Ancient China Simplified

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This is the chief journey; and whether the Chou Emperor in 984
B.C., or the Ts'in Duke in 650 B.C., made it, there are really no
difficulties, no contradictions. Four important places at least
are named which are known by exactly the same names, and are
frequently mentioned, in very much later history. The Emperor had
hundreds of carts or chariots with him, and we have seen that
these were a special feature of orthodox China. He came across a
huge moulting-ground of birds in the desert regions, and the later
Chinese very frequently speak of it in Tartar-land. Being caught
in the waterless desert, he had to cut the throats of some of his
best horses and drink their warm blood: two friends of my own,
travelling through Siberia and Mongolia, were only too glad, when
nearly starving from cold, to cut a sheep's throat and drink its
warm blood from the newly-gashed throat itself. Fattening up
horses for food is mentioned, and washing the feet with kumiss--
both incidents purely Tartar. "Cattle," distinct from horses and
oxen, are alluded to--probably camels, for which no Chinese word
existed until about the time of our era.

The second and third journeys, which occupied another 600 days
between them, both ended at, and therefore it is assumed began at,
the same place as the first journey's terminus; that is, at a
place marked on modern maps as Pao-CH'ENg, on the Upper Han River.
In later times it belonged to the semi-Chinese kingdoms of Shuh
and Ts'u in turn. One of these narratives is taken up with a
description of the Emperor's infatuation for a clever wizard from
a far country, and of his liaison with a girl bearing his own
clan-name, who died about two months before he reached home, and
was buried on the road with great pomp. These two later journeys
have no geographical value at all; but as the Emperor in each case
again crossed the Yellow River, it is plain that he was amusing
himself somewhere along the main Tartar roads, as in the first
case.

It may be added that the Taoist author Lieh-tsz, in his third
chapter, repeats the story of the magician, who, he says, came
from the "Extreme West Country." He also explains that it was
through listening to this man's wonderful tales that the Emperor
"neglected state affairs, and abandoned himself to the delights of
travel,"--thus anticipating by three centuries the language of Sz-
ma Ts'ien in 90 B.C. The story of the particular tribe of Tartars
(named with the same sounds, but not with the same characters) who
washed the Emperor's feet with kumiss is also told by Lieh-tsz.
The position of the Redwater River is defined, to which textual
remarks the commentators add more about the River Blackwater.
Curiously enough, in himself commenting upon the Emperor Muh's
conversations with the chieftain of _Siwangmu_, Lieh-tsz mentions
the traditional departure, west, of the philosopher Lao-tsz, his own
master.

Now, although there is considerable doubt as to the authorship,
date, and genuineness of Lieh-tsz's book, which at any rate was
well known to Chinese bibliophiles long before our era, the fact
that it mentions and repeats even part of the Emperor Muh's
travels 600 years before the ancient book describing those travels
was found, proves that the manipulators of the ancient book thus
found did not invent the whole story after our era. It also seems
to prove that in Lieh-tsz's time (i.e. immediately after
Confucius) the story was already known (and probably the book of
travels too), Confucius himself having mentioned one of the tribes
visited by the Emperor. The Bamboo Books bring history down to 299
B.C., and were found, together with the travels of the Emperor
Muh, in A.D. 281. The Bamboo Books not only support part of the
story of the Emperor Muh's travels, but their accuracy in dates
has been shown by Professor Chavannes to strengthen the
credibility of Confucius' own history: a reference to Chapter
XXXII. on the Calendar will explain what is meant by "accuracy in
dates." Finally, we have Sz-ma Ts'ien's history of go B.C.,
citing the Chou Annals and the Ts'in Annals, or what survived of
them after incessant wars between 400 and 200 B.C., and after the
destruction of literature in 213 B.C.

This point settled, the next thing is to consider Professor
Chavannes' reasons for supposing that Duke Muh of Ts'in (650 B.C.)
and not the Emperor Muh of Chou (984 B.C.) was the real
traveller:--

1. He shows that the ruling princes of Ts'in and Chao hailed from
the same ancestors, were contiguous states, and, besides being
largely Tartar themselves, ruled all the Tartars along the
(present) Great Wall line: also that the naming of individual
horses and other features of the Emperor's travels recalls
features equally prominent in later Turkish history. This is all
undoubtedly true: compare page 206.

2. He shows that the Duke Muh's chief claim to glory was his
successes against the Tartars of the West. This is also quite
certain. 3. He thinks that in 984 B.C. the literary capacity of
China was not equal to the composition of such a sustained work as
the Travels.

4. He also thinks that the real Chinese found in Ts'in the
traditions relating to Duke Muh, and then, for the glory of China,
appropriated them to the Emperor Muh, and foisted them upon
orthodox history.

There is a great deal to be said for this view, which has,
besides, many other minor points of detail in its favour. But it
may be answered:--

1. Chou itself was in the eyes of China proper, once a "barbarian"
tribe of the west, as the founder of the Chou dynasty in 1122 B.C.
himself showed when he addressed his neighbours and allies, the
eight other states of the west, and exhorted them, as equals, to
assist him in the conquest of China. It was only in 771 B.C. that
the original Chou appanage (since 1122 the western half of the
imperial appanage) had been ceded to Ts'in, which in 984 was a
petty state, still of the "adjunct-function" (_cf._ page 144)
type, and not "sovereign." In 984 there was no intermediate
sovereign "power" between the Emperor and the Tartars, with whom,
in fact, he had been directly engaged in war independently of
Ts'in. He was as much under Tartar social influences as was Ts'in:
in fact, the Chou principality, under the Shang dynasty, was a
sort of first edition of Ts'in principality under the Chou
dynasty. Just as in 1122 B.C. Chou ousted Shang as the imperial
house, so in 221 B.C. Ts'in definitely replaced Chou.

2. If Duke Muh distinguished himself by Tartar conquests, so did
the Emperor Muh before him, and the authorities are all agreed on
this point.

3. If in 984 B.C. the long-standing orthodox Chinese literary
capacity was unequal to this effort, how is it that semi-barbarous
Ts'in, the least literary of all the states (not only Chinese, but
also half-Chinese), into which state records had only been
introduced at all in 753 B.C., was able to compose such a book;
or, if not to write the book, then to dictate so sustained and
connected a story? Besides, the Emperor Muh left several
inscriptions carved on stone during the progress of his travels.

4. The instances M. Chavannes cites of the tombs of Yue and Shun in
South China, as being parallel instances of appropriation by
orthodox Chinese of semi-Chinese traditions have already been put
to quite another use above, as tending to show, on the contrary,
that those two Emperors either came from the south, or had
ancestral traditions in the south; (see pp. 138,191).

5. Finally, about a third of the Travels is taken up with a
description of the incestuous intrigue with Lady _Ki_, and of
her sumptuous ritual funeral. Why should Duke Muh trouble himself
about the rites due to members of the Ki family, to which the
Emperor belonged, but he himself did not? Why should the warlike
Duke Muh (who had just then been recommended by an adviser (an ex-
Chinese, since become a Tartar) to adopt simple Tartar ways
instead of worrying himself with the Odes and the Book "as _the
Chinese did_") waste his time in pomp and ritual? ( see p.
180). Again, when, as the Travels tell us, various vassal rulers
from orthodox China (even so far as Shan Tung in the extreme east)
arrived to pay their respects to the Emperor as their liege-lord,
how is it possible to suppose that these orthodox counts and
barons would come to pay court to a semi-barbarian count (for that
was all he was) like Duke Muh (as he is posthumously called), one
of their equals, a man who took no part in the durbar affairs, and
who, on account of his human sacrifices, was not even thought fit
to become an emergency Protector of China? What could the semi-
Tartar ruler of Ts'in have known of all these wearisome
refinements in pomp, mourning, and music? Once more, the place the
Emperor started from and came back to, though part of _his_
appanage in 984 B.C. and possessing an ancestral Chou temple, was
not part of the Ts'in dominions in 650 B.C., and never possessed a
Ts'in temple: if not independent, it was at that time a bone of
contention between Ts'in and Ts'u, and by no means a safe place
for equipping pleasure expeditions. Finally, if it is marvellous
that the Chou Annals of Sz-ma Ts'ien do not give full details of
the voyage, is it not at least equally marvellous that the Ts'in
Annals should not mention it in 650 B.C., when M. Chavannes
supposes it took place, whilst they do so mention it under 984
B.C., when he thinks it did not take place? All accounts agree
that the ancestor of Ts'in (named) was there with the Emperor as
charioteer; he was, as we have seen, equally ancestor of Chao, and
the Chao Annals of Sz-ma Ts'ien say exactly what the Ts'in Annals
say.

Hence we may gratefully accept Professor Chavannes' most
illuminating proofs, so far as they tend to show that the Travels
of the Emperor Muh are genuine history for a tour no farther than
the middle Tarim Valley; but, so far as Duke Muh of Ts'in is
concerned, he must be eliminated from all consideration of the
matter, and we must ascribe the tour, as the Chinese do, to the
Emperor Muh. Lastly, are there any _proved_ instances of such
radical tamperings with history by the Chinese annalists as M.
Chavannes suggests? I do not know of any; and such superficial
tamperings as there are the Chinese critics always expose, _coute_
que _coute_, even though Confucius himself be the tamperer.

CHAPTER XXXVI

ANCIENT JAPAN

The development of China is not only elucidated by documents and
events probably antecedent to the strictly historical period, such
as the supposed voyage of an Emperor to the Far West, but it is
also made easier to understand when we consider its possible
indirect effects upon Japan. The barbarian kingdom of Wu does not
really appear in Chinese history at all, even by name, until the
year 585 B.C. It was found then that it had traditions of its own,
and a line of kings extending back to the beginning of the Chou
dynasty (1122 B.C.), and even farther beyond. In 585 B.C. the new
King, Shou-meng, hitherto an unknown and obscure vassal of Ts'u,
altogether beyond the ken of orthodox China, felt quite strong
enough, as we have seen in Chapter VII., to strike out an
independent line of his own. It is a singular thing that, when the
Japanese set about constructing a nomenclature (on Chinese
posthumous lines) for their newly discovered back history in the
eighth century A.D., they should have fixed upon exactly this year
585 B.C. for the death of their supposed first Mikado Jimmu (i.e.
_Shen-wu_, the "divinely martial"). The next three Kings of
Wu, all of whom, like himself, bore dissyllabic and meaningless
barbarian names, were sons of Shou-meng, and a fourth son was the
cultured Ki-chah, who visited orthodox China several times, both
as a spy and in order to improve himself. Then follow two sons of
the last and first, respectively, of the said three brothers. The
second of these royal cousins was killed in battle, and his son
Fu-ch'ai vowed a terrible, vengeance against Ts'u, whose capital
he subsequently took and sacked in 506 B.C. Now appears upon the
scene his own vassal, Yiieh, and at first Wu gets the best of it
in battle. Bloodthirsty wars follow between the two, full of
picturesque and convincing detail, until at last the King of
Yiieh, in turn, has the King of Wu at his mercy; but he was,
though a barbarian, magnanimously disposed, and accordingly he
offered Fu-ch'ai the island of Chusan (so well known to us on
account of our troops having occupied it in 1840) and three
hundred married families to keep him company. But Fu-ch'ai was too
proud to accept this Elba, the more especially so because he had
it on his conscience that he had been acting throughout against
the earnest advice of his faithful minister (a Ts'u renegade),
whom he had put to death for his frankness. This adviser as he
perished had cried out: "Don't forget to pluck my eyes out and
stick them on the east gate, so that I may witness the entry of
the Yiieh troops!" He therefore committed suicide, first veiling
his face because, as he said: "I have no face to offer my adviser
when I meet him in the next world; if, on the other hand, the dead
have no knowledge, then it does not matter what I do." After the
beginning of our Christian era, when the direct communication
between Japan (overland _via_ Corea) and China (also by sea
to Wu) was first officially noticed by the historians, it was
recorded by the Chinese annalists that part of Fu-ch'ai's personal
following had escaped in ships towards the east, and had founded a
state in Japan. But it must not be forgotten that then (473 B.C.)
orthodox China had never yet heard of Japan in any form, though of
course it is possible that the maritime states of Wu and Yiieh may
have had junk intercourse with many islands in the Pacific.

We have already ventured upon a few remarks upon this subject in
Chapter XXIII., but so much is apt to be made out of slight
historical materials-such, for instance, as the pleasure
expedition of a Chinese emperor in 984 B.C. to the Tarim Valley--
that it may be useful to suggest the true proportions, and the
modest possible bearing of this "Japanese" migration--assuming the
slender record of it to be true; and the basis of truth is by no
means a broad one; still less is it capable of sustaining a heavy
superstructure.

Any one visiting Japan will notice that there are several distinct
types of men in that country, the squat and vulgar, the oval-faced
and refined, and many variations of these two; just as, in
England, we have the Norman, Saxon, Irish, and Scotch types of
face, with many other _nuances_. It is also clear from the
kitchen-midden and other prehistoric remains; from the presence,
even now, in Japan of the bearded Ainus (a word meaning in their
own language "men"); and from the numerous accounts of Ainu-
Japanese wars in both Chinese and Japanese history, that there
were (as there still are) manners, and possibly yet other men, in
ancient Japan, both very different from the manners and appearance
of the cultured and gifted race, viewed as a homogeneous whole, we
are now so proud to have as our political allies. But that brings
us no nearer a historical solution, It is a persistent way with
all ethnologists to search out whence this or that race came. Of
course all races move and mingle, and must always have moved and
mingled, when by so doing they could better their circumstances of
life; but even if movement has taken place in Japan as it has
elsewhere, there is no reason why, if comparatively uncivilized
Japanese displaced Ainus, Ainus should not have, before that,
displaced quite uncivilized Japanese; or, if other races came over
the seas to displace the people already there, the natives already
there should not have, later on, ejected these new-comers by sea
routes.

In other words, it is quite futile (unless we can lay hands on
definite objects, or definite facts recorded--even definite
traditions) to try and account for hypothetical movements in
prehistoric times. We are totally ignorant of early Teutonic,
Hungarian, and Celtic movements-though, thanks solely to Chinese
records, we are pretty certain, within defined limits, about early
Turkish movements. How much more, then, must we be ignorant about
the Japanese movements? If "people" must have come from somewhere,
whence did these arrivals start, and why should they not go back;
or why not meet other movers going to the place whence they
themselves started? If we are to accept the only historical
records or quasi-records we possess at all, that is, the Chinese
records, then we must accept them for what they are worth on the
face of them, and neither add to nor mutilate them; imperfect
things that do exist are necessarily better than imaginary things
that might have existed in their place. A few hundred families at
most, we are told, escaped; and if it be true that they went
intentionally to Japan, it is probable that the expert Wu sailors
(none existed elsewhere in China) had already for long known the
way thither, or to Quelpaert and Tsushima, which practically means
to both Corea and Japan; in fact, if they sailed east from Ningpo,
there is no other place to knock up against, even if the special
intention were not there. Everything tends to show that Fu-ch'ai,
though perhaps a barbarian in 473 B.C., was of orthodox if remote
pedigree dating from 1200 B.C., and that the ruling class of Wu
was very different from the "barbarians" by whom (as we are
specifically told) Wu was surrounded; the situation was like that
of the Egyptians and Phoenicians, like Cecrops and Cadmus, amongst
the earliest barbarous Greeks. It amounts, then, to this, that,
just as Chinese colonies and adventurers emerged under the stress
of increased population, or under the impulses of curiosity,
tyranny, and ambition, to found states in Ts'u, Ts'in, Tsin, Ts'i,
Lu, Wu, Yueeh, and other places round the central nucleus, so (they
being the sole possessors of that magic _POWER_, "records")
other parties would from time to time sally forth either from the
same orthodox centre, or from the semi-orthodox places surrounding
that centre, to still remoter spots, such as, for instance, Corea,
Japan, Formosa, Annam, Burma, Tibet, and Yiin Nan. Fu-ch'ai's
surviving friends had indeed a very lively stimulus indeed-the
fear of instant death-to drive them tumultuously over the seas;
and doubtless, as they must have been perfectly harmless after
tossing about hungry in open boats for weeks together, they would
be as welcome to the Japanese king, or to the petty chief or
chiefs who received the waifs, as in our own times was the honest
sailor Will Adams when he drifted friendless to Japan, and whose
statue now adorns a great Japanese city as that of a man who was,
in a humble way, also a "civilizer" of Japan (600 A.D.).
Doubtless, many Wu words, or Chinese words as then pronounced in
Wu, had already been brought over by fishermen; but here at last
was a great haul of (possibly) books and the way to interpret
them; at least there was a great haul of the best class of the Wu
ruling folk. It is true that the first Japanese envoys who came to
China made as much of their Wu "origin" as they could; firstly,
because it probably paid them as traders to do so; secondly,
because it necessarily gave them a respectable status in China;
and, thirdly, because they were, in the first century of our era,
gradually beginning to understand the mystic power of the Chinese
written character, and they would therefore naturally take an
intense interest in all records, rumours, traditions, and fables
about themselves, which they would embellish and "confirm"
whenever it suited their interests to do so. Which of us does not
begin to furbish up his pedigree when he is made a peer of the
realm?

As to the bulk of the Japanese race, be it mixed or unmixed, it is
surely in the main to be found now where it always was, or close
by? It is no more depreciating to early Japan to give her a
dynasty of Chinese adventurers, or perhaps to give her only
hereditary Chinese advisers and scribes, than it is derogatory to
the states of Europe to possess dynasties which belong by their
origin, as a general rule, to almost any place but the countries
they now govern as sovereigns. As to the ancient chiefs or kings
of Japan, some of their genuine native names may have been
preserved in the memories of men; whether they were or not, they
were, even without records, as "ancient" chiefs as the best
recorded chiefs of Egypt, Babylonia, or China; and it must be
remembered that Egyptian and Babylonian records were non-existent
to us for all practical purposes during many thousands of years,
until we recently discovered how to read them: that is to say,
what was once no history at all--the present condition of the
prehistoric races of High Asia--suddenly becomes history when we
find the records and know how to read them.

When, a few centuries later on, the Japanese had begun thoroughly
to understand Chinese books, they decided to have an historical
outfit of their own; they took what vague traditions they had,
and, in the absence of any long-forgotten genuine records, or
visible remains having part of the effect of records, simply
fitted on to their heroes, real or imaginary, the Chinese
posthumous system, and a selection of the historical facts
recorded about the Chinese. Even the Emperor Muh in China was not
so named until he died. If a man can be given a complimentary
title three years after death (that was the Chinese rule at
first), why not give it him 300 years after his death? The king or
chief hitherto known, whether accurately or not, whether honestly
or not, as X, had most certainly existed; that is, the tenth
great-grandfather of the reigning prince; the ninth, eighth, and
so on; must positively have been there at some remote period of
the past. By calling him Jimmu (a Chinese emperor had already been
posthumously so called) he is none the less there than he was
before he was called Jimmu, and his new title therefore does not
make him less of an entity than he was before. And so on with all
the other Japanese emperors who, in the eighth century A.D., were
similarly provided with imaginary names. Possibly this is how the
Japanese argued with themselves when they set about the task. The
situation is a curious one, and perhaps unique in the world; but
it does not matter much (as suggested in Chapter XXXI.) so long as
we keep imagination separate from real evidence.

CHAPTER XXXVII

ETHICS

We propose to say a few words now about peculiar customs which had
vogue all over or in certain parts of China; of course some of
them may be traced back to the "Rites of Chou," and to what is
prescribed therein; but general administrative schemes representing
in general terms things as they ought to be, or as the Chou federal
and feudal oligarchy would have liked them to be, do not give us
such a life-like picture of ancient China as specific accounts of
definite events which really did happen. Take, for instance, the
peculiar formalities connected with abject surrender.

After a great defeat in 699 B.C., just when Ts'u was beginning to
emerge from its narrow confines between the Han and Yang-tsz
Rivers, the defeated Ts'u generals had themselves bound in
fetters, or with ropes, in order to await their king's pleasure.
In 654, when Ts'u had one of the small orthodox states (in the Ho
Nan nucleus) at its mercy, the baron presented himself with his
hands tied behind, a piece of jade in his mouth, followed by his
suite in mourning, carrying his coffin. It is evident that at this
date Ts'u was still "barbarous," for the king had to ask what it
all meant. It was explained to him that, when the Chou founder
conquered China, and mutilated the last Shang dynasty emperor,
that emperor's elder brother by an inferior mother had presented
himself before the founder half naked, with his hands tied behind
his back, his left hand leading a ram (or goat), and his right
carrying sedge for wrapping round the sacrificial victim; he was
enfeoffed as Duke of Sung. In 537 the same thing happened to a
later King of Ts'u in connection with another petty principality,
and the king had to be reminded of the 654 precedent. Thus there
must have been records of some kind in Ts'u at an early date. In
645 B.C., when the ruler of Ts'in took prisoner his brother-in-
law, the ruler of Tsin, and was seriously contemplating the
annexation of Tsin, together with the duty of discharging Tsin
sacrifices, his own sister, with bare feet, wearing mourning, and
bound with a mourning belt, intercedes successfully for her
husband. In 597 B.C. the ruler of the important orthodox state of
Cheng went through the form of dragging along, with the upper part
of his own body uncovered, a ram or goat into the presence of the
King of Ts'u. In 511, when the ruler of Lu had to fly the country
and throw himself upon the generosity of Tsin, in order to escape
from the dangerous machinations of the intriguing great families
of Lu, the six Tsin statesmen (who were themselves at that moment,
as heads of great private clans, gradually undermining their own
prince's rights) sent for the arch-intriguer, and called upon him
to explain his conduct. At that time Lu was coquetting between its
two powerful neighbours, Tsin and Ts'i. The conspirator duly
presented himself before the Areopagus of Tsin grandees, barefoot
and attired in common cloth (_i.e._ not of silk, but of hemp), in order
to explain to them the circumstances of the duke's exile: it is
characteristic of the times, and also of the frankness of history, to
find it added that he succeeded in bribing the grandees to give an
unjust decision. When the Kings of Yueeh and Wu were in turn at
each other's mercy, in 494 and 473 respectively, their envoys, in
offering submission, in each case advanced to the conqueror "walking
on the knees," with bust bared: this knee-walking suggests Annamese,
Siamese, and possibly Japanese forms rather than Chinese. The Wu
servants at dinner are said to have "waited" on their knees. The third
and last August Emperor in 207 submitted to the conquering Han
dynasty seated in an unadorned chariot, drawn by a white horse
(with signs of mourning), carrying his seal-sash round his neck
(figurative of hanging or strangling himself), and offered the seals of
the Son of Heaven to the Prince of Han.

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