Ancient China Simplified Part 10

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 was.h.i.+ng the feet with k.u.miss-- 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 a.s.sumed 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 antic.i.p.ating 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 k.u.miss 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 _Siw.a.n.gmu_, Lieh-tsz mentions the traditional departure, west, of the philosopher Lao-tsz, his own master.

Now, although there is considerable doubt as to the authors.h.i.+p, 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 x.x.xII. 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 a.s.sist 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 princ.i.p.ality, under the Shang dynasty, was a sort of first edition of Ts'in princ.i.p.ality 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 Yu 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 va.s.sal 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, _cote_ que _cote_, even though Confucius himself be the tamperer.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

ANCIENT j.a.pAN

The development of China is not only elucidated by doc.u.ments 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 j.a.pan. 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 va.s.sal 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 j.a.panese 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 va.s.sal, 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 j.a.pan (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 s.h.i.+ps towards the east, and had founded a state in j.a.pan. But it must not be forgotten that then (473 B.C.) orthodox China had never yet heard of j.a.pan 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 "j.a.panese" migration--a.s.suming 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 j.a.pan 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 j.a.pan of the bearded Ainus (a word meaning in their own language "men"); and from the numerous accounts of Ainu- j.a.panese wars in both Chinese and j.a.panese history, that there were (as there still are) manners, and possibly yet other men, in ancient j.a.pan, both very different from the manners and appearance of the cultured and gifted race, viewed as a h.o.m.ogeneous 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 circ.u.mstances of life; but even if movement has taken place in j.a.pan as it has elsewhere, there is no reason why, if comparatively uncivilized j.a.panese displaced Ainus, Ainus should not have, before that, displaced quite uncivilized j.a.panese; 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.pan, 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 Tsus.h.i.+ma, which practically means to both Corea and j.a.pan; 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 cla.s.s 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, Yueh, 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, j.a.pan, 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.pan, and whose statue now adorns a great j.a.panese city as that of a man who was, in a humble way, also a "civilizer" of j.a.pan (600 A.D.).

Doubtless, many Wu words, or Chinese words as then p.r.o.nounced 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 cla.s.s of the Wu ruling folk. It is true that the first j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.pan 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 j.a.pan, 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 j.a.panese 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 t.i.tle 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 t.i.tle therefore does not make him less of an ent.i.ty than he was before. And so on with all the other j.a.panese emperors who, in the eighth century A.D., were similarly provided with imaginary names. Possibly this is how the j.a.panese 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 x.x.xI.) so long as we keep imagination separate from real evidence.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

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 princ.i.p.ality, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 Yueh 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 j.a.panese 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.

Something has already been said about the rules of succession in Ts'u and Ts'in. When the Duke of Sung just mentioned died, in 1078 B.C., he was succeeded by his younger brother because his own son was dead; this was in accordance with the Shang dynasty's ritual laws. Even the Warrior King himself, founder of the Chou dynasty, was not the eldest son of his father, the (posthumously) Civilian King; the latter had set aside the elder of the two sons; and it will be remembered that, several generations before that, two of the royal Chou brothers had voluntarily retired to colonize the Wu Jungle country, in order that their younger brother, father of the future Civilian King, might succeed to the then extremely limited va.s.sal state of Chou. Later on, in 729, a Duke of Sung on his death-bed bequeathed the succession to his younger brother instead of to his own son, on the ground that the rule is, "son to father, younger to elder brother"--a "universal rule" approved by Mencius in later times. The younger brother in this case thrice refused the kingly crown, but at last accepted, and Confucius in his history censures the act, which, it is considered, contributed to Sung's ultimate downfall. (It must be remembered that Confucius'

ancestors were themselves of royal Sung extraction.) In 652 the younger brother by the superior spouse wished, at his father's death-bed, to cede his right to the succession of Sung to his elder brother by an inferior wife; the dying father commended the spirit, but forbade the proposed sacrifice of prior right, and the elder therefore served the younger as counsellor. In 493 a Duke of Sung, irritated on account of his eldest son having left the country, nominated a younger son as successor, and after his death his wife confirmed by decree her late husband's nomination; but the younger brother firmly declined, on the ground that the rule of succession was a fixed one, and that he was unworthy to perform the sacrifices to the G.o.ds of the land and grain. It is a curious coincidence that the question of status in wives affects the present rulers of both China and j.a.pan. Though the dowager was Empress-Mother, she always ceded the pas to the senior dowager, who had no children. And as to the Mikado's mother, who died last October, she was, it seems, never officially considered as an Empress.

In 817 B.C. the Emperor himself is censured by history for having, "contrary to rule," wished to set up as ruler of Lu a second son in preference to the elder son; he repeated the act in 796, as has already been explained in Chapter XX., when a few other instances were cited to ill.u.s.trate the general rule in China. At this time the waning power of the emperors still evidently flickered. In 608, through the meddlesome political interference of Ts'i, a concubine's son succeeded to the Lu throne in preference to the legitimate wife's son; curiously enough, the legitimate wife was a Ts'i princess. The result of this irregularity was that the "three powerful families" of Lu (themselves descendants of the ruling family) grew restless, and the state began to decline. On the death of a King of Ts'u in 516, it was proposed to put on the throne, instead of the king's young son, the king's younger brother by an inferior mother, on the ground that the mother of the young son in question was the wife obtained from Ts'in by the king for marriage to his eldest son (who had since joined the king's enemies), which young lady the king had subsequently decided to marry himself. Even under this irregular and complicated family tangle, the proposed succession was disapproved by the counsellors, on the ground that irregular successions invariably produced trouble in the state. In the year 450 B.C. the ruler of Ts'i insisted, against advice, on the succession of a younger son by a favourite concubine in preference to his elder sons by superior mothers, including the first and most dignified spouse. But here, again, the powerful families intervened; one of the elder sons, who had fled to Lu, was brought back secretly in a sack; the wrongful successor was murdered, and the "powerful family" which took the lead in state affairs soon afterwards, to the horror of Confucius, by intrigue and by further a.s.sa.s.sination, secured the Ts'i throne for itself. It will thus be noticed that all the great states except Ts'in had their full share of succession troubles.

There were several customs practised in warfare which are worthy of short notice. In 633 B.C. a Ts'u general, in the interests of discipline, flogged several military men, and "had the ears of others pierced by arrows, according to military regulation." In 639 this same king had sent as a present to some princesses of other states, who had congratulated him on his victory over Sung, "a pile of the enemy's left ears." As the historians express their disgust at this indelicate act, it was presumably not an orthodox practice, at all events in this particular form. In 607 there were captured from Sung 450 war-chariots and 250 soldiers; the latter had their left ears cut off; in this case the victors were CHeNG troops, acting under Ts'u's orders, and it is presumed that CHeNG officers cut off the ears under Ts'u's commands. A few years later two or three Ts'u generals were discussing what the ancients did when they challenged for a battle; it was decided that the best "form" was to rush up to the entrenchments, cut off an enemy's left ear, carry him away in your chariot, and rush back to your own camp. As there is a special Chinese character or pictograph for "ears cut off in battle," it thus appears that to a certain extent even the orthodox Chinese practised the "scalping" art, which was doubtless intended to furnish easy proof of claims for reward based upon prowess; in fact, even in modern official Chinese, a decapitated head is called a "head-step," an expression evidently dating from the time when a step in rank was given for each head or group of heads taken.

Rulers, whether the Emperor or va.s.sals, faced south in the exercise of their sovereign powers. Thus, when the Duke of Chou, after the death of his brother the Martial King, acted as Regent pending the minority of the Martial King's son, his own nephew, he faced south; but he faced north once more when he resumed his status of subject. It has already been mentioned, in Chapter XX., that in 640 B.C. the state of Lu made the south gate of the Lu capital the Law Gate, because it was by the south gates that all rulers' commands emanated. In 546 a counsellor of Ts'u explained to the king how, since Tsin influence had predominated in the orthodox state of CHeNG, this last had ceased to "face south towards its former protector." Thus, though the Emperor faces south towards the sun, and his subjects in turn face north in his honour, those subjects face their other protector in whatever direction he may lie, supposing the Emperor's protection to be inadequate. It is evidently the same principle as "bowing towards the east," and "turning towards Mecca," both of which formalities must be modified according to place. In 315 B.C., when Yen (the Peking plain) had become one of the six independent kingdoms, a usurper (to whom the King of Yen had foolishly committed full powers) "turned south" to perform acts of sovereignty in the king's name. In 700 B.C., in the orthodox state of Wei, we hear of "princes of the left and right," which is explained to mean "sons of mothers whose official place is left or right of the princ.i.p.al spouse." Right used to be more honourable than left in China, but left now takes precedence of right. Thus the provinces of Shan Tung and Shan Si are also called "Left of the Mountains" and "Right of the Mountains," because the Emperor faces south.

Notwithstanding, the ancient phraseology sometimes survives; for instance, "stands right of him" means "is better than he is," and "to left him" means "to prove him wrong or worse." All _yamens_ in China face south; there are rare exceptions, usually owing to building difficulties. Once, in the province of Kwei Chou, I was officially invited by the mandarin to take my seat on his right instead of on his left, because, as he explained, his _yamen_ door did not face south, but _west_; and, he added, it was more honourable for me, as an official guest, to sit north, facing west, than to sit south, facing west. In Canton, the Viceroy used out of courtesy to sit south, facing north, and make his own interpreter sit north, facing south; the consul sat east, facing west, and the consul's interpreter sat west, facing east. But the consul could not have presumed to occupy the north seat thus given to an inferior on the principle of de _minimis_ non _curat lex_; nor was the Viceroy willing to a.s.sert his "command"

to a guest. In 436 the armies of Yiieh marching north through Ho Nan called the Chinese places lying to their west the "left" towns; but that was perhaps because Yiieh came marching from the south. In 221 B.C., when for the first time South China to the sea became part of the imperial dominions, the Emperor's territory was described as extending southward to the "north-facing houses." Hong Kong and Canton are just on the tropical line; but the island of Hainan, and also Tonquin, are actually in the tropics. Whether the houses there do really face north--which I have never noticed--or whether the expression is merely symbolical, I cannot say; but the idea is "to the regions where, when the sun is on the tropic, you have to turn north to see him."

A point of honour in China was not to make war on an enemy who was in mourning, but this rule seems to have been honoured in the breach as much as in the observance thereof. Two centuries before the Chou dynasty came into power, an emperor of the Shang dynasty distinguished himself by not speaking at all during the three years he occupied the mourning hut near the grave. As we have seen, the first rulers of Lu (as a Chou fief) modified existing customs, and introduced the three years' mourning rule there. In connection with a Sung funeral in 651 B.C., it is explained that the bier lay between the two front pillars, and not, as with the Chou dynasty, on the top of the west side steps; it will be remembered that Sung represented the sacrifices of the extinct Shang dynasty. That same year the future Second Protector (then a refugee among the Tartars) declined to put in a claim to the Tsin succession against his brothers "because he had not been in mourning whilst a fugitive." In 642 Sung and her allies made war on Ts'i, which was then mourning for the First Protector; by a just Nemesis the Tartars came to the rescue and saved Ts'i. In 627, after the Second Protector's death, Ts'in declared war, whilst Tsin was mourning, upon a petty orthodox princ.i.p.ality belonging to the same clan as Tsin and the Emperor, and belonging also to the Tsin va.s.sal system. This so enraged the new ruler of Tsin that he dyed his white mourning clothes black, so as to avenge the insult, and yet not to outrage the rites: moreover, white was unlucky in warfare: victorious over Ts'in, he then proceeded to mourn for his father, and ever after that black was adopted, by way of memento, as the national colour of Tsin. In 626 and 622 the Emperor sent high officers to represent him at Lu funerals, and to carry gems to place in deceased's mouth, "to show that he (the Emperor) had not the heart to leave the deceased unsupplied with food." In 581 the ruler of Lu, being on a visit to Tsin, was forcibly detained by Tsin, in order to swell the importance of a Tsin ruler's funeral. Lu (like the petty orthodox states of Wei, Sung, CHeNG, etc., further south) was nearly always under the rival political constraint of either Ts'i, Tsin, or Ts'u; and this factor must accordingly also be taken into account in explaining Confucius' longing for the good old days of imperial predominance. In 572 Tsin attacked Cheng, though of the same clan as itself, whilst in mourning; but in 567 semi-barbarian Ts'u set a good example to orthodox Tsin by withdrawing its troops out of deference to a later official mourning then in force in Cheng: in 564 the King of Ts'u withdrew his armies home altogether on account of the mourning due to his own deceased mother. In 560 barbarian Wu attacked Ts'u whilst in mourning for the above king (the one who first conquered the Canton region for Ts'u); but, here again, by a just Nemesis, Wu's army was cut to pieces, and Wu's own ally, Tsin, censured her for having done such an improper thing. In 544 the prime minister of Tsin mourned for his Ts'u co- signatory of the celebrated Peace Conference Treaty of 546; and this graceful act is explained to be in accordance with the rites.

In 544 Ts'u herself was in mourning, and in accordance with the terms of the Peace Conference Treaty, under which the Tsin va.s.sals and the Ts'u va.s.sals were to pay their respects to Ts'u and Tsin respectively--Ts'in and Ts'i, as great powers, being excused, or, rather, discreetly left alone--Ts'u put great pressure on Lu to secure the personal presence of the Lu ruler at the Ts'u funeral.

The orthodox duke did not at all like this "truckling to a barbarian"; but one of his counsellors suggested behaving before the corpse as he would behave to a va.s.sal of his own: this was done, and the unsophisticated Ts'u was none the wiser at the time, though, later on, the king discovered the pious fraud. In 514 B.C.

Wu wished to attack Ts'u while, mourning, and the virtuous Ki- chah was promptly sent by Wu to sound Tsin about the _facheuse situation._ At a Lu funeral in 509, it was explained that the new duke could only mount the throne after the burial was over; it was added "even the Son of Heaven's commands do not run in Lu during this critical period; _a fortiori_ is the duke not capable of transacting his own subjects' business." But long before this, when the First Protector died, in 643, his body lay for sixty-seven days in the coffin unattended, whilst his five sons were wrangling about the succession; in fact, the worms were observed crawling out of the coffin. These painful details have a powerful historical interest, for when (as mentioned on p. 209) his tomb was opened nearly 1000 years later, dogs had to be sent in ahead to test the air, as the stench was so great. In 492 an unpopular prince of Wei was in Tsin, which state had an interest in placing him on the throne. There happened to be in Tsin at that moment a scoundrel who had fled to Tsin from Lu, because he had found Confucius too strong for him in Lu; and this man suggested to Tsin that it would be a good plan to send seventy Wei men back to Wei in mourning clothes and sash, so as to make the Wei people think that the prince was dead, and thus gain an opportunity to "run him in" by surprise, and set him up as ruler. In 489, when the King of Ts'u died in the field of battle, his three brothers, all of whom had declined his offer of the throne, but one of whom had at last accepted in order to give the dying man peace, decided to conceal the king's death from the army whilst they sent for his son by a Yiieh mother, pleading that the king had been non _compos mentis_ when he proposed an irregular succession, and that the promise made to him was, therefore, of no avail. In 485 Lu and Wu joined in an attack upon Ts'i during the latter's mourning--a particularly disgraceful political combination: no wonder Confucius was hastily sent for from the state of CH'eN, whither he had previously retired in disgust at the corruption of his native land. In 481 a conspiracy which was going on in Ts'i was delayed because one of the chief actors, being in mourning, could not attend to public business of any kind. In 332 B.C. Ts'i took ten towns from Yen by successfully attacking her whilst in mourning; one of the travelling diplomats and intriguers so common in China at that period insisted upon the towns being restored.

This was at the exact moment when the philosopher Mencius, who seems to have also been a great political _dilettante_, was circulating to and fro between such monarchs as the Kings of Ts'i and Ngwei, alias _Liang_, as is fully explained in the still extant book of Mencius.

All the above quaint instances, novel though they may be in detail, strongly recall to us in principle our own "rules" of international law, which are always liable to unexpected "construction" according to the exigencies of war and the power wielded by the "constructor." Inter _arma leges silent_. As usual in these ritual matters, Ts'in is distinguished by total absence of mention.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

WOMEN AND MORALS

So far as it is possible to judge from the concrete instances in which women are mentioned, it appears that in ancient Chinese times their confinement and seclusion was neither nominally nor actively so strict as it has been in later days, and they seem to have been much more companionable to men than they have been ever since the ridiculous foot-squeezing fas.h.i.+on came into vogue over a thousand years ago. When the Martial King addressed his semi- barbarous western allies, as he prepared his march upon the last Shang Emperor in 1122 B.C., he observed: "The ancient proverb says the hen crows not in the morn; when she does, the house will fall"--in allusion to the interference of the debauched Emperor's favourite concubine in public affairs; and we have seen, under the heading of Law in Chapter XX., how one of the imperial statutes, proclaimed or read regularly in the va.s.sal kingdoms, prohibited the meddling of women in public business. But, in spite of this, so far as promoting the succession rights and political interests of their own children goes, wives and concubines certainly exerted considerable influence, whether legitimate or not, in all the states. The murder of an Emperor and flight of his successor in 771 B.C. was in its inception owing to the intrigues of women about Court. A few years only after that event, we find the orthodox ruler of Wei marrying a beautiful Ts'i princess (her beauty is a matter of history, and is celebrated in the Odes, which are themselves a popular form of history); and then, because she had no children, further marrying a princess of Ch'en. This princess unfortunately lost her offspring; but her sister also enjoyed the prince's favour, and her son was, after her death, given in adoption to the first childless Ts'i wife. This son succeeded to the Wei throne, but was ultimately murdered by a younger brother born of a concubine, who was next succeeded by still another younger brother, whose queen had also been one of his father's concubines. Thus in the most orthodox states (Wei was of the imperial clan), the rites often seem not to have counted for much in practice.--This book, it must here be repeated, deals with specific recorded facts, and not with civilization as it _ought_ to have been under the Rites of _Chou._--So, even in comparatively modern China, 1500 years later, the third emperor of the T'ang dynasty married his father's concubine, and she ultimately reigned as empress in her own right, which is in itself an outrage upon the "rites."

In 694 B.C. the ruler of Lu (also of the imperial clan) married a Ts'i princess, who, as has been stated in Chapter x.x.xIV., not only had incestuous relations with her brother of Ts'i, but led that brother to procure the murder of her husband. In connection with this woman's further visit to Ts'i two years later, the rule is cited: "Women, when once married, should not recross the frontier." The same rule is quoted in 655 when a Lu princess, who had married a petty mesne-va.s.sal of Lu in 670, recrossed the Lu frontier in order to visit her son in Lu.