A General History for Colleges and High Schools

P >> P. V. N. Myers >> A General History for Colleges and High Schools

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35

The system of castes, modified however by various influences, particularly
by the later system of Buddhism (see p. 11), has characterized Hindu
society from the time the system originated down to the present, and is
one of the most important facts of Indian history.

THE VEDAS.--The most important of the sacred books of the Hindus are
called the Vedas. They are written in the Sanscrit language, which is
believed to be the oldest form of Aryan speech. The Rig-Veda, the most
ancient of the books, is made up of hymns which were composed chiefly
during the long period, perhaps a thousand years or more, while the Aryans
were slowly working their way from the mountains on the northwest of India
across the peninsula to the Ganges. These hymns are filled with memories
of the long conflict of the fair-faced Aryans with the dark-faced
aborigines. The Himalayas, through whose gloomy passes the early emigrants
journeyed, must have deeply impressed the wanderers, for the poets often
refer to the great dark mountains.

BRAHMANISM.--The religion of the Indian Aryans is known as Brahmanism.
This system gradually developed from the same germs as those out of which
grew the Greek and Roman religions. It was at first a pure nature-worship,
that is, the worship of the most striking phenomena of the physical world
as intelligent and moral beings. The chief god was Dyaus-Pitar, the
Heaven-Father. As this system characterized the early period when the
oldest Vedic hymns were composed, it is known as the Vedic religion.

In course of time this nature-worship of the Vedic period developed into a
sort of pantheism, that is, a system which identifies God with the
universe. This form of the Indian religion is known as Brahmanism. Brahma,
an impersonal essence, is conceived as the primal existence. Forth from
Brahma emanated, as heat and light emanate from the sun, all things and
all life. Banish a personal God from the universe, as some modern
scientists would do, leaving nothing but nature with her original nebula,
her endless cycles, her unconscious evolutions, and we have something very
like Brahmanism.

A second, fundamental conception of Brahmanism is that all life, apart
from Brahma, is evil, is travail and sorrow. We can make this idea
intelligible to ourselves by remembering what are our own ideas of this
earthly life. We call it a feverish dream, a journey through a vale of
sorrow. Now the Hindu regards _all_ conscious existence in the same
light. He has no hope in a better future; so long as the soul is
conscious, so long must it endure sorrow and pain.

This conception of all conscious existence as necessarily and always evil,
leads naturally to the doctrine that it is the part of wisdom and of duty
for man to get rid of consciousness, to annihilate himself, in a word, to
commit soul-suicide. Brahmanism teaches that the only way to extinguish
self and thus get rid of the burden of existence, is by re-absorption into
Brahma. But this return to Brahma is dependent upon the soul's
purification, for no impure soul can be re-absorbed into the primal
essence. The necessary freedom from passion and the required purity of
soul can best be attained by self-torture, by a severe mortification of
the flesh; hence the asceticism of the Hindu devotee.

As only a few in each generation reach the goal, it follows that the great
majority of men must be born again, and yet again, until all evil has been
purged away from the soul and eternal repose found in Brahma. He who lives
a virtuous life is at death born into some higher caste, and thus he
advances towards the longed-for end. The evil man, however, is born into a
lower caste, or perhaps his soul enters some unclean animal. This doctrine
of re-birth is known as the transmigration of souls (metempsychosis).

Only the first three classes are admitted to the benefits of religion. The
Sudras and the outcasts are forbidden to read the sacred books, and for
any one of the upper classes to teach a serf how to expiate sin is a
crime.

BUDDHISM.--In the fifth century before our era, a great teacher and
reformer, known as Buddha, or Gautama (died about 470 B.C.), arose in
India. He was a prince, whom legend represents as being so touched by the
universal misery of mankind, that he voluntarily abandoned the luxury of
his home, and spent his life in seeking out and making known to men a new
and better way of salvation. He condemned the severe penances and the
self-torture of the Brahmans, yet commended poverty and retirement from
active life as the best means of getting rid of desire and of attaining
_Nirvana_, that is, the repose of unconsciousness.

[Illustration: STATUE OF BUDDHA.]

Buddha admitted all classes to the benefits of religion, the poor outcast
as well as the high-born Brahman, and thus Buddhism was a revolt against
the earlier harsh and exclusive system of Brahmanism. It holds somewhat
the same relation to Brahmanism that Christianity bears to Judaism.

Buddhism gradually gained the ascendancy over Brahmanism; but after some
centuries the Brahmans regained their power, and by the eighth century
after Christ, the faith of Buddha was driven out of almost every part of
India. But Buddhism has a profound missionary spirit, like that of
Christianity, Buddha having commanded his disciples to make known to all
men the way to Nirvana and consequently during the very period when India
was being lost, the missionaries of the reformed creed were spreading the
teachings of their master among the peoples of all the countries of
Eastern Asia, so that to-day Buddhism is the religion of almost one third
of the human race. Buddha has probably nearly as many followers as both
Christ and Mohammed together.

During its long conflict with Buddhism, Brahmanism was greatly modified,
and caught much of the gentler spirit of the new faith, so that modern
Brahmanism is a very different religion from that of the ancient system;
hence it is usually given a new name, being known as Hinduism. [Footnote:
Among the customs introduced into Brahmanism during this period was the
rite of Suttee, or the voluntary burning of the widow on the funeral pyre
of her husband.]

ALEXANDER'S INVASION OF INDIA (327 B.C.).--Although we find obscure
notices of India in the records of the early historic peoples of Western
Asia, yet it is not until the invasion of the peninsula by Alexander the
Great in 327 B.C. that the history of the Indian Aryans comes in
significant contact with that of the progressive nations of the West. From
that day to our own its systems of philosophy, its wealth, and its
commerce have been more or less important factors in universal history.
Greece carried on an intellectual commerce with this country; Rome, and
the Italian republics of the Middle Ages, a more material but not less
important trade. Columbus was seeking a short all-sea route to this
country when he found the New World. And in the upbuilding of the imperial
greatness of the England of to-day, the wealth and trade of India have
played no inconsiderable part.

2. CHINA.

GENERAL REMARKS: THE BEGINNING.--China is the seat of a very old
civilization, older perhaps than that of any other land save Egypt; yet
Chinese affairs have not until recently exerted any appreciable influence
upon the general current of history. All through ancient and mediaeval
times the country lay, vague and mysterious, in the haze of the world's
horizon. During the Middle Ages the land was known to Europe under the
name of Cathay.

The beginning of the Chinese nation was a band of Turanian wanderers who
came into the basin of the Yellow River, from the West, probably prior to
3000 B.C. These immigrants gradually pushed out the aborigines whom they
found in the land, and laid the basis of institutions that have endured to
the present day.

DYNASTIC HISTORY.--The government of China since the remotest times has
been a parental monarchy. The Emperor is the father of his people. But
though an absolute prince, still he dare not rule tyrannically: he must
rule justly, and in accordance with the ancient customs and laws.

The Chinese have books that purport to give the history of the different
dynasties that have ruled in the land from a vast antiquity; but these
records are largely mythical and legendary. Everything is confused and
uncertain until we reach the eighth or seventh century before our era; and
even then we meet with little of interest in the dynastic history of the
country until we come to the reign of Che Hwang-te (246-210 B.C.). This
energetic ruler strengthened and consolidated the imperial power, and
executed great works of internal improvement, such as roads and canals.
As a barrier against the incursions of the Huns, he began the erection of
the celebrated Chinese Wall, a great rampart extending for about 1500
miles along the northern frontier of the country. [Footnote: The Great
Wall is one of the most remarkable works of man. "It is," says Dr.
Williams, "the only artificial structure which would arrest attention in a
hasty survey of the globe." It has been estimated that there is more than
seventy times as much material in the wall as there is in the Great
Pyramid of Cheops, and that it represents more labor than 100,000 miles of
ordinary railroad. It was begun in 214(?) and finished in 204(?) B.C. It
is twenty-five feet wide at base, and from fifteen to thirty feet high.
Towers forty feet high rise at irregular intervals. In some places it is a
mere earthen rampart; in others it is faced with brick; and then again it
is composed of stone throughout.]

From the strong reign of Che Hwang-te to the end of the period covered by
ancient history, Chinese dynastic records present no matters of universal
interest that need here occupy our attention.

CHINESE WRITING.--It is nearly certain that the art of writing was known
among the Chinese as early as 2000 B.C. The system employed is curiously
cumbrous. In the absence of an alphabet, each word of the language is
represented upon the written page by means of a symbol, or combination of
symbols; this, of course, requires that there be as many symbols, or
characters, as there are words in the language. The number sanctioned by
good use is about 25,000; but counting obsolete characters, the number
amounts to over 50,000. A knowledge of 5000 or 6000 characters, however,
enables one to read and write without difficulty. The task of learning
even this number might well be hopeless, were it not that many of the
characters bear a remote resemblance to the objects for which they stand,
and when once explained, readily suggest the thing or idea represented.
The nature of the characters shows conclusively that the Chinese system of
writing, like that of all others with which we are acquainted, was at
first purely hieroglyphical, that is, the characters were originally
simply rude outline pictures of material objects. Time and use have worn
them to their present form.

This Chinese system of representing thought, cumbrous and inconvenient as
it is, is employed at the present time by one third of the human race.

Printing from blocks was practised in China as early as the sixth century
of our era, and printing from movable types as early as the tenth or
eleventh century, that is to say, about four hundred years before the same
art was invented in Europe.

CHINESE LITERATURE: CONFUCIUS AND MENCIUS.--The most highly prized portion
of Chinese literature is embraced in what is known as the Five Classics
and the Four Books, called collectively the Nine Classics. The Five
Classics are among the oldest books in the world. For some of the books an
antiquity of 3000 years is claimed. The books embrace chronicles,
political and ethical maxims, and numerous odes. One of the most important
of the Classics is the so-called Book of Rites, said to date from 1200
B.C.

The Four Books are of later origin than the Five Classics, having been
written about the fifth and fourth centuries before the Christian era; yet
they hardly yield to them in sacredness in the eyes of the Chinese. The
first three of the series are by the pupils of the great sage and moralist
Confucius (551-478 B.C.), and the fourth is by Mencius (371-288 B.C.), a
disciple of Confucius, and a scarcely less revered philosopher and ethical
teacher. The teachings of the Four Books may be summed up in the simple
precept, "Walk in the Trodden Paths." Confucius was not a prophet, or
revealer; he laid no claims to a supernatural knowledge of God or of the
hereafter; he said nothing of an Infinite Spirit, and but little of a
future life. His cardinal precepts were obedience to superiors, reverence
for the ancients, and imitation of their virtues. He himself walked in the
old paths, and thus added the force of example to that of precept. He gave
the Chinese the Golden Rule, stated negatively: "What you do not want done
to yourself, do not do to others."

During the reign of Che Hwang-te (see p. 13), Chinese literature suffered
a great disaster. That despot, for the reason that the teachers in their
opposition to him were constantly quoting the ancient writings against his
innovations, ordered the chief historical books to be destroyed, and
sentenced to death any one who should presume to talk about the proscribed
writings, or even allude to the virtues of the ancients in such a way as
to reflect upon his reforms. The contumacious he sent to work upon the
Great Wall. But the people concealed the books in the walls of their
houses, or better still hid them away in their memories; and in this way
the priceless inheritance of antiquity was preserved until the storm had
passed.

INFLUENCE OF THIS LITERATURE AND OF THE SAGE CONFUCIUS.--It would be
impossible to exaggerate the influence which the Nine Classics have had
upon the Chinese nation. For more than 2000 years these writings have been
the Chinese Bible. And as all of the Four Books, though they were not
written by Confucius, yet bear the impress of his mind and thought, just
as the Gospels teach the mind of Christ, a large part of this influence
must be attributed to the life and teachings of that great Sage. His
influence has been greater than that of any other teacher, excepting
Christ and perhaps Buddha. His precepts, implicitly followed by his
countrymen, have shaped their lives from his day to the present.

The moral system of Confucius, making, as it does, filial obedience and a
conformity to ancient customs primary virtues, has exalted the family life
among the Chinese and given a wonderful stability to Chinese society.
Chinese children are the most obedient and reverential to parents of any
children in the world, and the Chinese Empire is the only one in all
history that has prolonged its existence from ancient times to the
present.

But along with much good, one great evil has resulted from this blind,
servile following of the past. The Chinese in strictly obeying the
injunction to walk in the old ways, to conform to the customs of the
ancients, have failed to mark out any new footpaths for themselves. Hence
their lack of originality, their habit of imitation: hence the unchanging,
unprogressive character of Chinese civilization.

EDUCATION AND CIVIL SERVICE COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS.--China has a very
ancient educational system. The land was filled with schools, academies,
and colleges more than a thousand years before our era, and education is
to-day more general among the Chinese than among any other pagan people. A
knowledge of the sacred books is the sole passport to civil office and
public employment. All candidates for places in the government must pass a
competitive examination in the Nine Classics. This system is practically
the same in principle as that which we, with great difficulty, are trying
to establish in connection with our own civil service.

THE THREE RELIGIONS,--CONFUCIANISM, TAOISM, AND BUDDHISM.--There are three
leading religions in China,--Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The great
Sage Confucius is reverenced and worshipped throughout the Empire. He
holds somewhat the same relation to the system that bears his name that
Christ holds to that of Christianity. Taoism takes its name from Tao,
which is made, like Brahma in Brahmanism, the beginning of all things. It
is a very curious system of mystical ideas and superstitious practices.
Buddhism was introduced into China about the opening of the Christian era,
and soon became widely spread.

There is one element common to all these religions, and that is the
worship of ancestors. Every Chinese, whether he be a Confucianist, a
Taoist, or a Buddhist, reverences his ancestors, and prays and makes
offerings to their spirits.

POLICY OF NON-INTERCOURSE.--The Chinese have always been a very self-
satisfied and exclusive people. They have jealously excluded foreigners
and outside influence from their country. The Great Wall with which they
have hedged in their country on the north, is the symbol of their policy
of isolation. Doubtless this characteristic of the Chinese has been
fostered by their geographical isolation; for great mountain barriers and
wide deserts cut the country off from communication with the rest of the
Asiatic continent. And then their reverence for antiquity has rendered
them intolerant of innovation and change. Hence, in part, the
unwillingness of the Chinese to admit into their country railroads,
telegraphs, and other modern improvements. For them to adopt these new-
fangled inventions, would be like our adopting a new religion. Such a
departure from the ways and customs of the past has in it, to their way of
thinking, something akin to disrespect and irreverence for ancestors.

CHAPTER II.

EGYPT.

1. POLITICAL HISTORY.

EGYPT AND THE NILE.--Egypt comprises the delta of the Nile and the flood-
plains of its lower course. The whole land is formed of the deposits of
the river; hence Herodotus, in happy phrase, called the country "the gift
of the Nile." The delta country was known to the ancients as Lower Egypt;
while the valley proper, reaching from the head of the delta to the First
Cataract, a distance of six hundred miles, was called Upper Egypt.
[Footnote: About seven hundred miles from the Mediterranean a low ledge of
rocks, stretching across the Nile, forms the first obstruction to
navigation in passing up the river. The rapids found at this point are
termed the First Cataract. Six other cataracts occur in the next seven
hundred miles of the river's course.]

Through the same means by which Egypt was originally created, is the land
each year still renewed and fertilized. The Nile, swollen by the heavy
tropical rains about its sources, begins to rise in its lower parts late
in June, and by October, when the inundation has attained its greatest
height, the country presents the appearance of an inland sea.

By the end of November the river has returned to its bed, and the fields,
over which has been spread a film of rich earth, [Footnote: The rate of
the fluviatile deposit is from three to five inches in a century. The
surface of the valley at Thebes, as shown by the accumulations about the
monuments, has been raised seven feet during the last seventeen hundred
years.] present the appearance of black mud-flats. Usually the plow is run
lightly over the soft surface, but in some cases the grain is sown upon
the undisturbed deposit, and simply trampled in by flocks of sheep and
goats driven over it. In a few weeks the entire land, so recently a
flooded plain, is overspread with a sea of verdure, which forms a striking
contrast to the desert sands and barren hills that rim the valley.

[Illustration: ANCIENT EGYPT]

CLIMATE.--In Lower Egypt, near the sea, the rainfall in the winter is
abundant; but the climate of Upper Egypt is all but rainless, only a few
slight showers falling throughout the year. This dryness of the Egyptian
air is what has preserved through so many thousand years, in such
wonderful freshness of color and with such sharpness of outline, the
numerous paintings and sculptures of the monuments of the Pharaohs.

The southern line of Egypt only just touches the tropics; still the
climate, influenced by the wide and hot deserts that hem the valley, is
semi-tropical in character. The fruits of the tropics and the cereals of
the temperate zone grow luxuriantly. Thus favored in climate as well as in
the matter of irrigation, Egypt became in early times the granary of the
East. To it less favored countries, when stricken by famine,--a calamity
so common in the East in regions dependent upon the rainfall,--looked for
food, as did the families of Israel during drought and failure of crops in
Palestine.

DYNASTIES AND CHRONOLOGY.--The kings, or Pharaohs, that reigned in Egypt
from the earliest times till the conquest of the country by Alexander the
Great (332 B.C.), are grouped into thirty-one dynasties. Thirty of these
we find in the lists of Manetho, an Egyptian priest who lived in the third
century B.C., and who compiled a chronicle of the kings of the country
from the manuscripts kept in the Egyptian temples.

We cannot assign a positive date to the beginning of the First Dynasty,
chiefly because Egyptologists are at a loss to know whether to consider
all the dynasties of Manetho's list as successive or in part
contemporaneous. Thus, it is held by some scholars that several of these
families were reigning at the same time in the different cities of Upper
and Lower Egypt; while others think that they all reigned at different
epochs, and that the sum of the lengths of the several dynasties gives us
the true date of the beginning of the political history of the country.
Accordingly, some place the beginning of the First Dynasty at about 5000
B.C., while others put it at about 3000 B.C. The constantly growing
evidence of the monuments is in favor of the higher figures.

MENES, THE FIRST OF THE PHARAOHS.--Menes is the first kingly personage,
shadowy and indistinct in form, that we discover in the early dawn of
Egyptian history. Tradition makes him the founder of Memphis, near the
head of the Delta, the site of which capital he secured against the
inundations of the Nile by vast dikes and various engineering works. To
him is ascribed the achievement of first consolidating the numerous petty
principalities of Lower Egypt into a single state.

THE FOURTH DYNASTY: THE PYRAMID KINGS (about 2700 B.C.).--The kings of the
Fourth Dynasty, who reigned at Memphis, are called the Pyramid builders.
Kufu I., the Cheops of the Greeks, was the first great builder. To him we
can now positively ascribe the building of the Great Pyramid, the largest
of the Gizeh group, near Cairo; for his name has been found upon some of
the stones,--painted on them by his workmen before the blocks were taken
from the quarries.

The mountains of stone heaped together by the Pyramid kings are proof that
they were cruel oppressors of their people, and burdened them with useless
labor upon these monuments of their ambition. Tradition tells how the very
memory of these monarchs was hated by the people. Herodotus says that the
Egyptians did not like even to speak the names of the builders of the two
largest pyramids.

THE TWELFTH DYNASTY (about 2300 B.C.).--After the Sixth Dynasty, Egypt,
for several centuries, is almost lost from view. When finally the valley
emerges from the obscurity of this period, the old capital Memphis has
receded into the background, and the city of Thebes has taken its place as
the seat of the royal power.

The period of the Twelfth Dynasty, a line of Theban kings, is one of the
brightest in Egyptian hhistory. Many monuments scattered throughout the
country perpetuate the fame of the sovereigns of this illustrious house.
Egyptian civilization is regarded by many as having during this period
reached the highest perfection to which it ever attained.

THE HYSKOS, OR SHEPHERD KINGS (from about 2100 to 1650 B.C.).--Soon after
the bright period of the Twelfth Dynasty, Egypt again suffered a great
eclipse. Nomadic tribes from Syria crossed the eastern frontier of Egypt,
took possession of the inviting pasture-lands of the Delta, and
established there the empire of the Shepherd Kings.

These Asiatic intruders were violent and barbarous, and destroyed or
mutilated the monuments of the country. But gradually they were
transformed by the civilization with which they were in contact, and in
time they adopted the manners and culture of the Egyptians. It was
probably during the supremacy of the Hyksos that the families of Israel
found a refuge in Lower Egypt. They received a kind reception from the
Shepherd Kings, not only because they had the same pastoral habits, but
also, probably, because of near kinship in race.

At last these intruders, after they had ruled in the valley four or five
hundred years, were expelled by the Theban kings, and driven back into
Asia. This occurred about 1650 B.C. The episode of the Shepherd Kings in
Egypt derives great importance from the fact that these Asiatic conquerors
were one of the mediums through which Egyptian civilization was
transmitted to the Phoenicians, who, through their wide commercial
relations, spread the same among all the early nations of the
Mediterranean area.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35