civilisation,
14-18, 32; on the extent of
Mu-wang's peregrinations, 149-
150.

Lacquer industry : that of Foochow
a family secret, 117.

Ladders, hooked: used in assault
of a fortress, 165.

Lances : see Weapons.

Landholders : rank first in popula-
tion, 110.

Land tenure : 296-298 ; laws of,
changed under Shi-huang-ti, 298.

Lan-t'i6n (Shen-si) : birthplace of
Hua-sii, the Emperor Fu-hi's
mother, 8.

Largeteau, M. : on the Shu-king
eclipse, 41.

Latinized names of sages (Confucius,
Mencius, Micius, Licius) : 281.

LauHshang, Great Khan of the Hiung-
nu: 271.

Lau-tzi : name and Ufe of, 231-232 ;
possibly of foreign birth, 231,
269 ; interviewed by Confucius,
232, 240-241, 243; his doctrine
as starting-point of an indigenous
religion, 237 ; his Tau-to-king,
238-240, 305; Lcgge's and
Giles', the positive and sceptical
views of, 238; difficulty of re-
constructing system from his
sayings, 239-240 ; compared
with Confucius, 240-241; Giles
on, 300; some undisputed sen-
tences from his sayings, 300-301 ;
bids farewell to Kuan Yin at
the Han-ku Pass, 307, 313.

Iiau-tzi and Confucius, the age of :
227-257.

Law: administration of, 123-124;
forbidding states to cross each
other's boundaries except by
emperor's orders, 207; Con-
fucius' method, 245.

L^gge, James: his edition of the
CSiinese classics, 26, note 1;
on Yu's engineering exploits,
34, 36-38; translation of the
Bamboo Books, 51, note 1, 53-
55, 56-57; on south-pointing
chariots, 128; on Si-wang<4nu,
151 ; on customs of the ancient
Chinese, translated by, aft^
Biot, 162-167; his yean dates
B.C. differ from those of astrono-
mers, 174; on the eclipee of
776 B.C., 175; on gap in Shu-
king's accoimt of emperors,
178; eulogises Tso-chtuin, 180;
his lecture on Huan of Ts^
and Won of Tsin, 206-217 ; on
Confucius* family, 229; on
Tau-to-king, 238; on Ta-lu,
248; on Confucius* personal
life, 256-257 ; on Yang Chu and
Mo Ti, 277, note 1, 278, 282, note
1 ; 8ee also the several classics
quoted from his edition under
their respective titles.

Legitimacy of throne rights : began
to be recognized after Ti-k'i, 39 ;
respected by Chung-k*ang, 39 ;
based according to Shu-king on
the authority of God, 79, 100;
on the example set by the peo-
ple's ancestors, 82, 100-101, 218 ;
and individual merit, 101-102 ;
Ch6u-kung main spokesman of
absolute, 137; of emperor's
position loyally support eil by
Duke Huan of Ts*i, 207, 209,
217 ; respect of, holds together
Ch6u dynasty, 217-218; recog-
nized by victorious dynasty by
giving high appointments to
members of ruined house, see
Wu-k6no and Wei-tzi.

LeT-tsu, the Empress : 22.

Lei-wdn: see Thunder pattern.

Li, son of Confucius : 230, 248.

Li Ir : see Lau-tzi".

INDEX

367

U-Jong : a wUd tribe, 313, 313.

U4n: 163, 253.

lA Lung-mi^n, artist aod collecto r :

hrlpe to illustrate aod bring out

a work on ancient art, 78.
Li-mu, the poem : 315-316.
Li-shan : a hill famous for an attack

by the Huns on Yu-wang, 169.
Li 8si, anti-Confucianist : 326.
U T'ang (Japanene RUo) artist: 89.
li-wang, the Elmperor: 154, 332;

driven away by the people, 157,

159.
Liang, Mount : eeparatee T'ai-wangli

old and new residences, 69.
Llau barbarians: wanderings of

the, 193-194.
lidus (- U4^tiO: 281.
IjU-U^ (the book) : sti L»-nI, nu

pBiLoeomsm.
U^tsf , the philoeopher : on the 8i-

wang-mu legend, 146 ; his work

may be fictitious, 276; referred

to by Chuang-td and Meooius,

277 and note 1, 281.
Li^wang, the Emperor: 274, 332.
Life after death : reward for virtue,

82 ; ef, Hbll and puboatost.
Life, value of: Yang Chu on the,

277-278.
Lin4: 127.
Ung, Duke of Wei: 246-247, 348,

347.
Ung, IXike of Tsin : 220,335.
Ling-wang, the Emperor: 227, 332.
Liu An, author : 270.
Liu^k%»o: see "8ix STATBa,** trb.
Uu-sha ("The Moving Sands '0: •«

8t-WAKO-MU.

Livestock holders : how ranking in

population, 110.
Livy : describes custom the Boians

had in common with the Hlung-

nu, 271.
Lo or Lo-3rang: imperial capital

built by Ch'dng-wang, 136,

169, 177; SM aUo Titno-tu.
Loadstone: 128, 131, 132, 135.
Lob-oor: 146, 147.
Lojralty : example of, set by Ch6u-

kung, 137; Duke Huan'ii, to

the empsror, 2U7; offenses in,

aeeording to Meoeliis, 393-295;
S00 aUo Lbqitimact of thxonb

BIGHTS.

LQ : family name of the original
princes of Tsl, 339.

LQ Pu-wei : prime minister of Tsln,
career of, 323-328.

Lu, the state of : treatment of pri^
oners of war in, 165 ; history of,
described in Ch'un^'im and
Tm>-diuan, 179, 197; Jung
tribes make inroads on, 187;
as an inland state could not
extend its territory, 188; 0>n-
fucius a native of, 229; Duke
Chau of, patronises Confucius,
230; Confucius' sojourn in,
243, 244-246, 248 ; Duke Chau
of, an exUe in Tsl, 243-244;
Duke Ting of, 344-246; Con-
fucius' influence on go\'emment
of, 246 ; Wu Kl studies waHare
and beoomes military leader in,
274 ; Mencius a native of, 274 ;
and ends his days in, 287-288;
dukes of, never became king*,
315; annexed by Ch\i, 836,
341 ; princes of, 340-341.

Lu-fu : Mf Wu-kAko.

Lun^^ ( "Confucian Analects "0 : 36,
note 1, 253-254, 255.

Lung-m5n (in North China) : sup-
posed home of primeval em-
perors, 5*

Luxury of rich men described by
Yang Chu : 377, note 1.

Maoklin, Dr. W. E.: on Msoeius,
391.

Macnetie needle: set MABurmBs'
Compass.

Mailed warriora: 163.

Mailla, Father de: on Kung-wang,
153; author of a voluminous
"History of China," 365.

Ma Kl (tenth century) on 8i-wang-
mu: 151.

Man barbarians : defeated near Lake
Tung-ting by BQan-wang, 171 ;
rulers of the Ch%i stale call
th«mselves, 191 ; occupy the
south of China and possibly

368

INDEX

territories south of it, 102-194;
their wanderings from north to
south, 193; bronze drums of
the, 195-196; see also Ch'u,

THE STATE OF.

Man: personal name of Mu-wang,
144.

Manuscripts bxuied in tombs : 50.

Maps and charts of the Empire : 119,
125.

Mariners' Ck>mpass: origin of, 126-
136.

Marriage: introduced by Fu-hi, 9;
special officer in charge of, 115-
116; between parties of same
surname treated as incest, 152;
among the Huns, 168; between
Chinese and foreign tribes, 212,
213, 269; with several wives
apparently on equal terms, 215.

Martin, W. A. P., on Su Ts'm : 310.

Mastiff, the Tibetan : possibly the
prototype of the T'au-t'i6 mon-
ster, 87.

Matriarchy : see MATRiMO>nr.

Matrimony : introduced by Fu-hi,
9, 14, 60 ; see also Marriage.

Mau-tun, i.q. Baghatur, "hero,"
an early sovereign of the Hiung-
nu (Huns) : 161, 185; probably
one of King Attila's ancestors,
185-186.

Mayers, W. F. : chronological tables,
7, note 2, 17; on Si-wang-mu,
146.

Ma Yiian (Japanese Bayen), artist :
89.

Mean, Doctrine of the : see Chuno-

YUNO.

Medicine : early efforts in, ascribed
to Shon-nung, 10-11.

Meeting of princes : under Wu-wang,
103 ; under P-wang, 154 ; em-
peror's power to preside over,
delegated to Duke Huan of Ts'i,
207; Huan overrules emperor's
decision by a, 209 ; and ex-
presses his loyalty in another,
209, 218; "the Five Articles"
agreed upon in, 210; presided
over by Duke Won of Tsin,
when the emperor is required to

attend, 216; under Ch'ong-
wang represented on wall paint-
ing, 243; under Li4-wang, 275.

Megalomania, national : 112.

Md[-hi : the Elmperor 1^6 's para-
mour, 43.

Mencius: on Wdn-wang, 68; on
T'ai-wang's migration, 68-69 ;
calls Yu, Confucius, and Ch6u-
kung the " Three Sages, " 137 ; eu-
logises Yii and Ch6u-kung, 138 ;
on "the Five Articles" fixing
principles of government, 210;
criticises Ta-ch'an, 232-233 ;
work bearing his name M(fng-tBlf
255 ; a native of Lu, 274 ; refers
to Li6-tz], 277; opposed to
Yang Chu and Mo Ti, 276, 282 ;
his life, his mother, 282-284;
opposes anti-Confucian spirit
of his time, serves and declines
salary in Ts'i, 286 ; his relations
to King Hui of Liang, sojourn
in Ts'i, Sung and Lu, 287; his
death, 288 ; his vnews on life,
government, and political econ-
omy, 288-289; his method of
arguing, 290-292 ; an educator
in morals, 292-293 ; his political
views, 293-296 ; better expo-
nent of Confucianism than the
master himself, 299.

Merchants : how ranking according
to the Chdu-lif 110; Lau-tzi on,
240.

Meyer and Foy : 196, note 2.

Mi : old family name of the sovereigns
of Ch'u, 189.

Mi, the Duke of : 152.

Miau-tzi (aborigines of Southwest
China) : derive their origin from
the banished San-miau tribes,
86, 196; from P'an-hu, 194.

Micius : see Mo Ti.

Middle Kingdom {chung-4cuo) : origin
of the term, 137.

Migration : of Chinese nation in
prehistoric and legendary period,
8; alleged, from Babylonia to
China, 14-18; from Khotan,
18-20 ; T'an-fu and his people's,
from Pin to Ch6u, see T'an-fu;

ot TkDCUUUM, 71b«tuia, and
Mwii-ti( Irom CcDtral China
to their Ular nXa, 8S; of Von
bartsriuu, 1B3.

MUlet: 123.

Wn, KiDC of Tat : 31S-3I9, 340.

Mmiiten and xlviaen : partiality of
bialonau in aaeribing gn»l
decinona to, 33, 34.

Miniatcr. prime (lo-tMi) : 110-111.

IQraclea: an ill-portendins roulbnT^
tr«e, 48 ; a imiiiaUr nlectttl trf
Bmptror's dream, 53; aeveral,
nwDtionHl in Bamboo Booka.
ft3-A5 ; dteami, vinoiu, etc., in
tuatory ot Chau atate, 370.

Wmm, branv, mlloya of: IM.

Modd emperor lore of Stiti-king:
how orifinated. 33.

MAng Au, Ta'in Ke&eral : 338.

lltes.rb'ang-kOn : one of the " Four
Nobln," dipIonuUo tfeai in
Ta'iti, 317; tunu agaiiut Tiln.
•ervinit hk native itate, Tal,
31A. 321.

JtfMf-iVpi-l'an; 133, note I.

HAugK'o; •« HEHctim.

Man(-tdn (the tord of M6nf } : SS;

Uiftg-Ut: «* HaNnca.

Hont-y : ae* KzcHANuB, HEANa or.

Honopolin. nrigin of the aalt and

iron : 303-30S.
MoDotheian : *m Ood ; S^cwrtca

TO Oon <Hhako^).
Hoon, the : h an object o( worahip.

79.
Mo T! : the philosopher of mutual

love. 380-2H3.

Jtfo-itf .' ■« Un Ti. THE nuuwinna.

llountaina, ^mi : ■■ objecta of
wonhip, 79, 130-132.

HaurainK : ppriod of Ihm ypan', nol
founled ■■ officv by hiilorlana,
81 : ipmt in pn>|iarlm for
dutia ol KovinunpTit, 47 ; Cun-
turiua' reapeet fnr iierwin* in,
3M : Confuclua exB(|t«atM. 33(1 ;

Hu, Duke of Tain: aecording to
Chavanuea, identical with Uu-
tlto-td ot the H-mu^Hnu
legend. ISl ; fourth among the
"Five Leaden," SOfl, 319, 333.

Uulberry tree, an ill- portending ^ 48.

Murder, political : attempted bj
mean* ot unaafe boata. 143.

Hu^ ; inatnimenta of wood and nlk
thread oooatructed by Fu-hi, 9;
the *A4nf. or reed organ, in-
Tented by NQ-kua, 9; coDatmc-
tion of inatrumenta of, leada lo
aystcm ot wnghta and mraeurvaa
^, 23 ; a drum hung before the
EmpproT Bbun^ gate, 33; court
muaiciana and aingen under the
Ch6u dynaaty aelactad from tha
blind, 125; dnuna in niUiUry

approach of enemy, 178 ; Cott-

tuciua impreaaed t^, 343; tt»

o^ UaoNia DBUKa.
Muairiuui. court : 135.
Hu-t^^-tri ("Mu, the Son of

Heaven"): 145.
»u-l-i*n-M-ehyan : 145, 148-149.
Hu-wang, the Emperor; 144-153,

169, 369, 331.
Mythologiral Period : 3-30, S3B.

Nakhunte, Kudur, of the Baby-
loniana: reftrred to Huaog-ti
by De Laoouperie, 17-18.

Namea. clana, and by-namea not
known among the Huna ; 108.

Nan ( = baron) : 96.

Naa^hung: name ot two giatala
referrad to tn the akt-kiitt, alio
in Inacription of 813 B.C., 181.

Nait-a'i-iltv : 130, not* 1.

Nan-tri, the illfeput«] Ducbaaa ot
Wd, 348-347, 348.

Nan-wang. the Emperor: 114-431.
33A, 328, 333

Nan-yUf, Ihr aUlc of; 196, 337.

Needlea : among n n faa ri w of life In
aevenlh rwitury m.c, 304.

Neat-bulldfn : 5, 0. 339.

Nia*-tei-»M ("aeript oi Urda' toM-
printa ") : am WBiTtNO. aar op.

Nkna TTIpaik, tba (M»«v) = W*^

370

INDEX

spond to nine provinces of YG,
36, 90; taken possession of by
Wu-wang, 98; as emblems of
imperial dignity ridiculed by a
vassal, 221 ; history and sym-
bolic power of, described by
Ting-wang, 221-222; seised by
the King of Ts'in, 325 ; loss of,
forfeits title of " Son of Heaven, "
326.
Nobles, the Four : tee Foub Nobles,

THE.

Nobility, the five grades of: regu-
lated by Wu-wang, 98 ; see cdeo
Chit-h6u.

Nomadic life: under Fu-hi, 9-14;
under Huang-ti, 13; of the
Huns, 168.

Nii-kua, the Elmperor: Fu-hi's co-
regent or successor, 9; repairs
vault of heaven, 10.

Oath : legalized by blood of animal,
124, 271.

Oppolzer, T. von : on the Shu-king
eclipse, 41.

Old-Turkish stone inscriptions : 184,
note 1.

Oracles : see Divination.

Origin of Cliinese race : not known,
3-4, 8; oldest names ascribed
to prehistoric period belong to
northwestern China, 4, 5 ; re-
ferred to Babylonia, 14-18; to
Khotan, 18-20.

Ou-yang Siu : on the "Stone Drums
of the Ch6u dynasty," 171.

Ox : the Emperor Shon-nung repre-
sented with head of, 10.

Oxen : said to have been first used
by Huang-ti for drawing carts,
22 ; produced in Ordos territory
and North Shan-si, 122; bag-
gage-cars drawn by, in war, 164 ;
with horses and sheep reared by
the Huns, 168.

Pa-kua, sjTnbols of oldest system of
Chinese philosophy : invention
of, ascribed to Fu-hi, 9; de-
scription of, 59-61 ; as means of
auguration, 118 ; see also I-kino.

Pages : see Sons of thx Empibb.

Pai, or po {"hundred"): as a nu-
merical term denoting totality,
15.

Pairhvrt'ung : 60.

Palace : first, built by Huang-ti, 21 ;
emperor's, during thd Ch6u
dynasty, 114-115.

Pan Ku, historian : 60.

P'an-hu: legendary ancestor of the
Man barbarians, 194.

P'an-k5ng, the Emperor : 53, 82, 83,
100-101, 331.

P'an-ku : first human being, 4, 329.

Paravey, le Chevalier de: cited by
M. Huber as identifjdng Si-
wang-mu with the Queen of
Sheba in 1853, 151, note 2. [I
find that Paravey first wrote on
the subject in 1839 ; see his " Dis-
sertation sur les Amaxones,"
Paris, 1840, p. 16. F. H.]

Pardon : the sovereign's right, 123.

Parker, E. H. : 130.

Parliamentary power, traces of : 124.

Pau, the state of : 171.

Pau-hi : see Fu-Hi.

Pau-shi: an officer with censorial
functions, 116.

Pau Ssi : sultana of Yu-wang, 169,
171-174, 176-177.

Pear-tree, the sweet : symbol of
people's love, 139.

Pedigrees : extended to legendary
emperors, 99, 191, 228.

Pei-jung tribes : 187.

Penal code : that of Ch6u d>Tiasty
comparatively humane, 123.

People's voice, the, in important
decisions : 124.

Pessimism : see Yang Chu.

Pheasants : represented on oldest
bronzes, 88; offered as tribute,
127, 128.

Phenix, the, on bronzes : see Dragon.

Philosophers, minor : 264, 305-308.

Philosophy ; Chinese natural, based
on male and female principles,
69-62; Yii-Zzf, "the Philosopher
Yii," possibly oldest work on,
69, note 1, 192; difficulty of
translating works of, 239-240;

INDEX

371

flouriahiog at time of political
troubles, 262; somo philoso-
phrra' works throw light on, and
reflect spirit of, Contending
SUtes, 264, 276 ; sUtesmen and
diplomats study, 285; applica-
tion of, to affaire of |p>venunent,
205-206; texU of, 305-307;
claamfication of works of, 306;
minor works of, compiled or
added to by later writere, 307;
sef aUo GoNruciANUTi ; Ch(5u-
KrNo; Han-fkT; Kuan-tzj;
Mo Ti ; 8uN Wu ; 80n K'uang ;
T A CIS-re ; Won-wang ; Wu K'l ;
Yang Chu ; Yd-muNO.

Pi; see Gem, the aAcasD.

Pi-kan : kiUed by Ch6u^n, 63.

Pin : residence of the dukes of Ch6u
before T'an-fuli migration, 68,
68, 160.

Pines: 122.

Ping, Duke of Lu : 341 ; aad ICen-
cius, 287.

P'in9<h4hi4c*o-4*an : 133.

Plng-wang, the Emperor : 177, 332.

Plng-yOan-Mhi : one of the "Four
Noblea,"321.

Piton, Ch. : on 8u Tsin aad Chang I,
311, note 1.

Ploughs : of iron in aereoth ocotory
B.C., 204.

P&mrU'au-ytn^: 131.

Poetry, Chinese : difficulty of trana-
latioQ, 230-240; sm aUo 8Wh
KiifoaadK'&YOAN.

Po (scttri): 06.

Po-fu: Yu-wang^ son by hit sul-
tana Pau-«sl, 172.

Po-i, ancestor of the prinees of Tsln :
153.

Po Kl, commander of Tsln: 318-
323 ; besieges Shang-tang, 321 ;
coRunits suicide, 322.

P»-k%^'u4u: 73.

P6-3rang: court aetrooomer under
Yu-wang, 172.

Po-3rO : set li, son of CoifFrciua.

Police functions : 124.

Population : nine ranks of, 1 10 ; cen-
sus of, how taken, 110; has
■hare in important decieioos in

public matten, 124 ; transfer of,
away from original homes, 124;
mixed character in, of boundary
states, 267-268.

Porcelain : sm Pottsbt.

Pottrry : in the East aad in Europe
it has derived modds from
Bhang and Ch6u sacrificial
bronses, 84.

Prayvr by substitute: 103.

Prehistoric lore: 3-7, 235-237.

Pride, Chinese national: origin of,
112.

"Princes of the Empire": sse
Chu-hou.

Products of provinces : 120-122.

Professions, the nine : 1 10.

Provinces: empire divided into,
under Huang-ti, 21 ; nine cre-
ated under Chuan-hQ, 25; nine
under YO, 36, 37; pictorially
represented by Nine Tripods,
00; according to the Ck4u4i,
110-122.

P*u : city in the state of Tsin, now
province of Shan-ei, 212, 213.

Quipu : sss Knot-wbitiko.
Quivers: 164.

Rain, praying for: 36.

Red : declared the national eolor of
the Ch6u dynasty, 08.

Reed stalks : as inetrumeota of divi-
nation, 83.

Revenue, Board of: 113; est aUo

Riee: produced in Yang-eh6tt, 120;
in Ts1ng-eh5u, 121.

Richthofen, Baron F. von : deri%*es
origin of Chinese race fmro
Khotan, 18-20; on Sku^mg,
33; on the Emperor Y\k% en-
gineering works, 34, 38; his
view on the old model eroperom.
33-34; on the Yl^-kumg; hi*
authority in Chinese r esearch
limited, 38.

Ririumin : set Li Lmro-ui^M.

Roasting, the punishment of : 53,
57 and note 1.

Robber Cbl, the story of : 303<^303.

372

INDEX

Roman Orient : inliabitants of, said
by native author to be like
Qiinese, 19.

Rulers, the Five : 12.

Rushes: 121.

Sacks : used for provisions in war, 164.

Sacrifice: leadkig feature in life of
nation during Shang dynasty,
83 ; viands and libations used as
offerings, 84; sacrifice to Qod
(Sfiang-tC), first introduced by
Fu-hi, 9; regulated by Huang-ti,
13, 21 ; neglected by Shau-hau,
24; reorganized by Chuan-hu,
25 ; during the Shang and Ch6u
dynasties, 78-80, 118; claimed
as the emperor's privilege by
King of Ts'in, 326 ; sacrifice to
minor deities, 80-81, 118; see
also Mountains, backed; sac-
rifice to ancestors, 81-83, 118,
177 ; see also Ancestors.

Sacrificial vessels : see Bronzes.

Salt : produced in Yu-ch6u (Chi-li),
122; monopoly created by
Kuan-tzi, 203-205.

San-kiau ("the Three Religions"):
237-238.

San-kuo-chi: 129, note 1.

San-miau tribe : banished by Yau,
identified by some with T'au-t'i6
monster, 85-87 ; supposed ances-
tors of Tangutans, Miau-tzi, and
Tibetans, 86, 196.

SanrTsin (=The Three Tsin States) :
264, 335-336.

San-wei : locality in western Kan-su,
near the northern boundary of
Tibet, 87, 145.

School : established under Ti-k'u,
25; the Duke of Ch6u (Won-
wang) builds an imperial college,
54 ; school at Wu-wang's capi-
tal, 99 ; philosopliical school of
Kui-ku-tzi, 285, 307.

Scythians : possibly Hunnic tribes,
185.

Self-culture : the subject of the
Ta-hio, 254; reconunended by
Mencius, 292.

Sericulture : see Silk.

Servants : rank ^hth in population,
110.

Seven Heroes, the : see Ts'i-btcno.

Sha-ch6u : eastern terminus of tract
known as litp-sha, 147.

Sha-k'iu : one of Ch6u-flin'8 resi-
dences, in the present Chi-li,
67.

Shanrhai-king : 146.

Shan-jung ( = " HiU " Jung) : a
[Mongolic 7] branch of the Huns,

168, 187; Duke Huan of Ts^'s
expedition against, 207.

Shan-yii : title of the Great Khan
of the Huns, 66, 167; aee also
Huns.

Shang, Duke of Sung : 229, 342.

Shang dynasty, the : 47-91 ; 330-
331 ; its records consist chiefly
of emperors' names, 49; its
culture, 71-91 ; causes of its
downfall, 69-70 ; destroyed with
the assistance of Tartar tribes,

169, 183; probably first his-
torical period, 252.

Shang Jung : former minister of
Ch6u-sin, assists Wu-wang in
government, 95.

Shang-tang : city in the state of
Chau, the present Lu-an-fu in
Shan-si, 321.

Shang-ti, "the Supreme Ruler":
see God.

Shau-hau, the Emperor : 24, 329.

Shau-k'ang, the Emperor: 42, 330;
his succeasors, 330.

Shau-kung (= Duke of Shau) :
(1) prime minister to K'ang-
wang, 138 ; his popularity eulo-
gized in the Shi-king, 139 ; min-
ister to Chau-wang, 143 ; first
prince of Yen, 338; (2) prime
minister to Li-wang, advocates
freedom of speech, 154—155 ;
sliields Li-wang 's son, Siian-
wang, against revolutionists and
becomes his minister, 157.

Shau-ti6n : supposed father of Shon-
nung and Huang-ti, 12.

Sheba, Queen of : identified with
Si-wang-mu by Professor Forke,
150-151 ; also by Paravey, 151.

ftiMp: uMd •moDg the Hutn by
childno in the practica of
riding. leS.

flbao-ri mkI K»»-«u : the cndle ol

Chinese dviliiatiao, 4.

8U, PrioM of: 101.

8hl Hu, the Emperor : 130, 138.

6tal-huang-ti : ceuMS work* of Utor*-
ture to be coi»igii«l to obi'
71; calb hinudf "The Firat
^DpeTor, " VI : change* in
tunl life under, prepTed
tune* before him, 270; ehangei
oooditioiia of Und tenure, 298;
hia paternity and nicceHitHi tn
the Tain throne, 324, 327-328,
■w alao CrAmo.

8id-tr-dti: aee Ctcucal CHisAcraaa.

Bk%-^ean: eee Ctcucu. cii>a*CTiits.

aU-ki, ari-ma Ta'itn'a hirtory of
aeriy periods (tranalaled by
£d. ChavaoiMii) : on Huaiig-tl,
7, 13, 13; on eniperora' Set
namee, 17; ite praiane of model
onperon, 3S ; iU chronology
beKiniU'W tmo 841 B.C., Al ;
on ChAu-ain, SD; on culture
o( Shaii)[ period, 70; on 8an-
miau'a baoiahiiient, W; dates
decline ot imperial power from
Cbau-wang, 143; on the Duke
ti Mi'* three wive*, 1S3; on the
name Ti Vn-mAu ; lUent on
SOaD-wang^ wan against the
Huna, IM; on early hiatory
aod life of the Huna, 1A7-170;
cm Yu-wang and Pau ad. 172 ;
Ipwrea rrlipae of 776 I.e., 170 ;
on emperor** duty to aacrifire
U> aoRwtora, 177 : dal^ deray
of imperial authority from P'inn-
wang, 178 ; on the genealogy of
Huaaic aovmlKns, 180; on
C3wu-wang'> death. 189; on
the princw of Cb'u, II>1-1I>2;
oo the deaeeadanta of Kuan-
tri. 30S; on Lau-t«l, 231, 240:
wentiola the 5un-(af. 234; ila
chapter on CVuifucian Diariplra.
34V; throwe light on hiitorv
<■( TVt— -^-g (Halaa, 304 ; LU
hl*tot7 of the Cbau alala, aOB-

373 ; oa Hi«n-wang. 37S ; reten
to Kui-ku-tii aa a teacher, 308;
on 8u Tatn, 309, 310, 313; on
Priaoe I-jte^ Bight from Haa-
tan, 324.

S)ar*ir<t. or " Book of Odes " : ballad
referring to H6u-t*i, 20; con-
taina do mention of Ysu and
Bhun, 6S; portioua of, among
the oldest producta of Chinese
literature, 50 ; throws light on
Shang culture. 74. 70; oldest
ode in, referred to eighth century
I.e., 70; allegorical poem aa-
eribed to Ch0u-kung, lOA; the
term " Itiddle Kingdom " occur*
in. 137; ode on the "Sweet
Pear Tree." 130; many of its
aatirical poama refer to I*-waiig.
1113; lU aecount of a battle
against the Hum. 1S8-100;
ode ref wring to WAn-wang'*
wars against the Huns, 101 ;
extract from Lagge'b tranala-
tion of ^(louanl Biot^ anaiyri*
of ode* throwing light on mode
of warfare, 103-100; compared
to Homeric epics as a source of
history, lOS; rhymes ot. throw
light on ancient sound* of th*
language, 107 ; echpse men-
tioned in, confirmed bjr W**lim
MtroDomer*. 173-174 ; edited
by ConfudiM, 3&3; higbaet in
estimation amoog work* o(
poetry. 310.

Ships and boats: under Huang-ti,
33; soulh-polnling. allusian la,
during Tain dynasty, 130; boat
usnl for political murdsr, 143.

ShOo. yaniutaof: IflV, 172, 177.

Sk6tt-%-lcinf : 80.

8h«a-kua. *oeyrlop«di*( : 133, 130.

ShAn-nung, the Empsrori 10, 33S;
his appearance ; introduces field
labor and botany. 10 ; descend-
ants of, appointed flef-hokler*
under Wu-wang, H; his time
coinrldH with stone age, 330.

.UAfi-nuiVP^B-K'aw^Hf.- 10-11.

yb>^-i«ng-wang, the Emperv : 313,
833.

374

INDEX

Shdng, the reed organ : inTeated by
Na-kua, 9.

Schopenhauer's pesrimiem compared
with Yang Ghu's: 270.

Sh6u-oh'un, an eastern capital of
the state of Gh'u : m$ Map.

Shu (=s Sel-ch'uan) : oonquered by
Tliln, 314.

8hu4nng ("the Book of History *'):
its record of Yau and Shun a
"BCirror of Princes/' 29; early
knowledge of astronomy ben*
trayed in, throws doubt on the
tradition, 30; its account of
Shun, 31 ; of Y<i, 82-38; oldest
source of pre-Oonf udan history,
83; its c(»npilation ascribed
to Confuohis, 83, 251-252; its
tradition differs from that of
the Bamboo Books, 51; P'an-
kong's views on government re-
corded in, 52; suspicious for
periods preceding Ch6u-«in, 55-
56, 76-77; quotes names of
foreign tribes assisting Wu-
wang, 69-70; as a source for
knowledge of cultural life before
Ch6u dynasty, 76; contains
traces of monotheism, 78-80;
of cult of minor deities, 80;
of ancestor worship, 81-83; of
sacrificial service, 83; P'an-
kong's argument why the nation
should be loyal to him, 100-101 ;
Ch6u-kung's ideas about God,
one's ancestors, and one's own
merit, 101-102 ; Ch6u-kung'8
prayer for Wu-wang's recovery,
102-103; Ch'ong-wang's speech
appointing Wei-ta prince of
Sung, 106-107; contains two
chapters on the fundamental in>
stitutions of government, 107 ;
contains but scanty details on
Mu-wang, 144 ; the name K'un-
lun first cited in, 145; the Jo-
shui, or "Weak Water," men-
tioned in, 147 ; mainly a series
of speeches embodying political
wisdom, 156, 178; closes its
accoimt of Ch6u emp>erors with
P'ing-wang; gap in previous

history^ 178; Ckmfiiciiai' con-
nection with, 251-252; some
religious views expressed in,
foreign to Confucian school,
253 ; Menciiu' faith in, 288.
Shu^iang Ho, father of Ooofueius:

9iu-yQ, CJhVing-waagVi brother: in-
verted with Ttoin, 266, 834.

8hvi4nng^dnt: 127.

Shun, the Emperor: 31-32, 329;
mippoeed descendant of Ghuan-
hCk, 25; selected aa emperor
from the masses, 31; his love
of Justice, 32 ; banishes Kun and
appoints Yft to regulate dduge,
82; his title Yu-yA, 32; prac-
tised divination, 83; banbhed
certain tribes, or personages,
85; visited by Si-wang-mu,
151 ; Po I, minister under, sup-
posed ancestor of princes of
Ts'in, 153; wall painting of,
243 ; as represented in Shu-king,
251 ; a descendant of, invested
with Ch'on by Wu-wang, 343;
8ee also Yau ANn Shux.

Shim-wei (Shun-3ru) : name, or title,
of eitrliest chiefs of the Huns,
possibly standing for Shan-yii,
167.

Si-<5h6u (the "Western Ch6u"):
so-called before P'ing-wang, 179.

Si-ling, the Lady of : 22.

Si-po, "Chief of the West": see

WoN-WANO.

Si-wang-mu, legend of: 144-151.

Siang, Duke of Sung : 219, 342.

Siang, Duke of Tsin : 219, 335.

Siang, King of Ts'i : 319, 340.

Siang-wang, the Emperor : 218, 332.

Siau-kia, the Emperor : 48, 330.

Sxau'Uhi ("SmaU Historian") : 125.

Si6-yen-t'o : Bee Sir-Tardush.

Si^nr4aHnrchuA:A'ho-'pUn : a collec-
tion of philosophical texts, 305-
306.

Silk: Fu-hi constructs musical in-
struments of, 9; introduction
of, by Lei-tsu, 22, 23; pro-
duced under government super-
vision during the Ch6u dynasty.

INDEX

375

110; brocades of, a trade
monopoly during the lian dy-
nasty, 117; produced in YU-
ch6u, 121 ; textures of, produced
in Ping-ch6u, 122 ; axle-trees of
chariots and bows covered with,
1(M ; torn in quantities to please
a woman, 172.

Island, the bronae tripod of:
101.

-k<in: one of the "Four
Nobles," 821 ; raises siege of
Han-tan, 822; unsuccessful in
last attempt to break the power
of Ts'in, 328.

8in-po : minister under Chuang-
wang, 201.

Singers, court : 125.

Sb^-Tardush : identical with the 8i4^
3ren-t'o tribes of Chinese his-
torians, 184, note 1.

"&Lx SUtM." the (Yen, Chau, Han,
Wei, Tsl, and ai*u) : in aUi-
ance against Ts'in, 310; ex-
clude Tsln from Han-ku Pass,
313; riding on horseback not
customary before time of, 273.

Bkins : produced in King-ch6u or
Ch'u, 121, 214.

Skull of enemy used as drinking
vcHel: 270-272.

Soldiers enlisted for hunting pur-
poses : 119.

Son of Heaven : the emperor's title
from high antiquity, W^-96.

Sons of the Empire (Inio-tef) : 110,
117.

Sophistn, Chinese : 307-308.

Sounds, ancient, of Chinese syllables :
7, 107.

South-pointing: charioU, 127, 135;
shi|is, 130, 135; needle, see
Maainkks' Compass.

Spades : of iron in seventh century
B.C., 2f>4.

Speeches in historical texts : 155-
150.

Speech, liberty of : advocated, 155.

Spelling of C?hinese words : method
a<lopted in present work, xv-xx,
217. note 1.

Spirits: of tha departed supposed

to affect lives of descendants,
81-82, 100-102; of good sov-
ereigns and ministers live in
heaven, 82 ; sm aUo ANCKarou ;
Heavkn.

Spring, Mandarin of (ch'uhrkuan) :
113, 117-119, 124.

Ssl-ch'uan province : supposed home
of the Emperor YQ, 33; con-
quered by Ts'in, 314.

8H-hau: see Foum NoBLia, tbb.

8H-kUn ( = public remonstratora) :
110.

SH-Jk'u-ls'ao f i- sAi i- f so-yon4syng-ww;
see TsuNG-MC.

8tf-ma Kuang, historian : 204, 200,
208.

8sl-ma Tsl^n : ses BmUki.

8H-*hl (= court instructors): 110.

SH^u (" Four Books ") : 251, 358-
255.

Stars, the : as objects of worship, 79.

Statistics: early traces of n»ethod
in, 119-123, 203-206; ses aUo
KvAS-ra.

Steppe, northern: Ping-chOu and
Yung-ch6u, nearest tcrritorisi
to, 122.

Stone age, the, in China : 230.

Stone I>rums, the, of the ChOo
dynasty : 170.

Suoceasion, order of: Huang-ti be-
comes emperor by his ability,
12 ; the eldest bom dkregarded,
24; election from another fam-
ily, 25, 34 ; e mp e ru c deposed by
the people, 20; Yau elected to
s\icceed his deposed step-brother,
20 ; throne offered to a minister,
and then to Shun, a man of tlie
people, 31 ; Ytl selected on ac-
count of his ability, 34 ; reluc-
tantly appoints his son, 38-39;
succession regulated by Ood,
79-80; by the king's ancestors,
81-82; profile's share in decid-
ing succession to heirUiMi thrones,
124; rightful heir excluded
fmm throne by uncle as usurper,
153. 218; legitimate, insisted
on by miniitter against e mp et m *»
will, 201; crowll-princ•^^ so*

[orced ngainst nnperor'n wish
under preaaure of powerful
VBBBikl, 209; five wna of five
wiv« disputing over throoe of
Tb'i, 211; Duke Won of Tain
induoed by ruse of his followers
to accept, S14; diHput«d by
younger brothers, 333, 263.

Bttn KViaug, philosopher: governor
in Ch'u. 326; teachar of Han-
(el-tn lutd Li asi, 320.

BQHi, Qiieea Dowager and Regent of
Tala : 317. 319.

BDWQ, KidgofTs'i: 340; hiarelationfl
to Mencius, 386.

SBn-wnng, the Emperor: 187-171,
332.

OU uhiui in Kbd-su : supposed sent
of K-wftug-mu, 150.

Bu-chAu (K&n-au) : 160.

Bu Ts^, stateanuui: pupil of Eui-
ku-td, 285; hia career. 308-3 U.

Sui dynasty : claesiSoation of im*
pciial library of, imitatwl by
Chinese writers, 300,

aui-i5n: the Prometheua of the
Chinese, 6, 329; preduceeeor of
Fu-lii, 8.

Sununer, Mandarin of (hia-kuan) :
113, 119-123.

3un-M .- see Sun Wti.

Sun Wu, military leader and philoso-
pher : 234.

SUD, the : as an objeet of wanihip, 79.

Svng-thl: 131.

Sung-thu: 139, 130.

Superior Han, the : according to
Confucius, 239, 251, 2fi6; ac-
cording to Lau-tii, 240.

Torkio ("The Great Learning"):
26, note 1, 254.

Ta-ld ; tho Emperor ChOu-ein 'a con-
sort, brought away as a captive,
fi4; her licentiouBDBaa and cru-
elty, 56~S7; did not invent
punishment of roasting, G7.
note 1 ; ruled her huaboad, S6,
6S; her death, efi.

To-Uot (= prime minister) ; 110-111.

Ta-tB'in (Syria) : 19, 148.

TMya : let YB.

t known among

Taboo of names : n
the Huns, 168.
T 'u-hau : (M Fu-Bi. [

T'ai-kia, the Emperor: 47, 330.
T'ai-k'ang, the Emperor: 39, 330.
T'ai-kong, the Emperor: 48, 330.
T'ai-kuug Sl:»ng : invested with
Wu-wang, 339.

of princes

T'fti-m6u, the E

T'ai-po : legendary ai
of Wu. 347.

T 'aj-sban : sacred mountain in Shan-
tung, 9. 122,

T'ai-wang: «« T'ak-*t).

T 'ai-yfiau : Huns driven bank M
far B8, under SOaD-waog, 160,
161; part of the state of TMn,
312.

Tan, Duke of Ch6u : ere Caov-smta.

Tan-yang : old capital of Ous state
of Ch'u, 190.

T'aa-fu (T-ai-wang. or Ku-kung) :
W6n-wang 's grandfather. 57-58,
331 ; as a vassal of the Huns
is caused by their oppresaiona
to emigrate." 67-58, 68'«9, 169;
as cliief ancealor of the Ch6u
emperors is addressed by Ch6u-
kung ID prayer, 103 ; his eldest
aon, T'ai'po, supposed ancestor
of sovereigns of Wu, 347.

T'ang, "the Completer." or "the
Successful": »ee Cn'oNO-r'ANa.

r'ang-ihv: 96.

Tangutans (K 'iang) : derive their
origin from the San^niau tribe,
originally in central China, 80,
196; win battle agunst S&an-
wang, 158.

Tartarizatiun of Chinese culture :
368-273.

Tau. King of Ch'u : 274, 337.

rou ("the word"): in the Taitti-
king, 239; Professor Gilee on,
300.

Tau-te-king: sop Lau-tii.

TBuisrD : an indigenous retigioo, 338 ;
SM aUa TacIhis,

Tauists : cultivate Si-wang-mu leg-
eoda, 146 ; Confuoianisla Bnd,
how difTcrint;, 299 ; ■« aim
CHnifio-Tzi; KtJAN Yin; Km-

su-nt, L&tt>TtI; Lrf-ni; W6n-
■ralt.

T'au Hung-king, KhoUr : 308,

T'au-t^4, the mooater : a native
InvRition, H-87 ; held to be
ideotical with San-miau tribe,
8S; poMbly the Tibetan maatiff,
87.

Taxes; amount of, fixed by Han-
dariD of Heaves, 114; coUecled
by Mandarin of Earth, 110; on
nit and iron, 203-205; on aipi-
cultun, 390 ; a3nt«ins ot railing,
397-398.

Tea Stem*: let CrnJCAi. chamao-

Testurea of cott«n (vegetable fiber)
aodrilk; 133.

nuoder pattern (M-wAi) ; doiwd
from hieroglyphic tor " thunder,"
88.89; u»d a* an oroaoieat f or
filling-in purpoaea ; lymbolio
meaning, 89.

TburAci, John ot: hie Uat ol King
Atlila'a anoeetora, 185, 190.

Tl (northfrn barbarian*, Huna) ; 108 ;
nfemd to in Tto-dHtait, IftS,
188; Duka WOn of Til among
the. 313.

Ti-chI, the Emperor: 35, 36, 830.

r^^Hanf; aM TutKcatauL em-

"n-k-i, the ^peror: 89. 330.
Tt-kSi. the Bmperor; 35, 839;

father of Yau, aneeirtor of Shang

and Cb4u emperor*. 30.
Il-kal, the Emperor : ■■• Kia.
Tl-^ang, the Emperor: 41, S90.
Ttau-chKChaldea) : 148.
Hbetane : auppoeed deacendanta of

the San-miau tribe. 80.
7*140. the. family : uaurpen in Tt\

273, 33D, 340.
TVo Cli'ang, miniatrr in Tat : 373.
TVn Ho, uaurper In Tal : 373. 340.
T'Utt-ehu-ltiini (- Roman CatboU-

rSAt-ivaa ,- aM Ubavbn, MaHMMM

EX 377

T'Uit-M: MO 8o)t or Bbavbt.

Tin ; produced in YangrcbOu prov-
ince, lao.

Ting, Duke of Lu : 344-340, 841.

Ting-wang, the Emperor : 330, 333.

Tithe, levied on harvnt* : 397-398.

Tonjukuk, inacription of: 184, note
1.

T'Oug, the alata of : 200.

Tortoiae abelh : aa inatnunenta of
divination, 83. 103, 103. 118.

l^affic, land and water : regulated
under Uuaog-ti, 23.

Tranelation of poetry and philo-
aophieal teiU : 330-340.

Traveler, the Oreat and t^ Bmall :
I34-13S.

Traveliuii philoaopheia : 385.

Tribute (htnir) : 113.

Tripod*, U>e Nino; aw T

T*ai Ya ; •** Td-o.

Ta'al, the BtBt« of : Duka Huan of
Ti^'a expedition against, 308;
ila fir*t prince a bnttber of Wu-
wang; prinrea of, 846-340;
annexed by Ch 'u, 840.
jig-kil^, atata historian : reputed
Inventor of the art of vritiag,
30-31.

u, the atata of : on route from
T**! to ChM. 314 ; Wu-waim in-
vBtle hi* brother Chdn-to with,
343; princea of, S43-444; an-
nexwlbySung, S44.

Tal, the slate of : beeomM powerful
under PIng-wang, 178; as an
Inland state could not eitecul,
188 ; rise of, to great power ; Ita
Duk* Huan. flrst of the " Hva
Leader*," and hia minialer Kuan-
td, aOI-311, 317-318, 395; lU
lalt and iron biduatries. 304-
205 ; Ihika Wte of Tain as an
exile In. 313-314; on sida of
Tain In war with ChHi. 317;
under Duke Huan^ auceeasors,
318-310; Duke Chau of Lu an
exile In, with ConfurliM, 343-
344; its court had good muaie.
343; ita )raluu>y of CDoturltM*
good govwaiDsdt tn Lu, 340;

378

INDEX

»f

Of til0 "^

states, 266; ohsage of dynasty,
the T16n Ismily, 2178; sssiimes
tiUe of "Kng,'' but ramains
loyal to ^emperoTi 276» 816;
prinoes d, known for huciiry,
277, note 1; Menoiiis in, 2^,
287; i^ans oonquest of Ten,
287; i^DS oonf adoration against
Tiln, 810; attacka Caiau^ 818;
8u Titn aswasrinated in, 814;
IfAni^ltfig-kOtty natiye of,
takes servSoe in Ta'Uk and ra-
turns to, 817; the title of
''Emperor" proposed for Sng
IGn of, 818-819; oonquen
Sung, 810; snffeis defeat by
Yen and its allies, 810; annexed
by Tsln, 828» 840; prinees of,
880-840.

T9'i4Uung: the sewi powerful ooo-
tending states, 266.

Ta'Un-han^ahu : 66.

Ts^4n-m6u: battle-field, near the
present Liau-ch6u, Shan-si, 158.

Tsin, the state of : becomes powerful
under P'ing-wang, 178; causes
of its growth, 182, 188, 212 ; its
atuation, 183; its Duke Won
one of the "Five Leaders," 206,
211-217, 219; a son of Wu-
wang's invested with, 212, 266,
334; its Duke Hi^n, 212; de-
feats Ch'u in the battle of
Ch'ong-p'u, 216; Chau Ts'ui
and Chau Tun ministers in,
220, 269; defeated by Ch'u,
223 ; six grandees of, wrangling
for supremacy, 263; the fami-
lies of Han, Chau, and We!
become powerful in, 263 ; break-
ing up of, into three states, 264 ;
its former territory finally an-
nexed by Ts'in, 328, 335-386;
princes of, 334-335.

Ts'in, the state of : Duke Mu of, held
to be the Mu-wang of the Si-
wang-mu legend, 151 ; Fei-ta[,
a dealer in horses, elevated to
rank of prince of, 153 ; becomes
powerful under P'ing-wang, 178 ;
causes of its growth, 182, 188;

Iti flitiiatio&« 188; its Duke Mu
one of tbe ''Fiye Leaders," 206,
210; interferes with au ece s si on
in Trin, 218, 216; on side of
IMn in war with CSiHi, 216; one
ol tbe ''Seven Heroes" states,
260; its boundaries eonatantly
eacteDdin8» 260-287; non^ail-
nese diameter of, 207-268, 276;
eommon deeoent of its prinoes
irith those of Chau, 200; daims
faesemony among Contending
Bttttes; TCssrded as baritiarian
oountiy by Chinese, 275 ; Chang
I ndnister in, 280, 812; TWIn
and Antt-Tslia, tbe nudn poUli-
oal teotions in fourth oe n tury
B.O., 800; sends Ghang I on a
aneeessful miselon to Ch'u, 812,
816; oonfedsration against, bro-
ksn up by Kung-sun Yen, 818;
Chang I recalled to; conquers
Shu (Ssl-ch'uan), 314 ; strongest
state long before being styled
kingdom in 325 B.C., 314;
Kings Hui-w5n and Wu of, 316 ;
Chang I leaves, for want of ap-
preciation ; war with Han, 316 ;
Kmg Chau-siang, 317-325;
regency of Queen Dowager,
317-320; WeS. Jan, commander
in, 317; and chancellor, 318-
320; reverses in war with Ts^
Han, and Wdi, 317-318 ; Po K%
commander in, 318-322; wins
great battle at I-k'ii^; title of
" £^peror " proposed for king of,
318; defeats Chau and Ch'u,
conquers city of Ying and de-
stroys I-ling; Wd[ Jan's rule in,
overthrown, 319; King Chau-
siang sole regent with Fan Tsu
as chancellor, 320-323; de-
feats Chau at Shang-tang, 321 ;
the ** Four Nobles " work against,
321-326 ; besieges Han-tan and
is defeated, 322 ; loses its great^-
est general by Fan Tsil's jeal-
ousy, 322-323; Prince I-j6n of,
and Lu Pu-w^, 323-328; an-
nexes imperial dominion and
sacred tripods, 325; annexes

INDEX

379

Han; King ChAU-si&ng offers
■Acrifice to 8hang-ti in lieu of
emperor, 326; ita final struggle
for 8upr«ne power with Lil
Pu-wei •• prime minister, 327-
328; deposes last prince of the
Ch6u dynasty and annexcss
federal states ; Cbong ( -> Shi-
huang-ti), king of, 328; princes
of, 332-334.
Tsing, Duke of Tsin: loses his
throne to the princes of Wei,
Han, and Chau, 335.

Tsing : personal name of SQan-wang,
157, 150.

Tting (" well "), the : system of taxa-
Uon. 206-297.

Ts'ing-ch6u province : 121.

Tsoug Ts'an, disciple of Confucius :
author of f/iau-JInny, 240 ; teacher
of Wu K% 274.

Tmy-€huan, commentary on the
Ch*uip4M*xu: contains an expla-
nation of the name T'au-fi^, 85 ;
principal source for the Ch'un-
U'iu period, 17^181, 182, 107,
253; on foreign tribes (Jung,
Ti. etc.), 185, 187; describes
battle with foreign tribes, 187-
188; contains history of the
"Five Leaders," 206; Cti'dng-
wang*^ mistake as to duration
of dynasty reproduced in, su|>-
ports trustwortliiness of, 222;
extends beyond Confticius 'death,
202.

TW-klu Ming: supposed author of
the T§(xhuan, 170.

Tsu4, the Emperor : 40, 331.

Tmmi^Ang, the term : 307.

Tsung4i-yan»en, the: 111.

TtuHQ-^u: 133, note 1, 148-140.

Tu, brother of Wu-wang: investe<l
with Ts'at, 345.

Tuao-mu Bhu : 277.

Tuan-mu Tsl : set TtT>Kr?fa.

Tung-ch6u, the "Eastern Ch6u":
soK>alled since PIng-wang. 170.

Tiiiig-ch6u-kiin : the last nominal
regent of the Ch6u dominion,
325, 326, 332.

Tf mg kuofi^ *au-kumg^ : 125.

Tung-tu: eastern capital of Ch6u

emperors, 177.
T*ung-ki^n4cang-^u: 264-266, 268,

326.
TOrk, the Turks of Central Asia:

identical with the T*u-kQ« of the

Chinese, 184, note 1.
Turkestan, Eastern : 18-10, 01, 140-

150, 151.
Turkish : the language of the Hun^,

66, 70, 184, note 1.
Turkish word, the oldest, on record :

aee King-lu.
Twelve Branches: set Cyclical

CHARACTKIUI.

Ttf (-> viscount) : 08.

Tii-ch'an, the prudent minister of

Cliong: 232.
rrf-«Af-l'un^-An>n: see T*uno-ukn-

KANG-MU.

Ttf-kung : supposed author of the

Yuf-tMii^-^thu, 234; disciple of

Confucius, 240.
Ti{-lu, Confucius' favorite disciple:

248-240.
Ti{-o, disciple of Confucius : 250.
rtf-sAu-pai-cAuny, a collection of

philcisophical texts : 306.
Til-va : sf« TsoNo Tb'an.
Til-yiian, disciple of Confucius:

240.

Uigurs (Kau-kO) : described by the
(^unese as offshoots of the
Iliung-nu, 184, note 1 ; the T*unif-
kiin-kanf^mu translated intt)
thcnr langtuige, 264-265.

Uniforms : devised by Huang-ti, 23 ;
embmitlered beaste and binU
on, introduced by Hhau-hau. 24 ,
of the Hons of the Empire, 117 ;
of soldiers in war, 165.

Varnish: 121.

Vegetarian diet in primeval times : 6.

V^irtue rewarded in future life : 82.

Wai-i<\n, the Emperor: 40, 830.

Wai-shi ("Historian of foreign na-
tions and ancient rulers") : 125.

Wai-wu'pu, the lioard of Foreign
Affairs, 111, note 1.

Wall, the Great: a, comparati^y
modem Blructure. 37, 77.

Wung Fu, archtt-ologist : 73.

Wang Ho, geaenl of Ts'ia : 332.

Wang Hti : lee Kct-KIT-tiS.

War : Board or, 113, 119-123 ;
people's ahsre in deciaioo on
defenaive, 124; meUiods and
outfit of, 162-166; May and
June the ugual season for, \&i-
165; priaoaera of, punished as
rebels by cutting off left ear,
165, 16S ; Chinese and Hunnic
methods of, compared, 166, 187 ;
tee also Aruv ; BAm.GB ; CuAn-
lOTS; HoBSEB ; UiTNa ; UuTtrraa ;
Wl:Ai^>sa.

Walters, T. : on T»I-*h'aii, 233.

Weapons: bows, arrows, swords,
and lances sBcribcd ta HuADg-ti,
32; hieroglyphics for, occur on
vessels of theShang dynaafy, 75 ;
alloys of brouie weapons pre-
Boribed according to the Chdv-li,
126 ; same weapons used in war
aa in hunting, 162, 164; practice
of archery. 165; of the Huns,
168 ; hatebeM made of iron in
aeventh century B.C., 204 ; swords
of bronie and iron, 235 ; during
the stone, jade, bronze, and :
ages, 236.

Weaving : ace Dbess.

We!, the River : 64. 122.

Wei, the state of (Wei of Tun, also
called Liang) : beginnings, 263;
recognised as a feudal state, 204 ;
one of the "Seven Heroes"
states, 266 ; supporta the usurp-
er T'i*Q Ho as Duke of Ta"
273; Wu K'i takes service i
274; Chang I, a native of, and
miikister in, 28d; King Hu
with MeniiuB

I of I

287;

joins confederation against Ts'i
310; Chang I returns to, 312;
Kung-BunYcn, a native of, per-
suades Ills king to attack Chau,
313; Chang I chancellor of, 314 ;
kiugdora since 370 B.C., 315;
defeated by Ta'in in battle of

I-k'ii^, 318; Fan TfH a d

of, 320; Prince Wu-ki of, 321;

at the head of five states tria

to cheek, but dnatly is annexed J

by, Is'in, 326, 335; princes of, \

335.

W^, the state of [not to be coo-
founded with Wei of l^in, 273]:
bad treatment in, of Duke
W6n of Tsin, 213; Duke
Ling of, bis lascivious wife and
C-ontuciua, 246-247; Confuciua'
second eojoum In, 248; Wu K^,
military leader, a native of,
273-274 ; its princes reduced in
rank, 315; Wu-wang"a brothei
Fong invested with, 346; only
state surviving creation of 81^ '
buong-ii 'b empire, 347 ; priocta I
of, 34S-347. 1

W(i, Viscount of ; see WeI-^tw. ^

Wei Jan, commander and chancel-
lor in Ts'in: 317-320; plana
coronation of King of Ts'in aa
emperor, 318; fears itinerant
politicians and excludes them
from Ta'm, 320 ; hLi fall, 319-320.

Wei-li6-wang, the Emperor : 263-
273, 332.

Wd-tzi (Ki) : joins Wu-wang^
forces, 63; appointed prince of
Sung, 106, 341-342.

Weights and meaaureH ; system of,
derived from efforts in

inga

deal ii

._t«, 22, :

Western Ch6u ;

WinUr, Mandarin of (tunj;.ituan) :
113, 126-126.

Wives : rank eeventli in population,
110.

Wizards, cotut : duties include the
denunciation of subjeels heard
speaking disreapectfully of sov-
ereign, 155.

Wolves, wliitp : presented as tribute
to Mu-wang, 169.

Woman's position and dutiee ac-
cording to the mother of Men-

WSn, Uijte of T'ong : 300.
Won, Duke of TsLn ( - Ch ■ung-ir) :
third of the "FivB Leaders,':

INDEX

381

206, 211-217, 335; aasista em-
peror in fighting the Jung tmr-
bariAns, 210; Chau Tsui, one
of his p*rtiMtns, shared hia exile,
213, 220, 269.

WdnUH ("the Philosopher W6ii ") :
306-307.

Wdn-wang, Duke of Ch6u : inei-
dents of his life quoted from
Hamboo Books, 63-65; his
career as Duke of Ch6u, 57-62,
331 ; his sons, 58 ; remonstrates
against Ch6u-ain's cruelty; his
imprisonment, and authorship of
the i-king, 59 ; his rehabilitation
and death, 62; serves the Kun
barbarians, 68; defeats them,
70, 160 ; builds his capital Fdng,
00; Ch6u-kung's prayer ad-
dressed to, 103 ; offered a white
pheasant by foreign tribe, 128;
greatly admired by Mu-wang,
144.

Woodmen (foresters) : how ranking
in population, 110.

Works, Board of: 113, 125-126.

World, the (riM-Aia) - China : 112.

Writing, art of: knot-writing as-
cribed to 8ui-j6n, 6; replaced
by hieroglyphics under Fu-hi,
0; Ts'ang-ki^ imiUtcs birds'
footprints, 20-21 ; oldest ma-
terials: bamboo boards, brush,
and varnish, 20, 21, 50; com-
plaints to emperor written on
boards, 31 ; edicts on bamboo
tablets, 163; no writing among
Huns. 168.

Wu, King of C'hHj : see Hnmo Txjfto.

Wu, King of Tn'in : 316. 333.

Wu (Hoochow) : eastern capital of
the state of Ch'u, 322.

Wu, the state of: situation, 227;
its king, Ho-lu, removes capital
to Soorhow, 233; annexed by
YO^. 234, 261-262, 348 ; T'ai-po.
son of T'an-fu, supposed an-
cestor of sovereigns of, 347 ;
Princes of, 347-348.

Wu-chl-«han tombs : stone sculp-
tures of, contain image of Fu-hi,
2.

Wu-chung tribes : 187.

Wu-ki, Prince of Wei : ssi 8iK-LUfO-
k{jn.

Wu Kl, philoeopher, military leader
and minister : 274.

Wu4nng ("Five Canons'^ : 251-258.

Wu-k5ng, Ch6u-sin'b son : appointed
King of Corea, 06; intrigues
against Ch6u-kung, 104 ; sup-
ports rebellion, but is made
prisoner and killed, 104, 106.

Wu-ling, King of Chau : 336; wears
Tartar dress and introduces
cavalry, 272, 316.

Wu4ung: see FrvK DmAooNS.

ITu-pa (- the " Five Leaders") : 206.

Wu-sQ : 400 Chau Siano-tu.

Wu-Uu-td. artist: 140.

Wu-ti, the Han Emperor : 146.

Wu-ti: see Five Ri7i.ks8, the.

Wu-ting (Kau-tsung), the Emperor:
53, 331.

Wu-Ung, the Emperor: T'ai-kia'b
son, 48, 330.

Wu-Uf: see Wu K*l.

Wu-jfQ^h*un-U'iu : 234.

Wu-wang : Duke of Ch5u and first
emperor of the Ch6u djmasty,
second son of Wdn-wang, 58,
331; liberates his father by a
ruse, 62; assembles army to
fight Ch6uHun, explaining his
moti\*es in several speeches, 63-
65; defeaU Ch6u-sin, 65, 160;
as King of Ch6u, 05-103, 831 ;
his title, 06-07 ; secures posses-
sion of the Nine Tripods. 08,
221 ; appoints descendants of
old emperors and his brothers
fief-holders, 00-100; his illness^
102-103; greatly admired by
llu-wang. 144 ; the unequaled
sovereign of the (l)6u dynssty,
178; one of his sons Invested
with Tsin. 212. 834; Invests
T'ai-kung Bhang with Tsl. 330;
Duke Hu with Ch'dn. 343; his
brother (l)6n-to with TB*aa,
343 ; his brother Tu first Prines
of Ts'ai. 346.

ITu-tfW ("non-action." ^'Inaetioo") :
Lau-tsI on, 230, 301.

W]4ie, A.: on devUtion of mag-
netic needle, 131 ; on the Mu-
fUn-lzI-rhuan, 116; on
pliilDBapbet Yti, 193. not
OD the T'wtf-kUn-ltanfOitt, 265,

YBag-ch6u province : 120.

Yaikg Chii, Uio philoaopher : placed in
p-onlra^t vith Ch6u-kuiig by
MeiicitiB, 138; his teachinfts
bnaed on egotism, 27B-279 :
BpurioUB chapter ia Chuang-ttI
quoiea bis views. 303.

YuiB-til OT Kiang River : its length,
38-37; itn name, 120; Chau-
yang crOBaiag the, 143, 139;
state of King on the, ITi.

Y»tl, the Emperor: son ot "H-kM.
26, 329 ; his cliaracter described
in the Shu-king. 29, 251 ; the
deluge during his reign, 31, 3d;
tJLXation under, 297.

Yau and Shun : the most popular
names in Chinese history. 26 ;
held up an models of good rulers ;
guided by the advice of their
ministers, 33 ; legendary crea-
tions, 56—56; ancestor worship
ascribed to, 81 ; descendants of,
appointed Gef-holders under Wu-
wang, 90 ; wall-painting repre-
senting, 213; as viewed by
Yang Chu, 27S; Henciua a
believer in, 288.

Yau Hing, the Elmperor ; 130, 135.

r<-m*-tidu(= Protestantism): 238.

Yellow River ; overflow ot, see
Deluqe ; its length, 3Q ; causes
change of capitals. 49, 62; runs
into Quit of Chi-li, 122; re-
puted source of, in Karakorum
range, IIG ; valley of, hunting
ground of Chinese and indig-
enous hordes, 162.

Yen, Duke ot Sung : conGrmed as
king, 315, 342.

Yen, mother ot Confucius: 229.

Yen, the stats ot: causes of its
growth, 188; relieved by Duke
Huan of Ts'i from attacks of
Shan-jUDg, 207i ona ot tlie

"Seven HeroM" atato, 30t;
occupied by Ts'i, 2S7; its diika
persuaded by 8u Tsln to join
confederation against Tain,
310; Su Ts^in minister in, 314;
kingdom since 333 s.c, 3Ul;
forms coalition against Tsl;
victorious by its general Yo I,
319; annexed liy Ta'in, 339;
Princes ot, 338-339.

Yen-/a: see Balt.

Yen Hui : see TbT-tijan.

Yen-ti : see Snas-nvtia.

Yin and Yang : the female and nub
principles in Chinese natutil
pliilosophy, 60-61.

Yin dynsflty ; *ea Shako dtnastt.

Yin, Prince of ; gencraJisaimo undw
Chung-k'ang, 39.

Yin Ki-fu : general under SfioD-wang,
159-161.

Yin-li epoch : 5, 6, 329.

Ying : from 704 to 24S B.C., capital
of the state of Ch'u. the preeent
King-ch<iu-fu, 100, 319.

Yo : a sacred mountain, 1 23.

Yo Chong, disciple of Mencius:
prime minister in Lu, 287.

Yo J, general of Yen ; defeats army
of Tal, 319.

Yii, the Finperor; 33-38, 330; sup-
posed descendant of Huang-
ti, 33 ; his engineering works
exaggerated. 34-38; his suc-
cessors, 3S-44, 330; atone io-
BcriptioQ IcnowQ as "The Tablet
of Yil," jade inscriptions and
the Nino Tripods ot Yii, 90, 98,
221, 325; the Huna caUing thou-
princes descendants of. 167,
191 ; his time considered the
beginning of the bronze age
in China, 336 ; iron and steel
being mentioned among his
tribute articles is an anacliro-
nisra, 237; as represented In
Shu-king, 261 ; taxation under,
297.

Yii'a successors: 38-41, 330.

Yvl-ch6u province: 121.

Yii-hiung: ancestor of the sover-
dgna of Ok'u, 190, 336 ; initru^

INDEX

383

lor to W6n-WAng; luppoecd
author of the oldest book in
Chineee literature, 69, note 1,
102 306.

YH-kung ("The Tribute of YQ"):
34-38, 5&-57; iU geography
resembles that of the CKdu-4i,
122-123; China called "Ifiddle
Regions" in, 137.

Ya-itl: 50, note 1, 102, 306; see

€UllO YV'HIVSQ.

Yu ("to have"): used in forming

fief names, 5, 17, 32.
Kti-cA'au ("The Nest-buUdera") :

6, 6, 329.
Yu-hia : title of the Emperor YQ,

32.
Yu*hiung : title of the Emperor

lluang-U, 17, 32.
Yu-h6u: feudal lord under Ti-kl,

39.
Yu-k'iung : see H<^u-i.
Yu-li : city near the present Chang-

t6-fu, 54, 59.

Yu-shI : father of the Emperor Ki^'b

paramour, 43.
Yu-wang, the Emperor: 169, 171-

177, 332.
Yu-yii : title of the Emperor Shun,

32.
Yung-ch6u province: 122.
Yung-ki, the Emperor : 48, 330.
YUan Yiian : statesman and arelus-

ologist, 74.
YOan-wang, the Emperor: 261-262,

332.
YQ4, the state of: situation, 227;

annexes Wu, 234 ; works on its

history and antiquities, 234;

conquered by di'u, 314, 348;

mentioned in TscKeAuan; Princes

of, 348.
YQ^h'ang: tribes in the south of

Tungking, 127.
YQ4H>hI, or Indoscythians : 271.
YiiS-UaS-thu: 234.

Zeuss, Kaspar: izt 271.

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