Ancient China Simplified

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Tsin's great rival to the west, Ts'in, now found occupation in
extending her territory to the south-west at the expense of Shuh,
a vast dominion corresponding to the modern Sz Ch'wan, up to then
almost unheard of by orthodox China, but which, it then first
transpired, had had three kings and ten "emperors" of its own,
nine of these latter bearing the same appellation. Even now, the
rapids and gorges of the Yang-tsz River form the only great
commercial avenue from China into Sz Ch'wan, and it is therefore
not hard to understand how in ancient times, the tribes of "cave
barbarians" (whose dwellings are still observable all over that
huge province) effectively blocked traffic along such subsidiary
mountain-roads as may have existed then, as they exist now, for
the use of enterprising hawkers.

The Chinese historians have no statistics, indulge in fen (few?)
remarks about economic or popular development, describe no popular
life, and make no general reflections upon history; they confine
themselves to narrating the bald and usually unconnected facts
which took place on fixed dates, occasionally describing some
particularly heroic or daring individual act, or even sketching
the personal appearance and striking conduct of an exceptionally
remarkable king, general, or other leading personality: hence
there is little to guide us to an intelligent survey of causes and
effects, of motives and consequences; it is only by carefully
piecing together and collating a jumble of isolated events that it
is possible to obtain any general coup d'oeil at all: the wood is
often invisible on account of the trees.

But there can be no doubt that populations had been rapidly
increasing; that improved means had been found to convey
accumulated stores and equipments; that generals had learnt how to
hurl bodies of troops rapidly from one point to the other; and
that rulers knew the way either to interest large populations in
war, or to force them to take an active part in it. The marches,
durbars, and gigantic canal works, undertaken by the barbarous
King of Wu, as described in Chapter XXI., prove this in the case
of one country. Chinese states always became great in the same
way: first Kwan-tsz developed, on behalf of his master the First
Protector, the commerce, the army, and the agriculture of Ts'i. He
was imitated at the same time by Duke Muh of Ts'in and King Chwang
of Ts'u, both of which rulers (seventh century B.C.) set to work
vigorously in developing their resources. Then Tsz-ch'an raised
Cheng to a great pitch of diplomatic influence, if not also of
military power. His friend Shuh Hiang did the same thing for Tsin;
and both of them were models for Confucius in Lu, who had,
moreover, to defend his own master's interests against the policy
of the philosopher Yen-tsz of Ts'i. After his first defeat by the
King of Wu, the barbarian King of Yueh devoted himself for some
years to the most strenuous life, with the ultimate object of
amassing resources for the annihilation of Wu; the interesting
steps he took to increase the population will be described at
length in a later chapter. In 361, as we have explained in Chapter
XXII., a scion of Wei went as adviser to Ts'in, and within a
generation of his arrival the whole face of affairs was changed in
that western state hitherto so isolated; the new position, from a
military point of view, was almost exactly that of Prussia during
the period between the tyranny of the first Napoleon, together
with the humiliation experienced at his hands, and the patient
gathering of force for the final explosion of 1870, involving the
crushing of the second (reigning) Napoleon.

Very often the term "perpendicular and horizontal" period is
applied to the fourth century B.C. That is, Ts'u's object was to
weld together a chain of north and south alliances, so as to bring
the power of Ts'i and Tsin to bear together with her own upon
Ts'in; and Ts'in's great object was, on the other hand, to make a
similar string of east and west alliances, so as to bring the same
two powers to bear upon Ts'u. The object of both Ts'in and Ts'u
was to dictate terms to each unit of; and ultimately to possess,
the whole Empire, merely utilizing the other powers as catspaws to
hook the chestnuts out of the furnace. No other state had any
rival pretensions, for, by this time, Ts'in and Ts'u each really
did possess one-third part of China as we now understand it,
whilst the other third was divided between Ts'i and the three
Tsin. In 343 B.C. the Chou Emperor declared Ts'in Protector, and
from 292 to 288 B.C., Tsin and Ts'i took for a few years the
ancient title of _Ti_ or "Emperor" of the West and East respectively:
in the year 240 the Chou Emperor even proceeded to Ts'in to do
homage there. Tsin might have been in the running for universal
empire had she held together instead of dividing herself into
three. Yen was altogether too far away north,--though, curiously
enough, Yen (Peking) has been the political centre of North
China for 900 years past,--and Ts'i was too far away east.
Moreover, Ts'i was discredited for having cut off the sacrifices
of the legitimate house. Ts'u was now master of not only her old
vassals, Wu and Yiieh, but also of most of the totally unknown
territory down to the south sea, of which no one except the Ts'u
people at that time knew so much as the bare local names; it bore
the same relation to Ts'u that the Scandinavian tribes did to the
Romanized Germans. Ts'in had become not only owner of Sz Ch'wan--
at first as suzerain protector, not as direct administrator--but
had extended her power down to the south-west towards Yiin Nan and
Tibet, and also far away to the north-west in Tartarland, but not
farther than to where the Great Wall now extends. It is in the
year 318 B.C. that we first hear the name Hiung-nu (ancestors of
the Huns and Turks), a body of whom allied themselves in that year
with the five other Chinese powers then in arms against the
menacing attitude of Ts'in; something remarkable must have taken
place in Tartarland to account for this sudden change of name, The
only remains of old federal China consisted of about ten petty
states such as Sung, Lu, etc., all situated between the Rivers Sz
and Hwai, and all waiting, hands folded, to be swallowed up at
leisure by this or that universal conqueror.

Ts'in _s'en va t'en guerre_ seriously in the year 364, and
began her slashing career by cutting off 60,000 "Tsin" heads; (the
legitimate Tsin sacrifices had been cut off in 376, so this "Tsin"
must mean "Ngwei," or that part of old Tsin which was coterminous
with Ts'in); in 331, in a battle with Ngwei, 80,000 more heads
were taken off. 'In 318 the Hiung-nu combination just mentioned
lost 82,000 heads between them; in 314 Han lost 10,000; in 312
Ts'u lost 80,000; in 307 Han lost 60,000; and in 304 Ts'u lost
80,000. In the year 293 the celebrated Ts'in general, Peh K'i, who
has left behind him a reputation as one of the greatest
manipulators of vast armies in Eastern history, cut off 240,000
Han heads in one single battle; in 275, 40,000 Ngwei heads; and in
264, 50,000 Han heads. "_Enfin je vais me mesurer avec ce
Vilainton_" said the King of Chao, when his two western friends
of Han and Ngwei had been hammered out of existence. In the year
260 the Chao forces came to terrible grief; General Peh K'i
managed completely to surround their army of 400,000 men he
accepted their surrender, guaranteed their safety, and then
proceeded methodically to massacre the whole of them to a man. In
257 "Tsin" (presumably Han or Ngwei) lost 6,000 killed and 20,000
drowned; in 256 Han lost 40,000 heads, and in 247 her last 30,000,
whilst also in 256 Chao her last 90,000. These terrible details
have been put together from the isolated statements; but there can
be no mistake about them, for the historian Sz-ma Ts'ien, writing
in 100 B.C., says: "The allies with territory ten times the extent
of the Ts'in dominions dashed a million men against her in vain;
she always had her reserves in hand ready, and from first to last
a million corpses bit the dust."

No such battles as these are even hinted at in more ancient times;
nor, strange to say, are the ancient chariots now mentioned any
more. Ts'in had evidently been practising herself in fighting with
the Turks and Tartars for some generations, and had begun to
perceive what was still only half understood in China, the
advantage of manoeuvring large bodies of horsemen; but, curiously
enough, nothing is said of horses either; yet all these battles
seem to have been fought on the flat lands of old federal China,
suitable for either chariots or horses. The first specific mention
of cavalry manoeuvres on a large scale was in the year 198 B.C.
when the new Han Emperor of China in person, with a straggling
army of 320,000 men, mostly infantry, was surrounded by four
bodies of horsemen led by the Supreme Khan, in white, grey, black,
and chestnut divisions, numbering 300,000 cavalry in all: his name
was Megh-dun (? the Turkish Baghatur).

Whilst all this was going on, Mencius, the Confucian philosopher,
and the two celebrated diplomatists (of Taoist principles), Su
Ts'in and Chang I, were flying to and fro all over orthodox China
with a view of offering sage political advice; this was the time
_par excellence_ when the rival Taoist and Confucian prophets
were howling in the wilderness of war and greed: but Ts'in cared
not much for talkers: generals did her practical business better:
in 308 she began to cast covetous eyes on the Emperor's poor
remaining appanage. In 301 she was called upon to quell a revolt
in Shuh; then she materially reduced the pretensions of her great
rival Ts'u; and finally rested a while, whilst gathering more
strength for the supreme effort-the conquest of China.

CHAPTER XXVII

FOREIGN BLOOD

The history of China may be for our present purposes accordingly
summed up as follows. The pure Chinese race from time immemorial
had been confined to the flat lands of the Yellow River, and its
one tributary on the south, the River Loh, the Tartars possessing
most of the left bank from the Desert to the sea. However, from
the beginning of really historical times the Chinese had been in
unmistakable part-possession of the valleys of the Yellow River's
two great tributaries towards the west and north, the Wei (in Shen
Si) and the Fen (in Shan Si). Little, if any, Chinese colonizing
was done much before the Ts'in conquests in any other parts of
Tartarland; none in Sz Ch'wan that we know of; little, if any,
along the coasts, except perhaps from Ts'i and Lu (in Shan Tung),
both of which states seem to have always been open to the sea,
though many barbarian coast tribes still required gathering into
the Chinese fold. The advance of Chinese civilization had been
first down the Yellow River; then down the River Han towards the
Middle Yang-tsz; and lastly, down the canals and the Hwai network
of streams to the Shanghai coast. Old colonies of Chinese had,
many centuries before the conquest of China by the Chou dynasty,
evidently set out to subdue or to conciliate the southern tribes:
these adventurous leaders had naturally taken Chinese ideas with
them, but had usually found it easier for their _own_ safety
and success to adopt barbarian customs in whole or in part. These
mixed or semi-Chinese states of the navigable Yang-tsz Valley,
from the Ich'ang gorges to the sea, had generally developed in
isolation and obscurity, and only appeared in force as formidable
competitors with orthodox Chinese when the imperial power began to
collapse after 771 B.C. The isolation of half-Roman Britain for
several centuries after the first Roman conquest, and the
departure of the last Roman legions, may be fitly compared with
the position of the half-Chinese states. Ts'u, Wu, and Yueeh all
had pedigrees, more or less genuine, vying in antiquity with the
pedigree of the imperial Chou family; and therefore they did not
see why they also should not aspire to the overlordship when it
appeared to be going a-begging. Even orthodox Tsin and Ts'i in
the north and north-east were in a sense colonial extensions,
inasmuch as they were governed by new families appointed thereto
by the Chou dynasty in 1122 B.C., in place of the old races of
rulers, presumably more or less barbarian, who had previously to
1122 B.C. been vassal--in name at least--to the earlier imperial
Hia and Shang dynasties: but these two great states were never
considered barbarian under Chou sway; and, indeed, some of the
most ancient mythological Chinese emperors anterior to the Hia
dynasty had their capitals in Tsin and Lu, on the River Fen and
the River Sz.

It is not easy to define the exact amount of "foreignness" in
Ts'u. One unmistakable non-Chinese expression is given; that is
_kou-u-du_, or "suckled by a tigress." Then, again, the syllable
_ngao_ occurs phonetically in many titles and in native personal
names, such as _jo-ngao_, _tu-ngao_, _kia-ngao_, _mo-ngao_.
There are no Ts'u songs in the Odes as edited by Confucius, and
the Ts'u music is historically spoken of as being "in the southern
sound"; which may refer, it is true, to the accent, but also possibly
to a strange language. The Ts'u name for "Annals," or history, was
quite different from the terms used in Tsin and Lu, respectively;
and the Ts'u word for a peculiar form of lameness, or locomotor
ataxy, is said to differ from the expressions used in either Wei and
Ts'i. So far aspossible, all Ts'u dignities were kept in the royal family,
and the king's uncle was usually premier. The premier of Ts'u was
called _Zing-yin,_ a term unknown to federal China; and Ts'u
considered the left-hand side more honourable than the right,
which at that time was not the case in China proper, though it is
now. The "Borough-English" rule of succession in Ts'u was to give
it to one of the younger sons; this statement is repeated in
positive terms by Shuh Hiang, the luminous statesman of Tsin, and
will be further illustrated when we come to treat of that subject
specially. The Lu rule was "son after father; or, if none, then
younger after eldest brother; if the legitimate heir dies, then
next son by the same mother; failing which, the eldest son by any
mother; if equal claims, then the wisest; if equally wise, cast
lots": Lu rules would probably hold good for all federal China,
because the Duke of Chou, founder of Lu, was the chief moral force
in the original Chou administration. In the year 587 Lu, when
coquetting between Tsin and Ts'u, was at last persuaded not to
abandon Tsin for Ts'u, "who is not of our family, and can never
have any real affection." Once in Tsin it was asked, about a
prisoner: "Who is that southernhatted fellow?" It was explained
that he was a Ts'u man. They then handed him a guitar, and made
him sing some "national songs." In 597 a Ts'u envoy to the Tsin
military durbar said: "My prince is not formed for the fine and
delicate manners of the Chinese": here is distinct evidence of
social if not ethnological cleaving. The Ts'u men had beards,
whilst those of Wu were not hirsute: this statement proves that
the two barbarian populations differed between themselves. In 635
the King of Ts'u spoke of himself as "the unvirtuous" and the
"royal old man"--designations both appropriate only to barbarians
under Chinese ritual. In 880 B.C., when the imperial power was
already waning, and the first really historical King of Ts'u was
beginning to bring under his authority the people between the Han
and the Yang-tsz, he said: "I am a barbarian savage, and do not
concern myself with Chinese titles, living or posthumous." In 706,
when the reigning king made his first conquest of a petty Chinese
principality (North Hu Peh), he said again: "I am a barbarian
savage; all the vassals are in rebellion and attacking each other;
I want with my poor armaments to see for myself how Chou governs,
and to get a higher title." On being refused, he said: "Do you
forget my ancestor's services to the father of the Chou founder?"
Later on, as has already been mentioned, he put in a claim for the
Nine Tripods because of the services his ancestor, "living in rags
in the Jungle, exposed to the weather," had rendered to the
founder himself. In 637, when the future Second Protector and
ruler of Tsin visited Ts'u as a wanderer, the King of Ts'u
received him with all the hospitalities "under the Chou rites,"
which fact shows at least an effort to adopt Chinese civilization.
In 634 Lu asked Ts'u's aid against Ts'i, a proceeding condemned by
the historical critics on the ground that Ts'u was a "barbarian
savage" state. On the other hand, by the year 560 the dying King
of Ts'u was eulogized as a man who had successfully subdued the
barbarian savages. But against this, again, in 544 the ruler of Lu
expressed his content at having got safely back from his visit to
Ts'u, i.e. his visit to such an uncouth and distant court. Thus
Ts'u's emancipation from "savagery" was gradual and of uncertain
date. In 489 the King of Ts'u declined to sacrifice to the Yellow
River, on the ground that his ancestors had never presumed to
concern themselves with anything beyond the Han and Yang-tsz
valleys. Even Confucius, (then on his wanderings in the petty
state of CH'EN) declared his admiration at this, and said: "The
King of Ts'u is a sage, and understands the Great Way (_tao_)."
On the other hand, only fifty years before this, when in 538 Ts'u,
with Tsin's approval, first tried her hand at durbar work, the king
was horrified to hear from a fussy chamberlain (evidently orthodox)
that there were six different ways of receiving visitors according to
their rank; so that Ts'u's ritual decorum could not have been of
very long standing. The following year (537) a Tsin princess is
given in marriage to Ts'u-- a decidedly orthodox feather in Ts'u's
cap. Confucius affects a particular style in his history when he speaks
of barbarians; thus an orthodox prince "beats" a barbarian, but "battles"
with an orthodox equal. However, in 525, Ts'u and Wu "battle" together,
the commentator explaining that Ts'u is now "promoted" to battle
rank, though the strict rule is that two barbarians, or China and
one barbarian, "beat" rather than "battle." In 591 Confucius had
already announced the "end" of the King of Ts'u, not as such, but
as federal viscount. Under ordinary circumstances "death" would
have been good enough: it is only in speaking of his own ruler's
death that the honorific word "collapse" is used. All these fine
distinctions, and many others like them, hold good for modern
Chinese. These (apparently to us) childish gradations in mere
wording run throughout Confucius' book; but we must remember that
his necessarily timid object was to "talk at" the wicked, and to
"hint" at retribution. Even a German recorder of events would
shrink from applying the word _haben_ to the royal act of a
Hottentot King, for whom _hat_ is more than good enough, without
the _allergnaedigst._ And we all remember Bismarck's story of the
way mouth-washes and finger-bowls were treated at Frankfurt by those
above and below the grade of serene highness. _Toutes les vices et
toutes les moeurs sont respectables._

In 531 the barbarian King of Ts'u is honoured by being "named" for
enticing and murdering a "ruler of the central kingdoms." The
pedants are much exercised over this, but as the federal prince in
question was a parricide, he had a _lupinum caput,_ and so
even a savage could without outraging orthodox feelings wreak the
law on him. On the other hand, in 526, when Ts'u enticed and
killed a mere barbarian prince, the honour of "naming" was
withheld. This delicate question will be further elucidated in the
chapter on "Names."

It will be observed that none of the testimony brought forward
here to show that Ts'u was, in some undefined way, a non-Chinese
state is either clear or conclusive: its cumulative effect,
however, certainly leaves a very distinct impression that 'there
was a profound difference of some sort both in race and in
manners, though we are as yet quite unable to say whether the bulk
of the Ts'u population was Annamese, Shan, or Siamese; Lolo or
Nosu; Miao-tsz, Tibetan, or what. There is really no use in
attempting to advance one step beyond the point to which we are
carried by specific evidence, either in this or in other matters.
It has been said that no great discovery was ever made without
imagination, which may be true; but evidence and imagination must
be kept rigidly separate. What we may reasonably hope is that, by
gradually ascertaining and sifting definite facts and data
touching ancient Chinese history, we shall at least avoid coming
to wrong positive conclusions, even if the right negative ones are
pretty clearly indicated. It is better to leave unexplained
matters in suspense than to base conclusions upon speculative
substructures which will not carry the weight set upon them.

CHAPTER XXVIII

BARBARIANS

The country of Wu is in many respects even more interesting
ethnologically than that of Ts'u. When, a generation or two before
the then vassal Chou family conquered China, two of the sons of
the ruler of that vassal principality decided to forego their
rights of succession, they settled amongst the Jungle savages, cut
their hair, adopted the local raiment, and tattooed their bodies;
or, rather, it is said the elder of the two covered his head and
his body decently, while the younger cut his hair, went naked, and
tattooed his body. The words "Jungle savages" apply to the country
later called Ts'u; but as Wu, when we first hear of her, was a
subordinate country belonging to Ts'u; and as in any case the word
"Wu" was unknown to orthodox China, not to say to extreme western
China, in 1200 B.C. when the adventurous brothers migrated; this
particular point need not trouble us so much as it seems to have
puzzled the Chinese critics. About 575 the first really historical
King of Wu paid visits to the Emperor's court, to the court of his
suzerain the King of Ts'u, and to the court of Lu: probably the
Hwai system of rivers would carry him within measurable distance
of all three, for the headwaters almost touch the tributaries of
the Han, and the then Ts'u capital (modern King-thou Fu) was in
touch with the River Han. He observed when in Lu: "We only know
how to knot our hair in Wu; what could we do with such fine
clothes as you wear?" It was the policy of Tsin and of the other
minor federal princes to make use of Wu as a diversion against the
advance of Ts'u: it is evident that by this time Ts'u had begun to
count seriously as a Chinese federal state, for one of the
powerful private families behind the throne and against the throne
in Lu expressed horror that "southern savages (i.e. Wu) should
invade China (i.e. Ts'u)," by taking from it part of modern An
Hwei province: as, however, barbarian Ts'u had taken it first from
orthodox China, perhaps the mesne element of Ts'u was not in the
statesman's mind at all, but only the original element,--China. An
important remark is made by one of the old historians to the
effect that the language and manners of Wu were the same as those
of Yiieh. In 483, when Wu's pretensions as Protector were at their
greatest, the people of Ts'i made use of ropes eight feet long in
order to bind certain Wu prisoners they had taken, "because their
heads were cropped so close": this statement hardly agrees with
that concerning "knotted hair," unless the _toupet_ or chignon
was very short indeed. 'There are not many native Wu words quoted,
beyond the bare name of the country itself, which is something like
_Keu-gu,_ or _Kou-gu:_ an executioner's knife is mentioned under
the foreign name _chuh-lu,_ presented to persons expected to commit
suicide, after the Japanese _harakiri_ fashion. In 584 B.C., when the first
steps were taken by orthodox China to utilize Wu politically, it was
found necessary, as we have seen, to teach the Wu folk the use
of war-chariots and bows and arrows: this important statement
points distinctly to the previous utter isolation of Wu from the
pale of Chinese civilization. In the year 502 Ts'i sent a princess
as hostage to Wu, and ended by giving her in marriage to the Wu
heir: (we have seen how Tsin anticipated Ts'i by twenty-five years
in conferring a similar honour upon Ts'u). A century or more
later, when Mencius was advising the bellicose court of Ts'i, he
alluded with indignation to this "barbarous" act. In 544 the Wu
prince Ki-chah had visited Lu and other orthodox states.

[Illustration: Map of the Hwai system and Valley

1. The two lines indicated by...............to the north are (1)
the River Sz (now Grand Canal), from Confucius' birthplace, and
(2) the River I (from modern I-shui city south of the German
colony). After receiving the I, the Sz entered the Hwai as it
emerged from Lake Hung-t&h; but this Hwai mouth no longer exists;
the waters are dissipated in canals.

The Wu fleets coasting up to the Hwai, were thus able to creep
into the heart of Shan Tung province, east and west.

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